Friedrich the Blacksmith: From the Promised Land of Catherine the Great to the Gulags of Comrade

This story begins in the late 1890's and documents the life of an ambitious young man who grew up eagerly looking forward to a comfortable and sheltered life in an isolated community in Russia near the Polish border. In his youth this farm boy dreamed of becoming the best blacksmith in this community of ethnic German colonies in southern Russia. However, his plans for the future were interrupted when he was conscripted into the Russian Navy. Here he served as a stoker and rose in rank to become an astute marine engineer, and was decorated for bravery by Tsar Nicholas II in the disastrous Russo-Japanese naval Battle of the Yellow Sea, while he served on the flagship of Russia's First Pacific Squadron. Although he had diligently served his community, his country, and his Tsar, it is difficult to concieved how this dedicated citizen of a land which he loved and cherished, that he would end his life as a blind and destitute inmante in one of Stalin's slave labour camps.

Norman Fischbuch has a Ph.D. in geology and has worked in the oil business for most of his career. During this time he has lectured and published technical articles in Canadian, British, and American journals. He has done consulting work in Canada, United States, South America, Australia, China, the Middle East, and Russia. He had heard many accounts from his older Canadian relatives who fled Russia prior to 1928, when Stalin sealed the borders. While working in Russia, he sought out the villages where his ancestors had lived. This book is the result of his findings in Russia and Germany.