Due to the distance from the conflict, the Neumanns and their Mennonite neighbours in the Barnaul Settlement escaped the brunt of the conflict that was played out between Red and White armies over a two-year period (1918-20).

     There was suffering, nonetheless, in Siberia—famine and pestilence. Mennonite farmers were forced to surrender grain and livestock for the sustenance of the urban centers to the west. Often, the last grain set aside for spring planting was taken, resulting in the famine of the early 1920s.

     David Neumann remembers looking out of the window, witnessing the approaching sleighs accompanied by soldiers.  They came to haul away their last bushel of grain.  His mother told him to get away from the window or he might get shot.  Food had become scarce [pumpkins for breakfast, lunch and dinner] and clothes were as scarce as food.

“The years 1918 to 1922 were years of privation, illness, anxiety, and sometimes we feared for our lives — we had heard from other areas. When dad (Heinrich Neumann) went to town (Slavgorod), it would take several days. In the winter, I stood at the window anxiously waiting for him to return.”

     On one occasion, Heinrich Neumann was arrested for selling butter on the black market, but everyone did it because they had to eat; the money was used to buy other goods. A policeman took him in and instructed Heinrich to follow him. He wasn’t one to give in very easily, and the policeman was not trained very well. When they began to walk through a crowd, Heinrich slipped his overcoat on and disappeared into the crowd and averted the officers efforts to find him.

      In a report by a visiting delegation of Mennonites from North America, it was noted that by 1922, the situation in the Barnaul Settlement had changed considerably; the observation had been made that throughout the Mennonite settlements of Siberia and particularly Slavgorod, there was actual starvation, lack of clothing and bedding, machinery, horses, and cattle.