1871: "Mennonite Tough Luck"

In 1868, a delegation of Prussian Mennonite elders met with Prussian Crown Prince Frederick in Berlin. The topic was universal conscription--now also for Mennonites. They were informed that “what has happened here is coming soon to Russia as well” (note 1). In Berlin the secret was already out.

Three years later this political cartoon appeared in a satirical Berlin newspaper. It captures the predicament of Russian Mennonites (some enticed in recent decades from Prussia), with the announcement of a new policy of compulsory, universal military service.

“‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire—or: Mennonite tough luck.’ The Mennonites, who immigrated to Russia in order to avoid becoming soldiers in Prussia, are now subject to newly introduced compulsory military service.” (Note 2)

The man caught in between looks more like a Prussian than Russian Mennonite—but that’s beside the point.

With the “Great Reforms” of the 1860s (including emancipation of serfs) the fundamentals were changing for Russia’s minority religious and ethnic groups. The Russian imperial model of statehood had had many unique and unequal laws and charters for its diversity of minority religious and ethnic groups. Mennonites had their Privilegium, as did other groups, and each had a role within Russia’s larger sense of mission to serve and rule nobly over many people. All that was changing.

After the humiliation of the Crimean War, Nicholas I initiated a transition to a modern nation-state model, characterized by an increased assimilation, Russification and centralization of power.

On New Years 1871 a number of sweeping reforms, including the elimination of the legal status of “foreign colonists”—Mennonite, German, Bulgarian, and the like were announced. This meant the loss of the unique privileges and favourable tax conditions designed to enable them to rapidly develop and fully master their separated economic zones.

“Settler-landholders” were to become full Russian citizens, and be incorporated into the unified Russian county (uezd) and township (volost) administrative system. The protective Guardianship Committee structure was to be abolished, though Mennonites would be able to keep their insurance system, banks, medical services and (initially) school systems, which assured that future economic growth would not be hindered (note 3).

The classification of minorities like Mennonites also changed from a religious category—“those of other belief”—to one based on language and ethnicity, or “those of other origin” (note 4).

Advance notice of these changes put the Mennonite colonies on alert. Together these changes signaled an imminent end to the broad local autonomy that Mennonites enjoyed within the imperial state. A diary entry by minister Jacob D. Epp on November 18, 1870 has the following reflection: “Is the Charter of Privileges, exempting us from military service for all time, of no value? … God’s judgement is drawing near; and I fear our church faces a difficult future” (note 5).

The rumours of a new conscription policy that would include “all classes of the empire” were floating about for some time. Even before the new direction was reported in newspapers in November 1870 (note 6), Mennonite leaders were corresponding with their American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration (note 7).

As soon as the new direction was pronounced, elders from the Molotschna, Chortitza, and Bergthal Colonies organized multiple emergency meetings, the first hosted by the Molotschna District Chairman Peter Ewert in Rudnerweide on January 5, 1871. After a second meeting, a Mennonite delegation was sent to St. Petersburg to assure the government of their gratefulness and devotion to the crown, and to explain why the proposal was so “deeply distressing and worrisome” to the historically non-resistant community (note 8).

Delegates also composed a fresh and definitive confessional statement on Mennonites and non-resistance which would give guidance for decades (note 9).

While the delegation was well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the crown, a total exemption from individual service to the state was not an option for debate.

Military service as sin? One government minister offered his own quasi-theological argument, telling a Mennonite delegate and elder that it is surely a sin that he cannot speak Russian though Mennonites had been in Russia for seventy years—a line worthy of another of political cartoon (note 10)!

While the new policy did not result in the wholescale emigration of Mennonites, about one-third would leave for North America as a result. The first hundred Russian Mennonite agriculturalists arrived in the United States in September 1873.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Peter Bartel, “Beschreibung der persönlichen Bemühung der fünf Aeltesten bei den Hohen und Allerhöchsten Staatsmännern in Berlin um Wiederheraushelfung aus dem Reichsgesetz, worin der Reichstag uns Mennoniten am 9. November 1867 versetzt hat,” Christlicher Gemeinde-Kalender 29 (1920), 70–79; 78, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Christlicher%20Gemeinde-Kalender/1918-1932/DSCF6404.JPG. See also Josh Sanborn, “Military Reform, Moral Reform and the End of the Old Regime,” in The Military and Society in Russia: 1450–1917, edited by Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe, 507–524 (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 507f.

Note 2 /Pic: “Aus dem Regen in die Traufe, oder: Mennonitenpech,” Beiblatt zum Kladderadatsch (Berlin) 24, no. 24 & 25 (May 28, 1871), 1, https://books.google.ca/books?id=GkkOAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (thanks to Brent Wiebe for sharing a snipped version of this cartoon found in a Samara museum, https://goskatalog.ru/portal/?fbclid=IwAR1KR_Up-NaURSNIsBqHcDJb5XcMJr28_kO1YiPnHkn-FSav-v9_blbHvMk#/collections?id=31698664).

Note 3: Cf. Nataliya Ostasheva Venger, “Mennonite Privileges and Russian Modernization: Communities on a Path Leading to Legal and Social Integration (1789–1900), in European Mennonites and the Challenge of Modernity over Five Centuries. Contributors, Detractors, and Adaptors, edited by Mark Jantzen, Mary Sprunger, and John D. Thiesen (North Newton, KS: Bethel College, 2016), Kindle edition, oc. 2782. Also: Eric Lohr, Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 88.

Note 4: Paul Werth, “Changing Conceptions of Difference, Assimilation, and Faith in the Volga-Kama Region, 1740–1870,” in Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930, edited by A. V. Remnev, Mark Von Hagen, and Jane Burbank, 169–195 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 169.

Note 5: Jacob D. Epp, A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp, 1851–1880, translated and edited by Harvey L. Dyck (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 304.

Note 6: Cf. Paul Toews, “Mennonites and the Search for Military Exemption: State Concessions and Conflicts in the 1870’s,” in Вопросы германской истории [Voprosii Germanskoi Istorii], 81–105 (Dnepropetrovsk: Porogi, 2007), 10.

Note 7: Cf. Cornelius Janzen, Sammlung von Notizen über Amerika (Danzig: Thieme, 1872), https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1872/.

Note 8: Franz Isaac, Die Molotschnaer Mennoniten. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte derselben (Halbstadt, Taurien: H. J. Braun, 1908), 295f., https://archive.org/details/die-molotschnaer-mennoniten-editablea.

Note 9: In Isaac, Molotschnaer Mennoniten, 304–306; reprinted in Mennonitische Rundschau 39, no. 20 (May 17, 1916) 3f., https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1916-05-17_39_20/page/n1/mode/2up.

Note 10: Isaac, Molotschnaer Mennoniten, 303n.

Comments

Outrage in Canada: Ukrainian in Waffen-SS honoured in Parliament. Mennonite Connections

As an historic peace church, Russian Mennonite congregations in Canada never celebrated “their veterans” who had volunteered with the Waffen-SS or Wehrmacht in complex times; hundreds did however volunteer to protect and defend their corner of Ukraine from a new era of Moscow-based Bolshevism. Some later self-identified as "The Lost Generation." German Prussian Mennonites in contrast understood that heritage differently and celebrated the “Heroes' Day Memorial” service anually until 1945. After 1945 Germany appropriately renamed their remembrance day as Volkstrauertag —the People’s Day of Mourning ( note 1 ). Many descendents live in Canada. A parallel Ukrainian story made the news in Canada in September 2023. The Speaker of the House of Commons invited a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian war veteran to a joint session of Parliament for the visit and address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on September 22. Without good vetting by the Speaker, the guest was laud...

“The way is finally open”—Russian Mennonite Immigration, 1922-23

In a highly secretive meeting in Ohrloff, Molotschna on February 7, 1922, leaders took a decision to work to remove the entire Mennonite population of some 100,000 people out of the USSR—if at all possible ( note 1 ). B.B. Janz (Ohrloff) and Bishop David Toews (Rosthern, SK) are remembered as the immigration leaders who made it possible to bring some 20,000 Mennonites from the Soviet Union to Canada in the 1920s ( note 2 ). But behind those final numbers were multiple problems. In August 1922, an appeal was made by leaders to churches in Canada and the USA: “The way is finally open, for at least 3,000 persons who have received permission to leave Russia … Two ships of the Canadian Pacific Railway are ready to sail from England to Odessa as soon as the cholera quarantine is lifted. These Russian [Mennonite] refugees are practically without clothing … .” ( Note 3 ) Notably at this point B. B. Janz was also writing Toews, saying that he was utterly exhausted and was preparing to ...

From USSR to Cherrywood Station: Mennonites winter in Markham-Stouffville, 1924

On September 26, 1924, 126 Russian Mennonite passengers disembarked the S. S. Melita at Quebec City ( note 1 ). They were among some 20,000 Mennonites who could immigrate to Canada from the Soviet Union in the 1920s. A number of these families received train cards to Cherrywood (Pickering) and Locust Hill (Markham) stations, where they were received by Markham area Mennonites. The Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization (CMBC) registration forms record each family's travel dates as well as their "first place of arrival" in Canada. The attached artifacts—a few pages from the financial records booklet kept by Markham-Stouffville treasurer J. L. Grove, plus some correspondence—profile concretely the level of support of this community north-east of Toronto for co-religionists fleeing the Soviet Union. Mennonites in Ontario had been well informed of the relief needs in Russia since 1921 and plans for mass immigration ( note 2 ). In April 1924 the local Stouffville Tribune ...

Ukraine Independence--Russian Aggression--German Interests (1918)

The semi-autonomous Ukrainian People's Republic was established shortly after Russia's February Revolution in 1917. Much was still fluid, however. After the October Bolshevik Revolution the Central Rada of Ukraine in Kyiv declared full state independence from the Russian Republic on January 22, 1918. The Ukrainian People's Republic negotiated an end to its participation in Great War, and on February 9, 1918 signed a protectorate treaty in Brest-Litovsk. On February 17, Ukraine appealed to Germany and Austria-Hungary for assistance to repel Russian Bolshevik “invaders,” to detach Ukraine from Russia, and to establish conditions of stability. The World War had not yet ended. Imperialist Germany was desperate for grain and natural resources from Ukraine, eager to end the war in the east while containing Russia, and determined to establish post-war markets for German goods, technologies and influence ( note 1 ). For its part the Russian Bolshevik regime was eager to save ...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 4 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accurate and carefully considered. ~ANF Preparing for your next AGM: Mennonite Congregations and Deportations Many U.S. Mennonite pastors voted for Donald Trump, whose signature promise was an immediate start to “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Confirmed this week, President Trump will declare a national emergency and deploy military assets to carry this out. The timing is ideal; in January many Mennonite congregations have their Annual General Meeting (AGM) with opportunity to review and update the bylaws of their constitution. Need help? We have related examples from our tradition, which I offer as a template, together with a few red flags. First, your congregational by-laws. It is unlikely you have undocumented immigrants in your congregation, but you should flag this. Model: Gustav Reimer, a deacon and notary public from the ...

1929 Flight of Mennonites to Moscow and Reception in Germany

At the core of the attached video are some thirty photos of Mennonite refugees arriving from Moscow in 1929 which are new archival finds. While some 13,000 had gathered in outskirts of Moscow, with many more attempting the same journey, the Soviet Union only released 3,885 Mennonite "German farmers," together with 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists, and 7 Adventists. Some of new photographs are from the first group of 323 refugees who left Moscow on October 29, arriving in Kiel on November 3, 1929. A second group of photos are from the so-called “Swinemünde group,” which left Moscow only a day later. This group however could not be accommodated in the first transport and departed from a different station on October 31. They were however held up in Leningrad for one month as intense diplomatic negotiations between the Soviet Union, Germany and also Canada took place. This second group arrived at the Prussian sea port of Swinemünde on December 2. In the next ten ...

Mennonite-Designed Mosque on the Molotschna

The “Peter J. Braun Archive" is a mammoth 78 reel microfilm collection of Russian Mennonite materials from 1803 to 1920 -- and largely still untapped by researchers ( note 1 ). In the files of Philipp Wiebe, son-in-law and heir to Johann Cornies, is a blueprint for a mosque ( pic ) as well as another file entitled “Akkerman Mosque Construction Accounts, 1850-1859” ( note 2 ). The Molotschna Mennonites were settlers on traditional Nogai lands; their Nogai neighbours were a nomadic, Muslim Tartar group. In 1825, Cornies wrote a significant anthropological report on the Nogai at the request of the Guardianship Committee, based largely on his engagements with these neighbours on Molotschna’s southern border ( note 3 ). Building upon these experiences and relationships, in 1835 Cornies founded the Nogai agricultural colony “Akkerman” outside the southern border of the Molotschna Colony. Akkerman was a projection of Cornies’ ideal Mennonite village outlined in exacting detail, with un...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accuarte and carefully considered. ~ANF American Mennonite leaders who supported Trump will be responding to the election results in the near future. Sometimes a template or sample conference address helps to formulate one’s own text. To that end I offer the following. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mennonites in Germany sent official greetings by telegram: “The Conference of the East and West Prussian Mennonites meeting today at Tiegenhagen in the Free City of Danzig are deeply grateful for the tremendous uprising ( Erhebung ) that God has given our people ( Volk ) through the vigor and action of [unclear], and promise our cooperation in the construction of our Fatherland, true to the Gospel motto of [our founder Menno Simons], ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” ( Note 1 ) Hitler responded in a letter...

Flooding and Mennonites: A Common Thread

In November 2021 many Mennonites in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia were impacted by disastrous flooding. The mayor of Abbotsford—the worst-hit city—as well as the local Member of Parliament were Mennonites. Many Mennonites across Canada had family members who are directly impacted. Flood stories have been an important thread in the Prussian-Russian Mennonite story. How have Mennonites responded? Mutual aid stands out. For Menno Simons, it was “the only sign whereby a true Christian may be known” ( note 1 ). In 1562, “Dutch people of the Mennonite religion” were specifically invited by the Polish banking house Loysen to settle on the “Tiegenhoff part of the Vistula Delta” to rebuild dikes partially destroyed by huge floods (1540 and 1543) and wars, and to drain low-lying lagoons and swamps over large blocks of land ( note 2 ). The Tiege River—a branch of the Vistula—was at or below sea level. Dams and ditches along the Nogat and Vistula rivers had been construct...

Russian Mennonites were Monarchists

In 1848, Evgenii von Hahn, President of the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Settlers in New Russia, tasked each village administration to work with the schoolteacher to produce an exact historical description of its settlement and key events in its history ( note 1 ). Looking back 44 years, the mayor and teacher of the Molotschna village of Altona had no difficulty identifying and describing the most glorious event in their history ( note 2 ). “There are moments in life that are too great for the human heart, when we are simply overwhelmed--exquisite, great, blissful moments when our voices fall silent, when we are moved so profoundly in our inward being that our hands fold of their own accord and our eyes gaze heavenward and prayer is the one thing needed by an overflowing heart. One such great, blissful moment was in the year 1818, when the most blessed Emperor Alexander I on his journey from the Crimea to St. Petersburg honoured our colony [village] with his distinguished visit a...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog