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.

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History of the Russian Mennonites

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