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
the Revolution, and on March 3, 1918 signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which
effectively took Russia out of the war. Soviet Russia even recognized the
independence of Ukraine, and gave up control of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia that
were to become German client states.
There was still disorder in countryside. Bandit attacks on Mennonite villages grew in frequency and violence as wealth was transferred.
On April 19, 1918, the Molotschna settlement came under
German military administration. The propertied classes in Ukraine—especially
the ethnic Germans—welcomed the troops; from the estates “the communes and
commissioners fled wildly in all directions, and each one had grabbed whatever
he could” (note 2).
On April 29 the weak Ukrainian People’s Republic was toppled in a coup d’etat led by Pavlo Skoropadsky, a Ukrainian cavalry general in the war. Skoropadsky was the leader of the conservative League of Landowners. Skoropadsky agreed to continue to send food and resources to Germany and to complete German military control. Skoropadsy was installed Hetman, or royal head of state, by the church.
The new Ukrainian government ratified an edict on May 1,
1918 nullifying previous Russian liquidation laws (note 3), and confiscated
property was returned to original owners. Estate owner Jacob C. Toews was named
chair of a three-person commission formed to evaluate damage by Bolshevik
communes on the estates (Melitopol/ Molotschna area) and arrange compensation;
because there was little to take from neighbouring Russian “proletariat”
villagers, well-to-do Russian estate owners were forced to pay (note 4).
In the Mennonite villages the once wealthy—often accompanied
by the Ukrainian National Guard and the German military—went house-to-house to
identify property and goods that had migrated. Jacob C. Toews and his neighbour
Martens each received two carriages with horses, and two soldiers for the
protection of their estates (note 5). Mennonite “rich women went to the houses
of the poor and demanded back their pillows, lamps, chickens, pets and jars.
Here is where the real hatred was engendered,” according to one contemporary (note 6).
On May 14–15, 1918, a “Congress of Representatives of the
German Settlements” was called in the village of Prischib—across the Molotschna
River from Halbstadt—with 750 representatives from Taurien, Ekaterinoslav and
from the Don and Charkov regions. A resolution was passed unanimously with
little local consultation to request the German Kaiser grant citizenship to
German colonists in South Russia. The resolution indicated their wish “to
organize a German state structure” and “to remain here as German forerunners
and pioneers … [or to] return to the German motherland” (note 7). In turn, they
promised “to offer themselves unreservedly to the German homeland, economically
and militarily” (note 8).
Already a “good number” of Mennonites opted not to acquire
the new Ukrainian citizenship, and requested provisional papers as German
citizens; the Supreme Army Command hoped this option would help recruitment for
new reservists among the colonists (note 9).
Another option was for Germans scattered across the former
Russian state to migrate to South Russia including Crimea and seek independence
under German protectorship, or to pursue the creation of a culturally
autonomous German region within Ukraine or Crimea (note 10). Benjamin Unruh and
Johann Willms were key Mennonite representatives in discussions.
By November 1918, only seven months after the arrival of
German troops in Ukraine, Germany was defeated on the Western Front and began
to withdraw all troops from Ukraine.
With the departure of German troops the weak Ukrainian
government collapsed and with it all government authority. Nestor Makhno (1889–1934),
the notorious leader of an extensive army of anarchists, stepped into the power
vacuum to “expropriate the expropriators.”
---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast
---Notes---
Pic: Volksfreund II (XI), no. 14 (32) (April 20, 1918), 1, https://chortitza.org/pdf/pletk19.pdf..
Note 1:
“Denkschrift: Über die Wahrung der Interessen des Reiches in den neuen
Ost-Staaten in strategischer, wirtschaftlicher und verkehrspolitischer Hinsicht
durch Konzessionsierung einer Osteuropäischen Verkehr-Gesellschaft (June
1918),” from Reichskanzlei Kriegsakten 4:2, vol. 3 (März–Juli 1918), 185–188
(Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde R 43/2406, https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/).
Also Vzfw. (Sergeant) Rießner, “Das Ziel des deutschen Einmarsches in die
Ukraine,” Deutsche Zeitung für Ost-Taurien (DZOT), Melitopol, Ukraine, 1918,
no. 40 (July 25, 1918), 2f., http://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB00014E4200000000.
See esp. Wolfram Dornik et al., The Emergence of Ukraine: Self-Determination,
Occupation, and War in Ukraine, 1917–1922, translated by Gus Fagan (Edmonton:
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2015), https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/32934;
also Dmytro Myeshkov, “Der ukrainische Staat und seine nationalen Minderheiten
1917–1920,” Jahrbuch des Bundesinstituts für Kultur und Geschichte der
Deutschen im östlichen Europa 25 (2017), 159–176, https://martin-opitz-bibliothek.de/de/elektronischer-lesesaal?action=book&bookId=0431301-25-2017#lg=1&slide=159.
Note 2: “Biography of Jacob Cornelius Toews, 1882–1968,” translated by Frieda Toews Baergen (Leamington: Essex-Kent Mennonite Historical Association), 27, https://www.ekmha.ca/collections/items/show/42.
Note 3: Cf. “Die Liquidation der Deutschstämmigen,” DZOT,
Part I, no. 136 (November 15, 1918), 2; Part II, no. 137 (November 16, 1918),
2, http://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB00014E4200000000.
Note 4: J. Toews, “Biography of Jacob Cornelius Toews,” 17.
Note 5: J. Toews, “Biography of Jacob Cornelius Toews,” 27.
Note 6: Gerhard Schroeder, Miracles of Grace and Judgement:
A Family Strives for Survival During the Russian Revolution (Lodi, CA:
Self-published, 1974), 28f.
Note 7: In J.
Toews, Mennonites in Ukraine amid Civil War and Anarchy, 52; also in Edmund
Schmid, Die deutschen Kolonien im Schwarzmeergebiet Südrußlands (Berlin:
Deutschtum im Ausland, 1919), 35f., https://chortitza.org/pdf/vpetk341.pdf. Cf.
Thy Kingdom Come: The Diary of Johann J. Nickel of Rosenhof: 1918-1919. A
record of violence and faith during the Russian Civil War, edited and
translated by John P. Nickel (Saskatoon, SK: Self-published, 1978), May 31,
1918, 47; May 2, 1918, 44; Nickel references both the decision in Prischib and
the broader Mennonite support in Chortitza for German citizenship. The official
German response to colonists in Russia was, in contrast, very cautious; cf. Friedensstimme
16, no. 32 (July 9, 1918), 5, https://chortitza.org/pdf/pletk43.pdf. For the
larger German desire for ethnic-racial settlers to repopulate after war losses,
and for East Prussia to serve as a barrier to the east, cf. esp. Dornik, Emergence of Ukraine.
Note 8:
“Vertrauensrat russischer Kolonisten,” DZOT, no. 3 (June 12, 1918), 3.
Note 9: Abraham
Warkentin to W. J. Ewert, September 30, 1921, letter, in Benjamin H. Unruh, Die
Auswanderung der niederdeutschen mennonitischen Bauern aus der Sowjetunion,
1923–1933, folder 10, 546a. Unpublished draft, ca. 1944, from Mennonite
Library and Archives-Bethel College, “B. H. Unruh Collection,” MS 295, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_295/.
For the broad 1918 interpretation of
the July 1913 Reich Citizenship Law’s paragraph 33, cf. Oberste Heeresleitung,
“Reichs- und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz vom 22. Juli 1913” (July 1918), 1f.
(162f.), Reichskanzlei Akten, II Kr. 1 Adh. 5, 162–163 (BArch R 43/2403f). From
Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde. https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de; also DZOT,
no. 57 (August 14, 1918), 4.
Note 10: Benjamin H. Unruh to Peter Braun, October 28, 1926,
4 (Mennonite Library and Archives-Bethel College, MS 91, folder 2, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_91/folder_2/;
based on a letter from Unruh to B. B. Janz, May 19, 1922; “Ueber die Zukunft
der deutschen Kolonisten,” DZOT no. 59 (August 16, 1918), 2. Colonists were
divided on the loyalty they owed a sympathetic Ukrainian government; cf. “Aus der Ukraine,” DZOT no. 59 (August 16,
1918), 3; “Die Krim als selbständiger Staat,” DZOT, no. 65 (August 23, 1918),
3.
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