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 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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Swiss and Palatinate Connections

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History of the Russian Mennonites

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