Skip to main content

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.




Print Friendly and PDF
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fraktur (or Gothic) font and Kurrent- (or Sütterlin) handwriting: Nazi ban, 1941

In the middle of the war on January 1, 1942, the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau published a new issue without the familiar Fraktur script masthead ( note 1 ). One might speculate on the reasons, but a year earlier Hitler banned the use of the font in the Reich . The Rundschau did not exactly follow all orders from Berlin—the rest of the paper was in Fraktur (sometimes referred to as "Gothic"); when the war ended in 1945, the Rundschau reintroduced the Fraktur font for its masthead. It wasn’t until the 1960s that an issue might have a page or title here or there with the “normal” or Latin font, even though post-war Germany was no longer using Fraktur . By 1973 only the Rundschau masthead is left in Fraktur , and that is only removed in December 1992. Attached is a copy of Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann's official letter dated January 3, 1941, which prohibited the use of Fraktur fonts "by order of the Führer. " Why? It was a Jewish invention, apparent...
1 comment
Read more

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 ...
1 comment
Read more

A Mennonite Pandemic Spirituality, 1830-1831

Asiatic Cholera broke out across Russia in 1829 and ‘30, and further into Europe in 1831. It began with an infected battalion in Orenburg ( note 1 ), and by early Fall 1830 the disease had reached Moscow and the capital. Russia imposed drastic quarantine measures. Much like today, infected regions were cut off and domestic trade was restricted. The disease reached the Molotschna River district in Fall 1830, and by mid-December hundreds of Nogai deaths were recorded in the villages adjacent to the Mennonite colony, leading state authorities to impose a strict quarantine. When the Mennonite Johann Cornies—a state-appointed agricultural supervisor and civic leader—first became aware of the nearby cholera-related deaths, he recommended to the Mennonite District Office on December 6, 1830 to stop traffic and prevent random contacts with Nogai. For Cornies it was important that the Mennonite community do all it can keep from carrying the disease into the community, though “only God knows...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Beginnings: Some Basics

The sixteenth-century ancestors of Russian Mennonites were largely Anabaptists from the Low Countries. Because their new vision of church called for voluntary membership marked by adult baptism upon confession of faith, they became one of the most persecuted groups of the Protestant Reformation ( note 1 ). For a millennium re-baptism ( a na -baptism) had been considered a heresy punishable by death ( note 2 ), and again in 1529 the Imperial Diet of Speyer called for the “brutal” punishment for those who did not recognize infant baptism. Many of the earliest Anabaptist cells were found in Belgium and The Netherlands--part of the larger Habsburg Empire ruled after 1555 by “the Most Catholic of Kings,” Philip II of Spain. The North Sea port cities of the Low Countries had some limited freedoms and were places for both commercial and cultural exchange; ships arrived daily not only from other Hanseatic League like Danzig, but also from Florence, Venice and Genoa, the Americas and the Far Ea...
Post a Comment
Read more

“We have no poor among us”: From "Blue Bag" to e-Transfer

Through not unique or original to Menno Simons, the idea of watching and caring for fellow travellers on the journey of faith “where no one is allowed to beg” ( note 1 ) was a pillar of his teaching, and forms one of the most consistent threads in the Anabaptist–Mennonite story. In the decades before Mennonites settled in Russia they used the “Blue-Bag” to collect for the poor in Prussia. In 1723 Abraham Hartwich—an otherwise unsympathetic observer of Mennonites—noted that Mennonites in Prussia “do not allow their co-religionists to suffer want, but rather help them in their poverty from the so-called blue-bag, their fund for the poor” ( note 2 ). It is unclear when the “blue-bag tradition” changed? Similarly, in the early 1800s, two Lutheran observers—Georg Reiswitz and Friedrich Wadzeck—noted that the Mennonite care for their poor through annual free-will contributions was “exemplary” ( note 3 ). Moreover Reiswitz and Wadzeck describe a community stubbornly committed to each ot...
Post a Comment
Read more

Formidable Fräulein Marga Bräul (1919–2011)

Fräulein Bräul left an indelible mark on two generations of high school students in the Mennonite Colony of Fernheim, Paraguay. Former students and acquaintances recall that Marga Bräul demanded the highest effort and achievements of her students, colleagues and of herself—the kind of teacher you either love or hate but will never forget! In March 1947, Marga was offered a position at the Fernheim Secondary School ( Zentralschule ). A recent refugee to Paraguay from war-torn Europe, she taught mathematics, physics, and chemistry. In 1952, she was the only female faculty member ( note 1 ). Marga wedded a strong commitment to academics with a passion for quality arts and crafts. She provided extensive extra-curricular instruction to students in handiwork and was especially renowned for her artwork—which included painting and woodworking— end of year art exhibits with students, theatre sets, and festival decorations. Marga’s pedagogical philosophy was holistic; she told Mennonite ed...
Post a Comment
Read more

Shaky Beginings as a Faith Community

With basic physical needs addressed, in 1805 Chortitza pioneers were ready to recover their religious roots and to pass on a faith identity. They requested a copy of Menno Simons’ writings from the Danzig mother-church especially for the young adults, “who know only what they hear,” and because “occasionally we are asked about the founder whose name our religion bears” ( note 1 ). The Anabaptist identity of this generation—despite the strong Mennonite publications in Prussia in the late eighteenth century—was uninformed and very thin. Settlers first arrived in Russia 1788-89 without ministers or elders. Settlers had to be content with sharing Bible reflections in Low German dialect or a “service that consisted of singing one song and a sermon that was read from a book of sermons” written by the recently deceased East Prussian Mennonite elder Isaac Kroeker ( note 2 ). In the first months of settlement, Chortitza Mennonites wrote church leaders in Prussia:  “We cordially plead ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. … "Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." – Catherine II (Note 1 ) “We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds ...
Post a Comment
Read more

"In the Case of Extreme Danger" - Menno Pass and Refugee crisis, 1945-46

"In the Case of Extreme Danger 1. We are Russian-Mennonite refugees who are returning to Holland, the place of origin. The language is Low German. 2. The Dutch Mennonites there, Doopsgezinde , will take in all fellow-believing Mennonites from Russia who are in danger of compulsory repatriation. 3. The first stage of the journey is to Gronau in Westphalia. 4. As a precaution, purchase a ticket to an intermediate stop first. The last connecting station is Rheine. 5. Opposite Gronau is the Dutch city of Enschede, where you will cross the border. 6. On the border ask for Peter Dyck (Piter Daik), Mennonite Central Committee, Amsterdam, Singel 452. Peter Dyck (or his people) will distribute the relevant papers—“Menno Passes”--and provide further information. 7. Any other border points may also be crossed, with the necessary explanations (who, where to, Mennonites from Russia, Peter Dyck, M.C.C., etc.). The Dutch border Patrol is informed. 8. Here the whole matter must be h...
Post a Comment
Read more