“Why is this happening to us?” (1919): Social Unrest and Mennonite Wealth

Stable political arrangements are rarely permanent and can unravel rapidly—and they did for tens of thousands of Mennonites a century ago in the Russian Empire. Not a few asked: “Why is this happening to us?”

Russia was a multicultural colonial empire with sense of a manifest destiny, a long history of serfdom and displacement of non-settler populations, and a yawning disparity of wealth.

A few hundred Mennonite owners of sprawling estates with extensive landholdings suffered most severely in the first period of lawlessness, chaos and revolution in Ukraine.

During a period of civil war in 1919 when the villages in the Mennonite Molotschna colony were largely under White Army protection, Kornelius Bergmann, a teacher and Mennonite Brethren minister, addressed the question everyone was asking, “Why is this happening to us?”

Bergmann wrote using the pseudonym "C. Orosander"—in order to speak freely (note 1).

He began by admonishing his fellow clergy for general failure of office. “They are the embodied conscience of the people,” but over decades, inner and intra-church conflict, impatience, malice, clerical domination and posturing before state officials defined the sad history of Mennonite church presence in Russia.

Moreover, Bergmann opined that most congregational members were too lazy to think, too cheap and indifferent to questions of church, mission and theological education—which all served to create the conditions for decline and unfaithfulness.

But Bergmann saved his most stinging barbs for the formerly wealthy—the estate owners.

Without question they had “suffered the most—economically, physically and certainly also morally … a large number were murdered, while the rest have moved into our [colony] villages and towns, some in comparatively humble accommodations,” Bergmann recognized.

Notably despite the “general misfortune of this class, there appears to be very little sympathy [from other Mennonites] or pity for these unfortunate ones” in the colony.

Rather the author observed there was a certain “Schadenfreude,” “indifference,” and even “hostility” towards these fellow Mennonites who now seek refuge in the colony. He granted that “envy” and “resentment” are two of the greatest vices among less-wealthy Mennonites, but nevertheless, the estate owners—or “steppe kings”—are solely responsible for this kind of reception.

First—as a teacher—he addressed the abysmal attitude towards education that the formerly wealthy have displayed, not only as patrons for those deserving scholarships, but also towards their own children of both sexes. "What percentage from their own offspring have completed high school, let alone university—especially the females," he asks rhetorically (knowing the percentages are small)?

Bergmann contrasted them with the wealthier classes in Germany who had taken on educational equality for girls in higher schools and university as a priority. But for wealthy Mennonites this has been “unnecessary.” “Learning takes effort, and until now they could go anywhere and do what they desired with empty heads, as long as their pockets were full.” Is it unfair to say they “lack the thirst for knowledge,” he asked?

Lives marked by “alcohol consumption and especially inter-marriage” amongst other vices had made it difficult for the children of these “plutocrats” to advance academically. In addition, they brought a “trained, deeply rooted aversion to any strenuous activity,” which had rendered a significant portion of this class of Mennonites “mentally inferior,” he argued.

The older teens play cards and go on their hunting expeditions, and maidens “eat, drink, dance and flirt with their cousins without any higher ideals of life, until they finally hook up with one of them and then as a couple they continue to live lives that are equally worthless for God and for humanity.” [NB: marriage with close relatives was practiced in order to concentrate wealth].

Of course, he noted, “there are numerous and notable exceptions,” but as a rule this class has “almost never made the interests of the whole [Mennonite peoplehood] their own.” So it is no wonder that now “so few tears flow in our villages” for the empty-handed estate owners.

Again, there were exceptions, but overall the support of Mennonite charitable institutions by Mennonite estate owners was “weak” at best. Bergmann traced the problem back to how these children were raised. “Without having learned the basics of filial-piety” a “caste spirit” developed “that was strictly contrary to our brotherly democratic principle of equality, which simply made them incapable of adapting to other people.” They “did not even want to pay their share of the [Alternative Service] barracks tax while, on the other hand, they generally spared no money to somehow free their sons from the barracks!”

The primary concern of estate owners has always been around land speculation, Bergmann lamented. Their appetite for land has been “insatiable ... the more he has, the more he wants.” “The thought that one’s greed for more land could possibly arouse the envy of the poor seems to have occurred only to a very few. If only they had thought not only of themselves, and had not just stood up for their own interests alone with so much energy! The servants on the estates—and especially the Russian [Ukrainian] seasonal workers—were nothing but poorly paid and very often poorly fed workhorses.”

The author as teacher and minister witnessed this even among the “most pious” estate families. “When times were good they did not make the things of God and of their people their own. And now when times are evil, it is not surprising that neither God nor their people make the cause of the former estate owners their own. As you sow, so shall you reap.”

These are harsh judgments and harsh and too broad. But the class distinctions identified by Bergmann were real, as Henry Goertz painfully recalled 57 years later in a fascinating, wide-ranging interview (audio; note 2).

Goertz’s Molotschna family had been poor, he notes. “Everyone wanted to know whose son you were,” and you were treated accordingly he said. Not only the wealthy Mennonite farmer, but also the Russian [Ukrainian] neighbour knew his economic background; the latter even approached him to join Makhno [Ukrainian anarchist leader]! While Goertz did not join Makhno (he did not hate the rich, because of the way he was brought up, he said), but notes that some Mennonites did.

Goertz volunteered for the Selbstschutz armed Mennonite self-defence, yet decades later still remembered how the same wealthy land owner who treated him poorly not only expected Selbstschutz assistance, but also paid to keep his own sons from Selbstschutz service.

Some two years later (1922), the former estate owners were “scattered in various Molotschna villages, but not all were well-received," as American Mennonite Relief director C. E. Krehbiel observed (note 3; beginnings of MCC). By 1924 in one of the two Molotschna districts (Gnadenfeld), for example, twenty-seven villages were housing 1,800 Mennonite refugees in sheds, barns, cellars, and extra spaces in homes, while another 362 people were completely homeless and living in earthen huts. The norm was two to three, but often five families per house, and most of the refugees were without bedding, soap, or change of clothes (note 4).

The former estate owners were amongst the first chosen for immigration to Canada because of their precarious lot. Immigration leader B.B. Janz could persuade Soviet Authorities that a limited group emigration of 3,000 would be advantageous, especially the formerly wealthy farmers (kulaks) and “starving people whose absence might substantially benefit the colonies and enable economic reconstruction to begin” (note 5).

Many of prejudices and marriage expectations would continue in Canada for a generation.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Photos are randomly chosen from the page https://chortitza.org/FB/bguts.html, "Bilder und Fotos mennonitische Gutbesitzer und Guts (Chutors) in Russland."

Note 1: See Kornelius P. Bergmann (pseud. C. Orosander). “Warum geschieht uns solches?,” Part I, Friedensstimme 17 no. 42 (December 14, 1919), 1–2, https://chortitza.org/pdf/pletk99.pdf; Part II, 17, no. 43 (December 21, 1919), 1–2, https://chortitza.org/pdf/pletk100.pdf. Similarly, cf. previous post for November 1919 editorial by Abraham Kröker (forthcoming).

Note 2: Henry Paetkau, interviewer, “Tape #4 Interview with Henry Goertz,” July 1976, sound recording. Russian-Mennonite immigrants of the 1920’s (Niagara Peninsula), edited by E. Baar, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, http://hdl.handle.net/10464/13713.

Note 3: Example of Schönfeld refugees, in C. E. Krehbiel Journal, May 30, 1922; Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, Newton, KS, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_11/.

Note 4: N. Rempel and A. Brauer, “Report Regarding the Situation of the Refugees in the Gnadenfeld District” (Kharkov, July 22, 1924),” in The Mennonites in Russia from 1917 to 1930. Selected Documents, ed. John B. Toews (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1975), 55f.; John B. Toews, Lost Fatherland (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1977), 170, https://archive.org/details/lostfatherlandst0000toew.

In the years before the war Mennonite farms typically employed three or four domestic servants (Dienstbote) and “almost exclusively Russian,” according to Muntau farmer and Halbstadt elder Heinrich P. Unruh (Heinrich P. Unruh to Helena Unruh Richert Balzer, May 2, 1914, 2, letter, from Mennonite Library and Archives-Bethel College, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/mf_chr_34/15.jpg). H. P. Unruh employed “from October 1 to May 9, two males (three in spring) and one female, and together they receive a salary of 500 to 550 rubles.”

Note 5: Toews, Lost Fatherland, 132f.; 140. Cf. “Minutes of the Union Board Meeting, May 7–8, 1924” also (Resolution of the Verband on emigration, Feb. 26–28, 1925) in Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine (1922–1927): Mennonite and Soviet Documents, translated by J. B. Toews, O. Shmakina, and W. Regehr (Fresno, CA: Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 2011), 215f.; 220f., https://archive.org/details/unionofcitizenso0000unse.

For further reading, see James Urry, "Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth and the Mennonite Experience in Imperial Russia," Journal of Mennonite Studies 3 (1985), 7-35. https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/42/42.