1920s: Those who left and those who stayed behind

The picture below is my grandmother's family in 1928. Some could leave but most stayed behind. In 1928 a small group of some 511 Soviet Mennonites were unexpectedly approved for emigration (note 1).

None of the circa 21,000 Mennonites who emigrated from Russia in the 1920s “simply” left. And for everyone who left, at least three more hoped to leave but couldn’t.

It is a complex story.

Canada only wanted a certain type—young healthy farmers—and not all were transparent about their skills and intentions
The Soviet Union wanted to rid itself of a specifically-defined “excess,” and Mennonite leadership knew how to leverage that
Estate owners, and Selbstschutz /White Army militia were the first to be helped to leave, because they were deemed as most threatened community members;
What role did money play? Thousands paid cash for their tickets;
Who made the final decision on group lists, and for which regions? This was not transparent. Exit visa applications were also regularly rejected, and applications fees not refunded;
North American Mennonite relief too had its limits. American Mennonites knew it was much cheaper to send tractors than to encourage immigration and guarantee their “keep” for 5 years;
And who would stay back with "Oma" and the infirm? Who would shepherd the church?

Yes, some chose to stay. Yet a secret police GPU report in December 1926 indicated that “ninety-percent of the Mennonite population wishes to emigrate, and in some village, fifty-percent of the Mennonites have already sold their property, largely to Russian farmers. … The situation is dire” (note 2).

In 1926 collectivization and mass persecution were still years away and there were some reasonable options—though far from ideal—for rebuilding and adjustments to the new regime.

Indeed as the doors were closing to mass migration, these were the last words of leader B.B. Janz to his congregation in May 1926 before fleeing in disguise to join his son in Canada. Janz reassured his people that he is not leaving because he sensed the worst was still to come; on the contrary:

"Nothing terrible stands before us; everything is in order. We have looked broader society and the government directly in the eye; we are not fleeing. … Look how much better things are now [in contrast to December 1921]! God cannot use a wealthy Mennonite people as effectively as a poorer people. … That we are all poor is not bad. The consequences will be positive. … Earlier, prior to 1914, there were differences between us, our churches. But in difficult times we were all one: one affliction, one God—with some doctrinal variations—but united. Everything went steadily downhill between 1914 and 1922; from 1922 until now—uphill … a common search for the path of life—a beautiful thing. In the Union we all worked together … and have decided to remain together." (Note 3)

There is lots of drama as well as tragedy to tell as Canadian Russländer celebrate 100 years in Canada. My encouragement is to write up those stories in ways that show the complexities and dilemmas and choices of the 1920s.

To that end it is exciting to see the 2011 volume of t primary materials from the 1920s online in an edited collection by John B. Toews and Paul Toews, Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine (1922–1927) (note 4).

The documents of this volume can help you build-up your family immigration story with texture and context. Jacob A. Neufeld’s memories--also available in English--are an important complement to those documents (note 5).

Years later in Canada, Neufeld addressed the question of “motives.” He was as one of the leaders with Janz in the 1920s, but also lived through the Stalin years and the Trek through World War 2.

'Were those who remained back the imprudent, the simple-minded, those lacking foresight and insight, … closed to the warning of an inner voice, lacking the courage and will power to make the break?' Were those who left opportunists seeking prosperity, leaving their responsibility to church, seniors, the infirm, and others who could not farm, 'defying Christian principles and identifying with the materialistic side of life?' ... I do not believe that any of these were the strongest or only motives—if so, it would be distressing and regrettable. Nonetheless, beyond the practical impossibility of a further emigration, the psychological, immaterial motives were the weightiest" (note 6).

Indeed in the 1920s much was still in flux and unpredictable. “Although many would deny it today,” James Urry argues, “the early Mennonite emigrants to Canada in the 1920s were not really escaping an established, oppressive regime, but were economic refugees, victims of the Civil War and subsequent periods.” The motivation “was largely economic,” and “some might also be better considered as exiles who along with other sections of the massive Russian diaspora of the 1920s contemplated returning to Russia, if and when the economic and political situation improved” (note 7).

For my family, a few things happened that made for tragic decades to come. That is not to take away from celebrating the Mennonite Exodus in the next years. But our celebrations should be told as complex family, historical stories, even theologically complex: if God opened doors, others--many more--were shut.

All of these things should be discussed as we celebrate the Mennonite exodus of the 1920s and write our family stories.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Cf. John B. Toews, The Lost Fatherland: The Story of the Mennonite Emigration from Soviet Russia, 1921–1927 (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1967), 196, https://archive.org/details/lostfatherlandst0000toew. The photo above was taken on the departure of Heinrich and Maria [Thiessen] Bräul for Canada in 1928 (middle); cf. Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization, Heinrich Breul, Family Registration Form No. 5208. Mennonite Leader C. F. Klassen from Neu Samara with his family also migrated in September 1928.

Note 2: “Meldung über die Emigrationsbewegung der deutschen Kolonisten” (December 1926), in Gerhard Hildebrandt, editor and translator, Die Mennoniten in der Ukraine und im Gebiet Orenburg: Dokumente aus Archiven in Kiev und Orenburg (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2006), no. 53, p. 58.

Note 3: In A. A. Toews, ed., Mennonitische Märtyrer der jüngsten Vergangenheit und der Gegenwart, vol. 2: Der große Leidensweg (North Clearbrook, BC: Self-published, 1954), 484, 486.

Note 4: John B. Toews and Paul Toews, eds., 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), https://archive.org/details/unionofcitizenso0000unse.

Note 5: Jacob A. Neufeld, “Memories of the former activities of the Verband by a participant in the Union of the Citizens of Dutch Origin in the Ukraine,” unpublished manuscript, translated by Lena Unger, Bethel College, North Newton, KS, 1953. From Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College (MLA-B), https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/289_74771_N394ea/. Original German: “Erinnerungen eines Beteiligten des ‘Verbandes der Bürger Holländischer Herkunft in der Ukraine,’” MLA-B, https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/289_74771_N394e/.

Note 6: J. Neufeld, “Erinnerungen eines Beteiligten,” 23.

Note 7: James Urry, “After the rooster crowed: Some issues concerning the interpretation of Mennonite/ Bolshevik relations during the early Soviet period,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 13 (1995), 29, https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/442. A large group of Doukhobors returned to the Molotschna / Prischib region “from America” in 1926; cf. “Bericht der Zentralkommission für nationale Minderheiten beim Allukrainischen Zentralvollzugskomitee über die fehlende Umsetzung von Direktiven des Zentralkomitees” (June 19, 1926), in Hildebrandt, Mennoniten in der Ukraine und im Gebiet Orenburg, no. 45, 54. At least one Mennonite family returned from Canada in 1926, and another inquired in 1933 how it might be done. Cf. “Anzahl der ausgewanderten Mennoniten,” (April 1926), in Hildebrandt, Mennoniten in der Ukraine und im Gebiet Orenburg, no. 42, 49; also “Ein Brief von Johann Sawadskij an die Deutsche Zentralzeitung” (September 14, 1933), in ibid., no. 83, 62f.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “1920s: Those who left and those who stayed behind,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), February 3, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/02/1920s-those-who-left-and-those-who.html.

Comments

Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp, 1942: List and Links

Each of the "Commando Dr. Stumpp" village reports written during German occupation of Ukraine 1942 contains a mountain of demographic data, names, dates, occupations, numbers of untimely deaths (revolution, famines, abductions), narratives of life in the 1930s, of repression and liberation, maps, and much more. The reports are critical for telling the story of Mennonites in the Soviet Union before 1942, albeit written with the dynamics of Nazi German rule at play. Reports for some 56 (predominantly) Mennonite villages from the historic Mennonite settlement areas of Chortitza, Sagradovka, Baratow, Schlachtin, Milorodovka, and Borosenko have survived. Unfortunately no village reports from the Molotschna area (known under occupation as “Halbstadt”) have been found. Dr. Karl Stumpp, a prolific chronicler of “Germans abroad,” became well-known to German Mennonites (Prof. Benjamin Unruh/ Dr. Walter Quiring) before the war as the director of the Research Center for Russian Germans...

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 ...

Eduard Wüst: A “Second Menno”?

Arguably the most significant outside religious influence on Mennonite s in the 19th century was the revivalist preaching of Eduard Wüst, a university-trained Württemberg Pietist minister installed by the separatist Evangelical Brethren Church in New Russia in 1843 ( note 1 ). With the end-time prophesies of a previous generation of Pietists (and many Mennonites) coming to naught, Wüst introduced Germans in this area of New Russia to the “New Pietism” and its more individualistic, emotional conversion experience and sermons on the free grace of God centred on the cross of Christ ( note 2 ). Wüst’s 1851 Christmas sermon series give a good picture of what was changing ( note 3 ). His core agenda was to dispel gloom (which maybe could describe more traditional Mennonites) and induce Christian joy. This is the root impulse of the Mennonite Brethren beginnings years later in 1860. “Satan is not entitled to present his own as the most joyful.” His people “sing, jump, leap ( hüpfen ) ...

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 c...

Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (Holodomor), 1932-1933

In 2008 the Canadian Parliament passed an act declaring the fourth Saturday in November as “Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (‘Holodomor’) Memorial Day” ( note 1 ). Southern Ukraine was arguably the worst affected region of the famine of 1932–33, where 30,000 to 40,000 Mennonites lived ( note 2 ). The number of famine-related deaths in Ukraine during this period are conservatively estimated at 3.5 million ( note 3 ). In the early 1930s Stalin feared growing “Ukrainian nationalism” and the possibility of “losing Ukraine” ( note 4 ). He was also suspicious of ethnic Poles and Germans—like Mennonites—in Ukraine, convinced of the “existence of an organized counter-revolutionary insurgent underground” in support of Ukrainian national independence ( note 5 ). Ukraine was targeted with a “lengthy schooling” designed to ruthlessly break the threat of Ukrainian nationalism and resistance, and this included Ukraine’s Mennonites (viewed simply as “Germans”). Various causes combined to bring on w...

Why Danzig and Poland?

In the late 16th century, Poland became a haven for a variety of non-conformists which included Jews, Anti-Trinitarians from Italy and Bohemia, Quakers and Calvinists from Great Britain, south German Schwenkfelders, Eastern Orthodox, Armenian, and Greek Catholic Christians, some Muslim Tatars, as well as other peaceful sectarians like the Dutch and Flemish Anabaptists. Unlike the Low Countries and most of western Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a “state without stakes,” and as such fittingly described as “God’s playground” ( note 1 ). In the view of 17th-century Dutch dramatist Joost van den Vondel, it was “the ‘Promised Land,’ where the refugee could forget all his sorrow and enjoy the richness of the land” ( note 2 ). Over the next two centuries an important strand of Mennonite life and spirituality evolved into a mature tradition in this relatively hospitable context ( note 3 ). Anabaptists from the Low Countries began to arrive in Danzig and region as early as 15...

Becoming German: Ludendorff Festivals in Molotschna, 1918

During the friendly German military occupation of Ukraine at the end of WWI, patriotic “Ludendorff Festivals” were encouraged by German forces to raise funds to support injured German soldiers. A first such festival in the Molotschna was held on June 25, 1918 in Ohrloff, and was attended by “a great many German officers, soldiers and colonists with music, [patriotic] speeches and social interaction” From the perspective of the German army press, the event was “extremely enjoyable;” it was accompanied with music by a 30-piece regiment orchestra, and beer, sausage, sandwiches, ice-cream, raspberries and cherries were sold. It closed with a “small dance,” raising 7,387 rubles or 9,850 German marks in donations ( note 1 ). Later that summer, a Ludendorff Festival in Halbstadt began with Sunday worship, followed by an early concert, games and performances by the Selbstschutz , as well as “entertainment and merriment of every kind,” with short plays and dancing into the morning ( note ...

The Tinkelstein Family of Chortitza-Rosenthal (Ukraine)

Chortitza was the first Mennonite settlement in "New Russia" (later Ukraine), est. 1789. The last Mennonites left in 1943 ( note 1 ). During the Stalin years in Ukraine (after 1928), marriage with Jewish neighbours—especially among better educated Mennonites in cities—had become somewhat more common. When the Germans arrived mid-August 1941, however, it meant certain death for the Jewish partner and usually for the children of those marriages. A family friend, Peter Harder, died in 2022 at age 96. Peter was born in Osterwick to a teacher and grew up in Chortitza. As a 16-year-old in 1942, Peter was compelled by occupying German forces to participate in the war effort. Ukrainians and Russians (prisoners of war?) were used by the Germans to rebuild the massive dam at Einlage near Zaporizhzhia, and Peter was engaged as a translator. In the next year he changed focus and started teachers college, which included significant Nazi indoctrination. In 2017 I interviewed Peter Ha...

Four-Part Singing in Mennonite Schools and Church in Russia

The significance of singing instruction may seem trite, but it became a key vehicle in the Mennonite school curriculum for fostering a basic appreciation of the arts and for faith formation. In Johann Cornies’ circulated guidelines for teachers, singing was recommended as a means “to stimulate and enliven pious feelings” in the children—a guideline he copied directly from a German Catholic pedagogue and circulated freely under his own name ( note 1 ). On January 26, 1846 Cornies distributed a curriculum regulation to all schools that mandated “singing by numbers ( Zahlen ) from the church hymnal” ( note 2 ). Attention to singing instruction in the schools precipitated significant and controversial changes in Mennonite liturgy. An 1854 visiting observer to the Bergthal Colony—a Chortitza daughter colony outside of Cornies’ purview—wrote: “Endlessly long hymns from the Gesangbuch (hymnal) were begun by the Vorsänger (song leader) of the congregation, and sung with so many flo...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 4 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accurate and carefully considered. ~ANF Preparing for your next AGM: Mennonite Congregations and Deportations Many U.S. Mennonite pastors voted for Donald Trump, whose signature promise was an immediate start to “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Confirmed this week, President Trump will declare a national emergency and deploy military assets to carry this out. The timing is ideal; in January many Mennonite congregations have their Annual General Meeting (AGM) with opportunity to review and update the bylaws of their constitution. Need help? We have related examples from our tradition, which I offer as a template, together with a few red flags. First, your congregational by-laws. It is unlikely you have undocumented immigrants in your congregation, but you should flag this. Model: Gustav Reimer, a deacon and notary public from the ...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog