Between Revolutions: On the Compatibility of Socialism and Christianity, 1917

In mid-August 1917--two months before the Bolshevik Revolution, but in preparation of national elections--the first “All-Mennonite Congress” met in Ohrloff, Molotschna to organize and strategize Mennonite civil affairs (i.e., as separate from the church) with 198 representatives from various regions and interest groups.

Significant debate around Mennonite non-resistance and military service was on the agenda, but also questions around more equitable land distribution and the compatibility of Christianity and socialism.

The minutes (note 1) record that there was clearly a group of Mennonites at this meeting who were both convinced socialists and Christians, and that delegates had a longer, protracted debate on the compatibility of socialism and Christianity.

First they discussed what was most critical: more equitable land distribution (this topic was "in the air") and the right to private land ownership. There was broad agreement (even with the socialist leaning Mennonites) that landownership rights should continue, or else it would lead to a catastrophe. However a respected leader--and socialist--Peter Fröse wanted the word "provisionally" added, but that was rejected.

Second they discussed the compatibility of Christianity and socialism. H. B. Unruh (typo: B.H.) argued strongly that Christianity has no direct relation to either capitalism or socialism. A Christian "attitude" shaped by the Kingdom of God (converted heart) should certainly reveal itself in one's business dealings. However the agricultural problems of the day are scientific/economic in nature and best left to the experts. Peter Fröse followed and argued that Christianity was in essence closer or more compatible with socialism than capitalism, though not identical. The minutes capture what some have called the pinnacle of Mennonite intellectual and cultural life in Russia (Harry Loewen).

The Bolshevik Revolution however happened a few months later in October, and the long-delayed November election--in which Benjamin H. Unruh was a candidate for the “German Farmers of Tavrida Party”--was made void. Now all was up in the air; one Mennonite diarist in Rudnerweide wrote:

“January 15, 1918: The Franzthal [Molotschna] people are considering having everything in common or at least partly so, but most want to have everything together, only one farm with the cattle all in one place, but each is to live in his own place. In Gnadenfeld the [?] has gone over to deputies from the soviet of workers and soldiers. … Everything is restless and unsure.” (Note 2)

Where did this come from?

When the February 1917 Revolution happened and Russia pulled out of WW I, there were 4,700 Mennonite orderlies/medics from various parts of Russia still stationed in Moscow; they were “at the heart” of the revolution, “deeply affected by the course of developments,” and excited by the promises of peace and of liberty, equality, and fraternity, as Johann G. Rempel recalled (note 3).

Mennonites in the settlements were cautiously optimistic of the freedoms and reforms promised by the provisional government (note 4), and the younger generation of students in Benjamin Unruh's Halbstadt Commerce School were in full support of the February Revolution. “We all sang the Internationale [!] and joined the Red Flag parade started by workers from factories and mills in Halbstadt. … Large parades followed and many of us young Mennonites were sympathetic to the call for change and new order” (note 5).

In Moscow this younger generation had witnessed and shared in the revolutionary events, debates and local constituent assemblies of this “bloodless revolution.” The political climate “with a steady tendency towards ‘red’ heat, has not failed to have influence among a narrow section of our Sanitary workers,” according to Johann G. Rempel (note 6).

Many war-weary orderlies were “exposing themselves for the first time to outside Russian society and culture and becoming men of the world,” as Al Reimer has emphasized (note 7).

In Moscow they were attracted by early Bolshevik candidates and their “down with the war” slogans, but also with the Constitutional Democrats or Kadets who spoke well about complex land issues (note 8). The young Mennonite teachers in particular “believed that a time of new growth and joyous work had dawned” (note 9).

The newly unleashed forces for reform from within the ranks of the young Mennonite servicemen of varied religious outlooks, social class and educational backgrounds threatened a generational clash, just as older Mennonites leaders began to strategize for a new political future.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Ohrloff Zentralschule photograph, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/VI_34 glass slides/Russia - villages/q041.jpg.

Note 1: “Protokoll des Allgemeinen Mennonitischen Kongresses, August 14–18, 1917,” reprinted in Mennonitische Warte 4, no. 39 (March 1938) 68–73 (Part 2 of 4). https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/vpetk363.pdf.

Note 2: Jacob P. Janzen, “Diary 1916–1925,” translated by Edward Enns. From Mennonite Heritage Centre, Winnipeg, MB, Jacob P. Janzen fonds, 1911–1946, vol. 5136.

Note 3: Johann G. Rempel, in James Urry, ed., “A Mennonite Witness to Revolution: Johann G. Rempel’s Memoir of Moscow, March–June 1917,” translated with notes by David G. Rempel; edited with an introduction and conclusion by James Urry, Mennonite Quarterly Review 91, no. 3 (July 2017), 201–230; 229.

Note 4: Cf. columns by Peter Braun and Abraham Kröker in Volksfreund I (X), no. 1 (19) (December 21, 1917), 1–2, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/pdf/pletk07.pdf.

Note 5: Gerhard Wiens, in Irmgard Epp, ed., Constantinoplers—Escape from Bolshevism (Victoria, BC: Trafford, 2006) 45.

Note 6: Johann G. Rempel, in Urry, “Mennonite Witness to the Revolution in Moscow,” 221.

Note 7: Al Reimer, “Sanitätsdienst and Selbstschutz: Russian-Mennonite Nonresistance in World War I and its Aftermath,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 11 (1993), 135–148; 140. https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/360.

Note 8: Johann G. Rempel, in Urry, “Mennonite Witness to the Revolution in Moscow,” 222f.

Note 9: Peter J. Braun, “Education among the Mennonites in Russia,” GAMEO, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Education_Among_the_Mennonites_in_Russia.

Comments

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 ...

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 ...

German Village on the Dnieper: Occupation Propaganda Photos. Chortitza, 1943

The following propaganda photos are of the Mennonites community in Chortitz, Ukraine during German occupation in World War II. German armies reached the Mennonite villages on the west bank of the Dnieper River on August 17, 1941. The photos below were taken almost two years later. However the war was already turning, and within two months the trek out of Ukraine would begin. The photographs are accompanied by an article about the Low-German speakers of Chortitza for a readership in the Reich ( note 1 ). The author repeatedly draws on the myth of one-sided German pioneer accomplishments abroad: “The first settlers found the land desolate and empty,” the reader is told, and were “left to fend for themselves in a foreign environment” where with German diligence, order and cleanliness they thrived. The article correctly recognizes the great losses of the ethnic Germans under Bolshevism--as if to convince readers that the war is a shared burden of all Germans, and which is now payin...

Nazi German love for Mennonites in Ukraine. Why?

For Mennonites the dramatic and massive invasion of USSR by German forces in Summer/Fall 1941 meant liberation from Soviet state terror and answer to prayer. Nazi Germany spared neither money nor personnel to free, feed, cloth, protect, heal and educate the Soviet Union’s ethnic Germans—and Mennonites in particular. Mennonite memoirs, village reports and EWZ (naturalization applications) autobiographies are consistent with praise for the German Reich and its leader. From the highest levels, goodwill, care and patience towards ethnic Germans was policy. Reichsführer -SS Heinrich Himmler was also named by Hitler as Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood . This authorized Himmler and his para-military SS to oversee and coordinate the Germanization, resettlements and population transfers which came with the invasion and partial annexation of Poland (Warthegau), and later occupation plans for parts of Ukraine and Russia. The VoMi ( Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle )...

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...

Vaccinations in Chortitza and Molotschna, beginning in 1804

Vaccination lists for Chortitza Mennonite children in 1809 and 1814 were published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with little curiosity ( note 1 ). However during the 2020-22 pandemic and in a context in which some refused to vaccinate for religious belief, the historic data took on new significance. Ancestors of some of the more conservative Russian Mennonite groups—like the Reinländer or the Bergthalers or the adult children of land delegate Jacob Höppner—were in fact vaccinating their infants and toddlers against small pox over two hundred years ago ( note 2 ). Also before the current pandemic Ukrainian historian Dmytro Myeshkov brought to light other archival materials on Mennonites and vaccination. The material below is my summary and translation of the relevant pages of Myeshkov’s massive 2008 volume on Black Sea German and their Worlds, 1781 to 1871 (German only; note 3 ). Myeshkov confirms that Chortitza was already immunizing its children in 1804 when their District Offic...

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 reje...

"They are useful to the state." An almost forgotten Prussian view of Mennonites, ca. 1780s-90s

In 1787 Mennonite interest for emigration was extremely strong outside the quasi independent City of Danzig in the Prussian annexed Marienwerder and Elbing regions. Even before the land scouts Johann Bartsch and Jacob Höppner had returned from Russia later that year, so many Mennonite exit applications had flooded offices that officials wrote Berlin in August 1787 for direction ( note 1a ). Initially officials did not see a problem: because Mennonites do not provide soldiers, the cantons lose nothing by their departure, and in fact benefit from the ten-percent tax imposed on financial assets leaving the state. Ludwig von Baczko (1756-1823), Professor of History at the Artillery Academy in Königsberg, East Prussia, was the general editor of a series that included a travelogue through Prussia written by a certain Karl Ephraim Nanke. Nanke had no special love for Mennonites, but was generally balanced in his judgements and based his now almost forgotten account of Mennonites on perso...

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 ) ...

Flooding as a weapon of war, 1657

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these maps speak volumes. In February 1657, the Swedish King Carolus Gustavus ordered an intentional breach of the embankments along the Vistula River to completely flood the villages of the Danzig Werder. See the vivid punctures and water flow in 1657 map below; compare with the 1730 maps with rebuilt villages and farms ( note 1 ). In Polish memory this war is appropriately remembered as "The Deluge". Villages in the Danzig Werder (delta) from which Mennonites immigrated to Russia include: Quadendorf, Reichenberg, Krampitz, Neunhuben, Hochzeit, Scharfenberg, Wotzlaff, Landau, Schönau, Nassenhuben, Mönchengrebin, and Nobel ( note 2 ). In the war the suburbs outside the gates of Danzig suffered most; Mennonites lived here in large numbers, e.g., in Alt Schottland and Stoltzenberg. First, these villages were completely razed by the City of Danzig to keep the invading Swedes from using the villages to their advantage in battle. ...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog