Mennonite Dystopia: “Socializing” in the era of Collectivization

The 1942 village reports prepared for the German Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories document an almost complete breakdown of community life under Stalin in predominantly Mennonite communities.

To read them is to take a step into a dystopian world (note 1). Here is a small sample of responses to one of many questions; they are asked by the occupying German army to reflect on "socializing" (Geseligkeit)—having fun, meeting socially with others—as they experienced it during the recently ended communist period:

Adelsheim [Chortitza]: "Socializing during the period of collectivization came to a complete end. Because of the many frictions in the collective [farm], we became weary/wary (überdrüssig) of each other.”

Blumengart [Chortitza]: "Regarding our social life after collectivization, neighbour no longer wished to see neighbour.” Also: "A lack of clothing hinders social life amongst the youth in particular".

Chortitza [Town]: “Social life was extinguished in the Bolshevik period. If a few people got together, they became politically suspect. No one trusted the other anymore. That mutual distrust is now slowly fading.”

Franzfeld [Chortitza]: “Socializing ended completely during the Bolshevik period; slowly it is coming back to life, because people are beginning to trust each other more.”

Hochfeld [Chortitza]: “Social life ended completely under the Bolsheviks, especially with collectivization. We became weary /wary (überdrüssig) of each other. Earlier it was completely different. Farmers visited more and stuck together much more.”

Katharinovka [Borosenko]: “Socializing? That was unknown. From early till late, day in and day out, winter and summer (without a day of rest!) toiling on the collective farm without rhyme or reason … Life on the collective farm embittered the person; one hated the other, each lived for himself alone, in dreary brooding, without hope of a better future.”

Kronstal [Chortitza]: "Socializing disappeared almost completely with the collective system. Everyone is very happy if on a Sunday he can finally stay away from the community for a few hours and be alone to himself."

Neuhorst [Chortitza]: "Socializing was completely extinguished by the collective system; people had long become weary/wary (überdrüssig) of each other.”

Nikolaifeld [Chortitza]: “Socializing during the period of the collectivization stopped completely. Earlier, visiting with neighbours was very normal, but even that came to an end. On the collective farm and with the Bolshevistic assemblies people became wary/weary (überdrüssig) of each other. ... In 1929 a five-day week was introduced [i.e., no weekend], and then in 1932 the six-day week, and later again the seven-day week. From April to December there was no day of rest on the collective farm.”

Osterwick [Chortitza]: "Abject poverty and lack of clothing were also reasons for limited socializing at weddings, funerals and similar events. Earlier there was also a radio station that could be accessed from the loudspeakers in the homes.”

Rosenbach [Chortitza]: “With collectivization, socializing came to a complete stop. In the past years, wedding celebrations and other folk festivities also ceased.”

Rosengart [Chortitza]: "As is the case everywhere, socializing virtually stopped with collectivization; but it is also getting somewhat better in this regard compared to a year ago. Nonetheless, because of utter poverty, especially the lack of clothing, people hardly come together even at festive occasions.”

Schönhorst [Chortitza]: “In the past years, the beautiful German wedding celebrations were fewer and fewer. Earlier the churches too had organized children’s festivals together with neighbouring villages. Slowly social gatherings are coming back to life, but it is still in its early stage.”

While these reports were written under the Nazi-occupation regime, the claims are supported even by the extant literature in the villages in the 1930s and by the files of those arrested in the purge, 1937-38 (note 2).

With parents largely absent on the collective farm (or arrested), childrearing and formational instruction in the 1930s was largely out of their hands (note 3). Some German-language reading materials for the local Young Pioneer groups encouraged children and youth to turn against parents and neighbours to help with the problem of “German espionage.” Columns in the Pioneer Pravda (Truth) youth paper and “spy booklets”—with titles like “Be on alert!,” “Stranger with a Bundle,” etc.—taught young people that their own “watchful and attentive eyes” made them “good helpers” of the NKVD secret police. They too may be able “to discover traces of the enemy,” and perhaps even “detain and expose the vile intentions of spies” (note 4).

This message mirrored the adult literature in each village “Red Corner” reading room and in the mandatory subscription materials for Komsomol and Party members (note 5). A popular booklet translated into German, for example, was N. Abusow’s 1937 booklet Gestapo. “In recruiting spies and other vermin the German spy service tries to exploit the German population concentrated in certain districts. The Gestapo directs its focus to places of significant German population ... including the German villages in the Ukraine.” Abusow called for “honest citizens” to join the work of Soviet counter-intelligence services.

The support that the women sought to preserve among themselves after the purge (1937-38), for example, was also infiltrated and shattered by the planting of Soviet-friendly activists in the community. Each file of the thousands arrested includes testimonies of local informants. Stalin successfully manufactured and transmitted paranoia and fear from above, generating terror at the regional and village levels below tearing the fabric—almost completely—of Mennonite life in Ukraine. Every Mennonite village was impacted as the village reports suggest. Socializing ended, and no one had courage left to say, wish, or hope anything.

Nazi German occupation forces in Ukraine found Mennonites depleted and broken—physically, mentally, socially and spiritually—from Stalinist repression. “Every individual initiative in them has been killed or stifled, because to be an individual is to be suspect, in danger of being reported. They hesitate to express any private opinions, fearing … spies are still at work” (note 6).

Decades later Eduard Reimer summed up the experience and its life-long impact:

“It is practically impossible to imagine how afraid everybody was in the villages at that time. Already as children and especially as teens, we learned to put on a false face and were compelled to hide our true thoughts and feelings. I believe that this forced two-facedness left many of my generation with life-long inhibitions. . . . I was compelled—like most in the village and in school—always to have two faces, one that was shown outwardly, and one that was turned inward. Nothing in my life has been more repulsive to me." (Note 7)

Katie Friesen recalled : “We lived in fear of those who would take what little we had left. … not even neighbours and friends could be trusted. One never knew when one would become a scapegoat for the purposes of the state” (note 8). Similarly Victor Janzen: “[Y]ou did not know anymore whom you could trust. …Many a wound, inflicted in those days, is not quite healed even today” (note 9).

Helene Dueck’s memories are most direct: “Honesty, diligence, brotherly love and willingness to help disappeared more and more. Everyone tried to get by in a selfish way, especially in the famine years when everything edible was scarce and thousands died of hunger. Many collaborated with the godless regime. They even betrayed their friends and relatives to save their lives. ... no one could be trusted. A wife often did not know what her husband was thinking, and the husband did not trust his own wife. Children would inform on their parents, and were praised for it at school. One did not know what was right and what was wrong, what was legal and what was illegal.” (Note 10)

I think of my grandmother's church women's group in the 1970s--all individuals who had endured this era. However I cannot imagine them in this context. In my children memory they were generally happy, sociable, somewhat stoic, and in hindsight clearly resilient.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp.” Prepared for the German Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, 1942. In Bundesarchiv Koblenz, BArch, Special Unit Stumpp, R6 GSK, files 620 to 633; 702 to 709. From State Electronic Archive of Ukraine, https://tsdea.aewrchives.gov.ua/deutsch/. NB: better copies with no watermarks, https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de  (search e.g., by file: “R 6/620”).

Note 2: For a fuller treatment see my essay: “A new Examination of the ‘Great Terror’ in Molotschna, 1937–38,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 95, no. 4 (October 2021), 415–458, https://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/handle/20.500.12730/1031.

Note 3: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-day-in-her-shoes-women-on-collective.html.

Note 4: Vanya Kuznetsova and Anya Kuznetsova, “Stranger with a Bundle” (Незнакомец со свертком), Pinerskaya Pravda (December 20, 1937), https://www.oldgazette.ru/pionerka/20121937/text3.html; V. Varmuzh, “Young helpers of glorious NKVD officers” (Юные помощники славных чекистов), Pionerskaya Pravda (Dec. 20,  1937), https://www.oldgazette.ru/pionerka/20121937/index1.html; Lev Zilver, Be on alert! (Быть на-чеку!) (Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya, 1938), https://libking.ru/books/det-/det-espionage/445434-lev-zilver-byt-na-cheku.html.

Note 5: Cf. Andrej Kotljarchuk, “Propaganda of Hatred and the Great Terror: A Nordic Approach,” in Ethnic and Religious Minorities in Stalin’s Soviet Union: New Dimensions of Research, edited by Andrej Kotljarchuk and Olle Sundström (Huddinge: Södertörns, 2017), 95, https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1166306/FULLTEXT01.pdf.

Note 6: Anonymous, “Zwischen Odessa and Perekop in den ersten Monaten des deutsch-russischen Krieges,” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1949, cited in Anne Konrad, Red Quarter Moon: A Search for Family in the Shadow of Stalin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 151.

Note 7: Eduard (Abram) Reimer, “Memoir.” Unpublished (n.d.), 22, 17, 26. From Mennonite Heritage Archives, Winnipeg, MB., Gerhard Lohrenz Fonds, 60, no. 63, vol. 3333. See partial English translation under pseudonym Eduard Allert (Lost Generation, edited by Gerhard Lohrenz [Steinbach, MB, 1982]).

Note 8: Katie Friesen, Into the Unknown (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1986), 29.

Note 9: Victor Janzen, From the Dniepr to the Paraguay River (Winnipeg, MB: Self-published, 1995), 27.

Note 10: Helene Dueck, Durch Trübsal und Not (Winnipeg, MB: Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 1995), 16f., https://archive.org/details/durch-truebsal-und-not/mode/2up.