Recently a friend asked: “Based on their long historical sojourn in Russia / Ukraine, what light can Mennonites shed on Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine today?” (February 2022).
The story of so-called Russian Mennonites began in the
1780s, was defined by Greater Russia’s imperial expansion, and was almost
extinguished under Stalin and his fear of rising Ukraine nationalism and
minority ethnic resistance in the 1930s.
Below are a few historical learnings based on that lived
experience in Ukraine, formerly known as “New Russia” or “South Russia.” A
short history of Russian “empire building” from the Mennonite experience might
best begin with a brief reference to German Prussia in the 18th century, where
Mennonites were at home. By the 1780s, further land acquisitions or economic
expansion in West Prussia (today northern Poland) and Gdansk (Danzig) had
become increasingly impossible for Mennonites—largely because they refused
military service for religious reasons.
Prussia was a largely tolerant state, but Jews and
Mennonites were problems—for different reasons. Prussian historians Reiswitz
and Wadzek wrote: “Though the doctrine [of non-resistance] of the Mennonites is
not exactly anti-biblical, it is most certainly anti-Prussian. We Prussians,
because we are born soldiers, must rule these teachings to be incompatible with
our state system; … we are not intolerant, but just” (note 1).
In contrast to the German nationalism of Prussia and other
western European states like France, Russia’s Empress Catherine the Great was
pursuing a different vision of empire. Her policy of expansion included the
vast open short-grass steppes of present-day Ukraine, and stretched southwards
towards the Black Sea and the Crimean Peninsula. Before the Russian defeat of
the Ottoman Turks in 1774, this large, rich, and sparsely populated territory
was home to mixed groups of fiercely independent Zaporizhzhian Cossacks, Turkic
Tatar tribes (Muslim), a variety of Orthodox agrarian peasants with differing
Eastern Slav dialects, Doukhobors and Molokans (“milk-drinkers”). Catherine and
her predecessor had had many of these peoples removed and sought to settle
these newly depopulated and under-governed frontier lands with a permanent
population.
Again, in contrast to western nationalism, Catherine’s modernizing vision made no national claims on behalf of Russians; rather the Romanov Dynasty ruled with imperial, “millenarian” claims of Greater Russia as the bearer of a higher, universal law—a type of redeemer nation to benefit the empire’s smaller nationalities. This is important to understand for today’s events.
Obviously the Russian Empire of the Tsars was not a
democracy in which all were citizens with identical rights and
responsibilities. German-speaking, non-resistant Mennonites were welcomed into
this bigger vision to live in “colonies” (as did other smaller ethnic groups)
with their own specific language, church, schools--all governed by their
specific charter (Privilegium). On-going Mennonite presence in Russia as
“foreign colonists” was wholly contingent on fulfilling their charter-defined
role as “model farmers”.
In a period of western European national awakening, Russia’s
expansions were defined—in contrast to neighbours—by the logic of empire: not
the self-interest of one national group (e.g., “Russians”) and its founding myths,
culture, and laws, but self-sacrifice of the leading national group on behalf
of smaller nationalities (note 2). The Tsarist family—the Romanov
Dynasty—justified expansion, e.g., of “New Russia,” now Ukraine, not with
national claims. Rather “they ruled on behalf of God—or their own dynasty—but
never on behalf of the Russian people,” as David Rowley has argued. It is an
imperial Christendom tradition, with a notion of a special people called to
serve a historical destiny that has universal significance (note 3).
The generous Mennonite Privilegium and its terms are best
understood under Greater Russia’s sense of imperial, messianic mission to serve
and rule nobly over many peoples. Like other ethnic groups within Greater
Russia in this era, Mennonites also began to confess Russia and its emperor as
the great protector of Christendom Europe from anti-Christian forces—later
typically identified with France and its democratic revolutions. This was
consistent with Alexander I’s self-understanding as well (he reigned from 1801
to 1826), for example.
German-speaking “Russian” Mennonites developed their own
sense of call as one smaller, patriotic, contributing nation (Völklein) within
that vision of the larger Russian Empire. And they flourished. The most
influential and thoughtful Mennonite leader, Johann Cornies (d. 1848),
articulated this best in a letter to a Swiss missionary Daniel Schlatter about
“New Russia” (today Ukraine) peopled with Molokans, Cossacks, Nogais,
Doukhobors, Zaporozhians, Germans, Jews and many more:
“It is very interesting to find so many peoples living
closely together. They associate calmly and quietly with one another. As they
go about their business, we observe varied customs, languages, costumes, and
ways of life. I do not believe that this sort of thing can be found anywhere
else in the world. Our wise Imperial government has managed to bring all of us
together and provide leadership that makes all of us happy. For this we give
God the glory.” (Note 4)
The strong patriotic Mennonite support for the Tsar in the
Crimean War in the 1850s—which appears confusing or counter-intuitive 150 years
later—gives evidence for how fully they had accepted the larger framework of
Russia’s sense of empire and role as divinely chosen nation, i.e., as “a special
people called to serve a historical destiny of universal significance” (note 5).
If Mennonites thrived as one ethnic group among many in
Russia’s greater empire, in the last decades of the nineteenth century the
monarchy began to identify more explicitly with the Russian people, i.e., more
with Moscow than Europe-leaning St. Petersburg. National belonging was
gradually perceived as part of one’s essence, and increasingly being e.g.,
German-Lutheran or German-Mennonite in Russia was seen to be “invested with
political significance” and “abiding political loyalties and … allegiances” (note
6). The place for Mennonites within this new national construct, including
their Privilegium—so central to Mennonite identity and sense of call—would be
sorely tested.
There are some similarities between the earlier imperial
Christendom vision of the Tsars and the later “secular millennialism” of the
communism of the Soviet Union.
The hammer and sickle symbolism adopted by the Soviet Union
in 1922 represented the smashing of previous foundations, and the glorious
future harvest of a better world to be gathered in, cleansed of all gods and
made wholly human. With the Communist Revolution Ukraine was granted its own
cultural and political identity and quasi-independence as a Soviet Republic and
under the Moscow-centred leadership of the USSR. By the 1930s, however, what
Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin feared most was “losing
Ukraine” (note 7).
In response to the threat of Ukrainian nationalism and
resistance, Stalin specifically targeted Ukraine with a “lengthy
schooling" designed to ruthlessly break that movement. Southern
Ukraine—where most Mennonites lived—was arguably the worst affected region of
the Holodomor, i.e., the man-made famine of 1932–33 which killed millions of
Ukrainians (note 8). This too is important for understanding events of today.
Moreover, in the 1930s, Moscow was increasingly convinced of
the “existence of an organized counter-revolutionary insurgent underground in
Ukraine associated with foreign powers and foreign intelligence services,”
specifically the “imperialist” interventionism of Poles and Germans in support
of Ukrainian national independence (note 9).
As Rowley has argued, both “millennial” Russian
empires—Tsarist and Soviet—were “destroyed by the same forces that have brought
all modern empires to an end—the desire of their component peoples for national
self-determination (note 10). Ukrainian sovereignty is that example, and
German-speaking Mennonites in Russia/Ukraine were part of that story together
with Ukrainians.
Is Russia’s old imperialism rising again? I think so, and it is pushing against strong Ukrainian nationalism. Rowley argued in the late 1990s that Russian imperialism and tradition of empire building “still provides an important element in Russian identity” (note 11). But not as a Russian nation. Nations look back to some mythic beginnings; nations preach self-interest. Empires, so it goes, look forward and preach self-sacrifice. Empires “posit a special people whose mission is to sacrifice itself to hasten the day when all humanity will be blessed by the benefits of its law and civilization” (note 12). That may be background to Putin's actions.
I think it is too simple to say Putin is irrational. His
rationalism is just very different than the rationality of western nationalism.
Ironically there is a parallel to the American “manifest destiny” articulated
in the US Senate in 1900 by Albert Beveridge: a “divine sense of mission,” to
ensure that the world does not “relapse into barbarism,” and thus understanding
the USA as divinely predestined as God’s “chosen nation.”
Again I lean on Rowley here: “The legitimizing appeal of
Russia’s ruling ideology arose from its association with Christianity without
explicitly appealing to any particular denomination or national form, and its
intent was to justify the expansive policies of an imperial state. Russia, like
the United States, has, since the seventeenth century, conquered and absorbed
territories for which it had no historic, nationalist claim” (note 13).
Rightfully that appears strange and unacceptable today.
The long sojourn of German-speaking Mennonites in Ukraine—earlier
called New Russia or South Russia—has given this group of Mennonites, for
better or for worse, a little insight into about the logic of Russian empire
building, of imperialism vs. nationalism, including the former’s selective
benefits. All of this was learnt at a terrifying human cost, for Mennonites in
Ukraine in the 1930s as well.
In my estimation—which is obviously limited but rooted in
this set of experiences—events of today are at least in some ways a
continuation of that story.
---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast
---Notes---
Note 1: Georg von Reiswitz and Friedrich Wadzeck, Beiträge
zur Kenntniß der Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Europa und Amerika, Part I (Berlin,
1821), 159, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009717700.
Note 2: David G. Rowley, “‘Redeemer Empire’: Russian
Millenarianism,” American Historical Review 104, no. 5 (1999), 1582–1602; 1591.
Note 3: Rowley, “Redeemer Empire,” 1598; 1599.
Note 4: No. 350, Johann Cornies to Daniel Schlatter, 11
March 1833,” Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and
Papers of Johann Cornies, vol. 1: 1812–1835, edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid
I. Epp, and John R. Staples (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 318.
Note 5: Rowley, “Redeemer Empire,” 1599.
Note 6: Paul Werth, The Tsar’s foreign faiths. Toleration
and the fate of religious freedom in imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 151.
Note 7: Josef Stalin, “Telegram of 28 December 1932,” in
Bohdan Klid and Alexander J. Motyl, eds., The Holodomor Reader: A Sourcebook on
the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine (Edmonton, AB: Canadian Institute of
Ukrainian Studies Press, 2012), 5:27, https://holodomor.ca/the-holodomor-reader-a-sourcebook-on-the-famine-of-1932-1933-in-ukraine/.
Note 8: Cf. Stalin, “Resolution on Grain Procurement in
Ukraine, 19 December 1932;” “Memorandum on Progress in preparing Spring
Sowing,” in Klid and Motyl, eds., Holodomor Reader, 5:25, 37.
Note 9: “On the Need to Liquidate the Insurgent Underground,
February 13, 1932,” in Klid and Motyl, eds., Holodomor Reader, 5:32f.
Note 10: Rowley, “Redeemer Empire,” 1600.
Note 11: Rowley, “Redeemer Empire,” 1600.
Note 12: Rowley, “Redeemer Empire,” 1591.
Note 13: Rowley, “Redeemer Empire,” 1597.
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