Russian Mennonites: A People of Peace and a People of Witness

One way of explaining well who a certain group of people is, is by looking at the unique set of questions they kept on asking, generation after generation. What peculiar issues did Russian Mennonites (or earlier in Prussia) keep struggling with in each new context? What were their experiments as community?

Of course the answers differed in each place and time, and the arguments were divisive. Some experiments failed. Utterly.

Below are two basic sets of questions that Mennonites asked over and again in each generation in Russia/Ukraine. The questions, I would suggest, were unique to their experience; that is, the other Christian communities in their context--Lutheran, Pietist, Catholic and Orthodox--were asking different sets questions

First, and perhaps least surprising, Mennonites in Russia/Ukraine kept asking / being concerned about non-resistance, about being a people who took those New Testament admonitions of peace seriously, and did not return evil for evil, seek revenge or kill.

Mennonites only chose to come to Russia after they were assured that their sons would not be conscripted. In the 1870s, one-third of all Russian Mennonites left for North America when this was threatened. Those who stayed, only stayed because the option of alternative service was offered to the entire community.

And when war, revolution or anarchy was closer, it is easy to document the following questions they struggled with:

What are possible strategies of response when our country is at war? Eg., Russia's war with Japan 1904-5; Is our Alternative Service/ forestry work enough? Should we be sending medics and doctors? Should we collect money for a widows fund? What kind messages of support do we send to the Tsar, etc.
How do we organize and present ourselves politically with a changed government, and seek conscientious objector options? E.g., after 1905 revolution and after the 1918 February Revolution;
What do we owe our government and neighbours in times of war? E.g., the Crimean war, 1853-6; Mennonites tended the wounded (quota for each village), sent wagon loads of feed and food to the front (quota for each village), etc. Mennonites honoured the Tsar and his soldiers and prayed for their victory.
What privileges for conscientious objection are legitimate in a democracy where all citizens share the same rights and responsibilities? E.g., after 1918 February Revolution/.
Can a people committed to non-resistance take up arms in self-defense, or when there is no legitimate government? E.g., after 1918.
Is there a moral difference between self-defense and military engagement (e.g., Selbstschutz and White Army), between self-defense and wars of religion or wars of revenge?
(After recognzed failure, 1920) How does a Christian community confess the sin of its people, repent of grievous wrongdoing, and rediscover its peace bearings again?

These are only a few of the "peace" or "non-resistance" questions Mennonites in Russia struggled with. Whether a next generations like their answers or not and, e.g., are angry about the Selbstschutz or not, it is always an argument that Russian Mennonites found important to have, even as they disagreed.

Second, Mennonites in Russia struggled with a sense of call to be a people of Christian "witness". This set of questions is connected to the first.

At risk of sounding too pious, it must be noted that the concern and determination to be "salt and light" a "model" and "city of the hill" is mentioned time and again in materials from Prussia and Russia.

If they were the "quiet in the land" in Polish-Prussia, it was both a strategy for survival but also stance for witness in more or less toxic or potentially toxic environments: be quiet, be subject, return good for evil, work hard, do not offend, and be patient or long-suffering. (E.g., summary advice from Prussian Elder Gerhard Wiebe to those leaving for New Russia).

While words were important, early preachers from Jacob Denner in Danzig to business people like Johann Cornies in South Russia always mentioned deeds as powerful forms of Christian witness that should at least awaken curiosity in the "Turk, the Jew, and the Gentile" (Denner)--or for Cornies--the Nogai and Jew for example, and be model to others Christian groups.

Curiously while the individual is always being "admonished" in the Mennonite sermon, it is not so individualistic. (This changes toward the 1860s and with the MB movement). Rather, it always seems to be more about forming a people who as a whole are a model and witness to the kingdom of God.

At the most basic level, this usually meant communities marked by orderliness, no one goes hungry, hard work, people of upright behaviour and character etc.

But at another level they are were always also struggling with how to identify and navigate the pressures/options of patriotism, nationalism, and assimilation. In Russia there are very heated debates and fears (or hopes) about education, for example, which are all really rooted in these deeper values. There were different types of "conservatives"--Chortitza elders, Molotschna Old Flemish, Kleine Gemeinde, the whole Bergthal colony, who raised flags about the pace of change, by and large for the sake of unchanging identity.

The questions continued: What are the costs and benefits of adaptation, acts of non-violent protest like mass emigration, or even rebellion for the sake of Christian witness?

Toward the late 1800s early 1900s other forms of these two related concerns arose:

Is it even possible to be apolitical? How might the church identify and negotiate tolerable compromises in inhospitable environments, or when the church is under surveillance? How does a community stay alert to seductive or toxic forces of nationalism in competition to its own confession? What role can a church-based press play, especially in the chaos? How should a faith community respond to “fake news” and propaganda? Do Mennonites have a sufficient theology of the state?

These were all hard questions, and they were all asked and debated by Mennonites in Russia, usually in relation to a real sense of calling to give witness as a Christian community.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

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Invitation to the Russian Consulate, Danzig, January 19, 1788

B elow is one of the most important original Mennonite artifacts I have seen. It concerns January 19. The two land scouts Jacob Höppner and Johann Bartsch had returned to Danzig from Russia on November 10, 1787 with the Russian Immigration Agent, Georg von Trappe. Soon thereafter, Trappe had copies of the royal decree and agreement (Gnadenbrief) printed for distribution in the Flemish and Frisian Mennonite congregations in Danzig and other locations, dated December 29, 1787 ( see pic ; note 1 ). After the flyer was handed out to congregants in Danzig after worship on January 13, 1788, city councilors made the most bitter accusations against church elders for allowing Trappe and the Russian Consulate to do this; something similar had happened before ( note 2 ). In the flyer Trappe boasted that land scouts Höppner and Bartsch met not only with Gregory Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s vice-regent and administrator of New Russia, but also with “the Most Gracious Russian Monarch” herse...

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...

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...

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 ...

Why study and write about Russian Mennonite history?

David G. Rempel’s credentials as an historian of the Russian Mennonite story are impeccable—he was a mentor to James Urry in the 1980s, for example, which says it all. In 1974 Rempel wrote an article on Mennonite historical work for an issue of the Mennonite Quarterly Review commemorating the arrival of Russian Mennonites to North America 100 years earlier ( note 1). In one section of the essay Rempel reflected on Mennonites’ general “lack of interest in their history,” and why they were so “exceedingly slow” in reflecting on their historic development in Russia with so little scholarly rigour. Rempel noted that he was not alone in this observation; some prominent Mennonites of his generation who had noted the same pointed an “extreme spirit of individualism” among Mennonites in Russia; the absence of Mennonite “authoritative voices,” both in and outside the church; the “relative indifference” of Mennonites to the past; “intellectual laziness” among many who do not wish to be distu...

Mennonite Literacy in Polish-Prussia

At a Mennonite wedding in Deutsch Kazun in 1833 (pic), neither groom nor bride nor the witnesses could sign the wedding register. A Görtz, a Janzen, a Schröder—born a Görtzen – illiterate. “This act was read to the married couple and witnesses, but not signed because they were unable to write.” Similarly, with the certification of a Mennonite death in Culm (Chelmo), West Prussia, 1813-14: “This document was read and it was signed by us because the witnesses were illiterate.” Spouse and children were unable to read or write. Names like Gerz, Plenert, Kliewer, Kasper, Buller and others. 14 families of the 25 Mennonite deaths registered --or 56%--could not sign the paperwork ( note 1 ; pic ). This appears to be an anomaly. We know some pioneers to Russia were well educated. The letters of the land-scout to Russia, Johann Bartsch to his wife back home (1786-87) are eloquent, beautifully written and indicate a high level of literacy ( note 2 ). Even Klaas Reimer (b. 1770), the founder t...

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 ...

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...

Mennonites in Danzig's Suburbs: Maps and Illustrations

Mennonites first settled in the Danzig suburb of Schottland (lit: "Scotland"; “Stare-Szkoty”; also “Alt-Schottland”) in the mid-1500s. “Danzig” is the oldest and most important Mennonite congregation in Prussia. Menno Simons visited Schottland and Dirk Phillips was its first elder and lived here for a time. Two centuries later the number of families from the suburbs of Danzig that immigrated to Russia was not large: Stolzenberg 5, Schidlitz 3, Alt-Schottland 2, Ohra 1, Langfuhr 1, Emaus 1, Nobel 1, and Krampetz 2 ( map 1 ). However most Russian Mennonites had at least some connection to the Danzig church—whether Frisian or Flemish—if not in the 1700s, then in 1600s. Map 2 is from 1615; a larger number of Mennonites had been in Schottland at this point for more than four decades. Its buildings are not rural but look very Dutch urban/suburban in style. These were weavers, merchants and craftsmen, and since the 17th century they lived side-by-side with a larger number of Jews a...

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

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