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 disturbed from their slumber;
“blind dogmatism” among some who, “in trying to hold on to the ‘good old ways of our fathers’ insist upon holding on firmly to the past without even knowing what the past really was.”

Rempel added a few of his own observations. Why the paucity of good history and reflection? Because Mennonites in Russia were:

a “frontier people” with pioneering problems including a climate and terrain so radically different from their homeland;
mainly rural folk with conservative views on life and religion and “hidebound traditionalists in thought and habits … book-learning and an inquisitive mind had not been characteristic habits in their ‘old country;’”
more interested in partisan accounts of inevitable religious squabbles;
led by those "who were invariably chosen from the most prosperous segment of their farming communities, [and who] tended to regard the achievement of economic success as their main goal. … In the first half of the nineteenth century the official wielders of power in most communities maintained an air of disdain for intellectual pursuits and resisted most efforts to improve the moral tone of life, to bring a breath of fresh air into their stale church practices, and to raise the standards of the schools.”

Rempel (mostly) praised David H. Epp who wrote on the history of Chortitza and on Johann Cornies and Heinrich Heese--despite the deficiencies of these works (e.g., no sources given). He liked one of Epp’s quotes which he passed on to his own readers: "A people that does not know its history gives up on itself and is already on the way to dissolution" (note 2).

More than a few times groups of Russian Mennonites felt they were on their “way to dissolution.” I can relate to a line by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams: “When you sense that you cannot take for granted that things are the same, you begin to write history to organise collective memory so that breaches may be mended and identities displayed” (note 3).

We are in a season of anniversaries again: 150 years since the first arrival of Russian Mennonites to North America, and 100 years since the arrival of 21,000 Russländer to Canada in the 1920s.

There will be opportunity for Mennonites in the next year to give an account to the question, “Why study and write about Russian Mennonite history?” The answers today, I suspect, will not look the same as for David G. Rempel 50 years ago.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: David G. Rempel, “An Introduction to Russian Mennonite Historiography,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 48, no. 4 (1974), 409-446. See Rempel’s important doctoral dissertation, “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia. A study of their settlement and economic development from 1789–1914,” PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1933, https://archive.org/details/themennonitecoloniesinnewrussiaastudyoftheirsettlementandeconomicdevelopmentfrom1789to1914ocr; idem, “Mennonite Revolutionaries in the Khortitza Settlement under the Tsarist Regime as recollected by Johann G. Rempel,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 10 (1992), 70–86, https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/589/589; “From Danzig to Chortitza: The First Mennonite Migration,” Preservings 20 (June 2002) 3–18, https://www.plettfoundation.org/files/preservings/Preservings20.pdf.

Note 2: See some of David H. Epp's historical pieces include: Die Chortitzer Mennoniten. Versuch einer Darstellung des Entwicklungsganges derselben (Odessa, 1889), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=Dok/Epp.pdf; idem, “Historische Übersicht über den Zustand der Mennonitengemeinden an der Molotschna vom Jahre 1836,” Unser Blatt 3, no. 5 (March 1928), 110–112; no. 6 (März 1928), 138–143, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=Pis/UB27_05.pdf; https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=Pis/UB27_06.pdf; idem, “Hundertjahresfeier der Lichtenauer Gemeinde und Kirche am 31. Oktober 1926,” Unser Blatt 2, no. 3 (December 1926), 75–78, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=Pis/UB26_03.pdf; idem, Johann Cornies: Züge aus seinem Leben und Wirken [1909] (Rosthern, SK: Echo, 1946), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=1dok15.pdf.

Note 3: Rowan Williams, Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Erdmans, 2005), 5.

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History of the Russian Mennonites

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