Mennonite Labour Protests, 1905

It is rare that Mennonites make the news for their protests to pressure government or industry. Here is one example.

The agricultural machinery factories in in the Greater Zaporozhzhia-Alexandrovsk economic zone—including the villages of Chortitza, Einlage, Osterwick, and Schönwiese—were places of significant labour unrest in the early 1900s (note 1).

In February and March 1905 factory workers mobilized at the Mennonite factories of Schulz, and of Lepp and Wallmann in Alexandrovsk, where the following demands were made:

an 8-hour workday
a weekly or bi-weekly pay schedule
courteous treatment of employees
immunity from punishment for elected labour representatives
minimum wages
no child labour
appropriate equipment for moving heavy weights
free family medical care
free schooling for children
workmen’s compensation
regulation of overtime
factory hygiene including showers and proper air ventilation
lunch room facilities
conflict resolution mechanisms
the abolition of fines
accidental death benefits. (Note 2)

Most of the demands were not accepted by the industrial owners.

Elected labour representatives and negotiators at the Schulz plant in 1905 included Mennonites Peter B. Neufeld, Eduard Sawatzky, Heinrich Neufeld and Jacob A. Dick (note 3).

A small number of the Mennonite intelligentsia were sympathetic to these types of liberal reforms, and some were active in early revolutionary Bolshevik cells, including Cornelius Thiessen of Neuendorf, Johann Hildebrand of Neuendorf, and Peter Rempel of Nieder-Chortitza, the son of a prosperous farmer (note 4).

Mennonite factory owners initiated lockouts to break the labour uprisings and strikes of 1905 (note 5), while agitators organized at great personal risk. Cornelius Thiessen, for example, was exiled from Russia and moved with his Jewish wife to Buenos Aires, where he became a leader in the Socialist Party of Argentina. Some years later at their 1912 party congress, he reported that the party had formulated a “resolute protest against Tsarism, against Russian political [interference] in Finland and Persia, and also sent a brotherly greeting to the imprisoned Social Democratic faction of the second Duma, etc.” (note 6)—reflecting perhaps the reasons for his own activism in Russia a decade earlier. Thiessen’s published reports in the German socialist journal Die Neue Zeit reflect a nuanced understanding of Marxist theory, with significant historical knowledge and understanding of the roots of socialism—reaching back to the peasant uprisings of sixteenth-century Europe in which South German Anabaptists had their origins.

Similar labour strikes and bloody clashes were reported in Waldheim, Molotschna where Mennonite mill owners (J. J. Neufeld) suppressed strikers with the assistance of police. The workers were barred from returning to their employment and many resettled in large numbers in the Siberian village of Miloradovka in the Pavlograd District.

The ministerial had not yet grasped the gravity of the social issues of their time; few were alarmed by the resentment simmering in the country as a whole with respect to land ownership, industry, and labour-relations.

As late as 1903, the older and still influential Molotschna elder and former missionary Heinrich Dirks regarded the landless poor who complained as either impatient, lazy, or negligent. He expressed complete satisfaction with the wise Mennonite land acquisition and distribution policies, and considered loud disputes at the regional or village levels as an “evil” and a sign that some Mennonites are “not yet the quiet in the land … which does not correspond to their calling to be non-resistant” (note 7). Contemporary historian-minister P. M. Friesen noted that the Mennonite ...

“… social and economic condition was so good (if not excellent), that they could not expect anything positive for themselves from a possible, more or less radical, governmental change. To the contrary, as a genuine Christian-conservative and generally bourgeois group, ninety-nine out of one hundred Mennonites considered such words as ‘democrat,’ ‘democratic’ with suspicion, foreboding ill, and from a democracy only evil was expected.” (Note 8)

But there were clearly some Mennonite labourers in 1905 whose economic condition was not "so good," and who protested and pushed for labour rights and work-place health and safety regulations.

During this time, the soon-to-become de facto leader of Russian Mennonites for the next decades, Benjamin H. Unruh, was studying in Basel, Switzerland (1900-07). Here the “Religious Socialists” (esp. Leonhard Ragaz) were making a huge impact on “every thinking Swiss pastor”—even pointing to early Anabaptists for inspiration—but not on Unruh.

Unruh liked to tell of a meeting in those years in Basel with Lenin, who met with Russian German students. Lenin responded “warmly” to Benjamin Unruh’s speech—according to Unruh, at least!—on the economic contributions of the German colonists to Russian life but also their loyalty to the Russian people (note 9)!

Yet the visions for their respective new world foundations, and the means to achieve it, were diametrically opposed. Notably Unruh had received a large bursary for his studies from three wealthy Molotschna families.

Unruh missed the labour unrest in Russia, and the Christian socialism of Basel never shaped his account of Mennonite faith and life. For Unruh the large gap between rich and poor was not an urgent concern for Mennonite theological debate or activism—despite all the warning signs (note 10).

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Nataliya Ostasheva Venger, “The Mennonite Industrial Dynasties in Alexandrovsk,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 21 (2003), 89–108; 107, https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/887/886.

Note 2: M. Lvovsky, ed., Na barrikadah, 1905 god v Aleksandrovske (On the barricades: 1905 in Alexandrovsk) (Zaporozhzhia, 1925),120-122, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/vpetk400.pdf.

Note 3: Lvovsky, Na barrikadah, 1905 god v Aleksandrovske, 124.

Note 4: David G. Rempel, “Mennonite Revolutionaries in the Khortitza Settlement under the Tsarist Regime as recollected by Johann G. Rempel,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 10 (1992), 70–86; 73-74. https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/589/589.

Note 5: Cf. D. Rempel, “Mennonite Revolutionaries in the Khortitza Settlement.”

Note 6: Cornelio Thiessen, “Der Sozialismus in Argentinien. Anläßlich des elften Kongresses der P.S.A. am 10., 11. und 12. November 1912,” Die Neue Zeit. Wochenschrift der Deutschen Sozialdemokratie 30, vol. 1, no. 24 (March 15, 1912), 688–693, http://library.fes.de/cgi-bin/populo/nz.pl; also idem, “Der zehnte Kongreß der sozialistischen Partei Argentiniens,” Die Neue Zeit. Wochenschrift der Deutschen Sozialdemokratie 31, vol. 1, no. 19 (February 7, 1913), 856–860, http://library.fes.de/cgi-bin/populo/nz.pl.

Note 7: Heinrich Dirks, “Die Mennoniten in Rußland,” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1903 1 (1904) 5–18; 6f., https://chortitza.org/Buch/MJ/MJ03-18.htm.

Note 8: Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), 627, https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/.

Note 9: Benjamin H. Unruh, “Einige wichtige Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben und ein Vorschlag,” 2. From Mennonite Library and Archives-Bethel College, MS. 295, folder 13, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_295/folder_13/.

Note 10: There has been some work on the Kansas Mennonite socialist J. G. Ewert who argued in 1909 that socialism is in harmony with the teachings of Jesus. Cf. James C. Juhnke, “J. G. Ewert: A Mennonite Socialist,” Mennonite Life 23, no. 1 (1968), 12–15, https://mla.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/pre2000/1968jan.pdf. A few decades earlier, a Kleine Gemeinde radical and son of a preacher, Abraham Thiessen (1838-'89) advocated insistently on behalf of the landless in Russia, and later found his way to Nebraska where he was excommunicated. Cf. Cornelius Krahn, “Abraham Thiessen: A Mennonite Revolutionary?,” Mennonite Life 24, no. 2 (April 1969) 73–77, https://ml.bethelks.edu/store/ml/files/1969apr.pdf; and GAMEO: https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Thiessen,_Abraham_(1838-1889). In 1909, the transatlantic Mennonite-based paper Mennonitische Rundschau republished, for example, an economic prognoses of capitalist, industrial farming from the Odessa Zeitung that signaled great changes ahead: Karl Hoffman, “Ein kleiner Beitrag zur Bauernfrage,” Mennonitische Rundschau 32, no. 32 (August 11, 1909), 15, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1909-08-11_32_32/page/14/mode/2up, based on an article by Jaroschewitsch in the Odessa Zeitung, no. 128 (1909), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/lfrs143.pdf.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Mennonite Labour Protests, 1905," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), June 9, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/mennonite-labour-protests-1905.html.

Comments

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons!

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons: Heart-Shaped Waffles and a smooth talking General In 1874 with Mennonite immigration to North America in full swing, the Tsar sent General Eduard von Totleben to the colonies to talk the remaining Mennonites out of leaving ( note 1 ). He came with the now legendary offer of alternative service. Totleben made presentations in Mennonite churches and had many conversations in Mennonite homes. Decades later the women still recalled how fond Totleben was of Mennonite heart-shaped waffles. He complemented the women saying, “How beautiful are the hearts of Mennonites!,” and he joked about how “much Mennonites love waffles ( Waffeln ), but not weapons ( Waffen )” ( note 2 )! His visit resulted in an extensive reversal of opinion and the offer was welcomed officially by the Molotschna and Chortitza Colony ministerials. And upon leaving, the general was gifted with a poem by Bernhard Harder ( note 3 ) and a waffle iron ( note 4 ). Harder was an inf...

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...

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 ...

Fraktur (or Gothic) font and Kurrent- (or Sütterlin) handwriting: Nazi ban, 1941

In the middle of the war on January 1, 1942, the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau published a new issue without the familiar Fraktur script masthead ( note 1 ). One might speculate on the reasons, but a year earlier Hitler banned the use of the font in the Reich . The Rundschau did not exactly follow all orders from Berlin—the rest of the paper was in Fraktur (sometimes referred to as "Gothic"); when the war ended in 1945, the Rundschau reintroduced the Fraktur font for its masthead. It wasn’t until the 1960s that an issue might have a page or title here or there with the “normal” or Latin font, even though post-war Germany was no longer using Fraktur . By 1973 only the Rundschau masthead is left in Fraktur , and that is only removed in December 1992. Attached is a copy of Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann's official letter dated January 3, 1941, which prohibited the use of Fraktur fonts "by order of the Führer. " Why? It was a Jewish invention, apparent...

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...

"A Small Town near Auschwitz” – Chortitza Mennonite Refugee/ Resettlement Camps

Simple proximity to a place of horrors does not equal knowledge or complicity. Many Gnadenfeld-area Mennonite refugees were, for example, temporarily housed 20 km. away from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where 15-year-old Anne Frank died ultimately of typhus ( note 1 ). The day after liberation by British troops on April 15, 1945, camp survivors began to flow through neighbouring villages. “What a sight they were! They had been tortured and starved, and were swollen from lack of food. … We could hardly believe that the glorious country of Germany could commit such crimes against people,” Susanna Toews wrote ( note 2 ). My mother was only seven, but she remembers overhearing shocking descriptions given by their host family’s teenaged girls forced by the British to clean some of the camp buses. What about the much larger death camp at Auschwitz? There is a book entitled: A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. It is about an administrator living near the ...

1921: Formation of the “Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine”

Famine was imminent; unprecedented drought; taxes and requisitions exceeded what was harvested; some villages had no horses; extortion and arrests were widespread; many men were disenfranchised and barred from village affairs (see note 1 ). Lenin responded with the 1921 “New Economic Policy” (NEP), which allowed for a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism to ward off complete economic collapse. A fixed-tax was imposed, grain quotas were eased, farmers were allowed a small amount of land and could sell excess produce at free-market prices after taxes had been paid. Much was in the air. In secret talks, Soviet Trade Commissar Leonid Krasin told the head of the Eastern Section in the German Foreign Office, Gustav Behrendt, that the USSR was “prepared—just like Catherine the Great of old—to call hundreds of thousands of German colonists into the land and transfer them to large, closed complexes for settlement,” especially in Turkestan and the North Caucasus, be...

Mennonites and the Crimean War (1853-56)

Martin Klaassen was traveling through the Molotschna Mennonite Colony when the Crimean War broke out in 1853 ( note 1 ). His diary notes that the following hymn was sung before the sermon: December 1853 . With regards to the war which broke out between Russia and Turkey, the song, No: 723 “O Lord, the clouds of war are threatening now, above our heads we see them roll” was sung before the sermon” ( note 2 ). As the war effort grew, thousands of troops came through Molotschna: January 14, 1854 . Today our colony has received billets: in Halbstadt about 1,000 soldiers. It is said that Joh. Neufelds have offered liquor ( Branntwein ), naturally without charge. The soldiers are supposed to have marched in with jubilant singing and much hilarity. They had been very happy for the wonderful reception they got, and promised to accomplish great things. In March, England and France also declared war on Russia. March 26, 1854 . At noon today there was suddenly a military transport at ...

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...

Molotschna Elder Heinrich Dirks and tensions with Mennonite Brethren

Russian Mennonites were not always kind to each other—and nowhere is this seen better than in the tensions between “old” Mennonites and the “separatist” Mennonite Brethren, who had their beginnings in Gnadenfeld, Molotschna in 1860. Heinrich Dirks (1842-1915) was the first Russian Mennonite overseas missionary and later long-time Gnadenfeld, Molotschna ( note 1 ). Everything about Dirks’ life suggests that he would have joined the Brethren in 1860. He too was influenced by the "powerful and gripping” conversionist ministry of Eduard Wüst in his youth. Dirks was a young adult in the Gnadenfeld congregation in South Russia where the Mennonite Brethren /separatist movement began. Shortly thereafter, he was trained in the German pietist Barmen Mission School (1863-67), and famously travelled to Sumatra (Indonesia) where he started a mission outpost and school. The Mennonite Brethren too would later connect the global mission imperative with the impending return of Christ as did Dirk...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog