Thousands of Mennonites arrived as colonists in the underpopulated frontier lands of “New Russia” (aka Ukraine) in the years after 1789. Roaming Nogai peoples were moved and removed as necessary. As we might write a history of “American Mennonites,” Mennonites whose ancestors settled in Ukraine have typically written about the “Russian Mennonite” experience. Like the USA, Greater Russia had its own “manifest destiny,” and within that colonial context Mennonites flourished.
What would that mean to rewrite that story as a Ukrainian story,
within a Ukrainian historical frame of reference? What eyes would that give us
for the illegal invasion of Ukraine, for example?
Typically historical accounts of Ukrainian experience have
been “appendages” to the larger, more encompassing history of Russia--so Paul
Magosci, Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto. I continue to
learn much from his magisterial History of Ukraine: The Land and its People now
in its second edition (note 1).
Magosci’s account of Ukraine’s history challenges the “Russian historical tradition” which treats Ukraine as a Russian province (“Little Russia”) and in effect leaves the country without a history. This tradition of history writing assumes one single Russian people—Great Russia (Veliko Rus), White Russia (Belo-Rus), and Little Russia (Malo-Rus)—and deems any attempt at writing a distinct history of Ukraine from the outset as “illogical,” “inconceivable”—or a deliberately subversive modern western idea planted to undermine the unity of the Russian state. In this tradition, “Russian culture is meaningless without Ukrainian, as Ukrainian is without Russian” (Magosci, p. 16, citing Dmittrii Likhachev).
This sheds some helpful light on the 154-year Mennonite
sojourn in Ukraine--and on recent events too.
Magosci notes that in the nineteenth-century Ukrainian was
censored as a (legally) “non-existent language” (Magosci, p. 393), i.e., at
best a dialect of “common Russian,” perhaps as Low German, Swiss German or
Bavarian, or Swabian is to High German—and potentially subversive to empire.
For example, while the Russian censorship board in the nineteenth
century approved the printing of new editions of the Mennonite (German) hymnal,
the confession of faith, and the catechism, a German newspaper in Odessa, and
the purchase and distribution of any manner of foreign German church and
educational materials, Ukrainians had a very different lot.
Any religious or pedagogical works, or any writings in
Little Russian/ Ukrainian for mass consumption, were illegal to publish or
import. These were seen as Ukrainophile separatist propaganda.
Astonishingly in 1862 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox
Church forbade the printing and distribution of parts of the New Testament in
Ukrainian on the grounds that “a translation into a legally nonexistent
language would be politically dangerous” and “harmful”—a great recognition of
the power of the New Testament, by the way! (Magosci, pp. 393f.). Oral folklore
could be published only in limited numbers. Other cultural endeavors like
permanent “Little Russian” theatres, for example, were expressly forbidden.
Schooling in Little Russia / South Russia / Ukraine was
without exception to be conducted in common Russian—again, a policy fueled by
government fear of separatist, anti-imperial movements. In contrast, minority
groups invited to Ukraine with their own Privilegium (charter of
responsibilities and privileges)—like Mennonites, German Lutherans, Greeks,
Swedes, or Bulgarians, etc—were free and encouraged to organize their own
schools, churches and cultural life in their own languages.
On top of this, there was no compulsory education in Russia
and the state invested very little towards such ends; in predominantly
Ukrainian villages 91% to 96% were illiterate in 1897 (Magosci, p. 397). Conversely
in the same year almost 100% of Mennonite males and females, young and old,
could read and write (note 2).
Mennonites were eventually obligated to teach the language
of the land in each of their German-language village schools, but by law it was
Russian that was taught, not Ukrainian (cf. Magosci, p. 393). For the entire
"Mennonite era" in Ukraine prior to WW I, only few Mennonites ever
learnt Ukrainian—perhaps from farm labourers and sheep herders (note 3), “on
the street,” from the postal road and ferry across the Dnieper River at
Einlage, from the "salt haulers" (Chumaks) moving on separated paths
through the Molotschna Colony, or in the shops and markets of Tokmak, adjacent
to Ladekopp, Molotschna.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Mennonites and
Ukrainians were both threatened culturally and economically by a movement
referred to as “Pan-Slavism.” Russian Slavs (or Muscavite Slavs) posited
themselves as "big brother," politically superior to the other Slavic
groups—culturally and linguistically—and as their protector from (in
particular) Germanic dangers in the Empire or from Ottoman-Turkish enemies.
This leads to the present. At the start of the Russian invasion
of Ukraine in 2022, leading Orthodox church clergy and scholars outside of
Russia issued a declaration on the heresy of the “Russian World (Russkii mir)
Teaching” (note 4). This doctrine posits a transnational Russian sphere or
civilization called Holy Russia or Holy Rus’, which includes Russia, Ukraine
and Belarus, with a common political centre (Moscow), a common spiritual centre
(Kyiv as the “mother of all Rus’’), a common language (Russian), a common
church and patriarch (the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate)
upholding a common distinctive spirituality, morality, and culture. That is the
kind of history writing Magosci challenges above, with a quasi-theological
argument that attributes divine ordination and higher calling in God’s kingdom
mission to one national group. In that reading Kiev is seen as the “mother of
Russian cities,” and that all descendants of that mother have a holy obligation
to ensure the unity of a greater Kievan “Russia.”
Within that context, the point of reference for Mennonite
histories and theological developments is the empire and the Romanov Dynasty.
Ukrainian neighbours were ethnically and culturally non-existent, absorbed and
ignored.
Is this the right moment for Mennonites with that background
to rethink all that as well? What would that mean in our history writing and in
the recollection of church, family and people in Ukraine”? Perhaps some new
truth can be found and a story that sees and recalls new things with memories
powerful enough to reconcile.
---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast
---Notes---
Note 1: Paul R. Magosci, A History of Ukraine: The Land and
Its Peoples, 2nd edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), https://archive.org/details/history-of-ukraine-2nd-revised-edition-the-land-and-its-peoples.
Note 2: Cf. James Urry, “Prolegomena to the Study of
Mennonite Society in Russia 1880–1914,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 8 (1990), 57,
https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/658/658.
Note 3: One government report on Mennonite life from 1842 records the
following: “To herd the animals the Mennonists hire Malo-Russians (Ukrainians).
Now they number 350 men and 160 women. They earn about 26,000 rubles in cash
and up to 1,000 Tschetwert grain. On top of this, they have for their own use
159 Dessjtene land for seeding grain and 226 Dessjatene of hay land.” Source: “1842
Description of the Mennonite Colonies in Russia,” p. 12, translated from “Opisanie
Menonistskikh kolonii v Rossii," Zhurnal Ministerstva gosudarstvennykh
imushchestv (Journal of the Ministry of Crown Properties), 4 (1842), vol. 2,
part 1, 1842. Translated by John P. Dyck, edited by Selenna Wolfe and Glenn
Penner. Typed translation from Mennonite Heritage Centre, Winnipeg, MB.
Note 4: “A Declaration on the Russian World (russkii mir)
Teaching,” March 13, 2022, Fordham University, https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/03/13/a-declaration-on-the-russian-world-russkii-mir-teaching/.
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