Russo-Japanese War and the Mennonite Response, 1904-05

In February 1904, Russia declared war on Japan and Mennonite congregations sent the Tsar messages of loyalty, love and prayers. The large Lichtenau-Petershagen-Schönsee congregation in the Mennonite Molotschna Colony in today’s Ukraine led by 80-year-old Elder (Bishop) Jakob Töws expressed its “deep loyalty and love for the throne and the Fatherland” (note 1).

Similarly, the Mennonite Chortitza congregation declared that Mennonites bow “humbly before the Imperial Majesty with most faithful love and devotion,” and “together with all faithful subjects send their most passionate prayers and supplications to the Most High, that He may extend his mighty hand over the beloved Tsar and the Russian people, and that peace may soon be returned” (note 2).

The Einlage Mennonite Brethren congregation offered a similar statement, “inspired by feelings of boundless dedication to the Sovereign Fatherland,” with “passionate prayers” for the Tsar and Fatherland, based on 1 Timothy 2:1–4 (note 3).

At the centennial anniversary of the founding of the Molotschna Colony two months later, Elder Heinrich Dirks praised both God and Tsar after which—not surprisingly—worshippers sang the Russian national anthem in his Gnadenfeld church (note 4).

In part because neighbouring ethnic German reservists in Russia had also been mobilized for the war, Mennonites sought to demonstrate their willingness to help “carry the load of the Fatherland” as well (note 5). In order to show their “deep gratitude” to Tsar, Fatherland and army, services of prayer and solidarity were held (note 6), and Molotschna Mennonites agreed in September to a voluntary taxation rate of five kopecks per desiatina (ca. 1 hectare) land per month for the duration of the war; three-fifths was designated for the Taurida provincial field-hospital, and two-fifths for needy and poor families of soldiers from neighbouring Russian villages (note 7).

Herman Enns of Schönau, Molotschna had this memory as a seven-year-old:

“One day in the summer a group of Russian officers came onto our yard. They came up onto the veranda, set up a table and chairs and sat down. The farmers in the village had to bring all their horses onto our yard, and parade them in front of the Commission, who then picked out the best horses for their army. From us they took a beautiful big chestnut horse.” (Note 8)

The Molotschna Pordenau congregation chose a committee of three ministers and three lay people to distribute the monies or gifts in kind to near-by needy families (note 9).

Some like Crimean Mennonite Church Elder Heinrich Unruh were unsatisfied, however, and advocated that Mennonites also send medics. Money, horses and clothing donations alone were “too impersonal” and “could too easily look like an excuse to remain comfortably at home” (note 10).

After meeting in September 1905, elders sent a telegram to the Tsar passionately expressing their thanks and their loyalty as servants and subjects of the Russian crown. This telegram signed by all “Russian Mennonite elders” made clear that their political loyalty was to the land in which they lived (note 11).

This history recalls how church elders sought to show solidarity with the land that treated them well, as they struggled creatively to bring their beliefs, privileges, commitments (care for the neighbour; non-resistance)—and some kind of proper nationalism—together. The example above is not so much offered as a model for today, but rather as another example of how Mennonites in Russia wrestled authentically in new contexts with what it meant to be a Christian people of peace.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Otkliki russkoj semli na zarskoe slowo o wojne s Japonijej [Responses from the Russian Land to the Royal Announcement about War with Japan] (St. Petersburg: Ministry of the Interior, 1904), 316, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Dok/1904.pdf.

Note 2: Otkliki russkoj semli … Japonijej [Responses … to the Royal Announcement about War with Japan], 88.

Note 3: Otkliki russkoj semli … Japonijej [Responses … to the Royal Announcement about War with Japan], 88f.

Note 4: Heinrich Dirks, “Die Centenarfeier der Molotschnaansiedlung,” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1904 2 (1905), 18–24, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/kb/mj1904.pdf.

Note 5: Benjamin H. Unruh, “Der Kampf der russischen Gemeinden um die Wehrlosigkeit,” Jugend Warte (June 1925), 52–61; 53. https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Jugendwarte/DSCF8408.JPG.

Note 6: Cf. Heinrich Dirks, “Fortsetzung der Geschichte des Mennonitenvölkleins in Rußland im Jahre 1905,” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1905/6 3 (1906), 9–21, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Buch/MJ/MJ05-1.pdf. Cf. letters by Heinirch Rempel (Mennonitische Rundschau 28, no. 24 [June 14, 1905], 9f., https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1905-06-14_28_24/page/8/mode/2up) and Peter Neumann (Mennonitische Rundschau 29, no. 2 [January 10, 1906], 10, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1906-01-10_29_2/page/10/mode/2up).

Note 7: Mennonitische Rundschau 27, no. 44 (October 26, 1904), 9, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1904-10-26_27_44/page/8/mode/2up?q=japan.

Note 8: “Excerpts from Diary of Herman Enns,” Voices of Essex-Kent Mennonites, 2004, http://www.ekmha.ca/voices/archive/files/70ed2c3a3bf475101672f3867401a96e.pdf.

Note 9: Mennonitische Rundschau 28, no. 2 (January 11, 1905), 9, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1905-01-11_28_2/page/8/mode/2up.

Note 10: Summarized by Lawrence Klippenstein, “Mennonites and Military Service in the Soviet Union to 1939,” in Essays on Pacifism from 1918 to 1945, edited by Peter Brock and Thomas P. Socknat, 3–20 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 19f. Heinrich Unruh was the father of Mennonite theologian and immigration leader, Benjamin H. Unruh. See also Heinrich Ediger, ed., Beschlüsse der von den geistlichen und anderen Vertretern der Mennonitengemeinden Rußlands abgehaltenen Konferenzen für die Jahren 1879 bis 1913 (Berdjansk: Ediger, 1914), 104 (Minutes, September 1904), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Buch/MJ/MK4.pdf.

Note 11: Ediger, ed., Beschlüsse, 112f.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Russo-Japanese War and the Mennonite Response, 1904-1905,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), July 15, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/07/russo-japanese-war-and-mennonite.html.

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