Skip to main content

Collectivization and Dekulakization, 1930-33

Throughout 1930, Mennonite defiance and hope for another mass emigration was morphing into deep disappointment and growing apathy as they contemplated a permanent future under communist rule (note 1).

Together with rapid industrialization—including the Dnieper hydro dam—Stalin’s new focus on the collectivization of agricultural units in 1930 was both an economic strategy and the critical means for reconfiguring society and for the creation of the new “Soviet man,” with the liberation of women too from “exploitation and social isolation” (note 2).

This massive project of social engineering had profound effects on Mennonite faith, community and family life. Economic restructuring brought famine and profound poverty to the countryside. Women were increasingly removed from their children and subjected to impossible labour demands. Newly educated youth and children were the future of the socialist state, but their memoirs mostly speak of a lost childhood clouded by memories of poverty and of an atmosphere of fear.

Stalin’s first Five Year Plan in December 1929 called for the socialist enlargement of agricultural units and decreed the “complete” collectivization of all agricultural land including the confiscation of farm animals and implements. Counter-revolutionary opponents or kulaks favouring “capitalist” enlargements of private farms instead were to be eliminated. On the heels of the internationally embarrassing flight of Mennonite farmers to the suburbs of Moscow, Stalin spoke at a conference of Marxist students on the agrarian question, on December 27, 1929:

“Today, we have an adequate material base which enables us to strike at the kulaks, to break their resistance, to eliminate them as a class, and to substitute for their output the output of the collective farms and state farms. ... There is another question which seems no less ridiculous: whether the kulak should be permitted to join the collective farms. Of course not, for he is a sworn enemy of the collective-farm movement.” (Note 3)

Desperate to raise the level of enthusiasm for state-set production goals and to mobilize peasants, authorities responded with ideological education, including materials in German-language journals, newspapers and radio that emphasized the final liquidation of kulaks as a class in the countryside, the removal of all counter-revolutionary agitators, the complete collectivization of all farms, and a more focused battle to end religious belief in the village. Village councils were pressured to meet or exceed all procurement quotas especially by exposing and disciplining "kulak hoarders and shirkers."

Quotas for dekulakization in the German-speaking Ukrainian villages were higher than policies required; altogether Peter Letkemann estimates that at least 2,000 Mennonite families or 10,000 people were “dekulakized” in the years 1929 to 1932 (note 4).

In March 1930, Stalin celebrated progress made on the Collective Farm Movement with the broadly published article “Dizzy with Success.” Where there were violent excesses, he blamed it on overzealous local officials and suggested that some private land ownership going forward would be tolerated; collectivization would remain voluntary and only occur where it made sense (note 5). This was a temporary reprieve at best, and arrests continued.

In April and June 1930 the village of Neuendorf (Rayon Chortitza) offered some resistance to forced collectivization and a program dekulakization. The response against the village was severe and designed to make them into an example for surrounding Mennonite villages.

“Those affected were loaded with their families onto a wagon each and taken away to an unknown destination. But the population opposed this and did not let them go. The GPU came to arrest the heads of the families, but they were warned and went into hiding. Then, night after night, a number of people and trucks with GPU and police arrived and a great hunt began. The men were arrested and the other members of the families were later sent after them.” (Note 6)

Jakob Siemens, age 47, Franz Ens, age 43, Peter Wiebe, age 42 (and possibly others) of Neuendorf were arrested on April 18, and each charged with “agitating farmers to oppose / not to submit to Soviet rule” (note 7). Another larger sweep occurred on June 23, where at least five Mennonite men were charged with “agitating against the Soviet government.” Most were deported to serve five or eight years in a forced labour camp in “northern Russia;” one was sentenced to death (note 8). In total, twenty-four men were arrested in the village in 1930—and as per custom, family members followed, including 18 women and 11 children (total 53) (note 9).

In 1930, thirty individuals from the Chortitza village of Osterwick were also disenfranchised and exiled (note 10), and fifty-nine from Franzfeld. “We ethnic Germans had a hard time agreeing to collectivization,” the Franzfeld teacher K. Epp wrote in 1942. “But in the end … in order not to make closer acquaintance with the NKVD [secret police], we complied” (note 11).

A shift was occurring in the state’s anti-clerical propaganda from attacking religious beliefs and the clergy as obstacles to social and economic progress, to an explicitly politicized attack, painting faith leaders as “a direct threat to Bolshevik rule from enemies within and abroad” (note 12). In the Barnaul District (Altai), for example, thirty-six Mennonite ministers were disenfranchised in April 1930 (note 13). No longer were “preachers” smeared by state propaganda simply as exploiters of the peasantry, but now—“closely linked to developments in the general political arena”—they were shown “actively conspiring against Soviet power” (note 14). After the “mistakes” of rapid collectivization were admitted by the state in 1930, “kulak-preachers, priests and other anti-Soviet elements” were nonetheless blamed for “exploiting these mistakes” that were producing “dissatisfaction in the German villages, thereby reducing the intensity of their labour and their desire to improve and raise the level of agriculture” (note 15).

Accounts of dispossessed Mennonite families—especially as food shortages increased—left an indelible mark on the survivors of this era, and are recalled repeatedly in the memoir literature. 

Notably, Mennonites were not only the victims of dekulakization, but some were also its agents (that is another story). Moreover, the story of dispossession was shared by Mennonites and many Ukrainians together.

The remarkable photos (1932-33) by Mark Zaliznyak below are likely the best we will find of those terrible events. They are not from a Mennonite village, but from Udachne in Donetsk (Bakhmut District). The village had at least one Mennonite family, and the Mennonite Memrik Colony and estates were not far away.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Photos: "Donetsk village Udachne and Holodomor of 1932-33 in photos by Mark Zaliznyak," https://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=uk&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.radiosvoboda.org%2Fa%2Fholodomor-photo-zaliznyaka-1932-1933%2F28874991.html; also http://old.memorialholodomor.org.ua/eng/holodomor/archive/foto-arkhiv/golodomor-na-donnechini-foto-m-zheliznyaka/?fbclid=IwAR27xlF3nmJXptAP5M642s3LviqKTWy5sP__lrNSv0fjRY5RDUFvEedn2eM. NB: the fourth picture is from the Odessa region; https://flashbak.com/the-great-break-the-russian-peasant-becomes-the-collective-farmer-1920-1931-363372/?fbclid=IwAR0w3J5Hbeyw7OCu4tBLM4NySJq69fbFpgklddnhX5qb7qswTeUdq2M9QrM.

Note 1: The German government made arrangements with the Soviet Union to allow a few “splitter” families (some 20 families / 70 individuals) who were separated in Moscow in 1929 to leave in 1931; Benjamin H. Unruh played a key role; cf. Levi Mumaw to C.F. Klassen, August 10, 1931, from MCC-Akron, IX-03-01, box 3, file 70018.

Note 2: Daniel Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 81.

Note 3: Josef V. Stalin, “Problems of Agrarian Policy in the U.S.S.R.,” in Stalin, Problems of Leninism (Moscow: Foreign Languages, 1945), 317-319, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.14532/page/n315/mode/2up/.

Note 4: Estimate by Peter Letkemann, “Mennonites in the Soviet Inferno, 1929–1941,” Mennonite Historian 24, no. 4 (1998), 6, http://www.mennonitehistorian.ca/.

Note 5: Stalin, “Dizzy with Success: Concerning Questions of the Collective-Farm Movement [March 3, 1930],” Works 12, 197–205. For Siberian Germans, see report in Auslanddeutsche 13, no. 12 (1930), 429f., https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/pdf/vpetk324.pdf; and Detlef Brandes and Andrej I. Savin, Die Sibiriendeutschen im Sowjetstaat 1919–1938 (Essen: Klartext, 2001), ch. 8. For Ukraine, see Colin P. Neufeldt, “Collectivizing the Mutter Ansiedlungen: The role of Mennonites in Organizing Kolkhozy in the Khortytsia and Molochansk German National Districts in Ukraine in the Late 1920s and Early 1930s,” in Minority Report: Mennonite Identities in Imperial Russia and Soviet Ukraine Reconsidered, 1789–1945, edited by Leonard G. Friesen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), 216.

Note 6: In “Neuendorf (Rayon Chortitza) Dorfbericht,” May 1942, Fragebogen XI.5 (Addendum), “Schilderung der Verhaftungen usw.,” in Village Reports Special Command Dr. Stump, Bundesarchiv R6/622, 96 (TSDEA; Bundesarchiv).

Note 7: Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia Region (Zaporizhia: Dniprovskij Metalurg, 2004–2013) [РЕАБІЛІТОВАНІ ІСТОРІЄЮ: Запорізька область], Book V, 275 (Wiebe); 315 (Ens); 325 (Siemens), http://www.reabit.org.ua/books/zp/.

Note 8: Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia, Book IV, 69 (Braun); 133 (Heinrichs); cf. also 496 (Peter Redekop); 459 (Abram Peters); 145 (Dietrich Hildebrandt).

Note 9: “Neuendorf (Rayon Chortitza) Dorfbericht,” May 1942, “Fragebogen,” XI.2, in Village Reports Special Command Dr. Stump, Bundesarchiv R6/622, 94; “Liste der verbannten Bürger,” 133 (TSDEA; Bundesarchiv).

Note 10: “Osterwick, (Rayon Chortitza) Dorfbericht,” July 1942, “Fragebogen,” XI.2, in Village Reports Special Command Dr. Stump, Bundesarchiv R6/621, 9, 194 (TSDEA; Bundesarchiv).

Note 11: “Franzfeld, (Rayon Chortitza) Dorfbericht,” April 1942, “Fragebogen,” XI.2 and XI.5,  Village Reports Special Command Dr. Stump, Bundesarchiv R6/621, 384; “Schulisches Leben: Bericht,” 386b (TSDEA; Bundesarchiv).

Note 12: Peris, Storming the Heavens, 75.

Note 13: Abram Abram Fast, In the networks of the OGPU-NKVD, German District Altai Territory in 1927–1938 (V setyakh OGPU-NKVD: Nemetskiy rayon Altyskogo kraya v 1927–1938 gg unrh) (Barnaul, 2002), 31–34, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Dok/FastR.pdf.

Note 14: Peris, Storming the Heavens, 75.

Note 15: Auslanddeutsche 12, no. 13 (1930), 429f.

--

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Collectivization and Dekulakization, 1930-1933," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), August 14, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/08/collectivization-and-dekulakization.html. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (Holodomor), 1932-1933

In 2008 the Canadian Parliament passed an act declaring the fourth Saturday in November as “Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (‘Holodomor’) Memorial Day” ( note 1 ). Southern Ukraine was arguably the worst affected region of the famine of 1932–33, where 30,000 to 40,000 Mennonites lived ( note 2 ). The number of famine-related deaths in Ukraine during this period are conservatively estimated at 3.5 million ( note 3 ). In the early 1930s Stalin feared growing “Ukrainian nationalism” and the possibility of “losing Ukraine” ( note 4 ). He was also suspicious of ethnic Poles and Germans—like Mennonites—in Ukraine, convinced of the “existence of an organized counter-revolutionary insurgent underground” in support of Ukrainian national independence ( note 5 ). Ukraine was targeted with a “lengthy schooling” designed to ruthlessly break the threat of Ukrainian nationalism and resistance, and this included Ukraine’s Mennonites (viewed simply as “Germans”). Various causes combined to bring on w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Eduard Wüst: A “Second Menno”?

Arguably the most significant outside religious influence on Mennonite s in the 19th century was the revivalist preaching of Eduard Wüst, a university-trained Württemberg Pietist minister installed by the separatist Evangelical Brethren Church in New Russia in 1843 ( note 1 ). With the end-time prophesies of a previous generation of Pietists (and many Mennonites) coming to naught, Wüst introduced Germans in this area of New Russia to the “New Pietism” and its more individualistic, emotional conversion experience and sermons on the free grace of God centred on the cross of Christ ( note 2 ). Wüst’s 1851 Christmas sermon series give a good picture of what was changing ( note 3 ). His core agenda was to dispel gloom (which maybe could describe more traditional Mennonites) and induce Christian joy. This is the root impulse of the Mennonite Brethren beginnings years later in 1860. “Satan is not entitled to present his own as the most joyful.” His people “sing, jump, leap ( hüpfen ) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Four-Part Singing in Mennonite Schools and Church in Russia

The significance of singing instruction may seem trite, but it became a key vehicle in the Mennonite school curriculum for fostering a basic appreciation of the arts and for faith formation. In Johann Cornies’ circulated guidelines for teachers, singing was recommended as a means “to stimulate and enliven pious feelings” in the children—a guideline he copied directly from a German Catholic pedagogue and circulated freely under his own name ( note 1 ).  On January 26, 1846 Cornies distributed a curriculum regulation to all schools that mandated “singing by numbers ( Zahlen ) from the church hymnal” ( note 2 ). Attention to singing instruction in the schools precipitated significant and controversial changes in Mennonite liturgy. An 1854 visiting observer to the Bergthal Colony—a Chortitza daughter colony outside of Cornies’ purview—wrote: “Endlessly long hymns from the Gesangbuch (hymnal) were begun by the Vorsänger (song leader) of the congregation, and sung with so many flo...
Post a Comment
Read more

"Between Monarchs" a lot can happen (like revolt). A Mennonite "Accession" Prayer for the Monarch

It is surprising for many to learn that Russian Mennonites sang the Russian national anthem "God save the Tsar" in special worship services ... frequently! We have a "Mennonite prayer" and sermon sample for the accession of the monarch ( Thronbesteigung ) or its anniversary, with closing prayer-- and another Mennonite sampler of a coronation ( Krönung ) prayer, sermon and closing prayer ( note 1 ). After 70 years with one monarch, the manual is made for a time like this--try sharing it with your Canadian Mennonite pastor ;) Technically there is no “between” monarchs: “The Queen is Dead. Long live the King!” But there is much that happens or can happen before the coronation of the new monarch. Including revolt. Mennonites in Molotschna had hosted Tsar Alexander I shortly before his death in 1825. Upon his death in December, Alexander's brother and heir Constantine declined succession, and prior to the coronation of the next brother Nicholas, some 3,000 rebel (mos...
Post a Comment
Read more