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Non-Resistant Service: Forestry Camps

The 1902 photos are of the Mennonite Crimean Forestry (Forstei) “Commando” in the vineyards and orchards of southern Crimea on route to Yalta ("Gut [estate] Forroß"; note 1).

The tasks for the units or commandos were to plant forests, lay out nurseries, and raise model orchards—work not directly or meaningfully connected to non-resistance, but deemed by the state as an acceptable alternative to state or military service. This non-combatant, alternative service program was the largest, most expensive and most formative, faith-based undertaking by Mennonites during the Mennonite "golden era" in Russia (note 2).

The first cohort of young men were chosen and sent for their term of alternative service in 1880:

“On November 15 [1880] in Tokmak the first German youth were chosen [by lot] in the presence of the [Mennonite] district mayor and also of Elder A. Goerz. There, with singing and prayer, they beseeched the Lord for His mercy, which interested the Russian officials very much. The lot fell on four young men from Schönsee, including two schoolteachers who were immediately disqualified. The total number of young people is 72. Their term of service began on April 8, 1881, in a forestry near Mariupol.” (Note 3)

Since 1881, this program linked and defined Mennonites from across all geographical, economic, social and theological divides. Every Mennonite young man was eligible to be conscripted for three or four years of forestry work, normally in a camp in proximity to an existing Mennonite settlement.

Twenty-five years later the Mennonite Ministers’ Manual had a clear model to be used by ministers for commissioning new forestry recruits.

“When our Young Men are called up for Forestry Service. The solemn vow which our young men must affirm before entering the forestry service is the one which every elder has in his hands. Before [reading] that, the elder or preacher gives them a short, ernest address concerning civic service and exhorts them to loyalty and obedience to His Majesty our Emperor, to all their superiors and to our fatherland. Then the solemn vow is read to them in Russian, which they must repeat verbatim, and finally it is concluded with prayer and singing of the Russian fatherland anthem.” (Note 4)

In the early years, Mennonite evangelist and poet Bernhard Harder wrote a hymn text for the “conscription and dispatchment of the recruits,” which captures the community’s understanding of this service and witness for God and country: “So go forth now in peace … Serve the Lord faithfully in your office; serve the Monarch, faithfully, the Fatherland” (note 5).

This unique, government sanctioned, faith-based alternative to military service was funded by the community alone: every family and business was peer-assessed according to wealth and taxed by the Mennonite Forestry Service Commission. Commissions overseeing the collection of funds were typically comprised of some of the wealthiest Mennonite industrialists and estate owners (note 6). While the costs were significant, the combined wealth of the colonies was great as well. Mennonite self-organization across fifty settlements was a well-orchestrated, logistical challenge.

For Mennonites, this model worked to keep their young men together in larger self-contained groups for four years under civilian—not military—oversight, and under the spiritual care of their own ministers who served on rotational basis.

This post-educational experience was a requirement by law for Mennonite men—though wealthy families were known to bribe doctors to exempt their sons (note 7)—and like baptism, a prerequisite for marriage in the Mennonite church and property ownership in the Mennonite colonies (note 8).

While the state supplied tools and a very small wage for these conscientious objectors, the larger Mennonite community was responsible for the building of barracks at each of the commandos, for the provision of all food and clothing, as well as for the spiritual care of their young men (note 9).

In the early 1880s related expenses for Mennonites were between 60,000 and 70,000 rubles. By 1914 with some 1,204 young men in service, the annual costs to the community were upwards of 350,000 rubles (=$147,679) (note 10); for comparison, a “beautiful” new school was built in October 1912 at the Molotschna orphanage in Großweide for 12,000 rubles (=$5,000) (note 11). Estate owners paid four kopeks per desiatina; other farmers thirteen kopeks; this changed only with considerable resistance from the wealthy landholders (note 12).

While alternative service was an adventurous, formational experience, its duration was long, its conditions poor, and its work often very difficult; hence, memories were decidedly mixed (note 13).

An 1892 evaluative report by a minister, who had moved to North America and returned to visit, was positive: seventy-nine young men lived in three barracks in a camp near Berdjansk on the Sea of Asov, surrounded only by the gardens and trees they had planted. They worked daily from 6 to 11 am, and 1 to 6 pm. Basic food was supplied by the colonies, cooked and baked by their own, and eaten together in community. A minister was responsible for the order of community life, and the chief forester—normally a Russian—directed the work together with elected leaders. The work was not deemed more difficult than farming; in one year they planted 1,200,000 saplings. The barracks included a library and newspapers, and the young men had a few months leave per year. The North American visitor had a strong sense that in this program the young men were growing in discipline and in the “faith of their forefathers” (note 14).

The value of this concession by the state, its role in shaping young Mennonite men in their faith, and its broader witness was regularly debated. Minutes of the annual meeting of Mennonite elders in 1893 record their “deep sadness” with the moral level in the camps, especially concerning after-hours music making. Elders “urgently advise” the young men to “avoid dance music altogether, which our congregations consider to be contrary to the Confession.” In 1895 elders—now clearly exasperated—requested that all donated instruments come with the proviso: “For music, with the exception of all dance music.” A few years later they recommended that “it would be desirable if the singing of spiritual songs would be fostered more in the forestry camps” (note 15).

In order to help their youth embrace a Christian commitment to non-resistance, in 1906 and 1909 for example, elders and ministers re-committed themselves “to make it their duty to awaken a true confession to inner and outer non-resistance in everyday life through spiritually empowered proclamation of the gospel of peace in the congregations”; and in 1911 they commissioned a shorter Mennonite history text to give the vision context and roots (note 16).

Perhaps the most damning account of the forestry experience was written by Jacob H. Janzen, a teacher, minister and later influential elder in Canada, who experienced the camps as the child of a forestry chaplain, and later as a conscript:

"[T]he workers on the Forstei could not find any purpose in the work they did, therefore had no interest in it, and also no sense of satisfaction … an unjustified Privilegium guaranteed by the Emperor, it had a deteriorating effect upon our youth. … Anyone who knows the Forstei camps will make no attempt to argue that they had an ennobling effect on our people or our Christian faith." (Note 17)

A few returned home from the camps with concrete ideas for congregational reform including: elections rather than the lot for choosing ministers, better educated preachers, reforms in education, more welfare programs and cultural institutions, greater evangelistic outreach, and a structural reorganization of the Mennonite conference of churches (note 18). But perhaps most importantly, after three decades of organization and commitment, Mennonites would be prepared and able to mobilize and finance the much larger, more complex service of their young men as medics during the Great War (note 19). The program reinforced for the whole community their unique identity as non-resistant Christians in the tradition of their forefathers.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: The three Crimea “commando” photos come from Jakob Kröker, "Ein Besuch bei unsern Jünglingen an der Südküste," Christliches Jahrbuch für Belehrung und Unterhaltung, 1902, ed. by A. Kröker and J. Kröker (Spat), 152f., https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/pdf/cjb1902.pdf.

Note 2: For negotiations with the state leading to this Mennonite exception to military service, see previous posts: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2022/09/turning-weapons-into-waffle-irons.html; AND https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/1871-mennonite-tough-luck.html; AND https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/1873-first-russian-mennonites-leave-for.html.

Note 3: Mennonitische Rundschau 1, no. 16 (January 20, 1881), 2, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1881-01-20_1_16/page/n1/. See also Mennonitische Rundschau 2, no. 5 (August 1, 1881), 2, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1881-08-01_2_5/page/n1/mode/2up.

Note 4: Handbuch zum Gebrauch bei gottesdienstlichen Handlungen zunächst für die Aeltesten und Prediger der Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Rußland, edited by the Allgemeiner Konferenz der Mennoniten in Rußland (Berdjansk: Ediger, 1911), 85, https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/264.097%20Al34h/.

Note 5: Bernhard Harder, Geistliche Lieder und Gelegenheitsgedichte von Bernhard Harder, edited by Heinrich Franz, vol. 1 (Hamburg: A-G, 1888), nos. 540, 591, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Pis/Hard1.pdf.

Note 6: E.g., see “Jahresbericht des Bevollmächtigten der Mennonitengemeinden in Rußland in Sachen der Unterhaltung der Forstkommandos im Jahre 1908,” 3-7. From Mennonite Heritage Archives, C.E. Krehbiel Collection, fonds, vol. 4046, file 2, http://mennotree.com/pennerm/index_files/pdf/ForsteiList1908.pdf.

Note 7: Letter to editor, Botschafter 7, no. 1 (January 1 [14], 1912), 5, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Pis/B12-01.pdf.

Note 8: Ministers were very aware that for some baptism was more a custom and rite of passage than a faith commitment, and they tried to address this; cf. (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], 33 [Minutes 1889]). With respect to marriage, the conference of elders “regrets and finds it a disorder that persons who are not baptized are married” by one of their ministers (ibid., 97 [Minutes 1903]). Mennonite Brethren ministers increasingly married such couples, which caused frustration and disorder from the perspective of the larger church Ediger, Beschlüsse, 132 [Minutes 1909]).

Note 9: For a complete breakdown of program expenses for 1908, cf. “Jahresbericht des Bevollmächtigten der Mennonitengemeinden,” 47–71.

Note 10: George K. Epp, Geschichte der Mennoniten in Rußland, vol. 3 (Lage: Logos, 2003), 183f. Expenses not available for 1914; 1913: 347,492 rubles.

Note 11: Jacob P. Janzen, “Diary 1911–1919.” English monthly summaries,” edited and translated by Katharina Wall Janzen. From MHA, Jacob P. Janzen Fonds, 1911–1946, vol. 2341.

Note 12: Gerhard Duerksen, Gnadenfeld Oberschulz from 1887 to 1905, years later detailed to C. Krehbiel his showdown with the estate owners (C. E. Krehbiel’s Journal, February 19, 1922 to March 23, 1923, February 2, 1923. Transcribed by Ruth Unrau. From Mennonite Library and Archives—Bethel College, MS 11, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_11/.

Note 13: Cf. Waldemar Günther, David P. Heidebrecht, and Gerhard J. Peters, eds.,“Onsi Tjedils”: Ersatzdienst der Mennoniten in Rußland unter den Romanows (Yarrow, BC: Self-published, 1966).

Note 14: Letter from H. R. Voth, Mennonitische Rundschau 13, no. 18 (May 4, 1892), 2, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1892-05-04_13_18/page/n1/mode/2up.

Note 15: Ediger, Beschlüsse, 53, 62, 87, for the years 1893, 1895 and 1900 respectively.

Note 16: Ediger, Beschlüsse, 114 (Minutes 1906); 129 (Minutes 1909); 146 (Minutes 1911); 149f. (Minutes 1912). Cf. H. Dirks, “Geschichte des Mennonitenvölkleins in Rußland während des Jahres 1909,” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1909, vol. 7 (1910), 15, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/kb/mj1909.pdf.

Note 17: Jacob H. Janzen, Lifting the Veil: Mennonite Life in Russia Before the Revolution, edited with an introduction by Leonard Friesen; translated by Walter Klaassen (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 1998), 77.

Note 18: Cf. Al Reimer, “Sanitätsdienst and Selbstschutz: Russian-Mennonite Nonresistance in World War I and its Aftermath,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 11 (1993), 141, https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/issue/view/14.

Note 19: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/mennonite-medical-orderlies-in-world.html.

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Non-Resistant Service: Forestry Camps," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), September 20, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/09/non-resistant-service-forestry-camps.html.

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