Skip to main content

Mennonite Dystopia and Hunger Games Prequel

This weekend my daughter saw the new Hunger Games prequel, “Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.” A few years ago she and I watched two of the Hunger Games movies; when debriefing I thought of the dystopian Stalin years in which millions led dehumanized, fearful lives in a totalitarian, post-apocalyptic world. Because she is in another province and I am shackled by long-haul COVID, I will need to watch and debrief with her at a later date.

My thoughts begin, however, with two recently restored photos of my German-speaking Mennonite grandparents in Ukraine, 1923. They show a proud and ambitious young man hopeful for the possibility of emigration, as well as a young mother who with a sparkling eye and faint smile has dressed her first-born in fun baby clothing for the passport photo.

Ten years later, in 1933, they were still in the same village, but located squarely in a world so distant from 1923 that it defied description for those involved. It requires a movie, perhaps, but here are a few descriptors:

  • Forced collectivization of land, barns, animals with fines designed to break individuals;
  • Impossible production quotas with fines designed to break communities;
  • Targeted famine designed to quell rebellion and break a whole region (Ukraine);
  • Interrogations and torture (that made western, medieval torture look humane) to break the person;
  • Surveillance culture, rewarding denunciations and fabrications to break trust;
  • Disenfranchisement: no vote, loss of home, no opportunity to work, forced to wander; punishment of charity activities;
  • Crushing poverty in the country-side: no shoes, no material for clothing and bedding, no consumer items;
  • Cyclical, random arrests at night in every village to keep fear high (esp. 1937-38);
  • Distant, forced-labour prison camps for former leaders or advocates of pre-revolutionary values, ways or ideas;
  • Relentless propaganda: state-control of paper, radio, school materials, reading rooms; burning of books; news embargo; controlled mail;
  • State-sponsored devotion of authoritarian leader;
  • New liturgies and celebrations (of the Revolution, of the worker), with new holy texts (Marx; Lenin, etc.), and with new parades and feasts, flag, oaths, church (=Party), new paradise (world-wide communist revolution);
  • New Calendars (5-day, 6-day/week experiments) to confuse and break patterns of old secular or church calendars;
  • Isolation of children from parents; limit opportunities to transmit memories, values, teaching in order to shape the new Soviet person;
  • Celebrated mega-projects (Dnipro dam) as symbol of new world with crushing poverty in the country-side;
  • Control of movement internally and no opportunity for emigration;
  • Limit higher education to Party members;
  • Constant reminder of enemies abroad and fear of infiltration within.

Perhaps the world needs a dystopian movie to capture that. But for some 50,000 Mennonites in Ukraine generally—despite outliers, “spots and wrinkles,” and variations in piety—the bizarre and terrifying features of that confusing world came into sharp focus in the 1930s with the repression of church life. Here are a few examples:

  • expropriation of church buildings (Gebetshaus =house of prayer) and conversion to theatres, dance halls (with organ in Gnadenfeld), Red Reading rooms, Komsomol clubhouses with icons of “Goddess of Beauty” in red (Schönsee) and paintings of the disciples of the Bolshevik revolution; many were dismantled for bricks or used for grain storage;
  • imposition of suffocating taxation and ultimately arrest and deportation of preachers and deacons;
  • arrest or disenfranchisement of those who might preach, read scripture or lead a hymn at funeral or bless a wedding;
  • prohibition of faith instruction for children. In school dormitories, praying before meals or at night strictly forbidden. Hard work and prayer to Comrade Stalin was more effective than prayer to a god above the clouds, they were told;
  • interrogation of children at school: "Do you pray, read Bible at home?" (with repercussions):
  • end of all holy-day festivals (Advent, Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Thanksgiving);
  • requirement to work on Sundays and holy-days like Pentecost; worship made impossible (=class enemy);
  • end of choir festivals and compulsion to celebrate and sing for foreign feasts;
  • prohibition of mutual aid (hallmark of Mennonite community) for those in need;
  • loss of faith-inspired institutions: orphanage in Großweide, school for the deaf in Tiege; Bethania Mental Hospital;
  • undermining of the faith community’s highest values: truthfulness, trustworthiness, sanctity of family, conflict resolution (role of elder; minister); conviction that every person is made in God’s image with intrinsic value;
  • supplanting of sources of faith, hope, joy and love with constant fear and suspicion;
  • punishment for the practice of connecting to faith community abroad;
  • inability to contribute sacrificially to country in alternative, tradition-compatible service activities (e.g., Forestry, Red Cross);
  • silencing of faith-inspired reflection on freedom and justice locally or nationally;
  • accusation that Protestant-type faith innately connected to Hitler’s [!] Germany as early as 1933, “conspiring against Soviet power;”

The Mennonite faith lens, vision and memory, kept many from thinking they had “taken leave of your senses” in those completely bizarre, disorienting, and terrifying times.

One justification for state measures against the church and its ministers was published and distributed in 1931 by a researcher of the Central Council member of the League of Militant Atheists. His booklet, Enslaving Brotherhood of the Sectarians (note 1), was designed to turn Mennonite readers against their church leaders who “scream of persecution” to a “rabid” Mennonite press in North America and Germany. The author reminded readers that Mennonites are free to pray at designated times, but that the preachers want uncontrolled counter-revolutionary agitation “anywhere, anytime, to anyone.” The preachers demand religious neutrality in schools, which they interpret however as anti-evolution, anti-Leninist instruction. With their “Mennonite fabrications,” preachers “bloat and twist things around,” incite fanaticism and with their “frenzied campaigning for Canada” stir up “ordinary” sectarians. But most importantly they “thwart collectivization” in the name of religion to save kulak property [the formerly wealthy] he argued. The force of his argument is that Soviet measures are in fact liberating for Mennonites, and that preachers must be treated as kulaks (note 2). Faith leaders are no longer simply ideological hindrances to progress; but there is now “a direct threat to Bolshevik rule from enemies within and abroad” (note 3).

If the early anti-religious propaganda sought to show the pagan or anti-scientific origins of religion, into the 1930s the League emphasized “the military threat represented by Christmas” in particular the “hypocrisy of Christmas’s ‘peace on earth’ message while the West armed for an attack on the Soviet Union” (note 4). This would not bode well for German-speaking Christians.

The chairman of the powerful League of the Militant Godless declared that the role of the schools was to “cultivate in the children a hatred for those ties which religion imposes. ... We demand of the child to be a fighter against religion anywhere, at the school and in the family” (note 5).

The League’s highest profile campaigns were around Christmas and Easter, with events arranged to disrupt their observance. One Molotschna woman recalled the “anti-Christmas” evenings with “anti-religious” songs, poems, and speeches offered by the students—each marked by scorn and contempt for all religion. “All students and parents were required to attend these evenings. Whoever was absent was viewed as an enemy of the people, ridiculed and bullied. Absent students would be strapped with a metal ruler until their hands would swell. The whole school would mock them and their piety” (note 6).

“The parents were not permitted to be an example to their children. At school these children were instructed in atheism, and the values of their parents ridiculed. Parents were forbidden to teach religion to their children and the children were encouraged to report their parents to the Communist authorities if they did.” (Note 7)

The lens of dystopian movies with all of their night-mare qualities often functions as a radical political commentary in toxic and confusing times.

The lens of Mennonite faith and memory did the same in the 1930s. It is no wonder that many survivors of that era were simply left speechless about those years. But they spoke of the repression of church which gave them some ability to bring everything else into focus in those toxic and confusing times. Maybe there is a lesson here; maybe even a movie waiting to be made!

(Like thousands of other Mennonite men in Ukraine, my grandfather was arrested and executed in 1937; note 8).

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

First image from The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023) Official Trailer, https://youtu.be/RDE6Uz73A7g?si=DvDaafsgVNJxiG2D.

Note 1: For this paragraph, cf. Fedor M. Putintsev, Enslaving Brotherhood of the Sectarians [Кабальное братство сектантов]. Central Council of the Union of the Militant Atheists of the USSR (Moscow: OGIZ, 1931), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/pdf/vpetk265.pdf. See also Boris P. Kandidov, Religious Counter-Revolution of 1918–20 and Intervention [Религиозная контрреволюция 1918–20 гг. и интервенция] (Moscow: “Atheist,” 1930), https://rusneb.ru/catalog/000199_000009_008685391/.

Note 2: M. Kryvokhatsky, M. “Mennonites and Counterrevolution [Меноніти и контр-революція],” Bezvirnyk, no. 1 (1930), 5–11, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/vpetk386.pdf; idem, Churches and Sects: Agents of World Imperialism [Церковники та сектанти - агентура світового імперіялізму”] (Kharkov: Ukrainian Worker, 1931), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/vpetk385.pdf.

Note 3: Daniel Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 75.

Note 4: Peris, Storming the Heavens, 87.

Note 5: Cited in Vladimir Gsovski, “Legal Status of the Church in Soviet Russia,” Fordham Law Review 8, no. 1 (1939), 21.

Note 6: Cited in A. A. Töws, ed., Mennonitische Märtyrer der jüngsten Vergangenheit und der Gegenwart, vol. 2: Der große Leidensweg (North Clearbrook, BC: Self-published, 1954), 426.

Note 7: Eduard Allert (pseud., Abram Reimer), “The Lost Generation,” in The Lost Generation and other Stories, edited by Gerhard Lohrenz (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1982), 6.

Note 8: See previous posts, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-executioner-of-dnepropetrovsk-1937.html; and https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/stalins-purge-1937-38-and-mennonite.html; and https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/03/mennonite-dystopia-socializing-in-era.html, etc.

---

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Mennonite Dystopia and Hunger Games Prequel," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), November 21, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/mennonite-dystopia-and-hunger-games.html.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vaccinations in Chortitza and Molotschna, beginning in 1804

Vaccination lists for Chortitza Mennonite children in 1809 and 1814 were published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with little curiosity ( note 1 ). However during the 2020-22 pandemic and in a context in which some refused to vaccinate for religious belief, the historic data took on new significance. Ancestors of some of the more conservative Russian Mennonite groups—like the Reinländer or the Bergthalers or the adult children of land delegate Jacob Höppner—were in fact vaccinating their infants and toddlers against small pox over two hundred years ago ( note 2 ). Also before the current pandemic Ukrainian historian Dmytro Myeshkov brought to light other archival materials on Mennonites and vaccination. The material below is my summary and translation of the relevant pages of Myeshkov’s massive 2008 volume on Black Sea German and their Worlds, 1781 to 1871 (German only; note 3 ). Myeshkov confirms that Chortitza was already immunizing its children in 1804 when their District Offic...
Post a Comment
Read more

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, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Landless Crisis: Molotschna, 1840s to 1860s

The landless crisis in the mid-1800s in the Molotschna Colony is the context for most other matters of importance to its Mennonites, 1840s to 1860s. When discussing landlessness, historian David G. Rempel has claimed that the “seemingly endemic wranglings and splits” of the Mennonite church in South Russia were only seldom or superficially related to doctrine, and “almost invariably and intimately bound up with some of the most serious social and economic issues” that afflicted one or more of the congregations in the settlement ( note 1 ). It is important from the start to recognize that these Mennonites were not citizens,  but foreign colonists with obligations and privileges that governed their sojourn in New Russia. For Mennonites the privileges, e.g. of land and freedom from military conscription, were connected to the obligation of model farming. Mennonites were given one, and then later two districts of land for this purpose. Within their districts or colonies , villages w...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Shaky Beginings as a Faith Community

With basic physical needs addressed, in 1805 Chortitza pioneers were ready to recover their religious roots and to pass on a faith identity. They requested a copy of Menno Simons’ writings from the Danzig mother-church especially for the young adults, “who know only what they hear,” and because “occasionally we are asked about the founder whose name our religion bears” ( note 1 ). The Anabaptist identity of this generation—despite the strong Mennonite publications in Prussia in the late eighteenth century—was uninformed and very thin. Settlers first arrived in Russia 1788-89 without ministers or elders. Settlers had to be content with sharing Bible reflections in Low German dialect or a “service that consisted of singing one song and a sermon that was read from a book of sermons” written by the recently deceased East Prussian Mennonite elder Isaac Kroeker ( note 2 ). In the first months of settlement, Chortitza Mennonites wrote church leaders in Prussia:  “We cordially plead ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is the Church to Say? Letter 3 (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 Mennonite endorsement Trump the man No one denies the moral flaws of Donald Trump, least of all Trump himself. In these next months Mennonite pastors who supported Trump will have many opportunities to restate to their congregation and their children why someone like Trump won their support. It may be obvious, but the words can be difficult to find. To help, I offer examples from Mennonite history with statements from one our strongest leaders of the past century, Prof. Benjamin H. Unruh (see the nice Mennonite Encyclopedia article on him, GAMEO ). I have substituted only a few words, indicated by square brackets to help with the adaptation. The [MAGA] movement is like the early Anabaptist movement!  In the change of government in 1933, Unruh saw in the [MAGA] movement “things breaking forth which our forefathe...
Post a Comment
Read more

Widows, refugees, the unchurched, orphans and decommissioned soldiers: Building Church in Neuland, Paraguay

They were in unchartered waters when the Neuland (Colony) Mennonite Church in Paraguay was organized on November 12, 1947 under the innovative leadership of Hans Rempel (1908-2001). Rempel was ordained during German occupation of Ukraine, when “simple, untrained men and women called the believers together, read the Word, sang, and prayed” ( note 1 ). And for the others? In resettlement camps in Warthegau (annexed Poland) Rempel was encouraged by Heinrich Winter, the "last elder of Chortitza" to “make a new beginning ... like a farmer breaking up hard unplowed ground” (Jeremiah 4:3). After the refugees arrived in Paraguay in 1947, the church issues were many and the need for innovation was urgent. First , what should be the role of women in church leadership ? The tradition was very restrictive. The men however were largely missing and many of the women had experience of leadership in the re-establishment of church services during the German occupation of Russia. Innov...
Post a Comment
Read more

Flooding as a weapon of war, 1657

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these maps speak volumes. In February 1657, the Swedish King Carolus Gustavus ordered an intentional breach of the embankments along the Vistula River to completely flood the villages of the Danzig Werder. See the vivid punctures and water flow in 1657 map below; compare with the 1730 maps with rebuilt villages and farms ( note 1 ). In Polish memory this war is appropriately remembered as "The Deluge". Villages in the Danzig Werder (delta) from which Mennonites immigrated to Russia include: Quadendorf, Reichenberg, Krampitz, Neunhuben, Hochzeit, Scharfenberg, Wotzlaff, Landau, Schönau, Nassenhuben, Mönchengrebin, and Nobel ( note 2 ). In the war the suburbs outside the gates of Danzig suffered most; Mennonites lived here in large numbers, e.g., in Alt Schottland and Stoltzenberg. First, these villages were completely razed by the City of Danzig to keep the invading Swedes from using the villages to their advantage in battle. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

"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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (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 accuarte and carefully considered. ~ANF American Mennonite leaders who supported Trump will be responding to the election results in the near future. Sometimes a template or sample conference address helps to formulate one’s own text. To that end I offer the following. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mennonites in Germany sent official greetings by telegram: “The Conference of the East and West Prussian Mennonites meeting today at Tiegenhagen in the Free City of Danzig are deeply grateful for the tremendous uprising ( Erhebung ) that God has given our people ( Volk ) through the vigor and action of [unclear], and promise our cooperation in the construction of our Fatherland, true to the Gospel motto of [our founder Menno Simons], ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” ( Note 1 ) Hitler responded in a letter...
Post a Comment
Read more