History of the Russian Mennonites

How do you define Mennonites? What is their essence . Many historians and theologians have tripped up trying to address this question!   In 1838, Russian Mennonite leader Johann Cornies was asked to comment on a settlement idea by Russian State Counselor Peter Keppen—and he did not shy away from identifying what is at the core of their faith and identity. Keppen’s recommendation was to settle small clusters of three Mennonite families each—as model farmers, like a chain of pearls at key junctures—deep into central and western Crimea, on roads connecting Perekop, through Simferopol to Yevpatoria. Why? Mennonites were officially “foreign colonists” in Russia who were deemed especially “useful” and given favourable privileges and gratuities by the crown. These benefits were dependent on being model agriculturalists on the South Russian steppe. The expectation: that "their good habits would eventually rub off on the coarser people around them” ( note 1 ). In response, Cornie...

1. Millions died under Stalin One of the more recent studies on the Stalin-era estimates that more than 28.7 million people suffered in the northern prisons and slave camps of the Gulag and 2.75 million people died there during Stalin’s reign ( note 1 ). To this number must be added the “close to a million political executions, the millions who died in transit to the Gulag, and some six to seven million who died of starvation during the early 1930s” ( note 2 ). The mass deportation of workers and peasants provided millions of forced labourers in the Arctic and Siberia. George K. Epp calculated that approximately one-third of Mennonites in the Soviet Union—at least 30,000—died due to exposure, beatings, overwork, disease, starvation or shootings ( note 3 ). 2. Mennonites in Ukraine suffered together with their Ukrainian neighbours Moscow was fearful of “losing Ukraine” ( note 4 ) and specifically targeted it with a “lengthy schooling” designed to ruthlessly break the threat of U...

Naum Turbovsky likely killed more Mennonites than anyone in the longer history of the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement. This is an emotionally difficult post to write because one of those men was my grandfather, Franz Bräul, born 1896. In 2019, I received the translation of his 30-page arrest, trial and execution file. To this point my mother never knew her father's fate. Naum Turbovsky's signature is on Bräul's execution order. Bräul was shot on December 11, 1937. Together with my grandfather's NKVD/ KGB file, I have the files of eight others arrested with him. Turbovsky's file is available online. Days before he signed the execution papers for those in this group, Turbovsky was given an award for the security of his prison and for his method of isolating and transferring prisoners to their interrogation—all of which “greatly contributed to the success of the investigations over the enemies of the people,” namely “military-fascist conspirators, spies and saboteurs.” T...