History of the Russian Mennonites

For most Canadians, Queen Elizabeth II had been omnipresent their entire lives: on our coins, bills and stamps. In school in the 1960s and early -70s, my generation sang "God Save the Queen" every other day in class, and "O Canada" on the other days. A portrait of the Queen was in every classroom. I vividly remember lining Niagara Street in St. Catharines as a school child in 1973 when the Queen came whizzing through in a black limo in the rain to get to Niagara-on-the-Lake, the first capital of Upper Canada, now full of Mennonite farms. That black limo was owned by a wealthy Mennonite fruit farmer—my relative Isbrand Boese! It is not outside the tradition for Mennonites to sing “God save the Queen/King”. On Sunday, September 20, 1937, 700 people gathered in the Coaldale Mennonite Church (Alberta), and the service concluded with the singing of national anthem ["God save the King”] ( note 1 ). Mennonites organized this celebration to give thanks and to honour

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

Thousands of Mennonites arrived as colonists in the underpopulated frontier lands of “New Russia” (aka Ukraine) in the years after 1789. Roaming Nogai peoples were moved and removed as necessary. As we might write a history of “American Mennonites,” Mennonites whose ancestors settled in Ukraine have typically written about the “Russian Mennonite” experience. Like the USA, Greater Russia had its own “manifest destiny,” and within that colonial context Mennonites flourished. What would that mean to rewrite that story as a Ukrainian story, within a Ukrainian historical frame of reference? What eyes would that give us for the illegal invasion of Ukraine, for example? Typically historical accounts of Ukrainian experience have been “appendages” to the larger, more encompassing history of Russia--so Paul Magosci, Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto. I continue to learn much from his magisterial History of Ukraine: The Land and its People now in its second edition ( no