History of the Russian Mennonites

The document below is from the "Peter J. Braun Archives Russian Mennonite Archive"-- a veritable treasure trove of yet-to-be-read primary documents. To date this document has not yet been used in the telling of the "Warkentin Affair." While it does not add new information per se, it brings out well the dynamics and tone of official engagements of government actors with "their" Mennonites and the Mennonite church leaders. In the early 19th century, there was no question that Russia was among the most religiously tolerant nations that side of the Atlantic. But there was a framework with policies for that to work. How it played out was not always pretty. Here is an example and a helpful primary text. In 1842, Pure Flemish Elder Jacob Warkentin complained to the President of the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Settlers Eugen von Hahn about Johann Cornies’ “dictatorial” manner and disregard of the church’s approach to discipline and reconciliation in acc...

By 1860, the mix of entrepreneurial individualism, exposure to new ideas and horizons, intellectually and emotionally compelling preaching of conversion by Eduard Wüst a university-trained Württemberg Pietist minister installed by the nearby Separatist Evangelical Brethren Church, community dysfunction and lack of common vision, growing social and economic disparities, rumours of restlessness and revolution among Russia’s serfs, authoritarian leadership and moral laxity—were all part of that context in which eighteen Mennonite men felt compelled to submit a “Document of Secession” to the Molotschna Elders, dated January 6, 1860. They pointed to the “decay of the entire Mennonite brotherhood,” with examples of baptized brothers who at the annual fairs “serve the devil” in their public misdeeds, and of the ministers who watch and sit idly by ( note 1 ). “It was very natural that with such a decay of church, faith and morals, a reaction set in,” with individuals demanding “an end to the...

In 1848, Evgenii von Hahn, President of the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Settlers in New Russia, tasked each village administration to work with the schoolteacher to produce an exact historical description of its settlement and key events in its history ( note 1 ). Looking back 44 years, the mayor and teacher of the Molotschna village of Altona had no difficulty identifying and describing the most glorious event in their history ( note 2 ). “There are moments in life that are too great for the human heart, when we are simply overwhelmed--exquisite, great, blissful moments when our voices fall silent, when we are moved so profoundly in our inward being that our hands fold of their own accord and our eyes gaze heavenward and prayer is the one thing needed by an overflowing heart. One such great, blissful moment was in the year 1818, when the most blessed Emperor Alexander I on his journey from the Crimea to St. Petersburg honoured our colony [village] with his distinguished visit a...