History of the Russian Mennonites

The 1930 booklet  Bauer Giesbrecht was published by the Communist Party press in Germany —some months after most of the 3,885 Mennonite refugees at Moscow had been transported from Germany to Canada, Paraguay and Brazil ( note 1 ). In Fall 1929 Germany set aside an astonishingly large sum of money and flexed its full diplomatic muscle to extract these “German Farmers” (mostly Mennonites) who had fled the Soviet countryside for Moscow in a last ditch attempt to flee the "Soviet Paradise". About 9,000 however were forcibly turned back. Communists in Germany saw their country’s aid operation—which their crushed economy could ill afford—as a blatant propaganda attempt to embarrass Stalin with formerly wealthy ethnic German farmers and preachers willing to tell the world’s press the worst "lies." With Heinrich Kornelius Giesbrecht from the former Mennonite Barnaul Colony in Western Siberia they finally had a poster-boy to make their point: in Germany he had seen an...

In news (2022) from Ukraine we see some women active in the resistance against Russia.Is there any record of Mennonite women “rebels” against Moscow-based repression? In 1930 there were more than 3,700 recorded anti-Soviet, anti-collective farm, anti-kulakization “mass disturbances” in the USSR undertaken almost exclusively by women . “Vigrous action” … “some armed with pitchforks, sticks, stakes, and knives” with disturbances that would last several days ( note 1 ). Did Mennonites participate or lead in any such “rebellions”? Thousands had been turned back home after hoping to flee via Moscow in Fall 1929 and immigrate to Canada. Many of these refused to plant crops in 1930 and were intent on trying again to leave. There is a record of one Mennonite rebellion in 1930—and with a woman leader ( note 2 ). There may have been others. The following fascinating account is based on the work of Abram A. Fast, written in Russian ( note 3 ). Johann Martin Winter, a “kulak” emigration leader fro...