History of the Russian Mennonites

In the 16th century, the term “Mennonite” was adopted by several Anabaptist groups after the tolerant Countess of East Friesland, Anna von Oldenburg, insisted on distinguishing between the “fanatical” Münsterite Anabaptists, on the one hand, and Menno’s peaceful adherents—the Menniten—on the other ( note 1 ). In 1534, Anabaptists who found refuge in Münster had attempted to establish an “Anabaptist kingdom,” the “New Jerusalem,” in part with he forceful uprooting of the ungodly ( note 2 ). This new holy city was marked by a variety of excesses including polygamy and the community of goods as they awaited the end-time apocalyptic battle between good and evil. This ended disastrously: the armies of the bishop besieged the city and, once inside, killed almost all the men. The three leaders were caged, severely tortured, displayed throughout the country, and put to death six months later. The next year another 300 Münsterites, and possibly Menno’s brother, occupied a monastery in Fries...

In 1787 Mennonite interest for emigration was extremely strong outside the quasi independent City of Danzig in the Prussian annexed Marienwerder and Elbing regions. Even before the land scouts Johann Bartsch and Jacob Höppner had returned from Russia later that year, so many Mennonite exit applications had flooded offices that officials wrote Berlin in August 1787 for direction ( note 1a ). Initially officials did not see a problem: because Mennonites do not provide soldiers, the cantons lose nothing by their departure, and in fact benefit from the ten-percent tax imposed on financial assets leaving the state.  Ludwig von Baczko (1756-1823), Professor of History at the Artillery Academy in Königsberg, East Prussia, was the general editor of a series that included a travelogue through Prussia written by a certain Karl Ephraim Nanke. Nanke had no special love for Mennonites, but was generally balanced in his judgements and based his now almost forgotten account of Mennonites on perso...

The sixteenth-century ancestors of Russian Mennonites were largely Anabaptists from the Low Countries. Because their new vision of church called for voluntary membership marked by adult baptism upon confession of faith, they became one of the most persecuted groups of the Protestant Reformation ( note 1 ). For a millennium re-baptism ( a na -baptism) had been considered a heresy punishable by death ( note 2 ), and again in 1529 the Imperial Diet of Speyer called for the “brutal” punishment for those who did not recognize infant baptism. Many of the earliest Anabaptist cells were found in Belgium and The Netherlands--part of the larger Habsburg Empire ruled after 1555 by “the Most Catholic of Kings,” Philip II of Spain. The North Sea port cities of the Low Countries had some limited freedoms and were places for both commercial and cultural exchange; ships arrived daily not only from other Hanseatic League like Danzig, but also from Florence, Venice and Genoa, the Americas and the Far Ea...