History of the Russian Mennonites

As long as Johann Cornies was living (d. 1848), Mennonites in Russia received many distinguished visits and reports appeared in any variety of Imperial journals ( note 1 ). The following report was written by a British visitor in 1843 and appeared in a journal of international “commercial treaties, customs tariffs, port laws, etc.” ( note 2 ). The report makes reference to the newly established port city of Berdjansk, which was key to the wheat revolution in New Russia and the fantastic wealth of some like Johann Cornies ( note 3 ). The British editor warns that the description may be exaggerated, e.g., the statement on Cornies’ wealth—but likely the latter is accurate. For his British readers the writer converts Cornies’ net worth to 100,000 Pounds Sterling—what a 1,000 clerks in London might make together in a year ( note 4 ). While the account is not altogether unique or important for understanding Russian Mennonites, parts that stand out in the description include comments on...

There is no mention of this celebrative event in Hildebrand’s Chronologischer Zeittafel, no report in the newly launched Prussian church paper Mennonitische Blätter , or in the Unterhaltungsblatt for German colonists in South Russia. But plans to celebrate five decades of Mennonite settlement on the Molotschna River were well underway in 1853; detailed draft notes for the event are found in the Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive ( note 1 ). Perhaps most importantly the file includes the list of names of the first settlers in each of the first nine Molotschna villages (est. 1804). While each village had been mandated a few years earlier to write its own village history ( note 2; pics ), eight of these nine did not list their first settler families by name. The lists with the male family heads are attached below. By 1854 Molotoschna’s population had increased to about 17,000; more than half of those living in the original nine villages were landless Anwohner ( note 3 ). Celeb...

Adina (Neufeld) Bräul has an early childhood memory of the flight to Moscow in Fall 1929 and her first train ride; she was only three years old. Her family started the journey from Sparrau, Molotschna to Moscow in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to emigrate. The family however was turned back with hopes dashed ( note 1 ). Memoirs from nearby Marienthal also note that they had departed for Moscow only to be turned back en route . The cost was high; they returned “not only poor but couldn’t get work and were punished for trying to leave the country” ( note 2 ). A relative from Paulsheim told me that they were preparing to leave for Moscow as well, but told by returning families that no exit visas were being granted ( note 3 ). Most of the Mennonites who successfully fled the USSR in 1929 via Moscow with the assistance of the German embassy came from western Siberia, the settlements near the Ural Mountains, and also from Crimea ( note 4 ). Noticeably only few were from the largest Menno...

After four decades in Russia, the president of the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Colonists, Andrei Fadeev, considered only eight of 116 Mennonite teachers in the two larger regions of Katerynoslav and Tauria—which included the Molotschna—fit to teach ( note 1 ). Jakob Bräul’s Rudnerweide schoolhouse was given the same status as Heinrich Heese’s Ohrloff Agricultural Society School with regard to policies and “especially for the teaching of Russian” ( note 2 ). Fadeev triggered great angst when by “imperial decree” he distributed a book to church elders written by German Mennonite Abraham Hunzinger on the modernization of Mennonite schools and church. It was a friendly gesture and poke. The Molotschna was already a tinderbox, and this spark introduced by a state official to strengthen the community ignited a fire in the colony. Fadeev wrote to Johann Cornies on January 12, 1832: “Most valued Cornies ... I advise you to acquire and read a booklet sent to your church leaders f...