History of the Russian Mennonites

The picture below is my grandmother's family in 1928. Some could leave but most stayed behind. In 1928 a small group of some 511 Soviet Mennonites were unexpectedly approved for emigration ( note 1 ). None of the circa 21,000 Mennonites who emigrated from Russia in the 1920s “simply” left. And for everyone who left, at least three more hoped to leave but couldn’t. It is a complex story. Canada only wanted a certain type—young healthy farmers—and not all were transparent about their skills and intentions The Soviet Union wanted to rid itself of a specifically-defined “excess,” and Mennonite leadership knew how to leverage that Estate owners, and Selbstschutz /White Army militia were the first to be helped to leave, because they were deemed as most threatened community members; What role did money play? Thousands paid cash for their tickets; Who made the final decision on group lists, and for which regions? This was not transparent. Exit visa applications were also regularly reje...

Stable political arrangements are rarely permanent and can unravel rapidly—and they did for tens of thousands of Mennonites a century ago in the Russian Empire. Not a few asked: “Why is this happening to us?” Russia was a multicultural colonial empire with sense of a manifest destiny, a long history of serfdom and displacement of non-settler populations, and a yawning disparity of wealth. A few hundred Mennonite owners of sprawling estates with extensive landholdings suffered most severely in the first period of lawlessness, chaos and revolution in Ukraine. During a period of civil war in 1919 when the villages in the Mennonite Molotschna colony were largely under White Army protection, Kornelius Bergmann, a teacher and Mennonite Brethren minister, addressed the question everyone was asking, “Why is this happening to us?” Bergmann wrote using the pseudonym "C. Orosander"—in order to speak freely ( note 1 ). He began by admonishing his fellow clergy for general failu...

In the Mennonite tradition, there is no communion without first making peace with your brother or sister. The diary of Jacob P. Janzen of Rudnerweide, Molotschna—a single adult, brother to a lay minister—gives regular examples: “Easter Sunday, April 10, 1911: We were also admonished to take part in communion; not many had attended [it] on Good Friday. With some it is because of small quarrels within the family or with neighbours, but others have felt deep hate for a long time and have stayed away for more than 20 years!” ( Note 1 ) Frequently Janzen also wrote down brief evaluations of the worship service, like on Good Friday 1911: “Today we had communion in the morning and also church services in the afternoon. Rev. [S.] preached the sermon. He had written everything down and looked now and then at his papers, but in between he often got stuck and then he would keep coughing until he found his place in his papers. It was very disturbing and I became quite annoyed.” These Good ...

First Advent, 1918: The last page of the final issue of the German military newspaper Deutsche Zeitung für Ost-Taurien ( DZOT ), informed readers of a German Catholic mass at the Mennonite Church in Melitopol (near the large Mennonite settlement of Molotschna) for 8 am, followed by a Protestant (Lutheran) Military Advent worship service at 9 am ( pic ), with the Mennonite worship service beginning at 11 am. A week earlier they had done the same to honour their fallen comrades on Eternity Sunday ( Totensonntag )—in the Mennonite worship space. The Mennonite colonists—“especially Molotschna”—became “trusted friends,” whose assistance, hospitality and German manner created a “second home” for the troops, who now understood that “they belong inseparably together as members of one people ( Stamm ),” according to the editor ( note 1; pic ). Not only did troops give away German books, refrigerators, phonographs, recordings, movie projectors, distillery equipment, typewriters, linens, fo...

During the friendly German military occupation of Ukraine at the end of WWI, patriotic “Ludendorff Festivals” were encouraged by German forces to raise funds to support injured German soldiers. A first such festival in the Molotschna was held on June 25, 1918 in Ohrloff, and was attended by “a great many German officers, soldiers and colonists with music, [patriotic] speeches and social interaction” From the perspective of the German army press, the event was “extremely enjoyable;” it was accompanied with music by a 30-piece regiment orchestra, and beer, sausage, sandwiches, ice-cream, raspberries and cherries were sold. It closed with a “small dance,” raising 7,387 rubles or 9,850 German marks in donations ( note 1 ). Later that summer, a Ludendorff Festival in Halbstadt began with Sunday worship, followed by an early concert, games and performances by the Selbstschutz , as well as “entertainment and merriment of every kind,” with short plays and dancing into the morning ( note ...

No one developed and promoted the Frisian thesis more effectively than Prof. Benjamin H. Unruh’s one-time Halbstadt student, Heinrich “Hajo” Schröder—born in Molotschna, teacher in Germany, visitor to Paraguay, Nazi Party promoter, author and frequent letter writer to the Mennonite press across the Atlantic ( note 1 ). Schröder was a popular writer with a large influence in Germany, Paraguay and Canada. Schröder’s 1936 book on “Russian-German Frisians” places the Russian Mennonite sojourn into an essentially “Frisian” ethno-German narrative. He seeks to identify those innate characteristics of “true Frisians” in order to clarify their “racial ( völkische ) responsibility in the present,” and to connect kinship ( Stamm ) and nationality ( note 2 ). With pride and astonishment, he points back to Bruges in 1568 which had 7,000 [sic] distinctly self-confident Frisian Anabaptist members despite heavy persecution—misquoting his source tenfold ( note 3 ). Later migration to the “colonizatio...

Abram Kröker, editor of the Molotschna (South Russia/ Ukraine) -based Mennonite Friedensstimme , wrote that Mennonites are “predestined to foreshadow … even in an imperfect way, the great peace among nations in the Thousand-Year-Reign [of Christ].” And among all denominations, “it has pleased God,” according to Kröker, to “present and manifest” through the Mennonites this “pearl of evangelical truth gained at great cost by our fathers” ( note 1 ). And it is because of this theological hope and inheritance that “our youth are raised differently,” Kröker reminded his readers; “not military bravery or fighting are presented as the highest civic virtues, but rather sacrifice, suffering and renunciation for the sake of others. In all our schools, non-resistance is explicitly taught and impressed [upon students] according to the Mennonite catechism” ( note 2 ). But taking up arms in self-defence was nuanced differently by his colleague and influential 37-year-old teacher and theologian Benja...