History of the Russian Mennonites

Johann Cornies recommended “penmanship as the pedagogical means for [developing] a sense of beauty” ( note 1 ). Schönschreiben --calligraphy or penmanship--appears in the handwritten school plans and manuals of Tobias Voth (Ohrloff, 1820), Jakob Bräul (Rudnerweide, 1830), and Heinrich Heese (Ohrloff, 1842). Heese had a list of related supplies required for each pupil, including “a Bible, slate, slate pencil, paper, straight edge, lead pencil, quill pen, quill knife, ink bottle, three candlesticks, three snuffers, and a container to keep supplies; the teacher will provide water color ( Tusche ) and ink” ( note 2 ). The standard school schedule at this time included ten subject areas: Bible; reading; writing; recitation and composition; arithmetic; geography; singing; recitation and memory work; and preparation of the scripture for the following Sunday worship—and penmanship ( note 3 ). Below are penmanship samples first from the Molotschna village school of Tiege, 1869. This student...

In 1843 the Russian Mennonite colonies received a visitation from the London Bible Society. It was the same year that Charles Dickens published "A Christmas Carol" about the miser Ebenezer Scrooge and his conversion after the visitation of three Christmas ghosts! Dickens was not happy that the Church’s overseas mission budget was so large, while in his view they neglected the poor on their own doorsteps in London. Ebenezer was in fact a common British name of the era. A few years earlier the Molotschna was visited by a delegation from the British and Foreign Bible Society. The British agent, Reverend Ebeneezer Henderson, convinced Molotschna elders and Johann Cornies to establish their own Bible Society. "As they live on habits of friendship and intimacy with their Tatar neighbours, and one of their principal men [Cornies] speaks the Tatar with fluency, we furnished him with a good supply of New Testaments, and other portions of Scripture, in that language, that they m...

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...

School attendance for Russian Mennonite boys and girls aged (6)7 to 14 was obligatory. The attendance lists, for example, are keys that have unblocked many a genealogical impasse ( note 1 ). But an understanding of the developments in the Mennonite schools as such is also indispensable for the stories of those families, their villages and of Mennonites in their context. In short, the momentum of school reform did not abate with Johann Cornies’ death in 1848. However we soon enter a period of “archival darkness.” Only a few pieces exist from this era which I have transcribed (more below; see selected pics ). As we know, education in the Mennonite colonies happened from the outset, but was largely dismal or at least very uneven ( note 2 ). This changed when the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Colonists gave oversight of Molotschna’s schools to the powerful Agricultural Society and Cornies, its chairman for life in 1843. Many a school was reconstructed to become roomier and brighte...

By the end of 1924 Mennonite Central Committee’s food kitchens and feeding operations in the Soviet Union were wrapping up, and the possibilities for mass migration had opened. Refugees had come to the Molotschna settlement from surrounding estates and from villages in the North Caucasus region—now “scattered in various Dorfs (villages), but not equally well received by all Dorfs ” ( note 1 ); these were amongst the first chosen for emigration. In this still new reality there were signs that the community was caught up in a spiritual renewal—noted with special concern in a 1925 “Agitation and Propaganda Department Report.” “During the last six months [ca. November 1924 to April 1925] the work of Mennonite missionaries and ministers has increased. They agitate for strengthening Mennonite religion and at the same time agitate for emigration. Religious activity in Mennonite colonies is developing without restraint because no proper attention was given to its study.” ( Note 2 ) Earl...

In April 1921 Mennonites in the Caucasus and Don Region officially petitioned Moscow for permissions to emigrate—which Lenin had “flatly refused.” Their rationale was more than economic. “The disruption of economic conditions leads to impoverishment, which again goes hand in hand with the degradation of morals and has an alarming impact on our youth, who are also constantly exposed to the pressure of brutal and ruthless agitation on the part of those in power. … This decay of our spiritual and economic goods will only become greater and more ruinous.” ( Note 1 ) Later that year and some months before the large-scale feeding operations could begin in the Soviet Union, American Mennonite Relief (AMR) commissioner A.J. Miller petitioned the Soviet Embassy in London for exit permissions for 20,000 Mennonites ( note 1b) . He was unsuccessful. Nonetheless in a highly secretive meeting in Ohrloff, Molotschna on February 7, 1922, key Mennonite leaders took a decision to work toward the re...

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...