History of the Russian Mennonites

The significance of singing instruction may seem trite, but it became a key vehicle in the Mennonite school curriculum for fostering a basic appreciation of the arts and for faith formation. In Johann Cornies’ circulated guidelines for teachers, singing was recommended as a means “to stimulate and enliven pious feelings” in the children—a guideline he copied directly from a German Catholic pedagogue and circulated freely under his own name ( note 1 ).  On January 26, 1846 Cornies distributed a curriculum regulation to all schools that mandated “singing by numbers ( Zahlen ) from the church hymnal” ( note 2 ). Attention to singing instruction in the schools precipitated significant and controversial changes in Mennonite liturgy. An 1854 visiting observer to the Bergthal Colony—a Chortitza daughter colony outside of Cornies’ purview—wrote: “Endlessly long hymns from the Gesangbuch (hymnal) were begun by the Vorsänger (song leader) of the congregation, and sung with so many flo...

How do you define Mennonites? What is their essence . Many historians and theologians have tripped up trying to address this question!   In 1838, Russian Mennonite leader Johann Cornies was asked to comment on a settlement idea by Russian State Counselor Peter Keppen—and he did not shy away from identifying what is at the core of their faith and identity. Keppen’s recommendation was to settle small clusters of three Mennonite families each—as model farmers, like a chain of pearls at key junctures—deep into central and western Crimea, on roads connecting Perekop, through Simferopol to Yevpatoria. Why? Mennonites were officially “foreign colonists” in Russia who were deemed especially “useful” and given favourable privileges and gratuities by the crown. These benefits were dependent on being model agriculturalists on the South Russian steppe. The expectation: that "their good habits would eventually rub off on the coarser people around them” ( note 1 ). In response, Cornie...

1. Millions died under Stalin One of the more recent studies on the Stalin-era estimates that more than 28.7 million people suffered in the northern prisons and slave camps of the Gulag and 2.75 million people died there during Stalin’s reign ( note 1 ). To this number must be added the “close to a million political executions, the millions who died in transit to the Gulag, and some six to seven million who died of starvation during the early 1930s” ( note 2 ). The mass deportation of workers and peasants provided millions of forced labourers in the Arctic and Siberia. George K. Epp calculated that approximately one-third of Mennonites in the Soviet Union—at least 30,000—died due to exposure, beatings, overwork, disease, starvation or shootings ( note 3 ). 2. Mennonites in Ukraine suffered together with their Ukrainian neighbours Moscow was fearful of “losing Ukraine” ( note 4 ) and specifically targeted it with a “lengthy schooling” designed to ruthlessly break the threat of U...

Naum Turbovsky likely killed more Mennonites than anyone in the longer history of the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement. This is an emotionally difficult post to write because one of those men was my grandfather, Franz Bräul, born 1896. In 2019, I received the translation of his 30-page arrest, trial and execution file. To this point my mother never knew her father's fate. Naum Turbovsky's signature is on Bräul's execution order. Bräul was shot on December 11, 1937. Together with my grandfather's NKVD/ KGB file, I have the files of eight others arrested with him. Turbovsky's file is available online. Days before he signed the execution papers for those in this group, Turbovsky was given an award for the security of his prison and for his method of isolating and transferring prisoners to their interrogation—all of which “greatly contributed to the success of the investigations over the enemies of the people,” namely “military-fascist conspirators, spies and saboteurs.” T...

Schönsee is a small but typical Molotschna village; see map ( note 1 ). This story is of four Kliewer brothers arrested in the 1937 Stalin purge: Aron, Johann, Gerhard and Cornelius Kliewer. Their mother Elisabeth’s 1960 obituary in the  Mennonitische Rundschau  (GRanDMA #477382) notes that she had “four sons who were exiled and lost without trace in northern Russia. Two of these sons were married” ( note 2 ). These were my grandmother’s cousins. With the opening of the NKVD-KGB archives in Ukraine a few years ago, files of thousands Mennonite men and a few women arrested in the 1930s have been identified, summarized and catalogued. It is now possible say more about the Kliewer brothers and events in Schönsee, 1937-38. In brief, Aron, Johann and Gerhard were not “sent to the north” as assumed, but like so many others (including my grandfather and his brother) were shot shortly after their arrest. Brother Kornelius, however, was sentenced to 10 years forced labour. On ...

With the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022, Ukrainian women and men were/are being hailed for their "partisan" fighting against Russian aggression. A similar level of partisan fighting was displayed during Nazi occupation of Ukraine, Fall 1941 to Fall 1943. There is at least one archival account of a young Mennonite woman who became an active underground supporter of a partisan group on behalf of Ukraine/ USSR during German occupation: Anna Petrovna Wiens. The Mennonite story in Ukraine during WWII is messy. Some 35,000 Mennonites welcomed and embraced the Germans as liberators from the very real repression and terror they experienced under Stalin. Anna Wiens however was different—she became a partisan fighter against the Nazis. Anna was born in 1918 in Kleefeld, Molotschna to Peter and Elisabeth (Klassen) Wiens, and she had Mennonite cousins who immigrated to Canada mid-1920s. But according to a later testimony by her Ukrainian husband and director of the vil...

Nazi German forces in Ukraine found Mennonites depleted and broken—physically, mentally, socially and spiritually—from Stalinist repression. “Every individual initiative in them has been killed or stifled, because to be an individual is to be suspect, in danger of being reported. They hesitate to express any private opinions, fearing … spies are still at work” ( note 1 ). The 1942 Commando Dr. Stumpp village reports confirm an almost complete breakdown of social life. “Because of the many frictions on the collective [farm], each became weary and wary ( überdrüssig ) of the other.” “After collectivization, neighbours no longer wished to see their neighbours.” “If a few people got together, they were politically suspect. No one trusted each other anymore.” “Life on the collective farm embittered people, and they began to hate each other. Each lived for himself alone, in dreary brooding, without hope of a better future” and “happy if on a Sunday he can stay away from the community for...