History of the Russian Mennonites

In 1847 agricultural scientist and Russia expert Baron August von Haxthausen reported that for the conservative Mennonites in Russia tilling the soil is a “religious duty from which no one is exempt except those with special need, for the Bible teaches: ‘By the sweat of your brow you will you cultivate the ground’” ( note 1 ). This same rationale for Mennonite farming is picked up in Friedrich Matthäi’s 1866 volume of German settlements in Russia ( note 2 ). The biblical reference is a composite of Genesis 3:17 and 3:23. God says to Adam: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life” (3:17); and 3:23; God “banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.” That perspective however was rooted neither in Mennonite tradition nor theology. In the sixteenth century Flemish Anabaptists were largely urban; ability to read scripture was an imperative—not farming. While Genesis 3:17 is qu...

Johann Cornies expanded his Agricultural Society School library in Ohrloff to become a lending library “for the instruction and better enlightenment of every adult resident.” The library was overseen by the Agricultural Society; in 1845, patrons across the colony paid 1 ruble annually to access its growing collection of 355 volumes (see note 1 ). The great majority of the volumes were in German, but the library included Russian and some French volumes, with a large selection of handbooks and periodicals on agronomy and agriculture—even a medical handbook ( note 2 ). Philosophical texts included a German translation of George Combe’s The Constitution of Man ( note 3 ) and its controversial theory of phrenology, and the political economist Johann H. G. Justi’s Ergetzungen der vernünftigen Seele —which give example of the high level of reading and reflection amongst some colonists. The library’s teaching and reference resources included a history of science and technology with an accomp...

In New Russia church attendance for foreign colonists was obligatory. Colonists were required to take the religious commandments and teachings of their tradition to heart, and to follow them scrupulously.      If a colonist was uninterested or “lazy” with regard to church attendance, there could be trouble. First they received a warning; after the third offence the colonist could be fined. After that, the fine is doubled, and the person would be required to do a full day of community service as punishment ( note 1 ).      This policy for foreign settlers was enforced. The circular distributed to the German Lutheran and Catholic villages of the Sarata Colony, Bessarabia (near Crimea) in 1844 and 1845 is highly detailed (see below). The document contents are included in the historical collection of Mennonite leader Benjamin Unruh ( note 2 ).      In the circular letter from the Sarata district mayor, the policy above is quoted with some angry ...

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...