History of the Russian Mennonites

It is a largely unwritten story—the massive Mennonite food aid sent to the USSR from Canada and the United States during the great famine in Ukraine, 1933 ( note 1 ). The the following materials were photographed at the Mennonite Heritage Archives in Winnipeg  In a previous post, I examined a selection of thousands of petition letters sent to Mennonite offices from Ukraine (mostly), begging family, friends and co-religionists generally to help with food, lest they perish  ( note 2 ). Between January and April 1933, for example, the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization (CMBC) received over 7,000 letters such letters. It was stunning for me to find a letter by my grandmother’s sister in the mix; if she and her family were starving in Schardau, I know my grandparents and their children would have been at the edge in Marienthal as well. But the real alarm bells went off on February 15, 1933 with a telegram to David Toews (CMBC chair) in Rosthern from Benjamin Unruh...

 Around 1800 the Chortitza Flemish ministerial ordered Russian Mennonite former land scout/ deputy Johann Bartsch to destroy several family musical instruments including his violin.  Playing an instrument was feared by leaders to be flirtation with the demonic. Bartsch apparently broke his violin in two and threw the pieces at the feet of “the guardians of the purity of faith” ( note 1 ). The Mennonite Historical Archives in Winnipeg has a painting of this dramatic incident created by descendent Henry Pauls, as well as a family document written about the event some generations later. Here is a little more background. Bartsch had a more refined or sensitive side than many of the first settlers, including his fellow deputy Jacob Höppner. The letters he wrote to his wife while he and Höppner were scouting land in Russia, 1786-87 have survived; they are eloquent, beautifully written, and indicate a high level of literacy ( note 2 ). Not long after settlement, Chortitza’s fir...

In early July 1914, Mennonites knew war with Germany was imminent. Jacob Janzen’s diary (Rudnerweide) captures the feeling. “Rumour has it that we will soon have war with Germany! On the 18th everybody had to take their horses to a farmyard at the end of the village, where they were registered and examined. Some were led aside right there and then. … The next day all available teams and wagons from Rudnerweide, Großweide, Konteniusfeld and Sparrau had to take 700 men of draft age, Russians, to the station, where they boarded a train for Melitopol. Our hired man went too.” ( Note 1 ) Suspicious about Mennonite loyalties, 2,350 guns were seized from 1,850 Russian Mennonite households—including 600 handguns or revolvers—in 1914 ( note 2 ). A. A. Khvostov, Chair of the Russian Council of Ministers, surmised that “such large quantities of revolvers [seized] suggest that Mennonites intend to use their weapons for purposes other than hunting … ” ( note 3 ). Russia declared war on Germany...

In 1938 Mennonite Central Committee took the decision to significantly reduce their support of Benjamin Unruh’s work in Germany as of August 1, and Dutch Mennonites announced the same effective January 1, 1939. What to do? Ask the Nazi Party and government agencies to make up the difference ( note 1 )! On December 3, 1938, Unruh made the following pitch: “Germany generously and magnanimously helped our [Mennonite] organizations, on my intercession, to overcome the manifold difficulties connected with such a large movement of people [beginning 1923] in such critical times. ... The fact that finally all Mennonite synodal and national associations formally appointed me as their representative in the field of Russian-German welfare (Fürsorge), had its deeper reason especially in the success of my activity in Germany. … You see that I stand in the center of the global Mennonite [relief] work. However, I have always done this as a German man and not only as a representative of my denominat...

For most Canadians, Queen Elizabeth II had been omnipresent their entire lives: on our coins, bills and stamps. In school in the 1960s and early -70s, my generation sang "God Save the Queen" every other day in class, and "O Canada" on the other days. A portrait of the Queen was in every classroom. I vividly remember lining Niagara Street in St. Catharines as a school child in 1973 when the Queen came whizzing through in a black limo in the rain to get to Niagara-on-the-Lake, the first capital of Upper Canada, now full of Mennonite farms. That black limo was owned by a wealthy Mennonite fruit farmer—my relative Isbrand Boese! It is not outside the tradition for Mennonites to sing “God save the Queen/King”. On Sunday, September 20, 1937, 700 people gathered in the Coaldale Mennonite Church (Alberta), and the service concluded with the singing of national anthem ["God save the King”] ( note 1 ). Mennonites organized this celebration to give thanks and to honour ...

In February 1904, Russia declared war on Japan and Mennonite congregations sent the Tsar messages of loyalty, love and prayers. The large Lichtenau-Petershagen-Schönsee congregation in the Mennonite Molotschna Colony in today’s Ukraine led by 80-year-old Elder (Bishop) Jakob Töws expressed its “deep loyalty and love for the throne and the Fatherland” ( note 1 ). Similarly, the Mennonite Chortitza congregation declared that Mennonites bow “humbly before the Imperial Majesty with most faithful love and devotion,” and “together with all faithful subjects send their most passionate prayers and supplications to the Most High, that He may extend his mighty hand over the beloved Tsar and the Russian people, and that peace may soon be returned” ( note 2 ). The Einlage Mennonite Brethren congregation offered a similar statement, “inspired by feelings of boundless dedication to the Sovereign Fatherland,” with “passionate prayers” for the Tsar and Fatherland, based on 1 Timothy 2:1–4 ( note 3 ...

Thousands of Mennonites arrived as colonists in the underpopulated frontier lands of “New Russia” (aka Ukraine) in the years after 1789. Roaming Nogai peoples were moved and removed as necessary. As we might write a history of “American Mennonites,” Mennonites whose ancestors settled in Ukraine have typically written about the “Russian Mennonite” experience. Like the USA, Greater Russia had its own “manifest destiny,” and within that colonial context Mennonites flourished. What would that mean to rewrite that story as a Ukrainian story, within a Ukrainian historical frame of reference? What eyes would that give us for the illegal invasion of Ukraine, for example? Typically historical accounts of Ukrainian experience have been “appendages” to the larger, more encompassing history of Russia--so Paul Magosci, Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto. I continue to learn much from his magisterial History of Ukraine: The Land and its People now in its second edition ( no...