History of the Russian Mennonites

Johann Cornies was a young lad when he immigrated to Russia with his parents. They first wintered in Chortitza where, under the supervision of his aging father, the teen managed Jacob Höppner’s brandy distillery. There he observed the moral impact of poverty on good people (Chortitza pioneers came with little capital; note 1 ). In the years after his death in 1848, a landless crisis dominated the Mennonite Molotschna Colony--the district the had so carefully and energetically nurtured to achieve excellent economic and social outcomes. The crisis was marked by corruption, inequities, and economic disparities. As David G. Rempel summarizes, it shook most of the Mennonite villages “to their very foundation” ( note 2 ). In 1856 the Molotschna Society for Advancement of Schools tasked teachers to submit reflections on the moral condition of colony inhabitants and to offer their advice. Thirty-seven of these essays are buried in the massive 140,000-page archive by Peter J. Braun, lost ...

In the past few years, two volumes of the extensive John Cornies' correspondence discovered 1990 have been transcribed and published in English ( note 1 ). A third and final volume is forthcoming. No single Russian Mennonite has been as revered historically—or also despised or feared by his own!—as Johann Cornies (1789-1848). He was a larger-than-life figure who ruled over the Molotschna like a benevolent Mennonite Tsar and father of all, as some remember him, and for others as a despot with the demands and ideas of a devil! With some historical distance, David G. Rempel aptly refers to him as an “enlightened despot” ( note 2 ). Cornies was never elected to a Mennonite civic or religious post. But he would acquire a real power over all of those offices—de facto more than de jure—and over the manner in which all landholders in the Molotschna would farm, plant, build and develop. How did this happen? The Russian state required Mennonites and other foreign colonies to adopt a lo...

The landless crisis in the mid-1800s in the Molotschna Colony is the context for most other matters of importance to its Mennonites, 1840s to 1860s. When discussing landlessness, historian David G. Rempel has claimed that the “seemingly endemic wranglings and splits” of the Mennonite church in South Russia were only seldom or superficially related to doctrine, and “almost invariably and intimately bound up with some of the most serious social and economic issues” that afflicted one or more of the congregations in the settlement ( note 1 ). It is important from the start to recognize that these Mennonites were not citizens,  but foreign colonists with obligations and privileges that governed their sojourn in New Russia. For Mennonites the privileges, e.g. of land and freedom from military conscription, were connected to the obligation of model farming. Mennonites were given one, and then later two districts of land for this purpose. Within their districts or colonies , villages w...

In November 2021 many Mennonites in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia were impacted by disastrous flooding. The mayor of Abbotsford—the worst-hit city—as well as the local Member of Parliament were Mennonites. Many Mennonites across Canada had family members who are directly impacted.  Flood stories have been an important thread in the Prussian-Russian Mennonite story. How have Mennonites responded? Mutual aid stands out. For Menno Simons, it was “the only sign whereby a true Christian may be known” ( note 1 ).  In 1562, “Dutch people of the Mennonite religion” were specifically invited by the Polish banking house Loysen to settle on the “Tiegenhoff part of the Vistula Delta” to rebuild dikes partially destroyed by huge floods (1540 and 1543) and wars, and to drain low-lying lagoons and swamps over large blocks of land ( note 2 ). The Tiege River—a branch of the Vistula—was at or below sea level.  Dams and ditches along the Nogat and Vistula rivers had been construct...

Johann Jantzen was born in 1823 in Neuteichsdorfsfeld, West Prussia, resided in Neuendorf near Danzig, and migrated late to Russia (1869), then Central Asia, and finally in 1884 to Nebraska, USA. He died in 1903. Decades later his descendants translated his diary of notable annual highlights, entitled: Accounts of various Experiences in Life. A Diary begun in the Year 1839 ( note 1 ). The little West Prussian villages he names regularly are familiar place to many with Russian Mennonite family history: Schönau, Neu Münsterberg, Schönsee, Lakendorf, Neuteicherwalde, etc. While most Russian Mennonite families left Prussia much earlier than Jantzen, his diary offers a picture of the typical rhythm of life that Mennonites lived in West Prussia over generations. It also offers something I did not expect. The revolutions across Europe in 1848 had a local impact which he mentions, and he gives us a hint as to the other political highlights and episodes of civil unrest that were on the mind...