This year, 2024, marks the 150th anniversary of Mennonite settlement in Manitoba, Canada, by immigrants from the southern Ukrainian lands of the Russian empire. The first large group of Mennonites arrived on the shores of Quebec City aboard the SS Austrian on July 17, 1874, making their way to the confluence of the Red and Rat Rivers.¹ This group consisted primarily of families from the Kleine Gemeinde church, including some widows as heads of households, intent on starting again in a new country.

The D. F. Plett Historical Research Foundation places this moment, the 1870s migration to Manitoba, at the core of its mandate. Its interest in the migration has been reflected in past issues of Preservings, several of which have been dedicated to this topic.² Historically speaking, the 1870s migration was also a key moment in the spread of Mennonites across the Americas. This movement to Canada created a new branch in the geography of Mennonites originating from the European Low Countries, which would eventually extend to parts of Latin America.

To help us better understand the 1870s migration, this issue of Preservings focuses on the period before it happened. Rather than prioritizing the act of migration, this issue asks readers to think about the social, cultural, political, and economic changes facing Mennonite communities before the 1870s exodus that shaped the decision of families to leave or stay.

The first article, by Nataliya Venger, takes us back to the 1830s and 1840s when the reformer Johann Cornies was at the apex of his power within the colonies. She highlights the involvement of officials from St. Petersburg in the development of agriculture throughout the empire, including in Mennonite colonies, showing how Mennonites were co-opted into the reformist agenda of the tsarist state. The “Crown Trainees Project,” which empowered Cornies to train youths from surrounding Ukrainian, Russian, and Nogai communities in agricultural methods, facilitated new interactions, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, between Mennonites and their neighbours. This article demonstrates how the legal categories (or social estates) of serf, state peasant, and colonist (which included Mennonites) created hierarchies, which theoretically were eliminated with the reforms of the 1860s, but whose legacies lingered until the revolution of 1917.

The next article, by Cornelius Fast (1840-1927), I discovered by happenstance in the Mennonite Heritage Archives. Fast, a member of the Kleine Gemeinde who worked as a carpenter and a teacher in the Borosenko colony before joining the migration to Canada in 1874, recalled the death of his father from an unexploded bomb from the Crimean War (1853-1856) in the southern section of the Molotschna colony. His description reminds us of the proximity of certain Mennonite communities to the battlefield as the Russian empire fought British, French, and Ottoman troops on the Crimean Peninsula. Mennonite contributions to the Crimean War would later be cited by Minister of War Dmitrii Miliutin to question the refusal of some Mennonites to accept the option of alternative service, in light of the heroic feats they performed transporting supplies to the front and carrying the wounded back, over five thousand of whom were treated within the colonies.³ Reference to this past service hit a nerve in some communities, prompting certain leaders to apologize to the government for the sinfulness of their service in this war, likely causing more than a few raised eyebrows from state officials.⁴

After the humiliation of defeat in the Crimean War and the death of Tsar Nicholas I, the tsarist regime, under its new emperor, Alexander II, embarked on a series of reforms that spanned just over a decade. The most significant of these, the emancipation of the serfs (1861) and of state peasants (1866), alluded to by Venger in her article, had been on the minds of tsarist officials for decades. In the aftermath of this momentous change, Mennonites, particularly in Chortitza, as well as the Kleine Gemeinde in Molotschna, seized the opportunity to address issues of landlessness in their community by buying or leasing the estates of Russian nobles who could no longer rely on the labour of their former serfs. The proliferation of Mennonite settlements in the southern Ukrainian lands during the 1860s and early 1870s is significant: Mennonites settled land from seven different estate owners, in addition to creating new villages in the Crimea and in the Kuban province. Not all of these settlements were ideal. The family of Johan F. Toews, for instance, lived in a sod house (semlin) when they first moved to the Markusland settlement, close to Chortitza colony, and Johan recalled his father fighting wolves off their roof with a pitchfork, in a scene that could easily have been replicated on the open prairies of Manitoba a decade later.⁵

The emancipation of the serfs and state peasants was not the only reform enacted by the regime. The abolishment of the colonist category on June 4, 1871, had several implications for Mennonites who consequently became “settler-proprietors.” First, the former colonists were now under the new administrative structure that had governed peasants since 1861. This converted Chortitza colony into Chortitza district (volost) and divided Molotschna colony into Halbstadt and Gnadenfeld districts. These districts had the added responsibility of administering a district court with a jury system and were to transition from German to Russian in official correspondence. Demographically, Mennonites maintained their majority, although some villages such as Chortitza, Einlage (Kichkas), Halbstadt, and others shifted towards a multi-ethnic composition.

In contrast to Chortitza and Molotschna, the regime proposed to integrate Mennonite and Slavic villages into single districts in some of the offspring colonies, despite Mennonite objections.⁶ A few Mennonites welcomed this administrative change, as they perceived it as weakening church authority. Peter Peters allegedly stated that he “would rather be judged by the Khokhols” (a derogatory term for Ukrainians) “than by the church.”⁷ To help prepare their co-religionists for cross-cultural exchanges in governance, the Chortitza religious leadership discussed several issues, including “how to behave during the period of the [Orthodox] fast” and “how to conduct themselves peacefully at meetings of village assemblies.”⁸ To date, the history of these encounters between Mennonites and their neighbours under these new administrative structures has not received much attention.

The administrative changes, particularly the introduction of judges, justices of the peace, and jury trials within the district, caused considerable consternation among some Mennonite congregations. In the Molotschna and Borosenko settlements, some Mennonites belonging to the Kleine Gemeinde church refused to pass judgement on others outside of the normal practices of church discipline. However, under the statute of 1871 they were required to make themselves available for jury duty. In the newly formed Nikolaital district, the Kleine Gemeinde leadership attempted to convince their neighbours who were part of the Chortitza church to ignore the new regulations and continue to address religious and secular issues through their own spiritual leaders.⁹ The Chortitza contingent refused the suggestion; however, Bishop Johann Wiebe of Fuerstenland, who would become the leader of the Old Colony Church in Manitoba, expressed a similar apprehension to that of the Kleine Gemeinde over the involvement of Mennonites in the judicial process.¹⁰

Another reform initiated by the 1871 statute involved landownership. When Mennonites initially arrived in the empire, the imperial state granted land to the community, “with every family merely enjoying the use of its allotted portion.”¹¹ In other words, individuals did not hold title to the land, making them reliant on the blessing of the colony to conduct real estate transactions. After 1871, each family was to receive a private property deed.¹² Such a deed made it theoretically possible to sell to people outside of the community (after three years). During the 1870s migration there was some debate among tsarist officials in the Ministry of State Domains about the legality and desirability of this development.¹³ These officials also cynically wondered whether Mennonite emigrants were motivated by material gain by taking the profits from selling the land given to them in imperial Russia and absconding to North America for more free land.¹⁴

The administrative changes of 1871 arrived on the heels of a proposal to eliminate the exemption from military service enjoyed by Mennonites and other colonists since their arrival under Catherine II. Mennonites first heard rumblings of this change in November 1870 when Minister of War Miliutin published two memoranda outlining reforms to the military system, including the introduction of universal military service across the empire.¹⁵ In early January, the newspaper Die Odessaer Zeitung published these proposals in German, causing panic among Mennonite leaders that ultimately became the main catalyst for the 1870s migration.

Abraham F. Reimer’s diary, translated by Steve Fast, provides a day-to-day account of this tumultuous period from 1870 to the spring of 1874. An intellectual at heart, he was more interested in astronomy and other topics than farming, which resulted in financial struggles for his family.¹⁶ His intellectual curiosity might explain the rich details of the diary, which provides insight into family and church life, as well as contacts between Mennonites and the larger society. Due to space constraints, only an excerpt from 1873 is included in this issue; however, it shows that the normal Mennonite life of brotherhood meetings, faspa, visiting, and farming continued despite the uncertainty faced by these communities.

Two other groups would join Reimer and his Kleine Gemeinde church community in mass migration to Manitoba: the Bergthal colony, and part of the Fuerstenland settlement together with individuals from Chortitza colony. In Canada, members of this latter group would gain the designation “Old Colony” in reference to their link to the Chortitza colony, the first Mennonite settlement in imperial Russia. Arguably, the motivations of this group have received the least amount of attention by historians. This issue of Preservings includes an excerpt from an 1880s sermon delivered by Bishop Johann Wiebe reminding his flock of the reasons for their migration, which sheds some light on the dynamics within the community and relations with the Chortitza colony’s religious leadership during this period.¹⁷

Wiebe, born in the Chortitza village of Neuhorst, was a relatively young man in his mid-thirties when he led a flock of approximately one thousand to Canada from Fuerstenland in 1875. He had been elected and ordained as bishop in the fall of 1870, only months before the military conscription issue disrupted the comfortable position of Mennonites within the empire. Bishop Gerhard Dyck (1809-1887) of Chortitza colony conducted the ordination, laying his hand on the head of a kneeling Wiebe.¹⁸ Wiebe must have been well-respected by the other ministers in the settlement, as the majority of Fuerstenland’s ministers joined the migration, causing a turnover of spiritual leadership in the settlement.¹⁹

Unlike in Fuerstenland, the religious leaders of Chortitza agreed to the imperial state’s offer of alternative service in lieu of military service. In 1874, Bishop Dyck and his ministerial council affirmed this solution during a visit of state representative Adjutant-General Eduard Totleben to the Mennonite settlements. Not everyone agreed with the decision of the ministerial council: some from Chortitza colony joined the migration movement, taking communion at the church before departing for Canada.²⁰ For Dyck, the arrival of Totleben in Chortitza represented yet another in a series of crises that required his leadership. In the preceding decade, Dyck had to manage tensions caused by landlessness, controversy over church singing, and the emergence of the Brethren movement, in addition to rushing to St. Petersburg on several occasions to address the conscription issue.

In our telling of the 1870s story, the singing controversy has received little attention. Many historians have emphasized the introduction of compulsory instruction in Russian as a factor in the migration.²¹ However, a significant educational controversy in Chortitza and its offspring colonies during the lead-up to the migration was caused by an internal reform effort to improve Mennonite congregational singing. Traditionally, Mennonite congregations, led by a song leader (Vorsaenger), sang hymns in unison at a slow tempo, with syllables elongated to contain so many vocal flourishes the original melody was difficult to discern, a style of singing that later became known as the ole Wies (“old way,” or “old melody”).²² Two teachers from Prussia introduced singing from a system of notation using numbers (Ziffern) in Mennonite schools: Tobias Voth in Ohrloff, Molotschna, in the 1820s²³ and Heinrich Franz in the village school in Gnadenfeld, Molotschna, as early as 1837. In 1846, singing according to this system was included in Johann Cornies’s curriculum for Mennonite schools. Franz taught at the Chortitza secondary school (Zentralschule) from 1846 to 1858, where he continued to promote the new way of singing, which the educator felt enabled the learning of “correct” melodies and further musical development. In 1860 he published his Choralbuch, which contained four-part settings of the melodies of the standard Mennonite hymnal, using numerical notation.²⁴ This new way of singing was gradually introduced into churches.

Not everyone, however, welcomed the transition from the nasal, chant-like singing to the melodically simplified and formalized new style. This issue’s “A Story from Russia and Manitoba,” by an unknown author, provides an account of the controversy over singing in Chortitza colony during the period before the migration. On this question, it was Mennonites themselves, and not the state, who challenged the principle of separation from the world by their adoption of a “worldly” method of singing, which to some symbolized a moral and spiritual collapse.

The final feature article by “D. R.,” originally published in 1878, offers a reminder that not all Mennonites left imperial Russia. Two-thirds stayed, accepting the 1871 reforms and agreeing to a system of alternative service. For some, these changes were necessary in order for Mennonites to become full members of the state. They had developed a sense of belonging in the empire and they were hopeful for the future. For some of those who left, this feeling of belonging was a warning sign – not something to be embraced, but a symptom of spiritual decline and discord. They accepted the end to their sojourn in imperial Russia and took advantage of the opportunity to leave the empire. Ultimately, each group embraced their own ideas of faithfulness to their spiritual heritage.

1. “Quebec Passenger Lists: 1874–1880,” Mennonite Genealogy, https://www.mennonite genealogy.com/canada/quebec/passenger.html. ↩︎
2. See for example Preservings, no. 7 (Dec. 1995) on the theme “Emigration”; nos. 14 and 15 (June and Dec. 1999) on settlement of Manitoba’s East Reserve; no. 16 (June 2000) on settlement of the West Reserve; no. 17 (Dec. 2000) on the theme “1874 Revisited”; and no. 34 (2014), on the theme “1870s Migration.” ↩︎
3. For Mennonite service, see James Urry and Lawrence Klippenstein, “Mennonites and the Crimean War, 1854–1856,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 7 (1989): 15. For Miliutin’s confusion, see Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arhiv (RGIA), f.1246, op.1, d.8, (1874), l.164ob. ↩︎
4. Delbert F. Plett, Storm and Triumph: The Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde (1850–1875), Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde Historical Series 3 (Steinbach, MB: D.F.P. Publications, 1986), 274–75. ↩︎
5. Johan F. Toews, “Remembrances of Johan F. Toews,” in Pioneers and Pilgrims: The Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde in Manitoba, Nebraska and Kansas, 1874 to 1882, ed. Delbert F. Plett, Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde Historical Series 5 (Steinbach, MB: D.F.P. Publications, 1990), 158. For more on Markusland (Yakovlevo), see Delbert Plett, “Markuslandt, Andreasfeld,” Preservings, no. 17 (Dec. 2000): 91. ↩︎
6. Jacob D. Epp, A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp, 1851–1880, ed. Harvey L. Dyck (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 403. Epp described the negotiations related to the Baratov and Schlachtin settlements. The villages of Grunfeld and Steinfeld were incorporated into the Veselo-Ternovskoe district, which included a Slavic village. ↩︎
7. Epp, Mennonite in Russia, 412. ↩︎
8. Epp, Mennonite in Russia, 412. ↩︎
9. Plett, Storm and Triumph, 268–71. ↩︎
10. The Bergthal colony also objected to this change. See James Urry, None but Saints: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia, 1789–1889 (Winnipeg: Hyperion Press, 1989), 209. ↩︎
11. David G. Rempel, “The Mennonite Commonwealth in Russia: A Sketch of Its Founding and Endurance, 1789–1919 (Concluded),” Mennonite Quarterly Review 48, no. 1 (Jan. 1974): 6. ↩︎
12. Rempel, “Mennonite Commonwealth,” 34. ↩︎
13. RGIA, f.381, op.17, d.21366. ↩︎
14. RGIA, f.381, op.17, d.21366, ll.12–18. ↩︎
15. Epp, Mennonite in Russia, 304. ↩︎
16. Delbert F. Plett, ed., Profile of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde 1874, Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde Historical Series 4 (Steinbach, MB: DFP Publications, 1987), 277. ↩︎
17. Peter D. Zacharias, “Biography of Johann Wiebe (1837–1905), Rosengart,” in Old Colony Mennonites in Canada, 1875 to 2000, ed. Delbert F. Plett (Winnipeg: D. F. Plett Historical Research Foundation, 2011), 45. ↩︎
18. Epp, Mennonite in Russia, 300. ↩︎
19. For a list of religious leaders, see https://chortitza.org/Predig1.htm#08. ↩︎
20. Epp, Mennonite in Russia, 409. ↩︎
21. The introduction of Russian language instruction was more advanced by the early 1870s than is often assumed; both Chortitza and Molotschna had schools teaching Russian. In Borosenko colony, Kleine Gemeinde member Abraham P. Isaak taught the Russian language in the Gruenfeld school. Cornelius Fast is even rumoured to have learned English before migrating, which would have proved useful to early settlers. Plett, Storm and Triumph, 197. For more on Isaak see Abraham P. Isaak, “Reminiscence of the Past,” Preservings, no. 38 (2018): 65-72. For more on the history of Russian language teaching among German colonists, see Irina Cherkazianova, “Mennonite Schools and the Russian Empire: The Transformation of Church-State Relations in Education, 1789–1917,” in Minority Report: Mennonite Identities in Imperial Russia and Soviet Ukraine Reconsidered, 1789–1945, ed. Leonard G. Friesen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), 85–109. For Fast’s language ability, see Delbert F. Plett, Dynasties of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde in Imperial Russia and North America, Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde Historical Series 7 (Steinbach, MB: Crossway Publications, 2000), 174. ↩︎
22. Hans Werner, “‘Not of This World’: The Emergence of the Old Colony Mennonites,” Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies 4, no. 2 (2017): 124. ↩︎
23. Peter Letkemann, “The Hymnody and Choral Music of Mennonites in Russia, 1789–1915” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1985), 152, 206–11. ↩︎
24. Letkemann, “Hymnody and Choral Music,” 152–53, 175, 213–14, 238–50, 258. ↩︎