This summer Mennonites will be commemorating the beginning of the Russlaender migration from the Soviet Union to Canada through the Memories of Migration: Russlaender 100 tour. The provincial societies constituting the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada have planned events across the country to memorialize this event that transformed the life trajectories of many families, forging new paths for our community. The purpose of the tour is not to reminisce, but to remember. To remember is to bear witness to pain experienced, to contemplate difficult decisions made, to acknowledge adversity weathered, to be thankful for unforeseen blessings bestowed. But to remember is only possible if we know our own history.

It was Catherine II, a Romanov through marriage, who first opened the door to mass foreign immigration to the southern steppe of the Russian empire in the late eighteenth century. Mennonites soon joined the influx of migrants. Out of their two original settlements, Chortitza and Molotschna, grew thriving communities that spread across the empire. Hard work, in combination with privileges conferred by the tsar, fertile land, and a booming wheat market, would propel Mennonites into an era of prosperity. No longer the quiet in the land, in time they entered politics, becoming mayors of major cities like Ekaterinoslav (present-day Dnipro); they started successful enterprises, with business transactions reaching into the millions of rubles; they expanded their local educational system, while also sending their youth, both men and women, to universities in Europe and the imperial capital of St. Petersburg.

Life was not perfect. Do not be fooled by the photographs of neo-Gothic and neo-classical mansions, of multi-story brick mills, of grand estates. This was not a paradise that we lost. By the late nineteenth century, as the empire lurched and swayed towards greatness or catastrophe, Mennonites did not stand on the sidelines, aloof and separated from the realities of modernity. Even along the fruit-treed streets of Mennonite villages we can find signs of the deeply embedded tensions that existed in the rest of the empire. Land hunger divided Mennonites into the haves and have-nots; religious divisions tore apart families; quaint and quiet Mennonite villages were transformed into multi-ethnic and multi-confessional industrial centres that employed Ukrainian, Russian, German, and Mennonite workers, some housed locally in barracks.

The First World War

The start of the First World War papered over these differences and tensions, at least in the beginning. Mennonites joined others in pledging their loyalty to the state, to the defence of their homeland, donating money and goods to the war effort. Young men, eager to be useful while remaining true to their beliefs, served on medical trains, treating the war wounded. In this issue of Preservings, the recollection of Johann G. Rempel illustrates that medics were not sheltered from the trauma of the war. They carried its horror with them to Canada. Young Mennonite women took care of farms, sewed, and volunteered as nurses. The wartime contributions of Mennonites were recognized by some in positions of power and authority, but others refused to see past their identity as “Germans,” and excoriated Mennonites as traitors who never truly belonged.

It is hardly a wonder why Mennonites, along with millions of souls fatigued by the war, welcomed the collapse of the Romanov dynasty in February of 1917. A telegram issued on behalf of the inhabitants of the Molotschna district praised the people of the empire for “overthrowing the old power that has driven our fatherland to complete ruin,” pledging the support of the local population to the Provisional Government that replaced the hapless Tsar Nicholas II. Mennonites joined in political debates about the future of imperial Russia, embracing the ideas of “freedom, equality, and fraternity” proclaimed in the streets. For many Mennonites, the only way to achieve these goals and protect the rights of minorities was the establishment of a decentralized democratic republic. For many of their Ukrainian and Russian neighbours, true equality could only be achieved through a government that acknowledged the necessity of redistributing land.

Civil War

It was the next revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, that brought Vladimir Lenin to power and ushered in a new world order. Some celebrated this event as the overthrowing of a corrupt bourgeois culture that lived off the exploitation of workers. Others viewed it as temporary madness that would never last, a fleeting moment that, too, would pass before life returned to normal. And yet it never did. The Bolsheviks initiated a social and economic experiment that would define a century. After capturing the Winter Palace and arresting the Provisional Government, they declared power to be in the hands of the soviets, or councils of workers, peasants, and soldiers.

While news spread quickly of the unrest in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the reality of the regime change only became apparent in the Mennonite colonies of Ukraine in January of 1918. Armed men, members of the Red Guards, arrived in the Chortitza district and confiscated money, horses, and weapons from Mennonite households. To ensure full payment, they took hostages from among Mennonite leaders. Millions of rubles had to be collected from the wider community to secure their release. Extortion along with unofficial acts of vigilante justice for past crimes pitted people against each other. In Halbstadt (Molochansk), arrests led to executions, with several Mennonites and a Slavic boy losing their lives. Some Mennonites, albeit a minority, embraced this overturning of the old system, throwing their support behind the new regime.

The arrival of Austro-Hungarian and German troops in April halted, briefly, the exercise of Soviet power in southern Ukraine and the frequent armed robberies that terrorized Mennonites families. Mennonites welcomed these troops as liberators from the arbitrary rule of an illegitimate Bolshevik government. This was not a response of the politically naïve, but rather an acknowledgement of the independence of the Ukrainian National Republic, achieved with the Brest-Litovsk treaties in February and March of 1918. Mennonites looked to this new political circumstance with hope, not only for themselves, but also for their Ukrainian neighbours. The line between liberation and occupation, however, was not entirely clear, and by the end of April, General Pavlo Skoropadsky formed a new government that favoured the wealthy over the peasantry, leading once again to instability. With the encouragement of the German and Austrian forces, Mennonites would establish self-defence units, the Selbstschutz, ostensibly to protect people and property, although for certain units, confiscation and retribution also formed part of their repertoire. Armed Mennonite men patrolled the streets, becoming symbols within the community of either how bad things had become or how far Mennonites had strayed from their values.

But the worst was yet to come. By the fall of 1918, the southern Ukrainian steppe disintegrated into a dizzyingly complex and brutally violent civil war. It was a time of mass panic, of confusion and rumours, of fear and exhaustion. In some cases, villages were burned to the ground, children spent terror-filled nights in the fields, and entire families were massacred. B. Schellenberg’s article in this issue offers a snapshot of the district of Chortitza during this period, as Mennonites and their neighbours were forced to make choices, often with life-or-death consequences.

The trauma of the civil war lingered among Mennonites. In many families the full story of this period remained hidden. Yet while the horror of brutal rapes, of gruesome murders, of humanity’s worst might not have been spoken of, it assuredly was never forgotten by those who experienced it. Some who lived through that time tried to comfort themselves and their community with the words of Jesus found in John 11:25: “Whoever believes in me will live even though he dies.” For others, no balm could soothe the wounds: they carried the pain until the end of their lives.

In 1919, devastated by violence, and desperate for help, Mennonites reached out to their co-religionists in Europe and North America. Their needs dovetailed with a growing sense among Canadian, American, and Dutch Mennonites of the importance of relief work: that they were called to do more than sit on the sidelines as the world rebuilt itself after a senseless war. By late 1920, the civil war had been decided for southern Ukraine, with the Bolsheviks’ Red Army victorious. Many Mennonites were saved by the relief kitchens established by the organization that would become the Mennonite Central Committee, which fed not only Mennonites but, in compliance with Bolshevik policies, also others in need. Even with their help, hundreds of Mennonites died from starvation.

Leaving the Soviet Union

But feeding the hungry was not enough. While the Bolsheviks liberalized their economic policy to aid in the reconstruction of regions devastated by war and requisitions, a sense of disquiet still pervaded. In overcrowded villages, teeming with refugees, it was not certain how Mennonites could establish a basic standard of living, let alone rebuild their once prosperous communities. Only in unifying and organizing the Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage, in Ukraine, and the All-Russian Mennonite Agricultural Union, in Russia, could Mennonites convince the Soviet government to allow them to tackle two imperative tasks: the rebuilding of Mennonite agricultural life and the facilitation of emigration.

Mennonites managed the exodus of a third of their population during the 1920s only because community members were willing to undertake the burden of leadership. Men and women made tremendous sacrifices, often garnering unwanted attention from officials as they maneuvered through the early Soviet system to organize this migration. While everyone knows the name of B. B. Janz, who performed an instrumental role in negotiations with Bolshevik officials in Kharkov (Kharkiv) and Moscow, as the reports in this issue of Johann P. Klassen and John G. Bergen demonstrate, many others contributed their own creative thinking to help shepherd nearly 21,000 out of the Soviet Union before its doors closed.

Creativity was also required by Mennonites in Canada. The memoir of David Toews offers an honest portrait of these years from a Canadian perspective, showing the complexities of negotiations with the government, the Canadian Pacific Railway, and especially other Mennonites. Toews, who became the face of the Canadian response, persevered through the obstacles of the 1919 orders-in-council banning Mennonite immigration, of financing the movement of thousands of people without resources, and of skepticism among Canadian Mennonites about the feasibility and desirability of this endeavour. Toews, together with A. A. Friesen and Gerhard Ens, responded to this unprecedented situation, helping to open the door for Mennonite immigration and procuring financing for their travels and settlement. They did this by creating the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization, which would work to collect the travel debts of the Russlaender and coordinate the response of Mennonites to immigration issues for decades to come.

Most Russlaender did not flee with only the shirts on their backs. This was an organized process, as the journey of Henry Becker, my maternal grandfather, illustrates. The terror of collectivization and dekulakization was still unknown for most of the 1920s, which helps us to understand why people chose to stay and why it was so emotional for others to leave. I often share this story from my own family: My maternal grandmother’s father had no intention of leaving the Soviet Union. He knew the culture, he knew the land, he thought he could build a life for his family in Ukraine. He did not want to travel to an unknown place, to be surrounded by a language he didn’t know. He left because my great-grandmother told him the family was going. Their early life after the migration was not easy. He never experienced the promise of Canada. But his grandchildren did, as did his great-grandchildren and his great-great grandchildren. This is the essence of the story so often missed: the sacrifices made for future generations.

Those Who Remained

Those who remained in the Soviet Union, the majority of Mennonites, followed a different path. As the example of Johannes G. Thielmann shows, some found the capacity to fuse elements of communist ideology with their Mennonite identity. Others within the community strongly felt that God had created an opportunity for spiritual revival. As Jacob J. Rempel wrote: “Here we also have a responsibility. If . . . we want to further the Kingdom of God . . . then it has to be here.”¹ Yet, by the 1930s, while the Russlaender in Canada built churches and spiritual communities, Mennonites in the Soviet Union watched their ministers exiled, their pews confiscated, and finally, their churches closed. While the Russlaender educated their children openly in the faith, those who remained spoke of God only in whispers. While the Russlaender lived in safety and security, they witnessed their fathers disappear into the night, never to be heard from again.

Conclusion

Before he passed away, my grandfather lent me Dietrich Neufeld’s book A Russian Dance of Death: Revolution and Civil War in the Ukraine. He said it would help me understand what he had experienced in his village of Schoensee. To be honest, I didn’t read it. I was twelve and had other interests. How I regret my indifference. The generation that experienced this period of our history is gone; the next generation is fading. Why does this matter? It matters because many of the paths that were taken, many of the choices we have had the privilege of making, are predicated on these historical moments. To forget is not only to erase our individual family stories, but also to live without gratitude to the people who in a moment of intense turmoil did their best to find a place of refuge for the generations to come. As Heinrich J. Friesen, who arrived in Canada with his family in 1926, wrote: “Even though we had . . . lost much . . . we want to begin over again courageously in Canada, to try to establish a new home for us and our descendants . . . . It is our hope that God will be with us and guide us.”²

1. Alexander Rempel and Amalie Enns, Hope Is Our Deliverance: The Tragic Experience of a Mennonite Leader and His Family in Stalin’s Russia (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2005), 71. ↩︎
2. Heinrich J. Friesen, Memories from My Life (Winnipeg: H. J. Friesen Family, 1995), 59. ↩︎