# A Chronicle Like to Ours CHURCH HISTORY Language: en Author: Joshua Yoder Dundee, Ohio Original issue: The Heartbeat of the Remnant, Winter 2024 Source pages: 12–13 Read article: Original PDF: Winter\-2024\-Remnant\_web\_250324\_133620\.pdf [The Heartbeat of the Remnant, Winter 2024]() The people we commonly refer to as the Russian Mennonites came into being as a group in a way quite similar to that of us with an Anabaptist heritage\. We sprang from the same areas of Europe, from much of the same teachings of early Anabaptism, and have both experienced many of the same temptations and pitfalls, though at different times and locations\. This article will not focus on the beginnings of the Russian Mennonites apart from a brief overview\. The group first entered Russia upon the urgings of the Viceroy Potemkin, who came into authority over the area now known as Ukraine after its annexation by Russia in 1783\. The area had been under his partial administration since 1774, and he was eager to populate the land with foreign settlers\. The residents of New Russia, as it was then called, were mostly nomads and Cossacks, a seminomadic group present in the steppes of Russia\. The Mennonites in Danzig, Poland, were first approached with the offer of land, which would have appealed to them because they were routinely denied land ownership as a semi\-persecuted people at that time\. This offer came in August of 1786, and two brothers from the Danzig church were sent to survey the land and make arrangements for possible immigration\. The first immigration of 462 families began in 1788, and the “Old Colony” was established at Chortitza\. They were afforded freedom of religion, exemption from military service, and the right to maintain their own schools and governances\. The Mennonites thrived in their new homeland\. Although the first years were hard, partially due to the fact that mostly poorer families and those not in church leadership chose to resettle in Russia, the group soon began to transform the barren plains and steppes into rich agricultural communities\. As the churches grew, so did their prosperity\. This period of relative peace lasted for over a century, until the late 1800s, when the Russian government, dissatisfied with the number of foreign settlements inside its borders, began applying pressure to many of the groups it had invited to settle its land some 100 years before\. The Mennonites were not the only ones targeted, as many groups from various nations had established themselves in Russia\. Steps taken against the Mennonites included pressure to participate in the armed forces as well as pressure to drop the German language that the communities had been using in favor of the Russian language\. As these pressures increased, some Mennonites chose to flee the country in the 1870s\. The majority, however, by now quite wealthy and affluent in comparison to their Russian peasant neighbors, chose to stay and weather the storm\. Unbeknownst to them, a full\-scale revolution that would reshape Russia as a country was just around the corner\. In 1917, the Bolsheviks came to power through the October Revolution, an event where the reigning tsar, or emperor, was deposed and exiled, and a new government was set up\. A civil war broke out, and much of the fighting raged over the lands occupied by the Mennonites\. Here, it is necessary to insert a brief history of the ideology of this new government\. The October Revolution and its subsequent change in government were fueled by a class war\. As opposed to Nazi Germany, where a person could be arrested and killed for their race, in Russia, a person could and would be arrested for their class, for example, property ownership was seen as a crime against the people, and so the wealthier class of Russian peasants and farmers, those who most often owned property and employed the lower class of peasants, became an instant target a revolution that claimed to want to distribute all property and resources evenly amongst its citizenry\. By this time, the strong agricultural society of the Mennonites had transformed Ukraine into a breadbasket, its vast fields sown with wheat developed specifically by the Mennonites: Turkey Red Wheat\. This hardy crop had made the Mennonite church quite wealthy, and their colonies had grown and flourished into villages of comfort and, at times, extravagance\. This must have been a two\-fold insult to the still impoverished peasants of Russia\. Not only was there a large group of people in their midst that taught, spoke, and did their dealings in a language not of the Motherland, but these people also were wealthy beyond most peasants’ dreams\. It is, therefore, no surprise that when the kulaks, the wealthy class of peasants, came under persecution from the new government, the Mennonites were seen as the enemy of the people\. As the civil war raged over Mennonite lands, villages were burnt and decimated, people executed or driven off, and livestock and grain plundered\. Eventually, this period of fighting did come to an end, but for those few who survived the destruction, there was no reprieve to be found\. With the label of kulak and being generally defenseless, the Mennonites faced intense persecution\. Religious services were rarely allowed, and the agricultural communities that had fed Russia and many others besides were collectivized and put under government control\. Many of their churches ceased to exist entirely, although those in the east tended to last longer than the western villages\. Imagine then, to a people accustomed for generations to the favor and benevolence of material possessions and success, that all things material are stripped away\. In a historical eye blink, the wealthy become the poor, and the favored become the hated\. Even with a strong Christian faith, such a turn of events would shock and confuse\. But further tests were yet ahead for those who endured the first 25 years of the Soviet persecution\. With the memory of their easy lives still fresh, the dawn of World War II brought a unique and enticing opportunity: the rise of a government that promoted the well\-being of the German race, that valued those groups that could turn an empty prairie into a sprawling farm, that was vehemently anti\-Communist\- to this beleaguered group of believers, this must have seemed to be a God sent miracle to deliver them from their burdensome exile\. And so, they embraced the invading Germans\. We readers, who are blessed with the ability to see the end result of these people’s decisions, can certainly make a good guess at what the end result was of wholesale support for the Nazis, but we must remember the scenarios that these Mennonites found themselves in\.\.\.it was not one that would have been easy to decipher and decide upon if it were to be judged by man’s knowledge\. And so it was that the descendants of those helpless believers who gave their bodies at the stake and sword aligned themselves with a worldly kingdom that promised to protect and provide for them\. In exchange for an eternal heritage, they chose to hope that the might of the German army would win back their earthly heritage and riches, and it was in this might that they trusted, forming bands of men who fought alongside the Germans against their old neighbors\. History did not deviate from its course, and the German army was eventually beaten back to its own borders and then further, and yet further into German lands\. Before this retreating army ran those that had looked to it for their deliverance\. ![A historical photograph of windmills, people, and livestock]() The atrocities of the Soviet government against its citizens are well documented in various works, most famously in the *Gulag Archipelago*, a book written by a Russian officer who was accused of treason\. That author, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, painted a terrible picture of the treatment and exile of those who had opposed the USSR\. Amongst the imprisoned or executed millions described in his tomes, there lie the remnants of a people who began as we did, experienced the smile of prosperity as we do, and then, treasuring that prosperity, lost it in calamitous fashion\. We would do well to consider the paths we choose, as the wise king of the Scriptures instructs us, lest we, too, fall in the pursuit of prosperity\. “Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established” \(Proverbs 4:26\)\. ## Magazine citation - [A historical photograph of windmills, people, and livestock](): Wiki Commons