The Russian Steppe 7: Drought

We began this series first by identifying the extent of the steppe on which our ancestors settled: it extended over five thousand miles from Hungary to the west all the way into China to the east. We then narrowed our focus somewhat to locate Molotschna more precisely: it was in the western third of the Eurasian steppe, that is, the Pontic–Caspian Steppe. Even more specifically, Molotschna lay in the Azov Upland portion of the Pontic–Caspian Steppe.

Having set the geographical boundaries, we then turned our attention to key characteristics of the steppe. The steppe vegetation was noteworthy for what was there (feather grass) and what was absent (trees, except along streams and rivers). The climate can be characterized as continental: cold winters and warm summers, although not oppressively so. More significant than the temperature was the precipitation level: on average, just adequate to grow grains such as wheat and barley. The final key characteristic of the steppe is its soil: black earth. The potentially high productivity of this soil is what set the steppe apart from other areas of Russia and led to certain areas the steppe becoming a bread basket of sorts during the second half of the nineteenth century. 

The series thus far has described the general characteristics of the Russian steppe, the average state of affairs that Benjamin and family faced. In several posts that follow, we will look more specifically at factors that were outside the norm, for better or for worse. We do so as a means of complicating and nuancing our view of life in Molotschna colony. Although the Azov Upland offered both rich black soil and adequate rainfall, on average, it was not a perennial garden of Eden. The Mennonites of Molotschna had to overcome a number of challenges as they established a home in the New Russian wilderness.

We begin, as the post title indicates, with drought. As mentioned earlier (see here), the Azov Upland where Molotschna was located averaged between 15.7 and 17.7 inches of rain each year. This amount was just enough to raise the type of grains for which Molotschna colony would later become famous. 

Of course, an average that is just above the border of sustainable agriculture does not guarantee a good crop every year. In fact, it implies rather strongly that some years would exceed the average and that some would fall below—that is, below both the average and the minimum needed to raise a decent crop.

This post and at least the next one will explore what we know about droughts on the Russian steppe, especially in terms of how specific droughts may have affected our family members. Where possible, we will ask where they were during a particular drought.

We begin with a contemporary report of a particularly severe drought, helpfully provided by a source we have consulted previously: the papers of Johann Cornies, As you will recall, Cornies was the most prominent member of the Molotschna community during the first half of the nineteenth century. On 10 June 1833 Cornies wrote a letter to Traugott Blüher, a Moscow wool merchant who brokered the sale of Cornies’s wool every year. Cornies reports:

From 10 July 1832 to 12 April 1833, we had absolutely no snow or rain here at all. This resulted in a complete crop failure. In fact, in the winter frost, the soil did not harden because it had so little moisture and ditches and holes could be dug at minus fourteen degrees Reamur [0.5º F]. Spring began with dry winds and dust clouds, and has continued on in this way until almost the present time. Wool has lost its appearance. We found it almost impossible to keep fleeces white and clean out on the pastures, especially after the sheep had been washed. (Cornies 2015, 416)

Over nine months without any precipitation would certainly qualify as a severe drought. In addition, the report of dry winds and dust clouds evoke images of the American Dust Bowl in the 1930s—a comparison that is actually more than a little appropriate. A month later (26 August 1833) Cornies wrote Blüher again:

This year’s total crop failure, particularly in all local guberniias, is causing serious shortages. Some of our neighbours are starving. In our community, starvation has been avoided by communal efforts and arrangements we find beneficial. It is still impossible, however, for us to sustain our livestock through the winter. Because no hay and virtually no pasturage is available, thousands of animals will be destroyed. This fodder shortage extends over an area of approximately 300 verstas [200 miles]. Several thousand head of livestock have been accommodated for the winter in distant guberniias at the frightfully high price of four to five rubles per sheep. But where will people without means take their livestock? (Cornies 2015, 425–26)

Cornies goes on to describe the steps he had taken to provide for his own flocks of sheep and to help both the Nogai and other Mennonites to secure fodder, but the situation remains dire. Within three more weeks Cornies pens another letter, this one to Andrei M. Fadeev, who was chairman of the Ekaterinoslav Bureau of the Guardianship Committee (see further here). This correspondence fills in a few more details and provides a more nuanced description of the situation.

The second rain we had hoped for after the summer dog days utterly failed to materialize. The first rain, however, had helped, and plants growing on ploughed fields provided winter fodder for a large part of the ruminant livestock in our settlement. But since there was nothing for the horses, most were driven to distant pastures. At present, the steppe is so bare of grass that I cannot see how our livestock can draw nourishment from it at all. I have therefore sent my horses to winter in the Kinburn region where hay and pasture can still be found. The winter supply of food for people is inadequate, but determined efforts are underway to ward off starvation. District Chairman Regier has shown great concern and works earnestly and actively to keep our community intact. The steppes, which were fresh and green in July and early August, have turned red and yellow. They have been dried out by great, desiccating storms that have been blowing in without stop for a full month. This is for us, in many ways, a year of testing. Our total crop failure will set the settlers back several years. It will also force us to look into the future and consider numerous issues that will need to be dealt with if we are to prevent similar disasters in future. (Cornies 2015, 428)

Putting all the pieces together, we can reconstruct a reasonable picture of the situation. Before we do so, it is important to note that at this time, in 1833, agriculture was both pastoral and arable, as opposed to predominantly arable, as it would become within a decade or so. That is, Cornies and other Mennonites relied on the raising of sheep for a significant part of their income. Some crops were raised, to be sure, but they did not play as significant a role in the agricultural economy as they would later on. With that additional background in mind, let us put the pieces of the 1833 drought together as best we can.

1. There was no precipitation (neither rain nor snow) between 10 July 1832 and 12 April 1833, that is, from mid-summer of one year to mid-spring of the next.

2. The crops planted in late 1832 and early 1833 (presumably winter wheat and some spring grains) failed completely.

3. The crop failure threatened human and animal alike. Some Mennonites were in danger of starving, and both sheep and horses were threatened by insufficient fodder to carry them through the winter.

4. The first rain apparently fell and greened up the steppe pastures in July and early August. However, the expected second rain did not fall, so that by late mid-August the topsoil was dried out and being carried aloft by strong winds.

5. The effects of the 1833 drought were expected to be felt for years, as Mennonites throughout the colony rebuilt their now-devastated flocks and tried to recover from their significant financial losses.

The drought of 1833 was more severe than most, but the fact that there were other droughts during the first half of the nineteenth century deserves attention. Now that we have a sense of the potential severity and consequences of drought on the Russian steppe, the next post (or two) will examine the frequency of those droughts by listing the specific years that appear to have been drought-afflicted. The final post will bring it all home, so to speak, by cross-referencing the drought years with what we know of our family, to determine if and when they may have suffered the effects of one of the Russian steppe’s many droughts.

Work Cited

Cornies, Johann. 2015. Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies. Volume 1: 1812–1835. Translated by Ingrid I. Epp. Edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Travel Journal 2

We pick up Baron von Haxthausen’s narrative where we left off, but first a word of explanation. In the following section von Haxthausen is imprecise, if not confused in places. All that to say that one should not regard the next extract as reliable history.

The first emigration took place in 1783: whither the Mennonites first directed their steps is uncertain; they probably settled in Russian Poland, where, in the vicinity of Ostroga, a Mennonite colony of two villages still exists. From thence the greater part, joined by many emigrants from West Prussia, repaired to the Dnieper, sixty versts distant from Ekaterinoslaf, where the Government [424] assigned to the party of emigrants, consisting of 330 families (about 1650 individuals), a tract of land of 32,648 dessetinas (137 square miles). Each family was to receive sixty-five dessetinas (175 acres); the rest of the land to be reserved for new families. The Mennonites were by no means poor; nevertheless the Government advanced the sum of 341,800 silver roubles (£54,830) for their establishment; this entire sum had been paid off in 1842, except 30,000 silver roubles. 

Contra von Haxthausen, the first emigration probably took place in 1788–1789, when Danzig-area Mennonites answered Catherine the Great’s invitation to settle in the Chortitza colony. The year 1783 was when Catherine annexed the Crimea and extended her rule over the entirety of New Russia (or modern-day Ukraine). In addition, the first settlers did not settle first in Volhynia, which is what von Haxthausen means by “Russian Poland,” then move on Chortitza. Rather, a small group of Mennonites emigrated to Volhynia to a village near Ostrog at roughly the same time as the larger group was emigrating to Chortitza. Finally, the 330 families referenced by von Haxthausen did not all come in a single party nor even in the same year. That total number of families did not emigrate until ten years had passed. To his credit, von Haxthausen has the area of the colony (ca. 89,000) reasonably close.

Von Haxthausen becomes somewhat more reliable once he picks up the story at the time of his visit: 1843. Note, however, that the increase from 2,446 to 6,376 is 260 percent, not “nearly” 160 percent. 

The number of colonists inhabiting these seventeen villages in 1813 was 2446; in 1843 they numbered 6376. This rapid increase of the population in thirty years—nearly 160 per cent.—is not attributable to the increase of births, but to the arrival of new colonists from West Prussia.

These seventeen villages form a joint Commune, under a common administration; the income from the communal sheep-farm, from the ferry on the Dnieper, and the rent of the brewery and distillery, constitute a revenue in common. They have a Communal store, a fire­-assurance company, two churches, and in every village a school. The Communal House is in the village of Khortitz, the seat of the Communal Council, with its President, assisted by a colonial clerk conversant with German and Russian.

Here ends von Haxthausen’s narrative of his Chortitza visit; he is anxious to move on to a place of greater interest to us: Molotschna.

After passing several hours here, we left this Colony, to visit the new Mennonite settlements on the Malotch­naya [River], which are situated about eighty or ninety versts further north [sic: south]; toward evening we reached one of their villages, named Halbstadt, and were hospitably received by a wealthy Mennonite.

The following morning (July 24th), being a Sunday, we drove early to Orlof, the seat of government, about four miles distant, and were [425] kindly received in a neat farmhouse. Divine service was about to commence, and we entered the church, or rather large hall of prayer: this was entirely destitute of ornament, and had no altar; there were only an elevated estrade for the preacher and the benches usual in churches. There was first some old Lutheran music, and then the sermon.

The Mennonites have no professed preachers, but the congregation chooses one for the office, which he is obliged to accept; he receives no salary unless very poor and is obliged to relinquish any other avocation. I was the more astonished at the sermon, which was evidently not learnt by heart, nor even prepared; the preacher, in a perfectly natural manner, spoke of our bringing them greetings from their home, of our kind wish to inquire into their mode of life and condition, and our readiness to convey intelligence of them to their native country: in conclusion, he invoked the Divine protection on our further travels, calling upon the congregation to join in the prayer. The sermon was sensible, logical, and simple, spoken in correct and good German. How had this plain countryman, without any school instruction, attained such pulpit eloquence, correct in language, and surpassing hundreds of educated preachers whom I have heard? It could only be the power of traditional Christianity, in which the last generation instructed the living one, even among people who otherwise reject the traditions of the Church. None of the Sects which have separated from the Church can free themselves from tradition, which is the very essence of Catholicism.

We can trace von Haxthausen’s route along the western edge of Molotschana from Halbstadt in the north (number 1 below) to Ohrloff (number 2) 12 miles (not 4 miles, as von Haxthausen states) to the south. For the sake of reference, the number 3 far to the east marks the location of Waldheim, where Benjamin Buller and family resided in 1843.

Von Haxthausen mentions the Ohrloff church, which was the most progressive church in the colony. The building pictured within the quotation above is the Ohrloff church, although presumably after the original building, constructed in 1809, had been “considerably enlarged.”

It is obvious that the service made a powerful impression on von Haxthausen, especially in terms of its Germanic elements: singing Lutheran hymns (doubtful), a sermon delivered in “correct and good German” (certain). One might also question his explanation of the quality of the sermon: it seems that von Haxthausen wishes to attribute it to a certain solidarity with the “mainline” church rather than a rejection of and break from that church. Be that as it may, von Haxthausen gets one more detail wrong: the Mennonite preacher did not need to give up all other work but in fact served the church in addition to maintaining his usual labors.

In spite of the occasional misstep, von Haxthausen is of significant interest because he in an on-the-ground witness to the larger community in which Benjamin and family lived. The church services that they attended were no doubt very much like the one that he describes. The people whom von Haxthausen identifies were very possibly known to our ancestors. Certainly the one von Haxthausen describes in the next post was well known to Benjamin and the rest of the Bullers, since he founded the village Waldheim in which they currently lived.

Works Cited

Goerz, Heinrich. 1959. Orloff Mennonite Church (Molotschna Mennonite Settlement, Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.

Haxthausen, August von. 1856. The Russian Empire: Its People, Institutions and Resources. Translated by Robert Farie. 2 vols. London: Chapman & Hall. Available online: vol. 1, vol. 2.

Travel Journal 1

A passing reference in a footnote of David Moon’s The Plough That Broke the Steppes (2013, 263 n. 92) led to an interesting contemporary description of our Mennonite ancestors. Moon references a work by a German baron, August von Haxthausen, titled The Russian Empire: Its People, Institutions and Resources (1856). It turns out that this work, which sounds very much like an academic survey of various aspects of life during imperial Russia, is at first a travel journal that Baron von Haxthausen kept as he traveled throughout Russia in 1843, followed by a more systematic description of Russian life.

Baron von Haxthausen’s travels are of greatest interest to us; he describes his route as follows:

the Author took his departure from Moscow in the Spring of 1843. He travelled first to the north, traversed a part of the immense region of forests, and then returning to the Volga, penetrated eastward as far as Kazan, and southward to Saratof, visiting the rich corn districts of Penza, Tambof, Voronezh, and Kharkof, and then traversed the Steppes by Ekaterinoslaf to Kertch in the Crimea. Thence he made a short excursion into the southern countries of the Caucasus, at the conclusion of which he travelled over the Crimea, and, proceeding along the coast, arrived at Odessa. He then traversed Podolia and Volhynia, reached Kief, and, passing through the Governments of Tchernigof, Orel, and Tula, returned to Moscow in the month of November. (1856, 1:xi)

Two locations mentioned are worth special attention. First, the city of Ekaterinoslaf, or Ekaterinoslav (modern Dnipro), is roughly 50 miles north-northwest of Molotschna, so the steppe by that city is, as we will shortly learn, an area of importance to us. Second, on his return trip von Haxthausen passed through Volhynia, so we will also want to see what he reports of that area.

To set the historical context as far as our family is concerned, in 1843 Benjamin Buller and family were in Molotschna, specifically in Waldheim, where they had moved in 1839. Several years later they relocated to the north (Heinrichsdorf), but the point here is that our ancestors were in Molotschna when von Haxthausen came through the area.

Baron von Haxthausen was an inquisitive, interesting, multitalented fellow. In addition to being an economist and lawyer, he was an agricultural scientist with a particular interest in “the study of rural institutions, or, in other words, the different relations of the peasant class to the cultivation of the land, their families, the landowners, their Communes, and the State” (1856, 1:ix). His travels through Russia were directly related to that interest.

All that is background to the real point of this post (and several that follow): von Haxthausen writes extensively about the Mennonites of New Russia, especially about those of the Molotschna colony. Baron von Haxthausen’s two volumes are freely available online (see below), but his description of the Mennonites is worth quoting extensively just the same. Most of his narrative is self-explanatory, but we will add commentary and bracketed clarification as needed. The important thing to keep in mind throughout is that we are reading a contemporary description of Mennonite life in nineteenth-century Russia. Our narrative begins as follows:

Early in the morning of the 23rd we reached the banks of the Dnieper, and were transported across in a Ger­man ferry-boat.… Some German colonists had charge of this ferry, and we soon reached the colony of Rosen­thal, belonging to the great German Mennonite settle­ment in the Circle of Khortitz [Chortitza]. We felt at once trans­ported to the valleys of the Vistula, in West Prussia, so thoroughly German was everything around us: not merely the people, their language, dress, and dwellings, but every plate and vessel, nay even the domestic ani­mals, the dog, cow, and goat, were German. These co­lonists have even succeeded in giving a German aspect to nature itself throughout the whole district; a land[421]scape-painter might very well call the scenery German. The same mode of dividing and cultivating the fields prevails as in Germany; the meadows are enclosed with German hedges. The plan of the villages, and the de­tached farmhouses, with gardens, plants, vegetables, and above all potatoes, are all German. This was not at all the case with the colony on the Volga, the inhabitants of which had remained Germans only in language, dress, and manners. Everything about them had much more of a Russian character, with the addition of German conveniences.

This flourishing German settlement, consisting of se­venteen villages, was founded solely by Mennonites, who now inhabit them. (420–21)

Von Haxthausen then provides a history of the origins of the Mennonite “sect” that we can skip over. We pick up the story with his account of the Mennonite immigration to Poland.

Simon Menno, in spite of suffering and persecution, had a numerous body of adherents, particularly in Friesland and Holland. As early as 1540 and 1550 perse[423]cution drove a large number of them out of these countries into Western Prussia, where they established themselves on the low grounds of the Vistula. The Kings of Poland at first issued several ordinances against them; but the Mennonites subsequently obtained some privileges. The warlike Kings of Prussia were displeased with them for the objection they had, on religious grounds, to become soldiers. They were tolerated and protected, but were compelled to purchase their exemption from military service by paying a tax to the cadet-houses, and were not permitted to acquire more land than they already possessed, it being feared that, from their industry and love of order, they might acquire undue extension. Any one however who was willing to waive this religious scruple, and consent to serve in the army, was freed from all these restraints.

The strict Mennonites regard agriculture as a religious duty, from which no one is exempted, unless by absolute necessity, according to the words of Scripture, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” As the difficulty of acquiring land increased greatly, and their numbers likewise, the Mennonites determined that those among them should emigrate who could not find a suitable settlement at home. On payment of a certain tax, and petitioning the Government, they readily obtained permission to emigrate.

We will pick up at this point in the next post in the series, but before we close, several statements are worth highlighting.

1. Von Haxthausen’s emphasis on the Germanic character of the Mennonite colony no doubt reflects reality to some extent, but as we will learn later on it cannot be regarded as disinterested, objective reporting. The baron has a clear reason for beginning his description of the Mennonites this way, one that will become obvious a few pages later on.

2. The comparison with other Germans, specifically those on the Volga River (i.e., roughly 500 miles northeast) refers to von Haxthausen’s earlier discussion of a group of German Lutheran colonists (1:349–51). The explicit comparison of the two groups seems clearly to favor the Mennonites, who are thoroughly German in all their ways, not a mix of German and Russian, as the other group was.

3. The description of the Mennonite vegetable garden singles out potatoes. If you recall, Benjamin was recorded as planting 12 bushels of potatoes in 1839 (here). David Moon also discusses potatoes as a diet staple in his 1999 work The Russian Peasantry 1600–1930: The World the Peasants Made. We will return to this subject in the near future.

4. One might suspect von Haxthausen of overstating the case somewhat when he writes that “strict Mennonites regard agriculture as a religious duty, from which no one is exempted, unless by absolute necessity, according to the words of Scripture.” He will make the same point later on, although with a bit more nuance than he displays here. Regardless of the overstatement, von Haxthausen is certainly correct that the Russian Mennonite communities whom he encountered (as opposed to the Danzig Mennonites who may or may not have been known to him) were agriculture-centered, even if not all members worked the soil.

As we read on in von Haxthausen’s travel journal we will not only discover on-the-ground details about life in the Mennonite colonies but will hear his glowing admiration of the Mennonite way of life. This positive assessment and high regard was not von Haxthausen’s alone but was shared by many others outside of the community who observed how the Mennonites prospered on the Russian steppe.

Works Cited

Haxthausen, August von. 1856. The Russian Empire: Its People, Institutions and Resources. Translated by Robert Farie. 2 vols. London: Chapman & Hall. Available online: vol. 1, vol. 2.

Moon, David. 1999. The Russian Peasantry 1600–1930: The World the Peasants Made. London: Longman.

———. 2013. The Plough That Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700–1914. Oxford Studies in Modern European History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Groups Religious and Ethnic

Sometimes we gain insight by exploring a subject directly; sometimes discovery comes by reading on a seemingly unrelated or at least peripheral topic. This post is an example of the latter approach—in spite of the fact that the article that prompted it, E. K. Francis’s “The Russian Mennonites: From Religious to Ethnic Group,” might seem at first glance to be directly relevant to our interests. In fact, it is relevant in leading us to ask a completely different question.

The article abstract is technical but intelligible:

The study of social change seems to show that generic characteristics of different types of groups, as conceived in sociological literature, are susceptible to mutations. In the particular case of the Russian Mennonites a religious group was transformed within a comparatively short time into a distinct ethnic and folk group when the ethnically heterogeneous participants were allowed to segregate themselves by forming isolated territorial communities. While the specific religious system which afforded orientation in the formative stage changed and even lost much of its appeal, the identity and cohesion of the group did not suffer materially. (Francis 1948, 101)

Stated more simply, the main idea is that groups may change from one type to another, as the Russian Mennonites changed from a predominantly religious group into “a a distinct ethnic and folk group” that then permitted modification of the original religious principles that formed the group in the first place. Francis’s interest is in second half of that development; ours is in the first half. Permit me to explain. (Much of what follows is thinking out loud and may or may not be of value.)

Francis, we should realize, is entirely correct that a faith community may at times be thought of more as a religious group and at other times more as a social or ethnic group, in the sense in which he is using the term. We should also realize that membership in an ethnic group does not require, although it often corresponds to, a common racial or national background. As Francis defines the term, an ethnic group is a “small, closely integrated social unit, … the most inclusive, cumulative and realistic type of secondary community” (Francis 1948, 101). Why is all this important for us?

In the first place, the social/ethnic solidarity that developed among the Russian Mennonite groups (Molotschna and Chortitza) should not be projected back onto the Prussian or Polish Mennonite communities that preceded them. If I understand correctly, the Polish Mennonite group was far more diverse and disaggregated than the two Mennonite colonies in Russia. What united Mennonites in Poland was commitment to a common faith (even though certain details led to division), not a common social life. To offer one quick example, “some … Mennonites were farmers living in rural communities, while others [mostly in Danzig] were merchants, bankers, artisans, and manufacturers” (Francis 1948, 103). When considering Mennonite life in Poland/Prussia, it is important to keep these differences squarely in view. 

A second implication of Francis’s piece is even more important for thinking about our family history. Because the Mennonite church in Poland was more a religious group than an ethnic group, it follows that joining the group was at least hypothetically easier for those who wished to do so. Of course, given the lack of legal status that Mennonites endured, joining the church would not have been overly appealing to many, but that is not the point. One did not have to be born into the church to become a member; the Mennonite church was a voluntary association, as it were, that welcomed anyone who wished to subscribe to and live in keeping with the key tenets of the Mennonite faith.

We have long known this, of course, but we have perhaps not thought about the possibilities it opens and the questions it raises. Many Mennonites of the Polish-Prussian-Russian group ask where their family originated, where the family lived before Poland. We have wondered the same thing ourselves. That is a legitimate question to ponder, but it is not the only one that needs to be asked.

Generally the question assumes that a given family, such as the Bullers, must have been Mennonites who came either from the Netherlands or one of the Germanic countries (e.g., Switzerland), probably to escape Catholic or Protestant (Reformed) persecution. This assumption is valid in a number of cases and for a large number of families. However, one wonders how many families actually lived in Poland before they joined a Mennonite church. This is the significance of Francis’s insight: at that time in Mennonite history, the possibility of joining the church was greater because the identity of the church was more religious than ethnic. One would think, then, that at least some of the families who were members of the Mennonite church in Poland had not fled persecution but already lived in Poland and joined the church there.

Looking at matters this way raises several important questions for us:

1. How far back might our Mennonite heritage go? Was George Buller of Przechovka our earliest ancestor to convert to the Mennonite faith, or were his parents or prior ancestors also Mennonite? If the former, then presumably George lived in Poland before converting. If the latter, then our ancestors may have moved to Poland to escape persecution.

2. If George was the first of our line to join the Mennonite church, why was he in Poland in the first place? Buller is certainly not a Polish surname (Adelbert Goertz considers it to be Swiss), so he or his family clearly originated somewhere else. If George joined the Mennonite church while in Poland, he was not living there (presumably) because of persecution, so why exactly was he living there?

3. If George joined the Mennonite church while living in Poland, were there others in his family who also lived there who did not become Mennonite? To state the question differently, did non-Mennonite Bullers who are related to us live in the general area at the same time as George?

What makes these questions, especially the third, so intriguing is the possibility that there may have been other Bullers in the general vicinity of Schwetz at the same time as George Buller. Sometime back Buller Time was contacted by someone who was attempting to trace the line of an individual by the name of Daniel Buller or Bullert (the name was spelled both ways), who lived approximately 20 miles west of Schwetz, that is, the Przechovka church. The question was posed whether our George may have been related to this person’s Daniel Buller.

Now before we make much of anything of this, we should keep in mind the fact that surnames are frequently the same for no other reason than sheer coincidence. Two people in the same general area who have the same surname may be related, or they may have no connection at all. Still, it is intriguing to wonder if George was a prior resident of the area (presumably part of the long-term movement of many Germanic families east into Poland) who converted to the Mennonite church, if George had family in the area who were members of the Lutheran church. We will explore this in the future, if it seems a promising path to take.

We may never know when our family became associated with the Mennonite church or who the first Buller Mennonite actually was. We may never determine with certainty whether our roots lie in the Netherlands or one of the Germanic countries. Nevertheless, as a result of Francis’s article we can now imagine the options with greater clarity and insight, so that our explorations are conducted with greater precision as we continue to sift and sort whatever evidence comes into view.

***

Bonus question: Is it possible to correlate the relative size of a family within the broader Mennonite community with the length of time that family has been Mennonite? In other words, if one assumes that Mennonite families enjoy a comparable birth rate/rate of growth, might one determine roughly when the various families joined the Mennonite community? The largest families presumably have been Mennonite longer than the smaller families (our Buller line is generally considered a small family).

Work Cited

Francis, E. K. 1948. The Russian Mennonites: From Religious to Ethnic Group. American Journal of Sociology 54:101–7.

Searching for Benjamin’s Father 2

Before we begin to excavate through Glenn Penner’s email about the identity of Benjamin Buller’s father (see here), we should reset the background that will guide this search. A brief review of our family genealogy will set the stage.

1. As we all know, Grandpa Chris’s father was Peter P Buller. 

2. Peter P was born to Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller in Molotschna colony in 1869 and came to the United States with his family in 1879.

3. Peter D was also born in Molotschna colony (1845); his parents were David and Helena Zielke Buller.

4. David Buller was probably born in Volhynia (1818), just after his parents and older brother Benjamin emigrated to Volhynia. David’s parents were named Benjamin and Helena (we do not know Helena’s maiden name).

5. We learn from Molotschna (Waldheim) records that Benjamin’s father was also named Benjamin. We do not know his mother’s name. We distinguish the two Benjamins by referring to the father as Benjamin 1 and to the son as Benjamin 2.

Our male ancestors can thus be presented in linear fashion as follows (father > son): 

Benjamin 1 > Benjamin 2 > David > Peter D > Peter P > Grandpa Chris

The question that this series will seek to answer is the same one addressed in Glenn’s email: Who was Benjamin 1’s father? 

We believe, with good reason, that our particular family line originates with the George Buller who was patriarch of all the Bullers in the Przechovka Mennonite church. The problem we have struggled to overcome is connecting our line (Benjamin 1) to the descendants of George in that church. Glenn’s proposal does precisely that. With that background in mind, we will begin to unpack and evaluate that proposal in the next post in this series.

The Russian Steppe 6: Black Soil

Thus far in our series on the physical context in which our Mennonite ancestors settled in the mid-nineteenth century, the Molotschna colony in the Azov Uplands, we have examined the characteristic vegetation of the steppe land (feather grass, not forest) and the dominant climate patterns of the area (moderate temperatures and limited precipitation). One final element of the environment remains to be discussed before we turn our attention to several challenges that the Mennonite pioneers faced: the soil in which they planted their crops.

Black-soil steppe with white “feathers” of Stipa pennata.
Photograph by Olga N. Demina (Fedotova 2010, 277).

The soil of the Eurasian steppe is not uniform across, ranging from one end of the spectrum to the other in terms color, composition, and fertility. The soil that interests us is typically designated black earth, in Russian, chernozem. This soil type is characterized by its color (chern is the Russian word meaning black) and its organic content. With regard to the latter, Anastasia A. Fedotova writes that “the soils of the meadow steppes contain more humus than any other soils in the world – up to 12–15%” (Fedotova 2010, 293 n. 99).

Already in the early nineteenth century the soil was known for its fertility, and by mid-century “legends of the fabled fertility of the chernozem and the ease of cultivating it were widespread. … Professor Nikifor D. Borisyak, a researcher of the geological formations of southern Russia, … asserted [in 1852] that ‘chernozem … without any fertilisation, with very little labour, gives grain yields of 1:15 or 1:20’” (Fedotova 2010, 272). Borisyak’s bold claim was, unfortunately, not remotely accurate; five years later the Russian Department of Agriculture of the Ministry of State Domains calculated “grain yields … in various regions of the chernozem zone at between 1:4 and 1:8.” (Fedotova 2010, 272). In fact, the average was probably in the 1:4 to 1:6 range (see Moon 1999, 134). That being said, “yields of 1:10 or higher were obtained on virgin soil throughout Russia” (135, emphasis added). Of course, each new village in Molotschna was founded on virgin soil, including Waldheim, where Benjamin Buller and family settled in the late 1830s.

As already hinted, the black earth area corresponded largely to the Eurasian steppe, as shown in the mid-nineteenth-century map below (from Fedotova 2010, 282). As usual, the red arrow points to the area of Molotschna.

Not surprisingly, not all the black soil was the same. The humus content did vary, and the depth of the topsoil could be as little as several inches to as much as 5 feet. The soil in Molotschna colony, which was technically in the southern black-soils subzone, was 4–6 percent humus (thus on the lower end of the black-soils spectrum) and approximately a foot in depth. John R. Staples concludes that, “while [the Azov Uplands soils] are not as rich as the soils of the central Ukrainian steppe, they are very fertile. The lowlands [to the south] have much less fertile chestnut topsoils, twenty centimetres [8 inches] in depth, with humus ranging from 3 per cent in the north to 0.5 per cent in the highly alkaline areas immediately bordering the Sea of Azov” (Staples 2003, 6).

One final observation that must be made. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, there are two regions in the world with chernozem, or black soil: “mainly in the middle latitude steppes of Eurasia and North America” (FAO). More precisely, the middle latitude steppes of North America are what we call the Great Plains, the prairies from Manitoba in the north down across the Dakotas and Nebraska and even into Kansas on the south. The significance of this for our family history should be obvious.

What is the significance of all of this information for our family and other Mennonites of that time and place? At least four important implications come to mind.

1. The steppe land of New Russia, as well as of the rest of Eurasia, enjoyed a unrealistically favorable reputation for fertility. The land was fertile, to be sure, but the legend had outstripped the reality, or so it seems. Thus when the earliest Mennonites and even Benjamin Buller emigrated to Molotschna, their expectations may have been higher than was warranted. One might even suspect that their decision to emigrate was fueled by those unrealistic expectations.

2. Further, even if they enjoyed bumper harvests during the initial years (the 1:10 yield), the richness of the soil was depleted over time, and their yields probably fell to 1:6 or 1:4—even lower, when a weather pattern resulted in poor growing conditions. The fact that the Molotschna colony actually thrived for so long is a testament both to their will and their ingenuity in meeting each new challenge.

3. The moderate climate and black earth established the general potential of the area, but it in no way guaranteed success from year to year. As we will learn in subsequent posts, drought was a frequent experience for the farmers of the steppe, as were dust storms and even locusts. Molotschna was not a garden of Eden, and our ancestors did not enjoy endless bounty.

4. Finally, it is no accident that in the 1870s, when a third of Molotschna’s Mennonites decided to leave, many settled in the only other black-earth steppe in the world, whether in the Canadian prairies of Manitoba or the Great Plains of the central United States.* As we have remarked several times, although Peter D and family traveled thousands of miles to central Nebraska, their new life no doubt seemed in many ways familiar, perhaps even less of a shock than when Peter’s grandfather Benjamin moved only hundreds of miles from the Vistula River to modern-day Ukraine.


Note
* Not surprisingly, David Moon, whose 2013 book The Plough That Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700–1914, has informed much of this blog series, is currently engaged in a research project titled “The Amerikan Steppes: Russian Influences on the Great Plains.” According to the project website (here), “This project analyzes the role of influences from the Russian and Ukrainian steppes in the transformation of the American Great Plains from grassland to major agricultural region, albeit one with recurring droughts, between the 1870s and 1940s.”

Works Cited

FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). n.d. Mineral Soils Conditioned by a Steppic Climate. Available online here.

Fedotova, Anastasia A. 2010. The Origins of the Russian Chernozem Soil (Black Earth): Franz Joseph Ruprecht’s ‘Geo-Botanical Researches into the Chernozem’ of 1866. Environment and History 16:271–93.

Moon, David. 2013. The Plough That Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700–1914. Oxford Studies in Modern European History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Staples, John R. 2003. Cross-Cultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppe: Settling the Molochna Basin, 1783–1861. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Searching for Benjamin’s Father 1

Alongside our exploration of the Russian steppe, we begin with this post a new series that is more focused on our specific family line. The goal of this series is simple: to see if we can link our earliest known ancestor Benjamin (see here for an earlier discussion of this person) to some named Buller in the Przechovka Mennonite church. The prompt for this series is an email received from Glenn Penner some time back in which he “speculated” about the identity of the distant ancestor whom we have been referring to as Benjamin 1.

Glenn’s email is dense (in the good sense of the term) and detailed, and it will require time and effort to unpack, understand, and appreciate. This post will simply present the email in its entirety so that we can all begin with the same evidence, then sift through it together over the coming posts. Glenn writes:

Some speculation about the Benjamin Bullers:

I believe that your ancestor Benjamin Buller (GRANDMA 402138) was the son of Benjamin who was both 60393 and 32139. I believe that not long after Benjamin 2 moved to Volhynia, his father Benjamin 1 (who would have been a widower of about 70 or more years) left for South Russia with his daughter Catharina and her husband Johann Ratzlaff (and the majority of the Przechowka congregation). Considering the rarity of the name Benjamin among the early Bullers I cannot think of any other possibility without inventing more Benjamin Bullers (and I have no documentation available that would justify that).

I also believe that Benjamin 1 was the Benjamin Buller found in Deutsch Konopath in the 1789 census of Mennonite land owners in West Prussia. Note that 32139 was married in Deutsch Konopath in 1774.

The only inconsistency here is that 60393 is given the patronymic Benjamin in the 1835 census and 32139 is known to be the son of Heinrich Buller. This ties in with some work I have been doing on the 1835 census. I have found that many of the men who died between the 1816 and 1835 censuses were given the same patronymic as their first names in the 1835 census and that some of these are incorrect. This is particularly true for those men who were older when they died (their fathers would have died in Prussia and their children never knew these grandfathers). This would be the case for Benjamin 1. It is likely that none of his survivors in Alexanderwohl knew the name of Benjamin 1’s father. It seems to me that whenever this was the case for the 1835 census the census taker simply repeated the deceased man’s name as the middle name patronymic.

I also believe that Benjamin 2 was the 19-year-old Benjamin Buller found in Przechowko in 1810 (http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/prussia/Schwetz_1810.htm). Again I see no other possibility. Your interpretation (as well as mine) of the Volhynian census has him coming from Prussia in 1817. If that is the case his marriage would have taken place in Prussia. The Mennonites of this region lived in the Schwetz Evangelical Lutheran parish. Since the state (Evangelical Lutheran) church was required to record the vital statistics of the Mennonites in their parishes from 1800 on, the Schwetz Lutheran church records should contain the marriage of Benjamin 2 and Helena (ca. 1813–15) and probably the birth of Benjamin 3 (ca. 1816). I cannot find any Mennonite entries in the Schwetz records which are available on microfilm. I noticed also that Adalbert Goertz extracted many Mennonite events from the Culm and Graudenz Lutheran records but not the Schwetz records. I see two possibilities of why there are no Mennonites in the Schwetz records: (1) all of the Lutheran ministers from 1800 until 1874 (when Mennonites were finally granted citizenship) did not record Mennonites, in violation of the law of 1800; or (2) they kept a separate register of Mennonite vital records (as was often done) and that/those register/s is/are missing.

As I said, Glenn’s proposal is dense and will demand our careful attention. Whether or not we end up agreeing with his reconstruction remains to be seen. Whatever the outcome, many thanks to Glenn for sharing his incredible expertise and his valuable time with a grateful group of hicks from Lushton.

The Russian Steppe 5: Climate

Our exploration of the Russian steppe began by setting the boundaries of both the Eurasian steppe in all its expanse and the Azov Uplands portion of the Pontic–Caspian Steppe (western steppe), in which Molotschna was located. We then turned our attention to key aspects of the steppe environment, beginning with the vegetation that characterized the steppe (feather grass) and the notable absence of trees across the gently rolling terrain. This post shifts to a second aspect of the steppe environment: climate, particularly as that relates to temperature and precipitation. 

Molotschna is frequently said to enjoy the “continental temperature pattern,” which apparently refers to the Köppen climate system of classification. Continental climates are typically affected by cold air masses from the north during the winter, leading to a coldest month with a mean temperature below freezing (26.6º Fahrenheit), and by warm air masses during the summer in which the temperature for at least four months averages at least 50º. 

Molotschna certain qualifies on both counts, as Staples explains: 

The continental temperature pattern in Molochna, with its moderate temperatures and long average growing season of 180 days is far kinder to agriculture than the precipitation pattern is. Even in the hottest months of June and July temperatures seldom climb above the low twenties (Celsius) [ca. 73º Fahrenheit], while the short mild winters mean that in most years livestock require fodder only from December to February, and some years it can graze on the steppe year-round. (Staples 2003, 8)

The figure below (see Staples 2003, 10) shows the range and average temperatures by month for the Molotschna village Ohrloff for the years 1841–1855. The temperatures are given in Celsius (left) and Fahrenheit (right). This chart clearly demonstrates the mildness of the typical climate of the area.

We should not, however, think of the weather as inevitably moderate. Staples adds: 

on occasion the prevailing winds blowing out of the east would bring with them their own unique hardships for settlers. In winter, fierce blizzards with high winds and killing cold sometimes swept across the steppe, decimating livestock herds. Summers could bring week-long windstorms—known to settlers as “black blizzards”—with hot, dry winds that stirred huge dust clouds and sucked the moisture from soil and plants, destroying unharvested crops, and sapping the nutritive value from fodder grasses. (Staples 2003, 9)

Another crucial element of the climate, especially for farmers, is precipitation: not only how much but also when it falls. Staples once again provides the details.

South of Molotschna, in the Azov Lowlands next to the Sea of Azov, the annual precipitation was 350–400 mm (13.8–15.7 inches). Further inland and higher, Molotschna averaged 400–450 mm (15.7–17.7 inches) of annual precipitation. Even so, Molotschna was on the border of being a sustainable location to raise crops. According to Staples, “most types of grain require at least 400 millimetres of annual precipitation” (2003, 6), which means that, on average, raising grain was possible; of course, some years would be below average, in which case one might expect crop failure.

Staples also notes that the timing of precipitation is key:

Even when precipitation was adequate it often failed to come at the time when it was most needed. Ideally, crops need water when they first germinate. In Molochna this means in March and April. However, recorded rainfall in this region was heavily concentrated in the months of May, June, and July. (2003, 7)

More precisely, 39 percent of the annual precipitation fell in the months of May, June, and July; only 12 percent fell during the crucial months of March and April (see Staples 2003, 8, fig. 1.2).

All these numbers are interesting, but they become even more meaningful when we compare them with corresponding statistics from central Nebraska. It is one thing to say that Molotschna temperatures were generally moderate and that the area received roughly 16–18 inches of precipitation each year. How does that compare to the averages for York, Nebraska? The figure below helps us make several comparisons.

1. Comparing the temperatures requires a little work, since the Molotschna figures were (apparently) the mean by month and the York ones are highs and lows by month. Nevertheless, averaging the York high and low for each month probably produces the same mean reflected in the Molotschna numbers (unless the Molotschna numbers were based on hourly readings).

So, for example, the January mean for Molotschna was 21º Fahrenheit, while for York it is 24. There is no need to give all the numbers, since they track fairly closely with the January spread. On average, York is several degrees warmer than Molotschna, although one should note that the spread is the greatest in the summer months of June–September.

2. Precipitation is where the real difference lies. According to the U.S. Climate Data website (here; also the source of the figure above), York receives an average of 30.25 inches of precipitation, which is nearly double the Molotschna average. Further, whereas Molotschna averaged only slightly less than 2 inches of rain in the months of March and April, York enjoys over 5 inches of rain during the same months.

3. One final comparison point is interesting, although not entirely clear. As noted above, the average growing season for Molotschna was 180 days. Generally growing season is defined as “continuous temperatures > 32 F, following the last freeze in Spring and prior to the first freeze in the Autumn” (see the UNL website here). According to the website just referenced, the average growing season for Lincoln, Nebraska, is 162 days, which is substantially shorter than Molotschna.

If the 180 and 162 figures are counting the same thing, one might reasonably conclude that central Nebraska has a shorter average growing period due to its temperature extremes (later frosts in the spring and earlier in the fall) but that, on average, Nebraska enjoys superior growing conditions (warmer temperatures and greater precipitation) than Molotschna. Whether that superiority carries over into the final element to consider (soil) remains to be seen.

One final point before we end this post: one cannot miss the significant degree of similarity between Molotschna and central Nebraska. Not only did both exist as steppe land, or prairie (which is another word for steppe), but they were remarkably similar in climate, at least in terms of temperature. In other words, although our family traveled thousands of miles to start a new life in central Nebraska, the place where they settled had to remind them more than a little of the home they had left behind.

Work Cited

Staples, John R. 2003. Cross-Cultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppe: Settling the Molochna Basin, 1783–1861. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 

Prussian Vital Statistics, 1816–1849

We will return to the Russian steppe series momentarily, but first a little detour.

I recently stumbled upon an interesting 1860 article published in the Journal of the Statistical Society of London (available here). The article is the text of a paper that Francis Henry Goldsmid delivered before the Statistical Society of London on 15 November 1859. The paper summarizes data from the “Tables and Official Information Respecting the Prussian States for the Year 1849” (Goldsmid’s translation). Although our immediate ancestors were not part of Prussia during this time, some of the data is still of interest. 

Goldsmid focuses on statistics relevant to birth and to death, and the former is what caught my eye. As expected, the Prussian government compiled data for birth both in the aggregate (across all of Prussia) and for a variety of subsets, both geographical, social (urban versus rural), and religious. It is the latter data that interest us.

The Prussian report provided rates of birth for four distinct religious groups: Protestants, Catholics, Mennonites, and Jews. This division is worth notice in and of itself, since it reminds us that, although we may think of Mennonitism as a part of Protestantism, that was not the case in the Prussian realm, where the Lutheran Church was the dominant branch of Protestant Christianity.

Beyond that general observation, the specific numbers are intriguing. (The midline dots in the table below are decimals.)

The numbers in the table represent the population for every birth in a given year. So, to take 1831 as an example, there was one birth for every 26.54 Protestants in Prussia, one for every 26.52 Catholics, one for every 33.61 Mennonites, and one for every 30.01 Jews. 

Interestingly, the Mennonite birth rate was substantially lower than than that of every other religious group. To put this in more concrete terms, a group of 1,000 Protestants or Catholics in 1831 would have had 38 births that year; a group of 1,000 Mennonites would have had only 30 births. Why the large discrepancy? Goldsmid suggests, “The ordinarily small number of births amongst them appears to be attributable to the circumstances that they live in separate settlements, have no free alienation of landed property, and marry only among themselves” (1860, 205).

In all likelihood, the first and third of his reasons were probably determinative: a preference for endogamous marriage (marriage only within the group), coupled with frequent separation from other Mennonite groups from whom one might select a mate, might have led to a lower rate of (or perhaps a delay in) marriage and thus to a lower birth rate. Perhaps the restrictions on Mennonite ownership and transfer of land contributed, but that seems more a secondary cause than a primary one.

One general point should not be missed: the danger of assuming that our Mennonite experience was shared by all other Mennonites. Many tend to think of Mennonites as fecund and fertile, as inevitably having a large family. True as that may have been for many families of rural Mennonites who earned their bread by farming, it was not characteristic for many of the more urban Mennonites who lived in both the Netherlands and throughout Prussia. We should never lose sight of the social diversity that has always existed within the Mennonite community.

A second table sheds a different light on Mennonite conduct within Prussia.

This table records the number of legitimate births for every illegitimate birth in each religious group. To take 1831 as an example again, there would be one illegitimate birth for every 11.27 Protestants born legitimately, one illegitimate for every 16.48 Catholics born legitimately, one illegitimate for every 108.75 Mennonites born legitimately, and one illegitimate for every 54.21 Jews born legitimately. To be fair, the 1831 number for Mennonites is a bit of an outlier, but the illegitimacy rate for Mennonites is consistently and significantly lower than for Catholics and especially Protestants. 

Goldsmid offers no real explanation for this wide variation, since he observes that the illegitimacy rate varies from region to region and even city to city, with no correlation to religious affiliation. He explains:

The answer to this question does not lead to considerations referring to the nature of man generally … but rather depends on particular circumstances of civilization and society. In this respect the greatest differences exist among different European States: the proportions are so various, that whilst in England it is computed that 1 child out of 20 is illegitimate, the illegitimate births in Bavaria are as many as 1 out of 3 or 4; whilst the children born out of wedlock are in London 1 out of 20, they are in Paris and Vienna fully 1 out of 3, and in Munich years have even occurred when the illegitimate births have been more numerous than the legitimate. It would not be safe immediately and unconditionally to conclude that these proportions represent the degrees of morality of different populations. There may be considerable immorality where there are few illegitimate births, and, on the other hand, the frequency of such births may be increased by external circumstances. No doubt, however, can exist that a large number of illegitimate births is a misfortune for the nation where it occurs. The causes of the variations referred to have been sought in differences of religion (which can scarcely be considered as affording in most instances the real explanation),—in the laws on paternity, which may certainly exercise a perceptible influence,—and in administrative regulations, creating obstacles to the establishment of tradesmen in towns, and to the acquisition, by persons inhabiting the country, of land for cultivation. So far as respects Bavaria, it is highly probable that the large proportion of illegitimate births is, in great measure, due to the last cause, since persons employed in trade, and desiring, but not permitted, to establish themselves, and peasants who are not allowed to acquire land, often live for years as husband and wife, but without wedlock, or, as they phrase it, in “wild marriage.”

In various districts, again, popular opinion, regarding with more or less censure the pregnancy of unmarried women, has some effect in diminishing or increasing the evil; and often, probably, it is to the combination of several different causes that the large number of children born out of wedlock is to be ascribed. In these inquiries the differences between town and country are highly important.

I include that long quote to provide us perspective. As Goldsmid remarks, generally there is no single explanation for any phenomenon. Even if Mennonites in general did require adherence to a higher standard of morality than the Protestants and Catholics, this probably is not the entire explanation of the matter. Perhaps some of the factors that led to an overall lower birth rate also played a role here. Whatever the explanation, we should be reminded that simple explanations often obscure as much as they reveal; human behavior is complex and generally requires multifaceted explanations. This is true for our ancestors Benjamin and Helena, David and Helena, Peter and Sarah, Peter and Margaretha, and Chris and Malinda as much as it is for us today.

Work Cited

Goldsmid, Francis Henry. 1860. Extracts from the Tables and Official Information Respecting the Prussian States for theYear 1849, Published by the Statistical Department at Berlin, and a Few Remarks by the Translator. Journal of the Statistical Society of London 23:201–21.

The Russian Steppe 4: Vegetation

The last post located Molotschna within the larger Eurasian steppe. To be specific, Molotschna was in the westernmost third of the Eurasian steppe, in the Pontic–Caspian Steppe, in a subregion of that area known as the Azov Uplands: a plateau region characterized by “slightly undulating ground … occasionally dissected by shallow ravines and gullies” (Staples 2003, 6).

Volodymyr Kubijovyč provided the starting point for this post by noting that “the natural vegetation [of the steppe] is that of a mixed herbaceous, fescue-feather-grass.” The term feather grass is encountered most frequently in discussions of the dominant steppe vegetation, but we can also refer to this vegetation by its scientific name: Stipa pennata.

As can be seen in the photograph from the Central (or Kazakh) Steppe below, feather grass is clearly the characteristic vegetation of the Eurasian steppe. Note further the absence of trees and, like the Azov Uplands, the gently rolling but overall flat terrain.

Although the area of the Molotschna colony does not resemble the photo above today, it certainly did when the first settlers entered the region. John R. Staples explains that the Azov Uplands were “characterized in their natural state by a luxuriant growth of feather grass intermixed with timothy, spear, and broom grass, wild oats, wild rye, and wild wheat” (Staples 2003, 6).

Fortunately, we do not merely have to imagine what the steppe land of and around Molotschna looked like. A natural history museum in Zaporizhia, a city roughly 45 miles northwest of Molotschna, contains a painting of that area’s steppe before the land was settled and transformed into farmland.

Painting of the south Ukrainian steppe. Photograph by Patty, posted on Flickr here.

Be honest: If you had not been told that the painting was of the south Ukrainian steppe, where would you have placed it? Obviously, the landscape and wildlife evoke thoughts of Nebraska before the first settlers transformed that state into a center of agriculture. The fact that Molotschna before our family settled there and Nebraska before our family settled there were so remarkably similar cannot be missed.

As already mentioned, and as is obvious in the photograph and the painting, the stepple land was characterized not merely by what it contained (feather grass) but also by what it lacked: trees. David Moon explains why the steppe had few trees, and then only along rivers and streams:

the treeless grassland was to some extent created by human activity. For many centuries, the indigenous, nomadic population burned the steppe to encourage the growth of fresh grasses for their herds of livestock to graze on. The combined effects of fire and grazing contributed to the evolution of the grassland, restricting the spread of trees and shrubs from those parts of the landscape where they grew naturally. (Moon 2013, 7)

This is the land that the early Mennonites encountered when they emigrated to Molotschna. Most had previously lived in at least partially forested areas; now they entered a sea of grass with hardly a tree in sight. The dominance of the feather grass and the absence of trees was not the only obstacle that they encountered. They also had to deal with climate challenges, which will be the subject of the next post in this series.

Works Cited

Kubijovyč, Volodymyr. 2001. Azov Upland. Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Available online here.

Moon, David. 2013. The Plough That Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700–1914. Oxford Studies in Modern European History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Staples, John R. 2003. Cross-Cultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppe: Settling the Molochna Basin, 1783–1861. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 

The Russian Steppe 3

David Moon concludes the first part of his work on the Russian steppe with the following important statement: 

while there were common features across the steppe region as a whole, the steppes were neither uniform nor unchanging. There were significant variations inside the region, especially towards the south and east, where the climate was drier and the vegetation and soil different. … The components of the steppe environment that were most important from the perspective of the agricultural settlers, and for the purposes of this book, were the vegetation, the climate, especially precipitation, the relief and drainage, and, perhaps above all, the soil. (Moon 2013, 88)

As we explore various aspects and attributes of the steppe, we must always remember that there were variations within the region, just as there are differences between the subregions within Nebraska. As much as possible, therefore, we should seek to explore the specific area in which our family lived and supplement that evidence as needed with information from the broader steppe region.

In order to do that, we need first to identify a little more precisely the subregion of the steppe in which Molotschna was located. We begin with the most basic division of the Eurasian steppe into three clear sections, known respectively as the Western Steppe (aka the Pontic–Caspian Steppe), the Central Steppe, and the Eastern Steppe.  As we have seen, the Molotschna Mennonites settled toward the west end of the steppe, that is, in the Pontic–Caspian Steppe, which is shown below.

Map by Dbachmann—Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=789955.

Just left and below the center of the map one sees the small Sea of Azov, with the larger Black Sea farther south. Molotschna was the north of the Sea of Azov roughly where the red dot is located on the map.

Not surprisingly, the Pontic–Caspian Steppe was divided into a number of subregions. According to Volodymyr Kubijovyč, the subregion in which Molotschna was located is is known as the Azov Upland (indicated by the light red area in the map to the right).

Kubijovyč identifies the Azov Upland as a plateau, then delineates its extent: “In the north the Azov Upland borders on the Dnieper Lowland; in the northeast, on the Donets Ridge; in the southwest, on the Black Sea Lowland; in the south, on the Azov Lowland (an extension of the Black Sea Lowland).”

After noting that the Azov Upland’s crystalline (e.g., granite) foundation is “covered primarily with loess and loesslike loam” (black earth, in Moon’s terminology), Kubijovyč describes the terrain as follows:

This is a gently undulating, monotonous plain with an elevation of between 200 and 250 m. Rising above the plain are mounds or mohyly, denudated remnants, composed of crystalline formations, that resisted erosion. They are oval-shaped, with gently sloping sides. The highest of these is Belmak-Mohyla or Horyla (327 m); others are Korsak-Mohyla, Tovmak-Mohyla (307 m), Mohyla Hancharykha, and Kamiani Mohyly, which rise 100 m or more over the surrounding plain. The slopes of the Azov Upland, and in particular the southern slopes, are dissected by rivers that cut deeply into the crystalline formations and create rapids and waterfalls. The river banks, gouged by ravines and gullies, make a picturesque granite landscape.

John R. Staples fills in additional details:

The transition from lowlands to uplands is not obvious to the naked eye, for the increase in elevation is small and gradual. The slightly undulating ground is occasionally dissected by shallow ravines and gullies. It rises to a maximum elevation of 307 metres above sea level eighty kilometres inland near the headwaters of the Tokmak River at the peak of the optimistically named Siniaia Gora (Blue Mountain). Beneath the surface there are, however, critical differences between the two areas. The uplands have chernozem topsoils approximately thirty centimetres in depth, with 4 to 6 per cent humus. While they are not as rich as the soils of the central Ukrainian steppe, they are very fertile. The lowlands have much less fertile chestnut topsoils, twenty centimetres in depth, with humus ranging from 3 per cent in the north to 0.5 per cent in the highly alkaline areas immediately bordering the Sea of Azov. (Staples 2003, 6)

Kubijovyč also describes the climate and vegetation:

The climate of the Azov Upland is temperate-continental, similar to that of the neighboring Donets Ridge. Temperature and atmospheric precipitation (400–500 mm annually) depend also on the elevation of the locality. The soils are ordinary medium-humus and poor-humus chernozems. The natural vegetation is that of a mixed herbaceous, fescue-feather-grass steppe. The area is now almost entirely under cultivation.

Everything that Moon touched upon above—“the vegetation, the climate, especially precipitation, the relief and drainage, and, perhaps above all, the soil”—are covered in this account. We will focus on several of them briefly in the posts that follow, beginning with the vegetation that covered the steppe land of Russia.

Works Cited

Kubijovyč, Volodymyr. 2001. Azov Upland. Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Available online here.

Moon, David. 2013. The Plough That Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700–1914. Oxford Studies in Modern European History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Staples, John R. 2003. Cross-Cultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppe: Settling the Molochna Basin, 1783–1861. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.