Mennonite Life in 1920s Kazakhstan

The Konstantinovka 4 post published earlier (here) referenced an article titled “Der Cornies-Verband, Pawlodarer Ansiedlung,” which appeared in a German-language periodical named Der praktische Landwirt. Since then I have been able to look more closely at both the article and the journal; I have also learned more about Der praktische Landwirt from a recent article in the Journal of Mennonite Studies. This post will survey both the journal and the article to learn more about what Mennonites living under Soviet rule faced on a daily basis.

In “Modelling Mennonites: Farming the Siberian Kulunda Steppe, 1921 to 1928,” Hans Werner explains that the journal Der praktische Landwirt (The Practical Farmer) was the newsletter of the Allrussischer Mennonitischer Landwirtschafter Verein (AMLV), or the All-Russian Mennonite Agricultural Association. Werner writes:

The AMLV was established by Mennonites in 1922 to stimulate reconstruction after the Russian Revolution and Civil War. It was granted legal status by the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee in 1923 and established offices in Moscow. The AMLV served Mennonites in the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, while its counterpart, the Verband der Mennoniten Sudrusslands [Association of Mennonites of South Russia], later the Verband der Burger Hollandscher Herkunft [Association of Citizens of Dutch Descent] dealt with Mennonite settlements in Ukraine. The AMLV was dissolved by the Soviet government in 1928. (Werner 2017, 269)

Werner explains that the AMLV’s efforts to revitalize Mennonite agriculture failed in the Kulanda Steppe region, which included the Barnaul/Slavgorod colony, that is, the Mennonite area adjacent to where Heinrich son of David Buller lived, and by the late 1920s many of the Mennonite farmers in the area thought only of emigrating to North America or some other locale where they could live in freedom. 

Although the AMLV was short-lived, existing only from 1923 to 1928, the issues of its journal Der praktische Landwirt offer an interesting look at the Mennonite experience within the Soviet Union. The masthead, for example, provides basic information about the journal plus a possible hint about the ethos in which it was published.

The journal title is given, of course, but also its sponsor: “Organ des Allrussischen Mennonitschen Landwirtschaftlichen Veriens.” Below that we learn that this is the second volume (2. Jahrgang) and that it was published in Moscow (Moskau) in June–July 1926, numbers (Nummer) 6–7 of the current year and 13–14 since the journal began. The lead article reports on the ninth council meeting of the AMLV (Die 9. Ratssitzung des A. M. L. V.).

The journal motto is intriguing: “Einigkeit macht stark,” or “Unity makes strength.” The motto itself is common enough, being used by various nations and organizations down through history in various forms. Still, one wonders why it was chosen for this Mennonite periodical. Was this a quiet reminder to readers that members of the Mennonite community shared a common commitment? Was it perhaps a nod toward the unity promoted by the communist authorities, embodied in the call for the workers of the world to unite? Did it have any significance at all? That question must remain unanswered for the moment.

The opening paragraphs to the later article of interest to us, “Der Cornies-Verband, Pawlodarer Ansiedlung,” are equally instructive. I am not certain I have translated all the German exactly right (see below for the original), but the sense is clear enough.

Thousands of inhabitants, peasants of the Councils of Union [?], thanks to the tireless efforts [?] of the Councils of Government [?], which sacrificed everything to unite the peasants and workers through cooperation, recognized and grasped the deep-seated, valuable, idealistic nature of cooperation, and now we see how throughout the SSSR the peasant masses strive to improve their economic life through it.
     If you travel through all the autonomous republics of the Soviet Union, we also find a not-so-large Mennonite colony in Kazakhstan (Kyrgyzstan), whose inhabitants decided already in 1923 to create an organization that would overcome all economic difficulties.
     This is how the Cornies Association came into being! (1926, 8)

Although several terms are uncertain, the first paragraph sets the tone for what follows by sounding a number of key Marxist notes. The German word Räte, translated “Councils” here, is equivalent to the Russian term soviet, so it would also be legitimate, I think, to translate the opening as follows:

Thousands of inhabitants, peasants of the Soviet Union, thanks to the tireless efforts [?] of the Soviet government, which sacrificed everything…

Whatever the best translation of the opening clauses, the remaining sentiments are clear—and clearly Marxist in orientation. Reference is made to the two classes whose interests the communists claimed to promote: peasants and workers. The goal of the Soviet sacrifices is also mentioned: to “unite” the two classes; the use here of another form (vereinigen) of the term that appeared in the journal motto (Einigkeit) may hint at its significance within that context. Finally, the emphasis on cooperation for the sake of the greater, corporate good also reflects the ethos that the Soviets sought to engender.*

The Mennonites of Kazakhstan, which included the Mennonites of the Pavlodar colony where David Buller’s son Heinrich lived, are located within this geographical and political context. Further, the establishment of the AMLV is subsumed under the Soviet agenda: the Cornies Association, it is said, was formed in order to fight for the economic well-being of the Mennonite peasants whom it served.

This is the world in which the Mennonites of Kazakhstan lived during the 1920s. Some, we know, became communists in ideology, but all had to operate within the confines and constraints of the Soviet state. Even their efforts to rebuild the agricultural economy after the setbacks of the 1917 Revolution and ensuing civil war, so ably described by Werner (2017), became a tool in the hands and the mouths of the Soviet authorities. It is no wonder that, generations later, their descendants fled the region at the first opportunity.

***

Note: The acronym SSSR stands for Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, which is the transliterated form of the Cyrillic title Союз Советских Социалистических Республик (CCCP), or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Original

Tausende von Einwohnern, Bauern der Räteunion haben dank der unermüdlich bestrebten Räte-Regierung, die alles opferte, um die Bauern und Arbeiter durch die Kooperation zu vereinigen, den tieflagernden, wertvollen, ideellen Sachverhalt der Kooperation erkannt und erfaßt, und nun sieht man, wie in ganz S. S. S. R die Bauernmassen sich bestreben, ihr Wirtschaftsleven durch dieselbe zu verbessern.
     Durchstreist man nun alle autonomen Republiken des Räte bundes, so finden wir im Kasakstan (Kirgisien) ebenfalls eine nicht allzugroße Mennonitenkolonie, deren Einwohner schon anno 1923 den Entschluß faßten, eine Organisation zu schaffen, mit deren hilfe alle wirtschaflichen Schwierigkeiten überwältigt werden sollten.
     So entstand der Cornies-Verband!

Work Cited

Werner, Hans. 2017. “Modelling Mennonites: Farming the Siberian Kulunda Steppe, 1921 to 1928.” Journal of Mennonite Studies 35:269–85.

Konstantinovka 5

Thus far in this short series we have located the village Konstantinovka on a map and in relation to the village Miloradovka, where our ancestor David Buller’s son Heinrich moved with his family and his mother in 1907. We then contextualized the Mennonite presence in Siberia (the term being loosely used) within four specific stages of their history in the region. The last post sketched the geographical context of the Mennonite settlement of Siberia. We paid particular attention to Pavlodar, the area around the city by the same name, where twelve Mennonite villages—including Konstantinovka and Miloradovka—were grouped.

This post will supply an additional layer of context to our understanding of Mennonite life in Siberia, that is, the Mennonite migration east as a part of a significantly larger phenomenon within Russia at that time. What follows depends on the scholarship of Donald W. Treadgold and his work The Great Siberian Migration: Government and Peasant in Resettlement from Emancipation to the First World War.

We begin with a quick review of Russian history. For a good portion of its imperial history, Russian society included two types of serfs: state serfs were technically free but were tied to a particular plot of state-owned land and obligated to pay taxes on the fruits of their labor; private serfs enjoyed no freedom and were little more than the property, slaves, of the nobles who owned them and to whom they owed their labor. For all practical purposes, these two groups constituted the peasant class in Russia.

Unlike most of its European neighbors, Russia did not fully emancipate its serfs until quite late, in 1861, when Alexander II decreed that serfs on private estates—who constituted 38 percent of the entire population of Russia—and household servants were free citizens with all the rights of self-determination, including the right to own land. The state serfs, who were already free from a legal standpoint, were not directly addressed in the edict, but the effect was essentially the same for them.

We should stop here for a moment to compare the different situations of our Mennonite forebears with the vast population of Russian peasants. Before 1861, Mennonite farmers could own land, but Russian peasants could not; the government and the members of the nobility owned all of the land on which the peasants worked. After 1861, Russian peasants had the right to buy land, but there was insufficient land to meet all their needs. As a result, some peasants had plot sizes that averaged 4.5 dessiatines, or 12.1 acres (Treadgold 1957, 256), an area too small to support a family, let alone have surplus available for sale. If you recall, Mennonite full allotments were 65 dessiatines, or 175 acres. The disparity in landholdings is stark.

In other words, after 1861 Mennonites were not the only Russian residents to experience a land crisis. Newly emancipated Russian peasants faced the same reality. With a growing population and all of the land in Eurpoean Russia already claimed and cultivated, what were the peasants to do? Enter Siberia.

According to Treadgold, the Great Siberian Migration did not begin immediately after the serfs were emancipated in 1861. According to his table 2 (1957, 33), the explosion did not take place until 1891–1900, when over a million peasants moved east. More than double that number migrated in the period 1901–1910. Table 3 provides yearly totals for 1887–1913; the years 1900–1910 are of greatest interest to us, since 1907 was the year of Heinrich’s migration. 

1900	219,265
1901	120,125
1902	110,930
1903	125,500
1904	46,732
1905	44,029
1906	216,648
1907	567,979
1908	758,812
1909	707,463
1910	353,000

In other words, during the decade when Heinrich Buller and thousands of other Mennonites were moving to Siberia and the Kazakh Steppe, millions of Russian peasants were moving along with them. In 1907 alone, over half a million Russian peasants made the same trip that Heinrich and his family made. In short, the Mennonite migration to Siberia was neither unusual nor an aberration; it was a minor part of a long-term, large-scale settlement of a frontier region. Treadgold compares it, albeit loosely, to the westward movement to settle the American frontier. The direction of travel was different, but the pattern of settlement was the same.

This is not to discount the significance of the Mennonite migrants. Treadgood mentions them as one example of the success of the government’s promotion of Siberian migration. 

The example of the Kulunda steppe (in the southern part of Barnaul county of Tomsk province) was illustrative. It had 913,000 desiatinas, and had netted the Emperor’s Cabinet only 3,000 rubles annually from Kirghiz farms and Pavlodar townsmen. In 1907, 1,089 Kirghiz farms were there. The Resettlement Administration had left them 167,000 desiatinas (more than 150 desiatinas per farm) and had turned 746,000 desiatinas into migrant lots. Within three years, 200 villages were settled with some 55,000 peasants (Ukrainian and in part Mennonite). There arose a trade center, Slavgorod. In place of one earth hut, in a year there sprang up a church, administrative building, two mills, bazaars, hospital, and pharmacy; there were preparations for opening a church school for girls and a school for boys; land was set aside for an experimental field. (Treadgold 1957, 174)

The area being described includes the Pavlodar and Barnaul (Slavgorod) Mennonite colonies. They were an important part, but only a part, of the successful settlement and development of the Siberian region.

That being said, one additional point deserves mention. The Russian peasants who had owned 4.5 dessiatines in European Russia had average landholdings of 38.3, or 103.4 acres, in Siberia. This was a substantial increase. However, according to Igor Trutanow (2015, 37), the Mennonite settlers of Konstantinovka received allotments of 60 dessiatines, or 162 acres. If this is correct, then one might easily imagine that the Russian government repeated its earlier practice of granting the Mennonite farmers larger tracts of land in hopes that their example of successful farming would be adopted by the Russian peasants surrounding them.

Before leaving this topic, we should consider also the means of moving such large numbers of people thousands of miles across often-barren expanses: the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Constructed between 1891 and 1916, this railroad carried the majority of migrants west with great efficiency. In order to encourage as many people as possible to make the trip, the Russian government reduced fares in 1898 from an average of 57 rubles per family in 1890 to 15 rubles in 1898 (Treadgold 1957, 131). The lure of available land and the low cost of traveling to it had the desired effect: thousands of Mennonites and millions of Russian peasants made the trip to the wide open spaces of Siberia and the Kazakh Steppe. David Buller’s son Heinrich was but one of the many people who made that trek.

Works Cited

Treadgold, Donald W. 1957. The Great Siberian Migration: Government and Peasant in Resettlement from Emancipation to the First World War. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Trutanow, Igor. 2015. Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. Toronto: Lulu.

Konstantinovka 4

We continue our brief series on Konstantinovka (I promise we will return to Franztal soon), which was prompted by the discovery of Heinrich Buller, who formerly lived in that village (see Trutanow 2015). This called to mind that a much earlier Heinrich Buller, son of David Buller and his second wife (after Helena Zielke Buller died), had moved to the same area in 1907. In fact, it seems that the earlier Heinrich lived in a village roughly 20 miles to the east of Konstantinovka, where the later Heinrich lived. 

We are using the occasion to learn a bit more about the Mennonite settlements in Siberia, to use the designation loosely. In fact, Siberia is technically the area of Russia east of the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean: the Asian portion of Russia. Kazakhstan is not part of Russia proper, although it was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. However, the term Siberia was used to refer to the general area that included the Kazakh Steppe in the northern part of Kazakhstan, which is where our interest lies.

As noted in the previous post, chronologically speaking, the Mennonite residency in Siberia spanned roughly a century: from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when the majority of Mennonites left the region for Germany. The Mennonite presence also extended across a considerable area of land. Helmut T. Huebert offers a helpful overview of the Mennonite settlements in Siberia:

Thousands of Mennonites know of Siberia only as a place of brutal exile, but it should not be forgotten that there were over 100 villages of Mennonites who voluntarily moved to this vast region. Principal areas of settlement were near Omsk (29 villages plus many estates), the Barnaul (Slavgorod) (58 villages) and Pavlodar (12 villages) colonies south east of Omsk, Minusinsk (2 villages) in Yenisei province, and later settlements along the Amur River (20 villages) in the far east. (Schroeder and Huebert 1996, 131).

Three of the areas mentioned above are shown in the map below.

Omsk, in the upper left, grew into a significant transportation hub when the Trans-Siberian Railroad passed through it in the 1890s. Mennonites were part of the growth of industry in Omsk. The arrow to the right points to the Barnaul, or Slavgorod, Mennonite colony. We encountered that area in a post on Oma Buller (here). 

The center of our immediate interest is the Pavlodar Mennonite colony, which consisted, according to Huebert, of twelve villages. As we noted earlier, Konstantinovka is marked by the yellow pin on the left; Miloradovka is the pin on the right.

According to Cornelius Krahn, the settlement

was established in 1906 by Mennonites coming from the various European settlements. The first settler to come to this area was David Cornies, who bought the equivalent of three quarters of a section of land on the Irtysh River near the city of Pavlodar. … The first settlement, Rebrovka, was established on the west side of the Irtysh River on purchased land opposite Pavlodar, which is located on the east side. During the 1920s the village Rebrovka was transplanted to the east side of the Irtysh in the vicinity of the Mennonite villages of Tursun-Bay and Mosde-Kul. The rest of the land was located on the right [east] side of the Irtysh and was obtained through the government free of charge similar to that of the Slavgorod settlement. The land was sandy. When the settlers came they found no trees. They raised wheat, oats, barley, linseed, and watermelons in abundance. (Krahn 1959)

Krahn goes on to list thirteen villages in the settlement, not the twelve one would expect based on the Huebert report. Comparison with a list prepared by Tim Janzen (here) leads me to conclude that Krahn includes several villages that should be assigned to the Barnaul/Slavgorod colony and excludes one village that was part of Pavlodar, Heinrich Buller’s village: Miloradovka.

Thus the complete list of twelve villages in Pavlodar included Sabarovka, Tschistipol (Reinfeld), Sofieyevka, Rayevka, Rovnopol, Olgino, Nadarovka, Miloradovka, Konstantinovka, Domninskoye, Borissovka, and Rebrovka. Miloradovka and Konstantinovka were, in fact, part of the same colony, which only raises the intrigue about whether the more recent Heinrich Buller was not so distantly related to the earlier Heinrich, son of David. We shall see.

Before leaving this overview, it is worthwhile to read more of Krahn’s description of the Pavlodar settlement:

Most of the settlers were poor and the pioneering difficulties were great. The winter was severe and the summer hot and dusty. The Mennonites planted trees around their homes. When P. F. Froese visited the settlement during the summer of 1924 he stated that a Mennonite settlement could be recognized from a great distance. He describes four types of villages in the area. The native Kirghiz population lives during the summer in a special summer aul, and during the winter in a dugout. The Russian village consists of whitewashed adobe houses without any trees or shrubs. The Mennonite houses were also built of adobe or unburned brick patterned after their European architectural styles, but they were surrounded by trees. …

In 1925 the population of the Pavlodar settlement was 2,736. A report of the administration of the co-operative, named the Cornies-Verband…, gives an insight as to what happened to the settlement during the Revolution and after. … Even in 1926 only eight of 12 village schools were operating because of lack of teachers, in spite of the fact that the settlement had a Zentralschule in Sabarovka started in 1918, which was supported by private individuals until 1924, at which time the Cornies-Verband took it over.…

The Cornies-Verband was represented in all villages, and its 450 members constituted 90 per cent of the families. A report states that many had only one horse and some did not even have one cow. The primary objective of the co-operative was to obtain loans through the government to improve the seed and the cattle and do business for the community. Four dairies, one in each of the settlements, were in operation in 1925. The reporter reveals in his concluding remark that the Cornies-Verband was being influenced by the Marxian terminology when he stated, “We would like to urge all readers loyally and without weariness to continue the work of the co-operative so that we can achieve the goal desired by our forerunner, N. J. [sic: W. I.] Lenin.” (Krahn 1959)

The report that Krahn references in the second paragraph and from which he draws is, remarkably enough, available online (here). The article, titled “Der Cornies-Verband, Pawlodarer Ansiedlung,” appeared in a periodical named Der praktische Landwirt, published in Moscow. This particular article carries no personal byline but is rather attributed to the administration of the association. 

The article probably contains additional nuggets about the Pavlodar settlement, but that must await a future post. For now we end with the arresting recognition that this Mennonite settlement, less than a decade after the 1917 revolution, was already compelled to profess their loyalty to the leadership and the vision of one Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin, leader of the Soviet Union until his death in 1924.

Works Cited

Krahn, Cornelius. 1959. Pavlodar Mennonite Settlement (Pavlodar Province, Kazakhstan). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.

Schroeder, William, and Helmut T. Huebert. 1996. Mennonite Historical Atlas. 2nd ed. Winnipeg: Springfield.

Trutanow, Igor. 2015. Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. Toronto: Lulu.

Konstantinovka 3

As was already mentioned, Konstantinovka was not the only Mennonite village established on the Kazakh Steppe. In fact, there were a number of other villages founded at the same time in the same locale and throughout the region. This post will provide background to the larger phenomenon of Mennonite settlement in the Kazakh-Siberian region, so that we may understand Konstantinovka and other similar villages of interest within their proper contexts.

We have typically considered the Mennonite experience in Russia in terms of its westernmost sites: the Molotschna and Chortitza colonies. This is understandable, since our direct ancestors lived in Molotschna and left before any significant Mennonite emigration to the east. However, as noted earlier, Heinrich Buller, son of our ancestor David, and his family were part of a movement eastward. That emigration to what was loosely referred to as Siberia was not a minor event; rather, it extended over a number of years and involved large groups of people who founded a number of new colonies, each of which comprised multiple villages of Mennonites.

In fact, the Mennonite presence in Siberia and Kazakhstan was of such significance that the Journal of  Mennonite Studies devoted an in entire issue in 2012 to the Mennonites in Siberia (see here). One article in that issue is of particular interest for this post: Yulia I. Podoprigora’s “The Formation and Development of the Mennonite Congregations in Kazakhstan: From the End of the Nineteenth Century to the Early Twenty First Century.” Podoprigora divides Mennonite history in the region into four periods, which will give us a good framework for thinking about this topic.

Period 1 encompassed “The Late Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Centuries.” Emigration east began in the late 1880s with the followers of Abram Peters and Claas Epp, the latter of whom led a group of adherents to await Jesus’s imminent second coming somewhere “in the east.” Epp and his followers were disappointed, of course, but they remained in the east, and over the next decades large numbers of Mennonites moved to Siberia for more earthly reasons, namely, available land. 

Podoprigora reports that “fourteen Mennonite daughter settlements were established from 1900 to 1910 in Pavlodar uezd, Semipalatinsk oblast” (2012, 38; Pavlodar is the area that interests us). As Podoprigora explains, the new life on the wide open spaces of the steppe started out well but, with the coming of communist rule, took an alarming turn for the worse.

Mennonite congregations functioned in the aforementioned areas till the end of the 1920s and into the early 1930s when it became clear that they could not accept the new Soviet regime policies (collectivization, forced military service, anti-religious campaign, etc.). Many sought to emigrate. There were Mennonites who were at the forefront of the emigration movement in Pavlodar uezd. One observer noted that “in Mennonite settlements an inclination for emigration to America was especially noticeable.” Similar emigration sentiments were shared by Mennonite community members of Southern Kazakhstan, who in the late 1880s had considered Central Asia as a place of refuge but in the late 1920s “were burning with one desire, to emigrate.” During this initial period, some Mennonites emigrated but those who stayed were no longer able to observe religious practices as meeting houses were closed and presbyters and deacons were repressed. (2012, 39)

Period 2, “From the Early 1930s to the Early 1940s,” was a time of oppression. The Mennonites who had been unable to emigrate in the late 1920 were effectively living within a prison: they had no chance to leave the Soviet Union and little freedom within it. In addition, this period “was characterized by the forced, repressive resettlement of [other] Mennonites to Kazakhstan.” In the 1930s many Mennonites were designated kulaks (wealthy peasants), thus enemies of the people, and sent into exile in the east. The following decade, during and after World War II, the Mennonites and countless other Germans were deported to various areas of Kazakhstan, including the formerly Mennonite villages.

Period 3, “From the Late 1950s to the Late 1980s,” that is, after the death of Joseph Stalin, saw a gradual relaxing of the oppressive measures that had characterized the previous decades. Although the Soviet state continued to promote atheism and to dismiss religious faith as a relic of “reactionary ideology” (Podoprigora 2012, 40), some churches were permitted to reopen and hold services, albeit under strict scrutiny. During the 1960s, some Mennonite congregations allied themselves with other groups, such as the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists. By the mid-1980s there were eleven Mennonite churches registered in Kazakhstan, four of which were Mennonite Brethren (2012, 41).

Period 4, “From the End of the Twentieth to the Beginning of the Twenty First Century,” witnessed the end of any significant Mennonite presence in Kazakhstan. According to Podoprigora, “During this period the majority of Mennonite congregations of Kazakhstan disintegrated as a result of the emigration of believers to Germany” (2012, 42). As we noted in the previous post, this exodus is echoed by Igor Trutanow, who writes, “All my friends and colleagues in Konstantinovka went as Spätaussiedler (late repatriate) to their ethnic homeland,” to Germany (2015, 164). Podoprigora mentions one only congregation with several branches that has two hundred members total; clearly, the Mennonite presence in Kazakhstan is much diminished.

For over a century significant numbers of Mennonites lived, worked, and worshiped in Kazakhstan. We have long known that some members of our immediate family were among that group, but we have recently discovered that members of the broader Buller family remained in Kazakhstan through the terrible years of communist oppression, then left for Germany after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Both Heinrich Buller son of David and the later Heinrich Buller who lived in Konstantinovka were located in the Pavlodar uezd (district), as did a number of other Mennonites beginning in the early 1900s. Now that we have our chronological bearings, we are ready to explore the development of the Mennonite communities in this particular locale.

Works Cited

Podoprigora, Yulia I. 2012. The Formation and Development of the Mennonite Congregations in Kazakhstan: From the End of the Nineteenth Century to the Early Twenty First Century. JMS 30:37–44. Available online here.

Trutanow, Igor. 2015. Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. Toronto: Lulu.

Konstantinovka 2

We will return to Franztal in due course, but the village of Konstantinovka deserves at least one more post, if not more.

In the last post we learned where Konstantinovka is located: in the northeast corner of Kazakhstan, 22 miles west of Miloradovka, the small village where we think Heinrich Buller, son of our ancestor David, and his family and mother (David’s second wife) moved in 1908. The map below shows where within Kazakhstan the two villages were located (the two yellow pins). Note also that Siberia lies to the north and the corner of China appears in the lower right. The Mennonites of the Pavlodar area, in which both Konstantinovka and Miloradovka were located, were almost four times farther from the Molotschna colony (1,830 miles as the crow flies) than they were from China (475 miles).

It is important to keep this great distance in mind as we talk shift our attention to the founding of Konstantinovka. As we do so, we will consult Igor Trutanow’s Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. As a side note, I highly recommend that anyone interested in reading about Mennonite life in the Soviet Union during the 1980s buy a copy of this book (Amazon and Lulu). Trutanow’s book is not stale history but rather a firsthand account from someone who lived among the descendants of the Mennonites who established this village.

Like Miloradovka, Konstantinovka was founded by Mennonites who emigrated from south Russia (modern Ukraine) (Trutanow 2015, 28). Trutanow writes:

In the fall of 1907, a group of Mennonites came to the future Konstantinovka. They had to prepare temporary shelters for the settlers from Tokmak [a city on the edge of the Molotschna colony] in the arid steppe. … They made bricks from the upper layer of the fallow soil. It was the only building material in the barren steppes of Kazakhstan. Timber for roofs, doors, and window frames was bought at the bazaar in Pavlodar. These mud huts had no wooden floors, so people lived on the bare ground. Once the shelters were ready, officials of the Pavlodar district administration visited the newcomers to inspect their housing situation. The officials gave the first Mennonite settlers a list of approved Russian names to choose for their new village: Olgino, Borisovka, Konstantinovka, and Natashino. The men from Tokmak picked Konstantinovka. … In the spring 1908, about two hundred Mennonites from Tokmak, Melitopol, and Chortitza settled in Konstantinovka. They travelled by train from South Russia to Omsk, Siberia, where they purchased horses and carts for transportation to Konstantinovka. Upon arrival, each family received 60 dessiatin (655.5 square meters) of fallow land. The agricultural equipment, ploughs, wooden harrows, seeds, wheat, oats, barley, and corn were purchased in Pavlodar. Only three years later, the new land was put under the plough. (Trutanow 2015, 37)

The situation and struggles that Trutanow describes for Konstantinovka were also encountered by Heinrich Buller, son of David Buller and his second wife. So, for example, earlier we read about how the settlers planned to overcome the area’s scarcity of lumber by building sod houses (see the Peter Fast letter here). Even more interesting is the fact that the Peter Fast letter references a group of forty families from the Molotschna colony who were planning to emigrate to the Pavlodar area in April of 1980. Is this the same as the group of two hundred whom Trutanow mentions, or were they separate groups of Mennonite immigrants?

Intriguingly, we also have direct evidence that Heinrich Buller planned to moved to this region in April 1908. In a 5 February 1908 letter to the Mennonitische Rundschau, Heinrich responds to an earlier question about his brothers and sisters as follows:

You ask about my siblings. We are only two, me and Sarah, Mrs. David Nickel; they are already in Siberia, and we plan, if it is the Lord’s will, to depart April 7, from here to there, where we intend to establish our home. (see here)

Clearly, Heinrich planned to emigrate to Siberia—by which he no doubt means the Pavlodar area—in 1908, and he hoped to begin his journey on 7 April. Did he leave then, or did he delay several weeks and travel with the forty-family group that Fast mentions?

We do not yet have answers to these questions, but we will continue to search for information that will shed light on them. Before I close this post, I am happy to provide an answer to a question posed at the end of the previous post: the Heinrich Buller who lived in Konstantinovka and who is pictured with his cow Romashka (see here) is alive and well. There may be more to report about him within the next week, so stay tuned!

Work Cited

Trutanow, Igor. 2015. Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. Toronto: Lulu.

Konstantinovka 1

A little more than a month ago (here) I mentioned a book written by Igor Trutanow: Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. I have since purchased and read the book (reasonably priced at Amazon here). I may, in time, offer a more complete overview of the book, but this post seeks only to introduce this Mennonite village and several of its former residents who are important to us. 

I begin with a correction: Konstantinovka is not, as stated earlier, 5 miles west of Kleefeld in the Slavgorod Mennonite Settlement in western Siberia; I have no idea what led me to think that it is. Konstantinovka is in the same general vicinity, but farther west. The satellite photo below shows the city of Pavlodar in the lower left; Konstantinovka is located north–northeast and is marked by the yellow pin on the left.

The yellow pin to the right is also important to us, since it marks the location of the village to which David Buller’s second wife (after Helena Zielke) and their son Heinrich moved (here and here). Both that village, named Miloradovka, and Konstantinovka are located in Kazakhstan, which was earlier part of the Russian Empire and then, until 1991, part of the Soviet Union. 

Pinpointing Konstantinovka’s location is important for several reasons. First, as one can see in the photograph above, Konstantinovka was only 22 miles west of Miloradovka. It was close to a village of some importance to our family. 

Second, although the most common Mennonite names in the village were “Dick, Enns, Epp, Fast, Franz, Friesen, Janzen, Klassen, Lemke, Martens, Neufeld, Penner, Peters, Rempel, Thiessen, Toews, Warkentin, Wiebe and Wiens” (Trutanow 2015, 81), at some point Konstantinovka became home to at least one Buller family.

As mentioned earlier, Trutanow writes of a friend he made during his years in Konstantinovka: a man named Heinrich Buller who had a wife named Helene and a sister Elisa (long deceased). Trutanow includes a photograph from sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s of Heinrich and his cow Romashka.

Although we cannot say precisly how we are related to Heinrich, we can be fairly certain that he is a member of our family. It is a little odd, I admit, to see a photograph of a relative who lived on the other side of the globe and who eked out a living in a poor village located on the Kazakh Steppe. 

Trutanow explains that all the Mennonites fled Konstantinovka after the breakup of the Soviet Union, that is, after they no longer lived under the oppressive control of the Soviet government. Trutanow writes, “All my friends and colleagues in Konstantinovka went as Spätaussiedler (late repatriate) to their ethnic homeland,” to Germany (2015, 164). Presumably Heinrich and his mother Helene were part of that group. 

Does Heinrich still live there today? That we do not know, but perhaps Trutanow has kept in contact with his old friend. Trutanow, who lives in Canada now, helpfully included his email address in his book. The search for Heinrich is not yet ended.

Work Cited

Trutanow, Igor. 2015. Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. Toronto: Lulu.

Franztal 20

Twelve days is far too long to go without blogging, so I will try to make up for the inactivity over the coming days. For now, we bring to a close our series of posts on the 1848 Franztal Gemeindebericht. Only one minor task remains: identifying the Franztal residents who wrote the report. Before we do so, I offer a final version of the translation, updated and polished in places so that it reads reasonably well in English (the German original appears at the end of the post).

In April 1820, fifteen families from the district of Schwetz near Kulm in West Prussia arrived to establish a village among the others. It was considered appropriate by the authorities and a commission chosen for settlement to set up each village for twenty fireplaces [residences] but to cultivate only fifteen of them and to leave the others empty for their descendants. However, in a subsequent review of the plans, it was found that the villages would not get their proper land, so all fireplaces had to be occupied immediately, and one village had to be distributed among the others. So it happened that on 18 May of the same year, eight more families of immigrants from the same district were added to the village.

The steppe, which was given to the immigrants by the high crown and allocated and measured in the villagers’ presence by Johann Cornies, then head of the district [sic] and tenant of the same, was completely empty. Only a few nomads grazed their herds here in the summertime. In order to have the village established in the middle of the plot, the settlers chose a place located in the same depression where the colony Grossweide is located. This depression, however, was quite small and barely noticeable. Finding themselves in [what they took to be] a Prussian lowland, the settlers immediately dug a hole in the ground to find water. But, in fact, they were quite wrong. The deeper they dug, the harder and drier the soil became, until at a depth of 52 feet they stopped the laborious digging and, after six weeks, moved the village site to the River Iushanle. But even here it seemed impossible to reach the water through the hard rock, and water had to be carried from the river. The village was to be arranged in two rows, so discomfort [of carrying water] would be felt especially in the upper row, and there was a great deal of indignation until at last Chief Justice Fadeev appeared to inspect the newly established village and had it arranged in a single row along the river.

In the first year only one dwelling house was finished; the other [settlers] spent the first winter in habitable, furnished sections within stables or in earthen huts, until with the involvement of village head Peter Ratzlaff the full construction of the houses was completed as time and circumstances permitted.

The village is laid out in the direction from northeast to southwest. The Iushanle forms the border between the village and the land of the Tatars; the distance to the opposite border of the village Chernigov [Tscherniowka] is 7 versts. On the northwest side of the village along the lane are the orchards, each of which is a dessiatine in area and is already planted with a considerable number of fine fruit trees. At the end of the orchards rises the tree grove, which offers a lovely sight from the village with its green-leafed trees. On the west the village borders on Grossweide, on the east Pastwa, and it [Franztal] is 60 versts from the district seat Berdyansk. The numerous ancient burial mounds (Mohilen) give the land, one might say, a warty shape. The surface is almost everywhere black soil, in places containing saltpeter, with a layer of gravel and quarry stone, which lies over a Faden deep and in places comes to light. Although the productivity of the land does not equal that of the [land along the] Molochna [River], trees, grains, and food crops thrive here as well. Violent storms often destroy the grain fields in rows.

Initially this village was given the name Pschuchowka, after the former residence of the settlers in Prussia. But since this name was not confirmed as a Polish one by the authorities, Ohm Benjamin Ratzlaff, who is currently elder of the Rudnerweide congregation but who was also one of the founders of this village, proposed the name Franztal, which was known to him from Prussia—everyone agreed.

The first fifteen families of this village formed a single party in their immigration but did not have a leader. Of the others involved, some traveled with the large party whose leader was the now long-deceased elder Ohm Franz Goerz, and some also came to the country in small parties without a leader.

At their request, eighteen families without funds received a crown advance of 10,721 paper rubles. The rest had their own assets totaling 15,260 paper rubles.

Because of the late sowing, only a little millet was harvested in the first year. The following two summers yielded harvests of only three- to fourfold at high grain prices: 1 chetvert [?] rye cost 20 and wheat 24 paper rubles. In the three years that followed, the locusts destroyed blessed crops. The harsh winter of 1825 and the year 1833 with its famine and cattle epidemic are still fresh in the memory of the settlers. As a result of the earthquake on 11 January 1838, at half past ten in the evening, the water in the well has risen significantly. In 1838 the four-field system and fallow land were introduced. In 1845 there was no hay, only sowing of grain. The years 1846 and 1847 were blessed crops, but on 17 June of last year a hailstorm destroyed the whole crop. The storm of 25 December 1847 to 16 January 1848 caused many houses to collapse, whereby the affected families came into great need.

Franztal, 26 April 1848
Mayor Johann Flemming
Assistants: Heinrich Ediger, Andreas Becker
Teacher: Kornelius Siemens

Mayor … Assistants. Schulze was the standard designation for what we would call a mayor; the term Beisitzer (to be brutally literal, the one sitting by) identified the mayor’s assistants. These terms were in use already in Prussia and were carried over into the Mennonites’ Molotschna sojourn. According to Cornelius Krahn,

Every village had an assembly consisting of a Schulze (mayor), two Beisitzer (assistants), and a clerk. The Schulze and Beisitzer were elected by majority vote of the village assembly for a period of two years. Originally only landowners were eligible to vote and to occupy these offices. … The Schulze represented the village in the district assemblies and before higher government officials. He was responsible for the economic and the cultural welfare of the village. It was his duty to bring about peaceable settlement of disputes between the settlers, or, if this was impossible, to impose public work or fines. He was to prohibit the sale of liquor to villagers who were addicted to drunkenness and he was to enforce simplicity of life, i.e., to prevent the outlay of too much money for the household and entertaining visitors too frequently. The “Instructions” of 1800–1801 include a large number of detailed prescriptions which he had to enforce.

Johann Flemming. This is presumably the Johann Flaming listed at Franztal 1 in the 1847 voter list (see here). Unfortunately, this tells us little about who this person was, so we are left to offer a reasonable guess. The 1835 census does not list any Flamings living at Franztal, so we can assume that the 1848 mayor moved there sometime after the date of the census. There was a Flaming family living in Rudnerweide, which was only 2 miles west of Franztal. The father of that family was named Johann, as was his oldest living son. In all likelihood, the 1848 mayor of Franztal was the son Johann, who moved to the village next door when he established his own household. We know little about this person (GM 232386), but he seems the most likely candidate for being the owner of Franztal 1 and the mayor of the village.

Heinrich Ediger. The 1847 voter list lists Heinrich Ediger at Franztal 7, and GRANDMA confirms that this was Heinrich Salomon Ediger (61787). Born in 1811, Heinrich emigrated to Molotschna with his family in 1819. His family settled in Grossweide, less than a mile north of Franztal, and he presumably moved to Franztal sometime after 1835. He died just two years after the writing of the community report, at the age of thirty-nine.

Andreas Becker. This individual, whom the 1847 voter list locates at Franztal 15, is quite likely the son of Johann/Hans Becker, who died in 1813, when Andreas was a year old (GM 32071). His mother, born Ancke Richerts, then married Benjamin Ratzlaff, and they emigrated to Molotschna in 1819 and were among Franztal’s first residents (not landowners). The family, including Andreas, later moved to Rudnerweide, but Andreas moved back to Franztal sometime after the 1835 census.

Kornelius Siemens. The story behind the village teacher is interesting. Kornelius Siemens emigrated to Molotschna in 1817 and settled first in Ohrloff, then transferred to Franztal when it was founded (GM 61663). For the next twenty-seven years he lived at Franztal 16, until he decided to change careers in his early sixties. According to a record of household transfers from circa 1848,

Kornelius Siemens from Franzthal wants to transfer his household to Andreas Pankratz from Gnadenfeld. The 1835 census states that Kornelius Siemens was 51 and his son Cornelius 19. He wants to be a teacher. (see here)

Obviously Kornelius got his wish, since he is identified as the village teacher in the report. I rather doubt that Kornelius had dreamed of being a teacher all his life. More likely, he was tired of farming and viewed teaching as a physically easier way to eke out a living (see Goerz 1993, 34: “the schools in Molotschna were very primitive. There were no professionally trained teachers. The children were taught minimal reading and writing skills and a bit of arithmetic in a haphazard way and by anyone who happened to be available”).

So ends our examination of the 1848 Franztal Gemeindebericht. We know a great deal more than when we began, but there is more about Franztal yet to be learned.

Works Cited

Goerz, Heinrich. 1993. The Molotschna Settlement. Translated by Al Reimer and John B. Toews. Echo Historical Series. Winnipeg, MB: CMBC Publications and Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Krahn, Cornelius. 1956. Government of Mennonites in Russia. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.

German original

Im April 1820 kamen 15 Familien aus dem Kreise Schwez bei Kulm in Westpreußen hier an, um unter anderen auch diese Kolonie zu gründen. Es wurde von der Obrigkeit und einer zur Ansiedlung gewählten Kommission für zweckmäßig erachtet, jede Kolonie für 20 Feuerstellen einzurichten, aber nur 15 davon zu bebauen und die übrigen für die Nachkommen leer zu lassen. Bei einer kurz darauf erfolgten Revision der Pläne find es sich jedoch, daß die Kolonien nicht ihr gehöriges Land bekommen würden, weshalb alle Feuerstellen sogleich besetzt und eine Kolonie auf die anderen verteilt werden mußten. So kam es, daß am 18. Mai desselben Jahres dieser Kolonie noch 8 aus dem selbigen Kreise eingewanderte Familien beigefügt wurden.

Die Steppe, welche den Einwanderern von der hohen Krone geschenkt und dem damaligen Gebietsvorsteher und Pächter derselben Johann Kornies angewiese und in ihrem Beisein abgemessen wurde, war ganz leer. Nur einige Nomaden weideten hier zur Sommerzeit ihre Herden. Um die zu gründende Kolonie in der Mitte des Planes zu haben, wählten die Ansiedler einen Platz, welcher in der gleichen Vertiefung liegt, wo die Kolonie Großweide sich befindet. Diese Vertiefung war aber hier nur sehr gering und kaum bemerkbar. Sich in einer preußischen Niederung wähnend, gruben die Ansiedler sofort ein Loch in die Erde, um Wasser zu finden. Doch da hatten sie sich sehr getäuscht. Je tiefer sie gruben, desto härter und trockener wurde die Erde, bis sie in einer Tiefe von 8½ Faden das mühsame Graben einstellten und nach sechswöchentlichem Aufenthalt ihre Kolonie an den Fluß Juschanlee verlegten. Aber auch hier schien es unmöglich, durch den harten Fels bis auf's Wasser zu gelangen, und dasselbe mußte aus dem Flusse herbeigeschafft werden. Da das Dorf zweireihig angelegt war, so empfand diese Unbequemlichkeit namentlich die obere Reihe und es entstand lauter Unwille, bis endlich der Oberrichter Fadejew zur Besichtigung der neu angelegten Kolonie erschien und sie dem Fluß entlang einreihig anlegen ließ.

Im ersten Jahr wurde nur ein Wohnhaus fertig, die anderen nahmen den ersten Winter in wohnbar eingerichteten Abteilungen in Ställen oder auch in Erdbuden vorlieb, bis unter tätiger Mitwirkung des damaligen Dorfsvorstehers Peter Ratzlaff der völlige Ausbau der Häuser nach Zeit und Umständen vollendet wurde.

Die Kolonie ist in der Richtung von Nordost nach Südwest angelegt. Der Juschanlee bildet die Grenze zwischen ihrem und dem Lande der Tataren; bis zur entgegengesetzten Grenze am Lande des Dorfes Tschernigow beträgt die Entfernung 7 Werst. An der nordwestlichen Seite der Kolonie der Gasse entlang befinden sich die Obstgärten, welche je eine Dessjatine Flächeninhalt haben und bereits mit einer beträchtlichen Anzahl von edlen Obstbäumen bepflanzt sind. Am Ende der Obstgärten erhebt sich die Gehölzplantage, welche von der Kolonie aus mit ihren grünbelaubten Bäumen einen reizenden Anblick gewährt. Gegen Abend
grenzt die Kolonie an Großweide, gegen Morgen an Pastwa und ist von der Kreisstadt Berdjansk 60 Werst entlegen. Die vielen alten Grabhügel (Mohilen) verleihen dem Lande sozusagen eine warzige Gestalt. Die Oberfläche ist fast überall schwarze Erde, stellenweise etwas salpeterhaltig, mit einer Unterlage von Kies und Bruchstein, welche über einen Faden tief liegt und stellenweise zum Vorschein kommt. Obwohl die Erträglichkeit des Landes derjenigen an der Molotschna nicht gleichkommt, so gedeihen doch auch hier Bäume, Getreide und Futterkräuter. Heftige Stürme zerstören oft strichweise die Kornfelder.

Anfänglich wurde dieser Kolonie der Name Pschuchowka nach dem früheren Wohnorte der Ansiedler in Preußen gegeben. Da aber dieser Name als ein polnischer von der Obrigkeit nicht bestätigt wurde, so brachte Ohm Benjamin Ratzlaff, gegenwärtig Aeltester der Gemeinde zu Rudnerweide, der auch einer von den Gründern dieser Kolonie ist, den ihm aus Preußen her bekannten Namen Franztal in Vorschlag, welchem gleich alle beistimmten.

Die ersten 15 Familien dieser Kolonien bildeten bei ihrer Einwanderung eine Partie, hatten jedoch keinen Anführer. Von den beigezogenen aber sind einige mit der großen Partie, deren Anführer der nunmehr längst verewigte Älteste Ohm Franz Görz war, einige sind auch in kleinen Partien ohne Anführer in's Land gekommen.

18 unbemittelte Familien haben auf ihre Bitte einen Kronsvorschuß von 10,721 Rbl. Banko erhalten. Die übrigen hatten eigenes Vermögen, welches sich insgesamt auf 15,260 Rbl. Banko belaufen haben mag.

Wegen der späten Aussaat erntete man im ersten Jahr nur ein wenig Hirse. Die folgenden zwei Sommer brachten nur 3 bis 4fältige Ernten bei hohen Getreidepreisen. 1 Tscht. Roggen kostete 20, Weizen 24 Rub. Banko. In den drei folgenden Jahren vernichteten die Heuschrecken gesegnete Ernten. Der harte Winter 1825 und das Jahr 1833 mit seiner Hungersnot und Viehseuche sind noch frisch im Gedächtnis der Ansiedler. Infolge des Erdbebens am 11. Januar 1838 um halb 10 Uhr abends ist das Wasser in den Brunnen um ein Bedeutendes höher gestiegen. 1838 ist die Vierfelderwirtschaft und Schwarzbrache eingeführt
worden. 1845 gab es kein Heu und an Getreide nur die Aussaat. 1846 und 1847 waren gesegnete Ernten, allein am 17. Juni des letzten Jahres vernichtete ein Hagelwetter die ganze Ernte. Der Sturm vom 15. Dezember 1847 bis 16. Januar 1848 hat viele Häuser zum Einstürzen gebracht, wodurch die betreffenden Familien in große Not kamen.

Franztal, den 26. April 1848.
Schulz Johann Flemming.
Beisitzer: Heinrich Ediger, Andreas Becker
Schullehrer Kornelius Siemens

Franztal 19

Only three sentences remain in the 1848 Franztal Gemeindebericht, covering the years 1845 through early 1848.

Because of the late sowing, only a little millet was harvested in the first year. The following two summers yielded harvests of only three- to fourfold at high grain prices: 1 chetvert [?] rye cost 20 and wheat 24 paper rubles. In the three years that followed, the locusts destroyed blessed crops. The harsh winter of 1825 and the year 1833 with its famine and cattle epidemic are still fresh in the memory of the settlers. As a result of the earthquake on 11 January 1838, at half past ten in the evening, the water in the well has risen significantly. In 1838 the four-field system and fallow land were introduced. In 1845 there was no hay, only sowing of grain. The years 1846 and 1847 were blessed crops, but on 17 June of last year a hailstorm destroyed the whole crop. The storm of 25 December 1847 to 16 January 1848 caused many houses to collapse, whereby the affected families came into great need.

no hay, only sowing of grain. Several of the other community reports mention 1845 as a significant year, but they do so because Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, the second son of Tsar Nicholas I (reigned 1825–1855) toured the colony. Only Halbstadt, which was located in the opposite corner of Molotschna, references a possible problem with the crops: “In June 1845 heavy hailstorms … caused some damage in the fields, but at the beginning of July a second hailstorm smashed the almost ripe barley and rye fields. The watermelon fields, which were also destroyed, recovered again.” Does the Franztal report reflect the same reality? Perhaps, but all we can say with certainty is that the Franztal farmers did not put up any hay that year and refer only to sowing grain but not harvest of the same. Whatever the details may have been, the outcome seems clear enough: there was no harvest of any kind that year.

blessed crops. We have seen this term earlier in the paragraph, in the context of locusts destroying what was apparently a promising crop. Here again the term is applied to a lost crop for at least 1847 (see next), which may imply that the term is used in the Gemeindebericht to refer to promising crops that for one reason or another do not result in a bountiful harvest.

hailstorm destroyed the whole crop. The promising crop of 1847 was lost to a hailstorm on 17 June of that year. The event was no doubt fresh in the memories of the village, having happened only ten months before the report was written.

storm of 25 December 1847 to 16 January 1848. Only Ladekopp mentions this snowstorm, but it confirms what Franztal reports: “The dreadful blizzard that lasted for several weeks from 1847 to 1848 covered several houses almost with snow.”

caused many houses to collapse. Although it is possible that some house walls collapsed, it seems more likely that the roofs collapsed into the houses, due to the weight of the snow. As the Ladekopp Gemeindebericht notes, the snow was so deep that it nearly covered some houses; that amount of snow would easily cause roofs to collapse.

So ends the 1848 Franztal report proper. All that remains is to identify the individuals who authored the report, which we will do in the following post.

Franztal 18

As we have seen, the final paragraph of the 1848 Franztal Gemeindebericht recounts in chronological order the key events of the village’s history since its establishment in 1820. Thus far we have learned of the millet crop of 1820, the poor harvests of 1821 and 1822, the locust plagues of 1823–1825, the harsh winter of 1825, and the famine and cattle epidemic of 1833. 

This post begins with a notable event from 1838. As before, we repeat the entire paragraph before offering commentary.

Because of the late sowing, only a little millet was harvested in the first year. The following two summers yielded harvests of only three- to fourfold at high grain prices: 1 chetvert [?] rye cost 20 and wheat 24 paper rubles. In the three years that followed, the locusts destroyed blessed crops. The harsh winter of 1825 and the year 1833 with its famine and cattle epidemic are still fresh in the memory of the settlers. As a result of the earthquake on 11 January 1838, at half past ten in the evening, the water in the well has risen significantly. In 1838 the four-field system and fallow land were introduced. In 1845 there was no hay, only sowing of grain. The years 1846 and 1847 were blessed harvests, but on 17 June of last year a hailstorm destroyed the whole crop. The storm of 25 December 1847 to 16 January 1848 caused many houses to collapse, whereby the affected families came into great need.

earthquake on 11 January 1838, at half past ten in the evening. The earthquake mentioned here was not a strictly local event; in fact, four other Molotschna Gemeindeberichten mention this memorable event: Halbstadt, Muntau, Grossweide, and Mariental.

Even German villages in the surrounding area reported the earthquake in their own community reports. For example, Kirschwald in the Mariupol district was located roughly 50 miles northeast of Franztal. That village report stated: “The fearsome earthquake on 11 January 1838 at 9:00 in the evening caused no damage.” The nearby village of Rosengart reported: “The earthquake of 11 January 1838 passed without danger, yet many in those brief moments of fear awaited a dreadful future and looked with mournful glances at the earth’s shakings.” Schönbaum, in the same colony, stated: “The earthquake that took place on 11 January at 9:00 in the evening in 1838 lasted only a few minutes and did no harm.” Kronsdorf offered a largely similar report: “The earthquake of 11 January 1838 started here at 8:00 in the evening and lasted only a few minutes. Deeply shaken, one saw with mournful eyes and miserable gaze into the terrible future, but thank God, it passed without danger.” The Mariupol villages Rosenberg, Reichenberg, Elisabethdorf, and Bellagwesch gave roughly the same account. These villages were not Mennonite, being populated by German Lutherans and Catholics, yet their experiences as settlers in the Russian Empire were similar in many ways to those of our Mennonite forebears, and what we learn about them is frequently applicable to the main objects of our interest.

Although we will look at the other Molotschna reports in the next section, one is worth quoting here. The Halbstadt Gemeindebericht states: “On 11 January 1836 at 9:30 in the evening there was a strong earthquake here that caused no damage.” Note especially the year given in this report: 1836. All the other reports, Franztal included, agree that the year was 1838; Halbstadt’s variation serves as a good reminder that we dare not take a single report as representing the final truth of a matter. Humans make mistakes, and all facts must be checked before we can consider them confirmed.

the water in the well has risen significantly. The Franztal reports introduces an interesting result of the 1838 earthquake: the water in the well rose significantly. Before we discuss the rising water table, we must note that this is the first we have heard of a village well. When the village was founded, the people carried water from the river; clearly, however, sometime during the first eighteen years they dug a well that served their needs.

As a result of the earthquake, the water level rose significantly in Franztal’s well. Other Molotschna villages reported the same. Grossweide, a mile to Franztal’s northwest, wrote, “The water level is 7 to 10.5 Arschin [16–24 feet] deep and 3 Arschin [7 feet] higher since the earthquake of 1838 than it was before, but the earthquake damaged the condition of the water; it even got bitter in several wells.” So also Mariental, 5 miles southwest of Franztal: “The earthquake of 11 January 1838 meant that several of the 35- to 45-foot-deep wells collapsed, but since then the wells can be dug 10 feet shallower due to rising water levels.” Finally, Muntau reports, “The frightening earthquake of 11 January 1838, which broke out here at 9:30, had a pleasant consequence, in that the water in the wells has been higher since that time.” Clearly, in Franztal and other villages, the 1838 earthquake had a profound effect on the village wells.

four-field system. The year 1838 was also noteworthy for the introduction of the four-field system to Franztal. Other villages had actually begun to use the system the year prior, as reported by the Schönau Gemeindebericht: with “the four-field system, which was used from 1837 onwards, crops of ten- to twenty-fold are harvested with proper cultivation and favorable weather conditions.” The Petershagen report agrees and rightly attributes this development to the Agricultural Association under the leadership of Johann Cornies. Alexanderwohl and Altona also mention the four-field system as a significant advance on prior practices.

David Moon describes the development succinctly and clearly:

In 1837, Cornies ordered the Mennonites of Molotschna to introduce a four-field crop rotation in place of long-fallow agriculture. This was only four years after the “great drought” of 1833, and little over a decade after Molotschna had suffered from two successive harvest failures, caused in part by drought, in 1824 and 1825. Under the new rotation, each field followed the sequence: 1. Barley; 2. Spring wheat (girka or arnautka); 3. Winter rye or oats; and in the fourth year, the field was left fallow. Peter Köppen, an official of the Ministry of State Domains who inspected Tauride province in 1837, reported: “Out of 43 Mennonite colonies, 23 have already completed the introduction of four-field agriculture (vierfelder Wirtschaft).” He added that he had “invited” more Mennonites to follow suit in 1838. (Moon 2013, 253)

According to the Franztal report, they were one of those villages that followed suit in  1838.

fallow land. The mention of fallow land should not be taken to mean that the concept was unknown before 1838. In fact, farmers in that region practiced a long-fallow system in which they cultivated a plot of land until it was depleted, then left it fallow for fifteen years or more, after which it could be farmed again until it became unproductive, and so on (see Moon 2013, 111–13, 244, 252). The point of the reference to fallow land in this context is presumably to highlight the fact that allowing land to lie fallow every fourth year was part of the regular crop rotation.

We are nearing the end of the Franztal Gemeindebericht, but the events of several years remain to be discussed. We will take them up in the following post.

Work Cited

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.