So This Happened

Fun group.

Fun time!

A video from beginning to landing can be viewed on Flickr (split into two segments) here and here.

Thanks to Ian (jumper), Cody (camera), and the rest of the good people at Mile-Hi Skydiving! I highly recommend both Mile-Hi and the entire experience!

Russian Money

A recent post led us into questions about the Russian ruble of the first half of the nineteenth century, which in turn leads us to this post of background and clarification.

The earlier post referred both to rubles (Johann Cornies was worth more than a million rubles) and to silver rubles (a servant could earn 30–70 silver rubles, presumably per year). Further research reveals the differences between the two.

To begin, we should be clear that a ruble is, at base, a unit of measure, not an object per se. It may be put into objective form as a coin or a bill, but that state is derivative, not primary. This may seem like fussing over minutiae, but it helps us to understand the language of rubles in nineteenth-century Russia.

One of the oldest measurements of currency in the world, the ruble was used widely as early as the thirteenth century. According to Jarmo T. Kotilaine, “The term derives from the verb rubit (to cut), since the original rubles were silver bars notched at intervals to facilitate cutting” (2004, 1306). 

The ruble was issued as a copper coin in the seventeenth century but was standardized as a silver coin of a specified weight in the early eighteenth century. However, the Russian government also issued gold and copper rubles during this period. To complicate matters even further, “from 1769 to 1849, irredeemable paper promissory notes called assignatsii … circulated alongside the metal currency” (Kotilaine 2004, 1307). The word irredeemable is important here, since it signifies that this paper money, like ours today, could not be exchanged for a specified amount of silver or other precious metal. 

1834 silver ruble bearing the image of Nicholas I.
See the Yale University collection here.

Deficit spending and government borrowing around the time of Russia’s wars with Napoleon spurred high inflation and general monetary instability throughout the first third of the nineteenth century. To restore order, Nicholas I, tsar from 1825 to 1855, reestablished the silver ruble as the basic currency unit, as well as issuing redeemable, or convertible, paper rubles between 1843 and 1853.

During the time around the Crimean War (1853–1856), the Russian government returned to its earlier habit of funding a war by printing money. In addition, during the decade that followed Russia issued silver rubles with a decreased silver content. The end result of these policies was predictable: a soaring inflation rate.

This brief history enables us to imagine a little more precisely the worlds in which our ancestors lived, whether Benjamin 2 during the time of Nicholas I’s reforms or David and Peter D during the inflationary years following the Crimean War. This survey also helps us to understand several of the comments that von Haxthausen made in his travel journal (see here).

1. Payment of Mennonite servants was made in silver rubles. This was a hard currency whose value was fixed and thus stable. It is possible that payment for services rendered was commonly made in silver rubles, but we cannot say that for certain. What we do know is that the Mennonite servants could rely on the value of the payment they would receive, since the coinage retained its value far better than any paper money ever could.

2. Johann Cornies’s wealth was said to be in excess of 1,000,000 rubles. It seems obvious now that the word silver is not used because the value of his holdings was not fixed but was subject to the rise and fall of the economy. Cornies was no doubt the richest person in the colony, but his wealth was not liquid, covertible; thus it needed to be measured in rubles as a monetary unit, not imagined in terms of silver coins.

1843 1 ruble note

3. To take this one step further, it is almost certain that Cornies’s wealth was measured, so to speak, in terms of paper rubles. Earlier in von Haxthasen’s account of the Mennonites he mentions that the Russian government had advanced the Chortitza colony a sum of 341,800 silver rubles, which the translator clarifies in terms of British pounds: £54,830 (1856, 1:424).

The German edition offers a different perspective, since it clarifies the value of 341,800 silver rubles by stating it in terms of paper rubles (Rubel Banco): 1,196,300 (1847, 2:175). By dividing the second figure by the first, we can determine that around 1847 one silver ruble was worth 3.5 paper rubles. Or, to turn things around, a paper ruble was actually worth only a little more than a quarter of a silver ruble—a clear sign of an inflationary economy.

4. One final note: based on this new information we should recalculate the earlier measure of Johann Cornies’s wealth. His 1,000,000 net worth would be equivalent to 285,714 silver rubles and thus, by extension, the same as the salaries of 4,082 Mennonite servants being paid 70 silver rubles a year (not the over 14,000 estimated earlier). Cornies was still incredibly wealthy, just not as much as we had previously imagined.

Works Consulted

Haxthausen, August von. 1847. Studien über die innern Zustände, das Volksleben und insbesondere die ländlichen Einrichtungen Russlands. 2 vols. Hanover: Hahn. Available online: vol. 1, vol. 2. For the section on the Mennonites, see pages 171–96 in volume 2.

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

Kotilaine, Jarmo T. 2004. Ruble. Pages 1306–7 in Encyclopedia of Russian History. Edited by James R. Millar. New York: Thomson Gale.

Pravda.ru. 2007. Russian Ruble Was World’s Hardest Currency in Late 19th Century. Translated by Guerman Grachev. Available online here.

Travel Journal 4

With a promise to return as soon as time permits to the series The Russian Steppe and Searching for Benjamin’s Father, we continue for the moment with the last full entry from the Baron von Haxthausen travel journal. The previous post recorded the baron’s high assessment of Johann Cornies; this is not all that von Haxthausen has to say about Cornies, but first we read similarly laudatory comments about Mennonites in general:

A stranger cannot fail to be struck by the cordial and brotherly feeling which prevails among the Mennonites; he will not find the ceremonious politeness of the Russian peasants, nor the kissing and embracing in which the latter indulge as soon as the brandy mounts into their heads: they are genuine German peasants, stiff and awkward in their movements, taciturn, and each the ruler of his own little kingdom; but when called upon, ready at a moment to assist and stand by one another.

Nowhere is a more complete equality observable in all that relates to religious institutions than among the Mennonites. Agriculture is with them a religious duty, and no one can be either more or less than a peasant; all trades and handicraft are subordinate, and have reference to agriculture: their ruling officers, and even their preachers, are themselves peasants. This prevailing equality is most clearly manifested in the relation between master and servant; I noticed this particularly between Herr Kornies and the servant who drove us; it appeared more like the relation of a son to his father than of a servant to his master. On my remarking this to Herr Kornies, he replied, “With us it is a rule that every one, even the son of the richest peasant, should live as a servant for a few years with one of the neighbours; service therefore with us does not constitute the occupation of a class, but is one step in life, a school; one of my younger brothers was for some time a servant [429] with me, and he is now my superintendent. We pay our men-servants and girls very high wages—from thirty to seventy silver roubles—and keep this custom up strictly, which is found to bring us no loss. In this way even a poor man has an opportunity of accumulating a small fortune, and here, where there is plenty of fertile waste land, of establishing a small farm and becoming a peasant himself. It is by no means unusual for the daughters even of rich peasants to marry a servant of the house, however poor, provided he is worthy and industrious. My daughters may marry any one, even a servant, if she likes him and he is a good man.” (von Haxthausen 1856, 1:428–29)

Several of von Haxthausen’s comments deserve special mention. As mentioned previously (see here), von Haxthausen is eager to praise the Mennonites because he observes “Germanic” traits among and within them. Of course, the baron himself was German, which explains to a certain extent his dismissive attitude toward Russian peasants and high praise of Germanic ones (i.e., Mennonites). In other words, we should not regard von Haxthausen’s account as a sober, objective description of Mennonite life.

In spite of von Haxthausen’s ethnic-motivated bias in favor of the Mennonites, we can trust some elements of his description. For example, agriculture did play a central role within this particular branch of the the Mennonite community of faith, which sought to live as the “quiet in the land.” In addition, there was no professional class of clergy; rather, the leaders of and preachers in the church were lay ministers who worked just like everyone else.

Likewise, the practice of older children (one imagines teenagers) working within other homes as servants is attested elsewhere. Still, we should not imagine that every child so served or that every household was able to hire one or more servants. One wonders, how many of our ancestors served in the houses of others or, conversely, if any were able to employ others as servants. My understanding is that, as time went on, Mennonites employed more Russians than fellow Mennonites as servants, but this bears further examination.

At this point von Haxthausen turns his focus back on Johann Cornies:

Herr Kornies had only one son and daughter, the latter a pretty girl of eighteen, but as yet unbaptized, and he was said to have amassed a fortune of above a million roubles. It is not however to be inferred that disparity of fortune constitutes in all cases no barrier, or that a purse-proud spirit is not found here also occasionally. I heard various evils which were said to prevail among the Mennonites in the Circle of Khortitz [i.e., the Chortitza colony]; but these find no sympathy or response in the public opinions or the customs of the people: they are exceptions, not the rule.

We dined with Herr Kornies; the dinner consisted of genuine and very palatable household fare: everything placed on the table, even the wine, was the produce of his own farm; the dishes and furniture were old-fashioned and substantial. His wife and daughter did not dine with us; the former remained in the kitchen, and superintended the cooking, while the daughter waited upon the guests at dinner, according to the old German custom. On the 26th of July I drove with Herr Kornies to the [430] other German colonies, which are mostly inhabited by Würtemberg [an area in soutwest Germany] peasants, etc. Neither the order and discipline nor the wealth and comfort which are found among the Mennonites prevail here. These colonies languished for a long period, but they have in some degree revived of late, and in some of the villages there begins to be an appearance of wealth.

I have described in this detailed manner the economical state of the Mennonite colony on the Malotchnaya, as it furnishes the strongest proofs of German industry, love of order, cultivation and morality, and likewise because its importance to Russia has not yet been sufficiently recognized. In no district of Russia is there so high a state of civilization, or of the culture of the soil. The Mennonites may serve as a model, to the Government and people, of what may be effected by industry, morality, and order; and likewise in the cultivation and particularly the planting of the Steppe and the whole of Southern Russia, which is indeed the most important point in the whole internal policy of the country. If entire Southern Russia were cultivated like this district, Moscow and St. Petersburg would no longer be the sole centres of the Empire, but their privileges in this respect would be shared by Kharkof, or Ekaterinoslaf and Odessa. (von Haxthausen 1856, 1:429–30)

On the 28th of July I bade adieu to these worthy people. Herr Kornies accompanied me as far as Terpcnic, where I parted from him, and continued my journey toward the tongue of land which separates the Putrid Sea from the Sea of Azof. 

First we should clear up a minor disagreement between von Haxthausen’s quoting of Cornies about his daughters (plural) being free to marry anyone of good character and the following paragraph’s report that Cornies had only one daughter. Happily, the German original of von Haxthausen’s work is also available online, and it has the singular daughter (Tochter, not Töchter) in the quote of Cornies, which should be translated “My daughter may marry any one.”

Another matter of minor curiosity is Cornies’s net worth: 1,000,000 rubles. It is exceedingly difficult to compare the value of Russian currency in 1843 with our own currency today. More enlightening is to look at Cornies’s wealth within his own context. As noted in an earlier extract above, a Mennonite servant earned between 30 and 70 silver rubles a year (see here for 1860 evidence that these 1843 figures are annual wages). If so, then Cornies’s 1,000,000 (silver?) rubles would be equivalent to the annual wages of over 14,000 servants being paid 70 rubles a year. Another angle on Cornies’s wealth is provided by his own 1827 correspondence about the purchase and sale of Merino sheep to the community herd. Cornies apparently funded the initial purchase of 219 sheep on his own and then asked the Molotschna Mennonite District Office to pay him 24,000 rubles (110 rubles a sheep) for those that would become community property. The District Office could not expend such an amount and asked to pay off the debt over a ten-year period (see Cornies 2015, 209–10, text 142). It seems that Cornies was not only wealthier than all other Mennonites in Molotschna but was also in this case better off than the community treasury.

Of interest also is von Haxthausen’s return to his praise of the Mennonites as exemplars of all that was good about German values and culture. On his tour of Russia, the baron was no disinterested observer but rather an ambassador and advocate for things German. That being said, he was not alone in regarding the Mennonites as model farmers; the Russian government agreed that all those who lived around the Mennonites should emulate their practices so that the steppe could be transformed from grassland to cropland whose harvests would not only feed a nation but also stoke an economy by exporting grain to other countries across Europe and beyond.

* A glance through the German edition of von Haxthausen’s work reveals that in some places the English translation abridged his original text significantly. Further investigation of his original report of the Russian Mennonites is warranted. 

Works 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.

Haxthausen, August von. 1847. Studien über die innern Zustände, das Volksleben und insbesondere die ländlichen Einrichtungen Russlands. 2 vols. Hanover: Hahn. Available online: vol. 1, vol. 2. For the section on the Mennonites, see pages 171–96 in volume 2.

———. 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 3

The first post in this series (here) took us briefly to the first Russian Mennonite colony: Chortitza; the second followed von Haxthausen’s journey to Molotschna and his attendance at a church service in Ohrloff (here). As promised, this post turns to someone who captured von Haxthausen’s attention and earned his respect, someone who was no doubt known to Benjamin Buller and family, the man who founded the village of Waldheim, where Benjamin lived in 1843 and where his son David (Grandpa Chris’s great-grandfather) died many years later: Johann Cornies.

We have encountered Cornies from time to time and even read excerpts from his collected papers and letters (type his last name in the search bar to the upper right to retrieve all the posts). As stated often, Cornies was the most influential person in Molotschna and a person of some renown even among Russia’s governing officials. Although Cornies was disliked by many Molotschna residents,* he clearly caught von Haxthausen’s eye and made a significant impression.

On our return home, I made the acquaintance of a man who is unquestionably one of the most interesting persons among the Germans in Russia. John Kornies, [426] a native of West Prussia, when quite young, went with his parents, in the beginning of the present century, to settle on the Malotchnaya; he had received no school instruction, but possessed a clear and ingenious mind, an earnest character, an acute and practical understanding and loving heart; by his self-education he has unquestionably attained the highest degree of spiritual culture. Yet whilst by his mental superiority, his upright and tried character, he has become one of the most influential men in Southern Russia, he has remained in his family and domestic life, and his whole manner, the simple, plain, and unpretending peasant. The Emperor of Russia might at any time appoint him governor of the country, and he would be in his right place; but he will consent to be nothing but a Mennonite peasant, having promised at his baptism, “according to the duty of a Christian, not to rule, and not to wield the sword.” He has no rank or order, being obliged by a religious feeling to refuse both, although better entitled to them than many who are covered with decorations in Russia. In no other country could the influence of his personal character be more manifest than in Russia, where such power is seldom found without the accompaniment of rank and orders. The noble Prince Woronzof would hardly take any step in the internal government of this district without asking the advice of John Kornies.

We spent this day in inspecting all the details of the Colony, examining almost every house and farmyard, the agricultural implements, cattle, garden plants, crops, etc.  (425–26)

As before, von Haxthausen’s narrative should be viewed with some skepticism. In the first place, although Cornies did maintain a close connection with the day-to-day demands of farming, he did not live as a simple peasant. In fact, his house in Ohrloff (photo on the right) was impressive by anyone’s standards. In addition, Cornies was disliked by many precisely because he often imposed his ideas and his will on others, ruling them for their own good.

This is not to say that Cornies was a bad person. He was rather a visionary who was committed to leading his community to a better life—whether they liked it or not. Love him or hate him, Cornies did produce results, which is why men such as Prince Woronzof, Governor General of Caucasia and reputedly the second most powerful man in the empire, solicited his help and advice on more than a few occasions. Cornies’s ability to produce results was also on display in the Nogai villages that were founded under his direction.

The following day I drove with Herr Kornies to Akcima, a neighbouring Nogai Tatar village, and was not a little astonished to see apparently a perfectly German one on the Mennonite model. Herr Kornies had induced the [427] Tatars to construct their villages in this manner, assisting them in every way; a great many were already built according to his instructions, and I was informed that he had already settled thus seventeen thousand Tatars. In this village we met a deputation from a large body of Tatars, who had not yet acquired a settlement, and who came to him and said, “Thou art the father of our people; be our father also, and assist us as thou hast assisted the rest!”

The houses in this village were all built with regularity and solid structure; they had chimneys and enclosed courtyards. In front of the house-doors generally stand two poplars, with small flower-beds on each side; in the gardens I noticed a great many fruit-trees, and in the courtyard ploughs, harrows, and carts of Mennonite construction; in one corner was a large quantity of squared pieces of dung, for fuel, carefully piled up.

The master of the farmhouse, a handsome and powerful Tatar, who was the chief man in the village, received Herr Kornies with kindness and respectfully, and conducted us into the house. The arrangement was the same as in the Mennonite dwellings; although the furniture of the kitchen and dwelling-room was not so plentiful and old-fashioned as in the latter, it was not too scanty; there were tables and chairs, kettles and pails, and even a pan for making omelets. (426–27)

Von Haxthausen correctly notes the similarity of the Nogai villages to Mennonite ones, but he slightly muddles the relation between the two. It was not exactly the case that Nogai villages were patterned after Mennonite ones. Rather, starting with several basic organizational principles of the Molotschna Mennonite villages, Cornies developed them into a highly and rigidly structured village plan that he used to plan and construct the Nogai villages. These villages were his testing ground, so to speak, for the sort of carefully organized, highly efficient, and exceedingly productive Mennonite villages that he hoped to establish. Waldheim, where Benjamin Buller and family lived, was just such a village.

Cornies applied the same care to developing his own holdings:

From hence we drove to a large farm belonging to Herr Kornies, which he had established, several thousand dessetinas in extent. The buildings were all new, and of brick; the cattle were very fine, and of the West Prussian stock, with sheep of an improved breed. This farm was superintended by the brother of Herr Kornies. (428)

We cannot say which farm von Haxthausen visited, for Cornies had three large plots: a 10,000-acre sheep farm that he mostly leased from the government; another estate of nearly 9,500 acres; and a third farm of over 5,000 acres—giving Cornies roughly 25,000 acres of pasture and farmland. With regard to the brick-made buildings, Walter Quiring writes that Cornies’s “own brickyard produced the bricks necessary for his many buildings.” Finally, although von Haxthausen mentions cattle and sheep, Quiring offers additional information: “500 horses, 8,000 sheep, and 200 head of cattle of Dutch stock” (1847 numbers).

It is no surprise that von Haxthausen was favorably impressed by Cornies’s industry and wealth; they clearly set Cornies apart from the typical person, Mennonite or not. However, that is not what is most striking about this part of the account. What catches the eye and the imagination is a simple sentence early on: “We spent this day in inspecting all the details of the Colony, examining almost every house and farmyard, the agricultural implements, cattle, garden plants, crops, etc.” One wonders, did Cornies and his guest visit Waldheim that day? If so, did Benjamin and family see Cornies and von Haxthausen on their tour, perhaps even extend a greeting as they passed by?


Note
* One wonders how Benjamin Buller viewed Cornies. Did he approve of Cornies’s progressive ways and high expectations of all Molotschna residents, or did he find find Cornies’s demanding approach and authoritarian attitude distasteful, even at odds with key tenets of the Mennonite faith. To ask the question more pointedly, did dislike of Cornies play any role in the 1845 decision of thirty-five Waldheim families (Benjamin Buller among them) to leave their Molotschna village and establish a new village in Volhynia, namely, Heinrichsdorf (see here, here, and here)? We will take up this question at some point in the future.

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.

Quiring, Walter. 1955. Cornies, Johann (1789–1848). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available here.