A Pilgrimage Of Faith, J.B. Toews, 1993

departure on the years of Mennonite Brethren participation in the Pietist ic Blankenburg Alliance Bible Conferences,9 For whatever reasons, the result was that self-preservation with the weapons of war took 141 A PILGRIMAGE OF FAITH precedence over faithfulness to the teachings of Jesus, The consequences were far-reaching. The Mermonites lost both their right of exemption from military service and their historic witness.10 Anarchy and Starvation The occupying German forces withdrew in November, 1918. The Mennonite Selbstscbutz (self-defense corps) proved inadequate. During the winter of 1919-1920 Mennonite colonies Fell prey to the terrorizing anarchist bands of Nestor Makhno, A survivor from a village in the Sagradovka colony described the carnage: Nearly everybody in our village was struck down or mur- dered-old men of eighty as well as infants of a few weeks. This tenor lasted from 7 to 8 o'clock, and during that time ninety-six persons were killed. After the bandits had robbed us of all our money and such personal be- longings as they could carry with them they set fire to the buildings and departed for the other villages.11 According to John B. Toews, "the mutilations perpetrated by the bandits were particularly gruesome and mindless. It was violence for the sake of violence."12 The movement of the White and Red armies-the Ukraine being the major theater of the civil war-spread typhus, venereal disease and cholera in epidemic proportions. The Chortitza Colony, with a pre-war population of 15,000, was most severely affected, recording a casualty list of seven thousand- Of the remaining eight thou- sand, 1,200 died of typhus.13 Plundering by the warring armies and the communist government that followed, plus the natural disaster of extreme drought, caused the complete col- lapse of the economic structure. The result was widespread famine in Russia,14 Vast numbers of Mennonites were completely demoral- 142 IN THE SHADOW OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION ized The large relief operation mounted by the Mennonite churches from North America and Holland was the only ray of light in the dense darkness of despair.15 Light and darkness were in intense conflict. The Spirit of God and the forces of wickedness struggled for the hearts of a people who pro- fessed to be heirs of the dynamic spiritual movement of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists, David M Hofer, an American Krimmer Mennonite Brethren leader who visited the colonies in the early 1920s, noted that the "people became bitter, hard and cruel toward their own brothers. The spiritual and moral