THE MENNONITE BROTHERHOOD IN RUSSIA (1789 - 1910), P. M. Friesen, 1911

Merino sheep-raising and the silk industry, which had for decades been an important part of the economy, have been nearly completely supplanted by grain-farming. . . .] All three districts, or in other words ‘the Mennonite Brotherhood of New Russia' have for some Documentary Supplement 123 time had their own fire insurance company. . . . The Brotherhood formulates its own rules without any participation of the government agencies. . . .” [Thus far Klaus.] d) Unfortunately, however, already long before 1860 the problem of the landless was gnawing like a cancer at this co mmuni ty. The 165,000 dessiatines of crown lands were owned, directly or indirectly, by one third 49 of the families who, with all the power and means available to a ruling class, kept the landless families from sharing in any of its benefits. Even though they were bound together by the closest ties of ancestry and religion, the differences between these two “estates,” where father and son, brother and brother, minister and member of the congregation often confronted one another in accordance with the position each had been allocated by fate, became so great as to end in a kind of "class war” which later ran its course in the most wretched fashion during the ’60s, '70s and ’80s. It came to a close only when new tracts of land were made available through private owners, or by the mother colonies who had acquired land for purposes of expansion. The history of this “land- question” has still to be written! V. Letters of Counsel Written by a Chortitza Elder (Supplement to H32) Let us turn our special attention once more to Chortitza. The following letters of Elder Jakob Dyk, Sr., of 1846 to Isaak Penner, school teacher in Rosengart, which we present here, occasionally somewhat abbreviated, as given in the Mennonitische Rundschau of 1900, show that in spite of all the intellectual and spiritual impoverish- ment, 50 especially of the vast majority of the spiritual leaders of both colonies, some “seed” was always present [see Peter Hildebrand!]. The first letter: “Dear friend in Christ! May the Spirit of Truth, to which the world cannot attain, guide you, as He can and wills to do, into all truth. I am not worthy to be called your teacher; but together with you I thank God the Father through Christ that the heavenly teacher, in the person of the Holy Spirit, has received you into His school. I note from your letter that He has already begun to instruct you; for His first order of business, after He has begun to work within us, is to convict us of the worldliness in us (John 16:8), that is, He reminds us of our sins, a remembrance which in turn produces a repentance unto salvation, II Cor. 7:10. Thus we are humbled, and Peter says that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (I Peter 5:5). This grace is manifested in that He forgives all our sins through Christ and imparts to us a hatred of sins and their lusts. Many tim