The Great Trek of the Russian Mennonites to Central Asia, 1880-1884, Fred Richard Belk, 1976

t Khiva to reorganize the settlement into a collective farm. After the mayor met with the members of the settlement he reported to the officials that they did not want to be collectivized because they believed in personal freedom and wanted the right to control their own affairs. Besides, they argued, they had been guaranteed these rights earlier by governmental decree.* Soon several Soviet officials appeared in Ak Metchet to hold a town meeting of their own. At this meeting the mayor once more announced to the people what the officials wanted and again there were no signs of positive response in the audience. That night the mayor was arrested and jailed. The following night the officials called another meeting, saw to it that a new mayor was elected, and made the same demand of the popu- lation. The Mennonites again voted against collectivization. That night the new mayor disappeared and with him the elder of the congregation. This same procedure was repeated nightly until ten hostages had been arrested.* Still the people refused to comply, and the exasperated officials began seeking new alternative measures to jar them from their stubborn complacency. Soon it was announced that the ten persons recently arrested were to be tried publicly as counterrevolutionaries. When the prisoners returned to Ak Metchet for trial they were pale and thin and sur- rounded by a heavily armed guard. The next day the trial began at three o'clock in the afternoon and lasted far into the night. The testimony by these hostages was impressively defiant: with a Bible in hand, each of them unashamedly stated that the severest punishment would not make them waver from their belief that collectivism was 192 The Great Trek of the Russian Mennonites wrong for them and not God's will. After their lengthy testimony the verdict came swiftly: death by firing squad for each of them, and their families were to be exiled to Siberia! On the following day government trucks appeared to take the families to be exiled. A quiet crowd slowly enveloped the area around the trucks. Then, softly at first, a chant began demanding that all or none be taken: “all or none, all or none’ rang through the streets of Ak Metchet. As the momentum of the chant increased some began to prostrate themselves before the wheels of the trucks; others piled on top of them forming a human barricade against this injustice. The truck drivers, shocked by Mennonite dedication to each other and their courageous display of civil disobedience, left the trucks where they stood and walked back to Khiva for further orders.’ After several days many trucks came to Ak Metchet — this time to take the entire colony to an unknown destination. Each family was permitted to take as many belongings as they could carry. Surprisingly, they submitted to this new Soviet move very obediently even though they were leaving a village that had been their home for more than half a century.