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

As the trucks drove away from the village, tears flowed freely, but to bolster their faith they sang hymns to show they had no fear. The trucks took them to the Amu Darya port of Novo-Urgench where they boarded boats, and after a_ long river journey, they took a train to Samarkand. From there trucks transported them about 100 miles southeastward into the desert for resettlement. To their surprise they found themselves in the area their ancestors had wanted to settle over fifty years earlier — Shari-i-Sabs.* Thus Mennonite Ak Metchet was no more, and its brave people were once again pioneers in a new region that their forefathers had sought before them.’ Their former village was settled by Uzbeks. In 1947 a visitor reported that although one could still see remnants of Mennonite influence, Muslim cu:ture now dominated the area."” The Aulie Ata Mennonites did not experience such a dramatic turn of fate as their Ak Metchet brethren. In fact, little is known about those Mennonites who remained behind in the villages of Aulie Ata. We do know, however, to what extent they remained true to their anti- militaristic beliefs. None of the original settlers were involved in mil- itary service, but as the years passed, the young men in newly ar- rived Mennonite families could be found in state forests and work- ing on trains of the medical corps and in hospitals during World War I. In the first decades of the twentieth century these people ap- Conclusion 193 parently abandoned the millennialist doctrine that originally inspired their trek to Central Aisa and slowly acculturated to Soviet society. “Today it is estimated that approximately 100,000 people living in Siberia and Central Asia have a German Mennonite ethnic back- ground. Of this number about 5000 live in areas settled by Great Trek Mennonites, but not all of these people are practicing Mennonites because of their assimilation into the Russian culture. Those who do openly practice their Mennonite faith generally worship in Russian Baptist Churches as, for example, in Moscow and Alma Ata. Very little contact exists today between Russian Mennonites and their coun- terparts in the United States other than through correspondence. Many Canadian Mennonites have had not only a steady stream of let- ters but also exchange visits with their Russian coreligionists because visas for Canadian visitors can be obtained more easily than those for the United States." one Fates of Survivors in America The fate of the survivors of the Great Trek who safely made it to America is a story in itself and not within the scope of this work. Suf- fice to say that following their initial migration of 1884 to Newton, Kansas, and Beatrice, Nebraska, veterans of the Central Asia trek spread widely over the North American continent. Many of the de- scendants of the original group were assimilated and concentrated in Mennonite communities in the states of Kansas, Nebraska,