JOURNEYS Mennonite Stories of Faith and Survival in Stalins Russia, John B. Toews, 1998

such materials provided the secret police with a pre¬ text for espionage charges. Potentially Mennonite villages may have had access to two communist German language publications — the Deutsch-Ukrainische Zeitung and the Moscow newspaper, the Deutsche Zentral-Zeitung. When the Germans occupied the Chortitza and Molotschna settlements in 1941, their Mennonite inhabitants had experienced another loss. Most civic and ecclesiastical records had been de¬ stroyed or relocated by the retreating Red Army. This combined with the devastation of the earlier Civil War (1918-1919) meant that communities lost all records of the past in two decades. In some villages all birth, death and marriage records vanished. The destruction of the old was accelerated with the introduc¬ tion of the cinema. By 1932 literature and the arts were control¬ led by the slogan “socialist realism.” On the village level this at¬ tempt at cultural uniformity was implemented by the use of the film. Since other forms of cultural expression were generally lack¬ ing, the cinema was singularly successful in generating the ideo¬ logical uniformity demanded in the Russia of the 1930s. In the Chortitza volost for example, the town of Chortitza possessed a theatre seating 170, while Einlage had one seating 240 persons. Some villages were serviced by a mobile film unit, others pos¬ sessed their own projectors. One crucial ingredient of Mennonite life had virtually van¬ ished by the mid-thirties — the church. Here the tactics used against the kulak — excessive grain deliveries and high taxation — were 12 JOURNEYS applied against both the Mennonite churches and their ministers. When the local congregation could no longer pay the steadily aug¬ menting property taxes the church building was confiscated for non-religious purposes. They were used as club houses, theaters, schools, granaries or administrative offices. Others were disman¬ tled and the materials used for other buildings. All traditional religious activities were banned — Sunday services, funerals, wed¬ dings, baptisms. Only Bible studies and prayer meetings, usually conducted secretly, provided the community with religious nur¬ ture. By 1935 almost all Mennonite ministers had fled, were ex¬ iled or, like Aron Warkentin, gradually faded into oblivion in a bid for survival. Some churches, often without ministers, resumed services in the old buildings during the Nazi occupation. Church choirs appear to have played an important role during this brief interval. The cultural and identity losses associated with the reorgani¬ zation of the schools, the closure of churches and the exile of min¬ isters was partially offset by one element of cultural continuity. Low German remained the language of the village and the home in most communities. Its use signified a culture separate from the surrounding one and was a constant reminder of another identity and another time. It provided for in