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

formal social networking at a time when village self-government was supplanted by the collec¬ tive and when trusted leaders emerging out of the community were replaced by outside party radicals. For Mennonite prisoners meeting in exile it provided a ready identity badge and signified a belonging together. DEPORTATION Twentieth century German politics deeply impacted the Ger¬ mans and Mennonites living in the Ukraine. The treaty of Brest Litovsk brought with it a German occupation of much of the Ukraine in 1918. Such an event was not easily forgotten. Thanks to Hitler’s rabid anti-Bolschevism Russia’s Germans were easy tar¬ gets for charges of espionage and fifth column activities during the purges of the mid-1930s. The momentary respite generated by the Russo-German Treaty of August 23, 1 939, soon gave way to the 1941 catastrophe. In 1941 the world as they knew it came to an end for the Mennonites living in the western portion of the Soviet Empire. UNDERSTANDING THE MEMOIRS 13 Fearful of Hitler’s attack in June 1941, the Presidium of the Su¬ preme Soviet decreed the deportation of the Volga Germans on August 28, 1941. The order, which banished them to Kazakhstan, the Altai territory as well as the provinces of Omsk and Novosibirsk, also encompassed all Germans living in the Crimea and the Ukraine. Though well over half a million citizens of German ori¬ gin were eventually deported eastward, many on the west side of the Dnieper found themselves under German occupation thanks to the rapid advance of German armoured columns. Many Mennonites living in the Zagradovka and Chortitza settlements fortunately escaped mass deportation. By and large local commu¬ nist authorities placed a priority on the evacuation of livestock and farm machinery. The massive retreat of Red Army personnel and equipment, the lack of horses and wagons, the many refugees and the relatively few bridges across the Dnieper - such events and circumstances allowed most Mennonites west of the Dnieper to avoid deportation. Many of the Molotschna Mennonites were not so fortunate, though the rapid German crossing of the Dnieper north of the settlement frustrated the Soviet exile of the north¬ western villages. As a result the northern villages of the Molotschna lost only ten to fifteen percent of their population while some of the southern villages were almost totally evacuated. In Justina Marten s Kleefeld, for example, only twenty-five people remained. Well over five hundred villagers including Justina were sent east¬ ward. Germans who found themselves in Central Asia or Eastern Russia were subjected to a special command administration which severely limited their freedom of movement and forced them to report to local authorities monthly or sometimes weekly. Thanks to a special appeal by Konrad Adenauer on the occasion of a state visit in 1955, the restrictions were finally abolished on December 13, 1955. The Germans were is