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

the nationalistic appeals of their elders. Such initial enthusiasm was soon damp¬ ened by an inevitable anti-German hate campaign in tsarist Rus¬ sia. It found expression in the public press, the prohibition of German in public meetings and the closure of the German press. An unsuccessful attempt to seize the colonists’ land came with the property liquidation laws of 1915. Following the overthrow of the tsar, it was only the lenient minority policies of Kerensky’s Provisional Government in 1917 which saved the Mennonites from further reprisals. Now a momentary optimism emerged, at least judging by the wide-ranging agenda for economic, cultural and religious improvement tabled at the All-Mennonite Congress meet¬ ing in Orloff, Molotschna, during August 1917. In some ways the Orloff deliberations delineated the many complexities confronting the Russian Mennonites. They had tried to do what pacifists could in war: heal the wounded; support des¬ titute soldier’s families; maintain field hospitals and contribute funds to the Red Cross. In the process they also learned some¬ thing about the suffering masses in the Russian Empire and the repressive side of the tsarist system. Some of the young men re¬ turning from alternative service demanded Mennonites respond to an ailing Russia. Their elders, on the other hand, found it difficult to believe that a nation they had come to love had viewed them as an alien and potentially disloyal minority. Unfortunately the government which in 1917 promised them toleration and jus¬ tice in a new Russia was not destined to last. REVOLUTION AND CIVIL WAR Nothing in their past experience prepared the Mennonites for the cataclysmic changes which enveloped them following the Bol¬ shevik Revolution late in 1917. Red Army units entered the south¬ ern Ukraine early in 1918. Almost immediately the region was subjected to an intense requisitioning of cattle, agricultural ma¬ chinery and household inventory. Roving soldiers collected valu¬ ables and money at gunpoint. Mennonite self-government, en¬ during for more than a century now came under the jurisdiction of local soviets (councils of workers and peasants), who often used their newly won powers to better their economic status. 4 JOURNEYS Little wonder that the Mennonites welcomed the German oc¬ cupation troops which moved into the Ukraine during April 1918, under the terms of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Their happiness was short-lived. By November 1918, Germany’s military collapse meant the withdrawal of troops from the Ukraine. Villages soon became subject to attacks from marauding bands. In the wake of widespread robbery, rape and murder, the Mennonites, encour¬ aged by German officers, formed a militia for self-defense {Selbstschutz). Initially its chief opponent was the partisan army of Nestor Makhno, an avid anarchist who preferred to target Ger¬ man settlements. In March 1919, the Selbstschutz inadvertently e