Perilous Journey: The Mennonite Brethren in Russia 1860-1910, John B. Toews, 1988

d to hear that Heese received an annual salary of 800 rubles, a free house plus other benefits. 14 There was also a rumor that Heese himself was extremely unhappy about the local school situation. 15 Though there was still a general lack of support and commitment the interest in schools was there to stay. Chortitza elected a School Commission and instructed it to draw up appropriate statutes. 16 It seemed the long dark night was finally over. Judging from the diary, David Epp's religious world was still a secure and cohesive one. He records no debates about theology or dissent in the pattern of religious expression. Chortitza seemed content with its annual festivals and liturgies. Faith was fixed and known. Epp did not sense the same contentment among his co-religionists in the Molotschna settle- ment. During his annual visits to the colony he was repeatedly informed of the prevailing civil and religious disputes. 17 Why were these settlers so volatile and discontented? Compared with the Chortitza colonists their conditions of settlement were more tolerable. They had only begun to arrive in 1804. By then bureaucratic procedures related to colonization had been streamlined. Then, too, the flow of immigrants from Prussia was a gradual one, lasting several decades. Many arrived with substantial inventory and larger cash reserves than had been the case in Chortitza. Perhaps economic inequality accounted for some of the unhappiness. The impoverished seeking new opportunities could not compete with the wealthy who coveted even greater riches on the new frontier. There was another element. The gradual influx brought Mennonites from many different localities in Prussia. Ecclesiastical practices occa- sionally differed from region to region and at times there were even minor theological variations. Several decades often separated migrants from the same area. If local religious and intellectual views changed in the interval, the new settler might even offend his co-religionist who had preceded him by twenty or thirty years. In most instances the status quo was preferable to change. In David Epp's Chortitza of 1839 elder Jacob Dyck declared that "the girls were not to wear their braids to the side nor should young men have long hair over their forehead or their hair completely shorn in the neck" — all this was vanity. In the same year there was further consternation when several local teachers 15 erected Christmas trees in the schools and asserted that gift- giving was appropriate. Some likened this to image worship. 18 It was even difficult to be innovative in the Molotschna. The Ohrloff elder Berhard Fast, a prime supporter of the Ohrloff school and a strong advocate of Russian Bible Society endeavors, was confronted by angry parishioners when he admitted a visiting missionary to the communion service. Three-quarters of his congregation left him in the 1820s. All was not lost. His orphaned congrega