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

's western front or the plight of the peasant in rural Russia? Perhaps the religious differences which seemed so crucial at the village level lapsed into insignificance. A suffering world only asked for solace, not a specific brand of Mennonitism. The intense period of cooperation 83 which followed war and revolution, though prompted by a concern with collective survival, was spiritually enhanced by the presence of men and women who experienced something of the larger world. Here was a further stretching of the Russian Mennonite mind-set which supplemented the cultural broadening of earlier decades. As the nineteenth century drew to a close all Mennonites faced the crucial question of cultural survival. For several decades their sense of German identity had been reinforced by a significant minority of future teachers travelling to Germany and Switzerland for pedagogical training. Others obtained their professional qualifications in Russian institutions. At times it seemed there was a potential for a bilingual culture. In the end the pace of acculturation became unmanageable. With the accession of Alexander III nationalistic pressures demanded that Russian become the language of instruction in Mennonite schools. Increasingly local school boards lost their autonomy in setting the curriculum and appointing teachers. Only the concessions granted by the October Manifesto in 1905 momen- tarily halted the erosion of this key link in the Russian Mennonite sense of identity. Such threats of assimilation naturally forced greater inter- Mennonite cooperation. Certainly the almost frantic founding of new schools and the intense upgrading of teacher qualifications early in the twentieth century could be interpreted as an effort to block absorption into slavic culture. The majority of the religious and cultural ideas which provided a sense of Russian-Mennonite peoplehood were sustained in the context of the German language. In such a setting religious differences might well become secondary to the common task of preserving traditional life patterns and piety. The school, the historic transmitter of Mennonite ideals and practices, was the obvious means of cultural and intellectual assertion and both Brethren and Old Church members were very much a part of its operation. There was another less obvious dimension associated with the school which directly affected inter-Mennonite relations. While the Brethren were restricting their borders on such issues as open communion and the acceptance of immersed believers only, a different scenario was unfolding in the minds of many of their teachers. The ideas of Rousseau were finally reaching the Mennonite teacher on the Russian steppes. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi had been profoundly influenced by Rousseau's Emile on the one hand and by his old teacher Bodmer, a rabid Swiss 84 patriot, on the other. 15 Thanks to these influences Pestalozzi not only praised t