Getting under the tender spots in Russian Mennonite life

A Mennonite Family in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union: 1789–1923 By David G. Rempel and Cornelia Rempel Carlson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002, 356 pages with index and notes).

I’ve read many books about the Russian Mennonite experience but rarely one that conveyed quite the depth of understanding that David Rempel’s A Russian Mennonite Family in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union does.

Rempel, who was born and spent his first 24 years in southern Russia but devoted his working career to teaching at the College of San Mateo in California, wrote much of this book during the 1970s and 80s after he retired. Better than most writings I’ve read, it gives a feeling for what it was like to live within the world created by the Mennonites of Russia as well as the broader events which so utterly changed their lives in the final three or four decades before many, including Rempel, left in the wave of migrations that began in 1923.

He does this in a way that might seem, on the surface, not too promising. He has written this book from the vantage point of his own family’s story. Once he unpacks the elements, however, he has a great deal of story to tell. His father was from the Flemish church side, his mother Frisian – and members of the families went over to the Mennonite Brethren – so he could write about church conflicts.

He grew up in Nieder Khortitza, a community not far from Khortitza-Rosenthal, but clearly less affluent. His father engaged in the grain trade and dealt with both Russians and Mennonites. They ran a family store. Their situation gave him many insights, especially of the economic disparities among the Mennonites as well as between the Mennonites and many of the Ukrainian villagers who lived around them. On his father’s side, Rempel came from a family with rather little status, his mother on the other hand – a Pauls – was clearly upper crust in Russian Mennonite terms. Rempel recounts with some sense of wonder that she had turned down an opportunity to marry a son of the wealthy Niebuhr industrialist clan for David’s father, a widower who would never rise to such wealth.

What Rempel took from his home was a love for Mennonite history, an appreciation for education, a keen interest in the world around them including affairs on the wider Russian and European stage, and the security that parents with a robust, optimistic outlook and independent spirit could provide.

Rempel’s book was only completed after his death in 1992 with the help of Dr. Harvey Dyck of the University of Toronto and Rempel’s daughters, especially Cornelia Rempel Carlson. The volume is a shortened version of a thousand page manuscript the author left behind.

It has vivid descriptions of the area in which the author grew up, especially of the Island of Khortitza and the area around Rosenthal, which he often visited. The book explains many practices and expressions. For example, the origin of the expression “to give someone the basket” when a young woman wanted to signal to a young man that she wasn’t interested in his advances. Or the “good man” assigned to provide help to a widow when she had no males old enough to assist her with her business affairs. Or the practice of using a particular Thursday of the month for church meetings on disciplinary issues. The practice was given ironic meaning since in Low German the word for Thursday is also the word for thunder; those church meeting days became “thunder days.”

Rempel sheds light on the early Mennonite migrants from Prussia – he doesn’t believe they were simply the poor, as some have argued. He comments a good deal on the growth of wealth in the Mennonite settlements and the disparities that emerged between the wealthy estate owners and industrialists and others, especially those who had only small or no land holdings. He provides vivid descriptions of the events of the First World War, the revolution, the period of civil war, of the effects that the movements of four different armies including the anarchist-bandit Makhno’s army across the colonies had, and the aftermath as a typhus epidemic and then famine struck.

Rempel alludes to a crisis of faith that his experiences brought for him. The result appears to have been largely to close him to engagement with God. This book says little about faith. References to those who sought spiritual renewal are invariably disparaging. He provides little indication that faith played a strong role in his family, though his mother appears to have found solace there and his maternal grandmother even more. Thus, Rempel’s book does not provide much insight into the inner life of the Mennonites, why so many chose to embrace the renewal that the Mennonite Brethren represented, or how the tumultuous events of the revolution and civil war affected those who experienced them. Even a casual reading of the obituaries of many of those who lived through those years impresses the reader with a sense of their profound spiritual impact.

So don’t read Rempel’s book to discover the spiritual tide within Mennonite life. But for a rich insight into where and how life was lived for many of those who went through the years Rempel covers, this book can scarcely be surpassed. He’s given us a superb account. A warning: the book is expensive. You’ll likely need to pay $70 or more for a copy, too much for many pocketbooks. So borrow a copy, but read it!

Harold Jantz, retired founder of ChristianWeek, is a deacon at River East MB Church, Winnipeg, chairs New Direction for Life Ministries, and is working with a set of letters from relatives in the Soviet Union written between 1923 and 1937.