1999 Russia, Khorititsa and Tolstoy

1999  Russia, Khorititsa and Tolstoy, “Khortitsa 99: Mennonites in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union,” Harvey L. Dyck,  Orris Basinger, Sarah Kratzer (now Kehrberg), Delbert Plett, Svetlana I. Bobyleva,  Jack Thiessen, “Not Totally with Honor: US Mennonite Church Responses to Soviet Repression,” Derek Fraser  comments and West Overton Overholts, Moscow, Leo Tolstoy, Tula and Yasnaya Polyana, Leo Tolstoy and the Mennonites.

During first half of my life, Russia was never far away. Because of the Soviet Union, I heard of bomb shelters during the 1950s elementary school. Russia is technically one republic within the Soviet Union but I’ll use the terms interchangeably here. By my high school years there was Sputnik and the Cuban missile crisis; the name Nikita Khrushchev was commonplace. By the time I went to college, I took out low-interest loans with the National Defense Act, and I started to read the Russian novelists, especially Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. 

By the early seventies I started reading the British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, and especially his autobiographical memoirs Chronicles of Wasted Time: The Green Stick (1972). Although I think I read all of the British Muggeridge’s books, many relating to his conversion to Christianity, his years in Russia in the 1930s were always formative. Then in the seventies I started reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn, especially One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.  By 1978, when Solzhenitsyn gave the Harvard commencement address, most of it was published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. By the 1980s, I was again reading the New York public intellectuals such as Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, some of whom I had read earlier before they became what were now called neo-conservatives.

But if this national and international context kept Russia in my consciousness during the first half of my life, my religious and denominational affiliations also kept the Soviet Union in my consciousness. As a Mennonite and a confessing Christian; in my youth I learned that the Soviets had driven out or killed the Mennonites in the Ukraine and formed an atheistic state. When the children’s story Henry’s Red Sea was published telling about the Mennonites fleeing the Soviet Union after the Second World War, I read it. I heard of the radio preacher Carl McIntire who was strongly anti-communist and picketed our denominational relief agency Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). We had hosted a delegation of Russian Mennonites (and a Soviet agent). 

When I turned 18, I registered under the military draft as a conscientious objector, in effect because of the Vietnam War, sponsored on the one side by the communist north (backed by Russia) and on the other side the democratic south (backed by the United States). By the time I got to Scottdale in the early seventies, my Mennonite Publishing House colleagues reminded me that we right here in Scottdale had had hosted MCC-sponsored Russian Mennonites. The Mennonite Publishing House magazine Christian Living published articles on Soviet Russia’s domestic life which had the families appearing as a garden variety Good Housekeeping households.

So with this literary, religious, and political background I was very interested in visiting Russia, and when an opportunity came to visit and participate in a conference in the Ukraine (now an independent country), I jumped at the chance. “Khortitsa 99: Mennonites in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union” was a conference of largely Canadian Mennonite related scholars and Russian and Ukrainian scholars headed by Svetlana Bobyleva from the University of Dnepropetrovsk (called Yekaterinoslav from 1802–1917 for Catherine the Great in the Mennonite texts) and Harvey L. Dyck of the University of Toronto. The conference was to have lots of papers by the North American scholars and also by the Ukrainian scholars who now had access to the archives which had records of the Mennonite communities in the area, a kind of lost history. Hence these historians were interested in new research on this sectarian community of which now mainly remained the big dilapidated buildings and Soviet records.

The moving force behind all this was Harvey L. Dyck, an energetic scholar who had just edited a major work on the history of pacifism (The Pacifist Impulse in Historical Perspective, 1996), somewhat in the stream of Peter Brock. If Dyck was a scholar, he was also an organizer and an entrepreneur. I suppose in the lingo of the time, a networker; the conference had dozens of sponsors. This was a time when the Russian Mennonites from California, Manitoba and Ontario still had memories of the lost Khortitsa communities and travel tours were planned each summer taking people to visit their lost homeland, complete with trips down the Dnieper River and regional folk dance shows. 

The trips reminded me of our 1977 TourMagination tour taking American Amish and Mennonite descendants back to visit their European spiritual and cultural origins. Anyway, these Russian Mennonite sons and daughters had money for trips and foundations to support research, conferences, commemorative plaques, and exhibitions. The conference was held in conjunction with the opening of an exhibit of Mennonite life during Tsarist and Soviet Russia with paintings, museum artifacts, and a complete model of a Mennonite village. The conference and exhibit were in the city of Zaporozhe (during pre-1917 called Alexandrovsk) which is near the former Khortitsa settlements. The Ukrainians were interested in this part for their history and also it was a way of attracting tourists.

When word got out to the family of my intent to go, I got two traveling partners in Orris Basinger of the Berlin Mennonite Church in Ohio and my niece Sarah Kratzer of Bethel College in Kansas. My brother Paul’s Men’s I Sunday school class offered travel subsidy and along with the deal came Orris as our travel manager. My sister Miriam offered Sarah who had completed a history paper (1999) at Bethel directly on the topic which interested me: “Whose Story? How the American Mennonites Tell the Russian Mennonite Story, 1940-1975.” However, unlikely a troop we were of a student, an editor, and a retired building products manager, we got along quite well; I don’t recall one unpleasant conflict with either but many enjoyable conversations. 

At any coffee table or lobby, Orris Basinger would tell whoever was sitting nearby whether a Ukrainian scholar or a Manitoba Mennonite that he lived in the world’s largest Amish settlement, immediately striking up a conversation. Orris reminded me of my mother Mattie as traveler who would pick up a conversation with anyone whether the pilot, a young child, or a business traveler-- talking about the weather, babies, or quilting, seemingly assured that the other person was equally interested in the topic. Sarah went jogging every day, and one morning I met her near our hotel after she had met a poor Ukrainian woman who needed money. She had given her some, but was still in distress whether she should have given her even more. I remember it for Sarah’s conscientiousness, but also because the poverty of these European-looking Ukrainians was unsettling. I suppose I was expecting that their new political freedom would also bring greater economic freedom. 
  

Orris, Sarah and I had many opportunities for informal conversations because of the cast of characters who sat around the Khortitsa 99 tables were as memorable as the papers. From Steinbach, Manitoba, came attorney Delbert Plett (1948-2004) who was interested in all things Kleine Gemeinde (the Russian Mennonite conservatives), old order, or Amish. Plett wore a string-tie like a cowboy and enjoyed a kind of a sheriff and scholar persona for the old order and conservative groups. I had known him earlier from phone conversations, and he did an interesting and idiosyncratic magazine called Preservings, strong on Steinbach, Manitoba, history and with a special editorial animus toward the American evangelicals and dispensationalists who had been polluting his pure and innocent Canadians. Hence, he liked the Amish and the old order Mennonites in Mexico for whom he was also a lord protector, buying them old John C. Wenger texts such as Separated Unto God.

Another Manitoba person around the tables was Winnipeg Mennonite heritage director Lawrence Klippenstein who had shared the archivist Dennis Stoesz with us, and kept a lively conversations going on a coffee-break and lunch-time text, the New Zealand historian James Urry’s scurrilous attack article on our convener Harvey Dyck, in effect accusing Dyck of being a neo-Nazi sympathizer. Dyck was threatening to sue the Mennonite Quarterly Review journal for libel, and  Klippenstein, of course, knew that the editor of the review was our relative John D. Roth. Why Urry who until then was one of the main non-Mennonite historians of the Russian Mennonites did this flimsy attack on Dyck and why John published it, I never quite understood. To me on the outside, it appeared as little more than petty academic turf protection and jealousy. In any case, John Roth eventually issued an apology and the subject passed, but it provided an unpleasant if salacious undercurrent at the conference.

A young historian Marlene Epp, daughter of the journalist Frank Epp, was studying the families, especially the single parent Mennonite women who had led courageously during the great trek out of the Ukraine from 1943 to 1945. The Ukrainian academy also brought a number of very capable women scholars to the table, the most memorable being the co-chair professor Svetlana I. Bobyleva. I am, however, surely remembering her for all the wrong reasons and through no fault of her own. Bobyleva was an attractive woman, hence often bringing the Manitoba professor and humorist Jack Thiessen to her side. The conference Falstaff, Thiessen seemed equally drawn to low German humor and to low neckline blouses. He had the crowd happily howling with shared memories of a Plattduetsch dialect while we outsiders, the Ukrainians and the “Swiss,” looked on bemusedly.

Identity re-interpretations are commonplace to anyone who travels, and on this trip, we Pennsylvania German Mennonites became Swiss, a term which I had formerly used for the Kidron and Berne (Indiana) Mennonites who had more recently arrived from Switzerland. Here Swiss meant all American Amish and Mennonites of Swiss German origins, not to be confused with the real Mennonites that would be the Californians and Canadians of Dutch Russian heritage. Meanwhile, conversations with the Ukrainians often took on a personal tone as these professionals tried to adapt to their cultural, especially economic, come-down in a post-Soviet Ukraine. One professor about my age described his family in detail; under Soviet Russia he could take his family each summer on vacation to the Black Sea. Now his salary was hardly enough for food and shelter; how economic conditions had deteriorated in the independent Ukraine was a constant theme. Freedom, as we used to sing, certainly wasn’t free in the Ukraine.

I will not review the several dozen papers which gave one a better understanding of the Mennonites in Tsarist and Soviet Russia. My own contribution was probably a sideshow, a reflection on how the American Mennonites had come to view these Mennonites from the first half of the century as suffering brethren to the last half of the century as islands of privilege. My presentation “Not Totally with Honor: US [USA] Mennonite Church Responses to Soviet Repression”was based on surveying the Gospel Herald and other documents on how Mennonite leaders wrote and especially Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) leaders responded. During the first half of the century, one could characterize Mennonite leaders clearly being anti-communist, but by the second half of the century, Soviet communism was viewed as a moral equivalent of the Western democracies. 

I wrote: “A double standard emerged which allowed one to praise a communist dictatorship from a distance, even though one did not have to live with its consequences. The Mennonites in the Ukraine who did not have this luxury suffered grievously. But this Marxist view left little room to sympathize with their plight.” The exceptions here were the rank and file Mennonites who had little interest in leftist politics and supported MCC as a relief and service agency. The conservative Mennonites and Amish meanwhile quietly pulled out of MCC and began their own organization to aid the suffering Christians in communist countries such as Romania. My Holmes County, Ohio, Alvin and Mae Gingerich cousins were leaders in this movement which eventually became Christian Aid Ministries at Berlin, Ohio. I viewed the MCC left-leaning leaders as giving tacit approval to Soviet totalitarianism in the 60s and 70s and supporting violent socialist revolutions in Latin America in the 80s. I could do neither.
     

In many ways, the paper was a confessional of my own intellectual travels during this second half of the century; I was no longer a fellow-traveler on the road to some idealized socialist justice. If 1968 represented my youthful flings of utopian dreams of universal love and social justice as defined by the New Left, by the late seventies I was also aware of socialist nightmares. The Soviets had killed ten million of their own people, including 30,000 Mennonites. When the Baptists and Mennonites were able to leave in the early nineties, they did.  I have yet to hear any of these Umsiedler (Resettlers) commending MCC moral equivalency efforts, unlike what one heard from the refugees during the first half of the century. In Latin America, Cuba remained imprisoned and poor, while Chile became free and prospering. Meanwhile, Russia and China were moving toward the civility of the Western democracies, however haltingly. As I post this, haltingly must be emphasized because Russia remains, well Mother Russia, hence annexing parts of ifs former lands in Ukraine. 

It seemed to me that the 20^th century had been a major debate on free markets and socialism and on democracy and totalitarianisms. In both cases, free markets and democracies generally delivered a greater degree of freedom, justice, peace and prosperity. By the eighties the British had elected Margaret Thatcher and free markets and freedom began to flourish around the world, especially in small Asian countries and India. I understood some of the pacifist reluctance to be on the side of freedom as coming from fear of heating up the cold war; the democratic West and the Soviets appeared to be at a nuclear stand-off. 

Still it seemed to me an honorable path could be navigated in which pacifist Mennonites would give moral legitimacy to the free countries where they found themselves. I was especially influenced by Richard Gid Powers’ book Not Without Honor on American anticommunism during the 20^th century. Early on, Powers believed he was studying one of the sordid chapters of American history, in the public mind almost exclusively associated with U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy or anticommunism as fascism. But Powers discovered that he had studied one of the most honorable chapters of American history.  

But back to Khortitsa 99 where two memories especially remained with me. First, the Canadian ambassador to the Ukraine Derek Fraser spoke at the opening of the exhibition, reflecting on the tragedy which happened almost a century ago. Violent revolution and Soviet repression meant that thousands of Mennonites migrated to Canada which turned out to be a tremendous human resource to his country. The net effect was that Canada as a society benefited culturally and economically from this influx of churches and citizens. Left unsaid but clear to all was that by driving out some of its most productive citizens. Ukraine had greatly impoverished itself during the past century; the evidence was still all around. A second insight was visiting the big brick buildings which were left around the former Khortitsa, machinery factories, a girls’ school and a large meetinghouse in which we sang hymns and heard addresses. 

Although these one-time Mennonite owned buildings were all in some state of dis-repair, they reminded me of the large brick Overholt homestead back at West Overton, Pennsylvania: the distillery, houses, and barns which the Overholts and their workers had built during the 19^th century. By the 20^th century the Overholt project was also finished, and the people, industry and commerce had moved on. The difference was big however. The change at West Overton happened through people’s choices and the market place; the change at Khortitsa had happened through violent revolution and repression. Somehow, I could not find moral equivalence in these two systems of government.

But we had a second week; we traveled to Moscow where we stayed at the Hotel National which is right beside Red Square and the Kremlin. The 1903 hotel, most recently renovated in 1995, itself had historical meaning because Lenin and Trotsky had stayed here as had the North American Mennonites Harold Bender and David B. Wiens in 1955. Don Loewen the Mennonite Central Committee representative in Moscow had arranged for his friend Natasha Sedenkova to serve as our bilingual guide for the week. We visited the sites such as Lenin’s Tomb, and one day we drove out to the Novodevichy Cemetery, located on the grounds of a former convent where notables such as Nikita Khrushchev were buried. 

I remember Sarah was especially interested in the Russian musicians and composers who were also nearby: Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) and Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953). Loewen was able to get us tickets one night for the legendary Bolshoi Theater, and we took in a performance of Verdi’s “Aida.” We visited the Orthodox cathedrals and also the big Baptist church building where Billy Graham had preached and which during the Cold War had often appeared in our church periodicals. We went to various museums, the most memorable the Tetyakov Gallery which had classic 20th century social realism and a number of Ilya Repin paintings. Nearby in a desolate lot were tumbled over monuments of Stalin and other fallen Soviet leaders.

Repin also painted portraits of Leo Tolstoy. One day, we visited the Leo and Sonya Beers Tolstoy’s family house, now a museum, in Moscow and another day we headed for Tula, a city a 100-mile drive south and nearby Yasanya Polyana. This was my real goal of our trip, and it was a beautiful Spring day, and as we drove to Tula the same aspens which Tolstoy had described in War and Peace were still quivering during our morning drive. We stopped at a bakery and coffee along the way and bought a traditional bread at Tula (our guide Natasha called it ginger bread) which I took along back for the Mennonite publishing workers. The large Tolstoy estate was well preserved and a number of workers were out in the orchards and field with the tools and forks of 19^th Century Russia. The house is also well preserved and has the feeling of a country house as described in his novels. We walked out to grove of Tolstoy’s final burial place with green vegetation on top of the unmarked earth bier. Tolstoy and his brothers used to talk of a green stick buried nearby which would have all the secrets of life, peace and health. It was never found.

I started reading Tolstoy in college and when we moved to Scottdale Ken Reed was reading the 19^th century Russian novelists, and we would often discuss them. Then my mother-in-law Berdella Miller gave me Henri Troyat’s wonderful Tolstoy biography which she had read in her Berlin book club. Now, I was fascinated by his life and family too. By 1974 I had discovered Tolstoy’s connection to the American Mennonite Daniel Musser, and I sent a letter to John Oyer of the Mennonite Quarterly Review that I would like to do a study of Tolstoy and the Mennonites. Oyer encouraged it, and over the next three decades I dabbled in the subject, and I confess that I’m probably one of the world’s foremost living authorities on that subject, and I’ll list the publications below. Some Winnipeg PhD student has probably studied it since in greater detail. 

Ken Reed and I used to say that our life goal was more modest than Tolstoy’s to find the green stick which in his boyhood economy had the meaning of life, peace and happiness. Our goal was to become old sages like Tolstoy, sit on our porches and have the peasants come by and seek our counsel. So, now I am an old man, have a house with a long porch and sit on it in the summer time with plenty of time and room for the muziks to visit. As of this writing in 2013, I can report that only one Upper Tyrone peasant regularly comes to seek my counsel, or perhaps more accurately companionship. His name is Carlos, my faithful dog. So much for my youthful Tolstoyan vanities, but his writings remain.. 

Most winters I pull out a Tolstoy volume, and have probably read War and Peace and Anna Karenina a half dozen times, and their density, brilliance and characterizations continue to fascinate me. Still, given all that I know about Sonya Beers and Leo Tolstoy’s sad and terrible latter years, I also read them as cautionary stories and essays. A brilliant mind and moral certitude can have an ugly underside, especially to family life. Still, visiting Yasnaya Polyana was a highlight of our Ukraine and Russia visit, and now I was ready to go home. 

Our Moscow send- off was one morning at the large Sheremetyevo International Airport where everything seemed to be totally confused and disorderly, even as flights somehow safely were taking off and landing. I tried to find German, English or Spanish declaration forms but could not. So I decided to join the spirit of this apparent disorder. I simply took the French and Russian form (I’m guessing here) and after filling in my name Levi Miller Schlabach wrote in random addresses, dates and numbers in boxes with no idea what they represented. Everyone was hurried; the official took my form without looking at it, placed it on a stack, and told me to proceed to the gate and plane. Sarah and Orris navigated this airport with equal aplomb, and we were headed home. Back in the United States, the end of the year was approaching, but it was also the end of the century, and everyone had what was called Y2K fever; our daughter Elizabeth was headed for Barcelona and Jakob in London. But that is the subject of the next chapter.    

Most of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard commencement address was published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (June 9, 1978, 7), still in my files. James Urry’s attack essay on Harvey L. Dyck was "Fate, Hate and Denial: Ingrid Rimland's Lebensraum!" in Mennonite Quarterly Review (January, 1999, 107-127). My Khorititsa paper “Not Totally with Honor: US Mennonite Church Responses to Soviet Repression” was published in Mennonite Life (September, 2004, http://tools.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/2004Sept/miller.php ). The Richard Gid Powers’ book is Not Without Honor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). My Tolstoy and the Mennonites projects were  “Daniel Musser and Leo Tolstoy, Mennonite Historical Bulletin (April 1993, 1-7); Robert Friedmann and Tolstoy in “A Reconstruction of Evangelical Anabaptism,” Mennonite Quarterly Review (July, 1995, 295-306); and “Leo Tolstoy and the Mennonites,” Journal of Mennonite Studies (Volume 16, 1998, 163-180).