Editing Mennonites (section)

== Russian Mennonites ==
{{Main|Russian Mennonite}}
{{More citations needed section|date=January 2022}}

The "Russian Mennonites" (German: "Russlandmennoniten")<ref>{{Cite web |date=8 October 1926 |title=Ukrainian Mennonite General Conference – GAMEO |url=http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/U397.html |access-date=13 November 2012 |publisher=Gameo.org |archive-date=8 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130708122411/http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/U397.html |url-status=live }}. For a history of the Russian Mennonites, cf. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, [https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/ History of the Russian Mennonites] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231104144137/https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/ |date=4 November 2023 }}</ref> today are descended from Dutch [[Anabaptists]], who came from the Netherlands and started around 1530 to settle around Danzig and in [[West Prussia]], where they lived for about 250 years. Starting in 1791 they established colonies in the south-west of the [[Russian Empire]] and beginning in 1854 also in [[Volga region]] and [[Orenburg Governorate]]. Their ethno-language is [[Plautdietsch]], a Germanic dialect of the [[East Low German]] group, with some [[Dutch language|Dutch]] admixture. Today, many traditional Russian Mennonites use [[Standard German]] in church and for reading and writing.

In the 1770s [[Catherine the Great]] of the [[Russian Empire]] acquired a great deal of land north of the [[Black Sea]] (in present-day [[Ukraine]]) following the [[Russo-Turkish War (1768–74)|Russo-Turkish War]] and the takeover of the [[Ottoman Empire|Ottoman]] vassal, the [[Crimean Khanate]]. Russian government officials invited Mennonites living in the [[Kingdom of Prussia]] to farm the Ukrainian steppes depopulated by [[Crimean-Nogai raids into East Slavic lands|Tatar raids]] in exchange for religious freedom and military exemption. Over the years Mennonite farmers and businesses were very successful.

In 1854, according to the new Russian government official invitation, Mennonites from Prussia established colonies in Russia's [[Volga region]] (Am Trakt Colony), and later in [[Orenburg Governorate]] ([[Neu Samara Colony]]).<ref>{{Cite web |title=Am Trakt Mennonite Settlement (Samara Oblast, Russia) - GAMEO |url=https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Am_Trakt_Mennonite_Settlement_(Samara_Oblast,_Russia) |access-date=2025-04-16 |website=gameo.org}}</ref>

Between 1874 and 1880 some 16,000 Mennonites of approximately 45,000 left Russia. About nine thousand departed for the United States (mainly Kansas and Nebraska) and seven thousand for Canada (mainly Manitoba). In the 1920s, Russian Mennonites from Canada started to migrate to Latin America (Mexico and Paraguay), soon followed by Mennonite refugees from the [[Soviet Union|Union of Soviet Socialist Republics]]. Further migrations of these Mennonites led to settlements in Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Belize, Bolivia and Argentina.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the Mennonites in Russia owned large agricultural estates and some had become successful as industrial entrepreneurs in the cities, employing wage labor. After the [[Russian Revolution of 1917]] and the [[Russian Civil War]] (1917–1921), all of these farms (whose owners were called [[Kulak]]s) and enterprises were expropriated by local peasants or the Soviet government. Beyond [[Confiscation|expropriation]], Mennonites suffered severe persecution during the course of the Civil War, at the hands of workers, the [[Bolsheviks]] and, particularly, the [[Anarcho-Communism|Anarcho-Communists]] of [[Nestor Makhno]], who considered the Mennonites to be privileged foreigners of the upper class and targeted them. During expropriation, hundreds of Mennonite men, women and children were murdered in these attacks.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Rempel |first=John G. |year=1957 |title=Makhno, Nestor (1888–1934) |url=http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/M3490.html |access-date=1 November 2010 |publisher=[[Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online]] |quote=Two hundred forty names appear on a list of November 1919 of those murdered in Zagradovka. In Borzenkovo in the village of Ebenfeld alone 63 persons were murdered, and in Steinbach of the same settlement 58 persons. |archive-date=27 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130627172229/http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/M3490.html |url-status=live }}</ref> After the [[Ukrainian–Soviet War]] and the takeover of Ukraine by the Soviet [[Bolsheviks]], people who openly practiced religion were in many cases imprisoned by the Soviet government. This led to a wave of Mennonite emigration to the Americas (U.S., Canada and Paraguay).

When the German army invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 during World War II, many in the Mennonite community perceived them as liberators from the communist regime under which they had suffered. Many Russian Mennonites actively collaborated with the Nazis, including in the rounding up and extermination of their Jewish neighbors, although some also resisted them.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jantzen |first1=Mark |last2=Thiesen |first2=John D. |title=European Mennonites and the Holocaust |date=2020 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |location=Toronto |isbn=9781487537241}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Goossen |first1=Ben |title=The Real History of the Mennonites and the Holocaust |url=https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/heinrich-hamm-mennonite-holocaust |newspaper=Tablet Magazine |date=17 November 2020 |access-date=4 January 2022 |archive-date=4 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220104214354/https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/heinrich-hamm-mennonite-holocaust |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Schroeder |first1=Steve |title=Mennonite-Nazi Collaboration and Coming to Terms With the Past: European Mennonites and the MCC, 1945-1950 |journal=Conrad Grebel Review |date=Spring 2003 |pages=6–16 |url=https://uwaterloo.ca/grebel/publications/conrad-grebel-review/issues/spring-2003/mennonite-nazi-collaboration-and-coming-terms-past-european%26usg%3DAOvVaw1tJJZ7gx_HT21Npe3-PbLx |access-date=4 January 2022 |archive-date=4 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220104214403/https://uwaterloo.ca/grebel/publications/conrad-grebel-review/issues/spring-2003/mennonite-nazi-collaboration-and-coming-terms-past-european%26usg%3DAOvVaw1tJJZ7gx_HT21Npe3-PbLx |url-status=dead }}</ref> When the tide of war turned, many of the Mennonites fled with the German army back to Germany where they were accepted as ''[[Volksdeutsche]]''. The Soviet government believed that the Mennonites had "collectively collaborated" with the Germans. After the war, many Mennonites in the Soviet Union were forcibly relocated to [[Siberia]] and Kazakhstan. Many were sent to [[gulag]]s as part of the [[Population transfer in the Soviet Union|Soviet program of mass internal deportations]] of various ethnic groups whose loyalty was seen as questionable. Many German-Russian Mennonites who lived to the east (not in Ukraine) were deported to Siberia before the German army's invasion and were also often placed in [[labor camp]]s. In the decades that followed, as the Soviet regime became less brutal, a number of Mennonites returned to Ukraine and Western Russia where they had formerly lived. In the 1990s the governments of Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine gave these people the opportunity to emigrate, and the vast majority emigrated to Germany. The Russian Mennonite immigrants in Germany from the 1990s outnumber the pre-1989 community of Mennonites by three to one.

By 2015, the majority of Russian Mennonites and their descendants live in Latin America, Germany and Canada.

The world's most conservative Mennonites (in terms of culture and technology) are the Mennonites affiliated with the [[Barton Creek (Belize)|Lower and Upper Barton Creek Colonies]] in Belize. Lower Barton is inhabited by Plautdietsch speaking Russian Mennonites, whereas Upper Barton Creek is mainly inhabited by [[Pennsylvania Dutch language]]-speaking Mennonites from North America. Neither group uses motors or paint.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Altkolonier-Mennoniten in Belize |url=http://www.taeufergeschichte.net/index.php?id=altkolonier_mennoniten_in_belize |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924112819/http://www.taeufergeschichte.net/index.php?id=altkolonier_mennoniten_in_belize |archive-date=24 September 2015 |access-date=4 October 2014 |publisher=Taeufergeschichte.net}}</ref>