Изменение мировоззрения российских меннонитов и разрушение их сообщества

Abstract

The article raises the problems of the Mennonite community's reflection on the reforms in Russian Empire as well as the modernization of social, political and economic environment in 1861–1914, during the First World War, the recurring power changes and political anarchy in Ukraine during the Civil War. The author examines the Mennonites' attempts to adjust the changes in reality, the cause-and-effect relationships of arising social crisis which ultimately led to the destruction of the ethnoreligious community's canonical foundations. The research bases on the testimonies of the eyewitnesses (given in their diaries), memoirs and other published materials. The author examines the gradual deviation processes among the Mennonite society that were transforming the fundamental statements of the congregations’ doctrine and their moral norms and traditions. It is analyzed whether the Russian-Ukrainian Mennonites remained an ethno-religious conglomerate or lost their inherent values. As a result it has been proved the following: the Mennonites in Russia in a short period from the beginning of the reforms of the 1860s – 1870s to the beginning of the 20th century, went from a close-knit religious community to an opened and spiritually weakened unification. During the period of “challenges and reactions” of the First World War and the Civil War, the leaders of the community were unable to maintain the unity and cohesion, a complex of moral and ethical markers, pacifist views, social institutions, which led to a deformation of values and disorientation in further actions. Only a small part of the Mennonites society was able to organize itself and, thanks to the support of the Canadian Mennonites communities, it emigrated in 1923–1926 and thus avoided the Bolshevik regime repressions.
 Key words: the Mennonites, World War I, Civil War, Makhno, identity.