«Неличная история»: меннонитская община Александровска в переломный год Украинской революции

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The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the history of Alexandrovsk city`s Mennonite community in 1919, to show the conditions and ways of personal and community`s strategies of survival. The diary of the Mennonite entrepreneur A. Dick was the main source for the consideration about the problem. Living in the outskirts of the Russian Empire, A. Dick and other residents of Alexandrovsk felt the revolution not as a changing of power, but rather as anarchy. 1919 was a point of no return in the history of the revolution. For the local Germans the years of Anti-German Legislation (1914–1917) were transformed into the collapse of the post-war years. The anti-German policy of the tsarist government influenced the attitude towards the communities that next governments and political forces demonstrated during the Ukrainian Revolution. The congregations had to act in given circumstances. Traditionally aggressive Mennonite ethos had to be changed according to the new survival strategies. The political culture of the communities, that had had a dialogical nature, was used to communicate with the political regimes of first half of 1919. The communities intended to interact with the Bolsheviks making illusion of congregation’s loyal attitude towards their power. Since anarchist N. Machno regarded the local Germans as a class and military enemy, the Mennonites kept tactics of self-elimination from the public sphere. The Mennonites followed the tradition of an active congregational life that was a source of emotional hypercompensation for them. Biological survival was the first priority aim. Individual emigration became a more reliable way of self-preservation than community forms of salvation that had been traditional for the Mennonite. The influence of the left radical ideology led to the breakdown of the congregation members` traditional identity. New form of sub-identity was forming. A. Dick`s diary proves that during the revolutionary years the Mennonite community of Alexandrovsk passed the way from leadership to outsider position. Scholarly significance: can be used for the researches on the problems of interethnic relations in the conditions of the Ukrainian revolution, history of the Mennonite communities in Ukraine. Novelty: a new source has been introduced and its general characteristic has been presented.