TRANSFORMATION ON THE SOUTHERN UKRAINIAN STEPPE Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies VOLUME II: 1836–1842 Translated by Ingrid I. Epp Edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press 2020 Toronto Buffalo London utorontopress.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4875-0449-6 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4875-3029-7 (EPUB) ISBN 978-1-4875-3028-0 (PDF) (Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies) Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian steppe : letters and papers of Johann Cornies / translated by Ingrid I. Epp ; edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples. Names: Dyck, Harvey L. (Harvey Leonard), editor. | Staples, John Roy, 1961− editor. | Epp, Ingrid I. (Ingrid Ilse), translator, editor. | Container of (work): Cornies, Johann, 1789−1848. Works. Selections. English. Series: Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite studies. Description: Series statement: Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies | Includes bibliographical references and indexes. | Contents: v. 2. 1836−1842 | Translations from the German. Identifiers: Canadiana 20159035791 | ISBN 9781487504496 (v. 2 ; bound) Subjects: LCSH: Cornies, Johann, 1789−1848. | LCSH: Cornies, Johann, 1789−1848 − Correspondence. | LCSH: Germans − Ukraine, Southern − Correspondence. | LCSH: Mennonites − Ukraine, Southern − Correspondence. | LCSH: Germans − Ukraine, Southern – History − 19th century. | LCSH: Mennonites − Ukraine, Southern – History − 19th century. Classification: LCC DK508.425 G47 C67 2015 | DDC 940.2 CC-BY-NC-ND This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivative License. For permission to publish commercial versions please contact University of Toronto Press. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support from the University of Toronto Libraries in making the open access version of this title available. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement of Canada du Canada In fond memory of Ingrid Epp, 1938–2016 . A colleague and friend . This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Maps ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xvii Translator’s Note xix Introduction xxiii PART ONE: Correspondence 1836 3 1837 29 1838 99 1839 151 1840 213 1841 319 1842 447 PART TWO: Johann Cornies’ Archaeological Excavation Reports Editors’ Introduction 603 Reports 605 Contents Appendix I: Genealogy of Johann Cornies’ Immediate Family 641 Appendix II: List of Correspondents 643 Appendix III: Glossary 647 Appendix IV: Chronology 649 Index 653 viii List of Maps Map 1: Mennonite settlements in New Russia, circa 1880 xx Map 2: The Molochnaia Mennonite Settlement xxi This page intentionally left blank Preface The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the grasslands of the world open to agricultural settlement. In places as diverse as Argen- tina, the United States, Canada, South Africa, and Russia, people trav- elled to “promised lands” dreaming of peace, plenty, and escape from their overcrowded homes. They came with the urging and support of governments that viewed the grasslands as both a ground-spring of national wealth and a tabula rasa upon which to create new moral orders and shape new national identities. Russia’s expansion east to Siberia and south onto the steppe was born of this vision, but in the south – “New Russia,” as Catherine the Great named it – the Russian imperial project intersected with geopolitical realities that gave it unique shape. Beyond New Russia lay the Otto- man Empire, a powerful competitor with its own imperial ambitions. Expansion towards the Black Sea and the Balkans meant certain conflict between the two great powers. Geopolitics shaped the contours of Russia’s colonial project, and southward expansion was a carefully managed affair, constrained by the need to create communities that could support the Russian mili- tary. The clearest examples were the “military colonies” of peasant con- scripts, relocated with their families to the New Russian frontier and ordered to build their own villages and grow their own food, all under harsh military discipline. The Russian administrative ideal was cameralism, a theory of central- ized planning and tight control, administered through an obedient and well-trained bureaucracy. It relied in part upon providing models of proper behaviour to the Russian and Ukrainian peasants who moved to the empire’s new territories. Russia actively recruited settlers from the Preface German states as “model colonists” who could teach their progressive agricultural methods by example. Prussian Mennonites, renowned for their hard work and agricultural successes, became a central target for such recruitment. The Mennonites who immigrated to the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries brought little with them beyond a deep-rooted Christian Anabaptist faith and a tradition of hard work. Settled in New Russia, they built villages, ploughed the rich prairie, and established model farmsteads. They built farm machinery, milled grain, and manufactured cloth, creating a bustling, prosperous community that, in the late nineteenth century, led the way in Russia’s nascent industrial revolution. By 1914, Mennonites were also the target of Russian nationalist resentment, singled out for their German language, their unorthodox religious beliefs, and their prosperity. The First World War, and then the Revolution, brought confiscations and persecution. Those who could, fled; those who remained were impoverished and – when they clung to their faith – harried, imprisoned, and killed. By 1991 the Mennonites had become a “blank page” in Russian and Soviet history, unknown even to the people who occupied the homes they had once built. The surviving remnants in Siberia and Central Asia well knew to keep their beliefs to themselves. The Russian Mennonite story remained alive in the émigré com- munities that had left Russia in successive waves beginning in the 1870s and continuing into the 1940s. They settled in Canada, the United States, and South America, built new villages, and trans- planted their Russian successes – and religious disputes – to their new homelands. The story these Mennonites preserved was mainly one of faith and suffering. Filtered through their late Russian and Soviet experiences, it stressed their religious values and sense of community. It ignored (or did not understand) their role in the larger Russian story of colonization and economic development. This was true even in the work of secular historians, who depended almost exclusively on in-group Mennonite accounts. This document collection addresses the first period of Mennonite settlement. It reveals that the foundations of Russian Mennonite pros- perity were hard work, self-discipline, and entrepreneurial spirit. It likewise reveals the fermentation of religious beliefs in their commu- nity. Significantly, it also depicts a sometimes contentious, sometimes xii Preface cooperative, constantly evolving relationship with neighbouring peo- ples and the Russian state. This collection unveils the Russian colonial world through the eyes of Johann Cornies and his many correspondents. Cornies was the leading figure in his community – an ambitious, entrepreneurial, and energetic reformer. He accrued great wealth and power, and he devoted himself to transforming New Russia. In Moscow, St. Peters- burg, and the West, his keen mind and tremendous work ethic brought him acclaim. In the Mennonite community it brought him respect, but also deep hostility as his reform plans – and his imperious manner – generated controversy. Johann Cornies’ correspondence and studies offer a rich and varied feast. They depict a Russian colonial world where colonists could play a key role in shaping their own fate, and even gain influence at the highest levels of imperial power. They reveal a Mennonite community in which money and political connections sometimes competed with tradition and religious authority but sometimes worked hand-in-hand with them. Not least, they open a window onto the personal life of a remarkable man. This Volume The selection, translation, and editing of Johann Cornies’ papers has posed a series of significant challenges. Copies of Cornies’ personal and business correspondence, along with the correspondence of the Molochnaia Forestry Society and Agricultural Society, are preserved in the Ukrainian State Archive of the Odessa Region, intermingled with other Mennonite records. Originally gathered by the Moloch- naia Mennonite Peter J. Braun, the collection was seized by the Soviet government in 1929 and then disappeared. It was rediscovered in 1990 and in the mid-1990s was microfilmed and distributed as the Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive to selected Western deposi- tories by the University of Toronto’s Research Program in Tsar- ist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. 1 Between the time of the Soviet seizure of the documents and their rediscovery, some documents disappeared (primarily during Germany’s Second World War occu- pation