Communism
After communists gained control over the region, they began to appropriate grain from the landowners. Eventually the population began to starve and epidemics spread. During this time Mennonites began organizing to immigrate to Canada. In 1923 many of the former large landowners, ministers and internal refugees migrated to Canada, with credit provided by the Canadian Pacific Railway.
In 1926 the village of Einlage was abandoned to make way for the flooding from the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station dam. Many other Chortitza Mennonites suffered under the dekulakization programs of the 1920s and the collectivization of 1930. Confiscated land was given to peasants, usually Communist Party members. In May 1931, with these newest citizens of Chortitza village voted out the remaining Mennonite landowners. From 1929 to 1940, 1500 men of a total population of 12,000 were exiled to hard labor in the far north or Siberia.
Read more about this topic: Chortitza Colony
Famous quotes containing the word communism:
“Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“You’ll see certain Pythagoreans whose belief in communism of property goes to such lengths that they pick up anything lying about unguarded, and make off with it without a qualm of conscience as if it had come to them by law.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels’ wives.”
—Frances Fitzgerald (b. 1940)