Russian Mennonite - Collectivization

Collectivization

With the onset of economic and agricultural reforms, large estates and the communal land of the Mennonite colonies were confiscated. The next step was to reduce the model farms by 60% and then another 50% percent—an insufficient size to support a family. The confiscated land was given to peasants from outside the Mennonite communities, often communist party members. These new villagers soon controlled the local government, further confiscating land and rights from the Mennonite majority by labeling landowners and leaders kulaks and sending them in exile. The government taxed the remaining landowners so heavily that they could not possibly produce enough to meet the obligation and their land was confiscated as payment. As collectivization proceeded, there was some hope that Mennonites could run their own collective farms, but with the introduction of Stalin's First Five-Year Plan there was no hope that such a scheme would be allowed.

Starting in 1918 religious freedoms were restricted. Churches and congregations had to be registered with the government. Ministers were disenfranchized and lost all their rights as a citizen. Ministers could not be teachers, which was the livelihood of many Mennonite pastors. They or their family members could not join cooperatives or craft guilds. Because of these restrictions, ministers had a strong incentive to emigrate and few were willing to replace them. Congregations could no longer do charitable work of any kind, which ended destroyed the well developed social institutions with the Mennonite colonies. Villages lost all control of their schools and all religious content prohibited. Sunday was abolished as a holiday.