In this vivid and engaging study, David Rempel combines his first-hand account of life in Russian Mennonite settlements during the landmark period of 1900-1920, with a rich portrait of six generations of his ancestral family from the foundation of the first colony - the Khortitsa Settlement - in 1789 to the country's cataclysmic civil war.

Born in 1899 in the Mennonite village of Nieder Khortitsa on the Dnieper River, the author witnessed the upheaval of the next decades: the 1905 revolution, the quasi-stability wrought from Stolypin reforms, World War I and the threat of property expropriation and exile, the 1917 Revolution, and the Civil War during which he endured the full horrors of the Makhnovshchina - the terror of occupation of his village and home by the bandit horde led by Nestor Makhno - and the typhus epidemic left in their wake.

Published posthumously, this book offers a penetrating view of one of Tsarist and early Soviet Russia's smallest, yet most dynamic, ethno-religious minorities.

Rempel combines his first-hand account of life in Russian Mennonite settlements during the landmark period of 1900-1920, with a rich portrait of six generations of his ancestral family from the foundation of the first colony in 1789.

  • Imprint: University of Toronto Press
  • Published: September 2011
  • Pages: 408

The late David G. Rempel received his Ph.D. in history from Stanford University. He was professor of history at the College of San Mateo in California, from 1934 until his retirement in 1964.

Cornelia Rempel Carlson, daughter of David G. Rempel, edited the manuscript for publication.

Chapters

PDF
List of Maps and Genealogical Figures
Background of This Book
Preface
Introduction
1 Two Russian Mennonite Families
PART ONE Father's Ancestral Family: The Rempels
2 Cherkessy with Broken-Tipped Knives: The Rempel Clan
3 The First Three Generations of Rempels
4 A ‘Better’ Class of Rempels: The Maternal Lineage
5 Tribulations: My Paternal Grandparents
6 Father and His First Wife
PART TWO Mother's Ancestral Families: The Höppners, Hildebrands, Kovenhovens, and Paulses
7 Unjust Charges: The Fate of Jacob Höppner
8 Mennonite Service and Supernatural Tales: The Hildebrands
9 Piety and Pain: Mother's Paternal Ancestors
10 A Burdened Life: Grandfather Heinrich Pauls
11 Equanimity: Grandmother Pauls, 1901-1917
PART THREE Boyhood
12 Life at Home
13 Father's Occupations
14 Apprehension Following the 1905 Revolution: Premonition of Chaos to Come
15 Class Conflicts within the Khortitsa Settlement
16 Growing Interest in Education
PART FOUR Fading Hopes: War and Revolution
17 The Outbreak of War
18 Harassment and the Confiscation of Property
19 Revolution and Reform: Challenges to the Old Guards
PART FIVE From Dream to Nightmare: Civil War and Makhnovite Terror (Makhnovshchina)
20 The First Phase of the Civil War, January to March 1918
21 Nominal Security under Foreign Occupation, April to November 1918
22 A Short Respite: Two Celebrations
23 The Civil War Deepens, November 1918 to September 1919
24 Makhnovite Terror (Makhnovshchina): The Initial Stage, 21 September to 23 October 1919
25 The Height of the Makhnovite Terror, 23 October to 23 December 1919
26 Hostages
27 Typhus: The Nightmare Legacy of Makhnovite Terror, December 1919 to March 1920
28 More Desperate Years: A Sketch
Epilogue
Appendix I Terms of Catherine the Great's Recruiting Manifesto of 1785
Appendix II Mennonite Articles of Settlement in New Russia
Appendix III Special Privileges Granted to Höppner and Bartsch
Appendix IV Khortitsa Settlement Villages
Appendix V Nieder Khortitsa about 1917
Appendix VI Genealogy
Glossary
Notes
A Painter's Recollection of Khortitsa, 1910
Index

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