Fall 2024 · Vol. 53 No. 2 · pp. 210–212
Book Review
On Stony Ground: Russländer Mennonites and the Rebuilding of Community in Grunthal
James Urry. Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 2024. 360 pages.
James Urry, the highly respected historian/anthropologist of Russian Mennonites and author of None but Saints: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia, 1789–1889 (Pandora, 2007), has written another book about Russian Mennonites. This time the subject is the Russian Mennonites who arrived in southern Manitoba in 1923 and 1924, specifically those who settled in and around the village of Grunthal. This group consisted of Mennonites from the older Chortitza Colony in South Russia, Schönfelders (once wealthy estate owners with roots in the Molochna Colony), “Church” (Kirchliche) Mennonites, and a smaller number of Mennonite Brethren (although few Mennonite Brethren made Grunthal their home).
In all, about 21,000 Russian Mennonites arrived in Canada between 1923 and ’26 and settled either in Manitoba or Saskatchewan. Grunthal was established in the 1870s by conservative Russian Mennonite immigrants (referred to as Kanadier by the later Mennonite immigrants). The town lost many of its earliest families to Mexico and Paraguay between 1922 and 1926. The book focuses on how the new Russian Mennonites (referred to as Russländer by the Kanadier) took a leading role in rejuvenating the demographically diminished region centered in Grunthal.
In chapter 1, Urry contrasts the experiences of the Russländer in Russia in the first twenty-five years of the twentieth century with those of the Kanadier in Canada. Unlike the Kanadier, the Russländer lived through a violent revolution, a brutal civil war, anarchy, mass murder, famine, and disease. These traumas were burned into the memories of those who survived. However, they also had fond memories of a thriving prerevolution “Mennonite Commonwealth,” complete with schools, hospitals, sanatoriums, and seniors homes. All were lost during and after the Civil War. In Canada, the Russländer would attempt to reestablish what they could of that commonwealth. By contrast, Kanadier had few comparable experiences or ambitions and found Russländer to be arrogant and worldly, which made an easy mutual understanding and empathy difficult. Indeed, fashioning a community out of families unconnected by church or kinship was a challenge, and relations with the Kanadier were further strained by marked differences in piety, education, attitude toward Low German, and even manners.
Reestablishing important institutions would become a priority as the Russländer settled in. These included church (most Russländer would belong to the Elim congregation), women’s groups, mutual aid, mutual p. 211 fire insurance, and a burial society, among others, and they had a keen interest in education. Kanadier had different views of education, so schools became sites of heated disagreements, the issue of the place of the German language being especially controversial (chap. 5).
Urry relates astonishing figures that testify to the devastating impact of the Great Depression (1930s) on the Canadian prairies and particularly on the Grunthal area (chap. 6). Debt and poverty respected no ethnic group or religious affiliation and left a scar on the psyche of all who struggled through those grim years.
The political culture of southern Manitoba in the 1930s is examined in chapter 7, where Urry also presents Mennonites’ voting patterns in federal and provincial elections during the same period. The vast majority voted for the Liberal Party, largely because of its willingness to accept Mennonites into Canada when the need was great while the other parties opposed the decision.
In “Conflicted Identities” (chap. 8), Urry explores the instability that marked Russländer self-understanding before and after their arrival in Manitoba. They had grown to identify as Russian in the late 1800s and early 1900s under the czarist government there, but the First World War and events during the Civil War stoked German sympathies. These became more pronounced during the Nazi era in the 1930s when living conditions under the new Soviet Union’s communist regime were especially harsh. Correspondence with relatives there gave them a vivid sense of their sufferings. Thus, before and (for a time) during the Second World War (chap. 9), some Canadian Russländer openly expressed their support of Adolf Hitler whose anti-communism, his plan to unite German-speaking people throughout the world, and his (apparently) genuine Christian faith persuaded them that he could restore the lost fortunes of Russian Mennonites. Kanadier, however, were indifferent to political developments in Germany.
Germany’s defeat in 1945 forced Russländer to face the reality that they would need to be English-speaking Canadians and Christians without the German language. The prosperity that came to southern Manitoba Mennonites after the war (chap. 10) made coming to terms with that reality less arduous. A sense of unity was achieved in Grunthal after the war through social clubs, societies, ice hockey, songfests, and the like. Divisions, however, continued, fueled by differences of opinion about farmers’ unions, school reform, and religious matters, such as courtship and marriage between different stripes of Mennonites (chap. 11).
As many original Russländer immigrants entered retirement age and some died off, questions of how their legacy would be carried forward inevitably arose (chap. 12). The 1950s saw an increase in the transfer of p. 212 farms and businesses to adult children. But those who pursued teacher training often found employment opportunities and sometimes marriage partners outside of Grunthal, which loosened their ties to the community. In the meantime, English was fast eclipsing German as the mother tongue of the faith.
Urry devotes the penultimate chapter of his book to the Russländer coming to grips with a Canadian identity (chap. 13). Their dilemma, says Urry, “was how to become like the British but not to become totally ‘English’ in the process” (248). Multiculturalism was promoted by the Trudeau government in 1971 and encouraged with the proviso that Canadian citizens “abide by and contribute to the laws and aspirations that unite society” (250). This merely articulated what those of Russländer descent had already assumed for many years. But it was an invitation to participate in the life of the nation that implied a welcoming affirmation of the qualities and characteristics that made Mennonites unique. Urry draws attention to the not-always-positive influence of American culture and religion as well (256–58).
Scattered throughout the book are informative maps, data tables, and pictures. Two appendices are included. A substantial bibliography documents the breadth of the sources—archival material, interviews, government reports, monographs, scholarly articles, etc.—on which Urry has drawn. A serviceable but incomplete index is also provided. All in all, James Urry’s On Stony Ground makes an impressive contribution to a growing body of scholarship on the Russian Mennonite experience in Canada in the twentieth century.
