Mennonite History Timeline

After ascending the Prussian throne, Frederick William II imposed heavy fees on Mennonites in exchange for continuing their exemption from military service.

Image source: Frederick William II of Prussia

In 1859, Joseph Höttmann, a former associate of Wüst, met with Mennonites to discuss problems within the main Mennonite body. These discussions helped initiate the Mennonite Brethren movement.

A portion of Mennonites moved to Crimea in 1860, adopted baptism by immersion, and became known as the Krimmer Mennonite Brethren.

A growing group of dissenters presented a document to the elders of the Molotschna Mennonite Churches, formally breaking with the main church and declaring that the broader Mennonite brotherhood had decayed.

Russian authorities announced a Russification plan in 1870 that was intended to end Mennonite special privileges by 1880, including protections associated with military service and education.

Mennonite delegates traveled to Saint Petersburg in 1871 to meet with the czar and seek relief from the planned restrictions on their communities, appealing on religious grounds.

Concerned that 40,000 industrious Mennonite farmers might leave Russia for North America, the Russian government sent Eduard Totleben to the colonies in May 1874.

By 1880, the military service question for Mennonites who remained in Russia was resolved through a substitute four-year forestry service program for men of military age.

Although Mennonites had generally remained congregational in organization, the General Conference of Mennonite Congregations in Russia was formed in 1882.

Image source: Mennonites

After the Russian Revolution of 1905, Mennonites exercised their right to vote, marking a limited expansion of their formal political participation.

Image source: Russian Revolution of 1905

During World War I, approximately 5,000 Mennonite men served in forestry and hospital units. They also transported wounded people from battlefields to hospitals in Moscow and Ekaterinoslav.

The February Revolution of 1917 created hopes among Mennonites that the new Russian Provisional Government would preserve their religious and communal freedoms.

Image source: February Revolution

Beginning in 1918, religious freedoms were restricted in the Soviet Union, affecting Mennonite worship, institutions, education, and community life.

Image source: Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union

During the upheaval following the Russian Revolution, Mennonite self-defense militia forces were ultimately overwhelmed after Makhno’s anarchists aligned with the Red Army early in 1919.

Image source: Nestor Makhno

From 1929 to 1940, one in eight Mennonite men was removed, usually under political pretexts, to labor camps. Few returned or were heard from again.

Image source: Dekulakization

In 1937 and 1938, the NKVD carried out ethnically motivated purges of German descendants and German-language speakers, including Mennonites.

The main branches of the former General Conference Mennonite Church split into Mennonite Church Canada, established in 2000, and Mennonite Church USA, established in 2002.

Image source: Mennonite Church Canada

Mennonite Church USA was established in 2002 as one of the principal successor bodies to the former General Conference Mennonite Church.

Image source: Mennonite Church USA

In 2013, the Mennonite Brethren church had approximately 24,400 baptized members.

The Molotschna colony established a secondary school at Ohrloff and brought in a trained teacher from Prussia, strengthening formal Mennonite education.

The Central School was started in Chortitza in 1842, becoming an important educational institution for Mennonite communities in the colony.

Population growth and pressure for additional farmland became serious problems by 1860. The resulting land shortage encouraged industrial development, internal migration, and later overseas emigration.

The first large Mennonite foundry was established in Chortitza in 1860. Other firms followed, beginning a period of major Mennonite participation in Russian manufacturing.

By 1870, approximately 9,000 individuals had immigrated to Russia. Population growth brought the Chortitza and Molotschna settlements to about 45,000 people.

By 1914, forty daughter colonies had been established. They occupied nearly 12,000 square kilometers and had a combined population of approximately 100,000.

A delegation of twelve Mennonites explored North America in 1873, seeking large tracts of fertile farmland as Russian policies threatened their established way of life.

Winter wheat was introduced to Kansas in 1873. The crop was closely associated with Russian Mennonite agricultural migration to the American plains.

Between 1874 and 1880, approximately 10,000 Mennonites left South Russia for the United States and about 8,000 moved to Manitoba. Their settlement in the plains coincided with completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.

In the summer of 1920, Mennonites from Molotschna sent a commission to North America to alert American Mennonites to the dire conditions in war-torn Ukraine.

A year after the 1920 appeal, official permission was obtained from the Soviet government for relief work among Ukrainian villages affected by war and famine.

Image source: Russian famine of 1921–1922

Relief kitchens provided food to 25,000 people per day over three years beginning in 1922, with a peak of 40,000 servings during August of that year.

The more conservative Manitoba Mennonites left Canada after World War I. Most moved to Mexico between 1922 and 1927, while others moved to Paraguay in 1927.

Mennonites from Canada formed Menno Colony in Paraguay in 1927, establishing one of the earliest major Latin American Mennonite settlements.

Mennonites from the Soviet Union fleeing starvation, religious persecution, and Stalinist collectivization formed the Fernheim and Friesland colonies in Paraguay during the 1930s.

By 1930, approximately 21,000 Mennonites had arrived in Canada, with many traveling on credit provided by the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Many Mennonite refugees remained displaced until the Nansen International Office for Refugees of the League of Nations arranged resettlement in Paraguay and Brazil in 1932.

Neuland and Volendam colonies were founded in Paraguay in 1947 by Mennonites who had fled the Soviet Union at the end of World War II.

Beginning in 1954, conservative Mennonites settled in eastern Bolivia, particularly in the Santa Cruz Department. By 2006, Bolivia had 41 Mennonite colonies.

Old Colony Mennonites moved from Mexico to Belize in 1959, extending the Latin American Mennonite migration network.

In 1977, Russian Mennonites from Mexico established a settlement in Gaines County, Texas, where they began farming and ranching.

Old Colony Mennonites moved from Mexico to Argentina in 1986, continuing the movement of conservative Mennonite communities across Latin America.

About 100,000 people of Mennonite origin emigrated from the Soviet Union to Germany between 1987 and 1993. These migrants are commonly associated with the term Aussiedler.

By 2005, Gaines County, Texas, where Russian Mennonites from Mexico had established farms and ranches, had become the number-one cotton- and peanut-producing county in Texas.

By 2006, Bolivia contained 41 Mennonite colonies, reflecting the growth of conservative Mennonite settlement in the country.

The Mennonite population living in Mexico declined sharply during this period. At least 30,000 Mexican Mennonites were estimated to have immigrated to Canada between 2012 and 2017.

In 2014, several hundred thousand Russian Mennonites were distributed across Germany, Mexico, Bolivia, Paraguay, Belize, Canada, the United States, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Uruguay, and Brazil.