Flight

Flight:

Mennonites Facing the Soviet Empire in 1929-30, from the pages of the Mennonitische Rundschau

by Harold Jantz

With Flight you will discover how Mennonites in 1929 learned what was happening to family and friends in the Soviet Union that year. The 735-page Flight has translations or summaries of all the items about Mennonites “facing the Soviet empire” that appeared in the weekly Mennonitische Rundschau, during two critical years in the Soviet Union, 1929 and 1930. Ultimately, these are the stories of many others as well within Soviet Russia. Most Mennonites lived in Ukraine which was especially hard hit by the events of those years.

In 1929 Stalin’s Five Year Plan was just coming into force. It led to vast collectivization of the farm economy, requisition of most of the yield of harvests, an intense assault on religious belief, the arrest and eventual exile of many better farmers, a shift to a five-day week, and the advantaging of cities and heavy industry.

For strong faith communities like the Mennonites, it was a very difficult time. In late 1929 many thousands of Mennonites were camped around Moscow in a panicked effort to leave—hopefully for Canada.