During 150 years of Mennonite life in the southern Ukraine, their activity became an important factor of economic and social-cultural development of the region, and impacted positively upon the population. Therefore the interest in their history and culture from the side of researchers is well warranted.
Important but scantily explored sources on this theme are the materials of the population census in the period from the end of 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. The census of "Revision" was the basic form of tax and non-tax population registration in Russia. The main kind of population census materials are census lists ("revizskiye skazky"). From census lists we can determine the surname, name, patronymic, class affiliation of the person, the age, residence; number of children--male and female--their names, ages; and other important information. All census but the 6th registered women as well as men.
Mennonite registers of births, marriages and deaths from the end of the 18th century and the first half of 19th century are lost from archives. Therefore, census lists are of even greater value for genealogy and demographic investigations.
At the same time it is necessary to note that these documents counted not the whole population, but only those registered. In particular, there was no information about foreigners living in Mennonite districts. One more difficulty is that census lists on Mennonite settlements only survived partially. They do not form a separate complex of documents and are kept in different state archives in several districts of Ukraine.
A total of 10 Revisions or census (population census) were conducted in Russia. Information on Mennonites is found in the last 6, numbers 5-10. The 5th revision (1795) remains in the State Archives in the Denepropetrovsk regions (herein SADR) in the Deposit of Novorossiysk foreign settlers Tutorial office (Note 1). The 1795 census contains information on the 9 earliest settlements in the Khortitsa district. The lists contain information about the date of arrival of Mennonites to Russia and their former residence. These documents are already familiar to researchers because they were published in the well-known work by Benjamin H. Unruh (Note 2).
The 6th census was held in 1811 and was speeded up. Unfortunately, the revision lists of the census on Mennonite settlements are not found in archives, though we can assert that a revision was conducted there. This information is confirmed by the 1816 year revision list on the settlement (village) Schoenwiese in the Khortitsa district. This census is found in Aleksandrovsk district Treasury Fund of State Archives Zaporozhye region (herein SAZR) (Note 3), and contains information on this settlement and the previous revision of 1811.
The absence of the documents of the 6th census is compensated for by the preservation of materials of the 1808 census on 18 Moloschansk Mennonite settlements (1901 persons) as well as on Khortitsa settlements, including new ones (Burwalde and others), founded after 1795. The 1808 census, kept in SADR, also contains interesting information on the property status of settlers. Materials from this census are also published in the already mentioned work by Benjamin H. Unruh.
Though the basic year of conducting the 7th census was 1815, it was conducted in the spring of 1816 in the Mennonite settlements.
Census lists for 1816 are extant only for the settlement of Schoenwiese. The population of the settlement at this time was 156 persons--78 male and 68 female. According to the 1795 year census, there were 1836 persons in Schoenwiese. Only alphabetic indexes to census lists remain for the other Khortitsa settlements. The same are consequently of great value for researchers.
The 7th census on the Molochansk settlements is lost. To compensate to some degree for the absence of these documents, similar documents are extant regarding the Molochansk Mennonite district from 1835 (8th census), containing information on the previous census. They are kept in the State Archive of Odessa region (herin SAOR) in the Deposit "Mennonites Community of Berdyansk district" (Note 4), also known as the Johann Kornies Archives and in Canada as the Peter Braun Archives.
Lists kept here on 41 settlements contain rich material about the foundation of new settlements in the district between 1816 and 1835, and about the migration of population in this period. These documents contain information about the creation of new settlements and migration to them of Mennonites from 1835 to 1849 (e.g. to the settlement Grishau created in 1848), i.e. until the time of conducting of the 9th census in 1850. Materials of this revision have since been translated into English and published in Canada and are available for a wider audience.
The 9th all-Russia census was done in 1850. Unfortunately, of all Mennonite settlements whether Khortitsa or Moloshansk, only the lists on the settlement of Schoenwiese are known to be extant as of the present time. The revisions regarding other Khortitsa settlements may be in Germany. Archival materials was removed from the Zaporozhye State Archives and taken to Germany in 1943, including materials regarding the Khortitsa district and Khortitsa administration. Johnn Epp, former Oberschulz of the Khortitsa district during the period of Fascist occupation, confirms the fact of the transmission of Khortitsa Archives to the Archives in Frankfurt-on-Oder. But Epp does not know what happened to the documents later and their contents.
Census lists and extracts from revision lists remain in the SAZT and contain information regarding Mennonite families which migrated in the 19th century to the newly- created Mariupol Mennonite district, on migrants from Khortitsa to the Molochansk settlement and vice-versa, and about families changing their village of residence inside the Khortitsa district. There are a small quantity of such documents, but they, nevertheless, enable the study of the process of creating daughter settlements.
The census for the settlement of Schoenwiese shows a further increase in the population of the village: 159 male and 161 female, 320 persons in total. The census list reveals that important changes took place in the structure of population in the settlement.
The revision list of the 10th census for the Moloshansk settlements were kept only in SAOR prior to World War Two. During the Fascist occupation an effort was made to remove the Archives on German Colonization to Germany. The main part of the Odessa Archives was not removed. But documents of the 1858 census of Mennonite settlements were not found after the war and nothing further is presently known about them.
1858 census lists for the Mariupol Mennonite daughter settlements (Bergthal) are of great value for studying Mennonite daughter settlements. Documents on 2 or the 5 settlements (Heuboden and Friedrichstahl) remain in the Deposit of Aleksandrovsk Town-hall SAZR (Note 5). Another part of the revision is contained in the Deposit of Mariupol district treasury in the State Archives of Donetsk region (SADoR) (Note 6). Summary lists of the 9th and 10th census on Mariupol Mennonite district have also survived. These census lists remain largely unknown to specialists.
Even a superficial evaluation of basic information contained in these census lists confirms the great importance of these sources for studying problems of foreign colonization in the Southern Ukraine. Serious analysis of the census lists together with church and police materials of population registration, enable a much deeper study of the social, economic and demographic processes which took place in the Mennonite communities of the Southern Ukraine from the end of 18th century through the first half of 19th century.
Endnotes:
1. SADR, f. 134, in 1, file 18.
2. Unruh, Benjamin. Die niederlandisch-niederdeutschen
Hintergrunde der mennonitischtn Ostwanderungen im. 16/18.
und 19. Jahrhundert. Karlsruhe, 1955.
3. SAZR, f. 12, in 2, file 101.
4. SAOR, f. 89, in 1, file 357.
5. SAZR, f. 1, in 1, file 752.
6. SADoR, f. 131, in 1, file 115.
This article was reprinted with permission from Preservings (June, 1996), No. 8, pt. 1, p. 58.