Russian Mennonites
The Russian Mennonites are an ethnically Dutch group of Mennonites who traditionally spoke Plautdietsch, and who established colonies in Russia beginning in 1789. Since the late 1800s, many of them have come to countries throughout the Western Hemisphere.
In the early-to-mid 1500s, early Mennonites began to flee the present-day Netherlands (especially Friesland) and Flanders, seeking religious freedom and exemption from military service in the Vistula delta region of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (the area was actually part of Royal Prussia until 1569). They gradually replaced their Dutch and Frisian languages with the Low Saxon dialect spoken in the area, blending into it elements of their native tongues. Plautdietsch is the distinct Mennonite dialect that resulted from this.
In 1772, most of the Mennonites' land in the Vistula area became part of Prussia in the first of the Partitions of Poland. Frederick William II of Prussia ascended the throne in 1786 and imposed heavy fees on the Mennonites in exchange for continued military exemption.
In the same year, Catherine the Great of Russia sent a special invitation to the Mennonites, offering them land where they could have partial autonomy and military exemption. The territory was northwest of the Sea of Azov, and had just been acquired from the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War, 1768-74. Many of the Mennonites in Prussia accepted this invitation, establishing Chortitza on the Dnieper River as their first colony in 1789. The other primary colony, Molotschna, was founded in 1803.
In 1814, the Kleine Gemeinde, which would become the Evangelical Mennonite Conference, separated from the main body of the church in Molotschna. The Mennonite Brethren Churches (Brüder Gemeinde) split off in 1860.
Between 1874 and 1880, 18,000 of the approximately 45,000 Mennonites in South Russia left for North America due to increasing limitations on their special status.
