by Robert Martens

When I first see the ruins of the Mennonite church in the former Molotschna village of Schönsee, my first thought is of the similarly abiding beauty of Greek temple ruins that I’ve visited. The Schönsee church, with its lovely neogothic windows and traces of Dutch style, is a simple but stunning architectural achievement. We stream from the tour bus with digital cameras buzzing and clicking. Some of us clamber over stones and bushes into the interior, now open to the skies, as the roof has fallen in. The building, overgrown and slowly disintegrating, is a quiet memory of another time. But Schönsee church may not exist much longer. Its typically red nineteenth century Mennonite bricks, so well manufactured, are being scavenged by poverty-stricken Ukrainian villagers for their own homes.
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 In autumn of 2006 I sailed, along with nearly 200 other passengers, on the Dnieper Princess of the Mennonite Heritage Cruise. Many of us wondered what our reaction would be upon walking the homelands of our Russian Mennonite ancestors. My own response was a temporary feeling of disassociation, or even dislocation: so little remains of what the Russian Mennonites built. The slow disintegration of the doomed Schönsee church is typical. Often the only Mennonite markers in a former Molotschna village are a gate here, a fence there, a crumbling school building, tombstones with faded names.

 Even so, a visit to Ukraine can feel like a homecoming. Midway through the cruise I climbed into a large van which would take about fifteen of us to my grandfather’s birth village of Orloff, Zagradovka Colony. At least we hoped it would take us there. The van sputtered and ground to a final halt about an hour out of Zaporozhye, where we’d started. The pessimists among us resigned themselves to being pilgrims without a destination. But the efficient tour staff cell phoned for a new van, and we settled in for an hour’s wait. Meanwhile I talked at length with our warm and pleasant tour guide, who happened to be an instructor in world literature in her “real life.” In the upside-down Ukrainian economy, it’s quite possible that she earns more as a guide than as teacher.

 The new van arrived, and we travelled on through the rolling Ukrainian steppe. The climate is dry, with an average of 18 inches of rain a year, but the black topsoil is so rich that crops can flourish nevertheless. Many roads and streets are lined with shelterbelts of poplar and acacia, partly a heritage, perhaps, of the extensive tree planting to which the Russian Mennonites were committed. Many trees, but few road signs. We were soon wandering, getting lost, and asking directions from the locals, despite the map clutched by our tour guide. After several hours of backtracking, circling, and lurching down dirt roads which very likely would have been impassable in the rain, we spotted a large sign in Cyrillic letters of blue: Orlove. “Orloff,” I shouted, and everyone cheered.

 The day turned into an experience of seemingly random blessings. The van stopped at the village community centre, and while we waited, our tour guide emerged with the town administrator who just happened to be there. This lively and intelligent woman then proceeded to show us around Orloff for several hours. We visited a house built by Mennonites and still occupied, quite pleasantly, by an elderly Ukrainian couple. The village school, where my grandfather may have attended and my great grandfather may have taught, was abandoned but still standing. The Orloff administrator contacted her colleague from the village of Tiege, who then showed us his own village, as well as the dilapidated former Mennonite church at Nikolaifeld. Particularly for members of our tour group who had lost family to violence in Zagradovka, the day became a deeply emotional one.

 Of course many better-preserved fragments of the Russian Mennonite experience remain. A mill in Molochansk, the former Halbstadt, is still in use (but not as a mill). The Neufeld brewery there stands but is abandoned. The Zentralschule (secondary school) of Halbstadt has been locally renovated with rather unfortunate consequences: the result is something architect Rudy Friesen referred to as “Costco birthday cake style.” The splendid Mädchenschule (young women’s school) in Chortitza is still in use. And the former Mädchenschule in Halbstadt has been wonderfully renovated, and now operates as the Mennonite Centre in Ukraine. Its presence as a community centre is, in a sense, a gift from the “Mennonite Diaspora.”

 The Mennonite Centre is a generous response from a troubled past. Ukrainians generally refer to Mennonites as “Germans,” a designation that, due to the horrors of World War II, carries some soiled baggage. Resentment against prosperous tourists is quite evident, as demonstrated by some drunk Ukrainian men who boarded a tour bus and refused to leave until they were given money. And Nestor Makhno, the scourge of Russian Mennonites after the Revolution, has become a patriotic symbol to some. On the other hand, Ukrainians such as the administrator from Orloff are deeply interested in replicating the former Mennonite economic success. Some Ukrainians have also apparently wondered why returning Mennonites, whose families had been driven from their lands after the Russian Revolution, don’t bear them a grudge.

 The cruise, with extensive lectures from Paul Toews, Alan Peters, and Rudy Friesen, is sometimes “on information overload,” and is perhaps better absorbed after it is over. Yet it provides a profound return to the Mennonite past. I was particularly moved by our visit to the Lichtenau train station, from which so many of our ancestors were transported to the slow death of the Soviet gulag. We stood, a small group in a vast steppeland, and sang the Mennonite hymn of parting, “So nimm denn meine Hände” (Take thou my hands).

The Mennonite church building in the former village of Petershagen has been charmingly restored. It now functions as a Mennonite church, although its membership is no longer “ethnic Mennonite” but local Ukrainian. Like Schönsee, the building is uncomplicatedly beautiful. We are invited inside. The pastor greets us with a broad smile, and then a group of young people, eyes gleaming with innocence, sing choruses of joy.