For a long time, Russia had vast areas of uninhabited land. In the late 1700s the Russian czars offered many incentives for German speaking people to settle on some of the most fertile land. The first Anabaptists to move into Russia were Hutterites who settled into an area northwest of present-day Kiev, Ukraine. By 1877, all of them had moved to Canada and the United States.
Mennonites in Holland and northern German had fled to Prussia (now Poland) to escape persecution. In 1786, Prussian Mennonites were offered land in Ukraine. Two delegates of the Prussian Mennonites went to inspect the land. Russian Empress Catherine II guaranteed they would have exemption from military service and free exercise of religion. Two hundred and twenty-eight Mennonite families moved to Ukraine in 1788 and established the Chortiza Colony along the Dnieper River. From1803-1806, another 365 Mennonite families moved to Ukraine and established the Molotschna Colony. By 1859, there were 34,500 Mennonites in sixty villages in Ukraine, primarily in the Crimea and Zaphoresia areas.
In the late 1800s, military exemption was revoked. From 1874-1880, one-third of the 54,000 Mennonites in Ukraine left for United States and Canada. They took with them the Turkey Red wheat seed that turned the Great Plains into the breadbasket of North America.
The Mennonite population in Russia grew to 120,000 by World War I. The Bolshevik Revolution had taken away all religious and economic freedoms. From 1922-1927, about 23,000 Mennonites left Russia for Canada, Paraguay, and Argentina.
In World War II, the Chortiza Colony came under German occupation. When Hitler's army was driven out by the Russians, the Mennonite population followed the German army to Poland where they had come from 150 years earlier. Two-thirds of these 35,000 Mennonites were forcibly exiled to Siberia and the Far East in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan where all faced persecution for their faith.
A Pietist Evangelical church was established near the Molotschna Colony in 1845. The movement spread through Russia and played a large role in the formation of the Mennonite Brethren Church in Russia. It drew together the Baptists, Evangelicals, and Mennonites as well as some smaller groups. Since 1943, these groups have been united as the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists.
The persecution after the Revolution and during the two World Wars tended to draw believers together as they found themselves in prisons and labor camps. There were no Mennonite churches in many of the places where the Mennonites were exiled, so they attended Baptist or Evangelical churches. Their shared faith in Jesus Christ drew them together instead of splitting as was happening in the Mennonite churches in North America where there was freedom of religion.
As the Baptists organized, they got some concessions from the government, especially if they registered their churches. The Mennonites had never been recognized by the government and received few concessions. By joining hands with the Baptists, they found a measure of tolerance. The merger resulted in a Baptist church with many Mennonite convictions and practices.
There were some who refused to register because it restricted them from having Sunday school or taking their children to church. The unregistered churches worshiped in small groups in homes and suffered much persecution for "illegal" activities. Registered or unregistered, the believers were commonly called Baptists. The Mennonite name faded into history in Russia but was carried with those who left the country. Although they are known as Russian Mennonites, they were actually Dutch and German Mennonites who migrated to Russia and maintained the German language in all their wanderings.
