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  Historical Committee
I Wish I'd Been There: Tsar Alexander Comes to Lindenau
by Ted Regehr
I wish I’d been there on 21 May 1818 when Tsar Alexander I visited the
village of Lindenau in the Molotschna Mennonite Colony in southern
Russia. It would be interesting to see the state of the village,
founded in 1804 and just emerging from its difficult pioneering years.
Before the visit, the street had been carefully swept and sprinkled
with sand and the houses were colourfully decorated. The colonists
wanted to demonstrate their substantial progress and to promote further
migrations of Mennonites from Prussia, where people had suffered great
hardship during Napoleon’s occupation of that region in his 1812
campaign against Russia.
People came from many of the neighbouring Molotschna
villages along the
western side of the Molotschna River, and from the German Lutheran
Prischib colony on the river’s eastern banks. On the appointed day, in
glorious spring weather, Mennonite villagers gathered on the left side
of the street, the German colonists on the right. Their demeanor,
clothing, personal appearance, and the place, if any, assigned to
Russian peasants who had found work with the Mennonites would provide
fascinating insights into early Russian Mennonite culture.
The royal procession consisted of nineteen carriages. The Tsar sat in
the sixth carriage, drawn by six great |
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horses. He disembarked, as
previously arranged, at the home of David Hiebert,
the village teacher
and preacher, for a “breakfast” of bread, butter, onions and ham. The
Tsar’s gracious demeanor, particularly his insistence that the hostess
occupy the best chair at the table and his gift of a ring to her,
became the subject of Mennonite folklore. The Tsar’s retinue, including
two senior military officers in their resplendent uniforms, added
colour to the occasion.
Alexander I is probably the most enigmatic Tsar in Russian history. His
demeanor during the Lindenau visit contrasts sharply with the wild,
raucous and dissolute life of the Tsar and the entire Russian
delegation at the lengthy deliberations in Vienna following Napoleon’s
defeat at Waterloo. His apparent respect for a humble Mennonite hostess
seems incompatible with the often harsh autocratic style of government
he and the other members of the Concert of Europe imposed on their
people after 1815. Allegations that Alexander was involved, or at least
informed beforehand, of the plot to murder his father, the insane and
incompetent Tsar Paul I, add further mystery to the man, as do rumours
that he may not have died in 1825, shortly after a second visit to the
Molotschna colony. It has been alleged that, after an elaborately
staged hoax funeral, Alexander became a mystical religious recluse
trying to resolve the contradictions of his character and to expiate
the guilt of his father’s murder.
Like his father, who had given Mennonites their cherished Privilegium
spelling out in greater detail than any of Catharine the Great’s
invitations the privileges of the Mennonite colonists, Alexander was a
good friend and admirer of the Mennonites. But he had little patience
with some of the quarrelsome ways of Mennonite church and community
leaders. That was most evident when he awarded a large gold medallion
and restored to a position of authority one of the Mennonite leaders
who had been banished by his own people. Was this, as the Mennonite
accounts say, a man blessed of God, or an autocrat haunted by guilt and
a longing for a simpler and more godly life? I wish I could have seen
this mysterious man of contradictions when he first visited the
Mennonites in the Molotschna colony.
T. D.
Regehr is professor emeritus of history, University of Saskatchewan,
and the author of numerous articles and several books on Russian and
Canadian Mennonite history.
Photo/caption:
Alexander I.jpg- Tsar Alexander I ruled
Russia, 1801-1825. He was “a good friend and admirer of the Mennonites.”
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Mennonite
Historical Bulletin
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Mission
Statement:
"God calls us to preserve our faith heritage, to interpret our stories,
and to proclaim God's work among us."
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