CCCC Heritage: Germans from Russia

Alwyn York, Conference Historian

American Congregationalism is strongly associated with New England and the legacy of the English colonists who settled in Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. Yet a significant number of churches belonging to the CCCC, particularly those in the Great Plains and California, come from a German rather than a Yankee background. These German churches were established by a special subset of German immigrants whose story is not generally known. They were the Germans from Russia. Their identity has been a source of confusion to others through the years. Were they German or Russian? The short answer is that they were ethnically German people who had been living in Russia.

Their story begins in the days of the Empress Catherine the Great. She wanted people to settle and farm on the Russian Steppe, a vast treeless plain inhabited by a few nomadic tribes. In 1763 she issued a manifesto inviting people of non-Russian heritage to settle on the plains along the Volga River. Catherine’s successor, Alexander I, extended settlement to the northern Black Sea region. Thousands of Germans responded to these invitations. They came to Russia for much the same reasons that Germans and other immigrants came to America. The colonies in Russia offered them freedom and the chance to have their own land.

The Russian rulers offered very strong incentives to encourage people to come and settle. They were promised full religious liberty, provided they did not attempt to convert the Russian Orthodox to other religious denominations. They were also offered exemption from all forms of military service, almost total control of their local governments, schools and churches, free transportation to Russia, and tax exemptions for ten years.

Conditions in Russia were harsh, but the Germans who immigrated there were mainly farmers who brought with them a strong work ethic, in which they took great pride. As a result they prospered. They established thriving communities. Their communities did not assimilate into Russian society. In their self-contained communities they lived as Germans in the midst of Russia. They spoke German within their homes, worshipped in German, and their children were educated in German.

The arrangement established by Catherine the Great worked well for the Germans in Russia for about a century. But by the 1870’s the Russian rulers began to take their privileges away. An effort was made to erase their German identity. They lost control of their schools. Their young men became subject to being drafted into the Russian army. Their self-rule was abolished. Eventually all teaching in the schools was required to be in Russian. These changes spurred a mass exodus to America. Between 1898 and 1904 over 41,000 left Russia and came to the United States. Many settled in the Great Plains states. The American Plains were similar to the Russian Steppe where they had been living.

The Germans in Russia were devout Christians who had been greatly impacted by revival movements. But they were not Congregationalists. Congregationalism, in fact, was unknown to them. The way that many of the Germans from Russia became Congregationalists will be the subject of my next article.

(This article is drawn from the chapter on the German Congregational heritage of the CCCC written by Milton Reimer and Larry Scovil in Modern Day Pilgrims: A Proud Heritage.).