The Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive, 1803-1920 : A Research Guide

X I N T R O D U C T I O N R E C O V E R I N G A N I N H E R I T A N C E Harvey L. Dyck The original documents of the collection of microfilmed sources making up the Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive were assembled in the Molochna Mennonite settlement, located in southern Ukraine, during the years of revolution and civil war from 1917 to 1920. [...] As the most extensive collection of in-group Russian Mennonite sources sur- viving from the imperial period, the archive spans a wide range of subjects in the history of the Molochna Mennonite settlement, the largest, most influential Mennonite community in Russia. [...] Sometime after 1924, teachers of the School for the Deaf and the Mute seem to have panicked at the thought that the illegal archive hidden in the attic rooms above might compromise them in Bolshevik eyes and had it moved into the offices of the old Molochna Agricultural Society in the neigbouring village of Ohrloff. [...] Coincidentally, many of the documents in Braun's archive had been written by Johann Cornies and his associates in this same building.11 The archive remained concealed in Ohrloff until May 1929, when the Peter Cornies family was expelled from the village in the great wave of repressions marking the start of the drive to forcibly collectivize agriculture. [...] Although the final answer to this question must await detailed study of the Molochna archive, a preliminary review by the co-editors of this volume indicates that almost all the documents of the collection probably survived and were subsequently included in the reorganized Molochna archive of 1937.