44. Mass Migration to Moscow

            Between 1923 and 1928 the New Economic Policy of the Soviet regime seemed to give some stability to the Mennonite communities, but in October of 1928 Stalin embarked on the plan of Extreme Radical Socialism.  The plan was to force collectivization of all the farms and the methods used were brutal and barbaric.  Farmers were taxed beyond their ability to pay and when they couldn't pay their land, livestock and farm machinery was taken by the communists to be used in their collectivization plan.  Any resistance resulted in jail or banishment or death.  Farmers were left without any means of livelihood and knew that starvation was ahead.  Everyone had a great desire to leave the country but this seemed impossible to achieve.

            Early in 1929 two groups of Mennonites went to Moscow and petitioned repeatedly for passports and eventually were given passports and left the country.  News of the success of these two groups spread like wildfire through the Mennonite communities, and soon groups of families from all the many settlements began flocking to Moscow.  This was a spontaneous and desperate effort for these families to try to leave in order to survive.  If they stayed in their villages they knew they would starve because all their grain and livestock had been taken from them.

            It was also a very dangerous plan.  The brutal secret police were known to snatch families who they discovered trying to leave and send them into exile.  Many families who fled to Moscow were immediately put onto trains and shipped back to their home villages.  But what choice did they have?  Their livelihood was gone, they had lost everything they owned and had come to the realization that there was no hope for them but to flee.  Even getting to Moscow was dangerous because German travelers suspected of trying to get to Moscow to join the refugees were refused admission to the trains or were taken off the train without regard for their welfare.