The Ekaterinoslav Jewish and Mennonite communities: some details of the partnership and mutual assistance as a survival strategy in the multiethnic environment (1800-1920)

Abstract

The author deals with the history of cultural and economic interaction between two diaspora groups in Ekaterinoslav city (Jews and Mennonites) in the period 1800-1920. The presence of these ethno-confessional groups in the social and financial life of the city was quite noticeable, and their collaboration is possible to observe throughout the Late Imperial period. Despite all the cultural and social differences, both the Jews and the Mennonites were actively engaged in entrepreneurship that encouraged the coincidence of their economic interests. Diasporas were also brought closer by the socio-legal situation in the state (both were representatives of non-Orthodox ethnic groups with partially limited civil rights). The first signs of the interdiasporic cultural interaction can be found in the 1860s, when some Jewish entrepreneurs, despite the existing system of ethnic education, sent their descendants to the Mennonite school. At a new modernization stage of the city's history (since the 1870s), the Jews and the Mennonites actively cooperated in the devel-opment of the flour-milling, woodworking, and investment industries. The political strategy of diasporas' survival in the second half of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries was similar. The Mennonites learned from the Jews how to be public figures, lobby for business interests (using the tribune of the City Council), and influence the public mood of the local people, using ethnic periodicals. Although anti-Semitism was condemned among the Mennonites, the German-speaking community kept a wait-and-see tactic, avoiding supporting another ethnic group in the context of global and local social cataclysms (1880-1920: revolutions, pogroms, banditry, and anarchy). The latter, however, did not exclude some cases of groups' mutual assistance during pogroms and a few support actions between families, which had been united by many years of cooperation and trust. After the defeat of the Ukrainian revolution and the collapse of the national statehood project, the diasporas, as united ethnic communities of the city, lost their political and economic subjectivity.