Journal of Central Asia and the Caucasian Studies Volume: 5 Issue: 10 (2010), 165-168.

Pilgrims on the Silk Road attempts to re-narrate the story of a band of Russian Mennonites who went on an adventurous journey from  their settlements in Ukraine to what is today’s Uzbekistan in the 1880s in order to free themselves off the militaristic and centralistic tendencies of the Tsarist Russia and fulfill the apocalyptical predictions of the leader of their community. It is an interpretation of a long and arduous expedition into “terra incognita” in the eyes of descendants of the original “pilgrims”. What rendered the time-honoured lands of Central Asian Muslims unknown to the Mennonites was that they had no long1lasting encounter with Muslims previously, and that this close-knit group of Mennonites, hopeful but not without doubts, followed their leader Claas Epp Jr. to those distant lands with the belief that they would establish an “earthly kingdom” in accordance with the principles of Christ.

Mennonites are a group of Dutch people most of whom are farmers who follow the teachings of Frisian Menno Simmons (149611561). They are considered to be a branch of the wider Christian denomination which is called Anabaptists. Their most distinctive features, apart from their unwavering belief in pacifism and anti1militarianism, are their reclusion from state and government in any form and their apocalyptical convictions. Due these reasons, they have been prosecuted, since their inception, not only by Catholic Church but also by Protestants and state authorities at territories of whom Mennonites lived.

State and religious persecution forced Mennonites  to migrate from one country to another seeking refuge, as long as their new host promised them right to self-governance and exemption from military service. Therefore, throughout history, Mennonites moved from Netherlands into many countries including Germany, Russia, USA, Canada, Paraguay, Mexico and Brazil. Today, there are 1.5 million Mennonites worldwide, about one fifth of whom live in USA.  Mennonite groups have always been known for their aversion of militarism and violence.

The history of Russian Mennonites dates back to the 18th century when, under the threat of conscription and increasing centralistic pressures at the expense of Mennonite self-governance, Mennonites of Germany decided to  move to Russia in response to Catherine the Great’s promise for religious freedom, military exemption and right to self1governance. The Tsaritsa was eager to host such a people for she wanted to make  use of the Mennonites’ aptitude for modern agricultural techniques as Mennonites were known for their talent and skill in agriculture and craftsmenship.

Peaceful as they were, the Russian Empress planned to plant Mennonites in newly acquired lands in order to encourage Russian farmers to adopt and use new and more efficient agricultural techniques. Thus came into existence the Russian Mennonites. The first encounter between Mennonites of Russia and Muslims took place in the steppes of Ukraine where, the Nogais, destined for Caucasia, were selling their lands to the newcoming Russians and Mennonites. While trivial attacks took place against Mennonites, they quickly demonstrated to their Muslim neighbors their peacefulness and their skill in agriculture and medicine.

Nevertheless, the more lasting encounter between Mennonites and Muslims, which constitutes the subject of Pilgrims on the Silk Road, took place in Central Asia. However, before delving into the long journey of Mennonites, their incentives to undertake such a risky travel should be examined. With the coming to power of Alexander II, the Russification policies gained momentum. While religious freedom Mennonites enjoyed for decades remained untouched, their traditional ways of education in German language was challenged. The looming threat of conscription, coupled with Russification, forced Mennonites to seek a new refuge. While many turned their eyes to the Americas where land abounded and religious freedom was under guarantee of the state, a group of farmers under the leadership  of Claas Epp Jr. sought to emigrate to the east, to Central Asia instead. Epp  and his followers believed that the Second Coming of Christ would occur in the “Land of the Rising Sun”.

Their gathering1place for the Tribulation, they believed, would be the Emirate of Bukhara. The gruelsome journey of Mennonites began in what is today’s Ukraine and ended in modern day Uzbekistan. Many deaths due to the hard conditions were met with patience, and the community sought to liken their situation to that of the Jews roaming in the desert as told in Bible. While the Bride Community, as Epp called alluding to Bible, harboured people with conflicting views about Epp’s leadership and vision about Central Asia, there was no schism that divided people. In the final analysis, all members of the community were willing to move to Central Asia; some were less eager though. That the community was unable to settle for a long time and had to roam from place to place was due to the untimely death of their patron, the commander of Russian army in Central Asia. While Kaufmann had promised them exemption from military service, his successor was not sympathetic for Mennonite cause.

Therefore, Mennonites had to cross the border that divided the Russian Empire and the Khanate of Khiva and settle in Ak Metchet, leaving the Emirate of Bukhara behind, thus annulling the prophecy that the place for gathering for the Tribulation would be Bukhara. While the village of Ak Metchet met the expectations of the community in many ways, it was no safe haven. Turkmens living nearby who were slaughtered by the Russian Army just a decade  ago considered these Western-looking foreigners as enemies, and hit them whenever they could. Mennonite pacifism was tested in the form murder of a community member by Turkmen raiders, but deep-rooted pacifism won.

Mennonites were able to secure their place in Khiva through their service to the Khan as well as the rest of the local populace  as skilled craftsmen and through some members’ knowledge of foreign languages. Thus, while the community made some money to improve their financial situation, they became protected against local Turkmen raiders without further violent attacks. It was also this time that Mennonites started to struck more cordial friendship with the neighbouring Muslim community. Mennonites taught them new techniques in cotton farming, and became the first to introduce certain technological advancements to Khiva. Today, when one delves into  the history of photography in modern day Uzbekistan, the first names they encounter belong to those of Mennonites.

The hardships of living in Ak Metchet coupled with  the growing schism among members of the community regarding Claas Epp’s teachings and his style of leadership. While Epp harbored many signs of an authoritarian leader even before the community took its leave from their former lands in Ukraine, the apocalyptical nature of his teachings and claims became ever more erratic and daring, to the point that he claimed he was the son of god, surpassing his earlier claim that he was one of the Two Witnesses. This caused a rift among the community members that could not be breached; therefore the community experienced strained years of division. Many members who could not take Epp’s claims and leadership that brought them to the distant and hostile lands anymore started to emigrate to Americas where Mennonite settlers raised funds to facilitate their co-religionists’ emigrations. Therefore, the number of Mennonites living in Ak-Metchet dwindled in time.

The Communist Revolution was, in a sense, the last  draw for many Mennonites. While they were initially granted privilege to self-governance, education and exemption form military service, the  state soon started to increase its pressure on this community at the expense of the privileges they secured earlier. After Stalin came to power, collectivisation and anti-religious policies forced Mennonites in Russia and Ukraine emigrate to whichever countries they could manage to get themselves. Mennonites of Central Asia, and of Ak Metchet in particular, felt the crushing pressure of state with a lag of time, due to lack of consolidated Communist power in Central Asia. However, as the Communist regime consolidated its authority even in the remotest corners of the Soviet Republic, Ak Metchet too hardly escaped it.

While Mennonites refused joining kolkhozes [Soviet collectives-WR] and submitting to the authority of the Communist Party, to its social and religious policies in particular, they continued their policy of pacifism, to no avail. These pressures, therefore, instigated a new wave of emigration as far as the regime allowed. In they years of the Great Purges, Mennonites living in Central Asia, including those  in Ak Metchet, were
transferred to Tadjikistan where they were forced to join collective farms. However, their number was reduced to mere a few thousands.

The epilogue of the book tells how a group of American Mennonites, descendants of those who settled in Ak Metchet but later emigrated to the USA, visited the village in to commemorate the 50 year1long Mennonite presence in Ak Metchet. Their encounter with the descendants of the former neighbors of their grand-parents is a touching as well as teaching one. They came to realize, to their great surprise and mire, that while Mennonites were not living in Ak Metchet anymore since their forceful removal by the Communist regime, they were still remembered and held in high esteem by the local Uzbeks. These American visitors have witnessed that Mennonites of Ak Metchet were even included in the prayers of these Muslim people. This constitutes a mind-broadening experience both for Mennonites and Muslims in an atmosphere of ever escalating religious tensions between Muslims  and Christians throughout the world.

The visit also opened new venues for Mennonite historianship, for American Mennonites usually viewed the story of the Bride Community as that of a disaster due to chiefly false prophecy of Claas Epp Jr. And his authoritarian whims. However, the new visitors came to see that Mennonite presence in Ak Metchet brought about good relations between Mennonites and Muslims, and that the community itself was willing to follow Epp to Central Asia. His authoritarian style was nowhere like that of modern day dictators; and although his teachings fell out of favor among many members of his community, people still elected to remain in Ak Metchet.

Reviewed by Laurie Gray for ReadersFavorite.com

Pilgrims on the Silk Road: A Muslim-Christian Encounter in Khiva by Walter R. Ratliff follows the eastern trek of a small group of Mennonites into Central Asia in search of religious and social freedom. Ratliff weaves the personal letters, diaries and publications of the pilgrims themselves, together with an extensive bibliography of sources into a story well worth reading. The historical account begins in the 1840′s, about the time Claus Epp, Jr., a controversial leader in the Mennonite community, was born and concludes with the devastation of the Mennonites in Ak Metchet (now part of Uzbekistan) by Stalin and the Soviet Union’s collectivization policies in 1935. The epilogue describes how the author accompanied descendents of Claus Epp, Jr. on a return pilgrimage to Ak Metchet in 2007 in search of healing and forgiveness. They discover that the Muslim Uzbeks remember the Mennonites as fine craftsmen, friendly neighbors and a community devoted to peace.

Ratliff tells the tale through a broad 21st century lens that seeks to include both Christian and Muslim perspectives. For those unfamiliar with Central Asian geography and Mennonite history, the story sometimes feels a bit disjointed because the presentation is not strictly chronological. Ratliff occasionally creates dangling threads, but eventually loops back to include them securely in the overall tapestry. The book exposes the underlying tension between individual freedom and a moral society in a way that is particularly relevant today. There are still Christians who, like Claas Epp, Jr., prophesy that the End Times are near, but few uphold a tradition of nonviolence the way the Mennonites have since the 16th century. Pilgrims on the Silk Road demonstrates what can happen when Christians respond to terrorist attacks by Muslims with peaceful resistance rather than equal, exceeding or peremptory force: the Mennonites and Muslims were able to forge a mutually beneficial relationship based on respect. Ironically, it seems the deepest Mennonite wounds were inflicted not by the Muslims or Russians, but by their own internal doctrinal differences and the judgments they pronounced upon each other.

Check out my “Art in the First Person” article in the latest issue of Elan, an arts magazine in Northern Virginia:

An Author in Search of a Story: Retracing a Long-Forgotten Trek
by Walter Ratliff

A few flakes of white paint clinging to the rusting, sun-shaped ironwork of the gate fell away as I pushed it open. I was entering the site of the old Mennonite village of Ak Metchet near the ancient Silk Road city of Khiva. It was the culmination of a long trek that took me from the wheat fields of Kansas, to the steppes of Ukraine, and finally this windswept corner of Uzbekistan. Yet, in some ways the journey had just begun. Most journalists dream of finding a story that has the richness and universality that make it worthy of a book or documentary.

By the time I took on the film Through the Desert Goes Our Journey and the companion book, Pilgrims on the Silk Road, I had done several projects that were substantial to one degree or another. However, I still searched for a story that would warrant a deeper treatment. As it turned out, it was waiting within my own family history all along. In 1881, my great-

grandparents joined hundreds of other Mennonites living in South Russia on a migration to Central Asia. From the time of the Protestant Reformation, Mennonites had moved from country to country searching for a place where they could remain free of military service and govern their own affairs.

Since the 1500s, many moved east from the Netherlands to German lands, and eventually to the Russian Empire. When it looked like Russia would be the latest country to rescind their exemption from military service, tens of thousands migrated to the United States in the late 1800s.

However, a small group felt their new refuge was further east. They also believed the Second Coming of Christ was imminent, at their haven from the coming Tribulation lay beyond Russia’s eastern frontier. There were many deaths along the way to the refuge they dreamed about. The graves of children and adults dotted their path into Turkestan. My ancestors and many others soon abandoned hopes of finding a mythical refuge in the deserts of Muslim Central Asia, and migrated to the American Midwest.

Hardships and theological errors of the trek cast a stigma on the journey to Central Asia among many American Mennonites. Our family had a few scraps of a diary about the eastward journey, describing the hardships and exotic place-names. However, the account did not say why they moved east so soon before going west to the United States. Our family was not alone; a sense of shame about the trek was carried among some descendants’ families for decades. Even in my parents’ generation, the story remained largely hidden. Yet by my generation the dam of silence was about to burst among those who thought it was a fascinating episode that needed to be reassessed.

In 2007, I joined a team of scholars and descendants to retrace the steps of the migration from Ukraine to Uzbekistan. What we found upturned many of our basic assumptions about the story. As we walked toward the site of the old Mennonite village in Khiva, a mottled grey statue of a young man stood sentry along the path—only his bended knee remained on the pedestal. His pale stone torso, sporting a jaunty kerchief, lay fallen at the monument’s base. Someone chipped away the face long ago.

Several weed-covered yards away, a grey concrete building sported a fading mural of uniformed boys and girls offering eternal smiles around an ever- burning campfire. The statue, mural and building were the remnants of a Soviet youth camp that supplanted theMennonite village after the community was sent into exile in 1935. Our old view of the migration seemed just as damaged, blighted and static. What we learned from our Uzbek hosts cast a much more sympathetic picture of the Mennonite community in Khiva.

We learned how the Mennonites built lasting friendships with their Muslim neighbors. We also learned of their modernizing impact. Uzbeks do not remember anything about failed prophecies. To them, the Mennonites were modernizers, farmers, entrepreneurs, and valuable neighbors. One story, unknown among Americans but at the forefront of Uzbek understanding, hit us like a revelation. The story goes that Wilhelm Penner, a Mennonite schoolteacher in Ak Metchet, used to tie a lamp to his fishing pole. For this, the locals called him Panorbuva, or “grandfather lantern.”

One day, an Uzbek boy struck up a conversation with Penner as he fished for his dinner. Penner produced something the boy had never seen before – a portable camera. Penner showed him how the camera worked, and later mentored him in photography and filmmaking. The boy, Khudaybergen Divanov, grew up to become the “Father of Uzbek Photography.” Today, Panorbuva and the Mennonites are always mentioned at the beginning of Divanov’s biography. For descendants looking for healing in their collective past, this story and others were a like salve to a wound.

The old narrative of the trek as a shameful episode began to make room for a proud history of positive engagement between Muslim and Christian communities. As a journalist and religion scholar, it was absolutely fascinating to watch this happen in real time. An apple, a pear and an oak tree still stand where the Mennonites planted them at the village site. Local Uzbeks still draw water from one of their shallow wells. There is no Mennonite architecture left at Ak Metchet. Yet there is a memory of respect and admiration among Uzbeks who live in the modern village of Oq Machit.

As we explored the site, an older man trudged through the fields to our group. He had a mortar and pestle in hand—a gift to his father when the Mennonites were banished to Tajikistan in 1935. He told us about how he used to play among the Christian graves when he was a boy. He said the water table rose one day and destroyed the burial sites. After the water subsided, the townspeople decided to grow crops in the former cemetery. It proved a living metaphor for American descendants hoping to cultivate a vibrant new legacy of the trek to Central Asia. Here, deep in the heart of Central Asia was a story with the depth of meaning and the universal themes that I was looking for.

–Walter Ratliff is a journalist and religion scholar who works for the Associated Press in Washington, DC. He is the producer/director of the Emmy Award-winning documentary Through the Desert Goes Our Journey: The Mennonite Trek to Central Asia. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed book, Pilgrims on the Silk Road: A Muslim-Christian Encounter in Khiva. He lives in the Herndon, VA historic district with his wife Tricia, an oil painter (élan-June 2010) and his two sons.

The so-called Great Trek of several hundred Mennonites from the Molotschna and the Am Trakt colonies to Central Asia in the 1880s has fascinated historians and lay interpreters alike and evoked diverse interpretations. One early account by Franz Bartsch, a Trek participant, warned against committing the same errors: to interpret Scripture capriciously and arbitrarily . . . and accepting uncritically the emergence of self-appointed and self-aggrandizing leaders‛ like Claas Epp Jr. In Pilgrims on the Silk Road, Walter R. Ratliff presents, in contrast, a colorful and sympathetic narration. Ratliff is filmmaker (whose credits include a documentary of the Great Trek, Through the Desert Goes Our Journey), historian, journalist and consummate story teller. He is also a great-grandson of Trek participants.
…
As a historian, Ratliff surveys a wide panorama. Apart from a brief vignette of his early childhood (xiv, 2f.), we do not meet Claas Epp Jr., traditionally seen as the chief inspirer of the exotic Trek, until page 76. Instead, we are introduced broadly to the political and military moves of the British Empire and the Russian Tsarist Empire to extend their control over the Muslim states between their realms, among them Afghanistan, Turkestan, Bukhara, and Khiva, the last of these subdued by Russia (but not annexed) only seven years before the arrival of the Mennonite Trek. Ratliff’s presentation of the Muslim side in the political context of the Trek should be new and enlightening for Mennonite readers, who have generally read the Trek story in isolation, or, at best, in the context of Russian Tsarist politics.

Ratliff also offers much valuable insight into the internal pre-Trek Mennonite dynamics—dynamics strongly influenced by German Pietist millenarianism and the European political unrest around the turbulent year 1848—that eventually led them to seek a place of refuge in the East. He highlights the multiple leadership personalities and views, thus in effect greatly relativising the significance and leadership of Claas Epp Jr. and his excessive end-time claims and delusions.
…
While Ratliff’s historical presentation is a major accomplishment, the fascinating effect of his book is due largely to his storytelling skill in presenting the characters and scenes, whether they were Russian, British, Muslim or Mennonite; officials, soldiers, Turkoman tribesmen or the colorfully diverse inhabitants of multicultural cities like Orenburg, Tashkent, Samarkand and Khiva. The Trek participants themselves come to life as they move along in their horse-drawn covered wagons over dusty steppes, on long camel caravans through sandy deserts, or on boats along treacherous rivers. They experience wagon breakdowns, illness, childbirth, enemy attacks, robberies, and many, many deaths. But the reader also partakes of beautiful scenery, lush vegetation and dazzling architecture, as well as much faith, deliverance, kindness and hospitality.

For the details, Ratliff has frequent recourse to vivid autobiographical records, as for example, the observations of Elizabeth Unruh Schulz, who kept a diary from the time her family joined the Trek in 1880, when she was 14 years of age. Her autobiography, although written later and poorly translated into English, is unsurpassed for human interest, detail, vividness and unencumbered youthful perspective. Ratliff effectively introduces her as a six-year-old girl, and then returns to her intermittently.
…
After highlighting Ratliff’s masterful presentation and attaching a modest caution for the Mennonite community, I conclude with what I consider the most outstanding attribute of the book under review: its irenic spirit. Ratliff’s mode of writing history and telling story is itself a remarkable feat. In his book there are neither villains nor saints: only human beings. Not that wisdom and folly, good and evil, are lost in a valueless ethical relativism, but neither is anyone vilified, not even Claas Epp. I appreciate it especially that the author, although reticent in sharing his personal beliefs, takes religious convictions seriously in their own right, without any condescending attempt to “explain” them from the vantage point of sociology, psychology or some other extraneous perspective.

- WALDEMAR JANZEN, Canadian Mennonite University

If you aren’t familiar with Georgetown University, the Leavey Center is at the heart of campus next to the visitor parking garage. The Faculty Club is just down the hall and around the corner from the campus bookstore. Please drop me a line if you would like to attend and need advice on how to get there.

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The event will begin with a reception at 6:00pm. I will offer some introductory remarks before the screening of the full documentary. After the film, I will talk about some of the historical and contemporary relevence of this story for the larger issue of Muslim-Christian relations. Please RSVP to me at walterratliff@gmail.com, or the department at lsp@georgetown.edu.

I hope to see you there!

-Walter

Where is this last gathering place of the true church? The answer: It is to be in the desert. But where? Perhaps, yes very likely in one of the lands of the rising sun. Thither God will rescue the little company of his own, the little flock for the times of the last judgments. (81)

So wrote Martin Klaassen, a Mennonite schoolteacher in the Trakt colony, in his book, History of the Defenceless Baptism-Minded Community from the Time of the Apostles to the Present. This polemic, written in 1873, was immensely popular among Mennonites. Millennialist expectations were running high. A century earlier, a German writer, Johann Jung-Stilling, had predicted that the End Times were near, and some German Pietists had moved into Russia, where they believed God would provide them a Place of Refuge from the Antichrist. Numerous Mennonites were infected with these apocalyptic hopes.

Claas Epp, also living in the Trakt settlement, emerged as a leader among these millennialists. Napoleon, he wrote, was the Antichrist, and the Catholic Church was Christendom’s greatest enemy. Epp turned to the Book of Revelation for answers. Those few who live in pure faith, who practise nonresistance, who cling to the hope of the imminent return of Christ, were the Church of Philadelphia as described in Revelation. Epp implied, in fact, that he was one of the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11 who would prophesy to the world during the tribulations of the Last Times. When war and plague swept the globe, Epp wrote, the Lord would return to reclaim his chosen ones. And Christ would return in a specific place, at a specific time, somewhere in Central Asia. Epp proposed a trek of the faithful to this Place of Refuge. God would demonstrate to his pilgrims exactly where that place was.

In his book, Pilgrims on the Silk Road, Walter Ratliff vividly brings the story of the Mennonite Great Trek to life. The narrative ranges widely, leaping backwards and forwards in time, as well as simultaneously focussing on peoples and individuals far removed from each other. The story is also told within the context of great wars between western empires and Islamic civilizations. This clustering of various histories can sometimes be bewildering – the reader might ask at certain points, what does this all have to do with the Great Trek? – but Ratliff’s superb storytelling eventually demonstrates the fundamental connections between differing times and places.

In 1880 the first wagon train left the Trakt colony, bound for a point yet unknown, somewhere in Central Asia, where Christ would return to collect his faithful. In all, three wagon trains would make the journey, a migration
marked by tribal hostilities, hunger, thirst, desert deprivations, dysentery, and child deaths. To the surprise of these Mennonite pilgrims, Claas Epp accompanied the third wagon train. It had been expected that he, as one of the Two Witnesses, would travel to Jerusalem to await the Second Coming. The first migrants were met by the Russian general Kaufman, who had waged war with Muslim khanates in Central Asia, and who had encouraged Mennonites to settle somewhere in the region, promising them exemption from military service. He soon died, however, and the migrants were suddenly faced with the possibility of conscription into the Russian army.

For Claas Epp, this was a divine signal that his flock should leave the Russian Empire and cross over into Muslim-ruled territory. “Defencelessness” was absolutely essential for the chosen few. The pilgrimage was a troubled one. Some of the Mennonite migrants left Aulie Ata, located within the boundaries of Russia, and built the village of Ebenezer in the Khanate of Bukhara, but it was soon demolished by hostile Bukharan authorities. The Mennonites found a temporary refuge in Serabulak, Turkestan, and then moved on to a wilderness settlement in Lausan, located in the Khanate of Khiva. Their time here was plagued by robbery and murder at the hands of local tribesmen, who found these non-resistors to be easy targets. The young, tempted to take up arms in defence of family and home, were strongly repudiated by their elders, who were even reluctant to ask for help from Khivan authorities.

It was consequently a time of great struggle. The misery only ended when the Khan of Khiva, now aware of the ongoing difficulties, invited the Mennonites to settle in a protected walled garden called Ak Metchet – named after a nearby white mosque. The Khan had also discovered that these Mennonites were superb craftsmen, and he hired them to build a parquet floor in his palace.

There had been dissension among the trekkers from the start. In part, this was due to Claas Epp’s insistence on lay leadership and communal decision making. The majority went on to Ak Metchet, but at this point a substantial minority emigrated to the United States. Epp’s authority was slowly crumbling. In 1889 he prophesied that he would be raised to heaven, but a long day’s wait did not see the anticipated transfiguration. Eventually he was even prohibited from preaching. His own son moved to America.

In 1894, on the day of Pentecost, Epp proclaimed that he now sat on the left hand of God, and that the congregation would hereafter baptize in the name of the Father, the sons – a designation that included Epp – and the Holy Spirit. The shock of this proclamation was too much for some, and Epp’s personal following dwindled to a very few. In 1913 both he and his wife died.

Meanwhile, however, the Mennonites of Ak Metchet were settling in, for the most part living amicably with the local Muslim population. They introduced sewing machines to the local textile economy, built carriages, worked on royal projects such as hospitals, imported high yield cotton seed from America, and even promoted photography.

Hard times followed, as secularists battled with Islamic traditionalists in Khiva, and then as Bolsheviks usurped power after the Communist Revolution of 1917. Even so, the Mennonite community of Ak Metchet survived, and even thrived. Because of the village’s extreme geographical isolation, it was largely ignored by Moscow, and eventually became the last functioning Mennonite community in the Soviet Union, with its own ethnic school and church. Ak Metchet had finally become a true refuge, although not in the terms predicted by Claas Epp. In 1934 the fiftieth anniversary of Ak Metchet was celebrated. For the occasion, Gustav Toews wrote a long Jubilee Poem in the style of local Muslim literature. In it, he described the Mennonite trekkers as the Lord’s defenceless:

Often wandering, outcast, they followed
As a poor pilgrim through the world.
Like their Lord, the Great Divine,
They had no shelter and no tent.
But they sang wonderful songs.
The cottages were filled with harmony.
Enemies dropped their weapons
When the sound penetrated their hearts. (244)

But this peaceful existence could not last. Communist authorities were eventually informed of the uncooperative Mennonites, and in 1935, after an attempt to arrest the males of Ak Metchet failed due to physical resistance by women of the village, the entire community was deported to Tajikistan. Even here, however, the Mennonites eventually thrived on the vast collective farms, and a few in fact survived to move to Germany during the last days of the Soviet empire.

In 2007 several descendants of Claas Epp visited Ak Metchet. They were delighted to learn that Mennonites are still remembered with fondness by local Muslims; and they were stunned to discover that villagers pray annually to Mennonite spirits for a good harvest. To western Mennonites, “the Great Trek of Mennonites to Central Asia is often taught as a cautionary tale against End Times fanaticism”
(237).

Claas Epp has been regarded as an aberration and a historical embarrassment. But Epp was not a paranoid leader in the stereotypical sense: his vision of community was based on defencelessness and on communal leadership. He once remarked that the Mennonites of Ak Metchet did not bother with a “national nor our own civil government, but always treated each other with the same love and courtesy central to the Christian faith” (185).

In a sense, Walter Ratliff’s fascinating book is a welcoming back of Claas Epp into the Mennonite fold. Pilgrims on the Silk Road urges understanding across the Muslim-Christian divide. It also asks us, as broken human beings, to practise love and tolerance for those at the fringes of culture.