Talk:Molotschna

Not Ukrainian Mennonites

First, the term is only returned 1000 times with a Google search while Russian Mennonite is 22,000 times. Second, they were not invited to the Ukrainian, they were invited by Russian royalty to Russia and they settled in the Ukrainian region of the Russian Empire. The term will need to be referenced as Russian Mennonite is. Without that, you're adding WP:OR. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:33, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Fine, we can debate the term, but you can't wholesale revert all of my other edits. However, the use of the term is questionable. They lived in Ukraine, assimilated into local culture and evangelized the local Ukrainians, fought with Ukrainian communist-anarchists and continue to support missions in Ukraine today. I am a Ukrainian Baptist and we come from Ukrainian Mennonites. To keep calling them Russian is holding on to an imperial past and is intellectually dishonest. Is it that important for you to maintain the veneer of the Empire?--Sanya3 (talk) 05:40, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I would also add that Ukraine today is considered the Bible Belt of Europe and was in the past considered the Bible Belt of both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union precisely because of the Mennonite influence and Mennonite-inspired Baptist movement in Ukraine. The Evangelical Baptist Union of Ukraine is the second largest Baptist Union in the world after the Southern Baptist Convention in US and I have heard number that there are more Baptist churches in Ukraine than in UK. (More here: Baptists in Ukraine). None of this would happen if the Mennonites didn't settle in Southern Ukraine and didn't evangelize the local population.--Sanya3 (talk) 05:52, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm fine with you making finer changes when reverting the material, which appears to be what you suggested. As it stands, this is the extent of your changes. Russian Mennonite and [[oblast|province]] (possibly without the wikilink) should be restored and the link to Mennonites in Ukraine should be removed. I'll let other editors comment on other changes. You might also want to look at the WP:REPEATLINK guidelines.

I'll also remind you to watch the WP:3RR bright-line. You're currently at three reverts (a revert is changing content that another editor made) so I'll avoid injecting another intervening edit to keep you from breaking the barrier.

As for veneers, I'm not a woodworker, so I don't care about maintain any veneer. Looking at your edits, it seems to be clear that you have your own nationalistic agenda, which is clearly out-of-touch with reality in relation to this article. My mother, who was born in Molotschna, never held Ukrainian citizenship. Nor did her parents or grand-parents. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:52, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I am not injecting nationalism. I am seeking balance between a national and an imperialist perspectives, which you clearly don't seem to accept.

Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online consistently calls them Ukrainian Mennonites and not Russian Mennonites. They do sometimes they use the term "Mennonites in Russia" (interchangeably with "Ukrainian Mennonite" and "Mennoites of/in Ukraine"), which is much closer to being correct, but the more correct term would be "Mennonites in the Russian Empire": http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/U393.html

I have provided several other references, one specifically about Molotschna:

• Ukrainian Mennonite General Conference http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/U397.html
• Service celebrates Ukrainian–Mennonite experience http://www.mbherald.com/44/01/news-7.en.html
• Book:Nestor Makhno and the Eichenfeld Massacre: A Civil War Tragedy in a Ukrainian Mennonite Village by John R. Staples, and John B. Toews http://www.amazon.ca/Nestor-Makhno-Eichenfeld-Massacre-Ukrainian/dp/B0049PJJ0O/

If you want to be technical, your forefathers never held citizenship of Russia, because such a country never existed. It was called the Russian Empire from 1703 through 1918, if I remember correctly. That is the main change I have made on the page. Likewise, calling Ukrainian peasants Russians is incorrect on its face.

--Sanya3 (talk) 06:22, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I have multiple documents that say Russian Mennonite.

• http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia does not list either term outright.
• http://www.gameo.org/search?SearchableText=%22Russian+Mennonite%22 returns 197 articles.
• http://www.gameo.org/search?SearchableText=%22Ukrainian+Mennonite%22 returns 5. I suppose when you

And again, Ukrainian Mennonite is only used about 1700 times according to Google while Russian Mennonite is used about 51000 times. Russian Mennonites = 22700 ; Ukrainian Mennonites = 1080

The Russian Empire was 1721–1917. It was followed by the Russian Republic, which was quickly replaced by the Soviet Union. Since I've shown that your sense of history is incorrect, perhaps we need to review all of your edits with an equal amount of suspicion.

Being pedantic isn't necessary. I can find instances of pretty much any term I want to push. However WP:UNDUE states

"Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." (emphasis mine)

So now that we understand that Ukrainian Mennonite is occasionally used, but is not the primary term, you'll be so good as to restore balance. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:22, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

POV

The linked article says that the first Makhnovist attack may have been against Molotschna in March 1919, but later says that "the Molotschna Selbstschutz took the field with a successful attack against Makhnovite forces at Chernigovka (6 December 1918)". It seems hard to believe that an event can be caused by something that happens four months after it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.177.212.251 (talk) 08:07, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Citation needed

This is a call to interested parties to assist in improving the article by locating citations for many of the assertions made in this article. I have marked it as such. Jsniessen (talk) 20:48, 15 December 2015 (UTC)