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From what I can read it was not so much the Russian Mennonites wanting to go to Australia as Bugnion, a man of many religions but committed to none, wanting to create a large following for himself. The Russian Mennonites would have undergone a huge change, from being owners of vast properties in Russia to settling for an average of less than 7 acres per family.

My understanding of the Russian Mennonite situation was that it was just as much their own structure that left some Mennonites poor and landless.Whatever caused it, there certainly were some landless and therefore also voiceless Mennonites in Russia. I didn't realize they had difficulty leaving Russia in those years; many did leave for Western Canada and USA around that time.

According to Chester Weaver's 2017 talk, the Kleine Gemeinde and other groups who migrated in 1874 tended to be the landless, not the landed, because they were less attached to large, wealthy farms.