Colonizing Russia's Promised Land

Russia's political elite promoted the colonization of Siberia as a means of transforming the Russian empire into an international economic power, making possible the exploitation of Siberia's resources, particularly its rich farmland. The state's invitation to resettle was readily accepted in many communities in European Russia. Millions of peasant-settlers trekked across the empire for the opportunity to find affordable land, a luxury that their villages could not offer. Friesen highlights the role of Orthodoxy as a cultural force in transforming Russia's imperial periphery through settler colonialism; the religious meaning ascribed by settlers, clergymen, and state officials to these new settlements and the surround territory; and the cracks of modern Russian society, which could not be glossed over by the nationalistic rhetoric of Orthodox-driven settler colonialsm

Colonizing Russia's Promised Land

Russia's political elite promoted the colonization of Siberia as a means of transforming the Russian empire into an international economic power, making possible the exploitation of Siberia's resources, particularly its rich farmland. The state's invitation to resettle was readily accepted in many communities in European Russia. Millions of peasant-settlers trekked across the empire for the opportunity to find affordable land, a luxury that their villages could not offer. Friesen highlights the role of Orthodoxy as a cultural force in transforming Russia's imperial periphery through settler colonialism; the religious meaning ascribed by settlers, clergymen, and state officials to these new settlements and the surround territory; and the cracks of modern Russian society, which could not be glossed over by the nationalistic rhetoric of Orthodox-driven settler colonialsm

The Case of a Siberian Sect: Mennonites and the Incomplete Transformation of Russia's Religious Structure

https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/145

Assembling an Intervention: The Russian Government and the Mennonite Brethren Schism of the 1860s

https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/128

Screening Refugees: Mennonite Central Committee and the Postwar Environment

This article appears with the kind permission of the editor.In the last few years, MCC has undergone an intense period of introspection as it reconsidered its role as a post-World War II refugee resettlement organization. After the end of the war, Mennonite Central Committee provided aid to 12,000 Mennonite refugees and sought to secure their future. Some of these individuals had collaborated with the Nazi regime, committing acts of violence against Jews, Roma, and other groups. While some scholars have recently focused on antisemitism among MCC workers as a significant factor in shaping MCC’s responses, policies, and actions, this is an overly simplified account. Serious historical research requires historians to seek the wider context of an event. Within this methodology, a multitude of motivations appear to have molded MCC’s work. MCC’s Anabaptist operating principles, the improvised and emotional nature of post-war refugee work among co-religionists, and the role of conventions of patriarchy all influenced MCC’s response to refugee resettlement within this complex environment.https://www.goshen.edu/mqr

Sowing Hatred or Producing Prosperity: Agriculture and Believers in Post-World War II Communist Siberia

https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/173

Colonizing Russia’s Promised Land

The movement of millions of settlers to Siberia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked one of the most ambitious undertakings pursued by the tsarist state. Colonizing Russia’s Promised Land examines how Russian Orthodoxy acted as a basic building block for constructing Russian settler communities in current-day southern Siberia and northern Kazakhstan. Russian state officials aspired to lay claim to land that was politically under their authority, but remained culturally unfamiliar. By exploring the formation and evolution of Omsk diocese – a settlement mission – Colonizing Russia’s Promised Land reveals how the migration of settlers expanded the role of Orthodoxy as a cultural force in transforming Russia’s imperial periphery by "russifying" the land and marginalizing the Indigenous Kazakh population. In the first study exploring the role of Orthodoxy in settler colonialism, Aileen Friesen shows how settlers, clergymen, and state officials viewed the recreation of Orthodox parish life as practised in European Russia as fundamental to the establishment of settler communities, and to the success of colonization. Friesen uniquely gives peasant settlers a voice in this discussion, as they expressed their religious aspirations and fears to priests and tsarist officials. Despite this agreement, tensions existed not only among settlers, but also within the Orthodox Church as these groups struggled to define what constituted the Russian Orthodox faith and culture