Introduction to Russian Mennonites

Introduction to Russian Mennonites

Author: Wally Kroeker

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2005-04-01

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 1680992449

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Mennonites in Russia? Invited by Catherine the Great to farm the Russian steppes -- in exchange for exemption from military service -- Mennonite emigrants from Polish Prussia and The Netherlands made their home in Russia. Some remain today; many more eventually left for North and South Americas and Europe. Nearly all retain memories and stories from that place -- unbelievable prosperity for some; unspeakable terror for many; church tensions; struggles between the landed and the landless; exquisite clockmaking, storytelling, musicmaking, and food. Himself a Russian Mennonite, Kroeker heads into the history, but also the later movement of these people to the U.S. and Canada. Are they at all distinctive today? What has drawn some to the cities and professions, and others to the rural prairies? What about those in Europe, and those still in the former Soviet Union? Kroeker tells it all with vibrancy -- the overview and the memorable details. Includes dozens of historic and contemporary photographs. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.


Mission and Migration

Mission and Migration

Author: John Lapp

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-07-01

Total Pages: 547

ISBN-13: 1680992538

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Mission and Migration is the first comprehensive history to be written by Latin American Mennonite historians about Mennonite church life in Central and South Americas from its beginnings. From the Introduction to the volume: "The story of the coming of Anabaptist-descended churches to Latin America begins, not in the Spanish colonial period, but in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the period following Latin American political independence from Spain and Portugal. " The first Mennonite church to take root in Latin American soil gathered for worship in 1919, in the town of Pehuajo, Argentina. It was the result of North American mission efforts and represents one major impulse for the planting of Mennonite churches in Latin America. "The second major impulse came with the settling of Mennonite colonists in Mexico, Paraguay, and Brazil, in the 1920s and '30s. The Mennonite colonists did not come to Latin America as missionaries, but rather to settle as ethnic and religious communities, seeking new life and a future. "Given the variety of Mennonites who live in Latin America, the question, ‘Who or what is a Latin American Mennonite Christian?' is a recurring theme that runs throughout our story, including the present day."


Hidden Worlds

Hidden Worlds

Author: Royden Loewen

Publisher: Univ. of Manitoba Press

Published: 2001-11-30

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0887550584

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In the 1870s, approximately 18,000 Mennonites migrated from the southern steppes of Imperial Russia (present-day Ukraine) to the North American grasslands. They brought with them an array of cultural and institutional features that indicated they were a "transplanted" people. What is less frequently noted, however, is that they created in their everyday lives a world that ensured their cultural longevity and social cohesiveness in a new land.Their adaptation to the New World required new concepts of social boundary and community, new strategies of land ownership and legacy, new associations, and new ways of interacting with markets. In Hidden Worlds, historian Royden Loewen illuminates some of these adaptations, which have been largely overshadowed by an emphasis on institutional history, or whose sources have only recently been revealed. Through an analysis of diaries, wills, newspaper articles, census and tax records, and other literature, an examination of inheritance practices, household dynamics, and gender relations, and a comparison of several Mennonite communities in the United States and Canada, Loewen uncovers the multi-dimensional and highly resourceful character of the 1870s migrants.