MennoLink Books and Music

Copyright 2008 Pandora Press

This book deals with the first century of Russian Mennonite settlement, and the dynamics of change in Mennonite communities in Russia between 18789 and 1889. It chronicles the establishment in southern Russia of prosperous agrarian colonies, the foundation of religious congregations and the creation of new economic, social, and political institutions. Mennonites in Russia had to face the dual challenge of the emergence of a modern, industrial society and the increasing power of the Russian state. As Mennonites responded to these challenges, and some grew rich and successful, tensions and conflict in their communities increased. This resulted in the division of congregations and communities and the further emigration of many Mennonites to North America.

Revised 2007 Pandora Press

The Mennonites who settled in Russia kept their language, their religion, and their culture intact. But as the nineteenth century drew to a close, Mennonite community identity was increasingly seen as a threat. There was first a drive for russification under the Czars; there then was increasing suspicion of all things German with the outbreak of the First World War; and finally the Bolshevik Revolution brought Christianity and prosperity into question. The Second World War and its brutal Stalinist aftermath succeeded in destroying life in the Mennonite colonies.

The first person accounts translated here tell the stories of people who almost miraculously survived successive waves of revolution, civil war, assassination, economic and political purges, and arbitrary arrest and banishment. The stories of these survivors are just now beginning to be published, in both German and Russian.

Sarah Dyck's selection and skillful translation of these memoirs opens a rare window through which English readers can begin to grasp the reality of life in the Soviet empire for those judged to be enemies of the People. These stories provide graphic and personal documentation of a land and a people in turmoil.

The Alexanderkrone school story is especially important because it tells so much about the transition period from the pre-revolutionary to post-revolutionary times. What could continue unchanged midst the often chaotic, radical transformation caused by the sovietization of an entire society? What could not remain the same? How did Mennonites accommodate to the pressures which came upon everyone and all facets of existence in the new Soviet Union. In microcosm, the Alexanderkrone school experience answers those questions.

Includes maps and photos. Copyright 1988.

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, music-making, and food.

Kroeker tells it all with vibrancy-the overview and the memorable details. Includes dozens of historic and contemporary photographs.

Copyright 2005. Good Books

This book expands on the scope and detail of it's popular predecessor, Into the Past: Buildings of the Mennonite Commonwealth.

Copyright 2004 Raduga Publications

Through a close examinations of a variety of documents-diaries, letters to immigrant newspapers, and tax rolls-historian Royden Loewen shows that the 1870's Mennonite immigrants were in fact creative and innovative. In the "hidden worlds" of their private lives, they were able to maintain some of the most important aspects of their Mennonite identity-such as pacifism, and community-run institutions-while also adapting their old social structures to a new environment. Loewen argues that, in fact, private social practices, hidden from public view, were the undergirdings of these immigrants' successful integration into North American society.

Copyright 1984.