This collection of nine articles, plus the editor's introduction, seeks to show “how Mennonites interacted with the larger world around them, how those relations changed over time, and how those interactions in turn influenced the Mennonites’ self-perception and representation” (3). Five essays focus on the imperial period: Svetlana Bobyleva offers a microhistory of a single colony, John Staples examines the activities of an individual Mennonite (Johann Cornies), Irina Cherkazianova surveys Mennonite-state relations in education, Oksana Beznosova traces the state view of Mennonite believers, and Nataliya Venger recounts the role of Mennonite entrepreneurs and relations to the state up through World War I. After an article on the diaspora by John Toews (about A. A. Friesen), the final three articles deal with the Mennonites’ increasingly troubled plight in the Soviet era: Colin Neufeldt examines the Mennonite role in collectivization, Alexander Beznosov describes the Mennonites’ fate during the famine of 1932–35, and Viktor Klets tells the story of Mennonites in Ukraine during World War II.

The Mennonites were a tiny minority: the 1897 census reported just 66,370 adherents of the confession (0.05% of the population), but they were highly prosperous and successful—at least until the onset of the two world wars. They have been the subject of an enormous corpus of scholarship (both within the Russia and abroad), yet these nine articles still constitute a valuable contribution. While the call to de-ghettoize minority history is not breaking news, this volume offers much fresh empirical research—chiefly from local archives in Ukraine. The magnitude of the archival research varies among the different essays, but all have new findings to offer. Although the articles do not neglect central repositories (in Moscow, Kiev, and especially Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv in St. Petersburg), they draw mainly on local archives in Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Donetsk, and Simferopol. This highly productive research in archives enables the authors to reconsider the traditional historiography and to show how local authorities and Mennonites responded to directives from the capitals and demonstrates the gap between what was decreed and what actually transpired. That gap is an important theme, both for the imperial (Mennonite entrepreneurs during World War I) and Soviet periods (Mennonite involvement in local soviet and party activities in the 1920s). Generalists, not just specialists in Mennonite history, will find much useful data and fresh insights on a broad range of issues.

The collection, valuable as it is, nonetheless leaves room for further research. Alas, it gives scant attention to the religious sphere, tending to treat Mennonites as an ethnic rather than confessional group. Did the Mennonites exhibit a decline in religious observance (in accord with the conventional “secularization” model), or did they undergo a transformation like that of other religious groups? How did the evolution of religious life and praxis reshape their self-perception and representation? And how did their relationship to other faiths evolve, especially with respect to the Orthodox Church and various Protestant confessions? Moreover, it is essential to place the Mennonite experience in comparative perspective: how did official policy toward the Mennonites differ from that of other believers? The literature on that broader context is enormous, but these articles rarely frame the analysis within this larger context and only in a few cases show familiarity with the rich literature that has appeared in post-Soviet Russia.

The collection might also have given more attention to Mennonites outside southern Ukraine—for a comparative perspective. The pertinent scholarly literature, especially in post-Soviet Russia, is substantial. Some works focus specifically on Mennonites, while others address more general questions and include hundreds of references to Mennonites. To cite only a few examples of dissertations (accompanied by a plethora of ancillary publications): E. A. Pas΄ko, “Kolonizatsionnaia politika Rossii (vtoraia polovine XVIII—pervaia chetvert΄ XIX vv.) (PhD diss., Rostovskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii universitet, 2003); R. F. Gabidullina, “Vklad rossiiskikh nemtsev v ekonomicheskoe razvitie povolzh΄ia vtoroi poloviny XIX—nachala XX vekov (na materialakh Samarskoi i Saratovskoi gubernii)” (PhD diss., Samarskii gosudarstvennyi aerokosmicheskii universitet, 2007); I. K. Agasiev, “Nemetskie kolonii v Volynskoi gubernii (konets XVIII-nachalo XX vv.)” (PhD diss., Krasnoiarskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii universitet, 1999); D. G. Korovushkin, “Diaspory v Zapadnoi Sibiri: Osobennosti etnokul΄turnogo razvitiia sel΄skikh soobshchestv v kontse XIX—nachale XXI v.” (PhD diss., Institut arkheologii i etnografii Sibirskogo otdeleniia RAN, 2009); and V. Iu. Babkova, “Sotsial΄naia i khoziaistvennaia adaptatsiia mennonitov k usloviiam Severnogo Kavkaza v 60-e gody XIX–nachale XX vv.” (PhD diss., Stavropol΄skii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2008).

Finally, the editorial oversight leaves something to be desired. The names of oblast archives appear in diverse, sometimes unidentified formats (the oblast archive in Odessa, for example, appears in multiple Russian forms and even as an English abbreviation). There are also minor but irritating peccadilloes. For example, a well-known source like Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii appears as Polnyi svod zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (107, 136), an unfortunate confusion of two very different legal texts. Nevertheless, the collection is a useful contribution to a rich historiography. It should inspire future researchers to explore neglected sources and, no less important, to incorporate the rich burgeoning scholarship in post-Soviet Russia.