Drawing on an impressive body of archival and published sources, Aileen Friesen provides an insightful analysis of the collaborative efforts of the Russian imperial state and the Orthodox Church to strengthen the empire after the mid-1890s through the colonization of the western Siberian steppe. These efforts, Friesen demonstrates, were in many ways similar to those undertaken by other European colonial powers at the time. She concludes, however, that they largely failed despite the extensive migration of peasants to Siberia, demonstrating the limitations of Orthodoxy as a medium of political stabilization and Russian national integration.

Focusing on Omsk diocese, Friesen argues that state and church officials believed that an expansion of the Orthodox population in western Siberia would ensure political stability in the region as well as secure it from foreign threats. They therefore endeavored to increase the presence of Orthodox believers by simultaneously promoting the mass migration of Orthodox peasants into the steppe region and intensifying efforts to convert the non-Orthodox indigenous population, chiefly Muslim Kazakhs, to Orthodoxy. From an Orthodox patriotic perspective, this strategy also promised to advance Russia's presumed historical mission to Christianize Asia. As Friesen demonstrates, state and church officials recognized that to succeed, the strategy required the creation of an adequate religious infrastructure that included viable parish communities with a sufficient number of churches, schools, and clergy to support the Orthodox population. The creation of such an infrastructure, however, as Friesen shows persuasively, faced imposing challenges. The rapidly expanding and mobile population, widely dispersed across an enormous expanse of territory, with villages separated by vast distances, rendered the creation of stable parishes, the provision of reasonably accessible churches and regular pastoral services, and the timely performance of prescribed rituals by clergy extremely difficult. The costs of overcoming these obstacles were high, while funding for them from both the church and the state—as well as from parishioners—was limited. The recruitment of qualified clergy both from the imperial heartland and from within the settler population was difficult. These problems were compounded by a settler population that, though predominantly Orthodox, was highly diverse in terms of its ethnic and linguistic composition and its religious practices and traditions. For example, though deriving from common Orthodox roots, the marriage, funeral, baptismal, and confessional prayers and rituals practiced by peasants from different regions varied, causing tensions within settler communities and between communities and priests, who had to decide which variants they would tolerate. Diversity increased after the early twentieth century, and especially after the extension of religious toleration in 1905, as the number of Old Believers, sectarians, Baptists, and other non-Orthodox Christians in the diocese grew, to the point where church officials perceived these groups to pose a greater threat than Muslims to the faith of Orthodox believers.

Friesen demonstrates that state and especially church officials often responded creatively to these problems. Substantial funds were procured, for example, through the organization of a permanent empire-wide campaign to solicit contributions and a centralized body—the Emperor Alexander III Fund—to disburse the proceeds. The shortage of churches was partly overcome by the introduction of mobile churches, the construction of modest prayer houses, and the dual use of schools. In 1909, a special eight-month program was established in Moscow to recruit and train priests from outside the clerical estate, with the graduates being provided with monetary bonuses to assume positions in Siberia. In 1912, short-term summer courses were introduced at various sites in Siberia to train clergy in missionary work. For their part, settlers frequently adapted their ritual practices to the difficult conditions of life on the steppe.

Although, according to Friesen, such measures partly succeeded in meeting settlers’ religious needs, they failed to achieve the national-religious integration that state and church officials desired. The number of people converting to Orthodoxy from other faiths remained low, while missionary activities led frequently to friction, especially with Muslim Kazakhs. The tensions within settler communities and between communities and clergy, as well as among clergy themselves, produced by variations in religious practices and traditions persisted. Orthodoxy thus functioned as much as a source of division among settlers as a medium of their integration, even if their tenacious adherence to the particular form of lived Orthodoxy brought with them to Siberia also demonstrated its importance to their lives. Hence, the Orthodox “promised land” in the Siberian steppe envisioned by state and church officials remained elusive. The effort to achieve it, however, transformed the population, economy, culture, and geography of western Siberia during the last two decades of the imperial regime.