Slavic migration across the Urals into Asia in the last three decades of the tsarist period constitutes one of history's largest cases of human movement. As many as five million settlers left European Russia for Siberia, the Kazakh steppe, Central Asia, and the Far East, transforming those regions fundamentally. Yet until now there has been no systematic study of the religious dimension of this migration, at least not in English. Aileen Friesen's new book on the Siberian diocese of Omsk fills this gap and thus offers a fine contribution to the historiography on settler colonization and Christianity in European empires as well as on Orthodoxy in Russia.

Founded in 1895 as one of nine new episcopates in Asian Russia in the nineteenth century, Omsk diocese was immense—almost twice the size of France—and extended from central Siberia to the Chinese frontier. The opening of the trans-Siberian railway as far as the Ob River in 1896 dramatically facilitated its settlement. The Siberian steppe represented Russia's “promised land” (from the book's title) in that it offered both to alleviate the land hunger of the country's European provinces and to help secure Russia's place as a Great Power with an Asian presence. Orthodoxy, in the view of secular and religious figures alike, was essential to claiming the colonized territory as fully Russian. “By remaking Siberia through Orthodoxy,” remarks Friesen, “its true promise would finally be achieved” (4). To a degree, this implied missionary work among Kazakhs, but far more important was the task of transplanting the Orthodox religious life and culture of the European heartland to this distant territory, which would otherwise remain “foreign” and “barbaric” (36). The importance of all of this for the church is clear enough. But for the state as well—especially officials in the Resettlement Administration, tasked with overseeing Siberia's colonization—the stakes were similarly high: settlers, they supposed, “would be culturally unreliable without the support of the institutional church” (34).

Friesen's principal accomplishment is to show the hard work and challenges that accompanied this project. The issue, she shows, was not only that building new churches, consecrating cemeteries, and staffing new parishes required material and intellectual resources that were in short supply but also that the principal difficulties confronting the church back in European Russia appeared here in acute form. As Friesen remarks, “Instead of a coherent, unified faith, colonization revealed underlying disagreements among these groups as to what constituted the Russian Orthodox faith and culture they aspired to transplant to Siberia” (5). Hailing from diverse parts of European Russia—including Ukraine and Belarus—settlers brought with them diverse religious traditions that frustrated efforts to assert a shared Orthodoxy. Long-term residents of Siberia meanwhile exhibited their own peculiarities. Generational tensions created other complications. To complicate matters further, dissident sectarian traditions within Orthodoxy as well as confessions alien to Russia historically, such as the Baptist faith and Adventism, proved at least as successful in Siberia as they did back “home.” Large numbers of nearby Muslims enhanced the sense of vulnerability. Subject to greater restrictions before the Revolution of 1905, these alternatives to Orthodoxy gained greater liberty after the proclamation of “freedom of conscience” in that year. All these issues caused much ground for discord and tension.

There is much to recommend this book. It is concise and well written. It is nicely illustrated with intriguing photos. It is based on both a solid selection of primary sources (including archival materials from the country's two capitals and from Omsk itself) and on serious engagement with existing scholarship. With occasional glances at other empires, it has an admirable comparative component. It gives voice to a wide range of historical actors, showing, for example, how ordinary Orthodox settlers astutely marshaled the discourse of the state's colonization project to assert a sense of entitlement to support for their needs. (Even Catholic and Lutheran settlers made such requests, though with less success.) All these attributes make this a fine addition to the literature on Orthodoxy in Russia and on religion and empire more broadly.

Perhaps my only criticism—and it is small—is that Friesen seems unsure, in the end, about whether to regard all of this as a success or a failure. The title implies certain attainments, and in the conclusion, Friesen refers to colonization as a “fruitful venue” for church-state cooperation, declaring that “settlers reaped the benefits of this system” (147). Yet at other points, her emphasis seems to be on the vulnerability, fissures, and disputes—in short, on an unnerving instability that resulted not from the empire's many minority groups but instead “from within the core of the ‘Russian nation’” (149). In Friesen's defense, one can allow that all of this was present at once. Part of the issue, moreover, is that the revolution of 1917 intervened to set Russia on a very different course—one where building churches and providing clergy were decidedly not priorities. In this sense, Russia's grand experiment in colonization—and especially its religious dimension—was cut short.