THE MENNONITE BROTHERHOOD IN RUSSIA (1789 - 1910), P. M. Friesen, 1911

not easy to write in opposition to the word of the “common brother" (as a dishonest historical m axim ) and in line with father Reimer’s principle of truth. Emotions and historical conscience came into severe conflict. Time and again I listened to dozens of honorable men and women from the various factions and read and reread their documents— and a great sorrow overcame me! I could impossibly present loving old men of this or that faction in all their nakedness in a cold-blooded fashion during their lifetime, a nakedness of which they had themselves been unaware. Indeed, as I shall elaborate below in the delineation of my historical procedure, it became very difficult for me to treat men from the fellowship, who had already been in their graves for fifty years, in a truthful historical fashion: all of them have left a circle of admirers behind who see them in the light of a pious tradition. Their children and grandchildren live in our midst. To write contemporary history is a difficult task for one’s psyche! I found a way out. I began by sorting the documents— hundreds upon hundreds of private and official papers— according to year and day and began to copy them into a "chronicle” with explanatory footnotes. After three months of work (after Halbstadt, I lived in the Kuban settlement of Wohldemfuerst for twenty months), I carefully packed up all my original documents and the copies I had made and, tired of the impression all the historical material from my immediate and personal surroundings had made upon me— which weighed down upon me like a mountain— I went on a series of trips. During the time of my stay at the Kuban I visited many Mennonite and other congregations, watching, listening, t hinkin g, and constantly gathering material. Things I never dreamed existed came into my hands. Thus, because of the many interruptions, the “writing” also took longer than I had ever imagined. After a period of eight years as minister in Odessa, God gave me nearly two years of uninterrupted peace and quiet as a convalescent. During that time and with the help of my best secretary— my dear wife— I began to work on 5,000 pages of manuscript (to which, during my thirteen years in Sevastopol, again as much material was added), always in the same format of a “chronicle” (to the point of a diary) of our history. After constant expansion it finally turned, not into a "History of the M.B. Church,” but into a XXX history of the Mennonites in Russia within the framework of the totality of Mennonite history, as the present title indicates. With respect to my ecclesiastical, intellectual, and cultural position generally, I would request the reader who would like, from the outset, to know with whom he is dealing, to read pages 205, 301-303, 307, 453-454, 498, 543b, 631-636, 733-735, 748, 785, 787, 854, etc., and especially the concluding chapter, page 975 to the end, if he is so inclined. Finally, in 1906, I once again pr