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

esented my now essentially completed manuscript (about two-thirds the size of the present book) to the annual meeting of the M.B. Church through the oral and written explanation of two ministers, that is, two elders of the same church. I did this because the M.B. Church had, as its initiator, perhaps not a legal, but at least a moral right to the work. I asked the conference what it wanted to do with the “historical material” (in the original, of which a considerable part, though by far not the greatest amount, belonged to it). The meeting, by a recorded conference decision, declined any further participation and turned everything over to me personally. In 1909, sick and condemned to die by the verdict of the doctors, I offered the handwritten materials to a younger man from our midst who had specialized in the study of history so that he might fashion something new from them. But he and another young specialist, together with the partners of the Raduga publishing firm (the latter renewing their plea), insisted that the book should be printed the way it was. As always, J. Ph. Isaak, my authorized agent in these matters, was actively involved. For a considerable time, so shortly “before my imminent death,” I could not summon up the courage to take the responsibility for seeing the book through the press and all the criticism which was sure to follow from the publication of such a study upon myself. But God, who has led me in this matter, once again granted me strength and courage, and in the summer of 1809 I entered into an agreement with Raduga to publish the study. Instead of six months, the publication took two years; at times I was at fault, at times the publishers were at fault. Various circumstances caused me to increase the size of the book by half again that of the original— to a certain extent against the wishes of the publisher. During this two-year period I was forced to do most of my work in bed (half sitting, half lying— one learns how to do many things if one is forced to). Inspite of the fact that it was constantly expanded, the composition of the study has retained the character of a “chronicle” employed from the beginning. Endless new “insertions,” “appendices,” etc., have not made an overview of the whole any easier to achieve and have made a proper relationship between the major and minor subdivisions a virtual impossibility. I have therefore attempted, by means of numerous references from paragraph to paragraph, to draw the thread of continuity XXXI for the studious reader. Many sections had to be doubled and divided— # ... ( 2 ), etc.— because of the above-mentioned insertions. The exceedingly large size of that section of the book that deals with the M.B. Church, in comparison to the majority group, was a natural outgrowth of the original conception of the study as a specialized study of the M.B. Church. On the other hand, however, it also contains much that pertains to the