BOOK NOTES

New book tells about experiences of Mennonites in Tsarist Russia, USSR

"A Mennonite Family in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, 1789-1923," by David G. Rempel with Cornelia Rempel Carlson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003, 356 pp, $70 (hardcover).

History comes alive in David G. Rempel's "A Mennonite Family in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, 1789-1923." The author presents history through his own experience living in Russian Mennonite settlements during 1900-1920 and through drawing upon the history of his ancestors. Throughout the book Dr. Rempel weaves the reader through the 1905 revolution, the repercussions of the Stolypin reforms, World War I and the people's fear concerning property expropriation and exile, the 1917 revolution and Makhnovschyna.

Dr. Rempel includes photographs of himself and his family in this book, which draws the reader even more into the history of the time from 1789 to 1923 and where the author's family fits into that history. The geneaology of Dr. Rempel's family, which makes up one of the appendices, aids in the reading of the history as well.

This history describes "one of tsarist and early Soviet Russia's smallest, yet most dynamic, ethno-religious minorities." "A Mennonite Family in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, 1789-1923" was published posthumously and edited by Dr. Rempel's daughter, Cornelia Rempel Carlson.

Dr. Rempel received his Ph.D. in history from Stanford University. For three years during World War II the author was Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's military historian. Dr. Rempel taught history at the College of San Mateo in California from 1934 until he retired in 1964.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 18, 2004, No. 3, Vol. LXXII

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