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226 Reviews

amply discuss, for example, public punishment for personal sins—used to maintain discipline and harmony within the community.

The Diaries illustratc the heterogeneity of the coun&yside during this period: Mennonites often served as “model farmers” for resettled Jews under imperial and provincial tutelage and lived alongside Russians and non-Mennonite Germans as well. Epp took his task as model farmer seriously and often upbraided Mennonites who worked on Sunday as a bad example to the Jews, who held the Sabbath as sacred. AJthough forced to interact with one another in areas of mutual concem, such as common herding and grazing, Mennonite and Jew viewed the world dif-ferently, seemed not to trust each other, and consequently got along but poorly.

Concemed with the spiritual, educational, and physical well-being of his own flock, Epp rarely mentions any interaction with members of other religions (except for the Jewish settlers). On occasion, he notes holidays as times when the local Orthodox population would not work in the fields, but on only one occasion does he write of a Mennonite man who decided to convert to Orthodoxy (p. 327). At no point do the joumals recount a Russian becoming a Mennonite. Furthermore, Epp (usually a keen observer of the local and provincial scene) never mentions interaction with the Old Believer or sectarian populations, which were quite large in that part of the empire. These omissions show that, while in a Russian world, the Mennonites never became “of the world.” They had received guarantees to live in free-dom from imperial army service and other duties, and the Mennonites tricd to retain their independence from the rest of Russian society. Epp himself distrusted such gifts as the Mennonite Charter of Privileges, and his entries chronicie the erosion of those “perpetual” liberties.

The Diaries thus provide materiał for the study of communitarian groups in Rus-sia during this period. Morę broadly, the book can be used to aid research on inter-faith relations as well as for morę mainstream economic and social history. Each year’s entries include, for example, detailed data on harvests, birth and death rates, and other pertinent raw source materiał.

Epp’s prose (and Dyck’s translation) make for a good read: the stream of reli-gious activities, notable events. and the rhythm of rural life follow easily from day to day, year to year. His prose even becomes lyrical when recounting moments of par-ticularly strong emotion. He describes seeing his first wife, just deceased, in a dream:

It was past midnight when I drcamed that my elear, dear wife was standing at my side in a very familiar dress and saying to me that I should accompany her through all of this life. I was so happy. We walked hand in hand together towards our house, but we had to pass through deep

water that reached up to our chins----1 took my dearly beloved Maria in my arms and carried

her through the water. and on reaching home we sal down together in heartfelt Iove. just the two of us, and with a passionate kiss sealed our reunion forever. (pp. 180-81)

Indeed, the cycle of life and, especially, early death comprises a leitmotif for the book. Both scholars and students would do well to read the scores of entries detail-ing the early death of Epp’s family and parishioners. The joumals remind those studying the social conditions of the Russian countiyside that the endemic danger of life in these times was an untimely death.