The movement of millions of settlers to Siberia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked one of the most ambitious undertakings pursued by the tsarist state. Colonizing Russia’s Promised Land examines how Russian Orthodoxy acted as a basic building block for constructing Russian settler communities in current-day southern Siberia and northern Kazakhstan. Russian state officials aspired to lay claim to land that was politically under their authority, but remained culturally unfamiliar. By exploring the formation and evolution of Omsk diocese – a settlement mission – Colonizing Russia’s Promised Land reveals how the migration of settlers expanded the role of Orthodoxy as a cultural force in transforming Russia’s imperial periphery by "russifying" the land and marginalizing the Indigenous Kazakh population.

In the first study exploring the role of Orthodoxy in settler colonialism, Aileen Friesen shows how settlers, clergymen, and state officials viewed the recreation of Orthodox parish life as practised in European Russia as fundamental to the establishment of settler communities, and to the success of colonization. Friesen uniquely gives peasant settlers a voice in this discussion, as they expressed their religious aspirations and fears to priests and tsarist officials. Despite this agreement, tensions existed not only among settlers, but also within the Orthodox Church as these groups struggled to define what constituted the Russian Orthodox faith and culture.

Aileen E. Friesen is an assistant professor and Co-director of the Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg.

Aileen E. Friesen's profile page

"This work does fill an important gap in our knowledge and understanding of the Orthodox Church’s important role in Russifying the empire’s Siberian frontier in the last decades of the tsarist regime. It should be of interest to scholars specializing in Russian imperial history as well as the history of Christian missions in settler colonial situations."

<em>The Russian Review</em>

"In this engaging monograph, Aileen Friesen examines the role of the Orthodox Church in colonizing, Russifying, and "civilizing" the Siberian frontier between 1895 and the Bolshevik Revolution."

<em>Sibirica</em>

"Friesen’s work makes a valuable contribution to the growing historiography on Siberia and more broadly on Orthodox identity and lived religion as she exposes the diversity of ‘authentic expression of Orthodox belief.’ Her writing is rich with vivid descriptions of the Siberian landscape and amusing anecdotes that bring the conflicts and contradictions over the nuances of religious ritual to life."

<em>Journal of Mennonite Studies</em>

“In this case study of Omsk diocese, formed in western Siberia and the Kazakh steppe in 1887, Aileen Friesen demonstrates that while Orthodoxy meant a great deal to settlers and state officials alike, its meaning on the ground in Siberia was far from straightforward … [a]n excellent piece of work with much to offer both historians of the Russian Empire and scholars of religion and empire more generally.”

<em>Journal of Modern History</em>