The Russian Mennonite Story:

The Heritage Cruise Lectures

Take a unique journey through the Russian Mennonite past with Paul Toews’ Mennonite Heritage Cruise Lectures.

Ethno-tourism for Mennonites has grown through the Mennonite Heritage Cruises, where for sixteen years (1995-2010) Mennonite pilgrims have floated along the Dnieper River. Within a community of fellowship and reflection on the Mennonite story in Ukraine, Paul Toews, the resident historian, provided historical knowledge to the passengers.

Toews’ lectures explore the themes of prosperity, destruction, and resurrection within the The Russian Mennonite Story, while Aileen Friesen's illustrations, along with nearly 100 historic photographs, provide a memory of the past. This coffee-table book offers a rare glimpse into the prosperity, sorrow, and rebirth of the Mennonite story in Russia and Ukraine, and creates a path forward for the future study of Russian Mennonites.

Our memories of Mennonite life in this region are etched with deeply contradictory images. On the one hand, we remember a resplendent culture... We celebrate an idyllic pastoral existence... These images have encouraged us to revere the Mennonite story as a golden age—an age of economic prosperity, political engagement, cultural richness, and religious vitality. But memories of a very different kind are also deeply embedded in our imagination—scenes of waste, destruction, and pillage, of fields, villages, and factories laid bare, accounts of starvation, torture, and death that are almost too horrific for us to remember ...