In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Russian empire opened the grasslands of southern Ukraine to agricultural settlement. Among the immigrants who arrived were communities of Prussian Mennonites, recruited as “model colonists” to bring progressive agricultural methods to the east. Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe documents the Tsarist Mennonite experience through the papers of Johann Cornies (1789–1848), an ambitious and energetic leader of the Mennonite ...

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Russian empire opened the grasslands of southern Ukraine to agricultural settlement. Among the immigrants who arrived were communities of Prussian Mennonites, recruited as "model colonists" to bring progressive agricultural methods to the east. The three volumes of Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe document the Tsarist Mennonite experience through the papers of Johann Cornies (1789–1848), an ambitious and energetic lead...