Aileen Friesen, U of Wpg, presentation at 2, Q&A at 3 at Elmer & Hilda Hildebrand’s.

Aileen has done research in USSR archives in Ukraine about

Mennonite families after the Russian Revolution and after WW I.

Aileen Friesen grew up listening to stories about Russia from her

maternal grandparents who left the Soviet Union in the 1920s. To

understand their homeland, she pursued a Ph.D in Russian history,

eventually becoming an assistant professor at the University of

Winnipeg and the executive director of the Plett Foundation.

Over the years, she has travelled extensively in Ukraine and

Russia, conducting research in Zaporizhzhia, Omsk, St.

Petersburg, and Moscow. For three weeks, she lived in the village

of Apollonovka (formerly Waldheim) in Omsk province, where she

seeded the Siberian steppe, corralled calves, and took

meddachschlop on the couches of Omas. She is currently working

on a history of Mennonite migration into, through, and out of the

Russian empire and heading up a project on the repression of

Mennonites in the Soviet Union.