Customer Reviews

The Blue Mountains of China (New Canadian Library)

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The Blue Mountains of China is an historical novel that tells the story of a set of Mennonite immigrations from the Ukraine SSR to Siberia, Canada, Paraguay, and briefly, China. The novel begins with a series of loosely connected chapters which move forward in time, and focus on individual and interior responses to the privations endured by Mennonites, who either are being forced from their land or are seeking that next elusive place on earth where Mennonites can be Mennonites. It is ultimately a convergent novel, with characters separately developed in early chapters being linked together as a saga of several families interrelated by beliefs, culture, and circumstance. I chose to read it because my paternal line comes from the same Mennonite background, and in fact, emigrated to the US from the same Mennonite colony, Molotschna, in the Ukraine SSR from whence this story originates. I found this novel to be quite moving, and wonderful in depicting the lives and thoughts and beliefs of my ancestors. The writer is respectful of the Mennonite community and of the devotion to God that many in that community try to include in their daily lives. At the same time, the characters are very human and flawed, and the writer is candid in his depiction of some of the real problems and issues that the Mennonites struggled with, including the often exaggerated insularity, and the piety that could be overstressed to the point of missing Christ's message regarding treatment of our fellow men, among others. He doesn't miss the complexity of martyrdom or deep sacrifice that several of his characters show, bringing out the quiet personal courage of someone acting on their convictions while also showing the apparent futility of some of these actions.

The novel begins with the kulakization and collectivization of the late 1920's and early 1930's in the USSR, where Mennonite and peasant agricultural villages of the Ukraine and other areas were deliberately dismantled by the state using the most cruel, brutal and murderous methods (see Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine for a general history of this time), including mass starvation. The author uses local and individual stories to show the effects of this policy on the Mennonites without specifically describing the larger history. Through his patient development of characters he fleshes out the effects of Mennonite beliefs and culture in response to these terrible events in history, following people who were arrested and removed from their families or killed by the secret police, people who returned to once vibrant and well off villages only to find them being dismantled board by board or destroyed, people who left their villages, one step ahead of the authorities, to try to leave the country, some who are exiled against their will to Siberia, some who escape from Siberia to the Blue Mountains of China, and so on. Most of those who manage to survive end up in other parts of the world where the land is so poor that it is given away to newly arrived immigrants, like parts of western Canada, the semi-desert of Paraguay, and Siberia, and struggle to establish themselves in yet another place. The novel celebrates the endurance of these Mennonites, and their faith that sustains them in these often hard times. The author finishes the story with two beautiful chapters that help bring out the uniqueness of Mennonite ideals, and the radical Christian ideals that fueled the birth of the Mennonite movement, and that still lives in some of its practitioners, almost despite the rigidities of their micro-denominations and closed societies that exist side by side and in constrast to those ideals.

This novel is very thoughtful and highly recommended to someone who seeks a human face to the Mennonite immigration sagas. It requires some patience to acclimate to the author's literary techniques, which are more inward-directed than straightforward linear plot; as well the author provides the reader with little context for the Mennonite historical situation, beliefs and culture which the reader needs to fully appreciate the story, so a little extra reading would help to fill in these gaps: Kroeker's Introduction To The Russian Mennonites is brief account (111 pages) that provides a good part of that context. On a final note, the Russian Mennonites spoke Mennonite Low German, or Plautdietsch. The author employs an unusual technique that brings alive the native rhythm of Mennonite speech and thought; his novel is written in English, with a few Low German words sprinkled in, but many of the interior monologues are grammatically constructed as if in Low German, giving the sensation of listening to the character's thoughts in the rhythm of their native language.

.. seems to have nothing to do with the text. But the author is Rudy Wiebe, not Eva Marie Kröller!!!

You have to know Mennonite history to understand the book at all, especially since RW seems to have been bound and determined to become the James Joyce of Mennonite authors. Most of the book is written as introspection, so I can't help you with the meanings of the many sentence fragments, but I can at least do what RW should have done, namely, provide a little dictionary' of a few Mennonite (Plat-) dialect terms. Here are some naive guesses:

groutestov/Grossestua-living room
sommastov-summer (or back-) room
Chortitza (where they had originally settled in the Ukraine)
actstov-(from Mecklenberger-Vorp0momern Platt) a back room that can only be entered through another room, akt meaning "aft".

The 'Russian' Mennonites originated in Switzerland in Reformation times, as did all Mennonites of that age, then and picked up their language (Platdeutsch) in north Germany. From Prussia they were invited to 'Russia' by Katerina der Grosse. They're pacifist, refuse any but their own (German Bible-) schools, and prefer no citizenship. Ca. 1875 Canada looked more friendly so there was a mass migration but 'Russia' was not emptied of Mennonites (the book begins with the time after the communist revolution in the Ukraine). After WWI their German schools were outlawed in Canada (they go 6 yrs. to learn Hochdeutsch in order to read Luther's Bible) so they migrated to the State of Chihuahua in N. Mexico (and farther into Central and South America) where, in 1991, they still formed a colony some 50000 strong N, of Cuahtemoc (they make Mexico's cheese, e.g.). At that time they had no citizenship, by choice, and did not have to serve in the Mexican army. In Cuahtemoc and in their "Dorfs" north of Cuahtemoc we heard the language spoken (my German wife barely understood parts of the prettily sung old Plat dialect) and were able to speak with them using Hochdeutsch. The language of the Amish and Mennonites who settled Pennsylvania after 1693 ("Pennsylvania Dutch" is an "English" mispronunciation of 'Pennsylvania Deitsch') is a southwest German dialect, related Schwäbisch-Badenrisch, Swiss German and Alsatian. That was an entirely different Mennonite migration. Mennonites and Amish in Pa., Ohio, Ky. and Tenn. would not be able to converse (except via Hochdeutsch) with those in the Dakotas, Canada, and Mexico.

A very moving and powerful novel that tells the story of the Mennonites who fled the Soviet Union to escape religious persecution. Although not as highly acclaimed as some of his other works, The Blue Mountains of China is perhaps one of the great Canadian novels.