Authors

Nadezhda Beliakova¹;  ¹ Cluster "Religion und Politik" WWU Münster, Germany

Discussion

Since the mid-1950s, restrictions have been gradually lifted from Germans who were on the territory of the Soviet Union and deported to Central Asia. During the Second World War, Germans, who belonged to the religious minority – Mennonites (and lived on the territory of UdSSR), moved to different parts of the world. The focus of my research is the restoration of ties /networks between family members since the mid–1950s, which became possible thanks to the normalization of postal service between the two opposing political blocs and the growth of tourism to the republics of the USSR. The Mennonite Committee, located in Canada, organized assistance to find relatives and even sent a delegation to the USSR in the second half of the 1950s. In the presentation I show on the materials of the periodicals "Der Bote", "Mennonitische Rundschau", "Сеятель истины" how family fates and family events were presented in letters from the Soviet Union, and discuss what role their publication played in constructing a) the identity of the religious-national community b) global networks of communication.