The Discovery of Native "Mormon" Communities in Russia Tania Rands Lyon 1 IN EARLY JUNE 1998, Sheridan Gashler, president of the Russia Samara Mis- sion, felt moved to place missionaries in a small village called Bogdanovka. This was an exciting change in policy. Early LDS missionary work in Russia had been concentrated in large urban areas where most missionaries could enjoy such civilized luxuries as paved roads, frequent public transporta- tion, telephone lines, and running water. In recent years missions branched into smaller cities, but the Russian village was an altogether new frontier. Bogdanovka, although it is only 100 miles or so from the large regional cap- ital city of Samara, is a world apart. On their first reconnaissance trip, President Gashler, with his assistants and the mission driver, set out east from Samara until gray, concrete, high- rise apartment buildings gave way to immense rolling fields of grain, corn, and sunflowers. The Soviet legacy of massive collective farming left no small homesteads to break up the horizons that stretched along the two- lane road connecting the towns and villages of the Samara province, a terri- tory roughly the size of South Carolina. 1. This article is the fruit of close cooperation with a number of people. The author is especially indebted to Sheridan Gashler, president of the Russia Samara Mission (1998-pre- sent), Gary Browning, president of the Helsinki East and Russia Moscow Missions (1990- 1993), Don Jarvis, president of the Russia Moscow and Russia Yekaterinburg Missions (1996-1999) as well as to James Scott, Heather Frushour, Alida Purves, Brent Van Every, Dan Jones, Dmitri Slinkov, and many others who willingly shared their time and stories. For funding research trips to the Samara province, the author thanks Richard Rands and Janet Brigham. And for invaluable detective work and editing assistance, the author is grateful to John B. Lyon and Cherie K. Woodworth. An earlier version of this paper was de- livered at the Sunstone West Symposium in April 1999.