This dissertation analyzes a collection of personal letters sent to German-speaking migrants from Russia in the American Midwest by their relatives in southern Russia. The letters can be divided into two groups: the first one includes the ones written in 1913-1914, soon after the couple’s immigration to the United States, while the second one consists of the letters from the 1920s and the 1930s. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the letters from a rhetorical perspective, while the grounded theory and my personal and cultural knowledge about the ethnic Germans in Russia provided an additional help with analyzing the letters and filling in contextual “gaps.” After coding the letters, I examine the ways their rhetoric was influenced by the rhetorical situation, and also the ways various dominant “themes” were communicated by the letter-writers. Also, because some of the letters were sent during a famine that affected the region and the community they came from, many letters included pleas for help from America. I am interested in how these requests for help were rhetorically represented and, therefore, focus on analyzing the theme of “crisis” in these texts. My analysis contributes to a deeper understanding of the letter-writing genre and cultural rhetorics by offering a detailed discussion about the letters as rhetorical texts, the people, who produced them, and the constraints that influenced the letter-writers. By using grounded theory to guide my coding process, I was able tailor this qualitative research method for the needs of my project. By using rhetorical theory as a vehicle, I analyze the stories told through the letters and explore how these historical artifacts go beyond simply fulfilling the function of maintaining personal communication between the writers and readers and provide a rare ”unofficial” insight into a tumultuous period of Russian history in the early 20th century. Furthermore, my dissertation informs the discussion about the value of archival research and the use of archival artifacts in studying rhetoric and composition.