The opportunities opened up by the Gorbachev reforms have shown that religion is one of the most significant dynamic forces in Soviet society. Yet few scholars have attempted to relate the study of churches and religious movements in recent centuries to the politics and culture of the Soviet Union. To remedy this deficiency, leading western experts on Christianity in the Eastern Slav lands gathered at a conference in London on the occasion of the millennium of the baptism of Rus'. Their papers present unexpected and fascinating insights into an under-rated but crucial aspect of the life of the Soviet peoples.

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Acknowledgements - Preface - Notes on Contributors - The Formation of Modern Ukrainian Religious Culture: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; F.E.Sysyn - The Spirituality of the Vyg Fathers; R.O.Crummey - The Authority of Holiness: Women Ascetics and Spiritual Elders in nineteenth-century Russia; B.Meehan-Waters - The Greek Catholic Church in nineteenth-century Galicia; J-P.Himka - Printing the Bible in the Reign of Alexander I: Towards a Reinterpretation of the Imperial Russian Bible Society; S.K.Batalden - Christianity, the Service Ethic and Decembrist Thought; F.A.Walker - The Role of the Orthodox Missionary in the Altai: Archimandrite Makarii and V.I.Verbitskii; D.N.Collins - Theological Liberalism and Church Reform in Imperial Russia; P.Valliere - Alexander Kireev and Theological Controversy in the Russian Orthodox Church, 1890-1910; J.D.Basil - Leo Tolstoy, a Church Critic influenced by Orthodox thought; P.Kolsto - The Church's Social Role in St Petersburg, 1880-1914; S.Dixon - The Church Schools and Seminaries in the Russian Revolution of 1905-6; J.D.Morrison - The Political Philosophy of the Russian Orthodox Episcopate in the Soviet period; M.A.Meerson - The Rise of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, 1919-22; B.R.Bociurkiw - The Renovationist Coup: Personalities and Programmes; P.Walters - The Survival of the Russian Orthodox Church in her Millennial Century: Faith as martyria in an Atheistic State; D.Pospielovsky - Are the Furov reports authentic?; R.Oppnheim - Orthodoxy and Russian Nationalism in the USSR, 1917-88; P.J.S.Duncan - Religious Currents in Contemporary Soviet Literature and Film; J.B.Dunlop