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Religion and Identity in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Festschrift for Paul Bushkovitch. Nikolaos A. Chrissidis, Cathy J. Potter, David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, and Jennifer B. Spock, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2011, vii–ix. Preface Nash uchitel’, nash drug i otets (our teacher, our friend, and father), Paul Bushkovitch, turned 60 in May 2008. A few years earlier, Cathy Potter had suggested to Paul’s cortège of students that we could not let this landmark date pass unobserved. As a result, on 4‒5 April 2008, Yale University hosted a conference/workshop in honor of Paul Bushkovitch with presentations by his students. This volume brings together the revised articles in a festschrift cele-‐‑ brating Paul’s scholarship, mentoring, and friendship. Titled “Sources First! Religion, Politics, and Culture in Pre-‐‑Modern and Modern Russia,” the conference covered a broad swath of Russian history, reflecting Paul’s wide-‐‑ranging academic interests. Centering on the use of primary sources as its main theme, the conference highlighted three areas of research in our field: a) new or rarely utilized sources; b) new analytical ap-‐‑ proaches to well-‐‑known sources; and c) paradigm shifts in Russian history. As the author of Religion and Society in Russia: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, and as a specialist in pre-‐‑Petrine and Petrine Russian history,1 Bushkovitch has ipso facto been an authority on the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. He has been instrumental in shifting scholarly attention from the institutional to the cultural history of the church. Consequently, he has pioneered the investigation of the evolution of Russian Orthodoxy in the 16th and 17th centuries from a socio-‐‑cultural standpoint. Many of his students have accordingly followed this interest and extended it chronologically into the modern period. Many of the chapters in this volume address Russian Or-‐‑ thodoxy’s energetic adaptation to Russia’s changing domestic and interna-‐‑ tional conditions in the early modern and modern periods. Covering the 17th through the early 20th centuries, they range from Muscovite prophetic works and the impact of the Protestant Reformation on Orthodoxy to changes in rit-‐‑ ual and devotional practices in the late Imperial era. During the early modern period, being Russian meant first and foremost being Orthodox. By examining Orthodoxy’s evolution, Bushkovitch antici-‐‑ pated the current wave of interest in Russian identity. A number of his stu-‐‑ dents accordingly provide chapters on the way in which Russians viewed themselves and were viewed by others. These essays cover, among other sub-‐‑ jects, Muscovite perceptions of genealogical links, interaction with foreign traders, missions to non-‐‑Orthodox populations in the empire, a foreign trave-‐‑ 1 See the article in this volume by Nancy S. Kollmann on Paul Bushkovitch’s scholarship. viii PREFACE ler’s account of Soviet Russia, and a tongue-‐‑in-‐‑cheek look at identity on the imperial periphery. Religion and identity provide two strands uniting the essays in this vol-‐‑ ume, including the manner in which Finland developed its religious identity between Eastern and Western Europe before its incorporation into the Rus-‐‑ sian Empire. A third, no less important uniting factor, is the use of primary sources. Indeed, the majority of the articles are firmly grounded on the use of hitherto unexploited primary sources and the reinterpretation of known ones, thus reflecting Bushkovitch’s insistence on going to the sources first. We hope that the volume will be of particular interest to scholars of pre-‐‑Petrine and Petrine Russia. In addition, given its wider chronological scope, we hope that it will find an audience among scholars of Imperial Russian and Soviet his-‐‑ tory. As such, this volume has the potential to bridge the gap between early-‐‑ modernists and modernists in the field of Russian history. The workshop and the resulting volume could not have materialized without the help provided by a number of individuals. We are grateful to the following organizations for sponsoring the workshop activities: the Council on European Studies, the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Fund, the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, all at Yale University. A number of individuals provided much needed support and assistance with various aspects of this effort. Prof. Laura Engelstein immediately agreed with the idea of the workshop and helped secure a Kempf Fund grant from Yale University. The late Professor Frank Turner, at the time Director of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, secured funds for the reception. Marianne Lyden...