This is a massive, curious book. Although it is called Russia's path toward enlightenment, it is not an attempt to situate the Russian Enlightenment in the context of such other Enlightenments as those of, say, Scotland or France. Instead, it is an attempt to think about what it meant for some Russians to become enlightened, and to describe their efforts to examine their political reality in light of their beliefs.

The book's subtitle, Faith, politics, and reason, 1500–1801, brings us closer to what the book is about. Russian enlightenment, Hamburg argues, did not begin with Peter i. Instead, he tries to rescue sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Russian thought, and such historiographical categories as possessors vs non-possessors, Old Believers and Judaizers, from such labels as ‘backward’, ‘progressive’ or ‘secular’. In arguing against the ‘intellectual silence of Old Russia’, he enlists in his cause a host of both deceptively familiar and nearly-forgotten thinkers. This means above all taking seriously the ideas produced within the Orthodox Church. Hamburg puts it squarely: ‘We cannot understand Russian political thinkers from 1500–1801 without investigating the link between Orthodoxy and political life’ (p. 6).

To investigate this link, Hamburg begins in part i by exploring how Russian thinkers adopted and engaged with Byzantine notions of righteous rule and royal authority, from the eleventh-century Sermon on law and grace and the Instruction of Vladimir Monomakh to his sons to the Writing of Daniil the Prisoner (c. 1180) and Tale of the Vladimir princes (c. 1527). Agapetos's Advice to the emperor, written at the time of Justinian, proves to cast a long shadow. Hamburg identifies Filofei's Third Rome ‘theory’ as one of two main Muscovite political threads: the grand duke's dignity as hereditary sovereign versus Muscovy's status as the only true Christian polity (p. 54). His reading helps make clear why the Time of Troubles at the turn of the seventeenth century was both a political and an existential moral crisis: what did it mean that the dynastic line had ended? Who had the right to rule? Indeed, in some ways the Time of Troubles section is the heart of this book, for its arguments about legitimacy, justice and the right of resisting an over-reaching ruler anticipate those of the eighteenth century, explored in parts ii (the impact of Peter) and iii (the reign of Catherine).

Some familiar texts, like the Domostroi, the Kurbskii-Ivan iv correspondence and the Book of royal degrees, emerge in a fresh light. So do the remarkably sympathetic Grigorii Kotoshikhin and Petr Shafirov. Stefan Yavorsky, known mostly for his stint as patriarchal locum tenens under Peter, it emerges, has much to contribute to the recent debate on Ukrainian autocephaly. But even more valuable are Hamburg's analyses of, say, Feodosii Kosoi, Ivan Peresvetov and Ivan Timofeev whom he plucks from obscurity. No less interesting is Sil'vestr Medvedev, the champion of Peter's sister Sofia. The Russian Orthodox Church, so often dismissed as ‘Caesaropapist’ or the ‘handmaiden of the state’, is here the home of searching, dogged and restless lay and clerical minds. As one reads Hamburg, one realises how rarely they have had an impartial hearing, without being pressed into some reductive framework or ideological cause.

Why, one might ask, has the average historian barely heard of these people? Because, as Hamburg sadly writes,

And, in some cases (Avvakum, Medvedev, Razin and the rest), they were simply executed.

Given the book's service to the field in mining Russian Orthodox political thought, it may seem odd to regret an aspect of Russian Orthodoxy that would have strengthened its argument. And that is the place where most of Hamburg's subjects would have encountered the word ‘enlightenment’ (prosveshchenie): in Orthodox liturgy. Hamburg notes that one of the word's meanings is spiritual illumination, or ‘to complete the rite of baptism’ (p. 18). That is true. But it does not adequately convey how often in Orthodox liturgy ‘enlightenment’ is a synonym for baptism, or indeed simply how often the word is used. Anyone coming for baptism is coming for ‘holy enlightenment’. The rite asks that holy water ‘enlighten us with enlightenment of reason and piety’. The prokeimenon at baptism is ‘The Lord is my enlightenment and my saviour’ (Psalm xxvi/xxvii.1). Perhaps the most repeated use of the word ‘enlightenment’ was the section of the Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts served from the middle of Great Lent on: because historically converts were baptised on Holy Saturday, those present prayed for ‘those preparing for enlightenment’, and ‘that God enlighten them with the enlightenment of reason and piety’. At the key moment of the service, the priest intoned: ‘The Light of Christ enlightens all.’ Of course, one can also translate the word as ‘illuminate’ or ‘light’. But those raised in the Church Slavonic tradition – as were Hamburg's subjects – would have first encountered the word ‘enlightenment’ precisely in this liturgical context. That instinctive intimacy may be the reason why, through to the end of the eighteenth century, ‘Russia's path toward enlightenment proved generally friendly to the established Church’ (p. 742). It also made possible hierarchs like (St) Tikhon of Zadonsk and Platon Levshin.

This book is long. It may be better suited to being consulted as an encyclopedia than read in one go. But anyone teaching the first part of a Russian history survey, or a course in Russian intellectual history – or who simply wishes to better understand when and how Russian culture spoke up – should read it.