Ivan Sokolov's massive 1904 history of the ecumenical patriarchate under Turkish rule consists of three parts: (1) a history of the Greek Church from 1453 to 1900; (2) biographies of patriarchs enthroned between 1799 and 1897; and (3) a survey of administrative matters, accompanied by translations of canons and other regulations. Together these sections offer at least three things: (1) an encyclopaedic collection of information heretofore unavailable in English; (2) a highly-problematic, interpretive history; and (3) insight into the methods and prejudices of late nineteenth-century Russian historiography. Informed by extensive archival work in Constantinople and on Mt Athos, Sokolov also produced an unrivalled one-volume collection of facts, figures and profiles. The original Russian text was published in St Petersburg, at the Press of M. Akinfiev and I. Leontiv in 1904, and is here translated by Nikolai Sakharov. Other studies of the era – Steven Runciman, The Great Church in captivity; Deno John Geanakoplos, A short history of the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople – represent much better history but lack the sheer volume of data contained herein. As an interpretive historian, Sokolov is almost comically partisan. ‘The devious Turkish government should be blamed … for all the calamities and misfortunes of the Christian Church and people’ (p. 496). Muslim Turks were ‘incapable of … spiritual progress’ (p. 361), adhering as they did to a Qur'an that promotes ‘fanaticism, courage, and cruelty’ (p. 46). Greek Christians lived in a ‘lawless and barbarous environment’ (p. 143), a state in which ‘justice suffered at the expense of lower passions and cravings’ (p. 328). Sultans behaved ‘with particular treachery’ (p. 59) towards Christians ‘deprived of any human rights’ (p. 90) who endured ‘ceaseless suffering’ with ‘uncomplaining endurance’ (p. 104). Revolutionary efforts were wholly noble, stemming from the ‘benign and enlightened influence’ of Orthodox clergy and secular aristocrats (p. 225). Christian victims in the 1877–8 Russo-Turkish War were ‘innocent’ and ‘peaceful’ (p. 457). The Eastern Orthodox faith, according to Sokolov was invariably ‘holy’ (p. 108), but beset by the ‘perfidious plans’ of Protestants and the machinations of ‘black-clad missionaries’ who promoted ‘erroneous papal doctrine’ (p, 111) and bore the ‘intractable Roman disease’ (p. 65). Corrupt Eastern patriarchs and bishops simply fell victim to ‘external factors … beyond their control’ (p. 109). Eastern bishops' failures to respond to new challenges in creative ways represented ‘fervent care for the purity and inviolability of Church teachings and canons’ (p. 341). Such parti pris, frequently tipping into the farcical, is, nevertheless, part of what makes this work so valuable. Nikolai Sakharov's superb translation – clear, fluid, colloquial and sensitive to the cadences of Sokolov's Russian – constitutes one of the few examples in English of Russian religio-imperial historiography. And imperial it is, however wishfully beneficent. Russian adventurism, in Sokolov's account, always sought the best interests of the Greeks. ‘Nowhere in the world was the tragic end of Constantinople so keenly felt as in the hearts of the Orthodox Russians’ (p. 118). ‘Russia fulfilled her lofty mission with exceedingly generous charity towards the Christians of Turkey’, with ‘friendship’, ‘aid’, ‘defense’ and ‘liberation’ its guiding principles (p. 119). The Crimean War was ‘a war of religious liberation’ (p. 390), and Russia's interests in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8 arose not from ‘any material gain in mind or [from] any political aims’ but from ‘concern for humankind’ (p. 461).