This book is evidence of a growing interest in the history of the Baptists of eastern Europe. In his preface Toivo Pilli of the Estonian Baptist Seminary emphasises the role that the International Baptist Theological Seminary (IBTS) has played in this process and the volume itself is the proceedings of a conference, ‘Baptist histories in eastern Europe’, which took place at IBTS in May 2005. Particularly welcome among the fifteen contributions is the paper by Sharyl Corrado, ‘The Gospel in society: Pashkovite social outreach in late imperial Russia’ which demonstrates how the Gospel was proclaimed as much through actions as by words at that time. According to Corrado in her introduction to the collection, the paper, ‘Baptists as a symbol of sectarianism in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia’, by Aleksandr Negrov and Tatiana Nikol'skaia, generated the most discussion at the conference. Negrov and Nikol'skaia illustrate with telling examples the negative stereotyping to which the Evangelical Christian and Baptist movements have been and continue to be subjected in Russia. In a contribution entitled ‘Religious liberty in the Soviet Union: Baptists in the early days of protest (1960–1966)’, Michael Bourdeaux interprets the Reform Baptist movement, associated with the names of Georgii Vins and Gennadii Kriuchkov, ‘as one of the strong contributory factors to the evolution of civic society which Russia may yet become’. The title of the volume is ‘Eastern European Baptist history’ but the emphasis is on the Russian empire, the Soviet Union and the successor states. There are excellent contributions from Toivo Pilli and Valdis Tēraldkauns on aspects of Baptist witness in Estonia and Latvia respectively and Mary Raber has provided a very helpful summary and discussion of social service ministries among Evangelicals in Ukraine since independence. The volume as a whole exhibits meticulous care over names and places and their correct and consistent rendition. One error of fact, however, does require rectification. On page 194 it is said that ‘when the church was in its darkest hour in 1927 acting patriarch Aleksii i issued a declaration of comprehensive submission to Soviet power’. The declaration was indeed a very significant event in twentieth-century church history, but it was the patriarchal locum tenens Metropolitan Sergius who issued it, not Aleksii i. In a short review it is impossible to cover all the contributions in this volume but there is much that is worthwhile and which could stimulate further study, particularly in the area of comparative research.