The most important insight to take away from Sophie Kotzer's monograph Russian Orthodoxy, Nationalism and the Soviet State During the Gorbachev Years, 1985–1991 is that the year 1991 is not the watershed that divides church-state relations in modern Russian history into a before and after. The year in which communism ended, in which the Soviet Union fell apart, the Russian Federation became an independent country and the first presidential election in the country's history took place, was not the year in which everything changed for the Russian Orthodox Church. Things had started to change already earlier. On the basis of a thorough archival study of the public relations between the Soviet state and the Russian Orthodox Church during the time of perestroika, Kotzer creates a fine portrait of the period in which subtle changes in church-state relations created the conditions for the close alliance between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Kremlin that we know today.

The book is structured in five chapters. Chapter 1 gives a historical overview of church-state relations in modern Russian history. Chapters 2 and 3 approach the question of Russian Orthodoxy and nationalism from two “sides,” namely the side of the state and the side of the church. Chapters 4 and 5 contain an original media analysis of the representation of Russian Orthodoxy in the official Soviet and patriotic and Christian alternative press; they contain the most original contribution that the monograph makes to the state of the art. The analysis of photojournalism in Soviet media (Chapter 4) arrives at the striking finding that images of churches were mostly placed in the context of state-action for the preservation of historical memory, highlighting the role of church-state coordination for the preservation of Russian culture and the nation. The author reveals the nationalistic and antisemitic overtones in the media-coverage of the murder of Alexander Men΄ in a section full of insights that deserves close attention (94–96). Chapter 5 analyses a wide range of informal press of patriotic, monarchist, and Christian democratic groups that diverged sharply ideologically but shared a critical view of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Kotzer's book is a much welcome “prequel” to the many studies dedicated to the post-soviet Russian Orthodox Church that have appeared in the last decades. Most of these studies were of the implicit assumption that the end of the Soviet Union is the major explanatory factor for the development of the Russian Orthodox Church in the last three decades. Furthermore, a significant number of western researchers educated in the liberal-democratic tradition have emphasized the potential for liberalization within the Moscow Patriarchate after communism. Since I self-critically include myself in this group, I want to stress that Kotzer's study—much like the work of her supervisor Zoe Knox—has the merit of assessing the entanglements of the Russian Orthodox Church with the state and nationalist ideologies without strong prior assumptions, on the basis of rigorous document and media analysis that makes the sources and historical actors speak for themselves. Her in-depth analysis underlines the continuity of imperial ideology, church-state interests and the increasing detachment of the Moscow Patriarchate from believers during the perestroika years (143). Thirty years later, the situation has not changed: “The image of the Russian Orthodox Church [is] in many ways similar to the one…during perestroika” (145).

A final critical observation on the edition goes to the publisher rather than the author: the choice to reduce the table of contents to only chapter-headings is unfortunate, because in this way the structure of the systematic analysis in the monograph is obfuscated. The use of uniform and excessively short subheadings throughout the monograph does not help the reader when navigating the manuscript. Proper section-headings (for example, “Russian Orthodoxy in the alternative press: Ideological discussion,” 124) are not distinguished in layout and format from bullet-point-type of headings (“Russian national identity,” “Anti-Semitism,” “Anti-Ecumenism,” “Anti-Communism,” 125–27). The book includes reprints in black and white of visual material. Some of these are of an extremely poor quality that can hardly be explained by the original source alone (104–6). Their inclusion in the printed book demonstrate a lack of attention and judgment on the side of the publisher. Visuals in an academic book should either be published in good quality or not be published at all.