This intriguing set of essays explores the variety of ways in which “the sacred” is being reclaimed in post-Soviet societies and contributing to political and social developments. Though the essays cover disparate subject matter, the editors identify four broad themes underlying the collection: interpretations of religious contributions to Russian history, concerns with what morality means in post-Soviet societies, the role of religion in creating a sense of community, and the perennial Russian problem of coping with pluralism.

Three chapters concentrate on the country's pre-eminent “traditional religion,” the Russian Orthodox Church, and come at this topic from very different angles. The most fascinating in many ways is Jarrett Zigon's account of the “moral narratives” of Aleksandra Vladimirovna, an educated woman who had been an active communist but converted to Orthodoxy in the 1990s. What is intriguing here is that this story is not simply about a woman who has acquired the sometimes-militant Orthodoxy of many converts, but one who quite happily draws on religious and communist sources in constructing her often-complex and occasionally self-serving moral perspectives. Some of these ambiguities are evident in the depiction of Orthodox attitudes in Scott Kenworthy's discussion of different theological perspectives on engagement with “the world,” focusing on sacramental participation, personal transformation, or service to the world. They are also to be found in Irina Papkova's account of historical and contemporary institutional discussions of church-state relations. For the latter, some of the problems in defining this relationship stem from the “freezing of historical memory” that resulted from the fact that for 70 years Orthodox clergy and intellectuals could not freely discuss religious issues and therefore must now deal with a debate framed by a literature and concerns of a very different time.

Many of the other chapters pick up on different ways in which religious groups have sought to (re-)create a sense of community in post-Soviet Russia. Douglas Rogers demonstrates how one “Old Believer” religious community has opted for a reassertion of hierarchical structures and patriarchy in the more open conditions of the new Russia while simultaneously shifting from a posture of isolation to one of engagement. Sascha Goluboff shows how the mourning rituals of Azeri Mountain Jews mediated through the Internet serve to reinforce not just local identities but also connections with a wider Jewish world. Several of the studies bring out the ways in which religious communities meet other needs beyond the immediately spiritual, most notably in the field of charitable activity, which does not necessarily limit itself to the needs of fellow believers. Mourning rituals affect all of the community, regardless of their proven “religiosity,” and more overt charitable activities can in time lead to wider humanitarian concern, as demonstrated by Melissa Caldwell's chapter on Protestant charitable activities in Moscow.

While this is not primarily a book about religion and politics, none of the chapters can completely ignore the political dimension. Religious actors, such as shamans in Buryatia or Orthodox bishops in Moscow all seek some form of legal recognition of their special place in political life and some, as Zoe Knox shows, seek to curb the access of others to the public sphere. And in Uzbekistan, the state has carefully nurtured a fear of militant Islam in order to justify its own authoritarian secularism, but sometimes at the cost of making radical visions that challenge both local practice and state authority.

This is a book that repays careful reading. While on the surface it suffers from a problem of many edited books in offering a range of very different essays, the common focus on morality, community, and faith helps to create a unity. The authors are right to stress the complexity of religious identities, which are all too easily categorized according to denomination, tradition, or ethnicity. But, as the case of Aleksandra Vladimirovna demonstrates, each individual is a web of contradictions and, as the editors point out at the end, each individual and religious community is coping with “a profound sense of moral loss” (323) occasioned by the Soviet collapse. Here the multidisciplinary approach is helpful, and the study of the ways in which individuals and local communities frame and utilize their religious and moral identities provides a sense of grounding that larger studies often miss. This book asks numerous questions, answers some of them, and, most importantly, creates numerous research agendas for other scholars. For that the editors and authors are to be commended.