Metropolitan Filaret (Vasilii Mikhailovich Drozdov), who reigned over the important diocese of Moscow and Kolomna from 1826 until his death over forty years later, played an outsized role in nineteenth-century Russia in both ecclesiastical and political circles. Controversial in his own time, Filaret provoked strong responses from his contemporaries. The revolutionary émigré Aleksandr Herzen portrayed him as the sycophant of his imperial masters; the historian Sergei Solov΄ev, as an arrogant and cruel authoritarian, out of touch with his surroundings; and the devout journalist Nikolai Sushkov, as a wise spiritual elder. An enigmatic figure, Filaret both promoted autocratic rule and edited the official announcement of the emancipation of the serfs. He defended the prerogatives of the state church, even as he called for complete obedience to the tsar. He championed the translation of the Bible into Russian and actively worked with Protestants and Catholics in educational and philanthropic endeavors, while he staunchly opposed Protestant and Catholic missions in the Caucasus. After the fall of the USSR, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized Filaret in 1994, prompting a flood of hagiographical works about the metropolitan. Despite his significance, American historians have largely ignored him. Until the publication of the book under review, the major biography of Filaret in English was Robert L. Nichols's unpublished PhD dissertation, “Metropolitan Filaret and the Awakening of Orthodoxy,” written in 1972. To correct this neglect, Nicholas Racheotes, emeritus professor of history at Framington State University, has written Filaret's intellectual biography.

Racheotes draws entirely from a vast array of printed sources, most of which were published by Filaret's admirers before the Russian Revolution. After a short discussion of Filaret's early life in the first chapter, Racheotes presents the metropolitan's life in a series of thematic sections. In the second chapter, “A Man of the Word,” Racheotes explores Filaret's role as biblical scholar, ecclesiastical censor, and author of a revised authoritative catechism. The third chapter analyzes Filaret's pastoral and administrative activities as bishop of Moscow, while the fourth chapter is devoted to the metropolitan's theocratic political theories, as revealed in his many sermons. Chapter 5, “Contra Schism and Heresy,” documents Filaret's deep anti-Judaism, his lifetime of opposition to heterodox Christianity (including the Old Believers and sectarians), his role in forcibly uniting the Byzantine Catholics into the Russian Orthodox, and his enthusiastic embrace of state power to persecute religious dissenters and to compel right belief. The sixth chapter, “God Save the Tsar,” considers Filaret's as official spokesman for the tsarist regime, from his pronouncements on the Napoleonic invasion to his editing the 1861 emancipation decree. In his conclusion, Racheotes portrays Filaret as deeply influenced by Byzantine patristic spirituality, which animated his commitments to absolute monarchy, philanthropy, monasticism, and educational reform.

By organizing his biography thematically rather than chronologically, Racheotes emphasizes the continuities in Filaret's thought. Consequently, his analysis is most convincing in discussing Filaret's lifelong commitments, such as his critique of the social contract or his defense of obedience to the sovereign. The book is less successful in conveying the ways that Filaret's thought developed and changed over time. For example, did Filaret's views on serfdom, discussed primarily in relation to his work on the emancipation manifesto, evolve over the course of his career? Similarly, Racheotes treats Filaret's attitude toward religious dissent as largely unchanging, even though the metropolitan seems to have taken a much harsher position toward priestly Old Belief after the 1846 establishment of the Old Believer Belaia Krinitsa hierarchy. For Racheotes, the 1812 invasion and the European revolutions of 1830 and 1848 did not substantially affect Filaret's intellectual positions, which were drawn from the church fathers and Byzantine precedents. Overall, Racheotes does not portray Filaret as someone whose knowledge and understanding grew. Unfortunately, he does not engage recent Russian scholarship, such as Irina Smirnova's 2014 monograph Mitropolit Filaret i Pravoslavnyi Vostok (Metropolitan Filaret and the Orthodox East) or Aleksandr Segen΄’s Moskovskii Zlatoust (The Chrysostom of Moscow, 2013), neither of which are cited. At times, Racheotes seems to attribute the views of others (such as Alexander Schmemann) to Filaret without providing evidence from the metropolitan's own words (122–23). Racheotes mistakenly calls John Chrysostom, who was born in Syria, a Cappodocian father (27), and he incorrectly claims that the Secret Committee on the Schism had “limited influence” under Nicholas I (175). Despite these flaws, this biography helps to fill an important gap in our understanding of nineteenth-century Russia.