Skinner's monograph examines confessional politics and tensions between the Uniates (Eastern-rite or Greek Catholics) and the Orthodox in the territories that today constitute Ukraine and Belarus. Skinner places this confessional divide in the broader context of European confessionalization in the post-Reformation era. The study is based on a vast array of primary sources (including archival) in Latin, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian. She argues, with remarkable balance given the polemical nature of the subject and its sources, that the eighteenth century witnessed a period of politicization of confessional identity. This resulted in conversion efforts by the Polish authorities to bring the Orthodox into the Unia and reverse efforts by Russian authorities.

The Ruthenians, or Eastern Slavs of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (ancestors of today's Ukrainians and Belarusians), were predominantly Eastern Orthodox in the Middle Ages. The Commonwealth was one of the most religiously tolerant states of medieval Europe. In the sixteenth century, however, Poland became a battleground of the Reformation and the site of vigorous confessionalization by the post-Tridentine Catholic church. Skinner maintains that the Uniate church was created on the initiative of Ruthenians themselves in this context, some of whom felt the Orthodox church was at a disadvantage in the confessional disputes because of a lack of education and effective leadership (from Constantinople).

The Uniate church, created in 1596, consisted of the Orthodox who accepted subordination to Rome but kept the Eastern rite liturgy and other practices. The bishops went with the Union, but many clergy and leading laity refused, causing a deep confessional rift among the Ruthenians. Paradoxically, according to Skinner, the Orthodox used confessionalization techniques and revitalized their church far more than the Uniates in the seventeenth century. Only after the Cossack uprisings and the union of Left Bank (Eastern) Ukraine with Russia in the second half of the seventeenth century did Orthodoxy experience a significant decline (and increased intolerance) in the Commonwealth. In the eighteenth century the Uniate church itself underwent revitalization and grew closer to the Roman Catholic church in the process. By the end of the eighteenth century, Skinner argues, these differences resulted in distinct confessional and cultural identities.

Skinner's central argument is that the confessional divide was exacerbated by political divide. After Russia took over the Left Bank Ukraine, the Ruthenians were divided politically between Muscovy and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Because the Russians explicitly supported Orthodoxy and the Commonwealth was becoming increasingly intolerant of non-Catholics, the Uniate/Orthodox divide within the Commonwealth took on a political dimension as well.

The second half of the book focuses particularly on the era of Catherine the Great (1762–1796). The 1760s and 1770s witnessed coercive campaigns in the Commonwealth by both Uniates and Polish authorities, and Orthodox with Russian backing, to force Orthodox into the Unia and vice versa. The victims in all this, as Skinner points out, were the tens of thousands of Ruthenian peasants who were repeatedly coerced by both sides using similar tactics.

In the treaty that enacted the first partition of Poland in 1772, Catherine agreed to maintain the religious “status quo” in the partitioned lands and insisted on this even to the point of preventing Uniate parishes from becoming Orthodox upon their own request. The situation was quite different in the Commonwealth between the partitions (1772–1793), where Uniate clergy together with Polish officials and landowners would intimidate the Orthodox into the Unia, culminating in an outbreak of hysteria and mass arrests of Orthodox (especially clergy) in 1789.

The second partition of Poland in 1793 brought some two million Uniates into the Russian empire. By contrast with the first partition, Catherine and the Russian Orthodox Church and embarked on a massive campaign to convert Uniates to Orthodoxy in 1794. The justification for this followed upon rhetoric first developed by Orthodox Ruthenians themselves that Ruthenians were rightfully Orthodox and had only been brought into the Unia by Polish machinations or coercion. Skinner describes the conversion campaign of 1794–1796, which was carefully planned and executed. The campaign did meet resistance especially from Polish landlords who frequently used coercion to prevent churches on their land from becoming Orthodox. The conversion campaign won enormous initial successes where the Unia was never deeply rooted, but was less successful in other regions and petered out even before Catherine's death in 1796. As Skinner notes, the success and limits of this campaign probably “demonstrated where the confessional fault line really lay among the Ruthenians” (224) between those who identified as Orthodox (especially in Right Bank Ukraine) or Uniate (especially in Belarusia and Volhynia).

My primary criticism is the way the book is framed and the interpretation of Catherine's conversion campaign. The very first page of the introduction depicts Catherine's campaign as one of force and coercion, in which “the Uniates came under siege” in a campaign to eradicate their church, by contrast to the usual image of Catherine the Great's policies of religious tolerance (3). Moreover, Skinner presents it as the beginning of a single imperial effort that culminated with Nicholas I's campaign to eliminate the Uniate church in 1839. After reading the book, however, I came to the opposite conclusions. By comparison with earlier Polish efforts against the Orthodox in the early eighteenth century (which are passed over with little detail) and especially the coercive campaigns by both Orthodox and Uniates in the 1760s and 1770s, Catherine's campaign in 1794–1795 is striking precisely because of the “tolerant” way in which it was conducted. It appears to have been a concerted effort by the Orthodox Church (with state support) to bring in those Uniates who wanted to be Orthodox, but Skinner found remarkably little evidence of force or coercion used against those who did not want to—to the point that, instead of arresting Uniate clergy who refused to comply (as repeatedly happened in the Commonwealth) they were offered pensions! There does not appear to have been any real intention of “eradicating” the Uniate church, and the campaign stopped once the Orthodox had succeeded in receiving all those who wanted to join. The contrast with Nicholas I's campaign could hardly be more striking, and the lack of continuity (a forty-four year gap) suggests that this was a policy particular to Nicholas I himself rather than an over-riding “imperial” policy.

Despite any disagreements, this book is a remarkable achievement, and we owe a great debt to Skinner's efforts in telling a little known history that, as she argues at the end, should be much more central to our understanding of European church history in the eighteenth century.