As the author notes in the introduction to this monograph, relatively little work has been done covering the intersection of sociolinguistics and religious studies, and likewise little has been written about Eastern Christianity's new standing in postcommunist societies. As such, Brian Bennett's book is a welcome addition to several important, if neglected topical areas. Covering the period following Russia's postcommunist transition (roughly 1990–2008), Bennett traces the trajectory of Russian Orthodoxy's sacred language—Church Slavonic—as it entered the public sphere following six decades of state-sponsored atheism. Church Slavonic has traditionally been a language of sacred texts, and as a hieratic language—that is, one marked as sacred, archaic, and highly formal—its use has been restricted to liturgical contexts and the church hierarchy (unlike Latin, which, though formerly closely associated with the Catholic liturgy, has also been widely used outside of it). Yet as Bennett notes, in the post-Soviet era Russians have been experiencing new freedoms and opportunities in both religious and linguistic domains. As the Russian Orthodox Church's place has been changing in society, so has Church Slavonic found new life in religious and secular domains.
The book's approach is appropriately wide-ranging. Several chapters examine the language in institutional contexts, such as debates within the Russian Orthodox Church over whether it ought to remain the exclusive language of the liturgy (chapter 4), pedagogical texts and strategies used in promoting Slavonic literacy (chapter 3), and efforts to enshrine the language and its origins in national culture through, for example, erecting monuments commemorating Saints Cyril and Methodius—the ninth century brothers who are said to have been divinely inspired to create the language to evangelize the Slavs (chapter 6). Other chapters go further afield to focus on the role of Slavonic's distinctive script (which contrasts visually to both the modern Cyrillic and Latin alphabets) in the ‘graphic environment’—that is, the ambient use of written language—including commercial advertising and the publications of nationalist organizations (chapter 5), and Slavonic's place in the discourses of occultist and conspiracy theory circles (chapter 7).
Bennett's thesis, and what ties together these disparate domains, is that Slavonic has emerged as a potent symbol for negotiating contemporary Russian identity. The Slavonic tradition offers the basis for a national narrative that is appealing to those seeking to both distance themselves from the recent communist past and curb pernicious Western influence. Thus a heterogeneous collection of actors including, but not limited to, the Russian Orthodox clergy, cultural educators, advertisers, right-wing nationalists, and Neo-pagans find in the language a semiotic resource for advancing variations on a discourse about the need to recover the nation's authentic, deeply rooted past for the good of modern society. Bennett does an admirable job of tracing the vicissitudes of language and religion in a period of major social change and deftly unpacks the semiotic tangle surrounding Church Slavonic. His strong focus on texts (perhaps not surprising given the subject matter), however, may leave some wishing for further discussion of Slavonic's spoken forms and uses.
