A Review of Milena Benovska, Orthodox Revivalism in Russia: Driving Forces and Moral Quests. London: Routledge, 2020, 240 pp.

Abstract

The review discusses the problems and challenges faced by any researcher of Orthodox religiosity in the post-Soviet space. Milena Benovska, the author of the monograph under review, attempts—sometimes quite successfully—to portray Orthodox revivalism in post-Soviet Russia as a bottom-up process driven by the activism of parishes. This uneasy task has led the author to Kaluga, where she has gathered the main material for her study. The analytical framework of the study involves the anthropology of morality, the study of conversion narratives, the politics of memory, and reflections on religious nationalism. These directions determine the structure of the book, which consists of four chapters. In addition, the introduction provides some interesting reflections on the author’s own place in the field. The review outlines the general problems the author has to deal with and suggests the promising ways to resolve a number of the raised questions and inconsistencies.