Introduction
1: Early-Modern Bequests
2: The Multi-Confessional Establishment
3: Matters of Integrity
4: The Rhetoric and Content of 'Religious Toleration'
5: Prospects of Reform
6: Depoliticizing Piety, Russifying Faith
7: Towards Expanded Religious Freedom
8: Freedom of Conscience as Legislative Project
9: The Foreign Confessions in the Empire's Twilight
Conclusion: Between Toleration and Freedom of Conscience
Paul Werth obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in
1996 and has published widely on the history of religion and empire
in tsarist Russia. He has held fellowships with the Slavic Research
Center (Japan), the National Endowment for the Humanities (USA),
National Humanities Center (USA), the Center for the Study of
Russian, Central European and Caucasus World (France), and the
Center for Advanced Study at Ludwig-Maximaliens Universität
(Germany).
Since 2010 he has been editor of Kritika: Explorations in Russian
and Eurasian History, a leading journal in the field.
Those teaching the history of Imperial Russia at university level
would be well served by adding this work to their syllabus. Far
from being a straightforward history of religion, Werth offers up a
highly stimulating study that reveals a great deal about the
Russian state's broad attitude towards toleration and freedom of
conscience. More generally, anyone interested in the complex
practices of imperial rule in Russia, beset as it was by tensions
and contradictions, will gain many insights by reading The Tsar's
Foreign Faiths.
*Robert Collis, European History Quarterly*
excellent ... The Tsar's Foreign Faiths is the wisest sustained
discussion in any language of religious freedom in Russia
*Slavic Review*
In this intellectual, political, and administrative history of
concepts and practices of religious toleration and religious
freedom in Imperial Russia, Paul W. Werth provocatively argues that
confessional institutions provided the crucial framework for the
relationship between the Empire and its many subject peoples, and
that historians have misread imperial Russian history by seeking to
describe a "nationality" policy that was simply not there until the
rise of modern nationalist ideas in the latter part of the
nineteenth century. I can say with conviction that, with its
important argument about the very nature of imperial governance,
this book will be required reading for all students of imperial
Russia and of religion and governance in modern Europe
*Heather J. Coleman, Canada Research Chair in Imperial Russian
History, University of Alberta*
Paul Werth is once again forcing us to rethink the Empire of the
Tsars in a book that is well written, well researched, and well
argued. Most of all, it is expertly thought out and meticulously
plotted through a wealth of case studies that will inform and
surprise. He disrupts our assumption that this was a regime of
oppression plain and simple, and he shows this in the most
sensitive of areas, religion. Rather this was a confused and
complicated reality that negotiated religion between the two poles
of tolerance and freedom of conscience ... Werth takes an
exceptionally Russian story and makes it a recognizably modern one
by giving us the tools to compare. This is the latest word in our
ever-fascinating field of ethnicity, nationality, and
confession
*Yanni Kotsonis, Director, Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of
Russia, New York University*
The Tsar's Foreign Faiths is a first-rate contribution to both
imperial Russian and religious history.
*Lucien J. Frary, Ab Imperio*
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