November 10, 2021
Andrey V. Ivanov (PhD 2012) wins the Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies Association’s 2021 Marc Raeff Book Prize for his book: A Spiritual Revolution: The Impact of Reformation and Enlightenment in Orthodox Russia, 1700–1825 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2020). Prizes will be awarded at the meeting of the Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies Association at the ASEEES conference virtually on Wednesday, December 1, 2021, 1-2:30 pm. Read the formal announcement below:
“In this beautifully written monograph, Ivanov disrupts prevailing narratives about the isolation and stasis of the Russian Orthodox Church in the eighteenth century, demonstrating its intense and conscious engagement with Reformation and Enlightenment ideas. The study is positioned as continuing the unfinished line of inquiry opened by Georges Florensky, who, as Ivanov notes, “described the eighteenth century as the age of Russia’s symbiotically theological conversation with European Protestantism.” Supported by extensive research, including archival work in Italy, Germany, Austria, the Vatican, Ukraine, and Russia, Ivanov vividly presents the personalities and debates within eighteenth-century Russian Orthodoxy. Readers will gain appreciation for the dynamism and daring of many clergymen during the reign of Catherine II, the complexity and nuance of theological discussions, and the subsequent end to their Western-oriented reforms with the ascent of Nicholas I. Meticulously researched and engagingly narrated, Ivanov’s A Spiritual Revolution fundamentally changes what we think we know about Russian Orthodoxy in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.”