Focusing on the roles of Russian Orthodoxy and Islam in constituting, challenging and changing national and ethnic identities in Russia, this study takes Tsarist and Soviet legacies into account, paying special attention to the evolution of the relationship between religious teachings and political institutions through the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Juliet Johnson is Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University, Canada. She has published on topics ranging from post-communist political economy to the politics of Russian national identity formation. Marietta Stepaniants is affiliated with the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences as well as the State University of the Humanities (Moscow). Over her distinguished career, she has published numerous books and scholarly articles. Benjamin Forest is Associate Professor of Geography at Dartmouth College, USA. He has published articles on identity, race and ethnicity, and political representation.

Contents: Religion after Communism: belief, identity, and the Soviet legacy in Russia, Juliet Johnson; Ethno-religious identity in modern Russia: orthodoxy and Islam compared, Marietta Stepaniants; Orthodoxy, ethnicity, and mass Ethnophobias in the late Tsarist era, Liudmila Gatagova; In search of the "Russian Idea": a view from inside the Russian Orthodox church, Father Georgii Chistiakov; Tolerance and extremism: Russian ethnicity in the Orthodox discourse of the 1990s, Svetlana Ryzhova; Islam and the emergence of Tatar National identity, Aidar Yuzeev; Islam and the construction of Tatar sociolinguistic identity, Suzanne Wertheim; The Ponticization of Ethnic religious identity in Dagestan, Zagir Arukhov; Modern identities in Russia: a new struggle for the soul?, Juliet Johnson; Index.