Irina Paert has published extensively on the history of Old Believers and the Russian Orthodox Church. She is a researcher and a lecturer at Tallinn University in Estonia.
A well-researched, well-organized, well-written, and
delightful-to-read book.
*H-Russia*
In all, Paert's well-written study not only fills a notable caesura
in the existing scholarship but also provides a masterly historical
account of an institution often understood only through the
distorting lens of literary depiction. Conceptually rigorous and
analytically acute, she has provided a must-read monograph for all
students of Russian Orthodoxy and nineteenth-century European
religion.
*European History Quarterly*
This monograph, well-written and impressively researched, provides
a pioneering account of the elders—their origins, development in
the nineteenth century, and role in the final decades of the old
regime. It offers a fresh new perspective on Russian religious life
and suggests a number of important findings.
*Gregory Freeze, Brandeis University*
Paert's book is certainly essential reading for anyone who wants to
understand Orthodoxy, and even Christianity more broadly, in the
modern world.
*The Journal of Ecclesiastical History*
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