In recent decades scholars have done much to correct the previous neglect of the Russian Orthodox Church, but secular historians have virtually ignored this massive volume of dissertations, books, and articles on the Church. That also applies to the role of the Church in 1917. Although that neglect is largely due to the secularist bias in the traditional historiography, it is at least partly attributable to the new scholarship on the Church — which has tended to have a narrow focus: the internal history of the Church.

This article looks at state‑religion relations in Russia at two levels: legal and political. After an introductory overview of the development of religious freedom legislation in Russia since the fall of the USSR, I analyze the current model of religion‑state relations in Russia. I then move from the legal to the political plane and argue that in Russia not one, but three models of religion‑state relations are at play, which coexist and in part contradict each other.

This article presents the research of Orthodox priests who studied the religious ideas of the peoples of the Russian Empire. Their works, both published and in manuscript, can be classified into five main groups: studies dealing with Abrahamic religions; studies of other world and national religions; studies of religious dissidents (Christian sects and Judaizers); works on the traditional beliefs of the native peoples of the Volga Region, the Urals, Siberia, and the Caucasus; and works on popular religiosity.