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91����. Andrey Ivanov, associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, received two awards for his recently published book, “A Spiritual Revolution: The Impact of Reformation and Enlightenment in Orthodox Russia” (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020). The awards were presented at the recent annual convention of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) that met in New Orleans in-person and virtually on Nov. 18-21 and Dec. 1-3. 

The 2021 Marc Raeff Prize was given on Dec. 1 by the Eighteenth Century Russian Studies Association, an ASEEES affiliate society. It was awarded for the best book in eighteenth-century Russian studies written in either French, English, German or Russian in 2020-21. The committee that selected Ivanov’s book for this award was composed of scholars from the U.S., Germany, United Kingdom and Russia. 

The committee’s on Ivanov’s book reads in part, “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 … 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.” 

The second award, the 2021 Early Slavic Studies Book Prize, was given on Dec. 3 by another ASEEES affiliate, Early Slavic Studies Association. Ivanov’s book was selected for the best book in the fields of early modern or medieval Slavic Studies written in English in 2020-21. 

The committee administering this award , “Ivanov’s book demonstrates the far-reaching impact the Protestant Reformation and European Enlightenment had on Russian church and society in the eighteenth century. It is the first monograph to fully explore how Western ideas influenced the Russian Church in this period. The monograph thus makes a major contribution to the intellectual history of the Russian Orthodox Church...”

Ivanov’s book focuses on religious reform in the Russian Empire between the reigns of tsars Peter I (r. 1689-1725) and Nicholas I (r. 1825-1855), and demonstrates how the ideas of the European Reformation and the Enlightenment were pivotal to Russia’s ideological formation as a European – and eventually global – imperial power. He drew from sources obtained from the archives in Vatican, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Halle, Kyiv, Berlin, Vienna and Wolfenbüttel, among others.

“Every book is a journey and this one is no exception,” said Ivanov. “While writing a book is often a solitary effort, I am glad to have had the support and encouragement of my colleagues in the College of LAE, as well as numerous scholarly and institutional communities. I am truly blessed to receive these awards, and I am grateful to all who have helped me complete this journey over the years.”   

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