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May 2023 Vol. 60 No. 9

This is a study of the role of religion during and since the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine. Wanner (history, anthropology, and religious studies, Pennsylvania State Univ.) spent years of fieldwork exploring the role of everyday religious practices in Ukraine, where 62 percent identify as Orthodox but only 12 percent regularly attend church services. Religious life has become deinstitutionalized and pluralistic—which is not the same as secularized. Meanwhile, at the level of the state, both Ukrainian and Russian leaders weaponize religion to advance their political goals. Ukraine is unique in the Orthodox world for having several competing Orthodox churches, and President Petro Poroshenko was instrumental in persuading the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople to recognize the Orthodox Church of Ukraine as independent of the Moscow patriarch in 2019. Much of the book consists of thick description: interviews, attendance at services and pilgrimages, and descriptions of religious spaces. Notable chapters show how the 2014 revolution was a quasi-religious experience for many participants and how commemorative practices after 2014 reflected "the shared burden of a tragic past" (p. 131). Wanner shines a light on the entanglement of religion and politics both during and after the revolution.

--P. Rutland, Wesleyan University

Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.