Ricarda Vulpius, The Nationalization of Religion: Russification Policy and Ukrainian Nation-Building, 1860-1920/Nationalisierung Der Religion: Russifizierungspolitik Und Ukrainische Nationsbildung, 1860-1920 (Book Review‪)‬

Ricarda Vulpius, Nationalisierung der Religion: Russifizierungspolitik und ukrainische Nationsbildung, 1860-1920 [The Nationalization of Religion: Russification Policy and Ukrainian Nation-Building, 1860-1920]. 475 pp. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005. ISBN 3447052759. 98.00 [euro]. In this monograph, Ricarda Vulpius researches the role of the Orthodox clergy in the contest between Russian and Ukrainian national identities in the late Russian empire and the revolutionary era. The project of an "all-Russian" nation included both the Little Russians and the Belorussians, (1) even while some Ukrainophiles perceived their own nationality as fully separate from the Great Russians. (2) During the period under discussion, many of the clergy in Ukraine did not identify exclusively with either the Russian or the Ukrainian nationality but held multiple identities that contained elements of both. The third contestant, Polish identity and the Polish claim to Ukraine, is left to the background in this study, which is understandable considering the subject group. Vulpius is well aware of the dangers facing a historian in the field of nationality studies in general and of the Russian empire in particular. She attempts to avoid both one-sided extremes in which exclusive attention is paid either to the viewpoint of the government or to the subject nation under study. The author is well read in the most recent theories of nationalism and national identities, making use of the ideas of Benedict Anderson, Miroslav Hroch, Anthony D. Smith, and Adrian Hastings. (3)