With Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, O’Hurley and Shadrina highlight the importance of religious values and mythos for understanding why the post-Soviet Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church advance a civilizational type of politics that seeks to forcefully expand its neo-imperial power both in Ukraine and elsewhere. Adding to a growing interdisciplinary conversation on the importance of religion in furthering post-Soviet Russian geo-politics, O’Hurley and Shadrina offer a crucial lens through which to focus on the entanglement of Christianity, political power, and globalized projects of moralization that result in war, continued violence, and policies of social control. In doing so, they reframe the geopolitical question of Russian power through the prism of Russian Orthodox metaphysical ideology, refracting key insights into questions of religious freedom/control and political authority. A timely and essential read given the growing embrace of Russia’s illiberal and imperial politics by reactionary politicians and communities around the globe.

Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, P.h.D.
Assistant Professor of Religion and Anthropology
Northeastern University