Academic Journals Covering Aspects of Religion in Russia

Keston Institute (www.keston.org.uk) - Issues of its journal, Religion in Communist Lands (Vols. 1-19, 1973-1991), later renamed Religion, State and Society (Vols. 20-39.1, 1992-2011), are available to read/download from the biblicalstudies.org.uk website. For an index of all of the main articles published in Religion in Communist Lands, see www.keston.org.uk/archive-library-rcl. The journal, now entirely separate from the Keston Institute, continues to be published (by Routledge/Taylor & Francis), with 5 issues per year. The Keston Institute itself now concentrates on its bi-annual newsletters (in English), which contain articles on aspects of contemporary religious life in Russia, with a recent issue (No.42, 2025) focused on Solovki and Solovetsky monastery. See: www.keston.org.uk/newsletter.

East-West Church & Ministry Report (www.eastwestreport.org) - Founded in 1993 (and edited until 2017) by Dr Mark R. Elliott, then professor of history/director of the Institute for East-West Christian Studies at Wheaton College, the Report explores Christian life in the FSU and Central & Eastern Europe, focusing on church-state, interfaith, and interchurch relations, and emerging threats to religious freedom. Issues from 1993 to 2017 are available to view for free on its website: www.eastwestreport.org/recent; since 2018, the renamed East-West Church Report has been edited by Geraldine Fagan and is sent as a pdf to subscribers. Articles in its back issue archive include ‘Anglican Mission in Post-Soviet Europe – a Personal Retrospective’ (Vol.22, No.2 (2014)), a short account of Church Mission Society’s ‘first steps in Eastern Europe’, post-1989, by Canon Mark Oxbrow, who served as CMS Assistant General Secretary from 1988 to 2008.

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe (OPREE) (digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree) - In publication since 1981, OPREE is a multidisciplinary journal devoted to exploring religious issues, including interreligious dialogue, religious life and behaviour, and religious institutions, in Eastern Europe (including the former Soviet Union); it is published online by George Fox University, a private Christian university in Newberg, Oregon, originally founded as a school for Quakers in 1891. Its most popular paper in December 2025, based on the average number of downloads per day since it was published, is ‘The Russian-Ukrainian War in the Discourse of the Biblical Concept of a Just War’ (Vol.45, 2025).

Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe (RASCEE) (rascee.net/index.php/rascee) is a bi-annual, open access, and peer-reviewed journal, published by the International Study of Religion in Eastern and Central Europe Association (ISORECEA), that covers religious topics throughout the region from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Since 2011, the journal has been hosted by the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, Croatia. Articles on Russia include ‘Religious identities in a multicultural Russian society’ (2014, Vol.7 No.1), and ‘Religious beliefs and the limits of their accommodation in Russia: some landmark cases of the Russian Supreme Court’ (2018, Vol.11 No.1).

Studies in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought (www.rplrt.org) is the online, peer-reviewed journal of the Northwestern University Research Initiative in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought (NU RPLRT Research Initiative), published on an annual basis, in December. As a recent initiative, there has only been one issue to date, December 2024, which ran to 288 pages and included a ‘distinguished contribution’ from Rowan Williams, on ‘Sergii Bulgakov, Socialism, and the Church’.

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Russian Journals on Religion (all in Russian unless otherwise indicated)

Religiovedenie (“The Study of Religion”) (religio.amursu.ru/index.php/en/archive-of-the-journal) is a quarterly scientific peer-reviewed journal, published by Amur State University (Blagoveshchensk) since 2001, that features papers on aspects of the history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, phenomenology and philosophy of religion, e.g. ‘Protestant Organizations under the Soviet State-Confessional Policy in Buryatia’ (№ 2 2025).

Russian Journal of Church History (churchhistory.elpub.ru/jour) is an independent project of the Department of Church History of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, publishing quarterly ‘scientific articles and source materials directly related to the history, archaeology and history of Church art of different denominations of Christianity, including Western and Eastern denominations, as well as philological and archaeological research’. One article in Vol.6, No. 3 (2025), ‘Grammar of Dissent’: Conceptualising Religious Faith in the Works of John Henry Newman and Semyon Frank, ‘examines the engagement of the Russian philosopher Semyon Frank with the thought of the English theologian John Henry Newman’.

State, Religion and Church in Russia and Worldwide (religion.ranepa.ru/jour) is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal from the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). It has a broad religious studies profile, with special emphasis on modern religious and social processes in Russia and beyond. A recent issue, Vol.43, No.1 (2025), focused on Old Belief, e.g. ‘Old Believers on the Internet: The Category of “Desecration” and “Purity” in the Virtual Space’.

Studia Religiosa Rossica: Russian Journal of Religion (srr.rsuh.ru/jour) is an academic quarterly, published by the Centre for the Study of Religions at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow. It is peer-reviewed and features research in religious studies, history, sociology, and anthropology, with a focus on Russia, e.g. ‘Anti-religious propaganda in the USSR in the 1920s-1930s: Academic discourse and conceptual-theoretical foundations of the development of anti-religious cinematography’ (№ 2 (2025)).

Forum for Anthropology and Culture (anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/en/) is an interdisciplinary international journal for anthropology, cultural studies & cultural history, published since 2004 by the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (“Kunstkamera”) and the European University at St Petersburg. A quarterly publication in Russian, there is also a single English-language edition (editor: Professor Catriona Kelly), published each winter and containing selected material from the year’s issues. It includes occasional papers on the anthropology of religion, e.g. ‘The Effect of Religious Practices on the Social Structure of the Old Believers of the Yenisei’ (2020, no.16) or the 2015 issue, no.11, which featured 5 papers on ‘Religion in the Contemporary City’, including ‘‘Orthodox’ and ‘Soviet’: the Identity of Soviet Believers (1940s — early 1970s)’.