The papers published here are the product of a conference organised in July 1988 by Keston College and the School of Slavonic and East European studies of the University of London. The conference marked the millennium of Christanity in Russia, but it was held not just because of the date. The authors both felt that the time was ripe to try to begin correcting an imbalance which seemed to have crept into the Western (and even more Soviet) writing of Russian history, this is an increasing neglect of the role of religion. This neglect derives partly from the anti-religious bias of the revolutionary movement and the Soviet state, and Western scholars have often taken it on unthinkingly from their Soviet colleagues, especially as they too live in what are now largely secularised societies (though this background has not prevented historians of Britain, Germany or the USA from being sensitive to the importance of religion in the evolution of the their nations).