Collection of articles by S. P. Melgunov was published in 1907; it was centered at one of the most acute public debates of the period of the First Russian revolution: a discussion about the freedom of conscience and religious tolerance in Russia. The author was one of those Russian journalists and scholars of the early twentieth century, who recognized and repeatedly revealed in his works the imperfection of the existing legislation in the field of religion; he considered that one of the primary legislative initiatives born by the revolution should be a ‘reform of legislation in the sphere of interrelations of Church and State’. In anticipation of solving that problem, the book was conceived by M., as a ‘review of the dominant order of things’; he planned to present the issue for ‘a broad auditorium’. He published the articles in 1904-1906, mainly in the newspaper ‘Russkie vedomosti’, and then gathered the most important ones for a book. The first part of it was entitled ‘The Old Order’ and contained a brief historical overview of the Church and State relations from the moment of the formation of the Russian state until 1722; there was also criticism of the ‘serf position’ of people of the Russian Empire in the sphere of religion and political life even in the early twentieth century, and gave the analysis of the Russian religious legislation on Old Believers and various ‘sects that have arisen on the Russian soil and separated themselves from Orthodoxy’, as well as on Evangelical Christians, Stundists, Dukhobor and other groups under the pressure of official legislation.

The second part of the collection is titled ‘In Transitional Time’; it includes articles devoted to the consideration of ‘the legislation of transitional era, when the government tried to implement widely bureaucratic religious tolerance in practice’, namely the Decree of April 17, 1905, on strengthening the principles of religious tolerance, and on the realities of administrative methods in the field of religion. The third and final part of the book is ‘On the Eve of Freedom’’ it contains articles dealing with the near future and the practice of amnesty for religious crimes, the implementation of the principles of ‘the complete separation of Church and State’, and ‘the restoration of religious freedom’, as well as articles on the legal status of the so-called ‘savage sects’, namely Skoptsy, in Russia. Thus, the articles presented in the collection in a systematic way give a critical survey of phenomena, which are characterized by the author as ‘a major anomaly in Russian public life’ and ‘penetration of the state into the freedom of conscience’ and its ‘invasion into the intimate sphere of religious beliefs’.