In this article, presented at the 'Celebration of Living Theology' conference in honour of Fr Andrew Louth in Durham this summer, Alison Ruth Kolosova describes the effects of the work of N.I. Ilminskii and his disciples among the Chuvash people from the 19th century to the present day. Were his efforts to promote the use of the native language in schools and churches part of the Tsarist policy of russification, or was he in fact a separatist and nationalist?

In his book, ‘Ways of Russian Theology’, Fr. Georges Florovsky wrote of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, ‘He had practically no direct disciples, nor did he create a school; he created something more important: a spiritual movement.’ In this article Alison Ruth Kolosova examines the life and work of one of Metropolitan Philaret’s lesser known spiritual disciples, Fr Viktor Vishnevskii, missionary and philologist in Chuvashia in the mid-19th century, who both greatly contributed to the development of the Chuvash written language, and prepared the way for later Russian Orthodox missions among non-Russian peoples.