Francesca G Silano

Francesca Silano is a scholar of late-Imperial and Soviet Russian History. She is a specialist of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in the early years of the Bolshevik regime and examines the legal, cultural and religious impacts of the upheaval of revolution and civil war on lay believers, hierarchs, and the institutions of the Church.

She has published in Slavic Review, Kritika, and Revolutionary Russia, and is a co-editor and author of a chapter in Religion and the Russian Revolution: Conflicts, Encounters, and Transformations (Indiana University Press, 2026). Her current book project, The Battle for Russia's Souls: Patriarch Tikhon, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Soviet State (1865–1925) is under contract with Cornell University Press.