I would like to express my gratitude to the many individuals and institutions that have supported me in the process of researching and writing this work.
Financial support from the College of Liberal Arts and the office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS) has made this work possible. For their indispensable help with the bibliography and acquisition of materials I thank Jan Adamczyk (International and Area Studies Library), Joseph Lenkart (Manager of the Slavic Reference Service, International and Area Studies Library), and Geoffrey Ross (History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library) at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, as well as Mary O’Brien and Carol Reese in the Interlibrary Loan Department of Brookens Library at UIS. Several individuals answered my questions through SINDBAD, the research information service of the Bibliothèque nationale de France—including Clélia Guillemot and Colette Laspalles in the Département droit, économie, politique; Ingrid Bézard and Séverine Boullay in the Département philosophie, histoire, sciences de l’homme; and Roger Musnik and Mariusz Olczykowski in the Département littérature et art. I thank the archivists at the French Archives nationales and Archives diplomatiques, as well as Véronique Bontemps at the Archives diocésaines de Nantes for their assistance in locating unpublished manuscripts. Hélène and Serge Runge, parishioners at and local experts on St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris, met and corresponded with me, supplying me with valuable information on the history of the parish. Alexandre Jevakhoff was kind enough to meet with me and answer questions about the parish library.
I especially thank Tatyana Bakhmetyeva, Nadieszda Kizenko, and Roy Robson for valuable suggestions on how the manuscript could be improved in between its original and final form. Joshua Falconer, Kevin Kain, Paul Ladouceur, and Matt Miller read parts of the manuscript and responded to my queries. Theofanis G. Stavrou offered advice and encouragement at various stages of the project. Other scholars in the field and colleagues in my department, perhaps unbeknownst to them, have helped me develop parts of the manuscript by suggesting bibliography, asking pointed questions, or proposing analytical frameworks. Two colleagues in the Department of History at UIS, David Bertaina and Peter Shapinsky, helped shape specific aspects of my analysis. There are a number of individuals who have made pertinent suggestions, asked insightful questions that helped me conceptually, or offered general encouragement for the project. I would like to thank Charles Arndt, Stephen Batalden, Joel Brady, Eugene Clay, Lucien Frary, Faith Hillis, Scott Kenworthy, Erich Lippmann, Matt Miller, Jennifer Spock, Chrissy Stroop, Paul Valliere, Paul Werth, Christine Worobec, and fellow members of the Association for the Study of Eastern Christian History and Culture for their comments and questions at conferences and by correspondence.
Several individuals helped me obtain otherwise elusive sources: Father Sergei Alekseev, Arkady Avdienko, Kevin Kain, and Nathan Mason. For helping me translate tricky passages or decipher cultural references, I thank Father Sergei and my colleagues at UIS Rosina Neginsky and Larry Shiner. For general encouragement, I thank Father Martin Swanson, rector of St. Basil the Great Orthodox Church in St. Louis, MO.
I am indebted to Amy Farranto, Karen Laun, Sarah Noell, and Carolyn Pouncy for so skillfully guiding me and this manuscript through the publication process from submission to production.
Finally, since the early stages of this project, I have been blessed by the unwavering support and patience of my husband Travis Marshall. It is hard to imagine having completed this project without his willingness to listen and his reminders that at some point, one has to “fire the engineers and build something.”