After a systematic presentation by Frederike Nüssel of the concepts of Reformation and Enlightenment, the first section of the volume is dedicated to Protestant traces within the Russian environment, consisting of a certain conceptual closeness to Pietism and a corresponding distance from Catholicism. Ljudmila Žukova shows the effects of the Pietistic missionary activity in the crisis originated by Peter the Great's church reforms and the almost Lutheran attitude of some free thinkers of the eighteenth century, particularly in the spiritual Christianism of the Molokans. Marina Kiseleva provides an analysis of the Protestant traces in Pseudo-Makarios (seventeenth century) and Prokopovič (eighteenth century).

Elena Belyakova and Taisiya Leber analyze the topic in a slightly different light, explaining how under Peter, Pietism and its missionary attitude reached a certain diffusion in Russia, mainly through cultural exchanges. Oksana Kuropatkina shows traces of the work of the German Pietist Johann Arnd in the positions of the Orthodox Bishop Tichon, as well as with the Danish Lutheran Grundtvig. Anton Tichomirov provides some examples of the mention of Luther and the Protestant liturgy in Russian poems of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Georgij Orechanov offers insight on the influence of Protestantism on Tolstoy's nondogmatic “religion of the heart” and his translation of the Gospel, illustrating the role of Rousseau and the Enlightenment in conciliating revelation and reason, and investigating if Tolstoy's work itself might have influenced Protestantism (especially Bonhoeffer) in turn.

Natalia Bakshi provides insight on Merežovskij's association of the Reformation with the Russian Revolution, based on the idea of a structure that might exist without a leader, connecting the topic of the anarchy with the theocracy and the chiliastic leitmotif of the Third Reign. Merežovskij's idea of Reformation is therefore much more connected to Luther—linked in this overview to the Peasant's War and the idea of a social revolution—than to Calvin—linked to Rousseau, Robespierre, and the terror arising from such revolution. Nadežda Beljakova discusses the phenomenon of a religious revolutionary vocabulary through the diffusion of Christian socialism in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century; Beljakova recalls the alternating fortunes of the Radical Reformation between 1917 and the postwar period. The political role of the Reformation in Switzerland is presented by Harald Matern, referring to the history behind Zwingli's and Oecolampad's monuments.

As to the October Revolution and the traditional association of Ragaz to Lenin, Christian Münch illustrates the role of Ragaz's Christian socialism and his idea of a reformation of the reign of Christ. Ragaz was influenced by Kutter's focus on the immediateness of the experience of God. Georg Pfleiderer presents Kutter's theology, which refers to the phenomenon of the Swiss Volkskirchen and to the immediateness of the reformation of religion and the human being, as counterpart to Barth's approach. In turn, the Volkskirchen are analyzed as heritage of the Reformation in Christoph Weber-Berg's paper. Christine Schliesser refers to a rather conceptual heritage of the Reformation—theology as unavoidably public theology—with reference to Moltmann's and Bonhoeffer's standpoints.

The volume consists of the proceedings of the conference held on the occasion of the Reformation Jubilee in 2017 in Moscow, at the RGGU. The topic of the diffusion (Ausstrahlung) of the Reformation recalls immediately the occasional background provided by the Jubilee, which somehow reflects the heterogeneous nature of the contributions and their approach. Therefore, identifying a potential audience might be tricky: the majority of the contribution is dedicated to a proper historical investigation, but the presence of some rather theoretical (but not genuinely theological-political) papers referring to the contemporary German-speaking environment might be unclear for those who are unfamiliar with such context. However, the very choice of publishing an international volume in German instead of English might be a clear indication of the audience itself.