The problem of optimal carrier recovery and detection of digitally phase modulated signals on fading channels by using a nonstructured approach is presented, i.e. no constraint is placed on the receiver structure. First, the optimal receiver is derived for digitally phase-modulated signals when transmitted over a frequency-nonselective fading channel with memory. The memory results from the fact that usually the coherence time of the channel is larger than the symbol period. Symbols adjacent in time cannot be detected independently and therefore the well-known quadratic receiver is not optimal in this case. A maximum a posteriori (MAP) detector is derived and explicitly utilizes the channel memory for carrier recovery. The derivation shows that the optimal carrier recovery is, under certain conditions, a Kalman filter. Some attractive properties of this carrier recovery unit (including the absence of hang up) are discussed. Then the error rate of several digital modulation schemes is calculated taking the performance of the filter into account. The differences in susceptibility of the modulation schemes to carrier phase jitter are specified.< >