To the Issue of the Formation of a Historiographic Tradition of Studying “Orthodox Dissidence”

The article discusses the process of forming a historiographic tradition of studying such a complex phenomenon as “Orthodox dissidence”. Particular attention is paid to 1) how this tradition was born; 2) what basic conceptual ideas were introduced by the foreign historians into the process of disclosing this topic. The problems facing researchers today are also identified. The main one is the inaccessibility of the Russian archives, and therefore the full disclosure of the topic to this day is impossible. An important achievement of recent years has been the publication of interviews of dissidents themselves, which has become an expression of interest in the topic among a wide range of specialists and just interested. The memories of the dissidents themselves began to come out. However, only by combining archival materials, memoirs, interviews, and the works of foreign historians, it will be possible to write the true story of “Orthodox dissidence”.