‘The History of Russian Church’ is the most well-known popular book by N. M. Nickolsky (1877-1959), a prominent historian of religion, specialist in Biblical and Oriental studies. It was written on the request of the ‘Atheist’ Publishing House and for the first time it was published in 1930, republished with some correction and additional elements in 1935, and later – in 1985, as a book, which kept its significance and actuality.
On the opinion of his contemporaries, it was the first survey of the history of Russian Orthodox Church, Old Believers, and Sectarianism, described from the Marxist-Leninist point of view; the most important events were studied in the context of the social and economical evolution of the country; the author evaluated the premises and terms of shaping such phenomena as Old Believers, and Sectarianism in the social sense. And he put a special attention at the non-official trends in the history of the Church. The main characteristics and events were presented in the large-scale distance of three centuries – from the reforms of Patriarch Nikon.