It is generally accepted that the literature of the early Soviet period suffered from vulgar materialism. But it is not the main obstacle in reading the literature of that period for the modern reader in comparison to the necessity to break through the characteristic polemical style of 1930s, saturated with evaluative attacks, politicized phraseology, constant accusations of opponents of ‘priestly falsifications’, and anti-religious pathos, calculated on the needs of practical propaganda work. If, at the cost of some effort, the reader moves away from the stylistic features of the book and gets used to substituting in the appropriate places the terminology adopted in modern research works, then we will have an interesting concept of the religion of ancient Israel and early Judaism, embracing the period from the ancient times to the beginning of the Mishnaite period. R. was well-read in Western historiography, and there is an obvious pattern: the later the author considers the era, the more points of contact with Western literature can be seen. The main thesis of the book – about the late and stage-by-stage origin of Monotheism, about the late dating of the books of the Tanakh and their evolution, taken by itself, apart from the way of its expression, on the whole deserves the most serious attention.