The monograph by Academician R. is dedicated to the Novgorod-Pskov movement of the Strigolniks (1370s - 1420s), which was the first anti-clerical manifestation in medieval Russia known to us from surviving sources. The work on the topic was started by R. in the 1930s; and he is the author of the first monograph especially devoted to Strikolniks. In that phenomenon, R. saw “the mentality of Russian townspeople”, and rather an attempt of an ecclesiastic revolution, a return to the values of the Early Christianity, than an anti-clerical movement. The emphasis on humanistic searches of medieval Russian intellectuals was quite popular in the Soviet historiography of 1960s - early 1990s, while the concept of ‘humanism’ was interpreted quite broadly.
The working hypothesis of R. was shaped in 1930s; it was methodologically based on the work by F. Engels ‘The Peasant War in Germany’. To build arguments for the sake of his idea, R. drew on a wide source base, expanding it chronologically and thematically, adding there Novgorod penitential crosses, pilgrims’ narrations, epics, spiritual verses, the polemic manuscript known as ‘Trifonov’s collection’ (early fifteenth century) and the Frolov’s Psalter (fourteenth century). The author's conception is clearly expressed in the titles of the chapters. The monograph consists of six chapters: the first chapter ‘Preconditions and Precursors’ is based on the analysis of a vast complex of pilgrimage narrations, starting with ‘The Pilgrimage of Hegumen Daniel’; the author also refers to the ‘Sermon on Law and Grace’, the narrations and sermons of Luka Zhidyata, Clement Smolyatich, Abraham of Smolensk, and others, i.e. almost the entire layer of the Old Russian written literature, from which certain fragments are taken and interpreted in accordance with the author's intention). The second chapter ‘The Strigolniks and the Confessional Complex’ is devoted to the analysis of penitential literature, including the inscriptions on the penitential crosses, which the author without any doubts called ‘Strigolniks’ penitential crosses’. The third chapter ‘The Wise Tree’ is completely devoted to the interpretation of the inscriptions and images of the Lyudogoshchinsky Cross, which, according to the author, was a kind of sermon, “canonical in form, Strigolniks’ in its essence” (p. 149). In the chapter “The Strigolniks’ Bookish Tradition’ R. bravely introduces the Trifonov’s collection and the Frolov’s Psalter in the Strigolniks’ circle of reading and writing, while refusing a comparative study, he does not compare the decor and content of the Psalter with other similar monuments. The two final chapters, ‘Urban Art and Strigolniks’ and ‘City. Church. Strigolniks’, are based on the author’s interpretation of the monuments of applied and monumental art of Novgorod and Pskov of the fourteenth – fifteenth centuries, as monuments of Strigolniks’ ideology. At the same time, the author a priori completely excluded all Old Russian sources, speaking of the ‘heresy of the Strigolniks’, rejecting them as polemical and critical. Thus, he sees Strigolniks as a religious movement, the humanism of which laid in the fact that God appears “not so much as the Old Testament Yahweh, cruel and vengeful and unpredictable, but mainly as... the Savior Jesus Christ”. It becomes clear from the last paragraph of the book, why ‘Sermon on Law and Grace’ was mentioned at the beginning of the monograph: according to R., there were Strigolniks who completed the rejection of the Old Testament heritage and turned to Christianity, establishing the cult of Logos and Wisdom< the process started by that Sermon.
This book is of quite historiographic interest, since it is a unique collection of those intentions which were manifested in the Soviet historiography of Russian culture in the early 1990s. This is not only a desire to introduce Old Russian culture into the context of the common European cultural process, but also to establish concepts of rather nationalistic trend which could be found in the works by such authors as L.N. Gumilev, and I.R. Shafarevich.