Moscow: Indrik Publ., 2015, 512 p. (in Russian)
DOI: http://doi.org/10.22394/2073 - 7203 - 2017 - 35 - 4-314 - 323
In the post-Soviet period, Russia published and continues to publish a large number of collections of documents from state archives, often from previously classified funds. This also applies to the history of Christianity, in particular, the history of Russian Protestantism. In itself, such work is priceless. Thanks to it, thousands of unique documents were opened and put into scientific circulation. In addition, the new features allow historians who are traditionally "tied" to the archives of their regions to go to
page 314to a qualitatively new level of research.
But, unfortunately, such collections of documents do not always meet modern scientific requirements. Common drawbacks include random selection of documents that are not logically explained, insufficient attention to comments, and even their complete absence - at least of a reference nature. Publishers, as it were, transmit archival materials at the full discretion of readers, ignoring the need for source analysis, and sometimes even identifying authenticity. These hastily made collections (there is no point in giving examples) resemble the hasty and careless, although sensational in content, publications of documents from the "tsarist" archives in the early years of Soviet power (with the difference that at that time it was not customary to call it "scientific research", and the publisher "the author of a monograph"). Fortunately, the unprofessional approach to publishing sources that characterized the 1990s is gradually disappearing from practice.
Nadezhda Belyakova and Miriam Dobson's work "Women in Evangelical Communities in the Post-war USSR..." demonstrates a high level of modern research. Firstly, it is a very well-made collection of unique historical documents with source analysis and commentary, and secondly, it is a scientific monograph, the first major study devoted to women in Russ ...
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