The true orthodox church in the scientific discourse of the second half of the 20th – the first quarter of the 21st century

Abstract

The phenomenon of the True Orthodox Church (TOC), also known as the “catacomb church”, belongs to the complex and controversial plots of the history of Orthodoxy in the 20th century, as it arose in the context of the radical transformation of state-church relations after the 1917 revolution and the formation of opposition among some of the clergy and laity to the policy of loyalty of Moscow Patriarchate towards the Soviet government. The long-term illegal existence of underground Orthodox communities, the limited nature of the source base, and the ideological bias of early research led to the uneven development of scientific understanding of this phenomenon. The purpose of the article is to critically analyze the main stages and directions of studying the True Orthodox Church, to compare key research approaches, and to identify prospects for further studies. The methodological basis of the study is a complex of principles of historicism, problematics, and interdisciplinarity using special historical methods – historical comparative, problematic chronological, and historiographic analysis. The scientific novelty of the article consists in the systematization of the main directions of studying the TOC in the Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian historiography, a critical comparison of their methodological approaches and source capabilities, as well as in determining the specifics of the Ukrainian research tradition formation in this area. Conclusions. The analysis of historiography shows that the study of the True Orthodox Church was formed gradually and unevenly. The Soviet historiography considered underground Orthodox groups mainly through the prism of the state’s anti-religious policy and did not form a coherent scientific concept of the TOC, although it accumulated a significant empirical material. A new stage began after the opening of archives in the 1990s, when the Russian researchers introduced a significant array of documents of repressive bodies into scientific circulation and initiated a systematic study of the catacomb movement. Since the 1990s the Ukrainian historiography has gradually formed its own research tradition, based mainly on archival and investigative materials and regional studies. At the same time, the issue under study remains insufficiently generalized: a significant part of the sources has not yet been introduced into scientific circulation, and regional studies require synthetic understanding. Further studies should be aimed at expanding the source base, clarifying the conceptual and terminological apparatus, and creating generalizing studies that will enable scholars to make a holistic reconstruction of the history of the TOC in the context of church life in the Soviet era.