Book Review: Demchenkov, S.A. (2018) Posledniy iz Velikikh Prorokov (BibleyskayaProfeticheskaya Traditsiya v "Zhitii"Protopopa Avvakuma) [The Last of the Great Prophets (Biblical Prophetic Tradition in The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, by Himself]. Moscow; St. Petersburg: Tsentr Guma

This monograph is devoted to protopope Avvakum who was the one of the brightest and mysterious figures in the history of Old Russia. Assessments of his personality and activity are contradictory: the Pustozersk prisoner Avvakum is called the greatest heretic and a saint, a literary innovator and a consistent traditionalist. The key to the understanding of the "rebellious protopope" as a person and a writer is his main writing, that is The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, by Himself. The investigation of the concept, philosophical and genre specifics of this monument in the aspect of the biblical prophetic tradition demonstrates that The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum is not a modernized hagiographic text, not the first Russian realistic novel and not a Spiritual Testament, but a prophet book that is written according to the model of the Old and the New Testaments. Avvakum interprets his own life as a self-report on the execution of the mission assigned to him by God. The monograph is intended for literary scholars, historians, philosophers, culturologists, religion scholars and those interested in the figure of protopope Avvakum and the original Russian culture of the 17th century.