Archpriest Avvakum Petrov (or Avvakum Petrovich, 1620–1682) is one of the most prominent figures in Russian history. With extraordinary power, he showed the world those qualities that reflected the Russian man in all the diversity of his character - indestructible will, fortitude, passion, readiness for self-sacrifice in the name of a great idea. Among other things, Avvakum is undoubtedly a brilliant writer, centuries ahead of his time. The autobiographical “Life” he wrote in Pustozero imprisonment is a genre previously unthinkable in Russian literature! - one of the most powerful works not only of Russian, but also of world literature. The book about him presented in the ZhZL series is unusual in many respects. First of all, because it belongs to the pen of an Old Believer historian and gives precisely an Old Believer, in many ways unusual and unexpected for an unprepared reader, look at the biography of the “fiery” archpriest, and at the church schism of the second half of the 17th century, and at the entire Russian history of this and subsequent times .