THE MAIN DIRECTIONS OF STUDY OF THE DISSIDENT MOVEMENT IN THE USSR IN RUSSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY (ON MATERIALS OF DISSERTATION RESEARCH)
The article deals with the historiography of the dissident movement in the USSR, represented by a complex of dissertations for the degree of candidate and doctor of historical Sciences. According to the classification proposed by the author, the dissertations can be divided into 2 areas depending on the researchers' assessment of the place and role of dissidents in Soviet history. Most of the works are characterized by the apologia of dissidence, the consideration of this phenomenon only from the point of view of a positive contribution to the national history, the representation of all dissidents as martyrs and «prisoners of conscience». A smaller part of the work relates to the objective-realistic direction, which considers both the pros and cons in the dissident movement, its role in the years of the «cold war». The author concludes that the studies of the second half of the 1990s - the first decade of the 2000s are more characterized by the mythologization of the dissident movement, which replaced its sharp criticism in the 1960s - the first half of the 1980s.