Abstract
The treatise History written by a monk Avraamij Palicyn (around 1550 - 1626) offers an extraordinarily valuable personal insight of a well-educated and critically minded man to one of the crossroads of the Russian history - the Time of Troubles (Smuta). On the background of the description of particular phenomena stands the author's undertanding of the historical process.
Its characteristic features are a quest for the deeper causes and an interpretation of the individual events in their dynamics and mutual relationships. From the perpective of the authorial intent Palicyn conceives History as a testimony based on a reflection of the recent past, which is also, and above all, meant to be the source of information for his contemporaries as well as the future generations.
An inseparable component of the considerations is also an element of the religious messianism and the confessional exclusivism through the prism of which the author observes the fortunes of Russia.