The results of a research of literary critical works devoted to the study of Soviet under-ground poetry in the 1960s and 70s are presented in the review article. It is shown how the process of liberation of unofficial poetic culture from the collectivist attitudes of Soviet ideology and the search by its representatives for the spiritual and moral foundations of life and creativity was highlighted in the sam- and tamizdat periodicals. Special attention in the review is payed to the reflection of uncensored criticism in relation to the problems of restoring the connection with the literary tradition of the Silver Age by nonconformist poets and the formation of new principles of artistic writing in their work. In the context of these processes, the value nature of the phenomenon of “Christian Renaissance” in underground poetry, its role in the development of modernist poetic culture in the second half of the 20th century is revealed. In the light of literary-critical reception, the concept of “cultural movement” is considered as a strategy for uniting creative forces in the literary underground, which determines the value horizons of unofficial poetry. It is substantiated that the “cultural movement” was interpreted by uncensored criticism from the standpoint of its ideological and institutional self-sufficiency, the ability to be an active subject of Russian and world culture.