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The article aims to present a preliminary analysis of the interrelations between Carlo Emilio Gadda’s Giornale di guerra e di prigionia and the extensive textual corpus it belongs to: the autobiographical writings of the Great War. While acknowledging the originality and literary merit of the volume, which already exhibits the author’s extraordinary expressive, linguistic, and narrative qualities, the text cannot be fully apprehended without a more specific alignment with the historical circumstances in which it was conceived and elaborated, and with the vast array of testimonial writings born from the same war experience. Indeed, Gadda’s Giornale reflects a shared atmosphere and appropriates a series of recurrent topoi found throughout the memoirs of the era, albeit adapting and transforming them within the framework of a work possessing undisputed documentary and literary value.

This publication is a fragment of the memoirs of M.V. Neustrueva (1885–1961), written in the mid-second half of the 1950s, and opens a cycle of two articles, the first of which, “Lyosha and Manichka,” deals primarily with the first period of the memoirist’s acquaintance with the future writer A.N. Tolstoy, dating from the late 1890s to the middle of 1900s. In her memoirs, Neustrueva describes her acquaintance and meetings with Tolstoy, amateur performances in which they took part together, and several episodes dating back to the time when Tolstoy had already become a student and was returning to Samara on vacation. The publication accompanies the memoirs of Maria Neustrueva with an introductory article, which reconstructs the biography of the memoirist and the history of her work on them using available sources. Memoirs of M.V. Neustrueva are published for the first time.

The document Impressions of a Juror is analyzed as a personal account of an anonymous author, G.S.N., who recounted his experiences as a juror in legal proceedings in the Russian Empire in the late 19th century. Both external and internal criticism of the source is conducted, facilitating the establishment of the approximate place, time, and purpose of its creation. Furthemore, the socio-psychological portrait of the author is reconstructed, considering aspects such as social affiliation, level of education, place of residence, and certain psychological characteristics. The analysis acknowledges the uniqueness of Impressions of a Juror, which not being a part of mainstream historical sources, remain a distinctive work. On the other hand, it shares characteristics inherent in other personal documents from jurors of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century, particularly regarding its general character, presentation style, and the scope of covered issues. It is noted that the factual value of the source under consideration is limited, as it does not allow for the comprehensive reconstruction of the judiciary and legal proceedings in the Russian Empire, nor does it facilitate a complete understanding of the criminal cases under consideration. Despite these limitations, the conclusion is drawn that Impressions of a Juror holds cognitive value due to its provision of information not found in other historical sources. The document offers details that breathe like into the specifics that were previously only studied on the basis on normative legal texts, and official statistics. Thus while the source may not provide an all-encompassing view of the legal landscate of the Russian Empire, it contributes a unique perspective that enriches the understanding of historical proceedings.

In this paper, I will draw on two twentieth-century French writers and extract from their works their ideas about memory and memoir writing. The first, the poet and philosopher Charles Péguy wrote a great deal about memory, bringing the philosophy of Henri Bergson into realms of daily life that the philosopher himself did not. Not all of Péguy’s meditations on memory are related to memoir writings, and yet they provide a possible frame for anyone who would want to engage in such a task. I will focus on some of his points about time and aging, give some examples from his projected confessions, and relate them to the writing of memoirs as he saw it. The second author, Romain Gary was a prolific novelist, whose works were among the greatest best sellers in post-War France. I will focus on his literary memoir, Promise at Dawn. Gary does not write directly about memoir writing. His ideas on it are embedded in his autobiographical narration, however, and it is these ideas that I shall extract and illustrate. Much separates these two authors’ views on memory and memoirs. Despite their differences, I would like to argue that both authors focus on the ethics of memory and memory writing. That ethics revolves not so much on telling the literal truth, the getting this or that detail correctly, but in capturing and conveying the commitments that have marked one’s life, and capturing them in such a way that they do not coincide with the current pieties about the past. Memoir writing for both authors is a way of responding to the times, a kind of critique of contemporary society.

Abstract: The article attempts to reconstruct the biographies of two prominent historical figures of the first decades of the XX century – Counts Alexander and Mstislav Tolstoy, older brothers of the writer A.N. Tolstoy. Having begun their career path in Samara and in the Samara province, where both alternately headed the Samara district nobility, they made excellent careers (one of the brothers met the 1917 revolution as governor of Vilna, and the other as vice-governor of St. Petersburg), many and productive worked for the benefit of their hometown of Samara and the country as a whole, but after the revolution they were forgotten and erased from Russian history, a slow return to which began about three decades ago, but has not yet fully taken place. This article is an attempt at such a personal return, where, on the basis of rare and unique documents from the family collections of the descendants of Count Tolstoy, memoirs, newspaper publications, etc., their biographies are restored, including both official, public, and personal, family moments. The attempted biographical reconstruction is interesting and significant both in historical and local history terms, and in historical and literary terms – as a context for the historical trilogy of the younger brother of the heroes of this article by A.N. Tolstoy – the trilogy «The Road to Calvary».

Тема «Гоголь и Бухарев», впервые обозначенная в научно-богословской периодике конца XIX – начала XX в., стала предметом литературоведческого изучения лишь недавно. У истоков ее филологического осмысления стоят работы В. А. Воропаева, в которых книга о. Феодора (Бухарева) «Три письма к Гоголю, писанные в 1848 году» была включена в контекст изучения критического восприятия «Выбранных мест из переписки с друзьями» в литературе XIX в. Представляется, что не менее значимым является вопрос о мировоззренческой общности Гоголя и архим. Феодора, все еще не получивший обстоятельного рассмотрения в современной науке. Цель статьи – на материале мемуарных и публицистических текстов последней трети XIX – начала XX в. определить наиболее значимые факторы, послужившие предпосылкой для духовного сближения Гоголя и Бухарева. Материалом исследования выступают опубликованные в дореволюционной периодике («Богословский вестник», «Православный собеседник» и др.) мемуары, заметки, некрологи, посвященные архим. Феодору и содержащие в той или иной степени сведения о его знакомстве с Гоголем, а также запечатлевшие первые попытки современников разобраться в вопросе о воздействии друг на друга писателя и богослова. Материалы анализируются в междисциплинарном аспекте: историко-литературный метод дополняется методологическим инструментарием рецептивной эстетики и библейского богословия. По результатам исследования сделан вывод о характерном как для Гоголя, так и для о. Феодора (Бухарева) интересе к личности и богословию апостола Павла. Представляется, что именно это обстоятельство сыграло решающую роль в идейном и духовном сближении писателя и богослова. Начиная с конца 1840-х гг. Бухарев подготовил ряд научно-богословских работ об апостоле Павле («Учение ап. Павла об антихристе во 2 послании к Солунянам», «Несколько статей о святом апостоле Павле», «О подлинности апостольских посланий», «О послании апостола Павла к Филиппийцам», «О послании к Римлянам» и др.), заложивших основы изучения апостольской части Нового Завета в отечественной библеистике. Вероятно, о. Феодор стал для Гоголя своего рода консультантом по вопросам толкования посланий апостола Павла. И писателя, и богослова можно назвать «учениками апостола Павла», почерпнувшими из его посланий комплекс богословских идей, в значительной степени определивших их религиозный опыт, а в отношении Гоголя – и эстетическую концепцию. Сложно утверждать однозначно, кто на кого – богослов или писатель – оказал большее влияние, поскольку почти не сохранилось прямых свидетельств, сообщающих о конкретном содержании и характере бесед Гоголя с о. Феодором. Скорее всего, влияние было взаимным и равнозначным, поскольку о. Феодор питал искреннее уважение к Гоголю и восхищался его творчеством, а писатель с почтением относился к о. Феодору как носителю духовного сана и ученому богослову. Кроме того, их объединяли общие идеи и общий наставник в толковании и применении в жизни христианского учения – святой апостол Павел.

For studying the Great Patriotic War history, the testimonies of direct participants and eyewitnesses of the events of the war years are of great importance. The purpose of the article is to give a comprehensive description of documents of personal origin (memoirs, diaries, letters) reflecting the participation of Siberians (soldiers and home front workers) in the Great Patriotic War. The article designates these documents by the generalizing term “ego-documents”, generally accepted in the social sciences and humanities. The authors make a brief review of domestic and foreign publications on the introduction into scientific circulation and the evolution of the concept of “ego-document”. To solve the research problems, they identified a documentary stream (DS) of publications containing ego-documents. It was based on the materials of the bibliographic database (DB) “Scientific Siberica: nature, history, economics, culture, science of Siberia and the Far East” (“Nauchnaya Sibirika: priroda, istoriya, ekonomika, kultura, nauka Sibiri i Dalnego Vostoka”), generated by the SPSTL SB RAS, supplemented by data of publications from other authoritative sources. The article presents a bibliometric analysis of the DS content: the type-species composition of publications, types of ego-documents, the dynamics of publications in a time perspective (1945–2022), geographical data on the places of conscription, the residence of ego-documents authors, topics of publications, etc. An overview of some number of ego-documents publications from DS is given. Research results: a steady dynamics of quantitative increase in publications of ego-documents has been revealed since the 90s. XX century; the diversity of the type-species structure of DS was determined; the geographical connection of DS publications with the territories of 20 regions of Siberia and the Far East is shown; the main topics of ego-documents have been identified with a brief description of individual publications.

Рассматриваются возможности использования мемуарных текстов жителей Томской области в преподавании региональной истории. Представлена общая характеристика ситуации с учебно-методическим обеспечением преподавания региональной истории. Выявляются преимущества привлечения сборника воспоминаний томичей «Я вам, родные, излагаю быль» в образовательный процесс в школе. Показана информативность представленных в нем мемуаров в изучении отдельных тем по истории.

The article analyzes the descriptions of Polish-Lithuanian peasants found in travel literature penned by British visitors to Poland during the reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski. It aims to present the literary image of peasantry and comment on the Britons’ attitude towards the problems they faced. The authors whose works are analyzed are William Coxe (historian and tutor), John Lind (associate of a Polish king), Nathaniel Wraxall (traveler and ex-merchant), James Harris (a future diplomat), Joseph Marshall (a mysterious figure, probably a merchant) and John Williams. Villagers are generally described as miserable human beings struggling with poverty, cruelly exploited by their lords in a condition resembling slavery. The authors’ attitude is sympathetic to the difficulties of peasant lives. Britons appreciated attempts to extricate them from their plight in the belief that emancipation was ethically desirable and would render their work more productive.

The purpose of this archeographic publication is to expand the source base for the biography of Borys Grinchenko (1863–1910). The notes of Maria Grinchenko (1863–1928) are devoted to the episode of the imprisonment of young Borys Grinchenko in the winter of 1879–1880. This story clarifies the historical context of the worldview development of such Ukrainian public figure as Borys Grinchenko known by his descendants. At the same time, the notes help to understand what image of her husband Maria Grinchenko tried to construct. The text is provided with scientific comments for the historical substantiation of the events described in it. The publication is dedicated to the anniversary of the birth of Borys Grinchenko.

This publication presents the translation into Russian of the essay “K and T” by the Japanese writer Tayama Katai (1871–1930). The essay was published in 1917, first as a stand-alone piece in the magazine Bunshō Sekai, and then as a chapter of the book Thirty Years in Tokyo (Tōkyō no Sanjūnen). The heroes of the essay are Tayama Katai himself (in the text he acts as T) and his friend Kunikida Doppo (1871–1908, in the text he is K). The author speaks about the time in 1897 when the young heroes (both of them are 26 years old) spent a little over a month in a temple in Nikkō. At this time, Tayama Katai and Kunikida Doppo, who soon became famous writers, were just entering literary life. The essay gives an idea of the thoughts and feelings of the Japanese literary youth at the end of the 19th century. As twenty years passed since the events described, Tayama Katai manages to see not only his friend, but also himself “from the outside.” The heroes, very different in character, talk about what human life, love, religion, and nature are. They often argue, even quarrel. The conversations about literature give an idea of what the Japanese literary youth of that time were passionate about, which Western writers and poets were especially popular. From the essay, one can also learn how much the writers earned with their writings. The main purpose of the journey of the young people was writing. It was during his stay in Nikkō that Doppo wrote the short story “Uncle Gen” (“Gen oji”), a work that marked his turn to prose.

This article discusses the teaching methods that shaped the Russian school in the 19th century. The image of an “ideal teacher” is analyzed based on the recollections of historians of that period. The dynamics of its features is explored on a historical time scale. The factors that forced its transformation and evolution are considered. The sources used include memoirs written between the 1860s and 1870s, as well as those published at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. The first group of memoirs is characterized by the juxtaposition of the “old” and “new” history teachers who differed in their preferred “teaching methods”, moral beliefs, and attitudes to teaching. In the second group of memoirs, the trend to a negative view of the “old” teachers and the effectiveness of their methods is rejected, while the “young” teachers are criticized. The obtained results show that an “ideal history teacher” was endowed by the memoirists of the 1840s and 1850s with such new personal and professional qualities as: humanity, morality, “expertise” (a high level of scientific knowledge), as well as a sincere desire to awake students’ interest in what they are being taught and to help them become self-reliant in their reasoning.

The episodes proposed in the article from the memoirs of Sergei Vasilievich Sazanov refer to 1918–1921 and cover the details of Sazanov’s life in Altai during the Civil War. The presented «ego-document» reveals the everyday life of the Civil War, given through the prism of perception of an ordinary participant in the events, in this case, a peasant-otkhodnik of the Tambov province. The memoirs of S. V. Sazanov are valuable as they show the transformation of an ordinary, civilian person in the conditions of hostilities. The choice of one of the opposing sides (mostly forced), the manifestation of human qualities in extreme circumstances, the interweaving of domestic, everyday (work for the family) and emergency (the arrival of a punitive force, the threat of execution, etc.) are the content of the presented episodes from the memoirs. It makes these materials a valuable historical source, and publication can help in developing layers of historical problems that were previously ignored by historiography. The publication of memoirs is preceded by an introductory article, which presents a brief biography of S. V. Sazanov and reveals the value of memoirs for military anthropology.

For the first time, the article attempts to analyse some aspects of the content of T.N. Livanova’s Memoirs (1974-1983), a three-volume text corpus preserved in the archives of the Russian National Museum of Music (RNMM). Memoirs are being prepared for publication as a planned work of the State Institute for Art Studies. This article continues a series of materials devoted to this valuable source. A significant place in it is occupied by the portraits of the author’s contemporaries. The article discusses different types of such verbal portraits — from more detailed generalized characteristics to “instantaneous” and very vivid ones consisting of literally a few words. The gallery of the portrayed is represented by people of different generations. The narrative begins with family chronicles — the portraits of Livanova’s relatives on the mother’s and father’s side, as well as her husband V.E. Ferman, and continues with the characteristics of friends and employees. Among them are composers D.B. Kabalevsky, N.Ya. Myaskovsky, V.Ya. Shebalin, and V.G. Zakharov, researchers B.V. Asafiev, M.V. Ivanov-Boretsky, V.V. Protopopov, Yu.V. Keldysh, Yu.K. Evdokimova, Yu.N. Kholopov and others.

The article continues a series of studies devoted to the three-volume Memoirs by T.N. Livanova the publication of which is being prepared at the State Institute for Art Studies. The article considers several types of verbal portraits created by the memoirist. First, these are images of the people Livanova got acquainted with in the evacuation. Nowadays, almost nothing is known about them and it is the features of the text as such that remain the object of research. Another collection is made up of portraits of Livanova’s students, some of whom gained an odious reputation. A separate line of memoirs consists of “double” portraits not of musicians or musicologists but representatives of allied specializations of the humanities. Finally, roughly in the middle of Livanova’s narrative is an extended, multi-figured canvas dedicated to the Wipper family.

The article is dedicated to the memory of the outstanding scientist, teacher, public figure Academician Nikita Ilyich Tolstoy, great-grandson of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy. At the 15th of April, 2023 Nikita Ilyich Tolstoy would have turned 100 years old. The article presents the memoirs of Nikita Ilyich’s student about her mentor. The main facts of his biography are listed, including childhood in exile, participation in the Second World War as part of the Yugoslav partisan underground and of the Red Army, and the career of a Soviet philologist. The article tells about the important stages of his scientific, pedagogical and social activities. The author recalls the key ideas, research, works and achievements of Nikita Ilyich. She discusses the emergence of ethnolinguistics, which he founded, and ethnolinguistic expeditions in Polissia, which he inspired and organized for many years. The author emphasizes the importance of the organizational activities of the scientist in the difficult period for the Russian science during the late 80s – 90s. The text contains many private episodes from everyday meetings, studies and work side by side with Nikita Ilyich, personal impressions. Outstanding education, intelligence and aristocracy of the descendant of the famous Tolstoy family are noted. The author also notes the sincere and deep religiosity of Nikita Ilyich, which he did not hide in spite of external circumstances. The article presents to the readers a full, living image of a man and a scholar who left a deep mark both in scholarship and in the hearts of all who were lucky enough to know him personally.

In the last decades of the last century, the culture of keeping handwritten scrapbooks was widespread among urban schoolgirls. These scrapbooks are considered one of the small forms of urban and rural folklore of the recent Soviet past and have become an object of study by folklorists and anthropologists. This type of handwritten folklore has been widely studied in the works of foreigners, especially Russian theorists. It is usually referred to as post-folklore or subculture (Neklyudov). Various manifestations of adolescent behavior can be found in these manuscript albums: from rebelliousness to touching lyricism, from magical in-nature guessing games to sociological questionnaires. The predominant texts in these handwritten albums are lyrical texts consisting of couplets, quatrains, and rarely six verses, close to ditties. These small rhyming texts were recorded, memorized, and supplemented by friends and classmates. The tradition of girls’ albums survives today but is perceived as a relic of the Soviet era. These days, young people prefer to use social networks to express themselves. What is the Odnoklassniki portal but an electronic handwritten album? If modern folklore is actively and purposefully studied abroad, in the Armenian reality there are practically no serious studies on the topic so far. The main material of this study is schoolgirls’ notebooks created in Yerevan in the 80–90s of the 20th century, as well as materials recorded by the author from the former albums’ owners. Schoolgirls of this generation are now mature women, some of whom still lovingly keep their school handwritten albums. The article deals with the peculiarities of the folklore of girls’ school albums in Yerevan, the period and medium of their existence, and their genre-thematic manifestations, structure, and contents. The author pays most attention to the poetics of girls’ scrapbooks folklore, which is peculiar to urban schoolchildren. Such issues as bilingualism, thematic layers of these lyrical texts, expression of love feelings in them, attitude to friendship, school, studies, advice about love and life, relations with the older generation, and others are studied. Folklore formulas, allegorical expressions, and fortune-telling games characteristic of school-age psychology are also examined.

The memoirs of A.P. Sergievskaya, B.S. Zhukov’s granddaughter, are related to the history of her family with deep roots and rich traditions. In the context of the family chronicle, Boris Sergeyevich's personal and scientific biography is presented. It tells in detail about the pre-revolutionary period of his life in Nizhny Novgorod and the formation of his scientific hobbies and interests. The author considers his Moscow period that was full of intensive work at the department of anthropology of Moscow State University, at the Scientific Research Institute and the Museum of Anthropology and was associated with the hardships of the first post-revolutionary years. Memories give an idea of the versatile talents of B.S. Zhukov that became apparent not only in science, but also in his musical and literary hobbies. Information about the last years of the scientist's life, the circumstances of his arrest, exile and death is also important. The article is illustrated with extracts from letters and documents from the family archive, as well as photos.

The article is devoted to the relationship between N.V. Gogol and M.A. Maksimovich (1804–1873), his fellow countryman from the Poltava region. In his family there were writers and professors, they were proud of it, and Maksimovich himself from childhood dreamed of becoming a professor of botany in Moscow, but became a professor of Russian literature in Kiev and as a philologist and historian lived a fruitful scientific life. With Gogol he was brought together by his love for Little Russian songs. For the famous collection of songs by Maksimovich, Gogol offered several of his recordings and took part in its publication. Both were enthusiastic about the unrealized project to occupy university departments in Kiev together and turn it into a “new Athens,” launching an extensive educational program there. Their relations, invariably warm, were almost in absentia, until the autumn of 1849, when at the end of October Maksimovich arrived in Moscow, where Gogol then lived, and remained there for more than six months. In June they went together to their native lands, and in August 1850 Maksimovich visited Gogol in his village of Vasilyevka. Botany classes during the trip gave Gogol knowledge about Russia, important for the continuation of “Dead Souls.” Maksimovich, in his turn, left a portrait of the writer marked by professional observation and at the same time sympathetic understanding.

The article considers the possibility and limits of reconstructing the memorial landscape of the Ural town-factory based on the materials of student folklore practical studies in the late Soviet era. The author reveals the stable motifs of the legends connected with the history of the founding of the industrial settlement of Kaslee, as well as with the specifics of the ethnic interaction between Russian settlers and the local population. The article also defines the “places of memory” in folklore materials. The study shows how the scientific and methodological attitudes of folklorists and the methods of interaction between collectors and informants are reflected in the collection of field archival materials from a particular area. The memorial landscape reconstructed according to folklore data tells both about the past of Kaslee and the present, as the perspective of such a description of the past is determined by the present. Archival folklore materials are an example of a combination of practices of communicative and cultural memories. In this aspect, the place of “songs about the city” is also determined in the article. The authors believe that “empty cells” – lacunae of archival memory, about which the informants did not tell and/or the collectors did not ask, are significant elements of this memorative landscape. The stories related to the accident at the Mayak chemical plant in 1957 and the environmental agenda in general become such subjects of silence. The article will be useful to folklorists and anyone interested in the problems of memory in folklore materials, as an attempt to apply the methods of folklore and anthropology to the practice of memory studies.

At the present stage, the phrase “labor of minors” sounds alarming and is a sign of the low economic and cultural development of society. For the period of industrialization of the 19th – early 20th century this phenomenon was by no means a rarity, but rather one of the components of economic modernization. The Ukrainian lands were no exception in this regard, child and adolescent labor was used in coal, metallurgical, chemical and other industries. This study is based on workers’ memories of their teenage years, memories of mining engineers, factory inspectors, public figures, as well as, albeit very scattered, statistics on the employment of minors in industry in the second half of the 19th – early 20th century. The most significant and, in this regard, reflected in the memoirs of participants in the production process, were such aspects of the work of minors as working conditions, wages, “professions” of minors, their employment statistics, the evolution of labor legislation and numerous violations of approved norms. The complex conclusion is that it took a long mutual development of public opinion, legislation and family foundations to eradicate the work of minors in industry.

The article discusses the mythologization of Bella Akhmadulina’s biography and personality on the material of memoirs and literary texts, some of which are being introduced into literary criticism for the first time (1963 photos of Akhmadulina are also published for the first time). The study is aimed at identifying the constants, the dynamics of Akhmadulina’s biographical myth, and its functioning in culture. As its theoretical foundation, the study employs the methods of historico-cultural approach to biography (G. O. Vinokura, I. N. Rozanova, etc.), the theoretical works by Yu. N. Tynyanov, the principles of interpretation of biography by Yu. M. Lotman, the methods of receptive aesthetics and narratology, and the sociological approaches to literature. The study focuses on the prototypical models of biography mythologization, stable mythemes and symbols, as well as interpretations of the poet’s personality determined by memoirists’ positions in the literary field, genre conventions, and ideological and taste preferences. The nature of the material makes it necessary to study the development of the Akhmadulina myth outside, “after” the biography: the writers carry out creative reception and continue the mythologization of the image of the poet in their own work. The biographical myth, as the analysis has shown, accelerates the development in culture in contact with new media. The analysis undertaken in the work has lead to the conclusion about the decisive role of the author’s poetic word in the myth about the poet, has revealed the key symbols of the myth about Akhmadulina, and its heterogeneous representations. It has been found that genre, style, and even ideological and aesthetic boundaries become permeable to recurring mythologemes and symbolism: fictional and non-fictional, artistic and scientific, memoir and pamphlet texts reproduce recurrent images-symbols and plots. As a result, the myth about the poet can be considered as a text of culture, informative for the study of two opposite aspects of myth- creation: it characterizes not only the “protagonist”, but also the era that gives birth to this character, and reveals its demands, and the sought-after cultural mythology.

The paper highlights and describes the characteristic linguistic and stylistic features of Milan Petrović's memoirs. The aim of the paper is to single out and describe the basic linguistic and stylistic features of the language by applying grammatical and linguistic criteria and methods. Given that it is a memoir, we tried to determine whether elements of a literary-artistic or scientific functional style prevail in the book. Eight memoir texts by this author are included in the analysis. The conducted analysis of Milan Petrović's style and language in his book suggests several important conclusions. His style is simple, the sentence is narrative, never structurally complicated, with a small number of clauses in its composition. It is an essayistic-scientific style, with many literary touches, with conscious literarization, carried out with the aim of achieving greater beauty of the language. In addition to all this, in the language of Milan Petrović we also find purely scientific linguistic features, such as decomposed predicates, the frequent use of adverbs, as well as the author's 'we', and many historical facts. As for the grammatical features, his language does not differ much from the modern Serbian language. Given that Milan Petrović lived and worked in the area of the Šumadija-Vojvodina dialect, which became the basis of the standard Serbian language, there are very few deviations from the norm in his language. On the other hand, the narration, as well as all the linguistic features underlying his memoirs, represent their most immanent characteristic. That is why we cannot view his memoirs exclusively as a scientific-historical text, but as a literary text, which also contains certain scientific elements.

This Article analyses the memoires that are important for the research of the past. They are especially important, or sometimes the only source for examination of Ukrainian soviet history, as some documents just not survived or were created by the soviet ideologists. At the same time, scientists consider memoirs as a subjective source, that is influenced by the understanding of an author. Despite this, memoirs allow us to explore the social connections among intellectuals in particular. The memoirs of a writer Nadiya Surovceva, who was imprisoned by the soviet regime for many years, are important for the humanitarian intellectuals of 1920th research. The subject matter of this article is an environment of Ukrainian humanitarians in memoirs of N. Surobceva between 1925-1927 which are stored in Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine. The following special methods of historical analysis were used: microhistorical, prosopographical. It was shown that Kharkiv, as a capital of a soviet Ukraine, was living in a dense cultural life. Nadiya Surovceva in her memoirs about Oles Dosvitniy, Les Kurbas, Yurii Smolych depict the cultural life of humanitarian intellectuals, their personal, social and cultural connections. These memoirs are accompanying the colours of the day to day life of the “red renaissance” members in comparison with the book “Memories” of the Ukrainian writer. Memoirs about these famous cultural figures of the soviet Ukrainian capital in 1925-1927 also fix the information on their connections with the abroad – both personal and cultural. The analysis of the epicenters of Ukrainian renaissance in 1920th is important in memoirs of N. Surovceva. They are showing the places, where the cultural forces were working, meeting each other in Kharkiv, what was discussed by the humanitarians. The particular attention is devoted to the approach of the responsible memoirs writing mentioned by the author.

In her article, the author intends to embrace the phenomenon of Marie Bashkirtseff , whose literary legacy perfectly refl ects the epoch at the turn of the centuries. To achieve this goal, the author uses such methods as comparative, receptive and interpretive ones as well as cross reading. A special focus is on the Diary by Bashkirtseff which helps understand her creative personality, psychological priorities and artistic mission. The author studies her Ukrainian identity, estheticism, artistic behavior, feminism and disagreement with a traditional status of the woman that was so typical for her epoch. The author shows that estheticism and dandyism become her world view and life style. This can be traced in her female self-attraction, fascination with her own body, her clothes making or ordering it at Paris boutiques, love for accessories, artistic behavior and estheticism of her home. The author proves that Bashkirtseff ’s literary legacy can be seen as a true testimony to the arts of the turn of the centuries. Her Diary contemplates the atmosphere of the epoch, it resonates with real life, and it describes cultural reality simultaneously with social issues and everyday reality. It is fi lled with refl ections about art and literature that help discover cultural and historic truth. Also, the author presents an overview of Bojidar Karageorgevitch’s legacy. Born a Serbian prince, he was an intellectual cosmopolitan, writer, translator, journalist, artist, illustrator, designer, and jeweler. Bojidar was Bashkirtseff ’s close friend. He watched closely all discussions caused by the Diary. Karageorgevitch participated in denouncing invented stories about it. To give his friend more credibility, Karageorgevitch wrote several articles about Bashkirtseff , one of which was included into Encyclopedia Britannica. While researching the t life and multisided legacy of both artists, the author defi nes pronounced similarities between the two, including aristocratic decent, gifts and skills in the arts, education, cosmopolitanism, and bohemian lifestyles. It is proved that the legacy of Bashkirtseff and Karageorgevitch refl ects the tendencies of their time and can be used as a material to study the life of artists at the turn of the centuries and to deepen knowledge about European cultural context at the end of the 19th century.

This publication is a review of the book of memories by E.V. Kobelev called “65 years with Vietnam”. The prominent Russian expert on Vietnam writes about his path to the profession, including his studies at the Institute of Oriental Languages at Moscow State University, an internship at Hanoi State University and work as a TASS correspondent in Vietnam during the Indochina War. He also recalls his work at the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1968–1991 and his functioning as an expert in academic institutions after the collapse of the USSR and the dissolution of the CPSU. The author was a witness and a direct participant in many historical events related to the foreign policy of the USSR/Russia in Indochina. The book contains the portraits of a number of political figures and experts in science and culture of the Soviet Union and Vietnam. These memoirs may serve as an important historical source, contributing to the understanding of events and processes from the 1960s to the present day.

The article is devoted to a brief history of a high literary salon in the first half of the 19th century. The article traces the reasons explaining its bright heyday and rapid decline. The salon is considered as a dual phenomenon, belonging simultaneously to literature and everyday life. Therefore, the article focuses on both the literary processes associated with salon culture and the customs and behavioral norms of the world. The fate of the literary salon seems to be a private, but very revealing plot in the history of the development of Russian society.

On October 17, 2017 the conference “An Alsatian Intellectual in Enlightenment Russia: L.G. Nikolay, Strasbourg President of the Russian Academy of Sciences” happened. Materials of the conference, with the addition of other essays and documents, formed the basis of the book under review (published under the editorship of Sorbonne Professor Rodolphe Baudin and Senior Researcher of IWL RAS Alexandra Veselova). The book’s authors are well-known scientists from France, Russia, Germany and Switzerland. Baron Ludwig Heinrich von Nikolay (1737–1820; in Russia he was called Andrey Lvovich) played a prominent role in Russian social and cultural life at the end of the 18th century. Nicolay came from the intellectual milieu of Strasbourg, which became a subject of research in the essays included the book by R. Baudin, D. Ryusk and V. Berelovich. From 1769 he was in Russia, where he was entrusted with the position of mentor to the heir to the throne, Pavel Petrovich. In 1798, Nikolay was appointed president of the Russian Academy of Sciences; N. Prokhorenko’s essay is devoted to his productive activity in this post. Thanks to his personal qualities, Nicholas managed to stay at court after the coup on March 12, 1801 and ingratiate himself with Alexander I; in 1803 he left the service. A number of materials of the reviewed work are devoted to the literary work of Nikolay, a prolific and versatile poet (articles by M. Arens and A. Ananyeva). For posterity, the name Nikolay is associated primarily with the famous estate of Mon Repos in Vyborg, which he acquired in 1788, to which he dedicated a poem in 1804, probably his best work (article by Yu. Moshnik and M. Efimov). The book also pays attention to Nikolay as a character in historiographical essays and fiction (articles by A. Veselova and M. Efimov). Attached are five unpublished letters from Nicolai; their addressees are the diplomat and lawyer F.A. Annenberg and the poet and scientist K. Pfeffel. The book is provided with a chronology of Nicolai’s life and work and brief annotations of articles (in French and Russian).

The study of trends of memoirs, as the first generation of the history of Persian literature with a critical approach and with the aim of the formation, transformation and transformation, the origins of memoirs and their historical period and their ups and downs throughout literary history. It can be claimed that plagues such as superficiality, rhetoric, summary writing, love and hate have found their way into a number of them. The pathology textology of memoirs requires the use of "critical thinking", ability to achieve purposeful, accurate and scientific evaluation of memoirs provides analytical thinking and presentation of scientific theories, promoted the knowledge of literary theorizing, classification and classification of the history of literature, and removed literature from ethnic, ideological and political prejudices. In this research, the statistical society of which is four memoirs to 10th AH(Chahar maghaleh, Lobabol albab, Nafahatol ons, Tazkharatol shoarah),includes, in the context of the trends actual elements in each era, as well as describe and explain the various approaches to memoirs, tradition-breaking and innovation motives; We also try to use analytical-descriptive method to understand the classification, discover the relationships between the notes, their effects and effects, and especially the role of internal and external elements in the evolution of note. The aim of this article is only to plan the pathology of literary biographies through critical thinking in a number of biographies of the 10th AH, and it is obvious that the delay in the pathology of the found pests requires other opportunities.

V. A. Sollogub’s memoirs about the failed November duel of A. S. Pushkin are valuable as a very accurate source for the history of the last years of the poet’s life. Scholars use them to recreate specific events of November 1836 and to study the psychological state of the poet on the eve of his death. There are several editions of Sologub’s memories. In an effort to recreate the most complete and specific picture of the events preceding Pushkin’s death, scholars join various fragments of various editions of memoirs to a single whole, without taking into account that they are not only not consistent with each other, but in some cases directly contradict each other. The author of the article compared the various editions of Sologub’s memoirs and came to an important conclusion that the author of the memoirs without sufficient reason, he ascribed to himself the role of Pushkin’s savior.

This study focuses on the phenomenon of Jewishness and its representation in memoir literature. The author concentrates both on memoirs in the true sense of the word (recorded recollections) and on variations of the genre — e.g. memoir travelogues. However, she also takes into account texts in which distinctly fictionalised elements are discernible, and which can be classified within the genre of memoirs rather than that of the short story or novella only thanks to the author’s statement (usually presented in the introduction) that the described event belongs to his or her own personal recollections. The analysed texts demonstrate various degrees of playing upon national stereotypes, but it would nevertheless be inaccurate to term them anti-Semitic. However, in the concluding part of the study attention is drawn to Jaroslava Procházková’s pamphlet Český lid a český Žid (The Czech People and the Czech Jew), in which manifestly anti-Semitic propositions are put forth, intentionally accenting the stereotype of the Jew as a dishonest trader. The communication strategy in Procházková’s writing lacks literary ambitions, and the childhood recollection presented therein is entirely subordinated to the ideology of anti-Semitism.

Some personal fragments of memoir serve as an introduction to the article, which eschews overdetermined theorisation in favour of an approach of storying and reading reparatively. An image combining the bisexual and transgender Pride flags visually expresses the value of a shared queer identity with different manifestations. This forms a springboard for the analysis of two memoirs: Always Anastacia: A Transgender Life in South Africa (2016), by Anastacia Tomson, and Becoming Him: A Trans Memoir of Triumph (2018), by Landa Mabenge. The analytical tool used is Leah Anderst’s suggestion of three tracks of narrative empathy, which invite the reader to respond to numinous scenes involving the narrating-I of the present of the text, the experiencing-I of the past, and other characters respectively. The article argues that through the process of narrative empathy in reading memoirs, an imaginative experience of conviviality can be forged, which imbues contamination with positive energy, and builds bridges between perceptions of difference, with possible real-life increases in empathy and altruism.

The article analyzes visual sources on the history of St. John the Baptist Convent in Tomsk (1865–1920s). Due to the poor knowledge of the history of the monastery and small number of left written sources, the visual sources mostly act as an instrument of preserving the memory of the urban community about the now lost monastery, which is part of the so-called urban myth – a system of stable ideas about the city’s past, its peculiar features. Visual sources also reflect the contradictory transformations that the urban myth underwent in the 19–20th centuries. St. John the Baptist Convent arose in a period of transformation of ideas about the city as a sacred center, characteristic of Russia. The city started being understood from a functional point of view – as an orderly, comfortable place to live, and not a sacred center. This transformation can be clearly seen in the description of the appearance of the monastery and its surroundings, given by the memoirs of Peter Khandorin (1905–1992). The monastery clearly does not fit the urban environment, remaining an alien element. The transformation of ideas about the city-forming function of the monastery led to the fact that at the beginning of the 20th century the myth of the city as a sacred center was being destructed. However, by the 1970s the culture was not ready for the complete destruction of historical memory: in the conditions of prohibitions on religious subjects, “legends” about the monastery arise, often having nothing to do with historical reality. This testifies to the preservation of ideas about the city as a sacred center in the mass consciousness. At the same time, this myth makes it difficult to restore the historical truth and the memory of the monastery that actually existed. В статье анализируются визуальные источники по истории Иоанно-Предтеченского женского монастыря г. Томска (1865 – 1920-е гг.). Ввиду слабой изученности истории обители, малого количества сохранившихся письменных источников, именно доступные визуальные источники во многом выступают средством сохранения памяти городского сообщества о ныне утраченной обители, которая является частью так называемого городского мифа – системы устойчивых представлений о прошлом города, его своеобразных чертах. Визуальные источники также отражают противоречивые трансформации, которые претерпевал городской миф в XIX–XXI вв. Иоанно-Предтеченский монастырь возник в период, когда происходила трансформация представлений о городе как сакральном центре, характерных для Руси. Город начинает пониматься с функциональной точки зрения – как упорядоченно обустроенное, комфортное место для жизни, а не сакральный центр. Такая трансформация ярко прослеживается в описании облика монастыря и его окружения, которое дают мемуары Петра Хандорина (1905–1992). Монастырь явно не вписывается в городскую среду, остаётся в ней чужеродным элементом. Трансформация представлений о градообразующей функции монастыря привела к тому, что в начале XX в. миф о городе как сакральном центре подвергается целенаправленному разрушению. Однако уже к 1970-м гг. выясняется, что культура оказалась не готова к полному уничтожению исторической памяти: в условиях запретов на религиозную тематику возникают «предания» о монастыре, часто не имеющие ничего общего с исторической действительностью. Это свидетельствует о сохранении в массовом сознании представлений о городе как сакральном центре. Вместе с тем этот миф затрудняет восстановление исторической правды и памяти о реально существовавшей обители.

The article reconstructs for the first time the creative history of the memoir essay Visiting Father John of Kronstadt by Ivan L. Leontiev (Ivan Shcheglov) on the basis of the author’s diaries and his correspondence with Sergey A. Rachinsky, Vasily P. Gorlenko, Mikhail O. Menshikov and Priest Iosif Fudel. The essay was published for the first time in 1892, during the revered canonized churchman’s lifetime. The work on this essay coincided with the time of a fundamental spiritual change in the life of a “depressed humorist” (as Ivan Shcheglov was labelled by the critic Alexey A. Izmailov) and was underway in parallel to the completion of a story denouncing Leo Tolstoy’s ideology and the Tolstoyan movement (Around the Truth) and the creation of a story about “psychopathic times” (The Soul on the Wane). Conceived as an ordinary article for the Christmas issue of the Novoe Vremia newspaper, the essay grew both in size and content and was published in the Niva magazine’s book of collected stories and articles, which was followed by a separate edition. An impetus for making the concept more elaborate was the publication of Nikolay Leskov’s story Midnight People, which contained sharp criticism of Father John and his trustees. Abstaining from an open debate with Leskov, Ivan Shcheglov sought to treat the figure of his holy contemporary “with heroic grandeur.”

Goals. The article aims to determine the place of Mongolia and plots related to the history of this country in works of the famous Soviet and Russian historian Ilya I. Kuznetsov, to evaluate his contribution to the study of the military conflict between the Red Army and armed forces of Japan in 1939 at the River of Khalkhin, and to characterize the role of I. Kuznetsov in preparing the memoirs of Yu. Tsedenbal. Materials and methods. The article analyzes memoirs and correspondence of I. Kuznetsov, materials of periodicals and mainly scientific works of the historian dealing with exploits of Soviet and Mongolian soldiers during the conflict on the Khalkhin Gol River. The methodology employed — in addition to the general scientific method of analysis — includes special historical research methods, i.e. the retrospective and chronological ones. Results. The study determines the chronological framework of issues related to events on the Khalkhin Gol River and studied by I. Kuznetsov — from mid-1960s to mid-1980s. The scholar prepared a number of articles and monographs that forever inscribed his name in the historiography of the events at Khalkhin Gol. Assistance in the preparation of Yu. Tsedenbal’s memoirs also became an important and interesting part of the historian’s scientific path, although this work remained unfinished. Conclusions. The study shows that despite issues of Mongolian history were not central to the scientific endeavors of I. Kuznetsov, his insights into the events on the Khalkhin Gol River were important in developing another research interest of the historian — destinies of Heroes of the Soviet Union and feats accomplished by soldiers of the Soviet and Mongolian armies. Publications of I. Kuznetsov’s works in the Mongolian People’s Republic and the Soviet Union unequivocally attest to the significance of his academic efforts aimed at exploring destinies of the heroes of Khalkhin Gol. This is confirmed by the very fact the scholar was invited to assist Yu. Tsedenbal in writing the latter’s memoirs. I. Kuznetsov was a historian with diverse scientific interests who with genuine enthusiasm tackled new research topics. The Mongolian theme is undoubtedly a significant contribution to his scientific background. And for the Mongolian people proper, the perpetuation of their compatriots’ feats in the conflict at Khalkhin Gol was of great importance.

This essay explores the avenues opened and limits set by the sublime when used a rhetorical and narratological strategy for figuring and describing non-human animals in the memoir, an understudied but promising genre for examining human/nonhuman relationships. Since few (if any) recent theories of the sublime provide a viable revision of the fraught aesthetic distinction between sublime and beautiful animals and/or between humans and animals outlined in foundational works on the sublime (e.g., Burke’s and Kant’s texts), this article analyzes two case studies (Steven Rinella’s American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon [2008] and Meat Eater: Adventures from the Life of an American Hunter [2012]) that imaginatively deploy the rhetoric of the sublime in descriptions of living animals and dead animals. In Rinella’s memoirs, the described dead animals become still lifes which produce reflections on the ethics of hunting, on animal welfare, and on the tensions existing in the relationship between human and non-human animals.

The article examines narratives as a historical source and a unique form of information not only about the personality of the author but also about their special individual view on events, facts, people, and their actions. The study demonstrates that by means of assessing and evaluating the events described for compliance with their own ideals, the heroes of biographies transform themselves and their surroundings not so much into an object of narrative proper as into an object of analysis. At the same time, self-identification of the authors of women’s ego-documents is a specific form of attitude towards self, which is reflected in the assessments of everyday life and the characteristics of social reality. Memoirs are a representative source, with the help of which it is possible to retrace self-identification of the authors, i.e. to establish the identity of a person with any social community according to a set of features by means of their comparative study. On the basis of concrete examples, it is shown that self-identification of an individual in narratives largely reflects the features of the development of society as a whole and its problems. Comparative analysis of the memoirs of M. Bock, M. Kschessinska, M. Klyucheva, A. Ostroumova-Lebedeva, and M. Tenisheva, made it possible to consider the issues of self-identification based on gender, social status, level of material wealth, professional and social activities, and the attitude to social reality, including the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 and the Russian Revolution of 1905–07. The memoirs under analysis indicate that the priorities identified in the narration of the events of the memoirists’ lives are largely a reflection of their gender identity and also demonstrate a gradual expansion of the scope of women’s activities and the perception of this trend by society. The memoirists appear as independent, mature personalities, whose self-identification has common and specific features. The latter, among other things, being dependent on mentality and life priorities, determine the means to achieve the goals.

The historiography of the death of Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his family and retinue has been replenished with a new book. The monograph by famous historian Evgenii Pchelov The Regicide of 1918: Sources, Questions, and Versions published in 2020 by the publishing house of the Russian State University for the Humanities is based on the results of a source analysis of some issues related to the death of the members of the Russian imperial house in the Urals during the Civil War. The book consists of four sections (chapters), which respectively deal with four debatable and insufficiently studied issues within the framework of this topic. The first chapter of the book is dedicated to the mysterious fate of the documents of the White Guard investigation of the case of the murder of the tsar’s family. The author comes to the conclusion that the extant materials from different parts of the world, in general, make it possible to reconstruct the contents of eleven volumes of the case files. The second part of the work deals with the issue of interpretation of the finds made by investigator Nikolai Sokolov in the area of the Ganina Yama mine where the clothes of the victims were burned. The author disagrees with the conclusions of the White investigator about the complete destruction of the Romanovs’ remains. The third section of the book covers the controversial issue of “mysterious” inscriptions in the basement of the Ipatiev House, where the imperial family was shot. Evgenii Pchelov questions the mystical and cabbalistic background of these inscriptions, although he emphasizes that their further scientific study is necessary. In the final chapter, the author proposes a solution to the issue of whether Moscow represented by Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov sanctioned the murder of the Romanovs in Yekaterinburg. The researcher comes to a reasonable conclusion about the presence of a tacit permission from the top Bolsheviks to destroy the tsar’s family. The review notes both positive aspects of Evgenii Pchelov’s research and some inaccurate or insufficient conclusions of the author which were caused by ignoring the previous historiography, on the one hand, and by a simplified understanding of the source-study approach as relying solely on “available sources,” on the other hand.

The present article has put forward the idea that contemporary Persian realist stories and memoirs contain rare or sometimes unique information about the medical developments in Iran during the transition from traditional medicine to modern medicine, during the modernization of medicine in the Pahlavi era. The author believes that, in Iran, most research performed in the field of medical historiography is based on medical sources and, more recently, on documents whose information gaps can be compensated by information obtained from other fields, such as literature and memoirs. Accordingly, the author has first tried to prove the authenticity and validity of this data for being used in historical research by proposing some theoretical frameworks. Then, by adopting an interdisciplinary approach and analytical method, the researcher attempted to extract the most important topics related to Iranian medical history based on the selected sources.

This research paper deals with the connections between Stanislav Krakov's novel Wings and his memoir prose titled The Life of a Man in the Balkans. The many relations between these two works are seen through the prism of their respective themes and motifs, as well as through various genre shifts which are constantly leading the author back and forth between fiction and factography. The novelistic and real-life levels are interconnected and intertwined in a way that revitalizes the boundaries between art and the war chronicle, thus making the author ponder the questions of the meaning and the truthfulness of war events at a higher level. The tone changes in the aforementioned works, which go from skepticism, irony and sarcasm in Wings, towards sentimentality and declarative patriotism in The Life of a Man in the Balkans, demonstrate the varied reception of the novel through time.

The review analyzes the memoirs of the first governor of the Samara region in the modern history of Russia Konstantin Alekseevich Titov. The ex-governor recorded the most important events of his political career, presented the personal characteristics of statesmen of the period of the 1990-s and early 2000-s. As a result of the study, it was found that in the memoirs of K.A.Titov, the relationship of the Samara governor with statesmen and representatives of the political elite of the Russian Federation is presented and fragmented his activities as a regional head of one of the largest regions of the Russian Federation.

The article is a review of the childhood memories' book by Leonid Andreev's granddaughter O. Andreeva-Carlisle — the novella “An Island for Life,” first translated (by L. Shenderova-Fock) into Russian from English and French, the languages of the first publications. In the novel, the author recreates the five-year period (1939–1945) of her family's stay on the island of Oleron, occupied by the Nazis, reconstructs the “Russian world” of the diaspora, created by reading books, socializing with compatriots (G. Fedotov, M. Tsvetaeva, A. Remizov, etc.), and ardent interest in Russia. The review analyzes the genre of the book, which combines fidelity to fact with fictionalization of documentary material in the spirit of a girly story; it also reveals the “book code,” allowing the author to romanticize the narrative and present the events of the Resistance, in which the family was included, in an adventurous manner. It is demonstrated that the depicted events and the atmosphere in the village of Saint-Denis on the ocean coast are associated in the book with the artistic world of E.A. Poe, read aloud to the children by their father, Vadim, who lived as a child in Finland in a house on the Black River. The image of the author’s famous grandfather, the Russian writer Leonid Andreev, recreated from the stories, also merges with the notion of the American romantic Poe. The portrait of Leonid Andreev in the book appears mythologized, refracted by the prism of perception of his son Vadim and determined by the literary reputation of the writer himself.

The article reconstructs Lillian Hellman’s trips to the Soviet Union and the ways this experience was represented in her memoirs. The present study seeks to demonstrate how Hellman’s autobiographical narrative of “The Unfinished Woman” differs from other left-wing memoirs written mainly by men primarily occupied with politics. The historico-literary approach adopted to conduct this research calls for a detailed reconstruction of Hellman’s literary contacts with Soviet institutions, party functionaries, and cultural agents during her stays in the USSR. The article reveals that the Soviet circle of Hellman’s acquaintances radically transformed from 1940s to 1960s. In the 1940s Hellman became close to the people who were at the top of the Soviet party hierarchy: she wined and dined with the Generals on the Belorussian Front, Deputy People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs M. Litvinov at receptions with Ambassador A. Harriman, and A. Fadeev and K. Simonov during their trips to the United States. The acquaintances of this level were facilitated by her high mission as a cultural emissary during the Second World War. By the 1960s Hellman had become attracted to the dissident movement. Casting her eyes on Russia from her American far away, she was informed by Raisa Orlova of censorship, political prisoners, and all sorts of party excesses. The final change in Hellman’s views is testified by her speech at the IV Congress of Soviet Writers, when she publicly demanded greater freedoms for the intelligentsia, dissidents and human rights activists. The Soviet press materials as well as the archival documents deposited in the Russian State Archive of Literature, which are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time together with Hellman’s memoir prose, open a new page in the history of American-Soviet relations during WWII and the period of the “Thaw”.

The well-known reports of T. G. Pashchenko and A. A. Iovsky about I. I. Dmitriev’s meeting with N. V. Gogol in the summer of 1832 in Moscow are considered. An attempt is made to overestimate the text of T. G. Pashchenko’s memoirs, which is considered unreliable, and to show that the information contained there about the first acquaintance of these writers in its main part is consistently combined with the data of other sources that do not raise doubts. It echoes, first of all, with the record of A. A. Iovsky, recently attributed by S. I. Panov, about Gogol’s visit to Dmitriev’s house, as well as with the memoirs of S. T. Aksakov. Memory errors in T. G. Pashchenko’s story can be explained by the temporal remoteness of events and the indirect transmission of information through the retelling of several persons. Separately, it is proposed to consider another significant episode from T. G. Pashchenko’s memoirs — the scene of the author’s reading of the comedy “Marriage”, which supposedly took place at Dmitriev’s. This scene requires new understanding and temporary localization, regardless of I. I. Dmitriev and his meeting with Gogol.

Continuing the study of the life and work of Kokhanovskaya (N. S. Sokhanskaya), in this article the author introduces into scientific circulation large fragments of her unpublished letters to A. V. Pletneva (P. A. Pletnev’s widow) and M. O. Mozgova (Kokhanovskaya’s niece) and comes to the assertion that these epistolary materials can be considered not only as confessional prose, but as examples of Christian ascetic and teaching literature. A similar approach to Kokhanovskaya’s letters was outlined back in the 19th century by the famous bibliographer S. Ponomarev, who vainly tried to interest K. P. Pobedonostsev in this subject. The quoted texts, which constitute a kind of continuation of Sokhanskaya’s famous autobiography, refute in the best possible way the opinion voiced in one of the modern articles about Kokhanovskaya, the author of which called the writer’s life “a joyless vegetation”.

The relationship between S. I. Gessen and V. V. Zenkovsky, representatives of Russian philosophical, psychological, pedagogical and social thought, is considered as an episode of the intellectual history of the Russian diaspora. It is argued that the image of S. I. Gessen, formed in the scientific works and memoirs of a famous teacher, complements the idea of his personality, of the position S. I. Gessen held in the scientific, pedagogical and social life of the emigration. An analysis of the relationship between two thinkers over a quarter of a century is presented. The conclusion is drawn about the “internal dialogue” between them, which developed on the pages of emigre periodicals, was recorded in correspondence with like-minded people and became the subject of reflection and self-reflection in scientific works. The author pays special attention to assessments of the theoretical contribution of S. I. Gessen to Russian and European philosophical and pedagogical thought, which are given in reviews and surveys, the essay “Russian Pedagogy in the XX century” and “History of Russian Philosophy”. It is shown that in this context, the responses to the death of S. I. Gessen and memories of him, which make it possible to determine the attitude of V. V. Zenkovsky not only to S. I. Gessen the thinker, but also to man, acquire great importance.