The Paper of E.K. Karpenko (NRU HSE)

On February 22 E.K. Karpenko (NRU HSE) presented the paper entitled "Russian Autobiographical Documents at the XVIII Century (towards the methodology for the research with documents)" at the regular seminar of Research Group

In comparison with previous epochs the 18^th century in Russia is a time of a mass expansion of autobiographical practices, that is of such social actions whose communicative function consists in a person relating particular information about themselves. The diapason of historical explanations as to the reasons of this phenomenon are extremely wide: from the consolidation of an absolutist state with its institutions of power, oversight, accountability and control to the growth of education among certain social groups, the growth of the level of individual self-consciousness and historical memory. Documents, in which it is possible to identify this tendency are diverse in nature: from official “officer stories” to personal “notes about one’s life” and memoirs. In the presentation an attempt will be made to systematize the corpus of published autobiographical documents written by Russian people in the 18^th century and provide an overview of possible areas for further critical study with this corpus.

 

In the capacity of a biographical resource for identifying the corpus of sources “The history of pre-revolutionary Russia in diaries and memoirs” will be used (edited by P.A. Zaionchkovsky, volumes 1 and 5, M.: 1976-1989. Since the list of published memoir documents in this edition included dozens of texts, whose number significantly increased circa 1800, in order to set boundaries to the corpus a few criteria were applied in the process of selection: the degree to which the account of personal life was systematic regardless of whether it was exhaustive, as well as the literary quality, time and place fo writing.

 

The main areas for studying the corpus and comparing various documents include:

1) The person, the state and history. Here autobiographical writing may be linked to necessity as a civil (professional) obligation, a practice stimulated by state documentation processes, or state policy in relation to the nobility and changes of a social content of state service.

 2) The person, family and private life. Here autobiographical writing may be linked to a leisure practice for a narrow “family” circle of readers:

a) the autobiographies of “former” officials – the memorialization of the connection of the person with state history

b) autobiography as a literary and intellectual activity, autobiographical practices and the circle of private reading, the transfer of ideas of the Enlightenment.

c) autobiography, its meaning for “family” memory.

 

The main aim of studying the corpus is to reconstruct and develop a typology of ideas that people in the 18^th century had about themselves, which were consolidated in written practices of communicating about themselves for the benefit of specific addressees.