Memoirs of A. E. Friedrichs as a Source on the Daily Life of the Plemyannikov Noble Family

The relevance of the study is due to the increased interest of modern society in the historical sources of personal provenance containing valuable information on representatives of different estates of the Russian Empire. The reconstruction of family and personal histories, and thereby bringing them back from oblivion, allows us to showcase the formation of historical memory preservation mechanisms, determining the scientific significance of the study. The article provides an analysis of the manuscript heritage of Alexandra E. Friedrichs, a representative of the Plemyannikov family, great granddaughter of the brother of the writer and historian N. M. Karamzin, stored in the manuscript department of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The authors offer external critique of the personal provenance documents preserved in the collection. Attention is paid to their preservation. The historical value of unpublished documents in the fonds is revealed. The study of documentary materials in the collection makes it possible to reconstruct Friedrichs’s work on the history of her family over longitudinal period. It is concluded that the memoirist reconstructed and structured the history of her noble family on the basis of long-time communication with both immediate and distant relatives and acquaintances. She researched documentation and introduced it into scientific use, which greatly enhances the scholarly significance of her memoirs. The application of comparativist and phenomenological approach has allowed the authors to assess the archival collection materials as a product of collective memory of the representatives of the Plemyannikov noble family, to identify family traditions and Friedrichs’s motives in preserving the memory of her noble family history. The use of traditional historical methods, retrospective and comparative-historical, has made it possible to identify coincidences and inconsistencies in reconstructed historical everyday life, as presented in the ego-sources, and real historical events. For this purpose, the ego-sources of other representatives of the family, genealogical and biographical information, as well as a number of published scientific works of national historians have been analyzed. The possibilities of using memoirs and notes for reconstruction of the noble families history are shown. The authors underscore the prospects of studying family archives as valuable documentary materials on the history of everyday life of the Russian nobility both on the eve of the Great Reforms and in the post-reform era.