Memoirs and Epistolaries of D. N. Sverbeev - between Typicality and Originality. Essay to the Problem of Specific Features of Historical Sources
The article is dedicated to the comparative analysis of memoirs and epistolary texts by D. N. Sverbeev (1799-1874). He was a retired diplomat and had extensive relations in Russian society and were on friendly terms with many public figures of their time, welcoming both westernizers and slavophiles. A comparison of his memoirs written in the late 1860s and letters to his daughter Sophia from the same years shows the similarity of these texts' purposes. The article considers the situation in which letters play a role of a memoir, in the meanwhile keeping letter shape. Dmitry Sverbeev in his letters informs his daughter about the news of life in Moscow and adds to them memories of the events connected with the present. In these memoirs he follows his principles: he pays a lot of attention to individuals and historical excursions and avoids extreme points of view in social and political issues. The youngest daughter of the memoirist Sofia Sverbeeva (1842-1903) was in those years the main assistant of her father in the work on memoirs and supported him on many issues, what undoubtedly influenced their correspondence. In addition, it is possible to compare memoirs of D. N. Sverbeev with his early letters (for the 1820s). Here we compare the narrative of the same events in the current correspondence and in memoirs written almost 50 years later and observe a great difference in their presentation.