The history of the existence of one source. “The Diary of Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Volkonsky” in the Archive Fund of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstract

The article is devoted to the history of the existence of a unique historical source of personal origin – the “Diary of Prince D.M. Volkonsky”, created for more than thirty years by a representative of the Tula branch of the Volkonsky princes. The daily records allow us to trace the everyday life of a Russian aristocrat, the author’s subjective reaction to contemporary events, and are also a valuable source for studying the first third of the 19th century. Originally consisting of 42 notebooks, the “Diary” has not been fully preserved. Today, divided into parts, it is stored in three archives – the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art, and the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian National Library. The article deals with the part of the source that was deposited in the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Fund 646 of the “Editorial Board of the journal ‘The Voice of the Past’” and covers the period from 1812 to 1834, with time gaps. Despite the fact that the text of the document was referred to by S.P. Melgunov and A.G. Tartakovsky, only the war period of 1812–1814 was introduced into scientific circulation, the most famous part of which was the publication: “The Russians at Danzig”. Its use in subsequent research makes it possible to supplement the existing sources of official origin and the sources of a memoir nature.