The "Diary" of I.A. Zhelyabuzhsky (1682–1709): the Problem of the Authorship

The presented work is devoted to the study of the "diary" traditionally attributed to I. A. Zhelyabuzhsky. This source is a diary that covers the period from 1682 to 1709 and is widely used by researchers of Russian history during the period of Peter’s the Great reforms. The source is widely used because the "diary" contain a huge amount of unique evidence about the era, not found in other documents. At the same time, as we have already proved in the course of previous studies, the attribution of the “diary” to I. A. Zhelyabuzhsky is incorrect, since he died long before the end of the records, namely in 1692/1693. The present study is devoted to an attempt to establish the true author or authors of the "diary ", which is its goal. To achieve this goal, we formulated the following tasks: to study historiography concerning Ivan Afanasyevich Zhelyabuzhsky, traditionally named as the author, to conduct an in-depth analysis of the source text for information about the likely author, to study the oldest list of "notes" that we have discovered, and also to try to isolate most probable authors based on the information obtained in the course of this study. During the research, to fulfill our tasks, we used the method of source analysis, paleographic analysis, as well as comparative analysis and content analysis of the written text. In the chapter "The diary" in historiography ", we studied historiography on the topic of the "diary" and traced the history of attribution of it to I. A. Zhelyabuzhsky, as a result of which we came to the conclusion that the first who conducted the incorrect attribution was not F.O. Tumansky, as it was believed until today, but D.I. Yazykov, who incorrectly interpreted Tumansky's indication of the location of the source and suggested that it was I. A. Zhelyabuzhsky who was the author. In addition, in this chapter, we examined the earliest found list of the "diary" and concluded that it is probably the original document. In addition, the application of the method of paleographic analysis showed a change in handwriting in the document around 1699, which prompted us to conclude that there were several authors of the "diary". In the chapter "source study characteristics of the source", relying on the method of content analysis, we studied the structure of the "diary", examined the events that the author or authors report or do not report in their notes, and also tried to identify the purpose for which the authors created their diary. The result of this analysis was conclusion about the interests of the author, the frequency of notes throughout the years of keeping it, as well as the conclusion that the authors assumed that the notes could be read. These findings helped us in identifying possible authors and may also be useful in further research. In the chapter “attribution of the source”, an attempt was made to extract information about the author or authors from the text that they could unintentionally leave in their records. We made conclusions about the social status of the authors, in particular, that at least one of them was in the status of a stolnik in 1696, actively interacted with the system of prikazs, in particular with the Streletsky and Preobrazhensky prikazs. These findings about the authors of the "diary" helped us to formulate the criteria that these authors must meet. Using it, as well as the information about the first location of the source obtained in the first chapter, we narrowed the circle of possible authors to a few people from the Zhelyabuzhsky family. A detailed study of these people using information from the boyar lists led us to the conclusion that the most likely authors of the "diary" could be Semyon Vasilievich and Vasily Timofeevich Zhelyabuzhsky. As a result of the research, we, in our opinion, were able to put forward a reasoned hypothesis about the authors of the "diary", which, undoubtedly, can form the basis for further research on the topic.