Ego-Documents on the Russian-Japanese War: the Source Critical Review

The article presents a source critical overview of published ego-documents on the Russian–Japanese War of 1904–1905 that are recorded in the Nauchnaya Sibirika database of the State Public Scientific and Technical Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPSTL SB RAS). Basing on E. V. Kodan’s three- aspect methodology (informational, biographical, and communicative analysis), it examines a corpus of 42 publications (19 memoirs, 17 diaries, and 6 collections of letters). The article focuses not only on genre typology but also on the critical assessment of the corpus’s representativeness within the chosen source database. It shows that different strategies of narrative construction (post-factual rationalization in memoirs, the sociolinguistic specificity of diaries, and filtering mechanisms in the publication of letters) require different approaches to source critical analysis and interpretation. It is demonstrated that memoirs tend to shift reconstruction toward diachronic reflection, whereas diaries and letters provide access to a synchronic perspective of the war. Despite the corpus’s limitations, the identified set of sources establishes reference points for further in-depth analysis of the personal dimension of the Russian- Japanese War and makes it possible to refine existing historiographical approaches to interpreting this conflict.

1. Golubinov YaA (2019) Ego-documents as a way of constructing personal and family history: the case of Peter and Mikhail Gerasimov. Genesis: istoricheskie issledovaniya 12: 1–9. (In Russ.)].

2. Zaretskii YuP (2021) Ego-documents of the Soviet era: terms, historiography, methodology. Neprikosnovennyi zapas: debaty o politike i kul`ture 137 (3): 184–199. (In Russ.)].

3. Surzhikova NV [et al.] (eds) (2014) History in ego-documents: research and sources. Yekaterinburg: AsPUr. (In Russ.)].

4. Kodan EV (2017) Sources of personal origin in the study of the history of the Soviet state and law: theoretical methodological foundations of research. Universum Juris: nauch. electron. zhurn. 1. (In Russ.)]. URL: https://www.universum-juris.org/?q=ru/node/32 (дата обращения = accessed 22.09.2025).

5. Mandrinina LA (2024) The Great Patriotic War in the diary entries of Siberians: an analysis of the ego-document corpus. Trudy GPNTB SO RAN 2: 9–17. (In Russ.)]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.20913/2618-7515-2024-2-9-17

6. Mandrinina LA and Soloviev NA (2024) The Civil War in the ego-documents of the participants of the White movement in Siberia. Professional’noe obrazovanie v sovremennom mire 14 (4): 732–745. (In Russ.)]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.20913/2618-7515-2024-4-19

7. Mandrinina LA and Soloviev NA (2023) Ego-documents of Siberians on the history of the Great Patriotic War: document flow analysis. Bibliosfera 4: 67–79. (In Russ.)]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.20913/1815-3186-2023-4-67-79

8. Posadskov AL (2023) Evolution of the repertoire of military ego-document publications in modern Russia (1990s – 2020s). Trudy GPNTB SO RAN 4: 32–39. (In Russ.)]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.20913/2618-7515-2023-4-32-39

9. Posadskov AL (2023) Ego-documents of the Great Patriotic War: problems of identification, attribution and publication (based on materials from Siberia). X Yudinskie chteniya: materialy Vseros. nauch.-prakt. konf. (Krasnoyarsk, 11–12 okt. 2023 g.). Krasnoyarsk, pp. 210–221. (In Russ.)].

10. Tartakovsky AG (1980) 1812 and Russian memoirs: experience of source study. Moscow: Nauka. (In Russ.)].

11. Filatova NM (2018) Approaches to the study of ego documents in modern historical science in the light of the «linguistic turn». Dokument i «dokumental’noe» v slavyanskikh kul’turakh: mezhdu podlinnym i mnimym: sb. nauch. tr. Moscow, pp. 24–40. (In Russ.)]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31168/0402-2.2

12. Dekker R (ed.) (2002) Egodocuments and history: autobiographical writing in its social context since the Middle Ages. Hilversum: Verloren.