Письма Юрия Федоровича Самарина к графине Марии Федоровне Соллогуб (1864–1876)

Abstract

The present publication with comments includes the letters of Yuri Fedorovich Samarin to Countess Maria Fedorovna Sollogub (nee Samarina, the correspondent’s sister) in the period of 1864–1876. The special interest to the published materials is called for by the three circumstances: first, Samarin’s epistolary heritage of 1960– 1876 has been published only partially, in contrast to his correspondence of 1840–1850; second, due to family and spiritual kinship Samarin’s letters to his sister touch upon all aspects of his activities in the period, including his work in zemsky and city self-government bodies and preparatory work for foreign publications; third, due to the systematic character of the correspondence, the reader can see a kind of Samarin’s diary supplemented in the comments with extensive quotations from the letters to his younger brother Dmitry Fedorovich, with whom Samarin was especially close. In that way, Samarin’s letters to Countess Sollogub are important both as example of Russian intellectual history and as material on the history of Russian nobility daily life in the post-reform period that allows us to have a view of the life of one of the most well-known Russian families of that period.