History of Russia’s debt (based on materials from the personal archive of V. I. Bovykin)

Abstract

The object of this research is the analysis of the personal archives of Russian historians. The subject of this research is the examination of the personal archive of Professor Valery Ivanovich Bovykin, preserved in the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library since 1998. Leaning on the aforementioned sources, the article explores the history of the project “The Fate of Russia's Debt”, which was among unaccomplished plans of the scholar. The author attempted to assess the role of V. I. Bovykin in project organization on studying Russia's debts in the early XX century. The article touches upon the topic of discovery of the scholar’s laboratory, his archive for finding new scientific historical knowledge. The author analyzes how the Professor's personal archive allows following the process of creating the project infrastructure, since all the materials on the project were accumulated by the scholar, which defines the novelty of this work. It is revealed that the project of V. I. Bovykin was against the foreign policy conducted by the Russian Federation in the 1990s. The conclusion is made that the key components of the scientific method, followed by Valery Ivanovich Bovykin in his research, imply a solid empirical base, as well as advancing the topic to the international level.