“Strokes to the portrait”: the senior member of the Moscow City Duma N. P. Vishnyakov (1844–1927) on his contemporaries and himself (based on the materials of the personal archive)

Abstract

This article examines the informative capabilities of the body of materials from the personal archive of N. P. Vishnyakov for reconstructing the history of the senior member of the Moscow City Duma. Leaning on the historiography dedicated to the work with personal archive collections, as well as determining lacunas in the scientific literature, assessment is given to composition of the fund with emphasis on one of the varieties of sources stored therein – “Reminiscences of the Duma”, internal and external criticism of these materials. The example of N. P. Vishnyakov's “Reminiscences of the Duma” demonstrated the experience of development of the methods of archival studies, source studies, historiographical and specific-historical approaches towards examination of personal and family archives. Work with the body of materials from personal archive collections allows introducing the new historical sources into the scientific discourse. Based on the substantive analysis of the texts that comprise the source base of the article, the author attempts to reconstruct the everyday activity of the Moscow Duma, which draws interest of the historians in the context of sociopolitical history, as well as micro-historical analysis. The sources of N. P. Vishnyakov's personal archive bear the imprint of ego-documents, which allow reconstructing the actions “behind the scene” through the prism of personal relations and contracts of the founder, as well as direct participants of the historical process, including the figure of N. P. Vishnyakov.