CHRONICLE-WRITING IN THE LOWER VOLGA REGION BETWEEN THE 18th AND 19th CENTURIES AS A SOCIOCULTURAL PHENOMENON

This article considers works on the history of towns in the Lower Volga region written by the locals between the 18th and 19th centuries and referred to as chronicles in the historiography. The authors aim to trace the history behind the creation of the said works, characterise their genre features, and determine their role in the formation of historical consciousness in the region's population. The research relies on the principles of historicism and objectivity, using textual, historical-genetic, and historical-comparative methods. The works in question are highly heterogeneous in terms of their form and content, the topics they touch upon, and the methods of dealing with sources and other criteria. However, they share a lot of features that make it possible to attribute them to one genre of local chronicle which developed between the 18th and the mid-19th centuries. The textological analysis demonstrates that none of the works considered was called a chronicle by their authors. They were characterised as chronicles in later epochs. The historians who came into possession of the sources and published them described the documents as chronicles to draw the readers' attention to the fact that the sources they referred to were ancient and followed the old tradition of chronicle-writing. The majority of works analysed were popular with locals: they were copied and kept in municipal institutions and home libraries. Due to the fact that local print media did not exist in these towns and other forms of communicating information were underdeveloped, the chronicles that circulated around these territories became the main source of historical information. Five out of six works considered in the article were authored by Orthodox clergymen, which testifies to the special role played by the Orthodox clergy in the formation of historical consciousness among the population in the Lower Volga region. In the mid-19th century, the region was going through rapid social and economic development, which helped modernise the sociocultural space of its towns. This, in its turn, conditioned the emergence of newer forms of interpreting the past that were more acceptable to modern academic criteria.