TWO RUSSIAN ANONYMOUS WRITERS OF THE TURN OF THE XVII-XVIII CENTURIES

Two anonymous manuscripts about the acquaintance of Russians with European countries in the Petrine epoch received a “mirror image” of the interests of historians. For more than two centuries, “The Journal o Shestvii v Evropejskie Kraia” [“The Journal of The European Countries Travel”], written by a participant in the Great SHAPE \* MERGEFORMAT E mbassy, has caused lively disputes about authorship, since his autograph, the protograph and copies of Petrine epoch have not yet been found. The author of the article draws attention to the need to study the copies of The Journal, identifying examples of faulty The Journals' publications that were used for its attribution. The argumentation of new hypotheses about the authorship of the Journal (as a compilation of works by contemporaries; authorship by A. P. Izmailov or Prince P. A. Golitsyn) is studied. It is proposed to consider the biographies of other ‘spal'niki' that had anything to do with early ambassadorial practice, in particular, the biography of the I. S. Potemkin, the grandson of P. I. Potemkin, the famous ambassador to Spain, France and England. The author concluded that it is advisable to take an integrated approach to reconstructing the history of The Journal text. Another manuscript is almost unknown “Opisanie Gollandskoi zemli” [“Description of the Land of Holland”], was preserved in the original, however, without causing an eruption of copiess, did not receive responses from contemporaries and descendants. For the fi rst time, a preliminary attribution of the “Opisanie“ is proposed. The author of the article assumes that the manuscript was created in the early years of the XVIII century by one of the participants of the Russian embassy in Holland, headed by the A. A. Matveev.