K. N. Bestuzhev-Ryumin: socio-cultural significance of “living” sources of the past

For a long time historical science in its desire to achieve objectivity perceived legends, eyewitness accounts, memoirs and other “living” sources of the past as unreliable knowledge. The theorists of the St. Peters burg school of history at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were among the rst to draw attention to the socio cultural sense of “living” statements capable of storing and reproducing information from the past. The article highlights the research position of the Russian historian K. N. Bestuzhev Ryumin: from the scienti c point of view, legends and testimonies cannot be reliable sources; in the sociocultural sense, on the contrary, they are important for nding a “bridge” between the author of a text and its interpreter. It is con cluded that the course of Bestuzhev Ryumin's “Russian History” uses not only archaeological, material, legal, ethnographic sources, but also “living” discursive forms legends of olden times, the word of the chronicler, eyewitness accounts, memoirs, curiosities and other resources of the cultural memory of mankind.