Kravchenko-Berezhnoy's book Between the white and the red as a historical source and an author's text

The aim of the article is to determine the sociocultural significance of R. A. Kravchenko-Berezhnoy’s memoirs as a historical source and literary work. Kravchenko-Berezhnoy is best known as the author of a diary, which he kept when he was a young boy living in Western Ukraine occupied by Nazi Germany. This diary was used at the Nuremberg trials among other evidence against the Nazi war criminals. It became part of a book of memoirs that was written during the post-Soviet period. This book of memoirs is analyzed in the context of various problems of the humanities, related to the typology, specific characteristics, and literary diversity of ego-documents (personal narratives) serving as historical sources. The article investigates the content and structure of the autobiographical book of memoirs Between the White and the Red. The information capacity of this source is significant for studying the chronicle of events, the ethnosocial situation in the occupied city, the genocide of the Jews, everyday life during the war, the history of the family of Russian emigrants, as well as for understanding the processes of a Russian intellectual’s personal formation in specific historical and cultural contexts of the XX century. The author makes a conclusion that the book is a valuable resource for historical, anthropological and literary studies.