Image of everyday historical thinking of external gymnasium students in the autobiographies of the early XX century

The intensification of the study of historical culture contributes to the formation of new problem fields and the search for new study sources. The use of historiographical source studies methods for investigating historical consciousness has shown the information potential of educational essays (reports) on historical topics. This draws attention to biographies (autobiographies) of external students, presented for passing the gymnasium maturity tests (final examinations). It reveals the image of everyday historical thinking in the autobiography of an external student A. F. Diesperov (1903). Applying source studies methods to the conditions for creating the autobiography enabled to classify it as a record keeping document. The use of historical concepts, not prescribed by documentary norms, in the process of the external student’s self-determination is regarded as a phenomenon of ordinary historical thinking. The student’s use of the concepts “historical point of view” and “historical perspective”, as well as the ideas about different modes of time were his usual way of thinking. The set of historical concepts recorded in the autobiography presents a reliable image of the author’s historical thinking. It leads to the suggestion that the significance of external students’ autobiographies in the corpus of sources for studying the historical culture of modern times is determined by the combination of characteristics specific to record keeping documents and sources of personal origin, which makes it possible to reasonably separate reasoning activity from the imitating practices.