Inquiring mind: existential origins of scientific autobiography of Aron Ya. Gurevich

The article is focused on the methodological experience of Aron Ya Gurevich, one of the prominent Russian historians of the XXth - the beginning of XXIst century. The analysis of his works and unprecedented autobiography allows to point out the fragile and very fruitful balance of epistemological motivations of the historian. He problematizes historical knowledge to the extent of its free rationality. New historical knowledge turns out to be a dialogical one in relation to its former images that ought to be revised but leave a value- rational basis of historical studies intact. It is here, Gurevich believes, that we are to look for the new questions that can be addressed to historical sources, documents of history.