Sisters of mercy on the First World War: on materials of the autodocumentary texts

The article deals with the diaries of the sister of mercy, Yulia Vladimirovna Boutorova (1885-1946), recorded in 1914-1916 on the South-Western front, and published memoirs of the participants of the World War I. On the basis of auto-documentary sources, the author examines the composition of the sisters of wartime, the young women’s motives for the admission to the sanitary service. The features of the diary as a historical source allowed us to analyze how the perception of Julia Boutorova and her environment changes in extreme conditions. The author also managed to identify a significant number of persons mentioned by the author in the diary and to partially trace their post-war fate.