Establishing the authorship of the diaries of the Second Pacific squadron sailors

Russian sailors wrote several diaries during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Some of them, for various reasons, did not mention the names of their authors. To partially solve this pertinent research issue, the article examines the diaries of “unidentified persons” who served in the Second Pacific Squadron under the command of Vice Admiral Z. P. Rozhestvensky in order to recover their names. Using the diary entries, in which the authors revealed the facts of their biography, the authors made the conclusions about the hypothetical authorship of the diaries. Attention was also drawn to the names of seamen mentioned in the diaries in the third person, because excluding them made it possible to narrow the range of possible authors. Five diaries were studied, where there were mentioned four names of the possible authors of the manuscripts. The information obtained about the authors of these sources expanded what was already known about these diaries and about the events of the Russo-Japanese War in general. The successful attribution enabled using the diaries in the study of the biographies of Russian Navy sailors. The results of the research can be used by historians, archivist, librarians, and reference books or guidebooks compilers, which provides the sufficient level of the research novelty.