V. N. Lyaskovsky and his book about the emperor Alexander III

The article is dedicated to the unpublished book by Valery Lyaskovsky «Emperor Alexander III. Personal Biography Experience». The article examines the idea and history of creation by Lyaskovsky of the biography of Alexander III, analyzes the content of the book, the methodology and historiosophy by which the author was guided. Despite the fact that Lyaskovsky, while working on the biography of Alexander III, managed to interview the closest employees and relatives of the Tsar, his book turned out to be relatively poor in factual content due to the censorship conditions of the time and the author’s uncritical approach to the hero of his story. Nevertheless, the unpublished work of Lyaskovsky is of some interest for revealing the author’s own worldview and his search for non-standard methods of historical and biographical research. For the beginning of the XX century, his book had an innovative, experimental character and, if published, could have had an impact on the development of the biographical genre of the Russian literature of the Silver Age.