Books in the History of the Ideological and Creative Self Determination of the Russian Enlightener Yakov Abramov (Based on Archival Research). Article 1. The Role of Books in the Formation of the Creative Individuality of Yakov Abramov, a Populism Ideologist and Writer

Based on the material of archival research, the author examines the reading circle and the role of books in shaping the worldview and the positions of the democratic enlightenment of Yakov Abramov. Abramov was a theorist and practitioner of a culturalist trend in the reformist populism of the 1880s-1890s, a prose writer and publicist. The author aims to determine the genesis of Abramov's educational intentions and his philosophy of social evolutionism for his name and activities are connected with the second stage of the populist “going to the people”, “going to the great cultural work”. The origins of Abramov's social programs and educational ideas are found in social, scientific and artistic literature, which he independently studied as a high school student and a student of the Caucasian Theological Seminary (1873-1877). Books played a decisive role in the ideological and creative development of the future populist ideologist. The main criterion for evaluating books was their usefulness for the mental, spiritual, moral development of the people, the availability of presentation, and the significance for the sociocultural progress of society as a whole. A certain tendency is observed in how Abramov selected books: natural scientific research dominated among scientific literature, while among fiction and sociological publications it was books in which their authors' progressive social and democratic orientation were clearly expressed. Fixing the essence of what a text contains in terms of its social and aesthetic functions, Abramov analyzed the methodological guidelines of the authors, pointed out the real possibilities of using the cognitive qualities of a particular publication in a particular reading environment or in order to fulfill the educational needs of an emerging personality. From the point of view of epistemological resources and reception qualities in his youth, Abramov gave priority to scientific texts over fiction, which is explained by his belief in the power of scientific knowledge. Abramov relied on forms and methods aimed at accomplishing the tasks of socio-moral and general cultural progressive development, actualizing the genres of journalism, literary criticism, popular science and documentary literature. Wide readership in the field of research summarizing the nature of many spheres of modern society and the first experiments of Abramov's statistical reviews yielded fruitful results: the populist educator would later inspire many publishing projects, including the Life of Remarkable People series, promote public education in every possible way, open libraries, publish popular science essays, brochures, books for national reading, statistical works, etc. Abramov's reading circle of the time when his democratic worldview had been shaping largely determined the connection between the theoretical substantiation and the practical implementation of the sociocultural program of “work among the people”.

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