Specifics of the narrative about the rulers in Russian memoirs of the 20s - 70s of the 18th century

The paper considers the ways of authors’ self-representation concerning the presentation of the figure of the ruler in Russian memoirs of the 18th century. The memoirs of the 20s - 50s tend to combine personal and impersonal narrative with the predominance of the latter. This combination makes the view of events seem objective. Memoirists do not make value judgments about rulers and describe only facts. However, even in an impersonal narrative, memoirists, being former participants or witnesses of the described events, cannot avoid making judgments about various figures of their era. In the 60s and 70s, authors mostly used personal narrative and noticed any shortcomings of the reigning characters. In some cases, memoirists justify and explain them by the harmful influence of the courtier environment or do not recognize them as particularly serious. In other cases, shortcomings in public administration or wrong actions of the monarch are seen as a direct consequence of his personality. Memoirists, whose personal formation, as a rule, was in the time of Peter the Great (Neplyuev, Shakhovskaya), think about the figure of the sovereign as of an absolute super-personal value. Obviously, this personal value came to be devalued in the minds of people of the post-Petrine era and/or those personally affected by the rule of a monarch (Dolgorukaya, Minikh). The process of memoir individualization occurs during this period simultaneously in two directions - of the subject of the utterance and the object of description.

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