Personal files of participants in Polish uprising of 1863-1864 in State Archives of Dnipropetrovsk Region: source analysis and information potential

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to introduce to the scientific circulation the archival complex of personal files of the participants in the Polish uprising of 1863-1864, which are stored in the State Archives of the Dnipropetrovsk Region in order to present their informational possibilities for the study of regional history, social and revolutionary movements in the Russian Empire, everyday history, historical urbanism. The complex was formed as a result of the amnesty of the participants in the uprising, who were transferred from Siberian penal servitude and exiled to the European part of the empire, in particular to the Katerynoslav province. The methodological basis of the work became the source science approaches to the analysis and presentation of archival complexes. This provided an opportunity to outline the external parameters (number of cases, their volume, chronological framework, genre repertoire, thematic blocks) and set tasks for the archeographic, historiographical and source research development of this complex. An important methodological guideline was also the contextual approach, which determined the research optics aimed at including information resources in the broadest problem-thematic and interdisciplinary spaces. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time a significant complex of archival sources is introduced into scientific circulation, the informational potential of which is able to significantly change the perception of the ways of the formation of the Polish diaspora in the South of Ukraine, to expand the card index of the participants in the Polish uprising of 1863 and to reconstruct their fate after the Siberian exile, to integrate a new archival array to numerous problematic and interdisciplinary contexts. Conclusions. 29 personal files of the participants in the January Uprising, discovered in the State Archives of the Dnipropetrovsk Region, belong to the last quarter of the 19th century. They were formed as a result of the bureaucratic activity of the Katerynoslav governor’s office. The cases are of an official nature and consist of written communication between the authorities and the exiles regarding the conditions of stay, various needs and interaction between them. The information saturation of the complex indicates the prospect of introducing it into scientific circulation by preparing an archeographic publication.

Keywords

• archival matter, historical source studies, polish uprising of 1863-1864, regional history of ukraine in the 19th century, imperial history, history of poland, state archives of the dnipropetrovsk region, historical biography of the 19th century.