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Abstract

This paper explores the religious self-identification of historians based on their autobiographical writings. In particular, it dwells upon autobiographies of scholars of different generations who taught at the universities of the Russian Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The paper provides an analysis of various strategies used by the authors of autobiographies to create a religious identity: the complete disregard for questions of faith; the description of rituals; the reflection on the state of the clergy of various confessions and religions; the desire to give a representation of their religious beliefs – deep religious feelings, religious doubts, atheistic views, which often led to reflections on the influence of these beliefs on their scholarly activity. This approach allows us to identify some features of the worldview of the educated part of Russian society in this period generally and distinguish markers of identity that determined the writers’ strategies: family, professional community (places of service, positions, status etc.) and socio-historical context.