The study of the historical space of the South Coast of Crimea, which underwent signifi cant economic, social and cultural transformations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, has received a new impetus in recent years. This can be attributed to several factors. First is the importance of comprehensively reconstructing the history of Crimea as the primary “place of memory” of modern Russia. Second — ongoing debates about the nature of changes in the life of Russian society in that period. Third — significant developments in methodology and historiography, including the “memorial” and “sociocultural” turns. Finally, new opportunities for source research, that have arisen due to the large-scale digitization of Russian archives and museum collections. This article represents a continuation of the author’s series of works on the subject of the history of dacha resorts on the South Coast of Crimea. This series of works culminated in the monograph Dachas and Summerfolk of the Russian Riviera. Essays on the History of the South Coast of Crimea and Sevastopol in the Early Twentieth Century (2024). The present article is noteworthy as it introduces and analyses for the fi rst time paperwork documentation that has been preserved in the papers of the eminent scientist V.I. Vernadsky. This documentation is deposited in his fund in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences and relates to the existence of Batiliman, the dacha resort of “intellectual labourers” in the west of the South Coast of Crimea (the present-day territory of the city of Sevastopol) in 1911–1920. The history of this dacha resort, whose shareholders included prominent scientists, writers, artists, and leaders of the Cadet Party, has been reconstructed in the literature in fragments, primarily from ego-sources, i.e. memoirs and diaries. The complete list of shareholders has remained unknown, whereas it included K.S. Stanislavsky, I.Ya. Bilibin, V.G. Korolenko, P.N. Milyukov, M.I. Petrunkevich and other prominent fi gures. The documents from the V.I. Vernadsky’s fund, among others the map of the dacha resort’s boundaries, the list of plot owners and other materials, allowed, when used together with documents from the State Archive of the Republic of Crimea, as well as sources of personal origin and visual documents, to establish for the first time reliably the composition of the dacha residents of Batiliman, the history of the creation of the resort, and to systematize the data for further research.

Z.G. Morozova — wife of the entrepreneur and philanthropist S.T. Morozov and later of the Moscow governor A.A. Reinbot — left a marked imprint on the cultural, charitable, and business life of Moscow and Russia in the early twentieth century. For the first time, the authors have read Morozova’s memoirs in their entirety, provided commentary, prepared them for publication (2025), and introduced them into scholarly circulation on the basis of manuscript drafts preserved in the holdings of the A.A. Bakhrushin Central State Theatre Museum. Alongside the memoirs, seven letters from Morozova to O.L. Knipper-Chekhova, written between 1902 and 1939, have been published from the collections of the Moscow Art Theatre Museum, together with visual materials from several Moscow museums. The article offers a source-critical characterization of this editorial work and outlines further prospects for research and for increasing the informational yield of the published materials. The chronological horizon of the ego-document corresponds to one of the most contested periods in Russian history: the final decades of imperial Russia, the eve of the events of 1917, and the years that followed. Morozova’s memoirs feature political and public figures, writers, artists, and actors who formed the elite of Russia’s Silver Age culture. The perceptive, at times incisive, and often ironic — occasionally unexpected — observations and judgments of an influential and intelligent woman about her era, its protagonists, and its prevailing moods will undoubtedly contribute to a fuller understanding of this watershed time, with all its conflicts and contradictions. The work with Morozova’s memoirs is conducted within the framework of the biographical method, an approach that privileges the discovery and appropriation of sources capable not only of reconstructing the past but also of representing it. Ego-documents are treated here as micronarratives of self and time, registering individual responses to historical landscapes changing before their eyes; assessing their informational potential, in turn, enriches historical knowledge with the emotional and psychological apprehension of the past.