Traditional sources for identifying and studying the facts of the biographies of historical figures of the Early Modern period and the Age of Enlightenment are mainly the official records of various genres and private business correspondence deposited in archives. As a rule, these sources reveal information about the official career and family ties of the studied personalities. However, with rare exceptions, they do not allow to cover and clarify many aspects of their inner spiritual life and creativity. This is the state of the sources related to the study of the life and work of one of the most prominent Greek translators in Russia in the 18th century, Stefan Ivanovich Pisarev (c. 1708 — c. 1775). There are official sources testifying to his official career in the Collegium of Foreign Affairs and The Holy Synod, but information about the numerous works of Greek spiritual literature translated by Pisarev, with few exceptions, has not been preserved in office records. This situation is not accidental, since Pisarevs creative activity was for the most part his personal initiative, and he carried out many translations outside his official duties. Therefore, sources that are usually considered within the framework of book and archaeographical research and that are not quite traditional for prosopographical study are of crucial importance for the reconstruction of the translators biography. These are printed books and manuscripts that once constituted Pisarevs personal collection. The present study is devoted to the study of these very books and manuscripts attributed to Stefan Pisarev, identified in various collections in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kazan. Together, these sources allow us not only to add to the corpus of Stefan Ivanovich Pisarevs translations, but also to reveal previously unknown facts of his biography.
Jamilia Ramazanova (Wed,) studied this question.