Officers of Peter the Great's army according to the skazki‘s of the military college and the heraldmaster's office of the senate: a comparative analysis of evidence from the early and second half of the 1720s.

Introduction. The study of the Russian nobility of the Peter the Great era is often complicated by the lack of sources created directly by the nobles. Therefore, researchers have to study noble identities and aspirations through interpretations of their actions. Nevertheless, there is a set of documents created from the words of the nobles – skazki. Skazki‘s reflect various aspects of the life of serving nobles and can be used for a comprehensive study. At the same time, it is important to find out how much we can trust these testimonies. Materials and methods . The basis of the research is the skazki‘s of the Military College, collected in 1720-1721, as well as the skazki‘s of the Senate Heraldmaster's Office collected in 1726-1728. The skazki‘s of the same people are studied, which makes it possible to trace the changes that took place in the lives of officers, as well as to see the transformations in the description of reality that also occurred during the 1720s. An important task is also to verify information, to assess the correspondence of information from earlier skazki‘s to the data that are present in later skazki‘s. Results. Most of skazki‘s, in particular those related to the beginning of service, service regiments, literacy and social origin, coincide in both tales. Despite this, there are also less reliable indicators. These include information about the years of promotion and the nobles who approved the promotion. Indicators of the property status and counties where nobles were own estates reflect the dynamics. In our case, the main trend is to improve the property status of officers. It has been established that officers in different skazki‘s could call different nobles involved in the same promotion, and in some cases do not mention any of them. Changes in the self-identification of officers are shown, at least in the public sphere. The high literacy of the officers is shown. Conclusion. The author concludes that the skazki‘s of officers are a complex source, different indicators of which have different reliability. Nevertheless, for some in-dicators, skazki‘s can be considered to reflect reality, and actively used in research. If the information given by the officer in the skazki for different years differs, it is necessary to look for the reason for such a difference. Moreover, the reason may be not only forgetfulness. Based on the discrepancy between the data on the involvement of nobles in different skazki‘s to the same appointment of an officer, it is assumed that such differences purposefully appear. In addition, based on the research data and additional materials, the dynamism of the concept of "gentry" for the 1720s is shown. All this indicates that the officers were active actors in the process of creating skazki‘s.