The article considers works of pre-revolutionary authors, who used their memories as sources for studying the history of private education in Russia in the 18th century. The first person to address this subject was Academician P. Pekarsky. His article was published in 1855 in the Sovremennik journal; there he summarized the information about studying at home which was available in the memoirs of N. Dolgoruky, M. Danilov, A. Bolotov, Yu. Dolgoruky, E. Dashkova, I. Timkovsky. In 1826, Professor of Moscow University S. Soloviev published Volume 26 of Istoriya Rossii s drevneyshikh vremen [History of Russia from the Ancient Times]. He gave information from Zapiski [Notes] of G. Derzhavin about the activities of the boarding-school of convict Rose in Orenburg as an example. Teacher M. Demkov wrote Istoriya russkoy pedagogii [The History of Russian Pedagogy] in 1896, where he characterized the state of education in Russia in the first part of the 18th century and used the excerpts from the memoirs of M. Danilov and A. Bolotov. In a separate chapter, the author reviewed the memoirs of D. Fonvizin and G. Derzhavin. A teacher of the Bestouzhev courses, E. Shchepkina, published a book Starinnye pomeshchiki na sluzhbe i doma [Old Landlords in Public Service and at Home], in which she went into the question at large about the nobles' home education in the 18th century. Her book was based on the memoirs of A. Bolotov. The new era in the development of Russian historiography began in the last quarter of the 19th century which was characterized by the approval of positivism. One of the representatives was Professor of Moscow State University V. Klyuchevsky. In 1904, he used the memoirs of Smolensk nobleman L. Engelhardt for describing the private education of that time. The most detailed study of private education and of the value of memoirs as history sources was in the works of N. Chechulin (Privat-Docent of the History and Philology Faculty of St. Petersburg University). In 1920, he published a chapter from his book Vospitanie i domashnee obuchenie v Rossii v XVIII v. [Education and Home Schooling in Russia in the 18th Century] in the Dela i Dni journal. Unfortunately, he could not complete the work during his lifetime. It was published in 2010. The monograph consists of three books, in which the last one is devoted to the life of the nobility. A special chapter is devoted to the problems of education and upbringing, which begins with a section about primary education. Chechulin noted that the small number of public schools had stimulated the progress of private education. Based on memoirs, he cited data on the number of boarding-schools, number of students there, curriculum and methods of education in the capitals at the end of the 18th century. The author based on a wide range of memoirs such as G. Derzhavin's, V. Khvostov's, N. Levshin's, S. Protasev's, A. Bolotov's, I. Lopukhin's, etc. Summing up, it should be noted that the study of memoirs as sources on the history of private education in Russia in the 18th - early 20th centuries was only forming. This subject was discussed only in a few historical and pedagogical works as most part of research on the history of education was devoted to the study of public schools.
