PRODUCTS OF OLD BELIEVER PRINTING HOUSES OF THE LATE 19th — EARLY 20th CENTURIES AS A HISTORICAL SOURCE IN THE STUDY OF THEIR ACTIVITY

Handwritten and early printed books of the Cyrillic tradition are an independent type of sources due to the peculiarities of their creation and existence. Information recorded in main texts, convoys, records, decor, and external design can provide a specialist with the most interesting information not only from the history of culture, but also from the socio-political and economic life of society, which is not reflected in documentary sources or significantly supplements and corrects them. The article shows how the source analysis of book artefacts works in reconstructing the history of printed book production of the Old Believers of the Bespopovtsy denomination of the late 19th — early 20th centuries, associated with the name of the Vyatka book publisher L. A. Grebnev. Analysis of a wide range of publications from four printing houses enabled to formulate several conclusions. However, the complex patterns of relationships between publishers revealed during this analysis and successive nature of typographic materials force some of the proposed interpretations of events to be considered as hypotheses with varying degrees of argumentation, which require continued research with additional identification of publications and their examination. The close relationships between printing houses significantly complicates the attribution of their products. Such work requires a comprehensive analysis of fonts, decor and taking into account the history of book printing, which poses the most important task for specialists: the creation of reference literature that facilitates the attribution of Old Believer publications of the second half of the 19th — early 20th centuries, but this must be preceded by a difficult period of source study work.