Service on a train of the All-Russian Union of Cities in K. G. Paustovsky’s autobiographical book “Story of a Life”

The study aims to establish the autobiographical basis of a number of chapters in K. G. Paustovsky’s “Story of a Life”. The article examines the book “Restless Youth” (the second part of the autobiographical cycle), which reflects the writer’s service as a medical orderly on trains of the All-Russian Union of Cities, as well as his diaries, correspondence, and essays. The scientific originality of the research lies in the fact that, as a result of the analysis of the mentioned sources, the degree of autobiographical authenticity of the chapters from the book “Restless Youth” narrating the beginning of the First World War was established for the first time. While the events of late December 1914 and later times are reflected in the writer’s diaries and correspondence, the first months of the war are recreated only in the literary autobiography. The study established the following: the limited number of sources allows us to assert that in the novella, the events of October-December 1914 are stretched to the spring of 1915, but have a real basis. It is also evident that Paustovsky participated in the retreat of the Russian army in the summer-autumn of 1915. Valuable is the information reflected in the novella about the life of the sanitary train team, and the image of the heartland of Russia, first seen by Paustovsky then, is both biographically and artistically significant. Despite the fact that the events of the spring-autumn of 1915 are more fully reflected in ego-documents and formed the basis of two essays published in 1915, it is not possible to establish the reliability of particular facts reflected in the autobiographical novella.