«THESE NOTES SHOULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN IN BLOOD, NOT INK»: PETER ALABIN’S CORRESPONDENCE FROM BESIEGED SEVASTOPOL

The name of Pyotr Vladimirovich Alabin is widely known as the historiographer of the Crimean War and the initiator of the creation of the Sevastopol Defense Museum. Throughout the campaign, he kept a frontline diary, which academician E. V. Tarle considered «truthful and precious to the historian». However, officer Alabin wrote notes not only as material for a future military historian, but also to inform his contemporary about what was happening in the theater of military operations. He created his diary not only as a military memoirist, but also as a journalist. The study of the Alabin’s correspondence in the leading information resource of the Russian Empire – the newspaper «Severnaya Pchela», allows to expand the understanding of the journalistic searches of the Crimean War period as the time of the origin and rapid development of Russian military journalism. This article analyzes Alabin’s correspondence from besieged Sevastopol and establishes their main feature – cinematography.