«Stores» to draw Information from: Notion of «Historical Source» in Works of 18th Century Russian Historians

The author considers the process of introduction of the notion «historical source» in the conceptual-terminological system of the historical science in the 18th century. In the first half of the 18th century the word «source» meant the beginning of something. Therefore it wasn't used by historians to designate historical materials, on which their works were based. In 1750 G.F. Muller laid the foundation of the semantic transformation of this notion: «source» is something to draw information from. At the beginning of the 19th century A.L. Schlozer finally assigned the function of information carrier to the notion «source» - everything from which one can get historical information.

historical source, V.N. Tatischev, G.F. Muller, Kh.A. Chebotaryov, I.I. Go-likov, M.M. Scherbatov, I.N. Boltin, A.L. Schlozer, N.M. Karamzin, V.O. Klyuchevsky