Izvestiya of Saratov University.
ISSN 1819-4907 (Print)
ISSN 2542-1913 (Online)


Katherine I

Nikita Petrovich Villebois: two versions of biography

This article is devoted to one of the most mysterious and notorious sources on history of Peter I’s times. It is so called «Villebois’s memoirs». The author compares «autobiographic» story of the «memoir» with the real biography of the French at the Russian service Nikita Petrovich Villebois (1674–1760) and comes to the conclusion, that Villebois couldn’t write the memoir himself. The «autobiographic» part of «Villebois memoirs» is to be published in Russian for the first time.