At the end of the 19th century, the Decembrist Dmitry Irinarkhovich Zavalishin became a regular contributor to the «Historical Bulletin» almanac. As his relationship with the editor-in-chief S.N. Shubinsky was not always cloudless, the two engaged in an interesting correspondence exchange. This epistolary has not been published earlier and is a curious document of the era. Until now, it had been in the fund of S.N. Shubinsky stored in the Manuscript Department of the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg. It was there when Gali Vsevolodovna Nikolskaya, a long-term employee of the archival depository, conducted her research work with it for the first time. By a twist of fate, the letters by Zavalishin transcribed by her by hand together with her handwritten article ended up in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), which is where we got to know them. The letters by the Decembrist are interesting from the point of view of studying the history of journalism at the end of the 19th century. Nikolskaya's introductory article is also curious as she gives her textual comments and scientific assessments of Zavalishin's personality in there, as well as his journalistic activities. Written from the standpoint of a Soviet historian, her article provokes discussion involuntarily. The attitude of the historiography of those years towards the Decembrists as the initiators of the revolutionary movement in Russia is peculiar and requires a modern interpretation. That is why it is all the more important to introduce the unpublished letters by one of the famous Decembrists and an active journalist of the 1870s into scientific circulation, as well as to pay tribute to the memory of the researcher who prepared this material for publication 80 years ago, yet did not complete her important work.
D.I. Zavalishin; G.V. Nikolskaya; S.N. Shubinsky; «Historical Bulletin»; journalism of the 19th century; Decembrists.