The dissertation is devoted to the development, analysis, and assessment of the informational and scientific possibilities of the peasant memoir sources of Southern Ukraine of the 20th century as a source of the history of the region in the second half of the 18th and 20th centuries. The research was conducted in compliance with the principles of objectivity, historicism and multifactoriality. Philosophical (dialectical, hermeneutics) and general scientific (analysis, synthesis, induction, typology, statistical) methods are adapted to the needs of source research. A number of special-historical methods (heuristics, historical-comparative, textological, biographical) were used. The dissertation analyzes the following types of personal sources: diaries, memoirs "modern stories", memoirs "autobiographies". In addition to memoirs, the source base of the research was made up of archival sources (materials of investigative cases, autobiographies), published epistolary sources and memories of military and political figures of the 20th century. The total source base is 133 items. In the analysis of the historiography of the problem, it is determined that the question of the prerequisites for the development of peasant memoirs allows us to distinguish two directions of research: specialized research on the issues of memoirs and peasant memoirs in particular; scientific works developing socio-economic, political, etc. topics related to the history of Southern Ukraine that allow you to form an idea of the historical processes that took place in the region. However, attention is drawn to the fact that until now there are no special source studies devoted to the comprehensive analysis of peasant memoir materials as a source for the history of Southern Ukraine in the mid-18th-20th centuries in the national historiography. An important direction of the dissertation research concerns the term "peasant memoirs". In particular, the development of criteria that would allow us to distinguish the memoirs of peasants from the personal sources of other social groups. Accordingly, based on the experience gained by domestic and foreign researchers, we can define the main criteria that allow us to classify peasant memoir sources of Southern Ukraine of the 20th century by type, albeit conditionally. As a result of the analysis of the historiography and the source base, one of the main criteria in the construction of the classification scheme is the educational factor, as one of the main elements, which allows the author of the source to be assigned to the group of peasant memoirs. A significant part of the research concerns the derivation of typical features of peasant memoir sources. The fact that in the matter of the type classification of the sources of peasant memoirs, we can single out, as the main feature, the blurring of forms and the combination of features corresponding to different types of sources in one text is particularly noteworthy. Accordingly, the application of specific classification schemes to some extent depends on the goals and tasks that researchers set for themselves. Thus, the approach to the classification of peasant memoir sources, namely the division into memoirs of "modern stories", memoirs-autobiographies, diaries, such as have or do not have primary sources, has an applied and at the same time conditional character. The main part of the dissertation is devoted to identifying the source potential of peasant memoir sources. Peasant memoirs of Southern Ukraine provide the researcher with significant information opportunities in the study of social, international and family relations, issues of household organization and housing. We have no less valuable historical information from these sources in the field of public leisure, folk traditions, rituals and calendar holidays. Peasant authors provide unique ethnographic materials, some of which are absent in works of classical ethnology. Peasant memoir sources contain information that is often absent in other types of sources. It is stated that the significant scientific and informative potential and high representativeness of materials of peasant memoir origin, which creates potential perspectives of learning about the past and gives the opportunity to represent many aspects of the socio-economic, spiritual and everyday life of Southern Ukraine. The study of peasant memoir sources that appeared during the 20th century and their wide involvement in historical research allows us to reflect historical reality as faithfully as possible, to reproduce in more detail and vividly both individual events and characteristic features of the era or individual personalities. Within the framework of this study, work was carried out on identifying, classifying, determining the type of peasant memoir sources of the 20th century in Southern Ukraine, creating the "image" of a peasant historian-amateur...
