HISTORICAL SOURCES ON THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE CANTEMIR FAMILY. CURRENT STATE AND PERSPECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH

Among the distinctive features of contemporary cantemirology, the most obvious is the absence of minimal research and analysis of sources and documents. One of the causes of these gaps is the dispersion in space and time of documents that reflect the life and work of him and his family members. On the other side, there is an enormous amount of information not included in the circuit of researching the biography of the private and official life of D. Cantemir or, which has been too little studied. These are the numerous documents kept in the archives of Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Austria, Sweden, and other countries, which could shed light on the discovery of those events in the life of the Moldovan ruler vaguely or not at all known. The present report is dedicated to the current state and perspectives of the research of historical sources regarding the biography of the Cantemir and his relativs. Along with the analysis of the published documents, a description is made of the materials from the archives, accumulated by the author during last 40 years.