The Constitution of the Republic of Belarus, this Code and the laws of the Republic of Belarus, decrees and edicts of the President of the Republic of Belarus (Art.1 Civil procedural code The Republic of Belarus)

Watch value Legislative Acts in other dictionaries

Acts of Mn. - 1. Scientific works, notes, journals published by scientific institutions (in The Russian state until 1917).
Efremova's explanatory dictionary

Civil Status Acts - - 1) the main events in a person's life, which are subject to mandatory registration with state authorities, records of A. g. With.
law binds occurrence,
........
Economic Dictionary

Labor Acts Native Local - regulatory legal acts adopted by the head of the company, firm with the participation of employees or their representatives. Local labor regulations regulate labor ........
Economic Dictionary

Legislative Decrees - - in Italy, Spain and some other states - the name of government acts (
President) having the force
laws issued
government (president) ........
Economic Dictionary

Legal Restrictions - government decisions aimed at
restriction of competition,
along with economic ones. Form barriers to competition, e.g.
patents,
restrictions ........
Economic Dictionary

Legislatures - the highest bodies of state power that have the right and are authorized to make laws.
Economic Dictionary

Legislative provisions on the division of the city into zones - Resolutions
municipality on dividing the city into administrative zones (
district) and the establishment of the boundaries of these zones. Such
division is introduced to facilitate ........
Economic Dictionary

Local Labor Regulations - See Labor Acts normative local
Economic Dictionary

Unlawful Acts Against Civil Aviation Safety — -
actions that threaten the safety of aircraft. According to
Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation ........
Economic Dictionary

Normative acts regulating labor relations in the Russian Federation - - the fundamental issues of labor relations are defined by the Constitution of the Russian Federation 1993. In accordance with Art. 37 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation
labor is free. Everyone has
right freely ........
Economic Dictionary

Organs Legislative - state bodies that have the right to develop, consider and adopt laws.
Economic Dictionary

Civil Status Acts - legal facts (birth, death, conclusion and dissolution of marriage, change of name, patronymic and surname), which are subject to registration in the bodies established by law (in the mayor's office, registry offices, etc.).
Big encyclopedic dictionary

Historical Acts - documents of a legal nature (contractual, contractual-legislative, contractual-administrative, etc.), one of the types of historical sources. Classified by specialists ........
Historical Dictionary

Acts of Martyrs - (Latin acta martyrum) or acts of saints (acta sanctorum), the name of the collections of the most ancient news about the martyrs. There are two types of such acts. The first type is represented by official ........
Historical Dictionary

Acts of the Saints - see Acts of Martyrs.
Historical Dictionary

"acts of Southern and Western Russia - "Acts relating to the history of Southern and Western Russia, collected and published by the Archaeographic Commission" (ASWR), - a collection of documents on the history of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia in the 14-17 centuries .........

Acts - historical - documents, in which in the form of certain legal. economic norms are fixed. or polit. transactions, contracts between individuals; private (legal or physical) ........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

acts of the Archaeographic Expedition - "Acts collected in the libraries and archives of the Russian Empire by the Archaeographic Expedition of the Imperial Academy of Sciences" (AAE), - a series of documents on the history of Russia, ed. Archaeographic ........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

Acts of the Vilna Archaeographic Commission - (AVAK) - a series of documents on socio-economic. and polit. history of Belarus and Lithuania 14-19 centuries. (v. 1-39, Vilna, 1865-1915). Documents are selected and classified according to formal criteria .........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

acts of Civil Repression - "Acts relating to the civil reprisal of Ancient Russia" (AGR), - collection of rus. legal acts of the 15-17 centuries, prepared for publication by A. Fedotov-Chekhovsky (v. 1-2, K., 1860-63). Under........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

acts of Western Russia - "Acts relating to the history of Western Russia, collected and published by the Archaeographic Commission" (AZR), - publication of documents covering the period from 1340 to 1699 (5 vols., St. Petersburg, 1846-53). Volume 1 covers ........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

historical acts - "Collected and published by the Archeographic Commission" (AI), - a series of documents on the history of Russia, published by the Archaeographic Commission (v. 1-5, St. Petersburg, 1841-43): v. 1 covers 1334- 1598, 2nd -........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

acts of the Caucasian Archaeographic Commission - "Acts Collected by the Caucasian Archaeological Commission" (AKAK), - a series of documents on the history of the Caucasus from the 10th century. to 1862, published at the initiative of the Russian authorities. Consists of........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

kalachov's acts - see "Acts of legal life".
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

acts of the Moscow State - (AMG) - publication of documents on political. and military. history of Russia, published by the Academy of Sciences, ed. N.A. Popov and D. Ya. Samokvasov (v. 1-3, St. Petersburg, 1890-1901). Volume 1 covers 1571-1634, volume 2 - 1635-59, volume .........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

acts of the Socio-economic History of North-Eastern Russia of the End Xiv - Beginning of the Xvi Century. - (ASEI) - published by the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences (vols. 1-2, M., 1952-58). Their release will complete the publication of all identified and previously published acts from the end of the 14th century. to 1505. Part of the acts not included ........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

turgenev's acts - "Historical acts relating to Russia, extracted from foreign archives and libraries ... A. I. Turgenev" ("Historica Russiae Monumenta ex antiquis exterarum gentium archivis et bibliothecis deprompta ab A. I .........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

acts of feudal land tenure and economy - (AFZIKH) - published by the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences (parts 1-3, Moscow, 1951-61). In the 1st part, the first (main) part of the oldest copy book of Mosk. metropolitan see, containing ........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

acts of the Economy Boyarin B. I. Morozov - publication by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR of the surviving part of the patrimonial archive of a large feudal lord-landowner of the 17th century. B. I. Morozov; important source for socio-economic. history of the USSR (parts 1-2, ........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

legal acts - ", or a collection of forms of ancient office work" (AY), - collection of Russian. private acts 15 - early. 18th century (St. Petersburg, 1838). The AJ has published a bill of sale, exchange, data, deposit, spiritual ........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

Normative acts can be of general federal, republican, regional, regional, etc. significance, that is, they can be issued by the executive bodies of all constituent entities of the Federation and operate within the appropriate boundaries. At the same time, regulations can be issued by executive bodies of various levels, endowed with sectoral (departmental) or intersectoral competence. In cases specially provided for by administrative and legal norms, regulations of a sectoral nature may be legally binding outside this sectoral system. For example, the Government of the Russian Federation has established that the Ministry of Labor and Social Development, on issues of its competence, has the right to adopt resolutions that are binding on all ministries, other executive authorities, enterprises and institutions, regardless of their departmental subordination. The normative acts of some other executive bodies with cross-sectoral and sectoral competence have a similar legal force.

Individual acts, in contrast to the normative ones, have a pronounced law-enforcement (law-enforcement) character. In terms of their legal content, these are administrative legal acts. Specific juridical and authoritative expressions of the will of the relevant subjects of executive power always get their direct expression in them. The specificity of such statements of will (instructions) is manifested in the fact that, firstly, with their help, individual administrative cases or issues arising in the field of government controlled; secondly, they are personified, that is, their addressee is a certain person (s); thirdly, they are legal factscausing the emergence of specific administrative and legal relations. As the most illustrative example of an individual administrative legal act, an order to appoint a person to a particular position in the management apparatus, a resolution of an authorized body (official) on imposing on the perpetrator of the administrative offense administrative punishment.

Individual acts are most common in the practice of state management activities, since they are most consistent with its executive purpose and are the most important means of promptly resolving current management issues. In addition, it is the individual acts that ensure the implementation of the jurisdictional (law enforcement) function administrative law and the executive branch.

Individual acts are always acts of application of administrative law. But this does not exhaust their official role. They are also used to implement the norms of a number of other industries. russian law (for example, financial, land, labor, etc.). However, the main requirement for their publication is their compliance with regulatory administrative legal acts. Otherwise, they cannot be recognized as valid. For example, individual acts issued on specific issues of public-service relations should be based on the norms contained in Federal law "About the basics public service RF ".

Sometimes, according to legal consequences, the publication of individual legal acts is associated with the establishment of obligations, prohibitions, permits and permissions. This creates the impression that the legal content of normative acts is free from them, which is not true. In normative acts, first of all, administrative and legal permissions, instructions and prohibitions, as well as conditions for their use, are formulated, while in individual acts they are directly applied to specific persons. Legal acts of management can be classified on other grounds (criteria). Their scale, that is, their territorial distribution, has already been discussed. Sometimes in one administrative-legal act traits of normativity and individuality can be combined, that is, there are norms "intertwined" with prescriptions of an individual nature. For example, a decision is made to transform the current executive body or on the formation of a new one, and at the same time in this decision (act) its organizational and legal status is fixed in a normative manner, and a specific person is appointed by its head. Acts of this kind are called mixed, and sometimes they are singled out as an independent type of legal acts along with normative and individual ones. For this, however, there are no sufficient grounds. Since individual prescriptions in such cases "accompany" normative ones, in order to determine the legal nature of an act, it is necessary to focus on its prevailing quality, namely, on normativity.

In addition to the normative and individual ones, sometimes general acts are mentioned containing general short-term prescriptions (for example, on the transfer of the day off) or general requirements (for example, to save resources). However, the postponement of the day off is a typical example of an individual management decision, and the call to save resources has no legal significance at all.

The term "" in domestic law-making is not fully disclosed. Meanwhile, its correct understanding is of great practical importance.

General information

As you know, the concept of legislation is considered in two senses: narrow and broad. In the first case, we are talking about a collection of legal documents approved by the authorized body. In a broad sense, this term should be understood as a set of various bylaws and legislative acts. The first interpretation is the most common.

Key features

Legislative acts Russian Federation are created by authorized bodies with law-making initiative. The decisions they make on certain issues express the state's will. This determines the obligation, authoritarianism, and officiality of documents. Of the signs they possess, first of all, it is necessary to note the law-making character. Selected legislative acts establish, cancel, adjust certain norms. These documents are the custodians of established patterns of behavior in the state and society. It is worth saying that amendments to legislative acts, as well as their cancellation or acceptance, are carried out according to certain rules. The publication of certain documents should be carried out exclusively by authorized bodies. Otherwise, there may be several decisions on one issue in the state, including those that contradict each other.

Design features

Legislative act is a document. It must contain the required details. Among them:

1. Name. As a rule, the title is given a brief description of document. For instance " On amendments to certain legislative acts".
2. Date.
3. Place of approval.
4. The structure that has adopted.
5. Room.

Written form provides a consistent understanding of the prescriptions. This is very important because failure to comply with the requirements of the norms entails liability.

Additionally

Everyone must comply with the provisions of the Constitution. In addition, its norms should not contradict documents that are of great force in comparison with it. Any piece of legislation must be made public. Regulations are published in official publications available to organizations and citizens. Only after promulgation does the state have the right to demand the fulfillment of the instructions it contains.

Quality of presentation

For acts to have the proper regulatory power, they must reflect objective reality. This requirement is, by and large, general. It should be noted that although the authorized bodies have a certain freedom in the adoption of certain documents, it is far from unlimited. If the approved acts do not correspond to the objective reality, the provisions contained in them cannot be effectively applied in practice. In the presence of an acute contradiction, the adoption of such documents may provoke intrastate conflicts. Any ideas, including very promising ones, cannot be realized if society is not ready for them. An example is the inclusion amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federationgoverning elections to the State Duma. In 2005, a proportional voting system was introduced. Representation in parliament was assumed in the absence of a balanced and developed party system.

Structurality

Legislation should not be a hectic set of provisions. Usually, the document contains an introductory part. It is called the preamble. In a number of cases, it provides a description of the socio-political situation prevailing at the time the act was approved. It is mandatory to state (briefly) the purpose and objective of the document. For example, it can be adopted to amend some international agreements. Federations and individual legislative actsapproved for their execution.

Construction scheme

The first articles of the document may reveal the terminology that is used in it. After that, the formation of the act can be carried out as follows:

Nuances

The above order of arrangement is usually applied in uncodified acts. They are accepted in relatively "young" legal industries. As for the long-standing legal spheres, codes are the key documents in them. For example, civil legal relations are regulated by the Civil Code, criminal proceedings - Criminal Procedure Code. It should be said that the authorized bodies not only accept legal documents, but also monitor their compliance with modern realities. In order for the regulations to remain relevant, if necessary, amendments are included in certain legislative acts. So, for example, relatively recently the Criminal Code was adjusted. Some acts were decriminalized, and some clauses of a number of articles became invalid.

Accessibility for understanding

Legislative acts are approved for an unlimited number of subjects. They are aimed at establishing the rules, patterns of behavior of certain persons. In this regard, the acts must be understandable by ordinary citizens. The bodies that accept the documents should focus not on the highly intellectual part of the population, but on ordinary citizens. The content of the acts must be stated in clear language. However, vernaculars are not allowed. The document should be distinguished by the rigor of presentation, formality, comply with the laws of logic, not be overly abstract, but also not detail the little things.

Classification

Federal laws are divided according to their level of importance into:

Codes

They are considered a variation of the current legislation. The Code is a complex, structured document. Usually all or the main norms of a particular legal branch are placed in it in a certain order. For example, the Criminal Code contains all the provisions concerning crimes and punishments for them, the Civil Code regulates all aspects of civil (property) relations. Each code is a kind of "legal economy". It contains everything that is needed to regulate a certain group of relations. At the same time, all the material is systematized, divided into relevant sections, chapters. As a rule, there are 2 parts in the code: General and Special. The first contains generalizing provisions. These norms are relevant for the implementation of any article of the Special Part. In simple terms, they apply in the regulation of any relationship to which the code applies. In the Criminal Code, for example, in this part there are provisions on the age at which a citizen can be held accountable. Here, in fact, the concept of a crime is revealed, there is a list and procedure for the application of sanctions. A special part establishes specific penalties for certain acts.

conclusions

Laws are considered the most significant types of legal acts. They can only be approved by authorized bodies. The adoption of legislative acts is carried out within the framework of a special procedure. These documents are designed to regulate the most important public relations. In some countries, there is a closed list of problems, the solution of which is carried out through the adoption of laws. There is no such list in Russia. In this regard, the authorized bodies, in particular the FS, formally have the right to adopt legal act on absolutely any question. However, lawmakers are unlikely to solve problems that are not of paramount importance. It should also be said that the legal documents in question have the highest legal force... They have an advantage in application over other types of regulations. The exception is international agreements of the Russian Federation. In the cases established by law, agreements signed by Russia with other states shall prevail.

Saransk Cooperative Institute MUPK.

Course work

Theme:

"Normative legal acts, their types and meanings"

Teacher : Timoshkin V.V.

Performed: 1st year student of the correspondence faculty, specialty "Jurisprudence" Yushkevich I.N.

Saransk, 99

I. Introduction page 3

II. Normative legal acts as

sources of law, their differences from p. 5

other sources of law

III. Types of regulatory and legal

atov p. 9

IV. Systematization of normative -

legal acts p. 17

V. Action of regulatory and legal

acts in time, in space

and in a circle of faces p. 20

Vi. Conclusion p. 27

Introduction

In order to become a reality and successfully fulfill the regulatory, educational and other functions inherent in law, it, like the state, must have its own external expression. In domestic and foreign literature in this "external expression of law" in some cases they are named at the same time as forms and sources of law.

In this work, the “form of law” will be considered as synonymous with the “source of law”. Here, no fundamental significance is attached to those non-fundamental semantic nuances, shades and insignificant differences that the terms “form” and “source” of law have. As sources of law, one can interpret those material, social and other conditions of the life of society, which objectively necessitate the publication or amendment and addition of certain normative legal acts, as well as - legal system generally.

The world legal science examines the sources of law in indissoluble unity with the content of legal norms. The expression of legal norms in custom, precedent, in judicial practice has a casuistic and not always definite character. These norms are formed gradually, by the repetition of particular cases, the application of a certain rule of behavior. Therefore, legal norms cannot, in the indicated forms, embody a general and sufficiently definite expression.

The transition to universal normative regulation is carried out in an evolutionary way.

At the beginning, normative regulation extended only to those spheres of public life that directly concerned the interests of state power.

Private, property and family relations for a long time remained under the influence of ordinary law and judicial practice... Over time, legal regulation expands, subordinating other areas of public life, and thus becomes the predominant form of legal regulation of public relations.

Normative legal acts as sources of law. Their differences from other sources of law.

Among the numerous forms (sources) of law, an important place is occupied by normative legal acts of state bodies. For brevity, they are often referred to as regulations.

Regulatory legal acts are understood as expressions in writing of decisions of the competent state bodies, which contain the norms of law.

These are acts of lawmaking, with the help of which and thanks to which legal norms are established or canceled.

Without exception, all normative legal acts are state acts by their nature. They are published or authorized only by state authorities.

They have a strong-willed character. They contain and through them the state will is refracted. Violation of the decrees contained in the normative legal acts is associated with the onset of criminal, legal, civil and other legal consequences.

Among the normative and legal acts issued by state bodies, it is necessary to name laws, decrees, decrees, government (cabinet) decisions, orders of ministers, chairmen of state committees, decisions and decrees applied local authorities state power and administration. The system of normative legal acts in each country is determined by the constitution, as well as by special laws issued on its basis, provisions on certain state bodies, government decrees. Legislation also determines the procedure for issuing, changing, canceling and supplementing normative legal acts; it is indicated which body, in accordance with which procedure, issues this or that regulatory act.

Normative legal acts, as sources of law, have certain organizational, technical and other advantages over other sources of law. They are manifested: firstly, in the fact that those who publish them state bodies have much greater coordination than all other rule-making institutions to identify and reflect in law not only group, class, individual, but also common interests; secondly, due to clear requirements, traditionally established rules for presenting its content, a normative legal act is considered the best way to formulate established norms; and, thirdly, that a normative legal act, due to its clarity and certainty, is easier to “handle” than other forms of law. As theorists and practitioners note, it is easy to refer to it when resolving cases, to make the necessary adjustments, and to monitor its implementation. 1

1. General theory rights / otv. ed. A.S. Pigolkin. M., 1994.S. 174.

Normative acts have a number of characteristic features that differ from all other legal acts, in particular law enforcement ones, which are individually defined in nature. These signs are as follows:

1. normative acts are the result of law-making activities of the competent state bodies and officials, as well as authorized public associations and organizations;

4. are applied and implemented in a special procedural order;

5. have a strictly defined documentary form (law, decree, decree, etc.);

6. are aimed at regulating the most typical, mass relations, while the acts of application of the norms of law concern mainly only specific life cases, situations, circumstances.

7. are designed for permanent or long-term action, while the applicable acts - for a one-time implementation;

8. Normative acts are not personified, they are addressed either to all or to an indefinitely large number of subjects, and the act of applying a legal norm has a specific addressee.

Therefore, normative legal acts must be distinguished from individual legal acts, which are not sources of law. An individual legal act extends its effect to specific subjects of law that are in the field of legal regulation. It is designed for one-time use, refers personally to certain persons and ceases to be valid with the implementation of a specific right or obligation (for example, the appointment of pensions by a social security body to a specific person, a court decision on the forced return of a debt by an obligated person).

Individual legal acts are also a necessary means of implementing the general prescriptions of legal norms contained in regulatory legal acts. They are of a mandatory state nature, their implementation is ensured by the competent authorities of the state (court, mayor's office, arbitration), but they are not sources of law, since they do not contain legal norms. In contrast to legal norms, their prescriptions apply to personified persons and specific life situations.

The sources of jurisprudence, or the sources of our knowledge about law, should be distinguished from a normative legal act as a source of law. We draw information about the norms of law from various collections of legislation, from historical legal monuments, from the works of professional lawyers. All these are sources of our knowledge of legal norms, not sources of law.

As a result, a normative - legal act can be defined as an official act issued in a special order - a document of a competent law - making body containing legal norms.

Types of regulatory and legal acts.

The classification of normative legal acts is made on various grounds: by legal force; by content; by the volume and nature of the action; subjects publishing them.

By legal force all normative - legal acts are subdivided into laws and by - laws. The legal force of normative legal acts is the most essential sign of their classification. It determines their place and significance in common system state regulation... In accordance with the theory and practice of lawmaking, acts of higher lawmaking bodies have a higher legal force than acts of lower lawmaking bodies. The latter are published on the basis of and in pursuance of normative acts issued by higher law-making bodies.

Normative legal acts are also classified by content. This division is to a certain extent arbitrary. This convention is objectively explained by the fact that not all normative - legal acts contain norms of a homogeneous content. There are acts containing norms of only one branch of rights (labor, family, criminal legislation). But along with sectoral normative acts, acts of a complex nature are also in effect. They include the norms of various branches of law, serving a specific area of \u200b\u200bpublic life. Economic, commercial, military, maritime legislation - examples of complex regulatory legal acts

By the volume and nature of the action normative legal acts are subdivided.

Legislative acts and their meaning

Legislation is among key documents on the history of any society, since it is legal basis states; it regulates and directs all the daily work of state and public organizations, introduces relations between citizens and organizations in a certain legal norm.

The significance of these documents is very great. A legislative act is a special type of historical source that requires the use of certain methods of analysis, allowing the most complete disclosure of its content, meaning, and features. With the generality of the basic principles of studying legislative acts, the methodology for working with them is not the same. It depends on the type of document, purpose, time of creation, etc. Among the differences in legislative sources, it is necessary to note differences according to the purely nomenclature principle. Before the USSR Constitution of 1936, there were many types of legislative acts; constitutions, decisions of congresses of Soviets, decisions of sessions of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. For some time, in addition to decrees, the resolutions and orders of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars had the force of law.

This period is characterized by the absence of a stable terminology of legislative acts. Documents that were heterogeneous in content and functional purpose sometimes had the same designations, and acts that were homogeneous in content were named differently from each other.

Source study analysis of legislation can be carried out in a number of areas. In each case, there will be a specific formulation of the problem: the study of the history of the text of the act as a process as a whole and its individual links, the establishment of the role of this or that person in its development; analysis of the place of the act in the system of legislation; clarification of the nature of the legislative norm, the prevailing legal concepts; study of a legislative act in terms of reflecting in it certain aspects of socio-historical reality, ascertaining existing ideas; analysis of the process of its implementation, interpretation and other aspects of his life until the moment of his loss legal force or recycling.

And yet, the method of working with legislative acts better than with other types of sources, lends itself to a certain generalization. Therefore, in the lecture below, the emphasis will be on the methodological side of the matter.

Memoirs and their meaning and features

Memoirs are a specific genre of literature, a feature of which is documentary; at the same time, their documentary character is based on the testimony of memoirists, which are more obvious than the events described. Memories are capable of recovering many facts that are not reflected in other types of sources. Memoir particulars may have crucial to reconstruct an event.

Memories are not only a dispassionate recording of past events, they are also confession, and justification, and accusation, and thoughts of the individual. Therefore, memoirs, like no other document, are subjective. This is not a drawback, but a property of memoirs, for they bear the imprint of the author's personality. All the advantages and disadvantages of a memoirist are involuntarily transferred to memories. Otherwise, the memoirs are faceless. Sometimes in historical literature, in textbooks, the subjectivity of memoirs is, if not openly assessed as a defect, at least implied. However, I repeat, memoirs cannot be otherwise. Their subjectivity is an objectively inherent property of them.

However, the memoirs cannot be considered a product of exclusively personal origin. They inevitably bear the stamp of their time. The sincerity of a memoirist, the completeness and reliability of his impressions depend on the era in which, firstly, memoirs were written and published, secondly, the memoirs. The object of memories is also important: an event or person about which the memoirist writes. This is sometimes critical. A memoirist often first of all wants to show his role in this event, the attitude of one or another outstanding person to the memoirist.

A similar situation is well illustrated by the anecdote of the 60-70s about the memoirs of V.I. Lenin, who appeared in those years in abundance, after which the question arose: how many people helped Lenin carry the log at the first Kremlin subbotnik? If you do not play a major role in certain events, then at least be involved in them - such is the subtext of such memoirs.

If some of the dead knew how many inconsolable they would leave behind, they would never leave the sinful earth. As soon as Vladimir Vysotsky died, so many of his friends showed up that he did not even suspect. Thus, memoirs, like any other source, need a critical approach.

Sources of memories can be written and oral. Written documents are a wide variety of documents: operational documents of military headquarters, excerpts from letters and diaries, newspaper reports, fragments of departmental documents, etc. Many staff documents, maps and diagrams are used in military memoirs. Sometimes in memoirs, documents are given entirely in the form of attachments, which is very valuable. For example, in the memoirs of General P.N. Wrangel in the appendix reproduces the order of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces in the South of Russia "On the ground" of May 25, 1920 and the entire set of documents in the development of this order. Since the search for these materials is very difficult, such a publication is unique in the study of Wrangel's agrarian policy.

However, memory remains the main source of memoirs. And here much depends on the reliability of the memory of the memoirist and on his ability to accurately convey information about events to the reader. Although keeping silent about something is not always a sign of poor memory. When reading memoirs, one must remember the favorite expression of the famous detective Hercule Poirot. “Everyone has something to hide,” he liked to repeat.

Of course, censorship (and, accordingly, self-censorship) also forced to remain silent, to keep silent.

What is the place of memoirs among other sources? Often they are assigned a secondary role, or even completely reduced to illustrative material. The meaning of a memoir depends on the topic to which they are involved. For example, for writing a biography of a writer, for recreating the political history of a country, for reconstructing a historical fact, memoirs are an important source. As for the broad socio-economic paintings of the past, mass social movements, the history of the national economy, here memoirs play a secondary (or even tertiary) role, giving way to statistics, reports, etc.

One more circumstance must be remembered. After all, memoirs arose as a genre of fiction, that is, it is material not so much for research as for reading, often amusing. Historians, however, forgetting this, approach the memoirs exclusively as a historical source. The presence of emotional impressions does not find sympathy, as well as an attempt to analyze certain events. The historian only requires facts. This is his right (and his limitations!), But there is also the author's right to his view of the past.

A significant number of various memoirs have been deposited on the history of Soviet society. For orientation among them, we will try to group them according to specific criteria.