This article analyzes theoretical and methodological approaches of the Commissions on the History of Professional Movement in Russia (Istprofs) which functioned within the structure of the Soviet trade unions in the 1920s. The guiding idea of Istprofs’ work was radical inductivism, i.e. the notion that research process must be strictly divided into two stages: 1) accumulation of factual material and 2) analysis of that material and finding of the patterns of historical development. Even though they never openly challenged Party, Istprofs’ research project was an alternative to the Bolsheviks’ dogmatic reading of the Marxist epistemology.

This article is dedicated to the problem of how intertextual and contextual factors influence an autobiography. The aim of my thesis is analysis of the both S.Y.Alliluev's autobiographies, written in 1922−1923 and 1944−1945. I am trying to show peculiarities of the first text’s influence on the next, differences in systems of argumentation and plots' choice.