The chronicler of the Russian Empire’s last days (A. A. Blok and his duty work on the proceedings of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission, Russian Provisional Government)

Based on newly found and partly unpublished archival data, the article offers an in-depth insight into the studies of the prominent Russian poet and writer A. A. Blok’s duty activities as a staff member of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission (EIC) set up by the Russian Provisional Government in early March 1917 to check the eventual illegal actions of the ex officio Ministers. The study provides a comprehensive analysis of the duty specifics and key features of A. Blok’s responsibilities as a member of a special task group of professional editors within the EIC, to check and stylistically improve the verbal interrogation texts originally written in shorthand. Enormous amounts of work and time invested into this job resulted in a comprehensive historiographic essay Last Days of the Russian Empire (Poslednie Dni Imperatorskoj Vlasti. Petrograd, 1921) supported by extensive documentary source data, accumulated by EIC, and in an unprecedented volume of checked and stylistically improved read back shorthand records of interrogations held by the EIC Board — the poet’s valuable contribution to its later publication (The Fall of the Tsar’s Regimen = Padenie Tsarskogo Rezhima, in 7 volumes, 1924–1927) edited by the historian P. E. Tschjogolev.