Image of the Samara Volga region in the second half of the XIX – early XX century (based on the guidebooks and travel notes)

The article examines the problem of the image of Samara and the Samara region in the second half of the XIX – early XX century, the «face» of Samara of that era, the brands of the city and the province. The author shows aspects of the sides of the image of the Samara Volga region, which were reflected and broadcast to the Russian reading public on the pages of guidebooks and essays of those times, but have not yet been covered by historians and local historians. Disclosure of these issues will allow us to judge what images of the past of the Samara Volga region existed in the Russian public consciousness of the post-reform period, what new brands of the region appeared by the beginning of the XX century. In the course of the study, the author revealed that, firstly, the images of the past region are associated mainly with the Volga freemen and the names of the famous Cossack atamans; secondly, a significant part of the «brands» of the Samara Volga region appeared already in the second half of the XIX – early XX century: kumis therapy, large grain piers, etc. In this regard, the second suggests that the Samara Volga region in the post-reform era was only gaining its place on the «mental map» of Russian society.