Commissioned autobiography is an autobiographical genre that is very popular in Russia. Under this definition I include the autobiographical notes that accompany a literary work of a writer or a poet, or which is included in a collection of autobiographies of various authors. In my article, I try to define the main differences between autobiography and commissioned autobiography, which in my opinion is caused by the different motivation that inspire these texts, and on the limits imposed by the situation of the commission. The analysis focuses on the commissioned autobiographies by Artem Vesely, Sergey Auslender, and Veniamin Kaverin included in the volume by Vladimir Lidin entitled Pisateli. Avtobiografii i portrety sovremennykh russkikh pisatelei, Moscow 1928.
