Background
Nikolai Karamzin was born in the village of Znamenskoye on December 1, 1766. His father was an officer in the Russian army, of Tatar extraction.
Nikolai Karamzin was born in the village of Znamenskoye on December 1, 1766. His father was an officer in the Russian army, of Tatar extraction.
Nikolai Karamzin was sent to Moscow to study under Professor Schaden, and then on to Saint Petersburg.
In 1789-1790 Karamzin traveled to Berlin, Leipzig, Geneva, Paris, and London.
Like most of his literary efforts, the "Letters" were sentimental and romantic in the style of Laurence Sterne.
In 1810-1811 Karamzin wrote for the private use of Alexander I A Note on Ancient and Modern Russia, in which, from the conservative viewpoint of the Moscow gentry, he strongly criticized Russia's domestic and foreign policy.
Meanwhile, Karamzin was working on his magnum opus, Istoriya Gosudarstva Rossiiskago (1819-1826; History of the Russian Imperial State ), of which 11 of the 12 volumes were published before his death.
His own intellectual development had been under Western influence, so he found himself in the ambiguous position of seeking to discover and preserve the best of his own nation's historical character without fully denying the value of certain features of the Western tradition.
He maintained a conservative, humane, and intelligent balance between Russia and the West.
In 1825 the unexpected death of Alexander and the Decembrist Revolt, carried out by radical, Western-oriented officers of the imperial army, undermined Karamzin's health.
1957).
In 1811 Karamzin submitted his Memoir on Ancient and New Russia, which contained a biting critique of the policies of Alexander I, but vindicated autocracy and serfdom
Karamzin appears openly as the panegyrist of the autocracy; indeed, one of his works has been styled the "Epic of Despotism. "
Nikolai Karamzin's patriotic and conservative analysis corresponded to the chauvinism of Russian educated opinion in the traumatic aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.
Karamzin always urged that the uniquely Russian state virtues not be abandoned in the artificial quest for European progress, although he did not wholly reject Western civilization.