Historical prose in Russian emerged and reached a first peak during the Romantic period; the 1830s were characterized by emotional debates about the essence and meaning of Russianness, and the specific historical destiny of the Russian nation, which led to the formulation of competing interpretations in the concepts of official nationality, Slavophilism and Westernism.

In the wake of Karamzin’s Istorija Rossijskogo gosudarstva (“History of the Russian state”, 1816-26), Russian authors of the 1820s and ’30s overcame their contempt for Russia’s alleged lack of history and individuality (e.g. Pëtr Čaadaev), and imitators of Walter Scott, initially placing their stories in medieval Livonia rather than in the Russian principalities, flooded a growing book market with tales and novels set in the Muscovite past prior to Peter the Great. M.N. Zagoskin’s Jurij Miloslavskij, ili Russkie v 1612 godu (“Jurij Miloslavskij or the Russians in the year 1612”, 1829) was the first to pick up a highly patriotic topic: Russia’s rebirth during the Times of Troubles. The novel was an instant success, ran to four editions between 1829 and 1832 alone, and was translated into French, English, German, Italian, Dutch and Czech. Zagoskin followed it up in 1831 with a somewhat less successful story set during the Napoleonic War of 1812, Roslavev, ili russkie v 1812 godu (“Roslavlev or the Russians in the year 1812”). In the wake of Zagoskin’s success, the infamous Russian journalist and informer F.V. Bulgarin (1789–1855) published three historical novels dealing with comparable historical subjects, Ivan Vyžigin (1829) with the sequel Peter Ivanovič Vyžigin (1831), and Dmitrij Samozvanec (“The impostor”, 1830), also dealing with the Times of Troubles.

During the 1830s and 1840s, dozens of authors followed suit, creating some 150 novels covering Russia’s history from the days of medieval Rus’ to the 18th-century age of empresses. This interest was also expressed in the libretti of some early Russian opera’s such as Glinka’s A life for the Tsar (1835, on a libretto by the Baltic-German nobleman Gregor von Rosen) or even Musorgskij’s later Boris Godunov, based on Puškin’s play from the 1820s. The novels from this period used either detailed descriptions of historical settings for plots with fictional heroes in order to provide local colouring, or placed historical characters in a more or less fictional past, thereby following a genuinely Romantic paradigm. They also combined factual history with popular legends and folklore. Thus, from an early 19th-century perspective, Russian history emerged as a colourful past which the authors held up as the nation’s childhood, to be contemplated with both disdain and nostalgia. Russian characters were set against either European or Eastern antagonists. Loyalty to the ruler, devotion to the Orthodox faith and love for the native land, but also reckless courage and boldness were recurring elements, as was the implied agency of a transcendent Russian national character.

The productive tensions between contemporary historical research and Romantic narrative treatment of the past can be illustrated by the works of Puškin and Gogol’. The former immersed himself in serious, source-based studies of history (Arap Petra Velikogo, “The blackamoor of Peter the Great”, 1828; Istoriia Pugačeva, “History of Pugačëv”, 1833); the latter long contemplated writing a history of Ukraine which never materialized. Puškin’s historical novel Kapitanskaja dočka (“The captain’s daughter”, 1836) can be read as a fictional counterpart to his historical account of the Pugačëv rebellion. For Puškin, the peasant revolt illustrated the elementary forces of the people and Pugačëv himself emerged as a complex and fascinating villain. This was much more in line with popular tradition than Puškin’s portrayal of the rebel leader in A history, where Pugačëv was depicted as an ordinary military completely dependent on the Cossack leadership.

Gogol’s historical epic Taras Bulba (1835, revised 1842) freely combined historical events that had occurred across two centuries and totally abstained from using historical characters. Like Scott’s novels, it concentrated on the conflict of antagonistic civilizations and glorified the struggle of the Orthodox Cossacks against their Catholic Polish overlords, with the Cossacks embodying Russian recklessness and energy. “Can any fire, flames, or power be found on earth, which are capable of overpowering Russian strength?” – so Gogol’ comments upon the death of his defiant hero.

Ironically, both Pushkin’s and Gogol’s novels, long part of the school curriculum, remained once-off endeavours in their authors' respective work and remained largely unnoticed by contemporaries. By the mid-1840s, interest in the historical novel waned, and only Tolstoj’s Vojna i mir (“War and peace”, 1867-69) revived it, albeit in changed circumstances, and transcending the dualistic outlook and fact-fiction opposition of the Romantic novel.