Nikolaj Mihajlovič Karamzin (Znamenskoe/Karamzinka 1766 – St Petersburg 1826) was born on a rural provincial estate and was home-schooled until the age of fourteen. He was then sent to Moscow to study under the Swiss-German Johann Matthias Schaden and the Transylvanian Saxon Johann Georg Schwarz at the University of Moscow until 1782. After a brief stint in the Preobraženskij Regiment in St Petersburg and a sojourn in his native region, he returned to Moscow, where intellectual life stimulated his literary ambitions. In 1789-90 he travelled to Berlin, Leipzig, Geneva, Paris, and London, publishing his experiences after his return. His Pis’ma russkogo putešestvennika (“Letters of a Russian traveller”) were a landmark in his intellectual development and the start of his career as a writer.

In 1794, Karamzin published Il’ja Muromec, a story based on the adventures of the well-known hero of many Russian legends; this was followed by Russian translations of many foreign and classical literary works. His work and his style of writing served as a model for the development of the Russian literary language; accordingly, Karamzin came to be known as a “Westernizer”, one who believed that Russia’s future lay in adopting Western political institutions and integrating Russian culture into Western culture.

Karamzin abandoned his writing career in 1804 to devote himself to researching the history of the Russian state; he was a pioneer in approaching historiography by way of systematically reviewing the available sources. Karamzin’s career switch also marked a growing conservatism in his outlook, abandoning his earlier Westernizing sympathies and focusing on the importance of Russia’s Slavic roots and traditions. In 1811 he submitted to Emperor Alexander I his Zapiska o drevnej i novoj Rossii (“Memoir on ancient and modern Russia”), a firm historical defence of the virtues of the Russian autocracy as a distinguishing feature setting Russian history apart from that of the rest of Europe. Meanwhile, Karamzin was working on his magnum opus, Istorija rossijskogo gosudarstva (“History of the Russian state”, 1816-26), in 12 volumes, of which 11 were published before his death in 1826. His patriotic and conservative analysis chimed with the prevailing chauvinism among the Russian educated classes, including Emperor Alexander I himself, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars.