15 Facts About Nikolay Karamzin

Nikolay Karamzin is best remembered for his fundamental History of the Russian State, a 12-volume national history.

Nikolay Karamzin's father Mikhail Yegorovich Karamzin was a retired Kapitan of the Imperial Russian Army who belonged to the Russian noble family of modest means founded by Semyon Karamzin in 1606.

For many years its members had served in Nizhny Novgorod as high-ranking officers and officials before Nikolay's grandfather Yegor Karamzin moved to Simbirsk with his wife Ekaterina Aksakova of the ancient Aksakov dynasty related to Sergey Aksakov.

Ekaterina Petrovna was born between 1730 and 1735 and died in 1769 when Nikolay Karamzin was only over 2 years old.

In 1770 Mikhail Karamzin married for the second time to Evdokia Gavrilovna Dmitrieva who became Nikolay's stepmother.

Nikolay Karamzin was sent to Moscow to study under Swiss-German teacher Johann Matthias Schaden; he later moved to St Petersburg, where he made the acquaintance of Ivan Dmitriev, a Russian poet of some merit, and occupied himself with translating essays by foreign writers into his native language.

In 1794, Nikolay Karamzin abandoned his literary journal and published a miscellany in two volumes entitled Aglaia, in which appeared, among other stories, The Island of Bornholm and Ilya Muromets, the former being one of the first Russian Gothic novels and the latter, a story based on the adventures of the well-known hero of many a Russian legend.

Nikolay Karamzin's example proved beneficial for the creation of a Russian literary language, a major contribution for the history of Russian literature.

In 1802 and 1803, Nikolay Karamzin edited the journal the Envoy of Europe.

When Emperor Alexander learned the cause of his retirement, Nikolay Karamzin was invited to Tver, where he read to the emperor the first eight volumes of his history.

Nikolay Karamzin was a strong supporter of the anti-Polish policies of the Russian Empire, and expressed hope that "there would be no Poland under any shape or name".

Nikolay Karamzin died on 22 May 1826, in the Tauride Palace.

Nikolay Karamzin was most industrious in accumulating materials, and the notes to his volumes are mines of interesting information.

Nikolay Karamzin wrote openly as the panegyrist of the autocracy; indeed, his work has been styled the Epic of Despotism and considered Ivan III as the architect of Russian greatness, a glory that he had earlier assigned to Peter the Great.

Also, Nikolay Karamzin is sometimes considered a founding father of Russian conservatism.