St. Petersburg Volumes I - VIII, 1816, IX, 1821, X, XI, 1821, XII, 1829 (the first eight volumes were printed in a second edition in 1818 and 1819).

Having indicated in the title of the article all twelve volumes of the "History of the Russian State", we do not want, however, to offer our readers a detailed analysis of this wonderful creation, we will not follow its creator in detail in all respects, consider the "History of the Russian State" from general and specific sides and its writer as a historian and paleographer, philosopher and geographer, archaeographer and researcher of historical materials. A criticism of such volume cannot be a journal article, and this is because its enormity would exceed the limits that should be allowed for articles in periodical publications. We only want to generally survey Karamzin’s creation at a time when last The volume of this work showed us the limit of work that the writer, unforgettable for Russia, achieved. If magazines should be a mirror of modern education, modern opinions, if they should convey to the public the voice of people of higher education, their view of important subjects that attract attention, then, of course, it should be the duty of a journalist to make a judgment about the “History of the Russian State”, based on conclusions from various opinions and on the considerations of enlightened people. We can definitely say that there has not been before and, perhaps, for a long time there will not be another creation in our literature, so great, attracting such strong, universal attention of the domestic public. In Europe, Karamzin's work was received with curious participation, as a representative of our enlightenment, our opinions about the most important subjects of social life, our view of people and events. To show the reasons for the delight with which Russian readers greeted Karamzin’s work, the coldness with which Europeans responded when they recognized him in translations, and, guided by the opinions of critics worthy of respect, to indicate the degree to which Karamzin occupies in the history of modern literature, modern enlightenment, ours and Europe, to indicate his merit, to evaluate his right to glory - this is the goal we have proposed.

We do not think that right-thinking people would blame the reviewer for his obscurity and the enormous glory of the creation he is reviewing. It’s time for us to banish localism from literature, just as we banished this disastrous prejudice from our civil life. Impartiality, respect for a person worthy of him: these are the duties, the fulfillment of which the public should demand from a critic not only of Karamzin’s works, but also of any literary phenomenon. Nothing more. The indignation with which the public, and - we dare add - the author of this article, met Mr. Artsybashev’s criticism of “The History of the Russian State” last year, stemmed from the indecent tone, from the pettiness, injustice shown by Mr. Artsybashev in his articles. On the contrary, the more votes, the more opinions, the better. We must exterminate the unfortunate polemics that dishonor a good writer, we must leave it to those people who want to become famous even through dishonor, but fair, modest criticism, judging the book, not the author, is far from what many of us consider criticism, so as far as heaven from earth. Criticism is the breath of literature, and any attempt to achieve effective criticism should at least be excused by impartial people.

Another circumstance, much more important, may occupy us. We ask: has the time come for us to make judgments about Karamzin? Now it has arrived. Three years have already passed since all earthly relationships, all personal preferences, prejudices were buried in the grave of the unforgettable: only his creations remained, our inalienable inheritance. For us, new generation, Karamzin exists only in the history of literature and in his works. We cannot get carried away either by personal predilection for him or by our passions, which forced some of Karamzin’s contemporaries to look at him incorrectly. Karamzin’s work is complete: the picture of the great artist is presented to us, unfinished, it is true, but the cold of death has already shackled the life-giving hand of the creator, and we, mourning the loss, can judge his work as a creation as a whole. Fortunately for us, if Karamzin died too early for our hopes, then he did a lot, and his creation is as important as it is enormous. He did not have time to depict to us the deliverance of the fatherland by the great Minin and the glorious Pozharsky; did not have time to narrate the reigns of the meek Michael, the wise Alexy, the divine Peter, the great and wonderful deeds that took place over the course of more than seventy years, from 1611 (where he stopped) to 1689. Here Karamzin wanted to finish his creation, to briefly depict the rest of the history of Russia, from the accession to the throne of Peter the Great to our time, and to point out the future fate of the fatherland. But the future is known to the One God, said Karamzin, dedicating his History to Alexander the Blessed, and we, at Karamzin’s tomb, hearing about his assumptions, could repeat his words. Despite all this, Karamzin - let us repeat what we said - managed to fulfill a lot according to his assumption: he depicted for us the events of Russian history over seven and a half centuries, pursued it from the cradle of the Russian people to the maturity of the Russian state, this marvelous giant of the century. It’s not enough for us, who valued Karamzin’s glory, but it’s enough for his glory. He managed to fully develop his talent, he could no longer step further. In twelve volumes of "History of the Russian State" all Karamzin.

Time flies quickly, and things and people change quickly. We can hardly assure ourselves that what we consider to be real has become past, modern - historical. So is Karamzin. Many still classify him as belonging to our generation, to our time, forgetting that he was born sixty more than a year ago (in 1765); that more than 40 years have passed since he entered the literary field; that 25 years have already passed since he stopped all other exercises and took up only the history of Russia, and, consequently, that he began to work on it for a quarter of a century up to now, being almost magpie years: this is a period of life in which a person can no longer erase from himself the type of his initial education, he can only keep up with his rapidly coming century, only follow it, and then straining all the powers of the mind.

A chronological look at Karamzin’s literary career shows us that he was a writer, philosopher, historian past century, previous, not ours generations. This is very important for us in all respects, because in this way Karamzin’s merits, merits and glory are truly assessed. Distinguishing the century and time of each subject is the true measure of the correctness of judgments about each subject. This measure has been improved by the minds of thinkers of our time. Even the ancients knew it, and Cicero said that there can be non vitia hominis, sed vitia saeculi [ Not the vices of man, but the vices of the era (lat.)]. But because this opinion was imperfect and incomplete, many errors in judgment occurred.

If it were necessary to compare Karamzin with anyone, we would compare him with Lomonosov: Karamzin walked from the place where Lomonosov stopped; finished what Lomonosov started. The feat of both was equally great, important, enormous in relation to Russia. Lomonosov found the elements of the Russian language mixed and unsettled; there was no literature. Fueled by the study of Latin writers, he knew how to separate the elements of language, put them in order, form the original Russian literature, taught grammar, rhetoric, wrote poetry, was an orator, prose writer, historian of his time. After him, before Karamzin, for 25 years, very little was done. Karamzin (let us note a strange accident: born in the very year of Lomonosov’s death), educated by the study of French writers, imbued with the modern enlightenment of Europe, which was decidedly all French, transferred what he acquired to his native soil, and with his strong, active mind moved his contemporaries forward. Like Lomonosov, extremely varied in his activities, Karamzin was a grammarian, poet, novelist, historian, journalist, and political writer. We can hardly find any branch of contemporary literature on which he did not have influence; his very mistakes were instructive, causing the minds of others to stir, producing confusion and controversy, from which the truth emerged.

This is how Karamzin acted, and as a result his exploits should be appreciated. He was, without a doubt, first The writer of his people at the end of the last century was, perhaps, the most enlightened of the Russian writers of his time. Meanwhile, the century moved with a speed unheard of before. Never has so much been open, explained, and thought through as has been open, explained, and thought through in Europe in the last twenty-five years. Everything has changed in both the political and literary worlds. Philosophy, literary theory, poetry, history, political knowledge - everything has been transformed. But when this new period of changes began, Karamzin had already finished his exploits in literature in general. He was no longer an actor; one thought occupied him: the history of the Fatherland; He then devoted all his time and labors to her. Without him, new Russian poetry developed, the study of philosophy, history, and political knowledge began in accordance with new ideas, new concepts of the Germans, English and French, overheated (retrempes, as they themselves say) in a terrible storm and renewed for a new life.

What dignity do Karamzin’s works, translations and works have for us now, excluding his history? Historical, comparative. Karamzin can no longer be a model of either a poet, a novelist, or even a Russian prose writer. His period is over. The light prose of Zhukovsky, the poems of Pushkin are higher than the works in this genre of Karamzin. We are surprised at how Karamzin stepped forward in his time, we honor his merit, we honorably inscribe his name in the history of our literature, but we see that his Russian stories are not Russian; his prose is far behind the prose of our other newest examples; his poems are prose for us; his theory of literature, his philosophy are insufficient for us.

This is how it should be, for Karamzin was not a huge, centuries-old genius: he was a man of great intelligence, educated in his own way, but did not belong to the eternally young giants of philosophy, poetry, mathematics, he lived during a time of rapid change in young Russian literature, such a time in which everything needs to change quickly. He captivated his contemporaries, and he himself was captivated by them.

Having thus explained Karamzin as a writer in general, we turn to his History.

She took the rest twenty three years old life of Karamzin (from 1802 to 1826); he worked zealously dedicated the best time of his life to her. But did he stand alongside the great historians of ancient and modern times? Can his History be called a work? of our time?

We will see a comparison of him with ancient and modern historians, whose names are marked by glory, later, but now we will only say that just as Karamzin himself was not a writer of our century, so we cannot call his History a creation of our time.

There is nothing insulting to the memory of the great Karamzin in this opinion. True, at least contemporary ideas of philosophy, poetry and history have appeared in the last twenty-five years, therefore, the true idea of ​​History was inaccessible to Karamzin. He was already completely educated according to the ideas and concepts of his age and could not be reborn at the time when his work was begun; the concept of it was completely formed and all that remained was to carry it out. Let's explain in more detail.

We often hear the word Story in a confusing, false and perverse sense. Actually this word means: description, but how differently one can accept and understand it! They tell us about historians, and they count them in a row: Herodotus, Tacitus, Hume, Guizo, without feeling what a difference there is between these famous people and how mistaken is the one who puts Herodotus and Guizot, Titus Livy and Herder, Gibbon and Thierry, Robertson and Mignet side by side.

The newest thinkers have explained to us the full meaning of the word story; they showed us what a philosopher should mean by this word. History, in the highest knowledge, is not a well-written chronicle of times past, it is not a simple means to satisfy our curiosity. No, it is a practical verification of philosophical concepts about the world and man, an analysis of philosophical synthesis. Here we only mean general history, and in it we see a true revelation of the past, an explanation of the present and a prophecy of the future. Philosophy penetrates the entire abyss of the past: it sees the creations of the earth that were before man, discovers traces of man in the mysterious East and in the deserts of America, considers human traditions, considers the earth in relation to the sky and man in relation to his abode, a planet moved by the hand of providence in space and time. This is pre-history(Urgeschichte) person. Man appears on earth; society is formed; begins life of humanity, and it begins story person. Here the historian looks at the kingdoms and peoples, these planets moral world, as in mathematical figures depicted by the real world. He reflects the course of humanity, society, morals, concepts of each century and people, and deduces the chain of causes that produced and are producing events. This is the ultimate story.

But the forms of history can be endlessly diverse. History can be critical, narrative, scholarly; at the base each of them must be philosophical, in spirit, not in name, but in essence, in one’s view (for by simply adding the name: philosophical, following the example of Raynal, we will not make any history truly philosophical). General history is that huge circle in which countless other circles revolve: the histories of particular peoples, states, lands, beliefs, knowledge. The conditions of general history already determine what these particular histories should be. They must strive towards the basis of universal history, like radii towards the center; they show the philosopher: what place in the world of eternal existence occupied this or that people, this or that state, this or that person, for for humanity they equally express the idea - both a whole people and a historical person; humanity lives in peoples, and peoples in representatives who move rough material and form separate moral worlds from it.

This is the true idea of ​​history; at least we are now satisfied only with this idea of ​​history and consider it to be true. It has matured over the centuries, and from modern philosophy has developed in history, just as similar ideas have developed from philosophy in theories of poetry and political knowledge.

But if this idea belongs to our century, they will tell us, consequently, no one will satisfy our demands, and the greatest historians should fade in the rays of the few newest ones, let’s say more - future historians.

Thus, if we are pointed to a Greek or a Roman as an example of the highest perfection that man could achieve, as a model that we must unconditionally follow, this is false. classicism history; He insufficient And incorrect. But, having rejected it, we will find a place and a turn for everyone and everything. Don't think that we want to force everyone to be a philosopher. We have said that the forms of history are endlessly varied; in every form one can be a perfect, or at least a great, historian; fulfill only the conditions of the race you have chosen, and you will satisfy the demands of modern perfection.

History may be pragmatic, if you consider the events of, say, a state in relation to the system of states in which it was contained, and this system in the general history of peoples, if you reduce all events to causes and discover the connection of these causes with others, explaining the causes by events, and back, explaining through this the history of mankind, in the place, century, subject that you have chosen. This is History of European citizenship(Histoire generate de la civilization en Europe, depuis la chute de l'empire Romain jusqu'a la revolution francaise) [ General history of civilization in Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire to French Revolution(French)] Gizo. You can take a smaller volume, consider the events of a state or period, without elevating it to the general history of mankind, but this goal should be in the mind of the historian. These are: "The History of Charles V", op. Robertson, History of the Fall of the Roman Empire, op. Gibbon, works that could be called perfect in their kind, if the philosophy of these historians was higher than that which they revered as perfect, if the concepts of political knowledge of these writers were brought to the present maturity, if the materials were better processed in their time . Finally, we find another type of history, which we will call narrative. This is a simple narration of events; if possible, eloquently, but most importantly - right stated. Here, in fact, there is no historian: events speak, but extraordinary art is required. Loyalty it is needed not in the years alone, but in the spirit, expression, deeds, words of the characters, in the morals, customs, beliefs, and life of the people. Ancient historians are examples of perfection in this, and the writer of such a story can repeat the words of Karamzin: “Do not imitate Tacitus, but write as he would write in your place.” From the latest, an excellent example of such history was shown to us by Barant and, as a military historian, Napoleon, in the descriptions of his campaigns. Herodotus, Thucydides, Titus Livius, Tacitus fascinate with their narrative stories. They live in their descriptions, breathe the air with the people they portray; These are Omir's poems in the world of history. The most important difficulty for us, the new ones, if we want to move to another century, to another people, consists in separating ourselves from all opinions, from all the ideas of our age and people, in collecting colors for a picture, in seeking the truth through extensive criticism. The ancients speak unfairly about many things, but they are confident in the truth with such good nature, with such conviction as Omir was confident in his geography and mythology; Moreover, we have nothing to believe their story, and we take their word for it. Therefore, historical criticism completely takes away from the ancients the title of historical-philosophers, pragmatic historians, and looks at them only as eloquent storytellers.

Just as the French formed a special race classic creations from false imitation of the ancients, the false concept of ancient historians produced a special historical classicism. They wanted to force them to imitate the ancients; they adopted all their forms, expressions, even words. The mistake was that they imitated external forms without understanding the spirit of the ancients. Subsequently, they mixed all this with erroneous philosophy, with cleverness, apothegmas and maxims, intolerable and vulgar. And from the very restoration of European enlightenment, history, after monastic chronicles and legends, was an ugly, absurd mixture; Machiavelli, Bossuett, Montesquieu only appeared occasionally. In the past century, there was a desire for a more perfect history, and at a time when Herder was comprehending the secret of universal history, John Miller was guessing how narrative history should be written by new historians, German scientists showed true criticism of history, the French were the first to form, in the footsteps of Machiavelli, Bussuet and Montesquieu, philosophical history. Their experiments were insufficient, and the shortcomings of these experiments were reflected in the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, followers of French philosophy of the 18th century. It was necessary to combine the works of the Schellings, Schlegels, Cousins, Schletsers, Herders, Niebuhrs, to find out classicism And romanticism, to learn well the political sciences, to properly appreciate the ancients, to fully understand the requirements of the newest, perhaps even to be born Schiller, Zschocke, Goethe, W. Scott, so that we can finally understand what history is? How should it be written and what satisfies our age?

Let us apply all these considerations to the “History of the Russian State,” and we will see that Karamzin’s works, in relation to history, as our age requires, are the same as Karamzin’s other works in relation to the modern requirements of our literature - it is unsatisfactory.

Karamzin could not and did not get out of the concepts of his age, a time in which the idea of ​​philosophical history had just begun to appear, and the relationship of the ancients to us and the special conditions of the new writers were not yet clearly defined; political knowledge was not established; the narrative part of the story is not fully understood.

How philosopher-historian, Karamzin will not stand up to strict criticism. Read his thoughts on the story and you will agree without further explanation.

“History,” Karamzin begins his Preface to the “History of the Russian State,” - History in a sense(?) there is a sacred book of nations: main, necessary; a mirror of their existence and activity; the tablet of revelations and rules; the covenant of ancestors to posterity; addition, explanation of the present and example of the future."

Great phrases, but what does it mean? Holy book in a sense and at the same time - main, necessary, mirror of existence, tablet of revelations, testament of ancestors, Do all these words explain to us the essence of the subject? Is this how it should be definition stories?

“Rulers and legislators (Karamzin continues) act according to the instructions of History... Human wisdom needs experiments... One must know how From time immemorial, rebellious passions have agitated civil society and in what ways the beneficial power of the mind curbed their violent desire... And the common citizen must read history. She reconciles him with the imperfection of the visible order of things, as with a common occurrence in all centuries, consoles in state disasters, testifying, that there have been similar ones before, there have been even more terrible ones, and the state was not destroyed; she nourishes moral feeling (?), and with his righteous judgment he disposes the soul to justice, which affirms our right and the consent of society. That's the benefit."

All this is said beautifully, but is this how a philosopher should look at history? Having first made a rhetorical definition, we are told that history is useful for -

1st. The rulers of nations deal with it like a judge with an old archive, in order to decide cases the way they were decided before. Complete injustice!

2nd. Citizens see that there has always been evil What people have always endured why to them must be patient. A consolation similar to the comparison that Karamzin used in Volume IX, saying that the Russians died just as gloriously under the axes of the executioners of Tsar John IV as the Greeks died at Thermopylae *!

______________________

* Volume IX, page 437.

______________________

After such a limited view of benefit the author moves on to the pleasure of history, based on the fact that curiosity is human, and if we like novels and fiction, we should like history all the more, combining with entertaining novel the truth events. Even more so, domestic history, the author continues, moves from the private egoism of peoples to what it should have started with: the importance that the history of Russia has in the history of mankind. Do you think they will tell you how Russia was formed amid the turmoil of the 9th century; how it shielded Europe from the Mongols in the 13th century; how Europe entered the system in the 18th century; how it operated in the 19th century. Not at all! The author sees one curiosity: it is everything to him; he tries to prove that he is no more curious and not more interesting than history Russian history of other peoples; which is also in our history pictures, cases, which no less curious paintings and incidents described by ancient historians. Do you think that the author will say about Varangian feudalism, the formation of Russian principalities, rapprochement with Greece, the merger of Asia and Europe in Russia, the transformation of Russia by the hand of Peter; against; the author calls five centuries Russian history unimportant to the mind, a subject not rich in thoughts for a pragmatist, beauty for the painter, reminds that history is not a novel and the world is not a garden where everything should be pleasant, and finally consoles that in In the deserts there are beautiful views, and as proof he points to the campaigns of Svyatoslav, the invasion of Batu, the Battle of Kulikovo, the capture of Kazan, the blinding of Vasilko! Or does the historian think that we, like children, starting to read his book, ask in advance, isn't she boring? or - he is not a philosopher-historian!

They not a pragmatist when he later assures that it would be unfair if we miss boring start Russian history. " Bliss of readers will he condemn the deeds and fate of our ancestors to eternal oblivion? They suffered and we We don’t even want to hear about them! Foreigners may miss what is boring for them, but kind Russians are obliged to have more patience, following the rule of state morality, which places respect for ancestors in the dignity of an educated citizen." Doesn’t this mean proving that a body without a head cannot exist, and is it possible for a pragmatic historian to deal with the laziness of readers, and therefore force us to read the suffering of our ancestors, why compassion and respect makes a young grandson patiently listen to stories about the petty details of the life of an old and sick grandfather?

“Until now,” says the author, “ the ancients still serve as models for us. No one has surpassed Libya in the beauty of storytelling, Tacitus in force: that's the main thing! Knowledge all rights in the world (?), German learning, Voltaire's wit, not even Machiavellian profundity in a historian can replace the talent for depicting actions." Let us remember these words: they are remarkable.

We could write out and analyze the entire preface to the “History of the Russian State”: readers would then see the spirit, plan, layout of Karamzin’s creation and would agree with our opinion that Karamzin as a philosopher, as a pragmatist there is a writer not of our time. But the places we have cited are enough to show how Karamzin understood and wrote his story.

Read all 12 volumes of “History of the Russian State”, and you will be absolutely convinced of this. In the whole volume there is not one common beginning, from which all the events of Russian history would flow: you do not see how the history of Russia adjoins the history of mankind; all parts of it are separated from one another, all are disproportionate, and the life of Russia remains unknown to the reader, although he is tired of unimportant, insignificant details, he is occupied, touched by pictures of great, terrible, they bring before us a crowd of people, enormous to the point of excess. Karamzin nowhere introduces you to the spirit of the people, does not depict its numerous transitions, from Varangian feudalism to the despotic rule of John and to the original revival under Minin. You see a slender, long gallery of portraits, placed in the same frames, drawn not from life, but according to the will of the artist and dressed also according to his will. This is a chronicle written masterfully, by an artist of excellent, inventive talent, and not story.

“But,” they will tell us, “if so, then Karamzin’s work will go precisely to the type of stories that we named above narrative. Karamzin, who said that the ancients serve us samples to this day that the power and beauty of storytelling is the main thing for a historian, Of course, I managed to support my opinion with performance.”

But Karamzin saw the ancient models wrongly, and putting the power and beauty of the narrative at the forefront, it seems he did not know that he was doing the same thing as the French classics did, imitating the ancients. The French tragedy, in comparison with the tragedy of the Greeks, is the same as the history of Karamzin in comparison with the history of Herodotus and Titus Livy. So here, too, it is not understood that the ancients completely merged with the subject; the originality of the ancients disappeared, so to speak, in the subject that dominated their imagination, which was their faith. The French classics and Karamzin, on the contrary, clothed their spirit, themselves, their concepts, feelings in the forms of the object that occupied them; That is why everything is presented in the French classics and in Karamzin incorrectly and perversely. Let us take his creation only from one side in this regard.

Russian history begins with the arrival of formidable sea robbers to the tribes of semi-wild Slavs and Finns. The alien robbers are the terrible Nordmanns; they enslave the Slavs and Finns. These two elements are fighting, changing in the Russians, habituation with the despotism of Asia and Greece, the patriarchal rule of the conquered Slavs and the path to Constantinople that has opened for the Varangian adventurers; They destroy ordinary Nordmann feudalism, revealing a completely special feudalism: the appanage system of one ruling family of Russian princes. The estates are falling apart; Christian faith changes the characters of leaders and people; there is a struggle between destinies trying to merge into one whole; in the north, from the removal of the Russian princes to the south and the natural position of the country, is the Novgorod Republic; everything falls under the yoke of the Mongols. The spirit of the people fights against this yoke, liberates itself and reveals in Russia one despotic state, which soon collapses under its own burden. Slave done king, terrifying only by the power of the name; but this was the extreme degree of despotism: the horror of the name disappeared - a new era had arrived. The fall of Novagorod and the ferocity of Grozny were necessary to unite the torn parts of the state; a violent merger required strong internal fermentation, and the age of impostors overthrew despotism, awakened the original spirit of the people: it was created from strong elements experienced in the storms of feudalism, enslavement, despotism, and - Russia came to life under the meek, beneficent autocracy of the great Romanov dynasty; the history of Russia began with Minin as states with Peter - how European states.

Karamzin assumed something completely different, and already in the title of his book: “History Russian state" - there is a mistake. From the arrival of Rurik, he begins to say: we, our; sees Russians, thinks that love for the fatherland requires the ennoblement of barbarians, and does not notice the difference in Oleg’s warrior, Ivan the Terrible’s warrior, Pozharsky’s warrior; it seems to him the dignity of an educated citizen is a rule of state morality that requires respect for ancestors. After this, can you expect the concept that before John III there was not Russia, But Russian states; so that the author sees in Oleg a Nordmann barbarian; in the struggle of inheritances, gave equal justice to both Oleg Chernigovsky and Vladimir Monomakh? No! and you will not find it. Oleg is burning he has the popularity of heroes, and the victorious banners of this hero flutter on the banks of the Dnieper and Bug; Monomakh is the guardian angel of legitimate power, and Oleg Chernigovsky power-hungry, cruel, rejecting villainy only when it is useless, treacherous, rebel; Shame and disgrace fall on him for a whole generation of Olegovichs! So in Rurik he sees an autocratic, wise monarch; Among the semi-wild Slavs, the people are glorious, great, and Karamzin considers even the military trumpets of Svyatoslav’s warriors as proof love of Russians for the art of music!

After all this, is it surprising that European scientists, who were eagerly awaiting Karamzin’s history, received this creation coldly and do not give it a place among the famous modern historians, Niebuhr, Thierry, Guizot, Barant and others. Karamzin cannot stand comparison with the great historians of the past century, Robertson, Hume, Gibbon, because, having all their shortcomings, he does not redeem them with that broad view, that deep sophistication of causes and consequences, which we see in the immortal works of the three English historians of the past century. Karamzin is as far from them in everything as Russia is far from England in mental maturity and educational activities.

People who are accustomed to seeing unkindness and evil in any impartial judgment will say that we are taking away all his merits from Karamzin, we want to humiliate this great man in the eyes of his contemporaries, they will point us to the voice of the entire fatherland, giving him unanimous praise. We justify ourselves by pointing out to such people the respectful respect with which we speak about Karamzin. But let’s not be unconscious in the delight of gratitude and try to give ourselves a true account of our feelings!

On the contrary, we not only do not want to humiliate Karamzin, but we will elevate him, perhaps more than the most blind adherents would dare to exalt. We will say that none of the Russian writers enjoyed such fame as Karamzin, and no one deserved this fame more than him. Karamzin's feat is worthy of praise and surprise. Knowing well all the Russian writers of our time, we dare to assert that today none of all the Russian writers can even be his successor, let alone think of going further than Karamzin. Is this enough? But Karamzin is great only for today's Russia, And in relation to today's Russia- no more.

The glory that any people unanimously gives to one person is not a mistake, for this one, if he has acquired such fame, there is a true representative of the people glorifying him; it coincides with the people and exceeds them. Karamzin's feat in Russian history is as great for us Russians as his feat in our literature. In this case, foreigners cannot judge us, because they do not know our relationships, which justify the price of everything. We will try to provide evidence of the justice of the surprise that Karamzin arouses in his fatherland.

1. Is it possible not to appreciate the courage of Karamzin’s enterprise? An extraordinary mind is visible in each of his literary enterprises. He guessed the needs of his time, knew how to satisfy them, and in 1790 he thought and wrote: “It hurts, but it must be said in fairness that we still do not have a good Russian history, that is, written with a philosophical mind, with criticism, with noble eloquence. They say that our history in itself is less interesting than others: I don’t think so; All you need is intelligence, taste, talent. You can choose; animate, paint, and the reader will be surprised how from Nestor, Nikon, etc. could come out something attractive, strong, worthy of the attention not only of Russians, but also of foreigners."* For 12 years after that, he did not abandon this thought, surprising his compatriots with masterful experiments (description of the rebellion under Tsar Alexy; a trip to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, etc. ) and began History in 1802. You need to know, you need to experience all the difficulty of such an enterprise, to know what Karamzin found and what he left behind. He created the materials, the essence and style of history, was a critic of chronicles and monuments, a genealogist, a chronologist. paleographer, numismatist.

______________________

* Works of Karamzin (third ed.). M., 1820, vol. IV, p. 187.

______________________

2. It is necessary to carefully consider and understand what step Karamzin took from all his predecessors. Who, in any way tolerable, appeared before him, except the Frenchman Leveque (and that same Samaritan!)? Are Shcherbatov, Emin, Nekhachin, Khilkov, Tatishchev worth criticism? Our publishers of chronicles, private histories, and investigators of antiquities showed deep ignorance and often complete ignorance. Let's say more, let's note what, it seems, has not yet been noticed: the critics of Karamzin, the attacks of Messrs. Kachenovsky, Artsybashev and the minions of Vestnik Evropy, the very defense of Karamzin by Mr. Russov and Mr. Dmitriev 7 do not prove the superiority of an extraordinary man over people who can neither think nor write, who can barely master the small amount of learning that sometimes flashes in their heavy and discordant creations?

3. Karamzin rendered unforgettable services by discovering and putting materials in order. True, attempts were made even before him, and the works of venerable men, Bayer, Thunman, Miller, especially the famous Schlozer, were significant and important. But no one more Karamzin did not contribute to Russian history in this regard. He embraced all of Russian history, from its beginning to the 17th century, and one cannot help but be sad that fate did not allow Karamzin to bring his review of materials to our times. He began actively, and seemed to revive the jealousy of other prospectors. From that time on, Count Rumyantsev began to patronize such enterprises, and under his patronage the gentlemen worked as hard as they could. Kalaidovich, Stroev, Pogodin, Vostokov and others, all deserving, although not to the same extent, our gratitude; materials were sought abroad from Russia; the news of eastern writers was translated; State acts were printed. The Academy of Sciences itself seemed to come to life and showed us in the years. Krug, Frenet, Lerberge are worthy successors to Schlozer and Miller; many (Bauze, Wichmann, Count F.A. Tolstoy) began to collect libraries of Russian monuments; In general, paleography, archeography, numismatics, and Russian genealogy were formed. They will say that this was the desire of the times. But Karamzin guessed him, Karamzin walked ahead of everyone and made everyone more powerful. Having given a life-giving beginning, leaving precious guidance to all his followers in the first eight volumes, Karamzin finally (I must admit) seemed to get tired: the 9th, 10th, 11th and especially the 12th volumes of his History show that he is no longer with his previous activities he collected and disassembled materials. And here it is clear what we said that in twelve volumes of his History Karamzin is all; however, the arrangement of materials, a look at them, would be precious for us even with Karamzin’s fatigue, with which the most ardent activity of many cannot be compared.

4. But until the end of his career, Karamzin retained clarity, skill in private criticism of events, and fidelity in his particular meanings. Do not look for a higher view of events in him: speaking about civil strife among destinies, he does not see order in them, will not indicate to you the reasons, their properties, and only in the half of the 15th century he tells you: “From here on, our history accepts the dignity of a truly state, describing no longer senseless princely fights... alliances and wars have important goal: every special enterprise is a consequence main thought aimed at the good of the fatherland"*. The error is obvious, noticed by us from the very Introduction, where Karamzin named the first five centuries of the history of the Russian people unimportant for the mind, not rich in thoughts for the pragmatist, nor in beauty for the painter! From volume VI, the historian already recognizes the dignity of Russian history, but also in this one, which has state dignity(?) history, do not look for the reasons for the atrocities of John, the rapid rise and fall of Boris, the successes of the Pretender, the anarchy that followed him. You read the description of Russia’s struggle with Poland, but you don’t see on what the strange stubbornness of Sigismund is based, as a result of which he, having agreed at first, then does not give Russia his son; You don’t see what the salvation of Russia from alien dominion is based on. An event will come over the years, Karamzin describes it and thinks that he has fulfilled his duty, does not know or does not want to know that an important event does not grow instantly, like a mushroom after rain, that its reasons are hidden deep, and the explosion only means that the wick has been held to the tunnel, it burned out, but it was placed and lit much earlier. Is it necessary to depict (unnecessary, however, for Russian history) a detailed picture of the movement of peoples in ancient times: Karamzin leads the Cimmerians, Scythians, Huns, Avars, Slavs across the stage, like Chinese shadows; Is it necessary to describe the invasion of the Tatars: in front of you is only a picture of Genghis Khan; has it come to the fall of Shuisky: the Poles go to Moscow, take Smolensk, Sigismund does not want to give Vladislav the kingdom and - there is nothing more! This is a common shortcoming of writers of the 18th century, which Karamzin shares with them, and which Hume himself sometimes did not avoid. Thus, having reached the revolution under Charles I, Hume sincerely thinks that external trinkets offended the people and brought about a revolution; Thus, when describing the Crusades, everyone called them a consequence of the beliefs of Peter the Hermit, and Robertson tells you this, just as during the Reformation they point out indulgences and the papal bull burned by Luther. Even in our time, when talking about the French Revolution, didn’t they believe that philosophers had corrupted France, the French were flighty by nature, they became stupefied by the child of philosophy, and - a revolution broke out! But when they describe the events themselves, Hume and Robertson speak correctly, precisely: and Karamzin also describes the events as a prudent critic, a person who knows their details very well. Only there you cannot rely on him, where you must understand the character of the person, the spirit of the time: he speaks according to the chroniclers, according to his basic assumption about Russian history and goes no further. Added to this in Karamzin, as we have noticed, is a poorly understood love for the fatherland. He is ashamed of his ancestor colors(remember that he intended to do this back in 1790); he needs heroes, love for the fatherland, and he doesn’t know what fatherland, virtue, heroism for us they do not have the same meanings as they had for the Varangian Svyatoslav, a resident of Novagorod in the 11th century, a Chernigov resident of the 12th century, a subject of Theodore in the 17th century, who had their own concepts, their own way of thinking, their own special goal of life and deeds.

______________________

* Volume IV, pp. 5 and 6.

______________________

5. Let us also note that Karamzin, remaining the same as he was during other literary pursuits, without changing his spirit, without leaving the conditions of his time, was able to change external forms. The logical order of his ideas is superior to all his contemporaries; a noble, courageous way of thinking, in the direction that Karamzin considers best. For each chapter of his History, a huge refutation can be written, stronger than the remarks of Mr. Artsybashev; Almost half of the pages of his work can be criticized in many respects, but nowhere can you refuse praise for Karamzin’s mind, taste, and skill.

6. Finally (remembered: The main thing, according to Karamzin himself), his mind, taste and skill extended into the language and style of History to such a strong degree that in this last respect, for us Russians, Karamzin should be considered an exemplary, unique, inimitable writer. It is necessary to learn from him this oratorical rhyme, this arrangement of periods, the weight of words with which each of them is placed. N.I. Grech accepted, when compiling the Grammar of the Russian language, everything regarding this subject in Karamzin’s History as basic rules, referred to it as an authority and was not mistaken. Apart from Pushkin, there is hardly any writer in Russia now who penetrated as deeply into the secrets of the Russian language as Karamzin penetrated into them.

Karamzin's eloquence is charming. You don’t believe him when you read him, and you are convinced by the inexplicable power of the word. Karamzin knew this very well and took advantage of his advantage, sometimes sacrificing even the simplicity and fidelity of the images. This is how he portrays to us the reign of John IV, at first quietly, calmly, majestically, and suddenly becomes stern, impetuous, when the time has come for the life of not Anastasia’s husband, not the conqueror of Kazan, but Tiberius of the Alexander Sloboda, the murderer of his brother, the tormentor of Vorotynsky; You will notice the same contrast strikingly between Chapters I and II of Volume XII. But this noticeable, and therefore awkward, effort of art can’t be redeemed by the countless beauties of Karamzin’s creations! We are not talking about volumes IX, X and XII, where the life of Metropolitan Philip, the death of Tsarevich John, John IV himself, the election of Godunov, the overthrow of Dmitry the Pretender are passages inimitably written: they will stand alongside the most eloquent, immortal pages of Thucydides, Livy, Robertson, and in this regard, the words of the venerable publisher of the XII volume of “History of the Russian State”: “Karamzin did not have the misfortune to outlive his talent” are completely fair. But even in the 12th volume there are places of amazing eloquence, for example: Shuisky before the King of Poland and the death of Lyapunov. Karamzin’s hand had already become stiff, but his spirit still retained the youthful vigor of imagination.

These are the inalienable virtues and merits of our unforgettable historian. If we strictly judged his shortcomings, then, of course, no one can say that we did not appreciate his merits. The author of this article dares to think that, having devoted himself to the study of Russian history from his youth, now, after many years of work, he can with some hope believe that he has, over other admirers of the great Karamzin, a preferential right to speak about his merits and demerits.

Let us not give Karamzin any credit for the fact that he may not have been as well prepared for his work as his famous European rivals. Karamzin received not a scientific, but a secular education; he subsequently re-educated himself: all the more honor to him, but we have no need for the writer’s private means and methods: we judge only his creation. Let us note here in passing: there were and now are people in Russia who know more than Karamzin any part related to Russian history, but this private knowledge absorbs all their other abilities and does not give them the means to even think of comparing themselves with the great creator of the “History of the Russian State” ": they are masons, Karamzin is an architect, and a great architect. The building he built does not surprise the whole world, like the buildings of Michel Angelov, but nevertheless it is the honor and beauty of its age for the country in which it was erected.

And his contemporaries and fellow citizens were fair to the great Karamzin. His creation will be the subject of our surprise, honor and praise for a long time to come. Karamzin taught us our history; following in his footsteps, we will eventually learn to avoid his mistakes and shortcomings, we can and should compare him with brilliant creators, and give him not the unconditional praise of noisy ignorance, but at the same time we indignantly reject those who condemn the extraordinary man. He was as great as time, means, his methods and the education of Russia allowed him: gratitude to him is our duty.

Nikolai Alekseevich Polevoy (1796-1846) - Russian writer, playwright, literary and theater critic, journalist, historian and translator; brother of critic and journalist K.A. Polevoy and writer E.A. Avdeeva, father of the writer and critic P.N. Polevoy.

Columbus of Russian history

Pushkin called Karamzin Columbus, who discovered Ancient Rus' for his readers just as the famous traveler discovered America to Europeans. When using this comparison, the poet himself did not imagine to what extent it was correct.

We now know that Columbus was not the first European to reach the shores of America, that his journey itself was made possible only thanks to the experience accumulated by his predecessors. Calling Karamzin the first Russian historian, one cannot help but recall the names of Tatishchev, Boltin, Shcherbatov, and not mention a number of publishers of documents who, despite all the imperfections of their publishing methods, attracted attention and aroused interest in the past of Russia.

And yet, the glory of the discovery of America is rightfully associated with the name of Columbus, and the date of his voyage is one of the decisive milestones in world history. Karamzin had predecessors. But only his “History of the Russian State” became not just another historical work, but first history of Russia. The discovery of Columbus is an event in world history not only and not so much because he discovered new lands, but because it turned all the ideas of the inhabitants of Old Europe upside down and changed their way of thinking no less than the ideas of Copernicus and Galileo. Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State” not only informed readers of the fruits of the historian’s many years of research - it turned the consciousness of the Russian reading society upside down. It was no longer possible to think about the present without connection with the past and without thinking about the future. “The history of the Russian state” was not the only factor that made the consciousness of the people of the 19th century. historical: here the decisive role was played by the war of 1812, and the work of Pushkin, and the general movement of philosophical thought in Russia and Europe in those years. But Karamzin’s “History” stands among these events. Therefore, its significance cannot be assessed from any one-sided point of view.

Is Karamzin’s “History” a scientific work that creates a holistic picture of Russia’s past from its first centuries to the eve of the reign of Peter I? - There can be no doubt about it. For a number of generations of Russian readers, Karamzin’s work was the main source of acquaintance with the past of their homeland. The great Russian historian S. M. Solovyov recalled: “...The story of Karamzin also fell into my hands: until I was thirteen years old, that is, before I entered the gymnasium, I read it at least twelve times.” Such evidence could be multiplied.

Is Karamzin’s “History” the fruit of independent historical research and in-depth study of sources? - And it is impossible to doubt this: the notes in which Karamzin concentrated the documentary material served as the starting point for a significant number of subsequent historical studies, and to this day Russian historians constantly turn to them, never ceasing to be amazed at the enormity of the author’s work.

Is Karamzin’s “History” a remarkable literary work? - Its artistic merits are also obvious. Karamzin himself once called his work a “historical poem,” and in the history of Russian prose the first quarter of the XIX V. Karamzin's work occupies one of the most outstanding places. Decembrist A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, reviewing the last lifetime volumes of “History” (the tenth and eleventh) as phenomena of “elegant prose,” wrote: “We can safely say that in literary terms we have found a treasure in them. There we see the freshness and strength of the style, the seductiveness of the story and the variety in the composition and sonority of the turns of the language, so obedient under the hand of true talent.”

It would probably be possible to point out other connections; from the point of view of some, “The History of the Russian State” is a remarkable phenomenon. But the most significant thing is that it does not belong inseparably to any of them: “The History of the Russian State” is a phenomenon of Russian culture in its integrity and should be considered only as such.

On November 31, 1803, by a special decree of Alexander I, Karamzin received the title of historiographer. From that moment on, in the words of P. A. Vyazemsky, he “took his hair as a historian” and did not give up the historian’s pen until his last breath. However, in fact historical

3

Karamzin's interests are rooted in his earlier work. In 1802-1803 In the journal "Bulletin of Europe" Karamzin published a number of articles on Russian history. But this is not the very beginning: extracts and preparatory materials on Russian history dating back to the beginning of the century have been preserved. However, even here one cannot see the origins. On June 11, 1798, Karamzin sketched out a plan for the “Laudatory speech to Peter I.” Already from this entry it is clear that we were talking about the intention of an extensive historical study, and not a rhetorical exercise. The next day he added the following thought, clearly showing what he expected to devote himself to in the future: “If Providence will spare me; unless something happens that is worse for me than death (Karamzin was ill and was afraid of going blind. - Yu. L.) ... I’ll take up History. I'll start with Gillis; after that I will read Ferguson, Gibbon, Robertson - read with attention and make notes; and then I’ll get to work on the ancient Authors, especially Plutarch.” This entry testifies to the awareness of the need to introduce a system into historical studies, which in fact are already proceeding very intensively. It was during these days that Karamzin read Tacitus, to whose opinions he would repeatedly refer in the “History of the Russian State,” translated Cicero and Sallust for the “Pantheon of Foreign Literature” he published, and fought against censorship that prohibited ancient historians.

Of course, the idea of ​​completely devoting himself to history is still far from his mind. Plotting a word of praise to Peter I, he writes to Dmitriev, not without coquetry: this “requires that I devote three months to reading Russian history and Golikov: a task hardly possible for me! And there’s still a lot of thinking that needs to be done!” . But still, plans for essays on historical topics constantly arise in the writer’s head.

However, it can be assumed that the roots go even deeper. In the second half of the 1810s. Karamzin sketched “Thoughts for the History of the Patriotic War.” Arguing that the geographical position of Russia and France makes it almost impossible that they “could directly attack one another,” Karamzin pointed out that only a complete change in “the entire political state of Europe” could make this war possible. And he directly called this change: “Revolution,” adding to this historical reason a human one: “The Character of Napoleon.” One might think that when Karamzin in Frankfurt am Main first heard about the taking of the Bastille by the people of Paris, when he later sat in the hall of the National Assembly and listened to the speakers of the revolution, when he followed all the steps of General Bonaparte to power and listened to the tramp of Napoleon's legions on the roads Europe, he learned the lesson of observing modernity through the eyes of a historian. As a historian, he witnessed the first roars of the revolution on the streets of Paris and the last cannon salvoes on Senate Square on December 14, 1825. He felt early and throughout his life that a writer living in a historical era must be a historian.

It is generally accepted to divide Karamzin's work into two eras: before 1803, Karamzin was a writer, and later a historian. But we had the opportunity to make sure that, on the one hand, Karamzin, even after being awarded the title of historiographer, did not cease to be a writer (A. Bestuzhev, P. Vyazemsky assessed “History” as an outstanding phenomenon of Russian prose, and this, of course, is true: “History” Karamzin belongs to art to the same extent as, for example, Herzen’s “The Past and Thoughts”), and on the other hand, he “got deep into Russian history” long before his official calling.

However, there are other, more compelling reasons for contrasting the two periods of creativity. The comparison itself seems to suggest itself: the main work of the first half of creativity is “Letters of a Russian Traveler”, the second is “History of the Russian State”. The multiple oppositions contained in the titles of these works are so obvious that their intentionality cannot be doubted. First of all: “Russian” - “Russian”. The contrast here is stylistic. The root “rus” (through “u” and with one “s”) was perceived as belonging to colloquial speech, and “ross” - to high style. In Lomonosov’s odes the form “Russian” (Dal even protested against the fact that “Russian” is written with two “s”) does not appear even once. It is replaced by the “Russian” form, natural for the high style: “Victory, Russian victory!” (“At the Capture of Khotin”), “Beaut the Russian Family” (ode of 1745), etc. But if “Russian” is a stylistically high synonym for “Russian”, then “Russian” also includes a semantic connotation - it contains semantics statehood. This is how another antithesis arises: a traveler, a private person, and a deliberately private document - letters to friends, on the one hand, and the history of the state - the struggle for power, chronicles - on the other. Finally, behind all this

Quotes intended to confirm the “reactionary” and “nationalism” of the late Karamzin are usually taken from the “Note on Ancient and New Russia”, the preface to the “History of the Russian State”, or from a truly colorful episode with the final phrase of the draft manifesto of December 12, 1825, written on behalf of Nicholas I, who ascended the throne (the new tsar rejected Karamzin’s text and published a manifesto as edited by Speransky): Karamzin expressed at the end of the manifesto the tsar’s desire to “gain the blessing of God and the love of the Russian people,” but Nikolai and Speransky replaced the last expression with “the love of peoples Ours."

The point, however, is not the presence or absence of certain supporting quotes, but the possibility of giving equally striking examples that refute this scheme. And in early period, including in “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” Karamzin showed himself as a patriot remaining abroad “ Russians traveler." Not the late Karamzin, but the author of “Letters of a Russian Traveler” wrote the following words: “...The British know French, but do not want to speak to them... What a difference with us! We have everyone who can only say: comment vous portez-vous? unnecessarily distorts the French language so as not to speak Russian with a Russian; and in our so-called good society Without the French language you will be deaf and dumb. Isn't it a shame? How can you not have people's pride? Why be parrots and monkeys together? Our language and the right for conversation are no worse than others...”

At the same time, Karamzin never abandoned the idea of ​​the beneficial influence of Western enlightenment on the cultural life of Russia. Already at the end of his days, working on the last volumes of “History”, he sympathetically noted the desire of Boris Godunov to destroy the cultural isolation of Russia (this despite the general negative attitude towards the personality of this tsar!), and about Vasily Shuisky, who tried to establish cultural ties in the fire of state unrest with the West, wrote: “Pleasing the people with his love for the old Russian customs, Vasily did not want, however, to please him, to drive out foreigners: he did not show partiality towards them, with which they reproached Rasstrigu and even Godunov, but did not give them offense to the rebellious mob.. . tried by mercy to keep all honest Germans in Moscow and in the Tsar’s service, both soldiers and scientists, artists, artisans, loving civil education and knowing that they were needed for his success in Russia; in a word, he had the desire, but did not have the time, to become an educator of the fatherland... and in what a century! in what terrible circumstances!” (XII, 42-44).

The reproaches that Karamzin expressed against Peter I during this period concerned not Europeanization itself, but its despotic methods and the tsar’s tyrannical interference in the private lives of his subjects - an area that Karamzin always considered excluded

“The History of the Russian State” confronts the reader with a number of paradoxes. First of all, it is necessary to say something about the title of this work. Its title says “history of the state.” Based on this, Karamzin began to be defined as a “statesman” (may the reader forgive us this strange word used by some authors!). It is enough to compare Karamzin’s “History” with the works of researchers of the so-called “ public school"B. N. Chicherin and K. D. Kavelin (whose predecessors Karamzin is sometimes credited with, also based on the title), to see to what extent Karamzin was alien to issues of administrative and legal structure, organization of class institutions, i.e. problems of the formal state structure of society, which occupied the “state school” so much. Moreover, the initial premises of Karamzin and the “state school” are directly opposite: according to Chicherin, the state is an administrative-legal apparatus that determines the life of peoples; it is this, and not individuals, that acts in history; history is the history of state institutions: “The state is called upon to implement the supreme principles human life; it, as an independent person, plays a world-historical role, participates in deciding the destinies of mankind.” This formulation removes the question of the moral responsibility of the individual as a historical phenomenon. He turns out to be simply outside of history. For Karamzin, he always remained the main one. In order to understand what Karamzin understood by state, it is necessary, of necessity, to briefly consider the general nature of his worldview.

Karamzin’s views were deeply imprinted by the four years he spent in N.I. Novikov’s circle. From here, young Karamzin brought out utopian aspirations, faith in progress and dreams of future human brotherhood under the guidance of wise mentors. Reading Plato, Thomas More and Mabley also supported the belief that " Utopia(Karamzin made a note to this word: “Or Kingdom of Happiness the writings of Morus." - Yu. L.) will always be the dream of a kind heart...” Sometimes these dreams seriously took hold of Karamzin’s imagination. In 1797, he wrote to A.I. Vyazemsky: “You are granting me in advance a patent for the right of citizenship in the future Utopias. I sometimes make such plans without a joke and, having fired up my imagination, enjoy in advance the perfection of human bliss.” Utopia was conceived by Karamzin during this period in the guise of Plato's Republic as an ideal kingdom of virtue, subject to the strict regulation of wise philosopher-bosses.

However, this ideal early began to be undermined by skeptical doubts. Karamzin emphasized many times later, “that Plato himself felt the impossibility of it (the blessed republic. - Yu. L.)" . In addition, Karamzin was attracted by another ideal, rooted in the writings of Voltaire, whose strong influence he experienced during these years: not harsh asceticism, rejection of luxury, art, industrial success for the sake of equality and civic virtues, but the flowering of the arts, progress of civilization, humanity and tolerance, the ennoblement of human emotions. Following Mably's dilemma, Karamzin was torn between Sparta and Athens. If in the first case he was attracted by the harsh poetry of ancient heroism, then in the second he was attracted by the flowering of the arts, the cult of graceful love, a subtle and educated female society, and beauty as a source of goodness. But to both these hopes a bitter taste of skepticism began to be added early on, and it is no coincidence that the door

True, when publishing this passage in 1792, Karamzin added a skeptical ending: “A dream!” (“dream” is used here in the Church Slavonic meaning of the word: “empty imagination, vision of a thing without its existence”), but at that time his mood was exactly like that. Utopian hopes and philanthropic aspirations captured him, and it was no coincidence that, having learned in Frankfurt am Main about the storming of the Bastille, he rushed to read Schiller’s “The Fiesco Conspiracy in Genoa,” and in Paris he reread Mably and Thomas More.

7

But at the same time, one feature must be emphasized: Utopia for him is not the kingdom of certain political or social relations, but the kingdom of virtue; a shining future depends on the high morality of people, not on politics. Virtue gives rise to freedom and equality, not freedom and equality - virtue. Karamzin treated any form of politics with distrust.

In this regard, the meetings of the National Assembly taught Karamzin important lessons. He heard Mirabeau's stormy speeches about what Karamzin was keenly worried about: religious tolerance, the connection between despotism and aggression, the abuses of feudalism, and he also listened to his opponent, Abbot Maury. Even in the careful formulation of 1797: “Our traveler is present at the noisy debates in the National Assembly, admires the talents of Mirabeau, pays tribute to the eloquence of his opponent Abbot Maury...” - a preference for the former is evident. There is no doubt that the abbot’s defense of the historical rights of the Catholic Church (in response to this, Mirabeau pathetically evoked the shadows of the victims of St. Bartholomew’s Night) and the feudal order did not evoke any sympathy in Karamzin. But it was here that he had the most important idea that words are given truth only by their correspondence to the inner world of the one who pronounces them. Otherwise, any truths turn into “phrases” so hated by Karamzin in the future. Mirabeau's speeches made Karamzin feel the “great talent” of the speaker and, undoubtedly, excited him. But he could not forget that the speaker himself was a descendant of an ancient family, a marquis, an unprincipled adventurer who occupied a luxurious mansion and led a stormy life, the scandalous details of which Karamzin heard back in Lyon. Mirabeau bore little resemblance to the heroes of ancient virtue, from whose stern patriotism one could expect the transformation of France into Plato's Republic. But his opponent was no better: the son of a poor Huguenot shoemaker, consumed by ambition, striving to achieve the cardinal’s hat at any cost, the gifted but unprincipled Maury renounced the faith of his fathers, family and relatives, joined the camp of his enemies and became their tribune, demonstrating at the National a meeting of eloquence, intelligence and cynicism.

Much later, Karamzin wrote down the thoughts that first flashed through him, perhaps in the hall of the National Assembly: “Aristocrats, Democrats, Liberalists, Servilists! Who among you can boast of sincerity? You are all Augurs, and you are afraid to look into each other's eyes, so as not to die of laughter. Aristocrats, Servilists want the old order: because it is beneficial for them. Democrats and Liberals want new disorder: because they hope to use it for their own personal benefits.”

Karamzin, who valued only the sincerity and moral qualities of political figures, singled out from among the speakers of the Assembly the short-sighted and devoid of artistry, but who had already acquired the nickname “incorruptible” Robespierre, whose very shortcomings in oratory seemed to him advantages. Robespierre believed in Utopia, avoided theatrical gestures and identified morality with revolution. The clever cynic Mirabeau said about him with a characteristic shade of contempt: “He will go far because he believes in what he says” (for Mirabeau this was evidence of mental limitations).

Karamzin chose Robespierre. Decembrist Nikolai Turgenev, who talked with Karamzin more than once, recalled: “Robespierre inspired him with awe<...>in his old age, he continued to talk about him with respect, marveling at his unselfishness, the seriousness and firmness of his character, and even his modest household, which, according to Karamzin, contrasted with the way of life of people of that era.”

Frequently repeated statements that Karamzin was “scared” of blood need clarification. The fact that the triumph of Reason resulted in fierce hostility and mutual bloodshed was an unexpected and cruel blow for all the Enlighteners, and Radishchev suffered from this no less than Schiller or Karamzin. However, let us recall that in 1798, sketching out a plan for a word of praise to Peter I, Karamzin wrote: “Justification of some cruelties. Always being kind-hearted is incompatible with greatness of spirit. Les grands hommes ne que le tout. But sometimes sensitivity triumphed." We should not forget that Karamzin looked at events through the eyes of a contemporary and an eyewitness and many things seemed to him from a perspective that was unexpected for us. He did not identify the sans-culottes and the convention, the street and the tribune, Marat and Robespierre, and saw them as opposing

Now Karamzin is attracted to the realist politician. The seal of rejection has been removed from politics. Karamzin begins publishing Vestnik Evropy, the first political magazine in Russia.

On the pages of Vestnik Evropy, skillfully using foreign sources, selecting translations (sometimes very freely) in such a way as to express his thoughts in their language, Karamzin develops a consistent political doctrine. People are selfish by nature: “Egoism is the true enemy of society,” “unfortunately, everywhere and everything is selfishness in a person.” Selfishness turns the high ideal of the republic into an unattainable dream: “Without high popular virtue, the Republic cannot stand. That is why monarchical rule is much happier and more reliable: it does not require extraordinary things from citizens and can rise to the level of morality at which republics fall.” Bonaparte seems to Karamzin to be that strong realist ruler who builds a system of government not on “dreamy” theories, but on the real level of people’s morality. He is outside the party. “Bonaparte does not imitate the Directory, does not seek an alliance of one party or another, but puts himself above them and chooses only capable people, sometimes preferring a former nobleman and royalist to a sincere republican, sometimes a republican to a royalist.” “Bonaparte is so beloved and so necessary for the happiness of France that one madman can rebel against his beneficent power.” Defining the consulate as a “true monarchy,” Karamzin emphasizes that the non-hereditary nature of Bonaparte’s power and the way he seized it is fully justified by the beneficent nature of his policy: “Bonaparte is not a thief” of power, and history “will not call him by that name.” “Royalists must remain silent. They did not know how to save their good king, they did not want to die with weapons in their hands, but only want to outrage the minds of weak people with vile slander.” “France is not ashamed to obey Napoleon Bonaparte when it obeyed Madame Pompadour and Du Barry.” “We do not know the ancestors of the consul, but we know him - and that’s enough.”

It is interesting to note that, following his political concept, Karamzin during this period highly appreciates Boris Godunov, and in words reminiscent of the characteristics of the first consul: “Boris Godunov was one of those people who create their own brilliant destiny and prove the wonderful power of Nature. His family had no celebrity.” In the future we will touch on the reasons for the change in this assessment in the History.

The fact that heredity was not a significant factor for Karamzin in these years is evidenced by the persistent opposition on the pages of Vestnik to the energetic non-hereditary dictator negative image a weak, albeit kind, hereditary monarch, embraced by liberal ideas. Playing on his metaphysical speculations, cunning nobles create an oligarchic rule (this is how Sultan Selim is portrayed; describing the rebellion of Pasvan-Oglu, Karamzin, under the guise of a translation, creates his own text, deeply different from the original). Behind these characters a contrast arises that is obvious to contemporaries: Bonaparte - Alexander I. Later it will be directly expressed in “Note on Ancient and New Russia.”

But in 1803, at the very time when desperate debates began to boil over Karamzin’s language reform, he himself was already thinking more broadly. The language reform was intended to make the Russian reader “social,” civilized and humane. Now Karamzin was faced with another task - to make him a citizen. And for this, Karamzin believed, it is necessary that he had a story of your country. We need to do it man of history. That is why Karamzin “took his hair as a historian.”

Indeed: in the field of a poet, prose writer, journalist, one could already reap the fruits of long previous labors; in the field of a historian, one had to start all over again, master methodological skills, and study at almost forty years as a student. But Karamzin saw this as his duty, his tonsure. The state has no history until a historian tells the state about its history. By giving readers the history of Russia, Karamzin gave Russia history. If Alexander’s young employees hurriedly sought to look into the future with reform plans, Karamzin opposed them to a look into the past as the basis of the future.

10

Once in St. Petersburg, on the Fontanka, in the house of E.F. Muravyova, Karamzin read excerpts from “History” to close friends. Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev wrote about this to his brother Sergei: “Yesterday Karamzin read to us the conquest of Novgorod and again his preface. There is truly no historian equal to him among the living<...>His History cannot be compared with any other, because he adapted it to Russia, that is, it poured out from materials and sources, completely its own national character having. Not only will this be the true beginning of our literature; but its history will serve us as a cornerstone for Orthodoxy, public education, monarchical feeling and, God willing, a possible Russian constitution (emphasized by A.I. Turgenev. - Yu. L.). She will unite our concepts of Russia, or better yet, give us them. We will find out what we were, how we transitioned to the present status quo, and what we can be without resorting to violent transformations.”

The views of A. I. Turgenev, an Arzamasian and Karamzinist, an eclectic out of kindness and an amateurish assistant to Karamzin (A. Turgenev took his historical studies in Göttingen under the guidance of Schletser, and Karamzin had no historical education), did not completely coincide with Karamzin’s, and Karamzin is unlikely Lee would put his signature on this letter. But Turgenev firmly grasped one thing: a look into the future must be based on knowledge of the past.

Karamzin had the opportunity to describe the turbulent events of the past in the midst of the turbulent events of the present. On the eve of 1812, Karamzin was working on the VI volume of History, completing the end of the 15th century. Napoleon's approach to Moscow interrupted classes. Karamzin “sent his wife and children to Yaroslavl with the potbellied Princess Vyazemskaya,” and he himself moved to Sokolniki, to the house of his relative by his first wife, Count. F.V. Rastopchina, closer to the source of news. He escorted Vyazemsky, Zhukovsky, the young historian Kalaidovich into the army, and he himself was preparing to join the Moscow militia. He wrote to Dmitriev: “I said goodbye to History: I gave the best and complete copy of it to my wife, and the other to the Archive of the Foreign Collegium.” Although he is 46 years old, he “hurts from afar look at events that are decisive for our fatherland.” He is ready to “mount his gray horse.” However, fate has something else in store for him: departure to his family in Nizhny Novgorod, the death of his son, the destruction of all his property in Moscow and, especially, his precious library. He writes to Dmitriev: “My entire library has turned to ashes, but the story is intact: Camoes saved the Lusiad.”

The subsequent years in burned-out Moscow were difficult and sad, but work on “History” continues. By 1815, Karamzin had completed eight volumes, written the “Introduction” and decided to go to St. Petersburg to obtain permission and funds to print what he had written.

In St. Petersburg, new difficulties awaited Karamzin. The historian was enthusiastically greeted by the young Karamzinists of Arzamas, he was warmly received by Tsarina Elizaveta Alekseevna, smart and educated, sick and virtually abandoned by Alexander I; Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, Grand Duchesses. But Karamzin was waiting for something else - an audience with the tsar, who was supposed to decide the fate of “History”. But the king did not accept, “choked on the roses.” On March 2, 1816, Karamzin wrote to his wife: “Yesterday, speaking with V.<еликой>To.<нягиней>Ekaterina Pavlovna, I just didn’t tremble with indignation at the thought that I was being kept here in a useless, almost insulting manner.” "If they don't honor me contemplation, then we must forget St. Petersburg: we will prove that in Russia there is a noble pride that is not opposed to God.” Finally, Karamzin was made to understand that the tsar would not accept him until the historiographer paid a visit to the all-powerful Arakcheev. Karamzin hesitated (“Will they conclude that I’m a creep and a vile seeker? It seems better not to go,” he wrote to his wife) and set off only after urgent requests from Arakcheev, so the trip took on the character of a visit of social politeness, rather than a visit petitioner. Not Karamzin, but Arakcheev felt flattered. After this, the tsar received the historiographer and graciously granted 60,000 to print the history, allowing it to be published without censorship. It had to be printed in St. Petersburg. I had to move there with my whole family. A new period of life began for Karamzin.

At the beginning of 1818, 3,000 copies of the first eight volumes were published. Despite the fact that the circulation was huge at that time, the publication sold out in 25 days; a second one was immediately required, which was taken over by the bookseller Slenin. The appearance of the “History of the Russian State” became a public event. There were few responses in the press:

11

Kachenovsky’s criticism of the preface and Artsybashev’s petty remarks would have gone unnoticed if the Karamzinists had not responded to them with an explosion of epigrams. However, in letters, conversations, and manuscripts not intended for publication, “History” for a long time remained the main subject of controversy. In Decembrist circles she was met with criticism. M. Orlov reproached Karamzin for the lack of hypotheses regarding the beginning of Russian history that were flattering to the patriotic feeling (the skeptical school would reproach the historian for the opposite). The most thorough analysis is by Nikita Muravyov, who criticized Karamzin’s attitude to the historical role of autocracy. Griboedov, in his travel notes of 1819, observing despotism in Iran, wrote: “Slaves, my dear! Serves them right! Do they dare to condemn their supreme owner?<...>Their historians are panegyrists." Comparing the actions of despotism in Iran and in his homeland, Griboyedov, of course, thought about Karamzin in his last words. However, everyone who attacked “History” - right and left - were already its readers, they condemned the author, but based their own conclusions on his material. Moreover, it was the fact of the appearance of “History” that influenced the course of their thought. Now not a single thinking person in Russia could think outside the general perspectives of Russian history.

And Karamzin moved on. He worked on volumes IX, X and XI of “History” - the time of the oprichnina, Boris Godunov and the Time of Troubles. And this second half of his work differs markedly from the first. It was in these volumes that Karamzin reached unsurpassed heights as a prose writer: this is evidenced by the power of characterization and the energy of the narrative. But this is not the only thing that distinguishes Karamzin the historian of the last, “St. Petersburg” period of his activity. Until now, Karamzin believed that the successes of centralization, which he associated with the formation of the autocratic power of the princes of Moscow, were simultaneously successes of civilization. During the reign of Ivan III and Vasily Ivanovich, not only statehood was strengthened, but the original Russian culture also achieved success. At the end of volume VII, in a review of the culture of the 15th-16th centuries, Karamzin noted with satisfaction the appearance of secular literature - for him an important sign of the success of education: “... we see that our ancestors were engaged not only in historical or theological works, but also in novels; loved works of wit and imagination” (VII, 139). The reign of Ivan the Terrible confronted the historian with a difficult situation: increased centralization and autocratic power led not to progress, but to monstrous abuses of despotism.

Moreover, Karamzin could not help but note the decline in morality and the disastrous impact of the reign of Ivan the Terrible on the moral future of Russia. The Terrible, he writes, “boasted of justice,” “deep wisdom of state,” “touching with a destructive hand the very future of times: for the cloud of informers, slanderers, Kromeshniks, formed by him, like a cloud of hungry insects, having disappeared, left an evil seed among the people; and if the yoke of Batu humiliated the spirit of the Russians, then, without a doubt, the reign of John did not exalt it” (IX, 260). In fact, Karamzin approached one of the most difficult questions of Russian history of the 16th century. All historians who straightforwardly recognized the strengthening of statehood as the main historically progressive feature of the era fatally faced the need to justify the oprichnina and terror of Grozny as a historical necessity. In the heat of polemics with the Slavophiles, Belinsky spoke out this way, and K. D. Kavelin unconditionally justified all the actions of Ivan the Terrible. Based on the idea of ​​the progressiveness of “state principles” in their struggle against “tribal life,” S. M. Solovyov also approached this position. S. F. Platonov wrote about the direction of Grozny’s terror against the historically doomed land ownership of the former appanage princes. P. A. Sadikov also stood in the position of searching for socially progressive meaning in the oprichnina and executions of Grozny. This tradition received an odious continuation in historical and artistic works of the 1940-1950s, expressed in the exclamation that Ivan the Terrible threw from the screen in Eisenstein’s film: “No one is condemned in vain!” The source of the idealization of Ivan the Terrible in the texts of these years is obvious. N.K. Cherkasov in his book “Notes of a Soviet Actor” (M., 1953. P. 380) recalled the conversation of I.V. Stalin with Eisenstein and himself as the performer of the role of Ivan the Terrible: “Touching on the mistakes of Ivan the Terrible, Joseph Vissarionovich noted that one of his mistakes was that he failed to liquidate the five remaining large feudal families, did not complete the fight against the feudal lords - if he had done this, then there would have been no time of troubles in Rus'<...>And then Joseph Vissarionovich added with humor that God interfered with Ivan here: “The Terrible liquidates one family of feudal lords, one boyar family, and then for a whole year he repents and atones for his “sins,” when he should have acted even more decisively!”

Karamzin was perplexed by the contradiction between the strengthening of state consolidation and the transformation of the pathology of the tsar’s personality into a tragedy of the people and,

12

Having certainly justified the first tendency, he categorically condemned the second. He did not try to find a state meaning in the terror of Grozny. And if Pogodin in this regard acted as a successor to Karamzin, then Kavelin and many subsequent historians declared Karamzin’s view of Grozny outdated. The objective and insightful historian S. B. Veselovsky reacted differently to Karamzin’s concept of the Terrible: “N. M. Karamzin’s great merit should be recognized in the fact that when he talked about the reign of Ivan IV, about his disgraces and executions, about the oprichnina in particular, he did not fantasize and did not pretend to make broad generalizations of a sociological nature. Like a chronicler, he calmly and accurately reported huge amount facts he first extracted from archival and library primary sources. If in his assessment of Tsar Ivan and his policies Karamzin moralizes and takes on the role of a judge, then his presentation is so clear and conscientious that we can easily isolate from the story the valuable information he conveys and reject the author’s Tacitus approach to historical events.”

It should be noted that the Decembrists supported Karamzin’s concept, and the attitude of progressive circles towards “History” changed dramatically after the appearance of Volume IX. Ryleev wrote: “Well, Grozny! Well, Karamzin! I don’t know what to be more surprised at, the tyranny of John or the gift of our Tacitus.” Mikhail Bestuzhev in the fortress, having received Volume IX, “re-read - and read again every page.”

Clearly understanding that oral reading would have a much greater resonance than book publication, Karamzin, emerging from the role of an impartial observer of modernity, several times gave public readings of excerpts from volume IX. A. I. Turgenev described his impression from one of these readings: “A truly formidable Tyrant, such as no nation has ever had, either in antiquity or in our time - this John is presented to us with the greatest fidelity and as if he were Russian, and not Roman tyrant." When Karamzin decided to read a passage about the executions of Ivan the Terrible at the Shishkov Academy, where he was elected a member, Shishkov was mortally frightened. Karamzin wrote about this to P. A. Vyazemsky: “At the ceremonial meeting of the notorious Russian Academy, I want to read several pages about the horrors of Ioannov: the President considered it necessary to report this through the Minister to the Sovereign!” . It should be borne in mind that this letter was written at a time when relations between Karamzin and Alexander I became extremely tense. On December 29, 1819, Karamzin wrote a note “For Posterity,” in which he outlined his conversation with the emperor on October 17, when he told the tsar something that probably no one had ever told him: “Sir, you are too proud... I don’t I'm afraid of nothing. We are all equal before God. What I told you, I would have told your father... Sire, I despise one-day liberalists, I love only freedom, which no tyrant can take away from me... I no longer ask for your favor. Maybe I’m turning to you for the last time.”

With such sentiments Karamzin went to readings at the Russian Academy. This is what Metropolitan Philaret recalled 48 years later: “The reader and the reading were attractive: but what was read was scary. I thought then whether history would not have fulfilled its duty sufficiently if it had illuminated well the best part reign of the Terrible, and the other would be covered with shadow rather than with many dark, sharp features, which are hard to see, placed on the name of the Russian Tsar.” The Decembrist Lorer said in his memoirs that he led. Prince Nikolai Pavlovich, looking from the window of the Anichkov Palace at the historiographer walking along Nevsky, asked: “Is this Karamzin? A scoundrel, without whom the people would not have realized that there were tyrants among the kings.” This news is anecdotal: Karamzin and Nikolai Pavlovich met back in 1816, and their relationship was of a completely different nature. But anecdotes are also important for the historian: in Decembrist folklore, Karamzin, the author of volume IX, and Nikolai Pavlovich were imprinted as polar opposites.

The collision with the disharmony between statehood and morality apparently shocked Karamzin himself, and this was reflected in the strengthening of the moral pathos of the last volumes. Particularly interesting is the example of metamorphosis in the assessment of Boris Godunov. Both in “Letters of a Russian Traveler” and in “Historical Memoirs and Remarks on the Way to Trinity” Karamzin calls Boris Godunov the Russian Cromwell, that is, a regicide, although in “Historical Memoirs...” he stipulates that his participation in the death of Demetrius has not been proven. . Nevertheless, the characterization of Godunov in “Historical Memoirs...” -

So, the importance of “royal merit” comes first. Moral infallibility is, as it were, its consequence. In “History” the ratio changes, and a criminal conscience makes all the efforts of the state mind useless. What is immoral cannot be useful to the state.

This note sounds persistently in the last volumes of the History. The pages dedicated to the reign of Boris Godunov and the Time of Troubles belong to the peaks of Karamzin’s historical painting, and it is no coincidence that they inspired Pushkin to create “Boris Godunov.”

In recent years, Karamzin has persistently repeated that moral perfection is a matter of personal effort and the personal conscience of an individual, independent of those incomprehensible and tragic paths in which Providence leads peoples, and, therefore, accomplished outside the course of state development.

On December 5, 1818, Karamzin gave a speech at a ceremonial meeting of the Russian Academy (the speech was written earlier, in the fall, at the very time when the historian noted: “I describe the atrocities of Ivashka”). Here, for the first time, he sharply contrasted the state and morality, “power” and “soul”: “Is it for this reason that Powers are formed, or for this reason, they rise on the globe, so as to solely amaze us with the formidable colossus of power and its sonorous fall; so that one, overthrowing the other, after several centuries, with its vast grave, serves instead as the foot of a new Power, which in its turn will inevitably fall? No! both our life and the life of Empires must contribute to the revelation of the great abilities of the human soul; here everything is for the soul, everything for the mind and feelings; everything is immortal in their successes! This thought, among the graves and decay, consoles us with some great consolation.” Even earlier, in 1815, having buried his daughter Natasha, Karamzin wrote to A.I. Turgenev: “ Live there is not to write history, not to write tragedy or comedy, but to think, feel and act as best as possible, to love goodness, to raise your soul to its source; everything else, my dear friend, is husk - I don’t exclude my eight or nine volumes.”

Related to these sentiments is Karamzin’s obvious disappointment in the work to which he devoted 23 years of continuous work. It is even more striking that he, who put “history of the state” on the title, does not want to write about the period when the state achieves great success and really becomes the center of historical life - about the period of Peter I. Apparently, even the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich does not attract him. The Decembrist uprising and the death of Alexander confronted him with the need to rethink his historical concept, for which he no longer had the strength. It is no coincidence that one of the Karamzinists called the uprising on Senate Square an armed criticism of the “History of the Russian State.”

Karamzin writes on the last day of 1825 that he is seriously thinking about resigning and living in Moscow or serving in a diplomatic mission abroad, “but first I would like to publish a hefty volume of my historical poem” (“dozen” - the twelfth volume - is dedicated to the Troubles and, apparently, it should have ended with the election of Mikhail Romanov; since at the end Karamzin wanted to say “something” about Alexander, then, obviously, this would have ended the “History”. And a few weeks later, informing Vyazemsky about the thirst for travel that overwhelmed him, Karamzin writes: “There is no way I could return to my previous activities even if I recovered here.”

Death, which interrupted work on the “historical poem,” resolved all the issues.

Karamzin's merits in discovering new sources, creating a broad picture of Russian history, and combining scholarly commentary with the literary merits of the narrative are not in doubt. However, the historian's scientific achievements began to be challenged early. The first critics of Karamzin the historian: Kachenovsky and Artsybashev, reproached him for insufficient criticism. But since the theoretical positions of the critics themselves (denial of the possibility of the existence of Russian culture and statehood before the 13th century, denial of the authenticity of a number of indisputably original texts of the 11th-12th centuries, etc.) soon lost their persuasiveness, their objections shook Karamzin’s scientific authority and forced professional historians talk about its “obsolescence”. The first step in this direction was taken by Nikolai Polevoy, and then historians of subsequent schools and movements began talking about this from different positions. There was great scientific truth in this criticism. However, the very fact that each new direction, before formalizing its scientific position, must overthrow Karamzin speaks best of all about the place that he, in spite of everything, occupied in Russian historical science. They don’t argue with the unnecessary, they don’t refute the petty, they don’t compete with the dead. And the fact that Polevoy, S. Solovyov, Klyuchevsky created works that “cancelled” Karamzin’s “History”, that the pinnacle of the historian’s work traditionally began to be seen as a holistic experience of the history of Russia, is more eloquent than any reasoning.

Beginning with N. Polevoy, Karamzin faces one main reproach: the lack of a “higher” (Polevoy) or philosophical, as they began to say later, view, empiricism, emphasizing the role of individuals and lack of understanding of the spontaneous work of historical laws. If the criticism to which Karamzin the historian is subjected by P. Milyukov strikes with bias and some kind of personal irritation, then the modern reader can only join the words of V. O. Klyuchevsky: “... the faces of K<арамзина>surrounded by a special moral atmosphere: these are abstract concepts of duty, honor, good, evil, passion, vice, virtue<...>TO<арамзин>does not look behind the scenes of history, does not follow the historical connection of causes and consequences, and even seems to have a unclear idea of ​​what historical forces make up the historical process and how they act.”

Indeed, the idea of ​​history as a field of action of certain laws began to take shape in the 1830s. and it was alien to Karamzin. The idea of ​​historical regularity brought about a genuine revolution in science, which gives certain grounds for attributing everything that preceded it to the pre-scientific period. However, where there are achievements, there are also losses. Starting with Polevoy, Kavelin, S. Solovyov, the historian could no longer avoid creating an organizing concept. And this began to give rise to a desire to neglect facts that do not fit into the concept... And the somewhat grumbling words of Academician. S. B. Veselovsky contain much more truth than Miliukov’s statement that Karamzin did not have any influence on historical science. S. B. Veselovsky wrote: “There is no need to say and argue that Karamzin as a historian is outdated in many respects, but in his author’s conscientiousness and invariable restraint in assumptions and conjectures, he still remains a model beyond the reach of many subsequent historians whose disdain for facts, reluctance to look for them in sources and process them are combined with conceit and constant claims to broad and premature generalizations not based on facts.” Indeed, if many of Karamzin’s ideas are outdated, then he himself, as an example of scientific honesty and a high sense of professional responsibility to the truth, remains a noble example.

Finally, the “moral atmosphere” that Klyuchevsky writes about is also not only a sign of the archaic nature of Karamzin’s outdated methods, but also a source of charm, the special charm of his creation. No one will call for a return to moralizing and the “moral lessons” of history, but the view of history as a faceless automatic process operating with the fatal determination of a chemical reaction is also outdated, and questions of moral responsibility of man and moral meaning stories turn out to be decisive not only for the past, but also for the future historical science. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the “return” of Karamzin the historian.

But “History of the Russian State” should also be considered among the works

And one of the last papers written by his hand ends: “Greetings to posterity from the grave!” .

This publication is a sign that these words have reached the addressee. Karamzin returns.

|Introduction |p. 3 |
|Chapter 1. “History of the Russian State” as a cultural phenomenon |p. 5 |
|Chapter 2. Karamzin’s “Letters of a Russian Traveler” in development | |
|Russian culture | |
|Chapter 3. “History is art” as a method of Karamzin N. M | |
|Conclusion |p. 26 |
|List of sources used |p. 27 |

Introduction

Books and magazines of that time bear traces of someone else's will.
Tsarist officials mercilessly mutilated the best works of Russian literature. it took the painstaking work of Soviet literary historians to clear the texts classical works from distortion. Russian classical literature and social thought of the 19th century is a colossal wealth, an ideological, artistic, moral wealth inherited by our time. But it can be used in different ways. against the backdrop of the tragic judges of his contemporaries, Karamzin’s fate seems happy.

He entered literature early and quickly gained fame as the country's first pen. He successfully traveled and communicated with the first minds and talents of Western Europe.

Readers loved his almanacs and magazines. he is the author of the history of the Russian state, a zealous reader of poets and politicians, a witness to the great French Revolution, an eyewitness to the rise and fall of Napoleon, he called himself a “republican at heart.” Karamzin’s world is the world of a seeking spirit, in constant motion, which has absorbed everything that constituted the content pre-Pushkin era. The name Karamzin was the first to appear in German, French and English literature.

Karamzin's life was unusually rich not so much in external events, although there was no shortage of them, but in internal content, which more than once led the writer to the fact that he was surrounded by twilight.

Karamzin's role in the history of Russian culture is not measured only by his literary and scientific creativity. Karamzin created a stereotype of a Russian traveler in Europe. Karamzin created many works, including the wonderful “Letters of a Russian Traveler” and the great “History of the Russian State.” But Karamzin's greatest creation was himself, his life, and his spiritual personality. It was through this that he had a great moral influence on Russian literature. Karamzin introduced the highest ethical requirements into literature as ordinary. And when Zhukovsky,
Pushkin, and after them all the great writers of the 19th century, continued the construction of Russian literature; they began from the level set by Karamzin as a matter of course, the basis of literary work. Work on the “History of the Russian State” can be divided into three distinct periods: the time of publication of the “Moscow Journal”, creativity 1793 - 1800 and the period
"Bulletin of Europe".
Pushkin called Karamzin Columbus, who discovered Ancient history for his readers
Rus' is similar to how the famous traveler discovered the Europeans
America. In using this comparison, the poet himself did not imagine to what extent it was correct; Columbus was not the first European to reach the shores of
America, and that his journey itself was made possible only thanks to the experience accumulated by his predecessors. Calling Karamzin the first Russian historian, one cannot help but recall the names of V.N. Tatishchev, I.N. Boltin, M.M.
Shcherbatov, not to mention a number of publishers of documents who, despite all the imperfections of their publishing methods, attracted attention and aroused interest in the past of Russia.

Karamzin had predecessors, but only his “History of the State”
Russian" became not just another historical work, but the first history
Russia. Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State” not only informed readers of the fruits of the historian’s many years of research - it turned the consciousness of the Russian reading society upside down.

“The history of the Russian state” was not the only factor that made the consciousness of the people of the 19th century historical: the war of 1812, the work of Pushkin, and the general movement of philosophical thought played a decisive role here
Russia and Europe of those years. But Karamzin’s “History” stands among these events.
Therefore, its significance cannot be assessed from any one-sided point of view.

Is Karamzin’s “History” a scientific work that presents a holistic picture of Russia’s past from its first centuries to the eve of the reign of Peter I?
– There can be no doubt about it. For a number of generations of Russian readers, Karamzin’s work was the main source of acquaintance with the past of their homeland. The great Russian historian S. M. Solovyov recalled: “The story of Karamzin also fell into my hands: up to 13 years old, i.e. before I entered the gymnasium, I read it at least 12 times.”

Is Karamzin’s “History” the fruit of independent historical research and in-depth study of sources? – And it is impossible to doubt this: the notes in which Karamzin concentrated the documentary material served as the starting point for a significant number of subsequent historical studies, and to this day Russian historians constantly turn to them, never ceasing to be amazed at the enormity of the author’s work.

Is Karamzin’s “History” a remarkable literary work? – Its artistic merits are also obvious. Karamzin himself once called his work a “historical poem”; and in the history of Russian prose of the first quarter of the 19th century, Karamzin’s work occupies one of the most outstanding places. Decembrist A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, reviewing the last lifetime volumes of “History” (10-11) as phenomena of “elegant prose,” wrote: “We can safely say that in literary terms we have found a treasure in them. There we see the freshness and strength of the style, the seductiveness of the story and the variety in the composition and sonority of the turns of the language, so obedient under the hand of true talent.”

But the most significant thing is that it does not belong inseparably to any of them: “The History of the Russian State” is a phenomenon of Russian culture in its integrity and should be considered only as such. On November 31, 1803, by a special decree of Alexander I, Karamzin received the title of historiographer. From that moment on, in the words of P. A. Vyazemsky, he “took his hair as a historian” and did not give up the historian’s pen until his last breath. In 1802-
In 1803, Karamzin published a number of articles on Russian history in the journal Vestnik Evropy.

On June 11, 1798, Karamzin sketched out a plan for the “Laudatory to Peter I.”
Already from this entry it is clear that we were talking about the intention of an extensive historical study, and not a rhetorical exercise. The next day he added the following thought, clearly showing what he expected to devote himself to in the future: “If Providence will spare me; Or else what is worse than death for me will not happen...”

In the second half of 1810, Karamzin sketched “Thoughts for History
Patriotic War." Arguing that the geographical location of Russia and
France makes it almost incredible that they “could directly attack one another; Karamzin pointed out that only a complete change in the “entire political state of Europe” could make this war possible. And he directly called this change: “Revolution,” adding to this historical reason a human one: “The Character of Napoleon.”

It is generally accepted to divide Karamzin’s work into two eras: before 1803.
Karamzin - writer; later - historian. On the one hand, Karamzin, even after being awarded the title of historiographer, did not cease to be a writer (A. Bestuzhev, P.
Vyazemsky assessed Karamzin’s “History” as an outstanding phenomenon of Russian prose, and this, of course, is fair: Karamzin’s “History” belongs to art in the same way, as, for example, Herzen’s “The Past and Thoughts”), and on the other
- “got deep into Russian history” long before official recognition.

There are other, more compelling reasons for contrasting the two periods of creativity. The main work of the first half of creativity is
"Letters of a Russian Traveler"; second – “History of the State”
Russian." Pushkin wrote: “A fool alone does not change, because time does not bring him development, and experiences do not exist for him.” For example, to prove that Karamzin’s evolution can be defined as a transition from “Russian cosmopolitanism” to “pronounced national narrow-mindedness,” an excerpt from “Letters of a Russian Traveler” is usually cited: “...Peter moved us with his powerful hand...”.

In “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” Karamzin showed himself as a patriot who remained abroad as a “Russian traveler.” At the same time
Karamzin never abandoned the idea of ​​the beneficial influence of Western enlightenment on the cultural life of Russia. In the history of Russian culture, a contrast between Russia and the West has developed; S. F. Platonov pointed out: “In his works, Karamzin completely abolished the age-old opposition between Rus' and Europe, as different and irreconcilable worlds; he thought of Russia as one of the European countries, and the Russian people, as one of the nations of equal quality with other nations. “Based on the idea of ​​the unity of human culture, Karamzin did not exclude his people from cultural life. He recognized his right to moral equality in the fraternal family of enlightened peoples.”

“The History of the Russian State” confronts the reader with a number of paradoxes. First of all, it is necessary to say something about the title of this work. Its title is “History of the State.” Based on this, Karamzin began to be defined as a “statist.”

Karamzin's travels abroad coincided with the beginning of the Great French Revolution. This event had a huge impact on all his further thoughts. The young Russian traveler was at first carried away by liberal dreams under the influence of the first weeks of the revolution, but later became frightened by the Jacobin terror and moved to the camp of its opponents - very far from reality. It should be noted that Karamzin, who is often, but completely unfoundedly, identified with his literary counterpart - the narrator from “Letters of a Russian Traveler”, was not a superficial observer of events: he was a permanent member of the National Assembly, listened to the speeches of Mirabeau, Abbé Maury, Robespierre and others.

It is safe to say that none of the prominent figures of Russian culture had such detailed and directly personal impressions of
French Revolution, like Karamzin. He knew her by sight. Here he met history.

It is no coincidence that Pushkin called Karamzin’s ideas paradoxes: the exact opposite happened to him. The beginning of the revolution was perceived by Karamzin as the fulfillment of the promises of a philosophical century. “We considered the end of our century to be the end of the main disasters of mankind and thought that it would be followed by an important, general combination of theory with practice, speculation with activity,” Karamzin wrote in the mid-1790s. Utopia for him is not the kingdom of certain political or social relationships, but the kingdom of virtue; a shining future depends on the high morality of people, not on politics. Virtue gives rise to freedom and equality, not freedom and equality - virtue. The politician Karamzin treated any form with distrust. Karamzin, who valued the sincerity and moral qualities of political figures, singled out from among the speakers of the Assembly the short-sighted and devoid of artistry, but who had already acquired the nickname “incorruptible” Robespierre, whose very shortcomings in oratory seemed to him advantages.
Karamzin chose Robespierre. The tears that Karamzin shed on the coffin
Robespierre, were the last tribute to the dream of Utopia, Plato's Republic, the State of Virtue. Now Karamzin is attracted to a realist politician.
The seal of rejection has been removed from politics. Karamzin begins publishing Vestnik
Europe" is the first political magazine in Russia.

On the pages of the “Bulletin of Europe”, skillfully using foreign sources, selecting translations in such a way as to express their thoughts in their language,
Karamzin develops a consistent political doctrine. People are selfish by nature: “Egoism is the true enemy of society,” “unfortunately, everywhere and everything is selfishness in a person.” Selfishness turns the high ideal of the republic into an unattainable dream: “Without high popular virtue, the Republic cannot stand.” Bonaparte seems to Karamzin to be that strong ruler - a realist who builds a system of government not on “dreamy” theories, but on the real level of people’s morality. He is outside the party. It is interesting to note that, following his political concept, Karamzin highly appreciated Boris Godunov during this period. “Boris Godunov was one of those people who create their own brilliant destiny and prove their miraculous power
Natures. His family had no celebrity.”

The idea of ​​“History” matured in the depths of “Bulletin of Europe”. This is evidenced by the ever-increasing amount of materials on Russian history on the pages of this magazine. Karamzin's views on Napoleon changed.
The excitement began to give way to disappointment. After the transformation of the first consul into the emperor of the French, Karamzin wrote bitterly to his brother: “Napoleon
Bonaparte exchanged the title of great man for the title of emperor: power showed him better than glory.” The idea of ​​"History" was to show how
Russia, having gone through centuries of fragmentation and disasters, rose to glory and power with unity and strength. It was during this period that the name arose
"History of the State". Subsequently, the plan underwent changes. But the title could no longer be changed. However, the development of statehood was never the goal of human society for Karamzin. It was just a means. Karamzin's ideas about the essence of progress changed, but the faith in progress, which gave the meaning of human history, remained unchanged. In its most general form, progress for Karamzin consisted in the development of humanity, civilization, education and tolerance. Literature has a major role to play in the humanization of society. In the 1790s, after a break with the Freemasons, Karamzin believed that it was belles-lettres, poetry and novels that would be these great civilizers. Civilization is getting rid of the coarseness of feelings and thoughts. It is inseparable from the subtle shades of experiences. Therefore, the Archimedean fulcrum in the moral improvement of society is language. It is not dry moral sermons, but flexibility, subtlety and richness of language that improve the moral physiognomy of society. It was these thoughts that Karamzin had in mind, the poet K. N. Batyushkov. But in
1803, at the very time when desperate debates began to boil over Karamzin’s language reform, he himself was already thinking more broadly. The language reform was intended to make the Russian reader “social,” civilized and humane.
Now Karamzin was faced with another task - to make him a citizen. And for this, Karamzin believed, he must have the history of his country. We need to make him a man of history. That is why Karamzin “took his hair as a historian.” The state has no history until a historian tells the state about its history. By giving readers the history of Russia, Karamzin gave Russia history. Karamzin had the opportunity to describe the turbulent events of the past in the midst of the turbulent events of the present; on the eve of 1812, Karamzin was working on volume VI
"History", completing the end of the 15th century.

The subsequent years in burned-out Moscow were difficult and sad, but work on “History” continues. By 1815, Karamzin completed 8 volumes, wrote the “Introduction” and decided to go to St. Petersburg to obtain permission and funds to print what he had written. At the beginning of 1818, 3000 copies of the first 8 volumes were published. The appearance of the “History of the Russian State” became a public event. “History” has long been a major subject of debate. In Decembrist circles she was met with criticism. Appearance
"History" influenced the flow of their thoughts. Now not a single thinking person in Russia could think outside the general perspectives of Russian history. A
Karamzin walked on. He worked on volumes IX, X and XI of “History” - the time of the oprichnina, Boris Godunov and the Time of Troubles. In these volumes, Karamzin reached unsurpassed heights as a prose writer: this is evidenced by the power of characterization and the energy of the narrative. During the reign of Ivan III and Vasily
Ivanovich not only strengthened statehood, but also achieved success in the original Russian culture. At the end of volume VII, in a review of the culture of the 15th-16th centuries, Karamzin noted with satisfaction the appearance of secular literature - for him an important sign of educational success: “... we see that our ancestors were engaged not only in historical or theological works, but also in novels; loved works of wit and imagination.”

In “History” the ratio changes and a criminal conscience makes all the efforts of the state mind useless. What is immoral cannot be useful to the state. The pages dedicated to the reign of Boris Godunov and the Time of Troubles belong to the pinnacle of historical writing
Karamzin, and it is no coincidence that it was he who inspired Pushkin to create “Boris
Godunov."

Death, which interrupted work on the “historical poem,” resolved all the issues. If we talk about the significance of the “History of the Russian State” in the culture of the early 19th century and what attracts the modern reader in this monument, then it would be appropriate to consider the scientific and artistic aspects question. Karamzin's merits in discovering new sources, creating a broad picture of Russian history, and combining scholarly commentary with the literary merits of the narrative are not in doubt. But “The History of the Russian State” should also be considered among works of fiction. As a literary phenomenon, it belongs to the first quarter of the 19th century. It was a time of triumph of poetry.
The victory of Karamzin’s school led to the identification of the concepts of “literature” and “poetry”.

Pushkin's drama had inspirations: Shakespeare, the chronicles of the “History of the Russian State”. But Karamzin is not Karamzit. Critics of History in vain reproached Karamzin for not seeing a deep idea in the movement of events. Karamzin was imbued with the idea that history has meaning.

N. M. Karamzin (Tales of the Ages) M., 1988

I. “Ancient Russia discovered by Karamzin.”

N. Karamzin entered the history of Russian literature as a major writer - a sentimentalist who worked actively in the last decade of the 18th century. In recent years, the situation has begun to change - 2 two-volume works have been published
Karamzin, “Letters of a Russian Traveler” were published twice. But Karamzin’s main book, on which he worked for more than two decades, had a huge influence on Russian literature XIX century, practically still unknown to the modern reader, “History of the Russian State.”
History has interested him since his youth. That is why many pages of “Letters of a Russian Traveler” are dedicated to her. History has been an art, not a science, for many centuries. For Pushkin and Belinsky, Karamzin’s “History” is a major achievement of Russian literature of the early 19th century, not only historical, but also an outstanding literary work. The originality of the “History of the Russian State”
Karamzin and was determined by the time of its writing, the time of development of new historical thinking, understanding of the national identity of Russian history throughout its entire length, the nature of the events themselves and the trials that befell the Russian nation over many centuries. Work on
“History” lasted more than two decades - from 1804 to 1826. By 1820
“History of the Russian State” was published in French, German, Italian. In 1818, Russian readers received the first eight volumes of History, which told about the ancient period of Russia. And by that time V. Scott had managed to publish six novels - they told about the past
Scotland. Both writers in Russia were rightly called Columbus.
“Ancient Russia,” wrote Pushkin, “seemed to be found by Karamzin, like America
Columbus." In the spirit of the times, each of them acted simultaneously as an artist and as a historian. Karamzin, in the preface to the first volume of History, summarizing his already established principles for depicting Russian history, stated:
"History" is not a novel." He contrasted “fiction” with “truth.” This position was developed under the influence of the real Russian literary process and the creative evolution of the writer himself.

During the 1800s, literature was awash with original and translated works—in poetry, prose, and drama—on historical themes.
It is history that can reveal the “truth” and “secret” of the life of society and man, as Karamzin came in his development. This new understanding of history manifested itself in the 1795 article “The Reasoning of the Philosopher, Historian and Citizen.” Because
Karamzin, starting “History,” abandons “fiction,” those specific and traditional means by which epics, tragedies or novels were created. To know the “truth” of history meant not only to abandon one’s own agnosticism, calling on the objectivity of the real world, but also to abandon the traditional way of depicting this world in the art of that time. IN
In Russia, this merger will be brilliantly accomplished by Pushkin in the tragedy “Boris
Godunov,” but from the standpoint of realism, Karamzin’s “History” both preceded Pushkin’s success and largely prepared it. Refusal
Karamzin’s rejection of “fiction” did not mean a denial in general of the possibilities of artistic research into history. “The History of the Russian State” captured the search and development of these new, so to speak, equivalent principles for its depiction of historical truth. The most important feature of this structure that developed during the writing process was the combination of analytical (scientific) and artistic principles. Consideration of the elements of such a structure clearly shows how both the searches and discoveries of the writer turned out to be nationally determined.

“The History of the Russian State” contains not only love stories, but generally fictitious plots. The author does not introduce plot into his work, but extracts it from history, from real historical events and situations - the heroes act in circumstances set by history. Only a genuine, and not a fictional, plot brings the writer closer to the “truth” hidden by the “veil of time.”

Given the story, the plot tells a person in his broad connections with the general life of the country, state, and nation. This is how the characters of famous historical figures are built. The life of Ivan the Terrible opened up an abyss of possibilities for constructing a love story - the tsar had seven wives and countless others who were victims of his “shameless lust.” But
Karamzin proceeded from social conditions that determined the character of the tsar, his actions, and the “era of torment” that shook all of Russia.
The historical situation that created the possibility of B. Godunov seizing power had decisive influence his policies, his attitude towards the people, determined his crime and moral suffering. Thus, not only did history become material for literature, but literature also turned out to be a means of artistic knowledge of history. His “History” is populated only by genuine historical figures.

Karamzin emphasizes the talent, originality and intelligence of ordinary people who acted independently, without the tsar and boyars, who knew how to think stately and rationally. The historical plot, the use of a given situation, justified a different method, born of Russian tradition, of depicting a person - not in a “home image”, not from the side of his private family life, but from the side of his connections with the larger world of national, national existence. That is why Karamzin demanded from writers the depiction of heroic Russian women, whose character and personality were manifested not in home life and “family happiness,” but in political and patriotic activities. In this regard, he wrote: “Nature sometimes loves extremes, departs from its ordinary law and gives women characters that lead them out of home obscurity into the folk theater...” The method of depicting Russian characters in “History” is bringing them “out of home obscurity into folk theater,” it was ultimately developed from a generalization of the experience of the historical life of the Russian nation. Many folk songs captured heroic prowess, the poetry of a life full of activity, struggle, and high feat, which opened up beyond the boundaries of domestic family existence. Gogol in Ukrainian songs discovered precisely these character traits of the people: “Everywhere one can see the strength, joy, power with which the Cossack abandons the silence and carelessness of homely life in order to delve into all the poetry of battles, dangers and riotous feasting with his comrades...” This method contained the opportunity to most fully and clearly reveal the fundamental features of the Russian national character.

Karamzin, turning to history, was forced to develop a special genre for his narrative. A study of the genre nature of Karamzin’s work convinces that it is not the implementation of principles already found. It is rather a kind of self-adjusting model, the type and character of which was influenced by the experience of the writer, and by the involvement of more and more new materials, which required new illumination, and by the increasing trust in the artistic knowledge of the “truth” that grew from volume to volume.

Having abandoned “fiction,” Karamzin could not use one of the traditional literary genres for his narrative. It was necessary to develop a genre form that would organically correspond to the real historical plot, be capable of accommodating the enormous and varied factual material that was included in “History” under the sign of analytical and emotional perception, and, most importantly, give the writer wide freedom in expressing his position.

But to develop did not mean to invent, Karamzin decided to be consistent - and in developing the genre he relied on national tradition. And here the chronicle played a decisive role. Its main genre feature is syncretism. The chronicle freely included many works of ancient Russian literature - lives, stories, epistles, lamentations, folk poetic legends, etc. Syncretism became the organizing principle of Karamzin’s “History”. The writer did not imitate, he continued the chronicle tradition. Author's position, split into two principles - analytical and artistic - united all the material introduced into the “History”, determined the inclusion in the form of quotes or retellings of the lives, stories, legends and “miracles” included in the chronicles and the chronicler’s story itself, which was either accompanied by comments, or turned out to be merged with the opinion of the creator of “History”.
Chronicle syncretism is the main feature of the “History of the Russian State” genre. This genre - Karamzin's original creation - helped him both express Russian national identity in its dynamics and development, and develop a special ethical style of narration about a heroic nation, whose sons emerged from home obscurity into the theater of people's life.
The writer's achievements were adopted by Russian literature. His innovative attitude to the genre, the search for a special, free genre structure that would correspond to new material, a new plot, new tasks for the artistic study of the “real world” of history, turned out to be close to new Russian literature. And it is not by chance, but naturally, that we will find this free attitude to the genre in Pushkin (the “free” novel in verse - “Eugene Onegin”), Gogol (the poem “Dead Souls”), Tolstoy (“War and Peace”). In 1802, Karamzin wrote: “France, in its greatness and character, should be a monarchy.” A few years later, this “prophecy” came true - Napoleon proclaimed France an empire and himself emperor. Using examples of the reign of Russian monarchs - positive and negative -
Karamzin wanted to teach how to reign.

The contradiction turned into a tragedy for Karamzin; the political concept led to a dead end. And, despite this, the writer did not change his method of clarifying the truth that was revealed in the process of artistic research of the past, he remained faithful to it, even if it contradicted him political ideal. This was a victory for Karamzin, the artist. That is why Pushkin called “History” the feat of an honest man.

Pushkin understood the inconsistency of Karamzin’s work very well. Pushkin not only understood and saw the artistic nature of “History,” but also determined the originality of its artistic method and genre. According to Pushkin, Karamzin acted as a historian and as an artist, his work is a synthesis of analytical and artistic knowledge of history. The originality of the artistic method and the genre of “History” itself is determined by the chronicle tradition. This idea is both fair and fruitful.

Karamzin, a historian, used the facts of the chronicle, subjecting them to criticism, verification, explanation and commentary. Karamzin - the artist mastered aesthetic principles chronicles, perceiving it as a national Russian type of story about the past, as a special artistic system, which captures the Russian view of historical events of historical figures, of fate
Russia.

Pushkin correctly understood the enormity of the content of Karamzin’s work, writing that he found Russia like Columbus found America. This clarification is very important: opening
Ancient Rus', Karamzin discovered the historical role of the Russian people in the formation of a great power. Describing one of the battles, Karamzin emphasizes that it was the love of freedom that inspired ordinary people when they heroically fought the enemy, showed wonderful frenzy and, thinking that the one killed by the enemy should serve him as a slave in hell, plunged swords into their hearts when they could no longer escape : because they wanted to preserve their freedom in the future life. The most important feature of the artistic element
“History” is the patriotism of its author, which determined the possibility of creating an emotional image of “past centuries.”

“History” captures the unity of analytical study and emotional image of “past centuries.” At the same time, neither the analytical nor the emotional method of study and depiction contradicted the truth - each helped to establish it in their own way. Truth serves as the basis for historical poetry; but poetry is not history: the first most of all wants to arouse curiosity and for this purpose interferes with fables, the second rejects the most witty inventions and wants only the truth.

For Karamzin, in this case, the chronicle story, the chronicle point of view is a type of consciousness of the era, and therefore he does not consider it possible to introduce
“corrections” by the historian to the chronicler’s view. Revealing Godunov's inner world by psychological means, drawing his character, he proceeds not only from the facts gleaned from the chronicle, but also from the general historical situation recreated by the chronicler. The story about Godunov thereby opened up to modern literature a completely new type of artistic knowledge and reproduction of history, firmly based on national tradition.
It was this position of Karamzin that was understood and supported by Pushkin in his defense
“History” from Polevoy’s attacks, it gave him the opportunity to call the writer our last chronicler.

The artistic beginning of “History” made it possible to reveal the process of developing the mental makeup of the Russian nation. Analyzing numerous facts of the initial period of Russian history, the writer comes to understand the enormous role of the people in the political life of the country. The study of history made it possible to write about two faces of the people - they are “kind”, they are “rebellious”.

According to Karamzin, the virtue of the people did not at all contradict the people’s “love of rebellion.” Artistic research into history revealed this truth to the writer. He understood that it was not love for the “institutions” of autocrats, but “love for revolts” directed against autocrats who did not fulfill their duty to take care of the welfare of their subjects, that distinguishes the Russian people.

Pushkin, when working on “Boris Godunov,” used the writer’s discoveries. Not yet knowing the works of French historians, Pushkin, relying on national tradition, develops historicism as a method of knowledge and explanation of the past and present, following Karamzin in revealing Russian national identity - he creates the image of Pimen.

Karamzin in “History” discovered a huge art world chronicles.
The writer “cut a window” into the past; he really, like Columbus, found ancient Russia, connecting the past with the present.

“The History of the Russian State” rightfully invaded the living process of literary development, helped the formation of historicism, promoting the movement of literature along the path of national identity. She enriched literature with important artistic discoveries, incorporating the experience of chronicles.
“History” armed new literature with important knowledge of the past and helped it rely on national traditions. At the first stage, Pushkin and Gogol, in their appeal to history, showed how enormous and important Karamzin’s contribution was.

History enjoyed unparalleled success throughout many decades of the 19th century, influencing Russian writers.

The term "History" has many definitions. History of the story and incident. History is a process of development. This is the past. History must enter the consciousness of society; it is not only written and read. Nowadays, not only books perform this function, but also radio and television. Initially, historical description exists as an art form. Each field of knowledge has an object of study. History studies the past. The task of history is to reproduce the past in the unity of the necessary and the accidental. The central component of art is the artistic image. A historical image is a real event. In a historical image, fiction is excluded, and fantasy plays a supporting role. An image is created unambiguously if the historian holds something back. Man is the best object for studying history. The main merit of the Renaissance culture is that it opened the spiritual world of man.

Karamzin's feat.

According to Pushkin, “Karamzin is a great writer in every sense of the word.”

Karamzin’s language, which has undergone evolution from “Letters of a Russian Traveler” and “Poor Liza” to “History of the Russian State”. His work is the history of Russian autocracy. “History of the Russian State” fell out of the history of literature. History is a science that goes beyond; Literature is an art that transcends its boundaries. The story of Karamzin is for him a sphere of aesthetic pleasure. Karamzin formulates the methodological principles of his work. “The History of the Russian State” is considered as a monument to Russian literature.

The Karamzin tradition in the art of historiography has not died, and it cannot be said that it is thriving.

Pushkin believed that Karamzin devoted his last years to history, and he devoted his whole life to it.

The attention of the author of “History of the Russian State” is drawn to how the state arose. Karamzin puts Ivan III above Peter I. Volume 6 is dedicated to him ( Ivan III). Karamzin concludes his consideration of the era of Ivan III with the history of the wanderings of an ordinary Russian at his own peril and risk, without government initiative and support.

The chapters of Karamzin’s work are divided according to the years of the reign of one or another monarch and are named after them.

The “History of the Russian State” contains descriptions of battles, campaigns, as well as everyday life, economic and cultural life. In the 1st chapter of volume 7 it is written that Pskov is annexed to Moscow by Vasily III. Karamzin opened Russian history for Russian literature. “The History of the Russian State” is an image from which poets, prose writers, playwrights, etc. drew inspiration. IN
“History of the Russian State” we see the plot of Pushkin’s “Song of the Prophetic
Oleg”, as well as “Boris Godunov” and “History of the Russian State”. 2 tragedies about Boris Godunov, written by 2 poets and based on materials
"History of the Russian State."

Belinsky called “The History of the Russian State” a great monument in the history of Russian literature.

Historical drama blossomed earlier, but its possibilities were limited.

Interest in history is an interest in a person, in his environment and life.
The novel opened up broader perspectives than the drama. In Russia Pushkin and
Tolstoy raised the historical novel to great prose. The great masterpiece in this genre is “War and Peace.” Historical events serve as the background against which actions unfold. Historical figures appear in historical novel suddenly. The main characters are fictitious persons. The novel as a drama turns to historical material and pursues the goal of artistic reproduction of historical reality. A complete fusion of history and art is a rare occurrence. The line between them is blurred, but not completely. You could say they are allies. They have one goal - the formation of historical consciousness. Art gives history artistic culture. History provides the foundation for art. Art gains depth by drawing on historical tradition. Culture is a system of prohibitions.

About “Boris Godunov” Pushkin wrote: “The study of Shakespeare, Karamzin and our old chronicles gave me the idea to put one of the most dramatic eras into dramatic forms modern history" The play does not have a fictional plot or characters; they are borrowed from the “History of the Russian State.”
Karamzin writes about the famine at the beginning of the reign of B. Godunov: “Disaster began, and the cry of the hungry alarmed the king... Boris ordered the royal granaries to be opened.”

Pushkin in his tragedy also solves the problem of ends and means in history.

A historical era passed between “The History of the Russian State” and “Boris Godunov,” and this affected the interpretation of events. Karamzin wrote under the impression of the Patriotic War, and Pushkin - on the eve of the December uprising.

“The history of the Russian state helped Pushkin establish himself in two guises - a historian and a historical novelist - to process the same material in different ways.

When Karamzin was working on “History,” he studied Russian folklore, collected historical songs, and arranged them in chronological order. But this did not materialize. He singled out “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” most of all in historical literature.

The culture of Russia in the 19th century is like an example of the rise of peak achievements. Since the beginning of the 19th century, a high patriotic upsurge has been observed in Russian society. It intensified even more in 1812, deeply promoting national unity and the development of citizenship. Art interacted with public consciousness, shaping it into a national one. The development of realistic trends in the national cultural traits has intensified. A cultural event was the appearance of “History of the Russian State” by N. M. Karamzin. Karamzin was the first who, at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, intuitively felt that the main thing in Russian culture of the coming 19th century was the increasing problems of national self-identity. Pushkin followed Karamzin, solving the problem of the relation national culture with ancient cultures, after which the “Philosophical Letter” of P. Ya. Chaadaev appears - the philosophy of the history of Russia, which stimulated the discussion between Slavophiles and Westerners.
Classical literature of the 19th century was more than just literature, it was a synthetic cultural phenomenon that turned out to be a universal form of social consciousness. Karamzin noted that the Russian people, despite humiliation and slavery, felt their cultural superiority in relation to the nomadic people. The first half of the 19th century was the time of the formation of national historical science. Karamzin believed that the history of mankind
is the story of the struggle of reason against error, enlightenment against ignorance.

He assigned a decisive role in history to great people.

Professional historians were not satisfied with Karamzin’s work “History of the Russian State.” There were many new sources on Russian history. IN
In 1851, the first volume of “History of Russia since Ancient Times” was published, written by
S. M. Solovyov.

Comparing the historical development of Russia and other European countries, Solovyov found much in common in their destinies. The style of presentation of Solovyov’s “History” is rather dry; it is inferior to Karamzin’s “History”.

In the fiction of the early 19th century there was, according to Belinsky,
"Karamzin" period.

The War of 1812 sparked interest in Russian history. "History of the State
Russian" Karamzin, based on chronicle material. Pushkin saw in this work a reflection of the spirit of the chronicle. Pushkin attached great importance to chronicle materials. And this was reflected in “Boris Godunov”. In working on the tragedy, Pushkin followed the path of studying Karamzin, Shakespeare and the “chronicles”.

The 30-40s did not bring anything new to Russian historiography. These are the years of development of philosophical thinking. Historical science froze on Karamzin. By the end of the 40s, everything changed, a new historiography of S. Solovyov emerged.
M. In 1851, volume 1 of “History of Russia from Ancient Times” was published. Towards the middle
In the 50s, Russia entered a new period of storms and upheavals. The Crimean War revealed the disintegration of classes and material backwardness. "War and Peace" contains a huge amount of historical books and materials, it turned out to be a decisive and violent rebellion against historical science. “War and Peace” is a book that grew out of “pedagogical” experience. Tolstoy when he read
“The History of Russia from Ancient Times” by S. M. Solovyov, then he argued with him.
According to Solovyov, the government was ugly: “But how did a series of outrages produce a great, unified state? This alone proves that it was not the government that produced history.” The conclusion from this is that what is needed is not history.
- science, and history - art: “History - art, like art, goes deep and its subject is a description of the life of all of Europe.”

"War and Peace" is characterized by the features of thinking and style, composition, which are found in "The Tale of Bygone Years." The Tale of Bygone Years combines two traditions: folk-epic and hagiographic. This is also in War and Peace.

“War and Peace” is one of the “modifications” created by the era of “great changes”. The chronicle style served as the basis for satire on both historical science and the political system.

The historical era is a force field of contradictions and a space of human choice, which is its very essence as historical era consists of a flexible openness to the future; the body is a substance equal to itself.
Worldly wisdom, or common sense, knowledge of people, without which the art of understanding what is said and written, which is philology, is impossible.

The content of humanitarian thought is truly revealed only in the light of life experience - human experience. The objective existence of the semantic aspects of a literary word takes place only within the dialogue and cannot be extracted from the situation of the dialogue. The truth lies on a different plane.
An ancient author and an ancient text, communication with them is an understanding “above the barriers” of misunderstanding, presupposing these barriers. The past era is the era of humanity’s life, our life, and not someone else’s. Being an adult means experiencing childhood and adolescence.

Karamzin is the most prominent figure of his era, a language reformer, one of the fathers of Russian sentimentalism, historian, publicist, author of poetry and prose on which a generation was brought up. All this is enough to study, respect, acknowledge; but not enough to fall in love in literature, in ourselves, and not in the world of our great-grandfathers. It seems that two features of Karamzin’s biography and creativity make him one of our interlocutors.

Historian-artist. They laughed at this already in the 1820s, they tried to move away from it in the scientific direction, but this is exactly what seems to be missing a century and a half later. In fact, Karamzin, the historian, simultaneously proposed two ways to understand the past; one – scientific, objective, new facts, concepts, patterns; the other is artistic, subjective. So, the image of the historian-artist does not only belong to the past; the coincidence of Karamzin’s position and some of the newest concepts about the essence of historical knowledge - does this speak for itself? This, we believe, is the first feature of the “topical nature” of Karamzin’s works.

And, secondly, let us once again note the remarkable contribution to Russian culture that Karamzin’s personality is called. Karamzin is a highly moral, attractive person who influenced many through direct example and friendship; but a much larger number - by the presence of this personality in poems, stories, articles, and especially in History. Karamzin was, after all, one of the most internally free people of his era, and among his friends and acquaintances there were many wonderful, best people. He wrote what he thought, drew historical characters based on vast, new material; managed to discover ancient Russia, “Karamzin is our first historian and last chronicler.”

List of used literature

1. Averentsev S.S. Our interlocutor is an ancient author.

2. Aikhenvald Yu. I. Silhouettes of Russian writers. – M.: Republic, 1994.

– 591 p.: ill. – (Past and present).

3. Gulyga A.V. The Art of History - M.: Sovremennik, 1980. - 288 p.

4. Karamzin N. M. History of the Russian State in 12 volumes. T. II-

III/ Ed. A. N. Sakharov. – M.: Nauka, 1991. – 832 p.

5. Karamzin N. M. On the history of the Russian state / comp. A.I.

Schmidt. – M.: Education, 1990. – 384 p.

6. Karamzin N. M. Traditions of the Ages / Comp., intro. Art. G. P. Makogonenko;

G. P. Makogonenko and M. V. Ivanova; - Lee. V. V. Lukashova. – M.:

Pravda, 1988. – 768 p.

7. Culturology: a textbook for students of higher educational institutions - Rostov N/D: Phoenix Publishing House, 1999. - 608 p.

8. Lotman Yu. M. Karamzin: The Creation of Karamzin. Art. and research, 1957-

1990. Notes rec. – St. Petersburg: Art – St. Petersburg, 1997 – 830 pp.: ill.: portrait.

9. Eikhenbaum B. M. About prose: collection. Art. – L.: Fiction,

1969. – 503 p.
-----------------------
Lotman Yu. M. Karamzin. – St. Petersburg, Art. – St. Petersburg, 1997. – p. 56.
Soloviev S. M. Selected works. Notes. – M., 1983. – p. 231.
Karamzin N. M. Works. – St. Petersburg, 1848. t. 1. p. 487.Send a request indicating the topic right now to find out about the possibility of receiving a consultation.

History of Russia" href="/text/category/istoriya_rossii/" rel="bookmark">history of Russia

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, writer, historian, journalist, critic, honorary member Petersburg Academy of Sciences, patriot of his fatherland, author of “History of the Russian State.”

“Karamzin is our first historian and last chronicler” - this is the definition he gave him. After reading his “History of the Russian State,” the poet said that for contemporaries ancient Russia was “found” by Karamzin as America by Columbus. in a letter to 01.01.01 he wrote: “Karamzin is, for sure, an extraordinary phenomenon... No one except Karamzin spoke so boldly and nobly, without hiding any of his opinions and thoughts, although they did not correspond in every way to the then government, and you hear involuntarily that he alone had the right to do so,” Gogol wrote in his letters.

in a letter to his attitude, he gives the highest assessment of Karamzin’s personality: “I am grateful to him for a special kind of happiness - for the happiness of knowing, and even more so, of feeling his real value. I have a particularly good quality in my soul, which is called Karamzin: everything that is good and best in me is combined here.”

spoke about Karamzin like this: “With a pure and kind soul, he was, without a doubt, one of the most worthy representatives of humanity.”

Giving a speech in memory of Karamzin, he passionately exclaimed: “Russian, Russian to the core! What is the power, what is the attraction of Russian life! What an ability to take a lot, a lot, from the West - and not give it anything cherished!”

in one of his letters he notes that “... Karamzin’s moral influence was enormous and beneficial to all youth.”

Simbirians-Ulyanovsk rightfully consider Karamzin their fellow countryman. He was born in 1766 in the village of Znamensky (Karamzino also) in the Simbirsk province. And in the northern part of the Upper Embankment in Simbirsk, on Old Venets, at the intersection with Bolshaya Saratovskaya Street, there once stood a respectable stone two-story mansion. Its façade was facing the Volga. From the balcony of the top floor of the mansion a wonderful panorama opened up to the eye: the endless Trans-Volga expanses, orchards stretching along the entire slope to the Volga, the settlements of Kanava, Chapel and Korolevka were visible.

The historiographer spent his childhood in this house in the family of the Simbirsk landowner Mikhail Egorovich Karamzin. The coat of arms of the Karamzin family testifies to the ties of the family with the East, while the reliable history of the family begins in 1606, when Dmitry Semenov’s son Karamzin was included among those awarded by the self-proclaimed “Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich for siege and regimental service.” The Karamzins were the owners of land in the Simbirsk region - the village of Znamenskoye with a wooden church “in the name of the Sign of the Lord” (later the village of Karamzino).

The father of the future historiographer was a fairly educated man and had a substantial library. Nikolai Mikhailovich received a good education at home. The adventure novels from his father's library, which young Karamzin read, had a strong influence on the imagination of the future historiographer. In his autobiographical story “A Knight of Our Time,” Karamzin captured the captivating beauty of his native places. The high bank of the Volga, from where young Karamzin admired the beautiful panorama of the mighty river in Simbirsk, is exactly the area that was adjacent to the two-story stone mansion of the Karamzins in the northern part of Venets. And life in Znamensky, the picturesque nature of this small village, his father’s activities, the work and life of ordinary people and their suffering enriched little Karamzin’s idea of ​​his small homeland. The spirit of the future historiographer was tempered here, “in natural simplicity.” The heroes of the novels coexisted with real people, and in the tender soul of the boy from childhood a firm conviction was formed: “Evil is ugly and vile. But virtue always wins."

Karamzin retained his love for his small homeland throughout his life. He was one of the first to make the Volga a favorite theme of Russian poetry. And, having visited abroad, the historian will write, not without pride: “Simbirsk views are inferior in beauty to few in Europe.”

About the language

“Russians, awarded the honorary title of heroes, deserve to have their own holiday”.

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> Hour of feat “And Mother Russia will remember us”

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> Norkina, you have gained fame! // Read, learn, let's play.- 2009.- No. 9.- P. 49-55.- Evening of courage, glory and honor for students in grades 7-11

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> Illustrated book exhibition "Yours, Fatherland, Heroes"

Heroes are the glory and pride of the Fatherland."

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> “There is always a place for heroism in life”

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> clock of the history of the Fatherland “Served the Fatherland faithfully and truly”

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> Booklet “Day of Heroes of the Fatherland”

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> "Heroes of Russia. Feat in the name of life"

668 " style="width:500.8pt">

10.12.11

International Human Rights Day

International Human Rights Day has been celebrated since 1950, when the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 423 (V), which invited all states and interested organizations to observe December 10 as Human Rights Day.

The protection of human rights has been a core mission of the UN since its creation in 1945, when the organization's founding states declared that the horrors of World War II should never be repeated. Three years later, on December 10, 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the basic document of international law, was adopted. The preamble of the Declaration states that respect for human rights and human dignity “is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” The Universal Declaration proclaims individual rights, civil and political rights and freedoms, the right of everyone to personal security, freedom of conscience, etc., it is stated that all people have equal rights, which do not depend on their personal differences and on the difference in their political systems countries The declaration is not binding.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the first collectively developed universal human rights document of international scope. Many countries incorporate the main provisions of the declaration into their constitutions and national legislation. Its principles underlie many human rights covenants, conventions and treaties concluded since 1948. Compliance with these agreements is monitored by the UN High Commission for Human Rights. The High Commissioner sends envoys to countries around the world to report on human rights practices on the ground. If rights are not respected, then the tribunals step in.

Over the years, a network of tools and mechanisms has been created to protect human rights and combat violations wherever they occur. Practice has shown that for the comprehensive protection of numerous rights, it is necessary that the efforts of the state be complemented by the efforts of civil society organizations.

Excerpt from the speech Secretary General UN:

“Human rights education is much more than just a lesson at school or a topic of the day; it is the process of introducing people to the tools they need to live in safety and with dignity.

On this “International Human Rights Day”, let us continue our joint efforts to form and educate in future generations a culture of human rights, to promote the triumph of freedom, strengthen security and peace in all countries.”

ARTICLES, SCENARIOS and titles

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> Travel game “ABC of Law”

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> Why profanity is dangerous: For conversations with schoolchildren. - 2009 .- No. 1.- P.66-69.

2nd grade" href="/text/category/2_klass/" rel="bookmark">2 classes

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> http://mir. /contest Children's legal site

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> Game programs dedicated to this date"
“Who am I? What am I?
"Ideal Society"

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> Discussions:
"Protection of human rights"
"Why do I need rights"
"Human rights"
"Learn to be a citizen"

http://www. *****/stixiya/authors/nekrasov. html Read Nekrasov's poems, articles about him, chronology of works, poems by first line

http://www. *****/ Website dedicated to. Biography, photo gallery, selected works

http://vivovoco. *****/VV/PAPERS/BIO/KONI/AFKONI_N. HTM Anatoly Fedorovich Koni o

http://www. *****/M587 State Literary and Memorial Museum-Reserve "Karabikha"

http://www. *****/Kornei/Critica/anketa_nekrasov. htm/ Answers to questionnaire questions about Nekrasov

http:// relax. wild- mistress. ru/ wm/ relax. nsf/ publicall/ B708 D22 BD82 F.C.837 C32575 D.B.003 B321 D Unknown facts about

disc"> In honor of Nekrasov, the village-regional center Nekrasovskoye (former Bolshie Soli), in the area of ​​which he spent his childhood, was named. In the Karabikha estate, in which Nekrasov lived in the summer in 1861-1875, a museum-reserve of the poet was established. Since 1946 There is an apartment museum in St. Petersburg. Streets in Voronezh, Kazan, Kaliningrad, Lipetsk (demolished), Lobnya, Lomonosov, Minsk, Novokuznetsk, Odessa, Pavlovsk, Podolsk, Perm, Reutov, Samara, St. Petersburg, Tomsk are named after Nekrasov. , Yaroslavl and other settlements. Monuments were erected in Nekrasovsky, Nemirov, St. Petersburg, Ussuriysk, Yaroslavl and other settlements.

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image007_42.gif" align="left" width="202" height="280">

Nikolai Alekseevich NEKRASOV

(1821 - 1877)

My beloved forest whispered to me;

Believe me, there is nothing dearer than our native heavens!

Nowhere can I breathe more freely

Native meadows, native fields.

The great Russian poet wrote these lines

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov.

He loved his native land very much and the ordinary people who grew bread on this land and decorated it with gardens.

The writer spent his childhood in the village of Greshnevo, on the banks of the mighty and beautiful Volga River. The manor's house, large and spacious, looked out onto the road with its windows.

Often travelers, talkative and good-natured people, tired from a long journey, sat down to rest, and

...stories about Kyiv began,

about the Turk, about wonderful animals...

It happened that whole days flew by here,

Like a new passerby, there’s a new story...

Nikolai Alekseevich's father was a landowner. Hundreds of peasants worked for him from early morning until late evening. He forbade his son to be friends with the children of serfs.

But the boy secretly ran away from his father to the village to live with the peasant children. He played with them, swam in the Volga, fished, admired the sunrise, went into the forest to pick berries and mushrooms:

The mushroom time has not yet left,

Look - everyone’s lips are so black,

They filled the ears: the blueberries are ripe!

Nekrasov fell in love with this river for the rest of his life and called it his cradle.” But the most terrible childhood memory was also connected with the Volga - a meeting with barge haulers3. Exhausted, ragged people, groaning from pain and heaviness, walked along the shore and pulled a ship with cargo along the water:

Almost bending my head

To feet entwined with twine,

Shod in bast shoes, along the river

The barge haulers crawled in a crowd...

And then there was a gymnasium where Nekrasov wrote his first poems.

Petersburg, he left without his father's permission. I studied and worked. It was not easy at times, but perseverance, talent and hard work won. Nekrasov, the most famous Russian poet.

His poems were about the Motherland: its forests and fields, snow and frost and, of course, about peasants, carpenters, painters, ordinary Russian people.

Nekrasov also wrote poetry for children. The heroes of his poems are peasant children, friends from distant childhood. They grew up early, helping their parents in their difficult work from an early age. Therefore, in Nekrasov’s poem “A Little Man with a Marigold,” a little six-year-old boy, dressed in clothes that are too large for his height, does not walk, but proudly “walks” “in decorous calm.” He, like his father, is the support of the family, its breadwinner!

There was no time for peasant children to study. Only a few could read and write. But Nikolai Alekseevich knew that among ordinary people there were many talented and gifted people. Therefore, having met a hungry, ragged, but capable schoolboy, the poet turns to him and to all the children:

Russia celebrates December 12 holiday Constitution Day of the Russian Federation. The Basic Law was adopted in 1993 by popular vote. After the collapse of the USSR, in new historical conditions, Russia, like other union republics, declared its independence ("Declaration of State Sovereignty of the RSFSR" dated January 1, 2001). The Declaration established a new name - the Russian Federation and stated the need to adopt a new Constitution of Russia.

In 1993, the President of the Russian Federation convened a Constitutional Conference to develop a new Constitution. Representatives of political parties and movements, scientists, representatives of constituent entities of the Russian Federation, people's deputies of Russia, etc. took part in its work. The referendum on the adoption of the new Constitution was held on December 12, 1993, simultaneously with the elections of the legislative body of Russia - the Federal Assembly.

Since 1994, by decrees of the President of Russia (“On Constitution Day of the Russian Federation” and “On non-working day on December 12”), December 12 was declared a public holiday. On December 24, 2004, the State Duma adopted amendments to the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, changing the holiday calendar of Russia. Since 2005, December 12 is no longer a day off in Russia, and Constitution Day is included in memorable dates Russia.

The Constitution of the Russian Federation of 1993 is considered to be one of the most advanced in the world.

Two people have already taken the oath to the Constitution Russian president: Vladimir Putin on May 7, 2000 and Dmitry Medvedev on May 7, 2008 with the words: “When exercising the powers of the President of the Russian Federation, I swear to respect and protect the rights and freedoms of man and citizen, to observe and protect the Constitution of the Russian Federation, to protect sovereignty and independence, security and integrity state, to serve the people faithfully."

The development of the Russian state confirms general rule of our time: every country that considers itself civilized has its own constitution. And this is natural. The Constitution is important and necessary for a modern state, primarily because it enshrines its initial principles and purpose, functions and foundations of organization, forms and methods of activity. The Constitution establishes the limits and nature of state regulation in all main areas of social development, the relationship of the state with man and citizen. The Constitution of the Russian Federation is the fundamental law of the Russian Federation; a single political and legal act with supreme legal force, direct action and supremacy throughout the territory of the Russian Federation, through which the people established the basic principles of the structure of society and the state, determined the subjects of state power, the mechanism for its implementation, and secured state-protected human rights, freedoms and responsibilities and citizen.

If we imagine the numerous legal acts in force in the country in the form of a certain organized and interconnected whole, a certain system, then the Constitution of the Russian Federation is the foundation, core and at the same time the source of development of all law. On the basis of the constitution, the formation of various branches of law takes place, both traditional ones that existed in the past, and new ones created taking into account changes in the economy, social development, politics and culture.

The Constitution of the Russian Federation, adopted by popular vote on December 12, 1993, is not the first in the history of the country. Before its adoption, the Russian Constitution of 1978 was in force, which had its predecessors. But the current Constitution differs from all Russian constitutions of the Soviet era primarily in that it is the basic law of an independent, truly sovereign state. As noted in the preamble of the Constitution, its adoption is associated with the revival of the sovereign statehood of Russia and the affirmation of the inviolability of its democratic foundation.

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> “All guys should know the basic Law of the country...” - exhibition-question

14.12.11

Day of Nahum the Reader

DAY OF NAHUM THE GRAMMER

On December 14, the Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of the prophet Nahum - one of the 12 minor prophets. This holiday has come to us from time immemorial. According to the old Russian tradition, from the day of Naum (December 1, according to the old style), they began to teach children to read and write, and it was on this day that children were sent to study. They served a prayer service, asked for the boy’s blessing and honored him with an invitation to the teacher’s house. The teacher appeared at the appointed time at the parents' house, where he was greeted with honor and kind words. They said: “A smart head feeds a hundred heads, but a thin head can’t feed itself,” “He who is good at reading and writing will not perish,” so people treated teaching with reverence, and teachers in Rus' were especially revered; their work was considered important and difficult. The father, holding his son by the hand, handed him over to the teacher with requests to teach him wisdom: “Father Naum, bring him to mind,” and punish laziness with beatings; the mother had to cry at this time for her children going to study, otherwise “a bad rumor will do,” because teaching has always been accompanied by the hammering of science with rods. The next day the student was sent to the teacher with the alphabet and a pointer. Each teaching began with three blows of the rod. Even on the first day of meeting with the teacher, he had to reward each of the students with three symbolic blows of the whip. Children had to begin each lesson with three prostrations to the teacher and were obliged to obey him unquestioningly. You can’t eat during lessons, “otherwise you’ll forget what you’ve learned”; the book had to be closed, “otherwise you’ll forget everything.” They said that “the prophet Nahum will bring to mind a bad mind.” As a reward for their efforts, father and mother presented the teacher with a loaf of bread and a towel, in which they tied money as payment for classes. But most often, classes were paid for with food: the student’s mother brought the teacher a chicken, a basket of eggs or a pot of buckwheat porridge. 24.12.11

110 years

since the birth of the Soviet writer Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev

http://gazeta. *****/online/aif/1177/25_01 Article about the last years of the writer’s life

http://**/znamia/1998/10/ivanova. html Article by Natalya Ivanova “Personal file of Alexander Fadeev”

http://*****/author/fedor_razzakov/zvezdniye_tragedii/read_online. html? page=2 Death of the Red Writer

SCENARIOS, articles and titles

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> “I was full of the highest thoughts and feelings that only can give birth to the life of nations." A. Fadeev

https://pandia.ru/text/78/390/images/image002_91.gif" alt="*" width="16" height="16 src="> Ascended and killed by the century

December 12, 1766 (family estate Znamenskoye, Simbirsk district, Kazan province (according to other sources - the village of Mikhailovka (now Preobrazhenka), Buzuluk district, Kazan province) - June 03, 1826 (St. Petersburg, Russian Empire)

On December 12 (December 1, Old Style), 1766, Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin was born - Russian writer, poet, editor of the Moscow Journal (1791-1792) and the magazine Vestnik Evropy (1802-1803), honorary member Imperial Academy Sciences (1818), full member of the Imperial Russian Academy, historian, first and only court historiographer, one of the first reformers of the Russian literary language, founding father of Russian historiography and Russian sentimentalism.

Contribution of N.M. It is difficult to overestimate Karamzin's contribution to Russian culture. Remembering everything that this man managed to do in the short 59 years of his earthly existence, it is impossible to ignore the fact that it was Karamzin who largely determined the face of the Russian 19th century - the “golden” age of Russian poetry, literature, historiography, source studies and other humanitarian areas of scientific research. knowledge. Thanks to linguistic research aimed at popularizing the literary language of poetry and prose, Karamzin gave Russian literature to his contemporaries. And if Pushkin is “our everything,” then Karamzin can safely be called “our Everything” with a capital letter. Without him, Vyazemsky, Pushkin, Baratynsky, Batyushkov and other poets of the so-called “Pushkin galaxy” would hardly have been possible.

“No matter what you turn to in our literature, everything began with Karamzin: journalism, criticism, stories, novels, historical stories, journalism, the study of history,” V.G. rightly noted later. Belinsky.

“History of the Russian State” N.M. Karamzin became not just the first Russian-language book on the history of Russia, accessible to a wide reader. Karamzin gave the Russian people the Fatherland in the full sense of the word. They say that, having closed the eighth and final volume, Count Fyodor Tolstoy, nicknamed the American, exclaimed: “It turns out that I have a Fatherland!” And he wasn't alone. All his contemporaries suddenly learned that they lived in a country with a thousand-year history and had something to be proud of. Before this, it was believed that before Peter I, who opened a “window to Europe,” there was nothing in Russia even remotely worthy of attention: the dark ages of backwardness and barbarism, boyar autocracy, primordially Russian laziness and bears in the streets...

Karamzin’s multi-volume work was not completed, but, having been published in the first quarter of the 19th century, it completely determined the historical identity of the nation for many years to come. All subsequent historiography was never able to generate anything more consistent with the “imperial” self-awareness that developed under the influence of Karamzin. Karamzin’s views left a deep, indelible mark in all areas of Russian culture in the 19th and 20th centuries, forming the foundations of the national mentality, which ultimately determined the path of development of Russian society and the state as a whole.

It is significant that in the 20th century, the edifice of Russian great power, which had collapsed under the attacks of revolutionary internationalists, was revived again by the 1930s - under different slogans, with different leaders, in a different ideological package. but... The very approach to the historiography of Russian history, both before 1917 and after, largely remained jingoistic and sentimental in Karamzin style.

N.M. Karamzin - early years

N.M. Karamzin was born on December 12 (1st century), 1766 in the village of Mikhailovka, Buzuluk district, Kazan province (according to other sources, in the family estate of Znamenskoye, Simbirsk district, Kazan province). Little is known about his early years: there are no letters, diaries, or memories of Karamzin himself about his childhood. He did not even know exactly his year of birth and almost all his life he believed that he was born in 1765. Only in his old age, having discovered the documents, did he become “younger” by one year.

The future historiographer grew up on the estate of his father, retired captain Mikhail Egorovich Karamzin (1724-1783), an average Simbirsk nobleman. Received a good home education. In 1778 he was sent to Moscow to the boarding school of Moscow University professor I.M. Shadena. At the same time, he attended lectures at the university in 1781-1782.

After graduating from the boarding school, in 1783 Karamzin enlisted in the Preobrazhensky Regiment in St. Petersburg, where he met the young poet and future employee of his “Moscow Journal” Dmitriev. At the same time he published his first translation of S. Gesner’s idyll “The Wooden Leg”.

In 1784, Karamzin retired as a lieutenant and never served again, which was perceived in the society of that time as a challenge. After a short stay in Simbirsk, where he joined the Golden Crown Masonic lodge, Karamzin moved to Moscow and was introduced into the circle of N. I. Novikov. He settled in a house that belonged to the Novikov Friendly Scientific Society, became the author and one of the publishers of the first children's magazine " Children's reading for the heart and mind" (1787-1789), founded by Novikov. At the same time, Karamzin became close to the Pleshcheev family. For many years he had a tender platonic friendship with N.I. Pleshcheeva. In Moscow, Karamzin published his first translations, in which his interest in European and Russian history is clearly visible: Thomson’s “The Seasons,” Zhanlis’s “Country Evenings,” W. Shakespeare’s tragedy “Julius Caesar,” Lessing’s tragedy “Emilia Galotti.”

In 1789, Karamzin’s first original story, “Eugene and Yulia,” appeared in the magazine “Children’s Reading...”. The reader practically did not notice it.

Travel to Europe

According to many biographers, Karamzin was not inclined towards the mystical side of Freemasonry, remaining a supporter of its active and educational direction. To be more precise, by the end of the 1780s, Karamzin had already “become ill” with Masonic mysticism in its Russian version. Perhaps his cooling towards Freemasonry was one of the reasons for his departure to Europe, where he spent more than a year (1789-90), visiting Germany, Switzerland, France and England. In Europe, he met and talked (except for influential masons) with European “masters of minds”: I. Kant, I. G. Herder, C. Bonnet, I. K. Lavater, J. F. Marmontel, visited museums, theaters, secular salons. In Paris, Karamzin listened to O. G. Mirabeau, M. Robespierre and other revolutionaries at the National Assembly, saw many outstanding political figures and was familiar with many. Apparently, revolutionary Paris in 1789 showed Karamzin how powerfully a word can influence a person: in print, when Parisians read pamphlets and leaflets with keen interest; oral, when revolutionary speakers spoke and controversy arose (an experience that could not be acquired in Russia at that time).

Karamzin did not have a very enthusiastic opinion about English parliamentarism (perhaps following in the footsteps of Rousseau), but he very highly valued the level of civilization at which English society as a whole was located.

Karamzin – journalist, publisher

In the fall of 1790, Karamzin returned to Moscow and soon organized the publication of the monthly “Moscow Journal” (1790-1792), in which most of the “Letters of a Russian Traveler” were published, telling about the revolutionary events in France, the stories “Liodor”, “Poor Lisa” , “Natalia, the boyar’s daughter”, “Flor Silin”, essays, stories, critical articles and poems. Karamzin attracted the entire literary elite of that time to collaborate in the magazine: his friends Dmitriev and Petrov, Kheraskov and Derzhavin, Lvov, Neledinsky-Meletsky and others. Karamzin’s articles approved a new literary direction - sentimentalism.

The Moscow Journal had only 210 regular subscribers, but for the end of the 18th century, this is the same as a hundred thousand circulation at the end of the 19th century. Moreover, the magazine was read by precisely those who “made the difference” in the literary life of the country: students, officials, young officers, minor employees of various government agencies (“archive youths”).

After Novikov’s arrest, the authorities became seriously interested in the publisher of the Moscow Journal. During interrogations in the Secret Expedition, they ask: was it Novikov who sent the “Russian traveler” abroad on a “special mission”? The Novikovites were people of high integrity and, of course, Karamzin was shielded, but because of these suspicions the magazine had to be stopped.

In the 1790s, Karamzin published the first Russian almanacs - “Aglaya” (1794 -1795) and “Aonids” (1796 -1799). In 1793, when the Jacobin dictatorship was established at the third stage of the French Revolution, which shocked Karamzin with its cruelty, Nikolai Mikhailovich abandoned some of his previous views. The dictatorship aroused in him serious doubts about the possibility of humanity to achieve prosperity. He sharply condemned the revolution and all violent methods of transforming society. The philosophy of despair and fatalism permeates his new works: the story “The Island of Bornholm” (1793); "Sierra Morena" (1795); poems “Melancholy”, “Message to A. A. Pleshcheev”, etc.

During this period, real literary fame came to Karamzin.

Fedor Glinka: “Out of 1,200 cadets, it was rare that he did not repeat by heart some page from The Island of Bornholm.”.

The name Erast, previously completely unpopular, is increasingly found in lists of nobility. There are rumors of successful and unsuccessful suicides in the spirit of Poor Lisa. The poisonous memoirist Vigel recalls that important Moscow nobles had already begun to make do with “almost like an equal with a thirty-year-old retired lieutenant”.

In July 1794, Karamzin’s life almost ended: on the way to the estate, in the steppe wilderness, he was attacked by robbers. Karamzin miraculously escaped, receiving two minor wounds.

In 1801, he married Elizaveta Protasova, a neighbor on the estate, whom he had known since childhood; at the time of the wedding, they had known each other for almost 13 years.

Reformer of the Russian literary language

Already in the early 1790s, Karamzin was seriously thinking about the present and future of Russian literature. He writes to a friend: “I am deprived of the pleasure of reading much in my native language. We are still poor in writers. We have several poets who deserve to be read.” Of course, there were and are Russian writers: Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Fonvizin, Derzhavin, but there are no more than a dozen significant names. Karamzin is one of the first to understand that it is not a matter of talent - there are no less talents in Russia than in any other country. It’s just that Russian literature cannot move away from the long-outdated traditions of classicism, founded in the middle of the 18th century by the only theorist M.V. Lomonosov.

The reform of the literary language carried out by Lomonosov, as well as the theory of the “three calms” he created, met the tasks of the transition period from ancient to modern literature. A complete rejection of the use of familiar Church Slavonicisms in the language was then still premature and inappropriate. But the evolution of the language, which began under Catherine II, actively continued. The “Three Calms” proposed by Lomonosov were not based on living colloquial speech, but on the witty thought of a writer-theorist. And this theory often put the authors in a difficult position: they had to use heavy, outdated Slavic expressions where in the spoken language they had long been replaced by others, softer and more elegant. The reader sometimes could not “cut through” the piles of outdated Slavicisms used in church books and records in order to understand the essence of this or that secular work.

Karamzin decided to bring the literary language closer to the spoken one. Therefore, one of his main goals was the further liberation of literature from Church Slavonicisms. In the preface to the second book of the almanac “Aonida,” he wrote: “The thunder of words alone only deafens us and never reaches our hearts.”

The second feature of Karamzin’s “new syllable” was the simplification of syntactic structures. The writer abandoned lengthy periods. In the “Pantheon of Russian Writers” he decisively declared: “Lomonosov’s prose cannot serve as a model for us at all: his long periods are tiresome, the arrangement of words is not always consistent with the flow of thoughts.”

Unlike Lomonosov, Karamzin strove to write in short, easily understandable sentences. This is still a model of good style and an example to follow in literature.

Karamzin’s third merit was the enrichment of the Russian language with a number of successful neologisms, which became firmly established in the main vocabulary. The innovations proposed by Karamzin include such widely known words in our time as “industry”, “development”, “sophistication”, “concentrate”, “touching”, “entertainment”, “humanity”, “public”, “ generally useful”, “influence” and a number of others.

When creating neologisms, Karamzin used mainly the method of tracing French words: “interesting” from “interessant”, “refined” from “raffine”, “development” from “developpement”, “touching” from “touchant”.

We know that even in the era of Peter the Great, many foreign words appeared in the Russian language, but they mostly replaced words that already existed in the Slavic language and were not a necessity. In addition, these words were often taken in their raw form, so they were very heavy and clumsy (“fortecia” instead of “fortress”, “victory” instead of “victory”, etc.). Karamzin, on the contrary, tried to give foreign words Russian ending, adapting them to the requirements of Russian grammar: “serious”, “moral”, “aesthetic”, “audience”, “harmony”, “enthusiasm”, etc.

In his reform activities, Karamzin focused on the lively spoken language of educated people. And this was the key to the success of his work - he writes not scholarly treatises, but travel notes (“Letters of a Russian Traveler”), sentimental stories (“Bornholm Island”, “Poor Lisa”), poems, articles, translations from French, English and German .

"Arzamas" and "Conversation"

It is not surprising that most of the young writers contemporary to Karamzin accepted his transformations with a bang and willingly followed him. But, like any reformer, Karamzin had staunch opponents and worthy opponents.

A.S. stood at the head of Karamzin’s ideological opponents. Shishkov (1774-1841) – admiral, patriot, famous statesman of that time. An Old Believer, an admirer of Lomonosov's language, Shishkov, at first glance, was a classicist. But this point of view requires significant qualifications. In contrast to Karamzin's Europeanism, Shishkov put forward the idea of ​​nationality in literature - the most important sign of a romantic worldview that was far from classicism. It turns out that Shishkov also joined for romantics, but not of a progressive, but of a conservative direction. His views can be recognized as a kind of forerunner of later Slavophilism and Pochvenism.

In 1803, Shishkov spoke with “Discourse on the old and new syllable Russian language" He reproached the “Karamzinists” for succumbing to the temptation of European revolutionary false teachings and advocated for the return of literature to oral folk art, to the vernacular, to Orthodox Church Slavonic books.

Shishkov was not a philologist. He dealt with the problems of literature and the Russian language, rather, as an amateur, so Admiral Shishkov’s attacks on Karamzin and his literary supporters sometimes looked not so much scientifically substantiated as unsubstantiated ideological. Karamzin’s language reform seemed to Shishkov, a warrior and defender of the Fatherland, unpatriotic and anti-religious: “Language is the soul of the people, the mirror of morals, a true indicator of enlightenment, an incessant witness of deeds. Where there is no faith in the hearts, there is no piety in the language. Where there is no love for the fatherland, the language does not express domestic feelings.”.

Shishkov reproached Karamzin for the excessive use of barbarisms (“epoch”, “harmony”, “catastrophe”), he was disgusted by neologisms (“coup” as a translation of the word “revolution”), artificial words hurt his ears: “future”, “well-read” and etc.

And we must admit that sometimes his criticism was pointed and accurate.

The evasiveness and aesthetic affectation of the speech of the “Karamzinists” very soon became outdated and fell out of literary use. This is precisely the future that Shishkov predicted for them, believing that instead of the expression “when travel became a need of my soul,” one could simply say: “when I fell in love with traveling”; the refined and periphrased speech “motley crowds of rural oreads meet with dark bands of reptile pharaohs” can be replaced with the understandable expression “gypsies come to meet the village girls”, etc.

Shishkov and his supporters took the first steps in studying the monuments of ancient Russian writing, enthusiastically studied “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” studied folklore, advocated the rapprochement of Russia with the Slavic world and recognized the need to bring the “Slovenian” style closer to the common language.

In a dispute with the translator Karamzin, Shishkov put forward a compelling argument about the “idiomatic nature” of each language, about the unique originality of its phraseological systems, which make it impossible to literally translate a thought or true semantic meaning from one language to another. For example, when translated literally into French, the expression “old horseradish” loses its figurative meaning and “means only the thing itself, but in the metaphysical sense it has no circle of signification.”

In defiance of Karamzin, Shishkov proposed his own reform of the Russian language. He proposed to designate concepts and feelings missing in our everyday life with new words formed from the roots not of French, but of Russian and Old Church Slavonic. Instead of Karamzin’s “influence” he suggested “influx”, instead of “development” - “vegetation”, instead of “actor” - “actor”, instead of “individuality” - “intelligence”, “wet feet” instead of “galoshes” and “wandering” instead "labyrinth". Most of his innovations did not take root in the Russian language.

It is impossible not to recognize Shishkov’s ardent love for the Russian language; One cannot help but admit that the passion for everything foreign, especially French, has gone too far in Russia. Ultimately, this led to the fact that the language of the common people, the peasant, became very different from the language of the cultural classes. But we cannot ignore the fact that natural process The evolution of the language that had begun could not be stopped. It was impossible to forcibly return into use the expressions that were already outdated at that time, which were proposed by Shishkov: “zane”, “ugly”, “izhe”, “yako” and others.

Karamzin did not even respond to the accusations of Shishkov and his supporters, knowing firmly that they were guided exclusively by pious and patriotic feelings. Subsequently, Karamzin himself and his most talented supporters (Vyazemsky, Pushkin, Batyushkov) followed the very valuable instructions of the “Shishkovites” on the need to “return to their roots” and examples of their own history. But then they could not understand each other.

The pathos and ardent patriotism of A.S.’s articles. Shishkova evoked a sympathetic attitude among many writers. And when Shishkov, together with G. R. Derzhavin, founded literary society“Conversation of lovers of the Russian word” (1811) with a charter and its own magazine, P. A. Katenin, I. A. Krylov, and later V. K. Kuchelbecker and A. S. Griboyedov immediately joined this society. One of the active participants in the "Conversation...", the prolific playwright A. A. Shakhovskoy, in the comedy "New Stern" viciously ridiculed Karamzin, and in the comedy "A Lesson for Coquettes, or Lipetsk Waters" in the person of the "balladeer" Fialkin created a parody image of V. A Zhukovsky.

This caused a unanimous rebuff from young people who supported Karamzin’s literary authority. D. V. Dashkov, P. A. Vyazemsky, D. N. Bludov composed several witty pamphlets addressed to Shakhovsky and other members of the “Conversation...”. In “Vision in the Arzamas Tavern” Bludov gave the circle of young defenders of Karamzin and Zhukovsky the name “Society of Unknown Arzamas Writers” or simply “Arzamas”.

The organizational structure of this society, founded in the fall of 1815, was dominated by a cheerful spirit of parody of the serious “Conversation...”. In contrast to the official pomposity, simplicity, naturalness, and openness prevailed here; a large place was given to jokes and games.

Parodying the official ritual of the “Conversation...”, upon joining Arzamas, everyone had to read a “funeral speech” to his “late” predecessor from among the living members of the “Conversation...” or the Russian Academy of Sciences (Count D.I. Khvostov, S.A. Shirinsky-Shikhmatov, A.S. Shishkov himself, etc.). “Funeral speeches” were a form of literary struggle: they parodied high genres and ridiculed the stylistic archaism of the poetic works of the “talkers.” At the meetings of the society, the humorous genres of Russian poetry were honed, a bold and decisive struggle was waged against all kinds of officialdom, and a type of independent Russian writer, free from the pressure of any ideological conventions, was formed. And although P. A. Vyazemsky, one of the organizers and active participants of the society, in his mature years condemned the youthful mischief and intransigence of his like-minded people (in particular, the rituals of “funeral services” for living literary opponents), he rightly called “Arzamas” a school of “literary fellowship” and mutual creative learning. The Arzamas and Beseda societies soon became centers of literary life and social struggle in the first quarter of the 19th century. "Arzamas" included such famous people, like Zhukovsky (pseudonym - Svetlana), Vyazemsky (Asmodeus), Pushkin (Cricket), Batyushkov (Achilles), etc.

"Conversation" disbanded after Derzhavin's death in 1816; "Arzamas", having lost its main opponent, ceased to exist by 1818.

Thus, by the mid-1790s, Karamzin became the recognized head of Russian sentimentalism, which opened not just a new page in Russian literature, but Russian fiction in general. Russian readers, who had previously absorbed only French novels, and the works of the enlighteners, “Letters of a Russian Traveler” and “Poor Liza” were enthusiastically received, and Russian writers and poets (both “besedchiki” and “Arzamas people”) realized that they could and should write in their native language.

Karamzin and Alexander I: a symphony with power?

In 1802 - 1803, Karamzin published the journal “Bulletin of Europe”, in which literature and politics predominated. Largely thanks to the confrontation with Shishkov, in critical articles Karamzin has a new one aesthetic program the formation of Russian literature as nationally distinctive. Karamzin, unlike Shishkov, saw the key to the uniqueness of Russian culture not so much in adherence to ritual antiquity and religiosity, but in the events of Russian history. The most striking illustration of his views was the story “Martha the Posadnitsa or the Conquest of Novagorod.”

In his political articles of 1802-1803, Karamzin, as a rule, made recommendations to the government, the main one of which was educating the nation for the sake of the prosperity of the autocratic state.

These ideas were generally close to Emperor Alexander I, the grandson of Catherine the Great, who at one time also dreamed of an “enlightened monarchy” and a complete symphony between the authorities and a European educated society. Karamzin’s response to the coup of March 11, 1801 and the accession to the throne of Alexander I was “Historical eulogy to Catherine the Second” (1802), where Karamzin expressed his views on the essence of the monarchy in Russia, as well as the duties of the monarch and his subjects. The “eulogium” was approved by the sovereign as a collection of examples for the young monarch and was favorably received by him. Alexander I, obviously, was interested in Karamzin’s historical research, and the emperor rightly decided that the great country simply needed to remember its no less great past. And if you don’t remember, then at least create it again...

In 1803, through the royal educator M.N. Muravyov - poet, historian, teacher, one of the most educated people of that time - N.M. Karamzin received the official title of court historiographer with a pension of 2,000 rubles. (A pension of 2,000 rubles a year was then assigned to officials who, according to the Table of Ranks, had ranks no lower than general). Later, I.V. Kireevsky, referring to Karamzin himself, wrote about Muravyov: “Who knows, maybe without his thoughtful and warm assistance Karamzin would not have had the means to accomplish his great deed.”

In 1804, Karamzin practically retired from literary and publishing activities and began to create “The History of the Russian State,” on which he worked until the end of his days. With his influence M.N. Muravyov made many previously unknown and even “secret” materials available to the historian, and opened libraries and archives for him. Modern historians can only dream of such favorable working conditions. Therefore, in our opinion, talking about “The History of the Russian State” as a “scientific feat” by N.M. Karamzin, not entirely fair. The court historiographer was on duty, conscientiously doing the work for which he was paid. Accordingly, he had to write the kind of history that was currently needed by the customer, namely, Emperor Alexander I, who at the first stage of his reign showed sympathy for European liberalism.

However, under the influence of studies in Russian history, by 1810 Karamzin had become a consistent conservative. During this period, the system of his political views was finally formed. Karamzin’s statements that he is a “republican at heart” can only be adequately interpreted if we consider that we are talking about “Plato’s Republic of the Wise Men,” an ideal social order based on state virtue, strict regulation and the renunciation of personal freedom . At the beginning of 1810, Karamzin, through his relative Count F.V. Rostopchin, met in Moscow the leader " conservative party"at court - Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna (sister of Alexander I) and began to constantly visit her residence in Tver. The Grand Duchess's salon represented the center of conservative opposition to the liberal-Western course, personified by the figure of M. M. Speransky. In this salon, Karamzin read excerpts from his “History...”, and then he met the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, who became one of his patrons.

In 1811, at the request of Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna, Karamzin wrote a note “On ancient and new Russia in its political and civil relations,” in which he outlined his ideas about the ideal structure of the Russian state and sharply criticized the policies of Alexander I and his immediate predecessors: Paul I , Catherine II and Peter I. In the 19th century, the note was never published in full and was circulated only in handwritten copies. In Soviet times, the thoughts expressed by Karamzin in his message were perceived as a reaction of the extremely conservative nobility to the reforms of M. M. Speransky. The author himself was branded a “reactionary”, an opponent of the liberation of the peasantry and other liberal steps of the government of Alexander I.

However, during the first full publication of the note in 1988, Yu. M. Lotman revealed its deeper content. In this document, Karamzin made a justified criticism of unprepared bureaucratic reforms carried out from above. Praising Alexander I, the author of the note at the same time attacks his advisers, meaning, of course, Speransky, who stood for constitutional reforms. Karamzin takes it upon himself to prove in detail, with references to historical examples, to the Tsar that Russia is not ready, either historically or politically, for the abolition of serfdom and the limitation of the autocratic monarchy by the constitution (following the example of the European powers). Some of his arguments (for example, about the futility of liberating peasants without land, the impossibility of constitutional democracy in Russia) even today look quite convincing and historically correct.

Along with a review of Russian history and criticism of the political course of Emperor Alexander I, the note contained a complete, original and very complex in its theoretical content concept of autocracy as a special, uniquely Russian type of power, closely associated with Orthodoxy.

At the same time, Karamzin refused to identify “true autocracy” with despotism, tyranny or arbitrariness. He believed that such deviations from the norms were due to chance (Ivan IV the Terrible, Paul I) and were quickly eliminated by the inertia of the tradition of the “wise” and “virtuous” monarchical rule. In cases of a sharp weakening and even complete absence of the supreme state and church power (for example, during the Time of Troubles), this powerful tradition led, within a short historical period, to the restoration of autocracy. Autocracy was the “palladium of Russia”, the main reason for its power and prosperity. Therefore, the basic principles of monarchical rule in Russia, according to Karamzin, should have been preserved in the future. They should have been supplemented only by proper policies in the field of legislation and education, which would not lead to the undermining of the autocracy, but to its maximum strengthening. With such an understanding of autocracy, any attempt to limit it would be a crime against Russian history and the Russian people.

Initially, Karamzin’s note only irritated the young emperor, who did not like criticism of his actions. In this note, the historiographer showed himself plus royaliste que le roi (a greater royalist than the king himself). However, subsequently the brilliant “hymn to the Russian autocracy” as presented by Karamzin undoubtedly had its effect. After the War of 1812, Napoleon's winner Alexander I curtailed many of his liberal projects: Speransky's reforms were not completed, the constitution and the very idea of ​​​​limiting autocracy remained only in the minds of future Decembrists. And already in the 1830s, Karamzin’s concept actually formed the basis of the ideology of the Russian Empire, designated by the “theory of official nationality” of Count S. Uvarov (Orthodoxy-Autocracy-Nationalism).

Before the publication of the first 8 volumes of “History...” Karamzin lived in Moscow, from where he traveled only to Tver to visit Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna and to Nizhny Novgorod, during the occupation of Moscow by the French. He usually spent the summer in Ostafyevo, the estate of Prince Andrei Ivanovich Vyazemsky, whose illegitimate daughter, Ekaterina Andreevna, Karamzin married in 1804. (Karamzin’s first wife, Elizaveta Ivanovna Protasova, died in 1802).

In the last 10 years of his life, which Karamzin spent in St. Petersburg, he became very close to the royal family. Although Emperor Alexander I had a reserved attitude towards Karamzin since the submission of the Note, Karamzin often spent the summer in Tsarskoe Selo. At the request of the empresses (Maria Feodorovna and Elizaveta Alekseevna), he more than once had frank political conversations with Emperor Alexander, in which he acted as a spokesman for the opinions of opponents of drastic liberal reforms. In 1819-1825, Karamzin passionately rebelled against the sovereign’s intentions regarding Poland (submitted a note “Opinion of a Russian Citizen”), condemned the increase in state taxes in peacetime, spoke about the absurd provincial system of finance, criticized the system of military settlements, the activities of the Ministry of Education, pointed out the strange choice by the sovereign of some of the most important dignitaries (for example, Arakcheev), spoke of the need to reduce internal troops, about the imaginary correction of roads, which was so painful for the people, and constantly pointed out the need to have firm laws, civil and state.

Of course, having behind such intercessors as both empresses and Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna, it was possible to criticize, and argue, and show civil courage, and try to guide the monarch “on the true path.” It is not for nothing that Emperor Alexander I was called the “mysterious sphinx” by both his contemporaries and subsequent historians of his reign. In words, the sovereign agreed with Karamzin’s critical remarks regarding military settlements, recognized the need to “give fundamental laws to Russia,” and also revise some aspects of domestic policy, but it so happened in our country that in reality all wise advice statesmen remain “fruitless for the dear Fatherland”...

Karamzin as a historian

Karamzin is our first historian and last chronicler.
With his criticism he belongs to history,
simplicity and apothegms - the chronicle.

A.S. Pushkin

Even from the point of view of Karamzin’s contemporary historical science, no one dared to call the 12 volumes of his “History of the Russian State” a scientific work. Even then it was clear to everyone that the honorary title of court historiographer could not make a writer a historian, give him the appropriate knowledge and proper training.

But, on the other hand, Karamzin initially did not set himself the task of taking on the role of a researcher. The newly minted historiographer did not intend to write a scientific treatise and appropriate the laurels of his illustrious predecessors - Schlözer, Miller, Tatishchev, Shcherbatov, Boltin, etc.

Preliminary critical work on sources for Karamzin is only “a heavy tribute to reliability.” He was, first of all, a writer, and therefore wanted to apply his literary talent to ready-made material: “to select, animate, color” and thus make from Russian history “something attractive, strong, worthy of the attention of not only Russians, but also foreigners." And he accomplished this task brilliantly.

Today it is impossible not to agree that at the beginning of the 19th century, source studies, paleography and other auxiliary historical disciplines were in their infancy. Therefore, to demand from the writer Karamzin professional criticism, as well as strict adherence to one or another methodology for working with historical sources, is simply ridiculous.

You can often hear the opinion that Karamzin simply beautifully rewrote the “Russian History from Ancient Times” written in a long-outdated, difficult-to-read style by Prince M.M. Shcherbatov, introduced some of his own thoughts from it, and thereby created a book for lovers of fascinating reading in family circle. This is wrong.

Naturally, when writing his “History...” Karamzin actively used the experience and works of his predecessors - Schlozer and Shcherbatov. Shcherbatov helped Karamzin navigate the sources of Russian history, significantly influencing both the choice of material and its arrangement in the text. Whether by chance or not, Karamzin brought the “History of the Russian State” to exactly the same place as Shcherbatov’s “History”. However, in addition to following the scheme already worked out by his predecessors, Karamzin provides in his work a lot of references to extensive foreign historiography, almost unfamiliar to the Russian reader. While working on his “History...”, he for the first time introduced into scientific circulation a mass of unknown and previously unstudied sources. These are Byzantine and Livonian chronicles, information from foreigners about the population of ancient Rus', as well as a large number of Russian chronicles that have not yet been touched by the hand of a historian. For comparison: M.M. Shcherbatov used only 21 Russian chronicles when writing his work, Karamzin actively cites more than 40. In addition to the chronicles, Karamzin attracted monuments of ancient Russian law and ancient Russian fiction to his research. A special chapter of “History...” is dedicated to “Russian Truth,” and a number of pages are devoted to the just discovered “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.”

Thanks to the diligent help of the directors of the Moscow Archive of the Ministry (Collegium) of Foreign Affairs N. N. Bantysh-Kamensky and A. F. Malinovsky, Karamzin was able to use those documents and materials that were not available to his predecessors. Many valuable manuscripts were provided by the Synodal Repository, libraries of monasteries (Trinity Lavra, Volokolamsk Monastery and others), as well as private collections of manuscripts by Musin-Pushkin and N.P. Rumyantseva. Karamzin received especially many documents from Chancellor Rumyantsev, who collected historical materials in Russia and abroad through his numerous agents, as well as from A.I. Turgenev, who compiled a collection of documents from the papal archive.

Many of the sources used by Karamzin were lost during the Moscow fire of 1812 and were preserved only in his “History...” and extensive “Notes” to its text. Thus, Karamzin’s work, to some extent, itself acquired the status of a historical source, to which professional historians have every right to refer.

Among the main shortcomings of the “History of the Russian State,” the author’s peculiar view of the tasks of the historian is traditionally noted. According to Karamzin, “knowledge” and “learning” in a historian “do not replace the talent to depict actions.” Before the artistic task of history, even the moral one, which Karamzin’s patron, M.N., set for himself, recedes into the background. Muravyov. The characteristics of historical characters are given by Karamzin exclusively in a literary and romantic vein, characteristic of the direction of Russian sentimentalism he created. Karamzin’s first Russian princes are distinguished by their “ardent romantic passion” for conquest, their squad is distinguished by their nobility and loyal spirit, the “rabble” sometimes shows dissatisfaction, raising rebellions, but ultimately agrees with the wisdom of the noble rulers, etc., etc. p.

Meanwhile, the previous generation of historians, under the influence of Schlözer, had long ago developed the idea of ​​critical history, and among Karamzin’s contemporaries, the demands for criticism of historical sources, despite the lack of a clear methodology, were generally accepted. And the next generation has already come forward with a demand for philosophical history - with the identification of the laws of development of the state and society, the recognition of the main driving forces and laws of the historical process. Therefore, Karamzin’s overly “literary” creation was immediately subjected to well-founded criticism.

According to the idea, firmly rooted in Russian and foreign historiography of the 17th - 18th centuries, the development of the historical process depends on the development of monarchical power. Karamzin does not deviate one iota from this idea: monarchical power exalted Russia during the Kiev period; the division of power between the princes was a political mistake, which was corrected by the statesmanship of the Moscow princes - the collectors of Rus'. At the same time, it was the princes who corrected its consequences - the fragmentation of Rus' and the Tatar yoke.

But before reproaching Karamzin for not bringing anything new into the development of Russian historiography, it should be remembered that the author of “History of the Russian State” did not at all set himself the task of philosophical understanding of the historical process or blind imitation of the ideas of Western European romantics (F. Guizot , F. Mignet, J. Meschlet), who even then started talking about the “class struggle” and the “spirit of the people” as the main driving force of history. Karamzin was not at all interested in historical criticism, and he deliberately denied the “philosophical” direction in history. The researcher’s conclusions from historical material, as well as his subjective fabrications, seem to Karamzin to be “metaphysics”, which is not suitable “for depicting action and character.”

Thus, with his unique views on the tasks of a historian, Karamzin, by and large, remained outside the dominant trends of Russian and European historiography of the 19th and 20th centuries. Of course, he participated in its consistent development, but only in the form of an object for constant criticism and the clearest example of how history does not need to be written.

Reaction of contemporaries

Karamzin's contemporaries - readers and fans - enthusiastically accepted his new “historical” work. The first eight volumes of “History of the Russian State” were printed in 1816-1817 and went on sale in February 1818. A huge circulation of three thousand for that time was sold out in 25 days. (And this despite the hefty price of 50 rubles). A second edition was immediately required, which was carried out in 1818-1819 by I.V. Slenin. In 1821 a new, ninth volume was published, and in 1824 the next two. The author did not have time to finish the twelfth volume of his work, which was published in 1829, almost three years after his death.

“History...” was admired by Karamzin’s literary friends and the vast public of non-specialist readers who suddenly discovered, like Count Tolstoy the American, that their Fatherland has a history. According to A.S. Pushkin, “everyone, even secular women, rushed to read the history of their fatherland, hitherto unknown to them. She was a new discovery for them. Ancient Russia seemed to be found by Karamzin, like America by Columbus.”

Liberal intellectual circles of the 1820s found Karamzin’s “History...” backward in general views and overly tendentious:

Research specialists, as already mentioned, treated Karamzin’s work precisely as a work, sometimes even belittling its historical significance. To many, Karamzin’s enterprise itself seemed too risky - to undertake to write such an extensive work in the then state of Russian historical science.

Already during Karamzin’s lifetime, critical analyzes of his “History...” appeared, and soon after the author’s death, attempts were made to determine the general significance of this work in historiography. Lelevel pointed out an involuntary distortion of the truth due to Karamzin’s patriotic, religious and political hobbies. Artsybashev showed to what extent the literary techniques of a lay historian harm the writing of “history.” Pogodin summed up all the shortcomings of the History, and N.A. The field saw common cause These shortcomings are that “Karamzin is a writer not of our time.” All his points of view, both in literature and in philosophy, politics and history, became outdated with the advent of new influences of European romanticism in Russia. In contrast to Karamzin, Polevoy soon wrote his six-volume “History of the Russian People,” where he completely surrendered to the ideas of Guizot and other Western European romantics. Contemporaries assessed this work as an “undignified parody” of Karamzin, subjecting the author to rather vicious, and not always deserved, attacks.

In the 1830s, Karamzin’s “History...” became the banner of the officially “Russian” movement. With the assistance of the same Pogodin, its scientific rehabilitation is being carried out, which is fully consistent with the spirit of Uvarov’s “theory of official nationality”.

In the second half of the 19th century, based on the “History...”, a lot of popular science articles and other texts were written, which served as the basis for well-known educational and teaching aids. Based on the historical stories of Karamzin, many works were created for children and youth, the purpose of which for many years was to instill patriotism, loyalty to civic duty, and the responsibility of the younger generation for the fate of their Motherland. This book, in our opinion, played a decisive role in shaping the views of more than one generation of Russian people, having a significant impact on the foundations of patriotic education of youth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

December 14. Karamzin's finale.

The death of Emperor Alexander I and the December events of 1925 deeply shocked N.M. Karamzin and had a negative impact on his health.

On December 14, 1825, having received news of the uprising, the historian goes out into the street: “I saw terrible faces, heard terrible words, five or six stones fell at my feet.”

Karamzin, of course, regarded the action of the nobility against their sovereign as a rebellion and a serious crime. But among the rebels there were so many acquaintances: the Muravyov brothers, Nikolai Turgenev, Bestuzhev, Ryleev, Kuchelbecker (he translated Karamzin’s “History” into German).

A few days later Karamzin will say about the Decembrists: “The delusions and crimes of these young people are the delusions and crimes of our century.”

On December 14, during his movements around St. Petersburg, Karamzin caught a severe cold and contracted pneumonia. In the eyes of his contemporaries, he was another victim of this day: his idea of ​​the world collapsed, his faith in the future was lost, and a new king ascended to the throne, very far from the ideal image of an enlightened monarch. Half-ill, Karamzin visited the palace every day, where he talked with Empress Maria Feodorovna, moving from memories of the late Emperor Alexander to discussions about the tasks of the future reign.

Karamzin could no longer write. The XII volume of “History...” froze during the interregnum of 1611 - 1612. The last words of the last volume are about a small Russian fortress: “Nut did not give up.” The last thing that Karamzin actually managed to do in the spring of 1826 was that, together with Zhukovsky, he persuaded Nicholas I to return Pushkin from exile. A few years later, the emperor tried to pass the baton of the first historiographer of Russia to the poet, but the “sun of Russian poetry” somehow did not fit into the role of state ideologist and theorist...

In the spring of 1826 N.M. Karamzin, on the advice of doctors, decided to go to Southern France or Italy for treatment. Nicholas I agreed to sponsor his trip and kindly placed a frigate of the Imperial Navy at the disposal of the historiographer. But Karamzin was already too weak to travel. He died on May 22 (June 3), 1826 in St. Petersburg. He was buried at the Tikhvin Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.