The Historian

February 1, 1818 was a milestone in the history of Russian culture, marking the release of the first eight volumes of Nikolai Karamzin’s History of the Russian State. Releasing eight volumes at once was what might today be called “an astute marketing move.” Anticipation had been building for several years as the Russian reading public eagerly awaited the writer, poet, and historian’s magnum opus. The eight volumes – covering Russia’s history from Rurik to Ivan the Terrible – was a cultural bombshell.

This was the first history of Russia read by a broad readership, not just historians. An engaging narrative and accessible language, uncluttered by scholarly references, served to make Karamzin’s History both readable and entertaining. As the poet Alexander Pushkin described it, “everyone, even high-society ladies, rushed to read the history of their fatherland, which they had not previously known.”

But at the same time, History of the Russian State triggered heated debate. To get a sense of the author’s viewpoint, one need have looked no further than the dedication to Alexander I, which concluded with the words: “The history of the people belongs to the tsar.” For Karamzin, autocracy was Russia’s natural form of government, a logical outcome of the country’s history, an early part of which, in Karamzin’s narrative, involved the inhabitants of ancient Rus asking the Varangians to rule over them and establish order. In other words, Russians had no desire for autonomy.

This same thought had been succinctly yet eloquently articulated by Karamzin seven years earlier in Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia. Submitted to Alexander I, this work was more political statement than historical treatise, a protest against the reforms that the tsar had commissioned his close advisor, Mikhail Speransky, to draft. Written in Karamzin’s usual ornate style, it was a brief overview of Russian history, an outline of what he would describe in greater detail in History of the Russian State. In Memoir, he extended the scope of his analysis to recent history, not shying away from mentioning the murder of Alexander’s father, Emperor Paul, before going on to assert that abolishing serfdom and weakening the nobility would be catastrophic for Russia.

Alas, Alexander heeded Karamzin’s arguments. A few months after reading Memoir, the tsar sent the reformer Speransky into exile. Autocracy and serfdom remained firmly in place.

Karamzin would be fated to see many of the young men who had heatedly debated – and denounced – his History back in 1818 go out onto St. Petersburg’s Senate Square in 1825 in a desperate attempt to change the country. Legend has it that Karamzin raced to the square on that cold winter day to talk the Decembrists, as they came to be known, out of their audacious scheme and, as a result, caught a cold that ultimately led to his death several months later.

In February 1858, forty years after the publication of History of the Russian State, the nephew of that selfsame Alexander I to whom the work was dedicated, the young Alexander II, would refuse to stay the course set by his uncle and father, who had both alternated between reform and reaction, between establishing secret committees to draft reforms and then scrapping those plans, leaving the status quo unaltered.

Alexander II’s secret committee on the peasant question had been in existence for a year and could potentially have turned into yet another high-minded endeavor that ended in futility. But in February 1858, his secret committee was transformed into the Main Committee on the Peasant Question, and preparations to abolish serfdom ceased being a secret. It was finally possible to discuss emancipation in the press. Once the process of reform began, it snowballed.

We will never know for certain what Nikolai Karamzin would have thought of Alexander II’s reforms. Most likely he would have been appalled. But, as a historian, his sense of horror would no doubt have been accompanied by a devouring curiosity as to how they would turn out.