A history of political thinking in Russia. Karamzin on ancient
and modern Russia
N. M. Karamzin’s essay on ancient and modern Russia is one of the very first and significant products of Russian political philosophy. N. M. Karamzin’s intellectual stance evolved in the atmosphere of the profound changes that started under the reign of Peter the Great. His versatile activity fostered the thorough and conscious adoption of western culture in Russia as well as the making of the new Russian culture, whose peculiarity lay in the unification of the old Russian traditions and the impulses of western-bred modernization. Following his apprentice years and a brief military service, Karamzin joined Moscow’s Free Masonic Lodge led by notable writer, journalist and publisher, N. I. Novikov. The four years he spent in Moscow was also a time of reading and intensive studying of West European literature. This was when the foundations of Karamzin’s literary style and taste evolved. By 1788, young writer Karamzin gradually distanced himself away from Free Masonry, and on 18th May 1789 he set off on his thirteen-month-long tour abroad, which made a decisive impact on his intellectual development. There is little official data available concerning this tour, the main source for researchers being a book entitled Letters of a Russian Traveller, 1789-90, which earned fame for Karamzin. In the Letters he draws the figure of an ‘awakening’ traveller ‘coming to his senses.’ Once an enthusiastic admirer of western civilization, he becomes a writer who judges western civilization in a sober manner, recognizing its complexity and multifarious nature, and once glorifying universal humanity, he turns into a thinker taking note of the importance of national traits. It seems as if this change had prefigured Karamzin’s whole writerly career: he started out as a literary scholar, implanting the forms and ideas of western literature in Russia, ending up his life as a historian studying the Russian tradition. This change began with his western tour and nearly took another ten years, European events being its major impulse, especially the need to understand the morals of the French Revolution. Similarly to many of his contemporaries, the Revolution made Karamzin hopeful primarily about the quick realization of the ideas of the Enlightenment and the victory of liberty and philanthropy. This personal experience in revolutionary France is not likely to have changed his way of thinking, yet, at any rate, in contrast with other Russian-published works, in the Moskovsky Zhurnal, published by Karamzin, we cannot find any views critical of the events in France. Nevertheless, the ‘French parts’ of the Letters reflect the writer’s later, considerably modified stance. This change becomes fully tangible by 1794: this is borne witness to by a historico-philosophical essay by Karamzin, published in 1795, which is an invented dialogue between the ‘Poet’ and the ‘Philosopher’ about the French Revolution, about progress and the fate of the Enlightenment. However, almost every scholar regards it as a work containing obvious biographical references. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Karamzin could openly write about the lessons and consequences of the French Revolution, which – like before – served as a starting point for all of his trains of thought. In these writings the most important role is played by Karamzin’s thought – already known to us – about the failure of the Revolution and the great sacrifices made in the name of the Revolution. The dreams cherished about liberty did not come true, and the ten year’s war seemed futile as well. Karamzin identified the only benefit of the French Revolution as the general conviction that the lack of order brings more trouble for the people than the abuses of the most imperfect power: therefore, any transformation in society must take place from above and not as a result of revolutions. It was these conclusions that Karamzin utilized in his study, Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia, which he completed at the request of Ekaterina Pavlova, younger sister of the tzar, an influential opponent of the reforms of Alexander and Speransky. The assessment of the reforms is a logical consequence of Karamzin’s general views about the European events and Russia’s place in Europe. The present article analyses the major claims of Karamzin’s study, its general design, his rather sharp critique of Alexander I’s reign, as well as his views about autocracy, the limitation of autocratic power and the question of serfdom.
