Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, an Enlightener in the Field of Aerostatics

Abstract

The first flight of a hot-air balloon was demonstrated in France in 1783. On the wave of the Enlightenment, French society saw this flight as a great and promising scientific invention. However, in 18th century Russia’s culture, the hot-air balloon ascents were only regarded as entertainment. Seeing no practical benefit in hot-air balloons, and apprehensive of the fires they could cause, neither Catherine the Great nor Paul I encouraged any interest in aerostation. After Alexander I became Emperor of Russia (1801), the attitude towards hot-air balloon flights in Russia began to change. In this paper we show that it was the famous Russian historian and author Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin who was the first to introduce the educated part of Russian society to how aerostation was seen in Europe, to the experience and scientific knowledge gained as a result of such flights. This significant fact has eluded both the historians and Karamzin’s biographers. Karamzin’s publications concerned with balloon flights are reviewed in this article for the first time, and analyzed in the context of the history of aerostation, which allows to better understand Karamzin’s contribution to changes in the attitude of Russian society towards hot-air ballooning. It is demonstrated, that Karamzin’s thoughts, implicitly reflected in his choice of texts about hot-air balloon flights, which Karamzin adapted, translated, and published in his famous journal Vestnik Evropy (Herald of Europe), were in line with the overall shift in the attitude towards aerostation in Russia during the first years of the reign of Alexander I.