‘The Primary Pleasure Now is History …’: The Letters of N. M. Karamzin to M.N. Murav’ev

Abstract

The article discusses the letters of Nikolai Karamzin (1766–1826) to Mikhail Murav’ev (1757–1807) during the period 1803–1807 focussing on the circumstances surrounding the creation of A History of the Russian State . The article analyses 15 letters published in a three-volume collection of the works of Karamzin in 1848, as well as a letter published by Laura Rossi in 2018. The first letter was written on 28 September 1803 and it contains a request from Karamzin to Murav’ev to support his efforts to receive financial assistance from Russian authorities for the preparation of A History of the Russian State . The letters by Karamzin to Murav’ev, together with the writer’s letters to other individuals (the poet Ivan Dmitriev and Karamzin’s brother Vasilii), highlight the circumstances surrounding the emergence of the idea to compose an outline of the history of Russia (after the periodical Vestnik Evropy had ceased to be published) and the stages of Karamzin’s work on the first volumes.