How prescient Karamzin was ! It turns out that in addition to being THE historian he created an ideology.
"The new ideology of the once liberal Karamzin was expressed very sharply in his
"Memorandum about the Old and the New Russia," which he
presented to Alexander I in 1811. The "Memorandum" was meant
as a warning to the emperor against…
How prescient Karamzin was ! It turns out that in addition to being THE historian he created an ideology.
"The new ideology of the once liberal Karamzin was expressed very sharply in his
"Memorandum about the Old and the New Russia," which he
presented to Alexander I in 1811. The "Memorandum" was meant
as a warning to the emperor against the projected constitutional
and liberal reforms, and it began with a brief outline of Russian
history intended to prove that the fortunes, the very life of Russia
were inseparably connected with the institution of autocracy.
A criticism of all projects to limit the power of the sovereign
followed: such plans were found to be inadmissible both on
general grounds and especially in their application to Russia.
Next there was a defense of serfdom and of all the privileges of
the gentry, and an argument advocating a further strengthening
of the gentry, as well as of the Holy Synod. Karamzin's views
were summed up in the famous sentence which declared that
Russia needed fifty good provincial governors, and not reforms.
In another memorandum, "An Opinion of a Russian Citizen"
about Poland, Karamzin discussed the Polish problem in the same
conservative vein. Practically all component elements of subsequent
Russian nationalism can be found in Karamzin's writings.
A detail, especially interesting in connection with Slavophilism,
is that Karamzin took in his "Memorandum" a rather
negative view of Peter the Great"
Peter was the Stalin of his time.