Karamsin

Karamsin, NICHOLAS MICHAILOVITCH, the greatest of Russian historians, was born on 12th December 1765, at Mikhailovka in Orenburg. His father, an officer of Tartar descent, placed him in the army, but he soon left it to devote himself to literary pursuits, and, after a tour in Germany, Switzerland, and France, established the Moscow Journal, and published volumes of tales, critical papers, translations, &c. The work which first gained him a high reputation was his Letters of a Russian Traveller (6 vols. 1797-1801). In 1803 he was appointed imperial historiographer, and from this time laboured uninterruptedly at his History of Russia (11 vols. 1816-29); but he only brought it down to 1613, dying on 3d June 1826 in the midst of his labours. In this great work, the first really critical history of Russia, Karamsin manifests so much enthusiastic admiration for men like Ivan the Terrible that it has been called the 'Epic of Despotism.'