Letters of a Russian Traveler

After returning from a year-long journey through Europe, Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin established the "Moscow Journal," in which, starting from the first issue and for two years of its existence in 1791-1792, he published, among other things, "Letters of a Russian... Traveler" - his extraordinarily elegant in form and simultaneously monumental in concept work of the epistolary genre, which was destined to become one of the most significant phenomena of Russian literary sentimentalism. The story of "Letters..." continued even after the history of the "Moscow Journal" ended: Karamzin continued to work on them in the following years. The first complete edition of "Letters...", due to the close attention of censors to the fragments dedicated to the French Revolution, became possible only after the death of Paul I in 1801... Over time, in addition to the indisputable literary merits of "Letters...", the unique historical value of Karamzin's image of Europe, seen through the eyes of a traveler from Russia, as well as the reflection of the image of the enlightened Russian traveler of the eighteenth century increasingly became apparent.