Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin was the first to explain clearly and interestingly for readers the entire history of Russia from ancient times to the beginning of the 17th century, as it was known to science at that time. For educated Russian society of the first third of the 19th century, Karamzin's History was a real revelation.
A. S. Pushkin called Karamzin "Columbus, who discovered ancient Russia for his readers." Karamzin was the official court historiographer of Emperor Alexander I. All this together gave his work indisputable authority and contributed to the rooting of his versions and assessments of historical events in historiography. Until now, opinions that contradict Karamzin's concept are often subjected to reproach and obstruction by status historians, even if they are fully justified.
The myth of the vocation of the Normans
Karamzin was not the creator of this myth. It was introduced into scientific circulation by the German scientist A. L. Schlözer, who worked in 1761-1767. in Russia and published with commentaries "The Tale of Bygone Years" (PVL). Despite the fact that he subjected her to scientific criticism, he, nevertheless, put her information as the basis of ancient Russian history. True, his methods of "scientific criticism" led to its peculiar interpretation. PVL says that the Varangians who were called to reign in Novgorod lived on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. "Scientific criticism" by Schlötser PVL carried the Varangians to the northern shores of the Baltic and identified them with the Normans. This is how the notorious "Norman theory" (Normanism) was born, linking the emergence of Russian statehood with the "civilizing" mission of the Scandinavians-Germans.
Karamzin, with his authority, gave this hypothesis the character of an immutable truth. Having bloomed his presentation with a mass of fictional artistic details (which he accused Tatishchev of, but what he sinned, in comparison with him, much more), Karamzin convinced his readers that it could only be this way and not otherwise. Karamzin's authority contributed to the rooting of Normanism among Western scholars. Those could with good reason indicate: look, the most famous Russian historiographer - and he admitted that the state of the Eastern Slavs was founded by the Germans.
Mongol-Tatars
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To be fair, Karamzin never used the meaningless term "Mongolo-Tatars" anywhere. In his time, he was just beginning to enter the scientific circulation. It was invented in 1817 by the German historian H. Kruse, whose Atlas of the History of European Nations was published in Russian only in 1845. Karamzin only identifies the Mongols and Tatars of medieval sources. This identification dates back to the 13th century, to the book of the papal legate Plano Carpini "History of the Mongols, called Tatars." Carpini in 1244-1247 made a mission to the great khan in Central Asia.
It should also be noted that Karamzin uses the name not Mongols, but Mughals, after the name of the one who reigned in India in the 16th-19th centuries. Muslim dynasty. It is still unclear whether the dynasty identified itself with the descendants of Genghis Khan, or whether this identification belongs to Europeans who discovered India for themselves.
But the most important thing is that since the time of Karamzin, any attempts to understand this terminology and reveal who is hiding in history under the name of Karpini's “Mongals”, “Mughals” of later European historians and “Tatars” of ancient Russian chronicles and contemporary European chronicles, are met by historical science in bayonets. It is customary to identify them without bothering with evidence. Karamzin's version again turns out to be dogmatic "truth."
It must be said that this state of affairs was greatly facilitated in recent times by research on the "new chronology" of A. T. Fomenko and G. V. Nosovsky. Now any critical view of the generally accepted concept of the "Mongol-Tatar invasion" is swept aside by the labeling of "Fomenkovism".
Insanity of Ivan the Terrible
The reign of Ivan IV (1547-1584) at Karamzin falls into two parts. Until about 1560, he was a wise and kind, most Christian sovereign. In 1560-1564. he begins to be damaged by reason, which at times manifested itself in outbursts of rage and unjustified executions. And from the end of 1564, the king was completely moved by his mind and began to shed the blood of his subjects for nothing. Thus, all the vicissitudes of the political struggle of that era were "explained" by Karamzin to a stupid primitive: the tsar went mad.
It is noteworthy that Karamzin's descriptions of the fierce executions of the Ioannovs are based primarily on foreign sources. This is, first of all, the work of two Germans, who, according to them, were supposedly guardsmen, but then fled from John - Taube and Kruse, that is, adventurers about whom almost nothing is reliably known. Further, this is the English ambassador Giles Fletcher, who arrived in Russia after the death of Ivan the Terrible and wrote about the past events according to rumors and gossip. This is an Italian mercenary in the Polish service Alessandro Gvanini, and Poland at that time was at war with Russia. These are accusatory letters from the emigrant Prince Andrei Kurbsky. From Russian sources, according to Karamzin's notes, only the Pskov Chronicle tells about Grozny's atrocities.
It is easy to see that Karamzin's selection of sources about the era of Grozny is tendentious. These are either the works of the political opponents of the king, often written for propaganda purposes, or collections of information through second and third hands. Obviously, they fit best with Karamzin's version. Thus, Karamzin made a biased selection of sources in such a way that they would support the literary image of Ivan the Terrible as a crowned villain drawn by him.
It should be noted that V. N. Tatishchev, who used many Russian chronicles, including those that have not survived to this day, writes nothing about some fierce, out of the ordinary executions of Ivan the Terrible.
A. K. Tolstoy, who dedicated an ironic poem to the famous thesis with which the Varangian princes were allegedly called upon - "Our land is great and abundant, but there is no order in it" - nevertheless, he completely uncritically perceived Karamzin's hypothesis about Ivan the Terrible, putting it in the basis of the novel "Prince of Silver ".
Any attempt to establish a true historical picture of the reign of Ivan the Terrible by comparing various historical sources of that era and their critical research has since been met with hostility on the grounds that this will be the "rehabilitation" of Ivan the Terrible. And it cannot be produced, because, they say, Karamzin has already established the historical truth, and doubts about it are inappropriate.
Being a literary work, highly controversial from the point of view of scientific reliability, "History of the Russian State" N. M. Karamzin is still unreasonably regarded by many as scientific research and, with his inflated (not without Pushkin's participation) authority, sanctifies many pseudoscientific historiographical myths.
Yaroslav Butakov