Russian identification. Nikolai Karamzin

The article is devoted to the evolution of Nikolai Karamzin's views, which largely illustrates the identification processes in Russia at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even before writing the «History of the Russian State», Karamzin's views were in line with the trend of transition from a «servile» state to enlightened absolutism. In particular, the autocracy was to be based on law, the source of which should be the monarch himself. Under this system, the subject was not a slave but a citizen. However, after the defeat of enlightenment project , Karamzin began a research of Russian history, where he tried to find not a rational guidance, but something that could consolidate the nation – its spirit. All the ideologues of «Slavophilism» were brought up on Karamzin's «History». The author illustrates how Russian classicism gives way to romanticism, which «awakens» the national consciousness. Karamzin plays a significant role in this process: he provides the russian romantics with the necessary element without which Romanticism is impossible – tradition.