ABSTRACT

Russian history started in the second half of the ninth century, when a band of Scandinavian vikings seized power in Novgorod. So they organized the Slav tribes into a more or less ordered State with its capital in Kiev. Having merged with the natives in language and customs, they yet remained the ruling caste. By the end of the tenth century this "Kiev Russia" received Christianity from Byzantium and not from the West. The humanitarian and sentimental trend in literature was fostered by Freemasonry, which had spread in Russia during the second half of the eighteenth century and became rather strong towards its end. Nikolai Karamzin marks the transition from the pseudo-classic to the sentimental period. Karamzin's sentimentalism had a number of followers, who hardly contributed much to the quality of Russian fiction towards the end of the eighteenth century.