ABSTRACT
From the very beginning of his literary career, N. Karamzin had associated himself with circles and movements which, though broadly connected with the Enlightenment, were hostile to its extreme rationalist manifestations, and had sought a compromise in eighteenth-century conflicts between faith and reason, tradition and progress. An analysis of Karamzin's writings reveals that his conception of monarchy was in all essentials identical to that evolved by Montesquieu in his Spirit of Laws and was widely accepted by Russian public opinion in the reign of Catherine II. Karamzin also accepted Montesquieu's conception of the political principe, that is, the specific "human passion which sets into motion"; and with it the conviction that decline of great states usually begins with corruption of their principe. The writings of Karamzin are crowded with paeans in favor of "liberty"; it is the source of all wealth and power, "golden thing," loss of which, next to physical suffering, is one of life's two genuine tragedies.
