WRITERS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY: M. V. LOMONOSOV AND N. M. KARAMZIN

Abstract

This work examines the history writing of Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov and Nikolay Mikhailovich Karamzin. Besides a brief review of their biographies and work in other fields of Russian culture and science, an examination is made of their historiographical method, the sources they used, and the intellectual influences which shaped their thinking. Lomonosov, who wrote his most significant historiographic work Ancient Russian History in the mid-18th century, was an ardent opponent of the Normanist theory of Russian origins. Karamzin, who published his 12-tome History of the Russian State in the 1820s and 1830s, accepted this theory fully.