Nikolay Karamzin

Nikolay Mikhailovich Karamzin was a Russian historian, romantic writer, poet and critic. He is best remembered for his fundamental History of the Russian State, a 12-volume national history. Early life Karamzin was born in the small village of Mikhailovka (modern-day Karamzinka village of the Ulyanovsk Oblast, Russia) near Simbirsk in the Znamenskoye family estate. Another version exists that he was born in 1765 in the Mikhailovka village of the Orenburg Governorate (modern-day Preobrazhenka village of the Orenburg Oblast, Russia) where his father served, and in recent years Orenburg historians have been actively disputing the official version. His father Mikhail Yegorovich Karamzin (1724—1783) was a retired Kapitan of the Imperial Russian Army who belonged to the Russian noble family of modest means founded by Semyon Karamzin in 1606. For many years its members had served in Nizhny Novgorod as high-ranking officers and officials before Nikolay's grandfather Yegor Karamzin moved to Simbirsk with his wife Ekaterina Aksakova of the ancient Aksakov dynasty related to Sergey Aksakov. According to Nikolay Karamzin, his surname derived from Kara-mirza, a baptized Tatar and his earliest-known ancestor who arrived to Moscow to serve under Russian rule. No records of him were left. The first documented Karamzin lived as early as 1534. His mother Ekaterina Petrovna Karamzina (née Pazukhina) also came from a Russian noble family of moderate income founded in 1620 when Ivan Demidovich Pazukhin, a long-time officer, was granted lands and a title for his service during the Polish–Russian War. His two sons founded two family branches: one in Kostroma and one in Simbirsk which Ekaterina Karamzina belonged to. Her father Peter Pazukhin also made a brilliant military career and went from Praporshchik to Colonel; he had been serving in the Simbirsk infantry regiment since 1733. As far as the family legend goes, the dynasty was founded by Fyodor Pazukh from Lithuanian szlachta who left Mstislavl in 1496 to serve under Ivan III of Russia. Ekaterina Petrovna was born between 1730 and 1735 and died in 1769 when Nikolay was only over 2 years old. In 1770 Mikhail Karamzin married for the second time to Evdokia Gavrilovna Dmitrieva (1724—1783) who became Nikolay's stepmother.