Ermak’s Exploit on the Pages of N. M. Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State”

The article analyses the narrative structure of N. M. Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State” with the primary attention paid to the 9th volume, i. e. a part of the oeuvre which comprises the story of Ermak’s victorious campaign in Siberia. The focus is directed onto Karamzin’s contribution to the imagining of Ermak as a key-figure in the narrative of Russian colonization, historical agent who became an integral constituent part of national historical and cultural memory. The paper demonstrates that the conceptual plot of Ermak’s Siberian campaign was formed by a number of leitmotif lines and ideological notions bearing a particular importance for the author and his epoch. It was revealed in the course of the analysis that Ermak is related to the following semantic fields endowed with distinctive meaning in the context of time: Ivan the Terrible despotic authority; Novgorod (either as a “veche”-republic, a symbol of freedom, or as a commercial principality that paved the way beyond Urals); Cossacks, “new belligerent republic”, which very name linked free people of Russian late Middle Ages with Novgorodians; the Stroganov family of Ural merchants and a problem of oligarchy posed in relation with them. In Karamzin’s story on Ermak all these themes, deeply rooted in the national history, were skilfully intertwined. Dating back to the previous volumes of the “History” these leitmotifs formed a contextual milieu for the story of the conquest, and should this story be extracted out of this surrounding it would become opaque in semantic perspective and remain unread fully and comprehended improperly

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• Ermak’s Exploit on the Pages of N. M. Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State”

  Open Access•Kirill V Anisimov•Ural Historical Journal•2023

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• Ermak’s Exploit on the Pages of N. M. Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State”

  Open Access•Kirill V Anisimov•Ural Historical Journal•2023

  Add to list