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# Karamzin's family and court connections and his pension under Alexander I
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/prapravnuchka-russkogo-istorika-vasiliia-nikiticha-tatishcheva-rasskazyvala-o-bekgraunde-drugogo-znamenitogo-istorika-nikolaia-mikhailovicha-karamzina/
- Published: 2017-12-04T12:11:03.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:56:00.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Aristocracy, Observations, Mores, People

A great-great-granddaughter of the Russian historian Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev spoke about the background of another famous historian, Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin. Karamzin's stepmother had a nephew, Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev, who was on friendly terms with Senator Mikhail Nikitich Muravyov, the curator of Moscow University, a former tutor of Alexander I who had kept up close, amicable relations with the Emperor. Karamzin wrote to Muravyov asking him to petition the government for a pension, so that he might labour in peace on his «History of the Russian State». Muravyov conveyed the historian's wish to the sovereign himself, who granted the writer a pension and issued a decree admitting Karamzin without demur to the monastic and other libraries under the Synod's jurisdiction, with their ancient texts. Moreover, Karamzin's first wife was a relation of the wife of the all-powerful Rostopchin, who had risen under Paul as a political figure and served as Governor of Moscow. In his second marriage Karamzin likewise acquired considerable connections: he married the illegitimate, though adopted, daughter of Privy Councillor Prince Andrey Ivanovich Vyazemsky by Baroness Elizaveta Karlovna Sievers, who was a goddaughter of Empress Elizaveta Alekseyevna. Through these acquaintances he found himself presented to Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna, and then to the Empresses, the Dowager Maria Fyodorovna and Elizaveta Alekseyevna. My point is simply that nothing comes of nothing, least of all a pension of 2,000 roubles under Alexander I.