Contemporaries assessed the reign of Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich differently. For some, this was a brilliant era of Russian victories on the battlefield (the Caucasus, the pacification of Poland and Hungary), the idyll of “noble nests”. For others, it was a time of “shameful slavery,” “cruel tyranny,” which naturally ended with defeat in the Crimean War. One way or another, it was a difficult period of Russian history, ringing in us not only with the echo of the “shackle ringing”, but also with echoes of the “golden age” of our literature. From there, we inherited the unceasing disputes between Westerners and Slavophiles... There, in the depths of this “numb” Nicholas Russia, the whistles of the first steam locomotives sounded, there the idea of “peasant liberation” began to take the path of implementation. A new Russia was born there. Included in the collection Nicholas I.