“Nikolai Palkin”, “crowned drummer”, “gendarme of Europe” - these and similar epithets in relation to the “unsympathetic monarch”, as one historian put it, are firmly entrenched both in the mass consciousness and in historical science. Meanwhile, Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich was far from a limited person and an extraordinary statesman who loved, in his words, “our Mother Russia.” Yes, he proudly called himself a “conservative sovereign,” but he was not the reactionary that he is often portrayed as.

This book is essentially the first attempt to give a balanced and objective characterization of Emperor Nicholas I as a statesman and person.