Returning after a year-long journey across Europe, Nikolay Mikhaylovich Karamzin founded the "Moscow Journal," in which starting from the first issue and throughout its two-year existence in 1791–1792, he published among other works the "Letters of a Russian Traveler" — an extremely elegant in form and at the same time monumental in concept work of the epistolary genre destined to become one of the most significant phenomena of Russian literary sentimentalism. The history of the "Letters..." continued even after the end of the "Moscow Journal": Karamzin continued working on them in the following years. The first complete edition of the "Letters...", due to the censor's close attention to fragments concerning the French Revolution, became possible only after the death of Paul I in 1801... Over time, beyond the undeniable literary merits of the "Letters...", the unique historical value of the image of Europe captured by Karamzin, seen through the eyes of a traveler from Russia, and also reflecting the image of the enlightened Russian traveler of the eighteenth century himself, became increasingly clear.