“Glinka's pen was the first on the Rus' which began to skirmish with the enemy”3: S. N. Glinka's “Russian messenger” on the eve and in a time of the War for Fatherland, 1812

The article is devoted to the “Russian Messenger” of Sergey Nikolayevich Glinka. The magazine was created in the period of Napoleonic wars for the purpose of preparing Russian society to political-military and socio-cultural fight with France. Seeing that France and French culture were associated with revolution, “Russian Messenger” made actual the main questions of Russian conservative thought. The magazine advocated authority, Orthodoxy, patriarchal model of society and Russian national culture. The publisher argued that his contemporaries had to follow the experience of Russian history and illustrated his magazine with the biographies of great political, cultural and religion heroes of national past. Mythologized Russian history must be the center of the national educational system, propagated by Glinka's “Russian Messenger”. The publisher believed that the implementation of the system must secure Russian Empire from a revolution. The historic significance of Glinka's magazine consisted in preparing Russian social opinion to the War for Fatherland of 1812 and actualizing the idea of authentic, independent from the West way of Russian development.