Üç Çarin Hizmetinde Bir İstanbullu
A Writer from Istanbul Who Served Three Tsars

Summary/Abstract: Fyodor A. Emin is one of the most interesting writers of the 18th century Russian literature, because when he came to Russia and began to live there it was not well known where he was born and who he was. The famous writer and journalist Novikov and the publisher Kopnin who were his contemporaries tried to write Emin’s biography on the basis of his works and on what he had told them. But the Soviet researchers Beshenkovsky and Arzumanova found several documents in the Russian government archives, which proved that Emin’s ancestors were from Poland and they migrated to Ottoman Turkey. According to these documents, Emin, who had to become a muslim, couldn’t continue to live in Istanbul as an Otoman soldier because of some uncertain reasons and went to Russia. He lived in Russia until the end of his life serving three tsars. Emin as an immigrant was always in need of money and in debt. Several times he wrote official letters to the tsars about his insufficient salaries. At the end Catherine the Great lent him money, and asked to be notified about his every future translation, which would pay back the debt, given by her. Besides, Emin tried to find a kind of solution in the literature life by publishing novels, which were very attractive for the Russian people. In spite of his short literature life and learning Russian quite late, Emin had managed to become a very productive and popular adventure-romance novel writer among the ordinary people. Today Emin from Istanbul is considered to be one of the founders of the Russian novel.

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