From the vantage point of the twenty-first century, the Russian eighteenth-century ode seems a forbidding and inaccessible genre. The poems are without exception long, the language archaic, the subjects political, the tone jingoistic and/or sycophantic. However, when placed in its literary, historical, and sociological context, this poetry can become fascinating and even aesthetically interesting. What the eighteenth-century odists were doing in the cultural sphere was no less ambitious than what Peter the Great had done in the political arena a few decades earlier. This was an attempt to bring a backward, isolated country into the modern age, to take what the West had to offer and adapt it to specifically Russian needs.

Before the eighteenth century, Russia had no viable secular literature. If such a tradition was to take root, it could only do so with the support of the ruling institutions. The Church, skeptical of the value of literacy beyond religious texts, was unsympathetic. So the would-be poet needed to enlist the support of the sovereign.