This chapter describes the process whereby modern Russian literature came into being and entered the western European cultural mainstream in the eighteenth century. The period witnessed the creation of a modern vernacular Russian literary language and saw the development of the basic features of a modern literature with its literary and institutional infrastructure. The term ‘Classicism’ came into use in the 1820s as a retroactive label that disparaged the previous century’s literature as hopelessly rule-bound and obsolete, but this hardly corresponds to its complex, dynamic, and in fact intensely creative character. The chapter surveys the period through the lens of the modern literary language, with a focus on the creation of the so-called ‘Slaveno-Russian cultural and linguistic synthesis’ of mid-century that resolved the problem of the Baroque heritage and fundamentally shaped the literary practice of the age.