In twelve long cantos he celebrates the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible in "The Rossiad." "Vladimir" (eighteen cantos) celebrates the Christianizing of Russia by Prince-Saint Vladimir.
Ippolit Feodorovitch Bogdanovitch (1743-1803), who was developed under the immediate supervision and patronage of Kheraskoff, belonged, by education and his comprehension of elegance and of poetry, to a later epoch--on the borderland between pseudo-classicism and the succeeding period, which was ruled by sentimentalism.

His well-known poem, "Dushenka" ("Dear Little Soul"), was the first light epic Russian poem, with simple, intelligible language, and with a jesting treatment of a gay, playful subject.

This subject Bogdanovitch borrowed from La Fontaine's novel, "The Loves of Psyche and Cupid," which, in turn, was borrowed from Apuleius.
The third writer of this group, Ivan Ivanovitch Khemnitzer (1745-1784), the son of a German physician, was unknown during his lifetime; enjoyed no literary fame, and cared for none, regarding his capacities and productions as unworthy of notice.

In 1779, at the instigation of his friends, he published a collection of his "Fables and Tales." At this time there existed not a single tolerable specimen of the fable in Russian; but by the time literary criticism did justice to Khemnitzer's work, Karamzin, and Dmitrieff had become the favorites of the public, and Khemnitzer's productions circulated chiefly among the lower classes, for whom his Fables are still published.

His works certainly aided Dmitrieff and Kryloff in handling this new branch of poetical literature in Russia.