The article contains a justified assumption of the fact that G. R. Derzhavin’s poetry goes far beyond classicism. In Russian literature, he was one of the founders of realism. It was the influence of realism opened by G. R. Derzhavin that made A. S. Pushkin, a romantic poet, take the path of realism being guided by his teacher’s experience. As a matter of fact, G. R. Derzhavin is actually a forerunner of one more style — Russian sentimentalism, being called “karamzinism” in the beginning.