Eight volumes of The History of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were the most well-known work by N.V. Varadinov, which still keeps its significance for historians studying various aspects of the life of the Russian society of the first half of the nineteenth century. The author includes into his work a broad circle of issues connected to the peculiarities of the state management in the sphere of economical, political, and religious activity of the Russian Empire. The research was based on the archives of various departments of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as a number of publications, such as ‘The Complete Collection of the Legislation of the Russian Empire’, ‘The Corpus of Legislation’, ‘Sankt-Peterbugskyi Zhurnal’ (The St. Petersburg Magazine), ‘Severnaya Pochta’ (The Northern Mail), ‘Zhurnal Ministerstva Vnytrennikh Del’ (The Magazine of the Ministry of Domestic Affairs), ‘Senatskie vedomosti’ (The Senate’s News). In the field of religious affairs, a special attention was put on Old Believers, Molokans, Skoptsy, and Protestants. Beside a broad scale of data on the history of certain communities, the book includes the initial attempt to analyze the genesis of some religious movements in Russia.