Karion Istomin was a poet, translator and pedagogue who also worked as a printer in Moscow. The primer he produced somewhere between 1717 and 1722 stands out in the field of Old Russian children’s literature both in terms of choice of material and in terms of its overall conception. Previous Russian primers had been designed to teach children how to read correctly essentially for liturgical purposes and consisted only of the letters of the alphabet, long lists of syllables and abbreviated words and, in addition, some important prayers. In some cases, they also included other texts that were both religious and pedagogical in nature. Istomin’s Bukvar’ slavenorossijskich pismen marks a break with this tradition since it reorients basic literacy and redirects it along the lines of visual design. Each letter in the alphabet, 38 in all, is taken up by a page in the primer. As well as intricate typographical depictions of each letter (in both the printed and manuscript versions), each page contains illustrations of familiar, everyday objects, people and animals each of which has a name beginning with the letter presented on the page. This material is further supplemented by verses which relate to the images represented on the page in question.In this way, the visual design and choice of teaching material in Istomin’s primer goes beyond the passive learning of reading rules and the study of a few religious texts. Instead, it encourages children to learn to read a word in association with a specific image. It is thus designed to encourage basic literacy by linking the process of learning to read with personal experience and knowledge of everyday life. In addition to a rough draft, two manuscript copies exist, one of which dates back to 1692 and is particularly well drawn. It was made for the zarevič Aleksej, Peter the Great’s son. The other, dating from 1693, is less sumptuous and was designed to teach the daughters of Peter the Great’s brother, Ioann. There is also a printed edition with copper engravings which was produced by Leontij Bunin and which appeared in Moscow in 1694.