The article examines the image of Russia in Montesquieu's novel «Persian Letters» (1721). This image correlates with the widely used in the first half of the 18th Century common European representations of Russia as Oriental despotic state, which originate from the travel literature. By the means of textual analysis it is possible to identify the most probable sources of different passages. The focus is on the most popular myths about Russian people and their morals, personality and politics of the tsar Peter the Great, which have a specific interpretation in the novel ·