M. Lomonosov's works The Brief Guide to Rhetoric (1744) and The Brief Guide to Eloquence (1748) are an integral part of the 18th century Russian cultural, humanistic, scientific, and philological discourse. The former was never published during M. Lomonosov's lifetime; instead, a revision of the text was carried out and a new version, significantly reworked and expanded, appeared under a different title. The second version of M. Lomonosov's rhetoric, as compared with the first one, contains numerous examples supplementing the theoretical material. These include a number of illustrations by M. Lomonosov himself as well as fragments of classical literature translated by him into Russian.

The influence of innovative European science on M. Lomonosov's views has been studied in the framework of German studies. M. Lomonosov's longtime probation in Marburg under the supervision of Chr. Wollf and his acquaintance with J. Chr. Gottsched's works on grammar, poetics, and rhetoric had a great impact on the Russian scholar. Interrelations between M. Lomonosov's two texts with the German rhetoric tradition can be clearly seen in juxtaposition of rhetoric as a theoretical discipline containing rules of how to create texts, and eloquence as a more practice-oriented guide aimed at developing the reader's oratory skills.