His grand father Vasily Karazin was a Serbian-born Russian enlightenment intellectual, inventor, and the founder of Kharkiv University.

For his military service he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir and a gold sword.

[5] After his retirement from military service, Karazin wrote many adventure and ethnographic stories and novels: The most popular was his children's book, Cranes Flying South, telling the story of a crane migrating from the Ostashkov swamps to the Upper Nile.

The book combined an interesting story, geographic descriptions of the places the crane flew and illustrations by the author.

He painted many large canvases devoted to battles and especially military actions in Turkestan.