The French Language in Russia

Languages and Culture in History
This series studies the role foreign languages have played in the creation of the
linguistic and cultural heritage of Europe, both western and eastern, and at the
individual, community, national or transnational level.
At the heart of this series is the historical evolution of linguistic and cultural
policies, internal as well as external, and their relationship with linguistic and
cultural identities.
The series takes an interdisciplinary approach to a variety of historical issues:
the diffusion, the supply and the demand for foreign languages, the history of
pedagogical practices, the historical relationship between languages in a given
cultural context, the public and private use of foreign languages – in short, every
way foreign languages intersect with local languages in the cultural realm.
Series Editors
Willem Frijhoff, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Karène Sanchez-Summerer, Leiden University
Editorial Board Members
Gerda Hassler, University of Potsdam
Douglas A. Kibbee, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Marie-Christine Kok Escalle, Utrecht University
Joep Leerssen, University of Amsterdam
Nicola McLelland, The University of Nottingham
Despina Provata, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Konrad Schröder, University of Augsburg
Valérie Spaëth, University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle
Javier Suso López, University of Granada
Pierre Swiggers, KU Leuven

The French Language in Russia
A Social, Political, Cultural, and Literary History

Derek Offord, Vladislav Rjéoutski, and Gesine Argent

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Front page of Gazette de St. Pétersbourg, 5 September 1757
Used with permission from the Russian National Library, St Petersburg
Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden
Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout
isbn
e-isbn
doi
nur

978 94 6298 272 7
978 90 4853 276 6 (pdf)
10.5117/9789462982727
757

© Derek Offord, Vladislav Rjéoutski & Gesine Argent / Amsterdam University Press B.V.,
Amsterdam 2018
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of
this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations
reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is
advised to contact the publisher.

Contents
List of illustrations
9
Preface 11
Acknowledgements 23
Presentation of dates, transliteration, and other editorial practices
27
Abbreviations used in the notes
29
The Romanovs
33
Introduction 35
Conventional assumptions about Franco-Russian bilingualism
35
Russia and ‘the West’, and the two Russias
44
Empire, nation, and language
52
Sociolinguistic perspectives
60
Methodological considerations
67
Literature as a primary source
72
Chapter 1: The historical contexts of Russian francophonie 79
The spread of French in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Europe 79
The westernization of Russia in the eighteenth century
88
The introduction of foreign languages into eighteenth-century
Russia 94
The golden age of the nobility
102
The Napoleonic Wars and the Decembrist Revolt
110
The literary community and the intelligentsia in the age of
Nicholas I
115
Chapter 2: Teaching and learning French 123
An overview of French teaching in Russia
123
French versus German
135
French versus Latin
146
French (and English) versus Russian
151
Acquiring social and cultural codes by learning French
160
Chapter 3: French at court 173
The discovery of sociability
173
French as a sign of the status of the Russian court
183
French as a court language under Catherine II
188

6

The French L anguage in Russia

French at the nineteenth-century court
French as a royal language

195
200

Chapter 4: French in high society 215
The place of French in the noble’s linguistic repertoire
216
French in the sites of noble sociability
222
The spirit of the grand monde and social relations in it
232
Francophonie and social identity
242
French beyond the metropolitan aristocracy
253
Chapter 5: French in diplomacy and other official domains 263
The Chancery of Foreign Affairs and language training for Russian
diplomats 265
The gradual rise of French in European and Russian treaties
273
Turning to French for the conduct of Russian diplomatic business 278
The influx of French loanwords into Russian diplomatic parlance 287
Language use in internal communications about foreign affairs 290
The triumph of French in the diplomatic community and the
limits to its use
295
French and Russian in other official domains
301
French at the Academy of Sciences
312
Chapter 6: Writing French 327
Types of text and language choice in them
327
Language choice in nobles’ personal correspondence
332
Language use in diaries, travel notes, memoirs, and albums
346
Writing French to join Europe
359
Count Rostopchin’s ‘memoirs’
372
Women’s place in the literary landscape
376
Early nineteenth-century women’s prose fiction
381
Chapter 7: French for cultural propaganda and political polemics 395
Transforming Russia’s image
395
Cultural propaganda in French in the age of Catherine
409
Russian use of the Francophone press in the age of Catherine and
beyond 417
The promotion and translation of Russian literature
424
Chaadaev’s first ‘Philosophical Letter’
434
Geopolitical polemics around 1848
439
Polemical writings in French after the Crimean War
452

Contents

7

Chapter 8: Language attitudes 461
Language debate and its place in discourse about national
identity 461
The development of Russian language consciousness
465
Linguistic Gallophobia in eighteenth-century comic drama
472
The linguistic debate between Karamzin and Shishkov
484
Rostopchin’s Gallophobia
494
Literary reflection on francophonie in the 1820s and 1830s
501
A Slavophile view of Russian francophonie: Konstantin Aksakov 507
Chapter 9: Perceptions of bilingualism in the classical Russian
novel 519
The rise of the novel and the expression of nationhood in it
519
Ivan Turgenev
522
Lev Tolstoi: War and Peace
534
Tolstoi: Anna Karenina
550
Fedor Dostoevskii
558
Conclusion 571
The functions of French in imperial Russia
571
The changing climate in which French was used
575
Cultural borrowing and language use in grand narratives about
Russian culture
578
Bibliography 589
Archival sources
589
Published primary sources
611
Secondary sources and reference works
627
Index 661

List of illustrations
Cover
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

Gazette de St. Pétersbourg, 5 September 1757, no. 71
(Russian National Library)
Title page of a 1792 edition of Émile by Jean-Jacques
83
Rousseau (Russian National Library)
Portrait of Nikolai Karamzin by Vasilii Tropinin, 1818
93
(Russian National Library)
Map of Portugal, drawn by Princess Nina Bariatinskaia,
144
1785 (Russian State Library)
Draft of a letter addressed by Prince Dmitrii Golitsyn to
his mother, Princess Natal’ia Golitsyna, 1778–1781 (Rus163
sian State Library)
Exercises in French writing by Stepanida Baranova,
164
1781–1785 (Russian State Library)
Viktor Vasnetsov, Diner du 24 mai 1883 (Russian National
Library)213
View of the River Neva, including the buildings of the
Academy of Sciences (David Rumsey Map Collection,
at www.davidrumsey.com)313
Cover page of an unfinished essay by Prince Boris
366
Golitsyn, 1782 (Russian State Library)
Title page of Alexandre Golovkin’s treatise Mes idées sur
l’éducation du sexe, ou précis du plan d’éducation pour ma
368
fille, 1778 (Russian National Library)
Portrait of Fedor Rostopchin by Orest Kiprenskii, 1809
373
(Russian National Library)
Title page of Le Tableau slave by Zinaida Volkonskaia,
388
1826 (Russian National Library)
Title page of Relation fidelle de ce qui s’est passé au sujet du
jugement rendu contre le Prince Alexei et des circonstances
401
de sa mort, 1718 (Russian National Library)
Le Furet. Journal de littérature et théâtre, 1830, no. 8
(Russian National Library)
425
Title page of a copy of the first volume of the 1868 edition
539
of Tolstoi’s War and Peace (Russian National Library)
The first page of the text of the first volume of the 1868
edition of Tolstoi’s War and Peace (Russian National
Library)540

Preface
The aim of this book is to offer a multi-faceted history of the French language in pre-revolutionary Russia, where French was widely used for many
purposes by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century elites. (By ‘French
language’ we mean the exclusive standardized variety used by the upper
classes, which came in the eighteenth century to be seen as the only correct
form of expression, a variety synonymous with the French language itself.1)
This is a subject that has been rather little explored, at least until very
recently, but we believe it has considerable importance. Study of it may
afford insight into the social, political, cultural, and literary implications
and effects of bilingualism in a speech community over a long period.
The subject also has a bearing on some of the grand narratives of Russian
thought and literature, particularly the prolonged debate about Russia’s
relationship with the world beyond its western borders during the ages of
empire-building and nation-building. At the same time, we hope that a fuller
description of Franco-Russian bilingualism than has yet been provided will
enlarge understanding of francophonie as a pan-European phenomenon. On
the broadest plane, the subject has significance in an age of unprecedented
global connectivity, for it invites us to look beyond the experience of a single
nation and the social groups and individuals within it in order to discover
how languages and the cultures and narratives associated with them have
been shared across national boundaries.
Two principal threads run through our book; each could be the subject of
a discrete enquiry, difficult as it might be to separate them at certain points.
The first thread concerns language practice, that is to say, the functions of
French in Russia and the settings and media in which it was used over a
long period from the early eighteenth century. We analyze, for example, the
use of French as a spoken and written language in various social milieus
(the court and sites of aristocratic sociability, such as the salon, the ball,
and the Masonic lodge) and in some official domains, especially diplomacy.
We also examine its use as a literary language, both for amateur and more
professionalized forms of writing, and as a propagandistic or polemical
language for the promotion of a positive image of Russia beyond the country’s
borders and for international debate about politics and grand questions
of historical destiny. Language practice is the principal subject-matter of
Chapters 3–7, which we arrange in a way that is primarily thematic rather
1

We use here the definition given by Lodge, French, 184.

12 

The French L anguage in Russia

than chronological. Although we make occasional reference to language
use in the closing years of the imperial regime, at the end of the nineteenth
century and the beginning of the twentieth, the period with which we are
principally concerned in our consideration of language use ends in 1861. This
was the year in which the government of Alexander II abolished serfdom,
and the nobles’ loss of their exclusive right to own serfs marked the end of
an era: after this date the prestige of the noble estate, of which nobles’ use
of French among themselves was a symbolic indicator, was on the wane.
The second thread of our investigation concerns language attitudes and
the ways in which language use is bound up with conceptions of identity
of various sorts (especially social and national identity). It takes us into
the realm of perceptions, imagined communities, mental landscapes, and
notions of worth. We explore, for instance, the penetration of ideas about the
qualities of languages and the implications of language choice into Russian
cultural consciousness. We consider the degree to which attitudes towards
Russians’ adoption of the French language were entangled with conceptions
of France and the French people. Equally important, we discuss the narratives that unfolded in Russia about the supposed perils of cosmopolitanism
and bilingualism for an awakening nation. In Chapters 8–9, where such
matters come to the fore, our account is largely chronological. It begins
in earnest slightly later than our account of linguistic practice, around
the middle of the eighteenth century. This was the time when French was
establishing itself at court and as a prestige language among the Russian
nobility and when Russians were beginning to reflect on their use of foreign
languages and on the varieties and qualities of their own. It also ends a
little later than our account of language use, because the great classical
novelists, whose treatment of Franco-Russian bilingualism we examine
in our final chapter, continued to regard the subject as highly relevant to
their reflections on Russian destiny throughout the reign of Alexander II,
who was assassinated in 1881.
However, before following the two main threads that we have described,
on language use and language attitudes, we shall try to construct a conceptual framework for our investigation and to provide a rich historical
context for it. The first of these tasks we address in our introduction. Here we
begin by questioning some common assumptions about the Franco-Russian
bilingualism and related biculturalism of the elite in imperial Russia (or
rather their multilingualism and multiculturalism, for the eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century elite was exposed to a range of European languages
and cultures, not just to French language and culture) and about the effects
of these phenomena. We then consider two notions which have strongly

Preface

13

affected discussion of Russian culture: first, that Russia is best defined by
comparison with, or even in opposition to, an imagined ‘West’ and second,
that Russian cultural development has been exceptional or even unique.
Next, we approach the subject of language use and language debate from two
different disciplinary angles: as a subject that is germane both to historians,
especially historians interested in empire-building and nation-building,
and to sociolinguists interested in bilingualism, diglossia, language choice,
language loyalty, code-switching, purism, and so forth. The interdisciplinary
nature of our investigation also necessitates some reflection on the extent to
which the approaches of history and sociolinguistics can be reconciled and
on other methodological matters. In the last section of the introduction, we
discuss the nature, value, and shortcomings of some of the types of primary
source we have used, especially prose fiction and drama.
The linguistic phenomena we bring to light and the twists and turns
in both the threads of our narrative may be explained to a considerable
extent by social and political developments and by external and internal
cultural and intellectual stimuli. We therefore aim, in Chapter 1, to establish
a broad historical background which can be borne in mind as we examine
the functions of language and perceptions of the effects of language use
in pre-revolutionary Russian society over some two centuries. After some
discussion of the international spread of French from the age of Louis XIV,
we briefly describe the empire-building undertaken by eighteenth-century
Russian sovereigns, starting with Peter the Great, and the accompanying
reforms initiated by Peter with a view to modernizing the state he inherited
and westernizing its elite. We then outline the reception of foreign languages
in eighteenth-century Russia, focusing on the adoption of French as a prestige
language among the elite from around the middle of the century. A key
social factor in Russia’s modernization was the development of the nobility
into a corporation of a western kind, conscious of its privileged status, and
this process we survey in the fourth section of Chapter 1. After mention
of historical events (the Napoleonic Wars and the so-called Decembrist
Revolt of 1825) to which we shall often refer, we dwell on the emergence of
the literary community and intelligentsia in the oppressive age of Nicholas
I. These groups began in the second quarter of the nineteenth century to
vie with the nobility for cultural and moral authority. They also played a
key role in shaping a sense of national identity, fostering the development
of the modern Russian literary language and at the same time promoting a
predominantly negative attitude towards the Franco-Russian bilingualism
of the nobility. If in Chapter 1 we provide more contextual information than
might be required by specialists in the field of Russian history and culture,

14 

The French L anguage in Russia

it is because we are also aiming our work at readers who are students of
other fields and disciplines.
Our account of language use and language attitudes is preceded by one
further chapter, in which we describe and discuss both the place of French
in the curriculum of public educational institutions (especially the Noble
Land Cadet Corps) and the investment made by families in the Russian
elite in teaching their children French, if they could afford to do so. This
chapter (Chapter 2) is structured in such a way as to reveal the panoply of
languages to which the upper stratum of the nobility was exposed, as well
as the special place of French in their upbringing. We consider the ways in
which French was learned, through tuition in private or public educational
institutions or through the employment of foreign tutors in aristocratic
households. We point out that the learning of it was supported by such
means as study abroad, the Grand Tour, use of French as a medium for
tuition in other subjects, and personal correspondence between parents
and children. We emphasize that the symbolic value attached to command
of the French language, and to the assimilation of the refined culture for
which French was the primary international vehicle, is indicated by the
material cost willingly incurred by nobles in order to ensure that their
offspring acquired it.
Besides contextualizing the linguistic phenomena we examine, we attempt continually to relate language use, language choice, and language
attitudes to such matters as upbringing, pedagogy, social and cultural
practice, fashion, manners and morals, views of individual and national
character, and the formation of social and national identity. At the same
time, we resist casual generalizations about what we believe was a complex
multilingual environment, where practice did not always conform to assumed rules of etiquette. We do not seek to explain all Russian cultural and
linguistic developments as the outcome, in the final analysis, of autocratic
initiative, even in eighteenth-century Russia; rather, we emphasize the
initiative of families and individuals, especially in the upper nobility, as well
as sovereigns and individuals who were in some sense agents of the state. We
call into question the largely negative view of the effects of Franco-Russian
bilingualism that tends to emerge from classical Russian literature and
thought and that has been perpetuated by some works of scholarship. We
also make reference to linguistic practice and debate in other European
speech communities. We do this partly in order to give breadth to our
account but also for two other reasons. First, we wish to cast doubt on the
claims that are often made about the extent to which Russian cultural
development has been exceptional or to which Russia’s culture has been

Preface

15

imitative and its presence in European civilization marginal. Secondly, we
wish to underline the transnational nature of the cultural history we are
tracing, of which language use and language attitudes are a part.
Our approach, as we have said, is interdisciplinary. As our sub-title
indicates, our investigation of linguistic matters takes us at various points
into the fields of social, political, cultural, and literary history. On one level,
we are examining the relationship between language choice and social class:
the adoption of the French language for many purposes, especially for social
differentiation, is an aspect of the history of the pre-revolutionary Russian
nobility. Our work enters the terrain of political history to the extent that
the use of French in Russia is also a manifestation of the westernizing and
empire-building project of eighteenth-century sovereigns. Examination of
the strong reactions to the use of French by the Russian nobility also leads
us into the territory of students of national consciousness and nationalism
of various kinds, political and cultural. At the same time, we are writing
cultural history, since we are concerned with language use as an aspect of
cultural behaviour and as subject-matter in debate about Russian culture. We
are concerned with literary history too, for the corpus of writings produced
by Russians in French, including writings that are ‘literary’ even if we use
the term in the relatively narrow sense of belles-lettres, is quite substantial,
and this corpus does constitute an element in Russian literature. We are
working in the field of historical sociolinguistics as well, making use of
categories (bilingualism, diglossia, standardization, code-switching, and so
forth) employed by sociolinguists in their study of language as it functions in
society and as it is affected by social and cultural factors. We hope that our
attempt to integrate the approaches and findings of these various disciplines
will make the book of use to readers beyond the community of Slavists and
the community of French scholars who have an interest in the reception of
French language and culture in lands outside France.
It would be prudent also to make clear at the outset what we are not
aiming to achieve in this book. We do not attempt, for example, to provide a
fully comprehensive account of the history of French in Russia, although we
do try to survey the subject over a long time span, from the early eighteenth
century to the second half of the nineteenth, and to view it from many angles.
Admittedly, the abundance of pertinent primary sources might enable us
to describe certain relevant matters, such as foreign-language teaching in
educational institutions and language practice in the family circle, more
evenly over the whole period covered by our study. However, constraints
of time and space and the limitations of our own expertise preclude quite
such thorough treatment. In any case, only a relatively small proportion of

16 

The French L anguage in Russia

the primary source material has yet been examined in a way that would
allow us to draw copiously on secondary literature in a truly comprehensive
survey. The chronological scope of our study is also more restricted than
the sources available would no doubt allow it to be. For example, we have
not extended the study into the last two decades of the nineteenth century
and the first two decades of the twentieth (except insofar as we deal with
language practice in the royal family in the reigns of Alexander III and
Nicholas II). Nor have we attempted to write a systematic account of the
influence of the French language on the Russian language, because we
are concerned with the functioning of language in society rather than
with linguistic processes such as syntactic change. The lexical influence of
French on Russian also lies outside the fields of social and cultural history
in which we are primarily interested, although it is of tangential interest
to us insofar as it indicates the impact of French language and culture on
pre-revolutionary Russian elite society, and indeed its enduring impact on
Russian culture more broadly. What we have wanted to produce, in spite of
these limitations, is a many-sided account of the role of linguistic matters
in the social, political, cultural, and literary history of imperial Russia,
striking a balance between broad overview and close study of particular
cases and bringing together the approaches of both historical scholarship
and historical sociolinguistics.
Of the many areas on the margins of our investigation that future students
of the subject could usefully explore, we are inclined to mention five in
particular. First, further research needs to be done on the use of French
among the middling and lower provincial nobility and in non-noble classes,
such as the merchants (kupechestvo) and the clergy (dukhovenstvo), in order
to determine where the social boundaries lie beyond which French was
not used or barely used. Secondly, scholars might profitably investigate
the use of French in regions of the empire which were remote, peripheral,
or inhabited by a majority of people who were not ethnically Russian, such
as Siberia, the Caucasus, and the Ukraine.2 The language practice of the
Baltic German nobility, who played such an important role in the Russian
administration after the absorption of the Baltic provinces in the empire
in the eighteenth century, might prove especially illuminating. Thirdly,
although we have briefly alluded to theological disputation in French,3 we
have not dealt with such subjects as the conversion of Russian men and
2 We shall frequently use the term ‘the Ukraine’, in order to denote the pre-revolutionary
region, as opposed to the modern, post-Soviet political entity.
3 See the last section of Chapter 7.

Preface

17

women to Catholicism, the influence of French abbés who for one reason
or another resided in Russia, the presence of Jesuit schools there, or the
impact of French writings about spiritual matters and of translations of ecclesiastical literature written in French.4 All of these subjects are potentially
of interest from the point of view of linguistic history. Fourthly, official
language policy in the Russian Empire deserves a separate study, for which
one would need to undertake an exhaustive examination of legislation on
linguistic matters in the complete collections of the empire’s laws.5 Fifthly,
we are sure that fruitful work could be done on the language practice of
the Russian aristocracy in the twilight of its life and on multilingualism
among the artistic community during the cultural resurgence of the Silver
Age in the early twentieth century.
The large corpus of primary sources on which students of the history of
French in Russia can draw includes unpublished documents of many kinds
that survive in Russian archives in Moscow and St Petersburg, such as AVPRI,
GARF, RGADA, RGALI, and RGIA, and in the Manuscript Departments of
RGB and RNB (all these and other abbreviations are explained on pp. 29–31
below). We have also used material from GATO, the provincial archive in
Tver’, the capital of a province to the north-west of Moscow in which wellknown noble families, including the Bakunins and Glinkas, owned estates.
In these repositories, we find the personal archives of Francophone noble
families, nobles’ correspondence with friends and family members, personal
diaries and notebooks, family albums, children’s educational exercises,
library catalogues, official reports and correspondence, and even reports
written in French by agents of the Third Section, the secret police force
set up by Nicholas I in 1826. Some archival holdings have long since been
published, notably the forty-volume collection of correspondence and other
documents relating to four generations of the powerful Vorontsov family.
The very numerous relevant primary sources that have been published also
include the personal correspondence of many other individuals, diaries and
memoirs, and the impressions of foreign travellers of various nationalities
who visited Russia in the period in which we are interested. Of the types of
published primary source that we have used, works of Russian literature,
such as plays, short prose fiction, and novels, are perhaps the most familiar
to many readers. (This type of source, which often contains comment on
language use, will come to the fore when we discuss perceptions, as opposed
to usage, in Chapters 8–9.) Examples of each type of source may provide
4
5

We are grateful to Elena Grechanaia for identification of these lacunae.
i.e. PSZ (see list of abbreviations on p. 3o).

18 

The French L anguage in Russia

useful insights, but each type may also pose particular problems, of which
we take note at appropriate points in our account, especially in the last
section of the introduction.
We also draw, of course, on the secondary literature in various disciplines
in which scholars share an interest in language. In the f ields of social,
political, cultural, and literary history, we make use of work on European
nobilities in general and the Russian nobility in particular, empires and
nationalism, the cultural history of Russia, and classical Russian literature
and thought. In the field of sociolinguistics, we have benefited from the
extensive literature – which is not specific to any particular national situation – on such matters as multilingualism and bilingualism, diglossia, lingua
francas, purism, standardization, and code-switching. We also make use of
work on the general history of francophonie and the history of the Russian
language. Since the range of fields in the humanities and social sciences
into which we enter is quite large, and since we hope that our material will
be of use to scholars from different backgrounds who may be familiar only
with certain parts of the terrain we explore, we include references to some
standard works in several footnotes.
We have also made use, of course, of the existing corpus of scholarly
literature on the history of French cultural influence in Russia and, in
particular, the history of Russians’ use of French. Interest in the use of French
in Russia was already apparent in the nineteenth century, as attested by
a bibliography published in the 1870s, when French was still highly visible
in the Russian linguistic landscape.6 However, it was in the Soviet period
that the subject first began to attract serious scholarly attention, not least
because the attempts made during that period to deepen knowledge of
Russian literature in the age of Pushkin encouraged its investigation.7 The
main focus of Soviet studies of the subject was the use of French as a medium
of literary activity and a language of sociability among Russian writers of
the first half of the nineteenth century. Work was also done in the Soviet
and immediate post-Soviet periods on Russians’ bilingual correspondence,
6 Ghennady (1874). As a rule, we shall provide in our footnotes the surname of each author
whose work we cite together with a short title of the publication in question. We also give the
author’s forename if, in the book as a whole, we cite work by different authors who have the
same surname (e.g. Smith). In notes of a bibliographical nature (e.g. the notes in this section of
our preface), for the sake of economy, we generally provide only the surname of the author and
the date of publication of the work in question. Full details of all works cited in the footnotes
can be found in the bibliography at the end of the volume.
7 See especially the works in our bibliography by Lozinskij (1925), Vinogradov (1938), Paperno
(1975), Paperno and Lotman (1975), Galland (1976), and Zhane (1978).

Preface

19

especially the correspondence of men of the nineteenth-century literary
world.8 In addition, there are several works dating back to the 1970s and 1980s
on the circulation of French books in Russia and their presence in Russian
libraries and book collections.9 Interest in Russian francophonie continued
after the end of the Soviet era10 and has been reinforced by a new curiosity
about the culture of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russian elite.
Much of the recent scholarship on these subjects, like the scholarship of
the Soviet era that we have cited, has continued to be devoted primarily to
the phenomenon of Russian Francophone writings. A particularly notable
post-Soviet contribution to this part of the field has been made by Elena
Grechanaia, in the form of a monograph and two edited volumes produced in
collaboration with other scholars.11 Personal correspondence has continued
to receive attention, for example in Michelle Lamarche Marrese’s important
reexamination of Iurii Lotman’s conception of noble identity and in Wladimir
Berelowitch’s recent discussion of Russian francophonie.12 There have also
been important new contributions in this area of the field by Rodolphe
Baudin, on Radishchev’s letters from exile, and Jessica Tipton, on the correspondence of several generations of the Vorontsov family.13 Particular
aspects of the social and cultural history of Russian francophonie that have
attracted relatively recent attention include the development of a Russian
Francophone press14 and translation from French into Russian.15 A number of
studies have been devoted to ‘French education’ among the Russian nobility
as well.16 Finally, there has been new work in the twenty-first century in
another field directly related to our study, namely the linguistic influence
of French on Russian, particularly lexical borrowings from French.17
8 See Paperno (1975), Maimina (1981), and Ekaterina Dmitrieva (1994).
9 e.g. Luppov (1976 and 1986), Khoteev (1986), Somov (1986), and Kopanev (1988); see also the
more recent study by Berelowitch (2006).
10 e.g. Lotman and Rozentsveig (1994).
11 See Grechanaia (2010; translated into French and with an augmented set of texts, 2012),
Gretchanaia and Viollet (2008), and Gretchanaia et al. (2012).
12 Lamarche Marrese (2010); Berelowitch (2015). We explain our use of the term ‘francophonie’
in our introduction: see p. 41, n. 25 below.
13 Baudin (2015) and Tipton (2015 and 2017). Tipton was attached as an AHRC-funded postgraduate to the research team described in the following paragraph and in 2017 was awarded a
doctorate for her work on the Vorontsovs.
14 e.g. Speranskaia (2005, 2008, and 2013), Rjéoutski (2010 and 2013), Somov (2011), and Rjéoutski
and Speranskaia (2014).
15 e.g. Levin (1995–1996), Barenbaum (2006), and Maier (2008).
16 Berelowitch (1993), Rjéoutski (2005), Chudinov (2010), Rjéoutski and Tchoudinov (2013), and
a further large volume edited by Rjéoutski (2016).
17 Gabdreeva (2001) and May Smith (2006); see also the earlier study by Hüttl-Worth (1963).

20 

The French L anguage in Russia

This book will also build, finally, on all the work already done by its
three co-authors and other scholars within the framework of a project
generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
of the United Kingdom on ‘The History of the French Language in Russia’
over the academic years 2011–2015. Publication of findings arising out of this
project began with the appearance on the project website of the first set of
documents in a corpus of primary sources that may be used for the study of
Franco-Russian bilingualism, together with essays of our own on each text
or group of texts.18 The broad purposes of this corpus were, first, to begin
to classify the functions of French in imperial Russia and the domains in
which French was used and, secondly, to explore possible approaches to
and interpretations of Franco-Russian bilingualism.
We then edited a cluster of four articles on ‘French Language Acquisition in Imperial Russia’, two of them written by Rjéoutski and one each by
Ekaterina Kislova and Sergei Vlasov. This cluster appeared in the opening
number of an online American journal, Vivliofika.19 These articles investigate foreign-language education in Russian public and private educational
institutions and noble families and examine the values and ambitions
that pedagogical policy and practice reflect. Our broader aim here was
to illustrate the importance of educational matters in the study of the
socio-cultural history of language.
Next, we explored the incidence and importance of francophonie
as a social and cultural phenomenon in seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and
nineteenth-century Europe.20 In collaboration with sixteen other European
scholars,21 we surveyed aspects of historical francophonie in a dozen European language communities outside France (Bohemia, medieval England,
Holland, Italy, Piedmont, Poland, Prussia, the Romanian Lands, Spain,
Sweden, and Turkey as well as Russia) and published our f indings in a
volume containing twelve single-authored or co-authored chapters. We
ourselves contributed an introductory chapter, in which we attempted
18 The website can be found at http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/research/french-in-russia/.
Electronic sources on which we have drawn were last accessed by us on 26 October 2017, and
references to them were accurate at that date.
19 Vivliofika, no. 1 (2013); available at http://vivliofika.library.duke.edu/issue/view/2231/showToc.
20 Rjéoutski et al. (eds), European Francophonie (2014).
21 Marianne Ailes, Manuela Böhm, Silviano Carrasco, Ivo Cerman, Laurent Mignon, Ileana
Mihaila, Nadia Minerva, Katarzyna Napierała, Luis Pablo-Nuñez, Margareta Östman, Ad Putter,
Begoña Regueiro-Salgado, Alda Rossebastiano, Amelia Sanz-Cabrerizo, Maciej Serwański, and
Madeleine Van Strien-Chardonneau. The chapter on Russia in European Francophonie was
written by Derek Offord.

Preface

21

to provide a framework for the study of the use of French as a European
lingua franca and prestige language in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries. Peter Burke contributed a further preliminary chapter,
on diglossia in early modern Europe. We thus used this volume to provide
a pan-European context for our study of the language situation in imperial
Russia and a background against which to test claims about the exceptional
nature of Russian linguistic and cultural development.
We used a further cluster of articles, on ‘Foreign Language Use in Russia
during the Long Eighteenth Century’, to underline the complexity of
the language situation there.22 The cluster contains articles by Kristine
Dahmen, Wladimir Berelowitch, and Anthony Cross on the presence of
German, French, and English respectively in eighteenth-century Russia. In
our co-authored introductory article,23 we pointed to the strong presence of
German alongside French and invoked the concept of value in the linguistic
market-place to explain the pre-eminence of French in the eyes of the
elite. We also explored the link between foreign-language acquisition,
on the one hand, and Russia’s westernization and empire-building, on
the other – a link to which we return in this book in our introduction
and in Chapter 1.
Together with Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, we have also edited two volumes on
the co-existence of French and Russian in imperial Russia and the interplay
between them.24 Volume 1 of this pair concerns language use among the
Russian elite and Volume 2 concerns language attitudes and identity. Here, in
collaboration with a further 20 scholars25 from France, Russia, and the United
States, as well as the UK, and in many chapters of our own, we undertake a
more detailed examination of language use and language attitudes among
the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russian elites. Our main aims in
these volumes were twofold. First, we sought to determine who spoke or
wrote French in pre-revolutionary Russia and in what domains and for what
purposes. Second, we wished to consider the effects that the use of French
had on Russian society, culture, and thought during the period when Russian

22 See The Russian Review, 74:1 (2015).
23 Available online, on open access, at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/russ.10752/abstract.
24 Offord et al., French and Russian in Imperial Russia (2015).
25 i.e. (as their names appear in these volumes) Rodolphe Baudin, Xénia Borderioux, Stephen
Bruce, Carole Chapin, Sara Dickinson, Nina Dmitrieva, Georges Dulac, G.M. Hamburg, D. Brian
Kim, Iuliia Klimenko, Sergei Klimenko, Michelle Lamarche Marrese, Emilie Murphy, Liubov
Sapchenko, Svetlana Skomorokhova, Vladimir Somov, Natalia Speranskaia, Jessica Tipton, Olga
Vassilieva-Codognet, and Victor Zhivov.

22 

The French L anguage in Russia

writers were beginning to create a rich secular literature and to construct
a distinctive identity for their nation.
In the present volume, we synthesize and enlarge upon all this preparatory
work in order to provide both an overarching account of an important aspect
of Russian social, political, cultural, and literary history and an examination of a striking example of bilingualism and its effects. We hope that in
the process we shall also have offered fresh insight into the interaction of
languages and cultures across national boundaries and proof of the intricate
connections of Europe’s cultures.
Derek Offord, Vladislav Rjéoutski, Gesine Argent
October 2017

Acknowledgements
Over the years during which we have been collectively engaged in the project
that culminates in this volume, we have received support from a large
number of institutions, scholars, and other colleagues, and we gratefully
acknowledge that support here.
First of all, we thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
of the UK for a three-year Standard Research Grant which underpinned
a project based in the University of Bristol on ‘The History of the French
Language in Russia’. This AHRC award began in August 2011 and was subsequently extended until the end of June 2015. It funded the employment of
Derek Offord as Principal Investigator, on a half-time basis, for the duration of
the project and the full-time post-doctoral research fellowships of Vladislav
Rjéoutski, from August 2011 to November 2013, and Gesine Argent, from July
2012 to June 2015. Additionally, a postgraduate studentship was attached to
the award, and this was held by Jessica Tipton over the period from October
2011 to October 2015.
The AHRC grant also enabled us to make three research trips to archives
and libraries in Russia and to organize a series of academic events and collaborations that laid extensive and solid foundations for this monograph. The
first of these events was a seminar series on European francophonie in 2012,
to which scholars from the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands,
Romania, and Sweden, as well as scholars from the UK, contributed. (Fuller
details of this seminar series are available on our project website at http://
www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/research/french-in-russia/seminars/.) The second
event was an international conference, attended by some 60 delegates, that
was held in Bristol in September 2012 to mark the bicentenary of Napoleon’s
invasion of Russia and the rapid repulsion of the invading force. (Details
of this conference too can be found on our website, at http://www.bristol.
ac.uk/arts/research/french-in-russia/conference/.) The third event was a
colloquium in Bristol, attended by some 35 delegates, at the end of June
2015, which concluded with a three-hour round table which we found highly
rewarding. In our preface we describe the various publications that have
arisen out of this AHRC project and the ways in which they have prepared
the ground for the present volume. We also acknowledge in our preface the
contributions made to these publications by many individual scholars (42
in toto) from outside the project team.
Secondly, we thank the German Historical Institute in Moscow (DHI
Moskau) and its Director, Professor Nikolaus Katzer, for the award of a

24 

The French L anguage in Russia

generous subvention which has enabled us to publish such a long book at a
price which should not be prohibitive. This subvention has made it possible
for us to explore our relatively unploughed terrain widely and without
seeming, we hope, only to scrape the surface of it.
Next, we warmly thank the members of an advisory board of scholars
whose expertise in a range of fields (Russian history and literature, European
history, language as a subject of investigation for historians, and sociolinguistics) helped to guide us. This board, for whose meetings the AHRC also made
provision, consisted of Robert Evans (University of Oxford), Rosalind Marsh
(University of Bath), David Saunders (University of Newcastle), Andreas
Schönle (Queen Mary, London), Wim Vandenbussche (Vrije Universiteit,
Brussels), and Andrei Zorin (University of Oxford). We have also benefited
from the fact that Professors Schönle and Zorin have concurrently been
leading another project, ‘The Creation of a Europeanized Elite in Russia:
Public Role and Subjective Self’, supported by the Leverhulme Trust, and
that they kindly invited Derek Offord to participate in symposia associated
with that project in Oxford and London in 2013 and 2014 respectively.
There are many other scholars whose knowledge and opinions have
informed our work on this book in some way. These include Michael Gorham,
of Florida State University, with whom we had valuable discussions during
his week-long stay in Bristol as a Visiting Fellow supported by our AHRC
grant in May 2015. Wladimir Berelowitch (École des hautes études en sciences
sociales, Paris), Anthony Cross (University of Cambridge), Sara Dickinson
(University of Genoa), and Gary Hamburg (Claremont McKenna, California),
together with four members of our advisory board (Robert Evans, Rosalind
Marsh, David Saunders, and Andreas Schönle), made substantial contributions to the planning of the book at our colloquium in Bristol in June 2015.
We also thank other scholars who helped to make our 2012 conference in
Bristol so productive, besides those whose papers evolved into chapters in
our volumes on French and Russian in Imperial Russia or one of the clusters
of articles arising out of the project, namely: John Dunn, Aleksei Evstratov,
Ol’ga Kafanova, Svetlana Maire, Vera Mil’china, Nina Nazarova, Alla Polosina,
Kelsey Rubin-Detlev, Mikhail Safonov, Alexandre Stroev, Catherine Viollet,
and Iurii Vorob’ev. There are many other scholars who have kindly read and
commented on the whole manuscript (in the case of Elena Grechanaia) or
drafts of some of the chapters, or who have drawn our attention to useful
sources or generously shared information with us. These scholars include
Grigorii Bibikov, Ol’ga Edel’man, Igor’ Fediukin, Aleksandr Feofanov, Sergei
Karp, Ekaterina Kislova, Denis Kondakov, Sergei Korolev, Andrei Kostin,
Tat’iana Kostina, Dmitrii Kostyshin, Maiia Lavrinovich, Gary Marker, Sergei

Acknowledgements

25

Pol’skoi, Galina Smagina, Ol’ga Solodiankina, Vladimir Somov, Angelina
Vacheva, and Alexa von Winning. We also gratefully acknowledge the help
afforded to us by Lisa Poggel, Evgenii Rychalovskii, and Viktoriia Zakirova
in the course of our archival research. It goes without saying, though, that
we ourselves are solely responsible for whatever flaws the book may have
despite the best efforts of all these advisers.
Among Bristol colleagues, or former Bristol colleagues, Nils Langer
deserves a special mention for his advice on all sociolinguistic matters,
for his organization of numerous academic events that were of relevance
to us, and for his introductions to other scholars working in the broad
field of sociolinguistics. We are grateful also to Mair Parry, for advice on
sociolinguistic matters and on the history of Italian in particular. Thanks
are due to other Bristol colleagues (Stephen Gray, Gilles Couzin, Markland
Starkie, and Chris Bailey) for advice at one time or another about IT matters
and construction and maintenance of the website that has helped us to
clarify our views and manage the project out of which this book has grown.
We are also grateful to the staff of the German Historical Institute in Moscow
(DHI Moskau) and particularly to the librarians Larisa Kondrat’eva and
Viktoria Silwanowich.
We are indebted too to the staff of the many archives and libraries,
including their manuscript departments, in which we have carried out
the research on which this volume is based. We should like to mention the
following in particular: the Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian
Empire, the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St Petersburg
Branch), the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of
Sciences, the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the National
Library of France, the Russian National Library, the Russian State Archive
of Ancient Documents, the Russian State Historical Archive, the Russian
State Military History Archive, the Russian State Naval Archive, the Russian
State Library, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, and the Tver’
Province State Archive.
We also thank the Russian National Library, the Russian State Library,
and the David Rumsey Map Collection for their permission to use the illustrations listed on p. 9 above.
Finally, we thank many individuals working for publishers and editing
academic journals whose prompt, efficient, and courteous oversight has
enabled us to publish volumes and articles arising out of our project sooner
than we might reasonably have expected when we began work on it in 2011.
These individuals include Laurel Plapp of Peter Lang, Laura Williamson
and Richard Strachan of Edinburgh University Press, Eve Lewin and Kurt

26 

The French L anguage in Russia

Schulz, as well as Michael Gorham, at The Russian Review, Ernest Zitser at
Vivliofika, and of course Louise Visser and Jaap Wagenaar of Amsterdam
University Press, who have overseen the production of this book. Last but by
no means least, we thank Willem Frijhoff and Karène Sanchez for affording
us the opportunity to publish this volume in the series they are editing on
‘Languages and Culture in History’ and for their advice on its conception
and design. The role that foreign languages have played in the creation of
the European cultural heritage; the diffusion of foreign languages and the
demand for them; the historical relationship between languages in a given
cultural context; the relationship of languages to identities of various kinds;
the history of pedagogical practices: these topics, on which these scholars in
the Netherlands have focused their series, provide a framework within which
our present volume, we hope readers will agree, is ideally accommodated.

Presentation of dates, transliteration,
and other editorial practices
Old style and new style dates
In 1700, Peter the Great adopted the Julian calendar, which was eleven
days behind the Gregorian calendar in the eighteenth century, twelve days
behind in the nineteenth, and thirteen days behind in the twentieth. Thus,
the Bol’shevik Revolution took place in Russia on 25 October 1917 according to the Julian calendar but on 7 November according to the Gregorian
calendar. The Gregorian calendar, which western states had begun to adopt
in preference to the Julian calendar in 1582, was not adopted in Russia until
1918. In this book, dates are given in the Old Style (OS; i.e. according to the
Julian calendar) when the event to which reference is made took place in
pre-revolutionary Russia and in the New Style (NS; i.e. according to the
Gregorian calendar) when it took place outside Russia.
Transliteration
We have followed the Library of Congress system of transliteration in our
text, footnotes, and bibliography. Thus, Russian surnames ending in -ский
have been rendered with -skii (e.g. as in Dostoevskii) rather than with the
commonly used English form -sky (as in Dostoevsky). The Russian soft sign
has been transliterated with an apostrophe, e.g. Gogol’, and the letter ë as
e. Russian words printed in pre-revolutionary orthography (e.g. the titles of
pre-revolutionary periodicals) have been transliterated from their modernized form. In the footnotes and bibliography, alongside the transliterated
name of an author who has published a cited item in Russian, we have in a
few instances added, in square brackets, the form of the surname by which
the scholar in question may be known from publications in languages other
than Russian (e.g. Chudinov [Tchoudinov]).
Forms of forenames
We have preferred transliterated Russian forenames (e.g. Aleksandr,
Ekaterina, Petr) to translated ones (Alexander, Catherine, Peter), except
in the case of monarchs and other members of the Russian royal family
(e.g. Alexander I, Catherine II, Peter the Great), who are familiar to the
English-speaking reader from the translated form of their names. We also
use the form Alexander in the cases of the poet Pushkin and the thinker
Herzen.

28 

The French L anguage in Russia

Translation of quotations in foreign languages
In many cases (for example, when authors are merely quoting an opinion
or a statement about a fact), we have not considered it necessary to retain
the language of the original and the words we quote have been translated
into English. However, in many other cases (for instance, when language
usage is being illustrated), it has seemed important to retain the original. In
these cases, we have also provided a translation in the text, either within the
quotation itself or separately after or beneath it, as seemed most appropriate.
Translation of titles
In the text of each chapter, titles of novels, plays, poems, articles, chapters,
and other works written in a language other than English have been translated, but the original title (in transliterated form, if it was in Russian) is
given, with only a few exceptions, in a footnote. In the references, as a rule,
only the original foreign-language title is given.
Titles of periodicals
Titles of periodicals, on the other hand, are presented in the text of a chapter
in their original or transliterated form. A translation of the title is also given,
in brackets, when the periodical is first mentioned.
Dates of works
Dates given in parentheses after the titles of works mentioned in the text
are, unless otherwise stated, the date of first publication, not the date of
composition.
Ellipses
Where we have omitted material from a quotation or title we have indicated
the omission by use of three dots in square brackets (i.e. […]), in order to
distinguish this type of ellipsis from suspension points (i.e. …) used by an
author who is being quoted.
Punctuation
We have anglicized the punctuation in quotations and titles in French; for
example, we have removed the space that normally precedes a colon or
semi-colon in French.

Abbreviations used in the notes
Names of archives, libraries, and research institutions
AN
AVPRI

BAN (BRAN)
BNF
GARF
GATO
IMLI
IRLI

RAN
RGA VMF
RGADA
RGB
RGIA
RGVIA
RNB
SPbF ARAN
SPb II RAN

Akademiia nauk (Academy of Sciences)
Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi imperii (Archive of the Foreign Policy
of the Russian Empire), Moscow
Biblioteka (Rossiiskoi) Akademii nauk (Library of the (Russian)
Academy of Sciences), St Petersburg
Bibliothèque nationale de France (National Library of France), Paris
Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the
Russian Federation), Moscow
Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Tverskoi oblasti (Tver’ Province State Archive),
Tver’
Institut mirovoi literatury im. A.M. Gor’kogo (Gorkii Institute of World
Literature), Moscow
Institut russkoi literatury (Pushkinskii Dom) Rossiiskoi akademii nauk
(Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy
of Sciences), St Petersburg
Rossiiskaia akademiia nauk (Russian Academy of Sciences)
Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Voenno-Morskogo Flota (Russian State
Naval Archive), St Petersburg
Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov (Russian State Archive
of Ancient Documents), Moscow
Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka (Russian State Library), Moscow
Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (Russian State Historical
Archive), St Petersburg
Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (Russian State
Military History Archive), Moscow
Rossiiskaia natsional’naia biblioteka (Russian National Library), St
Petersburg
S.-Peterburgskii filial Arkhiva Rossiiskoi akademii nauk (St Petersburg
Branch, Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences)
Sankt-Peterburgskii institut istorii Rossiiskoi akademii nauk (St
Petersburg Institute of History at the Russian Academy of Sciences)

Titles of books and journals
AKV
IP
IS

Arkhiv kniazia Vorontsova (Archive of Prince Vorontsov)
Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Selected Works)
Izbrannye sochineniia (Selected Works)

30 
KA
LN
PSS
PSSP
PSZ
RA
RBS
RR
RS
SEER
SRC
SS
SSPAS

The French L anguage in Russia

Krasnyi arkhiv (Red Archive)
Literaturnoe nasledstvo (Literary Heritage)
Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Complete Works)
Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem (Complete Works and Letters)
Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (Complete Collection of the
Laws of the Russian Empire)
Russkii arkhiv (Russian Archive)
Russkii biograficheskii slovar’ (Russian Biographical Dictionary)
The Russian Review
Russkaia starina (Russian Antiquity)
The Slavonic and East European Review
The Semiotics of Russian Culture, by Lotman and Uspenskij
Sobranie sochinenii (Collected Works)
[Shishkov], Sobranie sochinenii i perevodov admirala Shishkova
(Collected Works and Translations of Admiral Shishkov)

Other abbreviations
bk
Bulg.
CS
d.
Dan.
ed. khr.
Erm.
f.
fol.
Fr.
Ger.
It.
k.
Lat.
op.
Pol.
pt
r.
Russ.
sect.
SIRIO
Sp.

book
Bulgarian
Church Slavonic
delo (dossier, file)
Danish
edinitsa khraneniia (individual file)
Hermitage (in St Petersburg)
fond (collection)
folio (list in Russian)
French
German
Italian
karton (box)
Latin
opis’ (inventory)
Polish
part
razriad = fond
Russian
section
Sbornik imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva (Collected
Papers of the Imperial Russian Historical Society)
Spanish

Abbreviations used in the notes

Swed.
Tat.
trans.
Turk.
v.

Swedish
Tatar
translated or translation
Turkish
verso

31

The Romanovs
Michael (1596–1645; reigned 1613–1645)
Alexis (son of Tsar Michael, 1629–1676; reigned 1645–1676)
Sof’ia (daughter of Tsar Alexis, 1657–1704; regent 1682–1689)
Peter I (i.e. Peter the Great; 1672–1725, son of Tsar Alexis; co-ruler with his
half-brother Ivan V, 1689–1696, and sole ruler 1696–1725)
Catherine I (1684–1727, Lithuanian peasant taken captive by the Russians in
1702; consort of Peter I from 1703 and his wife from 1712; reigned 1725–1727)
Peter II (1715–1730, infant son of Prince Alexis (1690–1718), who was the son
of Peter I; reigned 1727–1730)
Anna (1693–1740, daughter of Ivan V; reigned 1730–1740)
Elizabeth (1709–1761, daughter of Peter I and Catherine I; reigned 1741–1761)
Peter III (1728–1762, son of a daughter of Peter I and of Charles Frederick, Duke
of Holstein-Gottorp; reigned December 1761 (OS) or January 1762 (NS)–July 1762)
Catherine II (i.e. Catherine the Great; German princess who came to Russia
as fiancée of the future Peter III, 1729–1796; reigned 1762–1796)
Paul (1754–1801, son of Peter III and Catherine II; reigned 1796–1801)
Alexander I (1777–1825, son of Paul; reigned 1801–1825)
Nicholas I (1796–1855, son of Paul and younger brother of Alexander I; reigned
1825–1855)
Alexander II (1818–1881, son of Nicholas I; reigned 1855–1881)
Alexander III (1845–1894, son of Alexander II; reigned 1881–1894)
Nicholas II (1868–1918, son of Alexander III; reigned 1894–1917)

Introduction
Conventional assumptions about Franco-Russian bilingualism
Until recently, the role of the French language in Russia had attracted rather
little attention, save for passing remarks in works on Russian social or
cultural history.1 No doubt this oversight is due partly to the fact that social
and cultural historians and western students of the Russian nobility, on the
whole, have not been specialists in linguistic matters and partly also to the
fact that historical sociolinguistics is a relatively new academic discipline.
In those works of scholarship (especially Anglophone scholarship) in which
Franco-Russian bilingualism has been mentioned, moreover, we find a
number of generalizations which have tended to reinforce the predominantly
negative discourse on the subject in classical Russian thought and literature.
Since we shall want to probe the accuracy of these generalizations in the
course of our account of language use and language debate in eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Russia, we begin by briefly considering three of them. In
the process, we shall introduce some of the key questions that our discussion
of language use and language attitudes will need to explore and some of
the larger narratives about Russian culture within which that discussion
needs to be situated. We shall also rehearse some of the arguments against
the commonplaces that are encountered.
First, the Russian nobility (which was numerically very small as a proportion of the population of the empire2) is commonly treated as a clearly
defined and undifferentiated class which uniformly adopted French in
preference to Russian.3 The impression may even be given that all nobles,
over a long period, spoke French all the time, and in all situations, to any
compatriots who could understand that language. Thus it is claimed – to
take an extreme example – that ‘for over two hundred years French (and,
1 For a brief outline of the literature on the subject, see our preface above (pp. 18–19).
2 The number of persons of both sexes who were entitled to noble status in the years before the
emancipation of the serfs in 1861 was only just over 600,000 (Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire,
1801–1917, 240). The number of landowners at this period was just over 100,000 (Roosevelt, Life
on the Russian Country Estate, 233). The population of the Russian Empire was a little over 70
million.
3 See, e.g., Charques, A Short History of Russia, 102, where it is stated that Catherine’s reign
‘confirmed the sway of French fashion at the higher levels of society and the adoption by the
Russian nobility of the language of France in place of their own’. Similarly, Evtuhov and Stites
assert, with respect to the age of Paul, that ‘the Russian nobility used the French language in
preference to Russian’ (A History of Russia, 7).

36 

The French L anguage in Russia

to a smaller extent, English) replaced Russian as the principal language
spoken by the vast majority of Russian aristocracy, landed gentry, government officials, army officers, and wealthy merchants’. 4 Even a leading
sociolinguist, whose authoritative work we frequently cite, is drawn into
a large generalization covering a vague time-span: ‘In some countries it is
expected that educated persons will have knowledge of another language.
This is probably true for most of the European countries, and was even
more dramatically so earlier in countries like pre-Revolution Russia, where
French was the language of polite, cultured individuals’.5 We shall want to
guard in this study against unqualified statements about the replacement
of Russian by French throughout the noble estate6 over a long period and to
consider instead questions of the following sort. Was the language practice
of nobles really uniform or very similar throughout the estate? What effect
did educational opportunity have on Russians’ language use? Did nobles
invariably use French for communication, oral and written, with other
Francophone individuals? Did French predominate among Francophone
groups in all linguistic domains? If preference for French was so marked,
how could Russia’s magnificent literature in the vernacular have come
into being, unless nobles had no part in its creation? (In fact, of course,
they played the leading role.) Was language use the same in all parts of the
empire? Did it remain constant over the whole period between the adoption
of western culture and habits by the nobility in the early eighteenth century
and the collapse of the Russian Empire, and the consequent destruction of
the nobility, in 1917? What place did language practice have in conceptions of
social and national identity, and indeed conceptions of gender differences?
How and why did such conceptions change over the long period we examine?
We begin to address such questions in Chapter 1 by noting the economic and
social differentiation within the noble estate and the consequent variations
in opportunity to acquire a command of foreign languages.
Secondly, alongside assertions about the universality of competency in
French among the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century nobility we commonly find equally confident assertions about their lack of competency
in Russian, at least up until the Napoleonic invasion of Russia in 1812.
Their mother tongue (if that is how Russian can be classified in this case)
4 Sutherland, The Princess of Siberia, 24.
5 Romaine, Bilingualism, 31. It is the implication of the last part of this statement that seems
most problematic, as if all such individuals altogether abandoned Russian.
6 We shall generally use the term ‘estate’ (Russ. soslovie) to denote this social stratum, rather
than the term ‘class’, which is anachronistic, at least with regard to the eighteenth-century
nobility.

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37

is frequently described as a language that nobles never learned, or never
properly learned, or did learn in infancy but then more or less forgot. ‘By
the time of Catherine’s death in 1796’, Catherine Merridale writes, ‘her
court conversed and wrote in French’ and Russia, no longer content ‘to be
an apprentice to Europe (especially as France dissolved into revolution
after 1789)’, would ‘attempt to revert to its roots, reviving a half-forgotten
language’.7 ‘The use of the French language by the Russian aristocracy was
often pushed to the point of forgetting their own’, Hugh Seton-Watson
affirms in his valuable history of the nineteenth-century Russian Empire.8
There are indeed grounds for such assertions in Russian memoirs, such as
those of Princess Dashkova who, recalling her childhood in the Vorontsov
family in the mid-eighteenth century, claimed not only that members of the
younger generation in her family circle spoke French as their first language
but also that they spoke Russian very imperfectly.9 The presumption of
noble incompetency in Russian is sustained by entertaining anecdotes. For
example, when the sixteen-year-old Nikita Murav’ev ran off without his
mother’s permission to fight against Napoleon’s invading army in 1812, it
is said, he was detained by peasants who suspected him of being a French
spy because his Russian was so poor.10
In its extreme form, the presumption of nobles’ ignorance of Russian is
hard to maintain, for the evidence will not support it. Thus Orlando Figes,
while he speaks at one point in his panoramic cultural history of Russia about
a pronounced and persistent prejudice against study of Russian among the
nineteenth-century aristocracy, in a subsequent passage points to a fashion
after 1812 for the sons of nobles to read and write Russian and a growing
trend in the provinces for women as well as men to learn it.11 Common sense,
moreover, may lead scholars to admit that noblemen who served in the
army, at least in the lower officer ranks, must have needed some minimal
competence in Russian in order to command Russian peasant soldiers, and
that nobles also needed Russian in order to manage the overwhelmingly
monolingual inhabitants on their rural estates.12 This admission about
men’s practical linguistic needs may partly account for the belief, which has
been convincingly contested by Michelle Lamarche Marrese in an article
7 Merridale, Red Fortress, 197–198. Our italics, to emphasize the scale of the generalization.
8 Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire, 40.
9 Dashkova, Zapiski, 38, 42. For further examples, see Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country
Estate, 181.
10 Lotman ‘Russkaia literatura na frantsuzskom iazyke’, 353–354.
11 Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 56, 102–103.
12 Sutherland, The Princess of Siberia, 172–173.

38 

The French L anguage in Russia

to which all students of French-speaking in Russia are greatly indebted,13
that noble women found it even more difficult than noble men to express
themselves in Russian. This belief is most famously inscribed in Eugene
Onegin (1823–1831), in which Alexander Pushkin’s heroine seems to exemplify
incompetence in the vernacular. Foreseeing a problem and wishing to save
the honour of his native land, the narrator confides to his readers, he will
have to translate Tat’iana’s letter to Onegin, for
She knew Russian poorly, / Didn’t read our journals / And expressed
herself with difficulty / In her native language, / And so, she wrote in
French… / What is to be done! I repeat anew, / As yet, a lady’s love / Has not
declared itself in Russian, / As yet, our proud language / Has not become
attuned to postal prose. / […] Is it not true that those sweet subjects, / To
whom, for your sins, / You secretly wrote verses, / To whom you gave up
your heart, / Did they not all, weak in Russian / And finding it hard to
use, / Mangle it so sweetly, / So that a foreign language / Turned in their
mouths into a native one?14

And yet, paradoxically, Tat’iana also illustrates another commonplace that
became entrenched in Russian fiction in the age of Nicholas I: in contrast
to feckless westernized males, Russian woman had a sound moral compass
and was rooted in native soil. Tat’iana herself was ‘Russian in soul, although
she herself knew not why’, Pushkin asserted.15 Dostoevskii would agree,
exalting Pushkin’s favourite female creation as an authentic embodiment
of the national spirit.16
With respect to some aristocrats, assertions about their mastery of French
and the low level of their competency in Russian are no doubt entirely true.
It is likely that such assertions hold good, for example, in the case of some
(but by no means all) nobles who spent much of their childhood abroad.
Prince Dmitrii Golitsyn, who had been brought up in Paris in the last years
of the French ancien régime, initially had to have his speeches translated
from French into Russian when he was appointed governor of Moscow in
13 Lamarche Marrese, ‘“The Poetics of Everyday Behavior” Revisited’.
14 Evgenii Onegin, Canto 3, Stanzas 26–27, in Pushkin, PSS, vol. 6, 63. Of course, a woman’s
inability to use Russian for the purpose of writing a letter to a noble suitor does not necessarily
indicate that she was unable to use it for any other purpose!
15 Ibidem, 98 (Canto 5, Stanza 4). As Priscilla Roosevelt points out, Tat’iana believes in popular
superstitions (Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate, 277).
16 On the speech in which Dostoevskii expressed this view, see the last section of Chapter 9
below.

Introduc tion

39

1820.17 In general, though, there are grounds for treating claims about the
extent of noble ignorance of Russian, as well as claims about the universal
predominance of French among the nobility, with caution. For one thing, we
need to take a sceptical attitude towards our primary sources. There may
be reasons, for example, why memoirists wished to create the impression
that they had almost no knowledge of their native language in childhood.
For instance, Dashkova, who edited the first dictionary produced by the
Russian Academy, may have wanted to show what sterling efforts she had
made as an adult to master Russian. Most importantly, we should bear in
mind the typical language-learning process in a noble household which could
afford to employ a resident Francophone tutor or tutors or to send a child to
a Francophone pension. As Priscilla Roosevelt explains in her monumental
study of life on the Russian country estate, the arrival in the household of
the first governess or tutor marked the cultural divide between a Russian
infancy and a European adulthood […] In some families social contact
with serf servants was prohibited after infancy, lest the young noble’s
language and habits be corrupted by peasant speech, prejudices, and
superstitions. The inability of most tutors to speak Russian forced young
nobles to learn a foreign language in short order. One memoirist notes
that as a small child she rarely saw her older sister and even more rarely
spoke with her, chiefly because the sister spoke only French or English,
while the younger children spoke only Russian.18

However intense the exposure of noble children to foreign languages during
their childhood and adolescence, though, the fact remains that the language
they mainly heard in infancy, in the years when they were learning to speak,
was Russian. Most noblemen and noblewomen, Roosevelt affirms, ‘were
raised almost exclusively by wet nurses and nannies, who periodically
presented them to their parents’.19 These nannies were domestic serfs, like
the Arina Rodionovna whom Alexander Pushkin fondly remembered, and
the nobleman’s or noblewoman’s bond with them might be very close: Anna
Kern, to whom Pushkin addressed a famous love poem, once cuttingly
remarked that she did not think Pushkin ever really loved anyone other
than his nanny and, later on, his sister.20 To overlook this fact is to make it
17
18
19
20

Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate, 216.
Ibidem, 181.
Ibidem, 180.
Kern, ‘Vospominaniia Anny Petrovny Kern’, 233.

40 

The French L anguage in Russia

seem miraculous that Pushkin, having been brought up in a Francophone
noble household and educated in the elite lycée at Tsarskoe selo, could turn
out to be a figure of cardinal importance in the creation of the Russian
literary language. Likewise, any account of noble language practice has to
accommodate the fact that the perfectly Francophone Fedor Rostopchin,
who for some six years was educated in a house separate from the manor
house on his parents’ estate so that he would be compelled to communicate
exclusively in French with his resident French tutor, was nonetheless able
to produce rabble-rousing leaflets in demotic Russian when he served as
governor of Moscow in 1812.21
There is no doubt that many noble families attached greater weight to
the development of their children’s ability to use French than to having
them taught Russian, especially in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries when Russian francophonie was in full bloom. At the same time,
it seems questionable whether so many Russian nobles found it so difficult
in adulthood to use Russian as some sources, both primary and secondary,
would have us believe, as if command of one language precluded proficiency
in another. The impression that nobles were unable to develop and retain
functional competence in Russian as well as French may rest on a rigorous
notion of competence as perfect command in all domains or on a polarized,
black-and-white view of linguistic competence (either one knows a language
or one does not) to which few sociolinguists would subscribe. What we seem
in fact to be dealing with in the Russian case is a phenomenon common to
bilinguals: individuals attain different levels of competence in the languages
spoken, or they perform unevenly in the languages in different linguistic
domains. Disparagement of nobles’ competence in Russian, moreover, may
sometimes be due to disdain for the variety of Russian acquired by the nobleman or noblewoman in infancy through exposure to domestic serfs, peasants,
and their children, that is to say, Russian ‘of the careless and ill-educated
kind, culled from the servants’.22 However, we should beware of falling into
the trap of classifying users of Russian as incompetent on the grounds that
they did not master a register deemed appropriate in refined society. Indeed,
Nikolai Karamzin – an important man of letters to whom we shall often
refer – doubted at the beginning of the nineteenth century whether such
21 On Rostopchin’s bilingualism, see Vigel’, Zapiski, vol. 2, 13–14, and Offord and Rjéoutski,
‘French in the Nineteenth-Century Russian Salon’. For his leaflets in Russian, see Kartavov,
Rostopchinskie afishi. Some of these leaflets may be viewed online at http://www.museum.
ru/1812/Library/Rostopchin/index.html. They are briefly discussed in Martin, Romantics,
Reformers, Reactionaries, 126–129.
22 Sutherland, The Princess of Siberia, 24.

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41

a register had even come into being in Russian, since ‘in the best houses’,
where such society was to be found, people tended to use French for polite
conversation.23 In general, we are inclined to think that existing discussion
of the subject of Franco-Russian bilingualism has been marred by failure to
consider linguistic competence as relative rather than absolute, a matter of
degree,24 and even by intrusion of the assumption common in monolingual
communities that bilingualism, even if we define it as functional competence
in more than one language, is an unusual phenomenon.
A third common assertion, or set of assertions, about Franco-Russian
bilingualism concerns the supposedly detrimental effects of Russian francophonie25 and the cultural westernization of the elite of which francophonie
was symptomatic. These effects, it has often been thought, might be felt at
national, social, and personal level.
The practice of speaking French, Russian writers began to suggest as
far back as the mid-eighteenth century, weakened the sense of national
identity, or indicated that a sense of national solidarity that should have
been experienced was lacking. It even seemed to call into question nobles’
allegiance to their native land or, worse still, to undermine their loyalty.
The strong association of language use with nationhood in the minds of
late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russian writers and thinkers will
repeatedly be apparent in this volume, especially in our account of language
attitudes in the last two chapters. We emphasize here at the outset that this
association depends upon a rigid and ethnic view of national identity, according to which peoples have fixed, primordial attributes. (We shall shortly
attempt to describe the cultural background against which this view arose.)
We also emphasize the highly problematic nature of the assumption that
foreign-language use implies acceptance of the cultural values and political
beliefs with which a language may be associated at a particular time.26
At the social level too, francophonie could be perceived as a negative
phenomenon, on the grounds that it was divisive. By using a foreign language,
23 ‘Otchego v Rossii malo avtorskikh talantov?’, in Karamzin, IS, vol. 2, 185, translated as ‘Why
is there so Little Writing Talent in Russia?’, in Karamzin, Selected Prose, 193.
24 We return to this subject in the penultimate section of this introduction, on methodological
matters.
25 We use the term ‘francophonie’ in this book to denote the historical phenomenon of the
use of French from the seventeenth century onwards in European countries, including Russia,
where it was not the mother tongue. On meanings of the term, see Argent et al., ‘European
Francophonie and a Framework for its Study’, especially 4–10.
26 We consider the question of allegiance in the section on eighteenth-century comic drama
in Chapter 8 below.

42 

The French L anguage in Russia

it was supposed, the nobility separated itself from the rest of the ethnically
Russian population of the empire, especially the bulk of the peasantry, and
allegedly fractured a nation which, in the opinion of Romantic conservatives,
had been whole and organic before the elite was westernized in the eighteenth
century.27 Now, francophonie was indeed a means of social differentiation,
insofar as it served as a marker of nobility, and in our account of Russians’
use of French we shall dwell on this function of it.28 However, the notion
that nobles’ habit of using French among themselves was damaging to social
cohesion perhaps depends to some extent on the assumption – which, we have
already suggested, should be treated with caution – that nobles had little or no
competence in Russian and were therefore incapable of communicating with
monolingual compatriots from lower social strata. In general, we are inclined
to keep an open mind about the extent to which it was nobles’ adoption of
a western style of life and their foreign-language use (as opposed to their
right to own serfs) that separated them from the common people. Roosevelt
usefully draws our attention, moreover, to beliefs and customs that brought
lord and peasant together on the rural estate. The Orthodox religion, its rituals,
celebration of its festivals, and even popular superstition, she points out, all
provided a basis for shared experience and common identity.29 After all, not
all late eighteenth-century nobles were Voltaireans, nor were all nineteenthcentury noblemen and noblewomen atheists or agnostics: many promoted
church-building, gave hospitality to pilgrims and protection to beggars and
holy men, or collected icons.30 In any case, memoirs and belles-lettres, as Mary
Cavender points out, ‘testify to the commonsense notion that interaction
between serfs and landlords was ongoing and multifaceted’.31
At the personal level, it has been claimed, cultural westernization also
had a detrimental psychological effect: Europeanized Russians were divided
27 Such conservatives included the Slavophiles (on whom see the following section of this
introduction) and Native-Soil Conservatives, including Dostoevskii (on whom see the last
section of Chapter 9).
28 On the use of French as a marker of social identity, see especially the fourth section of
Chapter 4.
29 See Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate, Chapter 10, especially 271.
30 Ibidem, 273. The view that the Orthodox religion was ‘remote from the consciousness of
the Westernized elites’ is expressed in, e.g., Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 57. For an example of a
Francophone nobleman who did his best to support Orthodox piety among his serfs through
church-building, see the case of the mid-nineteenth-century nobleman Valerii Levashev that
is described in Offord and Rjéoutski, ‘Family Correspondence in the Russian Nobility’, n. 9, on
the basis of a document in GARF, f. 279, op. 1, d. 69, fol. 23. The peasants seem to have been
disappointingly indifferent to Levashev’s efforts, though!
31 Cavender, ‘Provincial Nobles, Elite History, and the Imagination of Everyday Life’, 47.

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selves with a ‘split identity’,32 and the elite was consequently disoriented and
enervated. Isolated by an education based on the study of western languages
and culture and on the acquisition of French in particular, the eighteenthcentury Russian nobleman33 – so this argument runs – absorbed ideas that
could not be put into practice in Russia and thus became alienated from his
own country.34 He turned into a ‘superfluous man’ avant la lettre, that is to
say a prototype of those disillusioned, nomadic characters, lacking a moral
compass or the ability to form enduring relationships, such as Evgenii Onegin
in Pushkin’s novel in verse, Mikhail Lermontov’s Pechorin in A Hero of Our
Time, and Ivan Turgenev’s eponymous hero Rudin, who abound in the fiction
of the age of Nicholas I and beyond. Attempts have even been made – in
American biographies of the mid-nineteenth-century metaphysical poet
and nationalist polemicist Fedor Tiutchev, for instance – to explain the
personal crisis that biculturalism and bilingualism supposedly induced in
the Russian nobleman in psychoanalytic terms, as a morbid ‘psychosocial
dislocation’.35 It is worth noting in passing at this point that the argument
that Russian francophonie had pernicious effects on nobles’ psychological
wellbeing – and indeed the argument that it had pernicious effects at other
levels too – rests to a considerable extent on evidence in literary sources.
We shall consider at the end of this introduction how we should approach
such sources and what weight we should attach to them.
It will be seen that at all the levels we have identified – national, social,
and personal – the argument about the detrimental effects of biculturalism
and bilingualism hinges on anxiety about fracture and loss of imagined
wholeness. It is also apparent that the principal cause of the schism perceived
in the collective or individual personality is the westernization of the elite,
of which foreign-language use was symptomatic. In order fully to understand
the perceptions we have outlined about the national, social, and personal
problems to which Russian francophonie allegedly contributed we therefore
need to see them in the larger discourse about the relationship of Russia
32 Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 44–45.
33 We say ‘nobleman’ here because it is men with whom the exponents of this idea are primarily
concerned.
34 The main proponent of this thesis in western scholarship is Marc Raeff, in his Origins of the
Russian Intelligentsia. The thesis has often been well summarized in subsequent scholarship,
e.g. by Hartley, A Social History of the Russian Empire, 129, and, most recently, Schönle and
Zorin, ‘Introduction’, in The Europeanized Elite in Russia, ed. by Schönle, Zorin, and Evstratov,
10–11. The fullest arguments against it are advanced in Confino, ‘Groupes sociaux et mentalités
collectives en Russie’ and idem, ‘Histoire et psychologie’.
35 Conant, The Political Poetry and Ideology of F.I. Tiutchev, 9–10; see also Gregg, Fedor Tiutchev,
especially 106, 145–146.

44 

The French L anguage in Russia

to Europe in which they were entwined. Was Russia a part of Europe or
something sui generis? Should Russia orient itself towards the West or, on the
contrary, look within its own history and tradition for principles that would
guide its further development? These questions provided the framework
within which classical36 Russian thinkers and writers reflected on their
national identity, the role and predicament of the Russian elite, the nature
of the Russian common people, and the national mission and destiny. We
shall need at the same time to refer to the influential corpus of scholarship on
Russian cultural history produced in the late Soviet period by Iurii Lotman,
in which the relationship of Russian culture to European culture was also
a central preoccupation. Lotman had more than most other scholars to say
about late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russian francophonie
and his analysis of this subject is often cited as received wisdom by other
scholars who touch upon it.37

Russia and ‘the West’, and the two Russias
Russian self-definition since the early modern era has depended heavily
on the notion of opposition between ‘Russia’ and ‘Europe’ (Evropa) or ‘the
West’ (Zapad). And yet, the nature of the concepts being compared is very
hard to define. Even the unit ‘Russia’ in this opposition is less tangible than
it may seem at first sight, for it could refer to a multi-ethnic empire or to the
Russophone nation (concepts which we discuss in the following section).
The notion ‘the West’, however, is more elusive still. It belongs as much
to a mental landscape as to a geographical one. Although it theoretically
included everything European beyond Russia’s western border, in truth
nineteenth-century Russian writers, when they railed against ‘the West’,
were generally thinking of the more advanced European powers (Britain,
France, and the German states). Besides, the notion is too capacious to
mean anything very precise. It assumes that a group of nations38 divided for
many centuries by religious and cultural heterogeneity, political rivalries,
36 We use this term in this work to describe the writers of what is generally considered the golden
age of Russian literature, which spans the period from about 1820 to 1880, when a literary canon
was created and the question of Russia’s relationship to Europe was explicitly and exhaustively
examined.
37 See especially Lotman, ‘Russkaia literatura na frantsuzskom iazyke’.
38 Or peoples, empires, polities, or other entities, for the term ‘nation’, which for convenience we
use loosely here, may be anachronistic before the early modern period. We consider nationhood
and language in the following section of this introduction.

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45

military conflicts, and linguistic diversity in fact had a uniformity, coherence, and solidarity which were not always obvious to the inhabitants of
those nations themselves. Its use as a term denoting a conceptual antipode
to ‘Russia’ implies, furthermore, that differences among the western nations
pale into insignificance by comparison with the collective difference of
those nations from Russia. Nonetheless, for all its weaknesses, the idea
that Russia can be best defined by contrasting it with an imagined ‘West’
has repeatedly been employed as a tool for examination of Russia’s history,
religion, economic development, national character,39 and – in ways we
explore in this book – language use.
The classic formulation of the contrast between Russia and the West – but
by no means its first formulation, let alone its last – is to be found in the
mid-nineteenth-century dispute between so-called Westernizers (zapadniki)
and Slavophiles (slavianofily), especially in the writings of members of
the latter group. It is conventional to say that the Westernizers, who were
often known in their time as ‘Europeans’ or ‘cosmopolitans’, 40 believed that
Russia needed to adopt European ideas and practices in order to overcome
its backwardness. 41 The Westernizers therefore admired Peter the Great as
a ruler who had greatly accelerated the modernization of Russia in the early
eighteenth century.42 The Slavophiles, on the other hand, believed that native
values and traditions could provide the bases for a bright and distinctive
Russian future. They extolled Russia’s Orthodox form of Christianity and
detested Peter as the ruler who was responsible more than any other for
39 On the use of this device in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russian travel-writing, for
example, see Offord, Journeys to a Graveyard.
40 Billington, The Icon and the Axe, 379.
41 In fact, the concept of ‘Westernism’ is not nearly so coherent as this conventional description
suggests. For one thing, the group of individuals commonly cited as representatives of the
Westernist camp is too large and the intellectual and political complexion of the individuals in
it too diverse for us to be able to form any precise idea of the Westernizers’ thinking. Moreover,
the thinkers often cited as outstanding representatives of Westernism, especially Vissarion
Belinskii and Alexander Herzen, in fact expressed views, at one time or another, that were critical
of the very bases of the Western economic, social, and political life that they are supposed to
have admired. Nor were positions in the Westernizer-Slavophile controversy as polarized as
they might appear at first sight. Writers working within the Westernist tradition were in most
cases nationalists of a sort themselves, while Slavophiles owed their ideas to a considerable
extent to the European counter-current to the Enlightenment, particularly to ideas associated
with the pan-European Romantic movement and emanating from the late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century German world.
42 On Peter’s reforms, see the second section of Chapter 1. We shall refer to Peter in this book
as Peter the Great rather than as Peter I, as twentieth- and twenty-first century Russian scholars
have often preferred to call him.

46 

The French L anguage in Russia

the introduction of alien habits and for the consequent disruption of the
organic community that had existed, they imagined, in Muscovy before
the eighteenth century. Whereas western peoples, the Slavophiles believed,
were aggressive, materialistic, and individualistic, the Russian people – or
more precisely, the Russian peasantry, who most truly represented Russian
character – were peace-loving and uninterested in private property, sharing
the land and other resources available to them and abiding by the decisions of
their village commune, the obshchina or mir. At bottom, Slavophilism reveals
an understandable concern about loss of spirituality and the weakening of a
sense of social cohesion in the prosaic age of urbanization, industrialization,
and thriving commerce, whose effects Russian nobles could observe when
they travelled abroad. At the same time, it shows very well where a strongly
contrastive approach to national identity may lead: that is to say, to sweeping
generalizations, crude stereotyping about peoples, and chauvinism. 43
The Russia-West paradigm that was used to view relations with the
external world was replicated in the notion of two contrasting Russias, which
helped to shape views on the internal realm. 44 On the one hand, there was
‘Russian Europe’, consisting of the court and the noble elite which in the
eighteenth century adopted western cultural practices, dress, and fashion
and learned foreign languages. This Russia was minute as a percentage of the
population of the empire and yet omnipotent politically. It was concentrated
in St Petersburg and Moscow, at least during the winter months; its outposts
were the manor houses on the isolated estates owned by the nobility that
were scattered over Russia’s agricultural heartland. On the other hand, there
was the much more populous indigenous Russia, including the peasant mass
clothed in traditional Russian costume. While this non-noble Russia was
present in all towns and cities, it was located mainly in the countryside,
in innumerable villages, which a peasant might never leave unless he was
recruited for military service. This other Russia provided the labour force
(which remained enserfed up until 1861) on the lands owned by nobles, the
Church, and the state. Even in the mid-nineteenth century, it remained more
or less untouched by western culture and, being untutored and illiterate,
43 There is a large literature on Slavophilism. For general studies, see especially the works by
Riasanovsky (1965) and Walicki (1975) that are cited in our bibliography. Useful monographs
on individual Slavophiles include Gleason’s study of Ivan Kireevskii (1972), Christoff’s separate
volumes on each of Khomiakov, Ivan Kireevskii, Konstantin Aksakov, and Samarin (1961, 1972,
1982, and 1991 respectively), and Lukashevich’s biography of Ivan Aksakov (1965). Rabow-Edling
(2006) places the Slavophiles in the tradition of cultural (as opposed to political) nationalism.
44 For a classic exposition of this notion, see Dostoevskii’s Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
(Zimnie zametki o letnikh vpechatleniiakh), in Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 5, 46–98, especially 50–64.

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had no knowledge of the major Western European languages which served
as the vehicles for that culture. The Prussian aristocrat Baron August von
Haxthausen, who travelled widely in Russia in 1843–1844, noted the gulf
between these two Russias. ‘The cultivated class in Russia’, he wrote,
is separated from the people by a much wider chasm than in the rest of
Europe, where modes of living, riches and poverty stand far apart, but not
the different spheres of ideas, as in Russia; in other parts of Europe the
people have the same cultivation as the educated classes, only in a less
degree. In Russia the higher classes have assumed that of the West, while
the people have an ancient national cultivation, not much developed, and
of a lower grade in comparison to the other. 45

The tendency to depict Russia itself as containing two different cultural
worlds, like the tendency to characterize Russia by comparison with the
West, was strong in classical Russian writing. It has also been sustained in
scholarship: the juxtaposition of ‘the European culture of the upper classes
and the Russian culture of the peasantry’, for example, is the organizing
principle of Natasha’s Dance, the book by Figes to which we have already
referred, one of the major studies of Russian cultural history written in
recent times. 46
The contrastive approach to the task of defining Russian identity that is
encountered in classical Russian writing has been sustained and reinforced
in cultural historiography over the last fifty years by the work of Lotman,
with regard both to the relationship between Russian culture and European
culture and to the inner dynamic of Russian culture itself. The influence
of Lotman and his followers on western students of Russian culture no
doubt explains the persistence of some of the commonplaces about the
detrimental effects of Franco-Russian bilingualism that we have identified.
Three notions that run through Lotman’s writings about Russian culture
have particular importance from our point of view, and we illustrate them
here by reference to some much-cited texts in his corpus. 47
45 Haxthausen, however, did not consider bilingualism a factor that contributed to the gulf he
observed. On the contrary, language and religion were the only things, he thought, that nobles
and peasants had in common. See Haxthausen, The Russian Empire, vol. 2, 185–186.
46 Figes, Natasha’s Dance, xxvii.
47 Most of these texts are available in English in Lotman and Uspenskij, SRC. Lotman’s writings
contain many arresting insights to which we shall refer, but they are also highly schematic and
make generalized assertions about culture that are based on slender evidence. For discussion
of Lotman’s reliance on evidence of a literary nature, see the last section of this introduction.

48 

The French L anguage in Russia

First, Russian culture, according to Lotman, is ‘constructed on a marked
dualism’. Before the nineteenth century, for example, life beyond the grave
was divided conceptually into heaven and hell: unlike Catholicism, Orthodoxy placed no ‘neutral axiological zone’, no purgatory, between life on
Earth and the afterlife. This dualism extended to concepts unconnected
with the Church, so that Russia lacked social institutions of the sort found
in the medieval West which were ‘neither “holy” nor “sinful”, neither “stateorganized” nor “anti-state”’. The absence of a neutral sphere in Russia led to
a conception of the new as total eschatological change, ‘the radical rejection
of the preceding stage’, rather than a continuation of the past. Thus, Russian
culture, which is seen with hindsight to have an underlying structure and
unity over various historical periods, is perceived by its bearers as embodying
an ‘opposition’ between what is old (starina) and what is new (novizna). 48
The experience of the alien as revolutionary novelty was acutely felt, Lotman argues, by the noble elite on whom Peter the Great and subsequent
sovereigns imposed a western way of life in the eighteenth century, with
profoundly unsettling effects. The introduction of foreign-language use
in eighteenth-century Russia may easily be seen as a manifestation of the
‘binary opposition’ between tradition and innovation, Russia and the West.
Secondly, Lotman argued, the everyday behaviour of the post-Petrine nobleman was a sort of improvised theatrical performance. Underlying this claim
is a distinction that Lotman makes between two modes of human behaviour.
On the one hand, there is the ordinary, everyday, customary, social behaviour
that seems normal and natural to a group. On the other hand, we have all types
of ceremonial and non-practical behaviour, which may be connected with the
state, worship, or ritual and which is perceived by native speakers of a culture
(for culture is in a sense a language) as having an independent meaning. The
first type of behaviour is learned by bearers of the culture unconsciously,
like a native language, through immersion. The second type is consciously
learned like a foreign language, with the aid of rules and grammar books.
(The distinction also applies literally to language itself, of course.) The result
of the adoption of a foreign style of life by the Russian nobility from the early
eighteenth century on was that members of the elite came to resemble foreigners in their own country. Even when fully grown up, the Russian nobleman
had to learn artificially what people usually absorb in early childhood
by direct experience. The alien and the foreign became the norm. To
48 Lotman, ‘The Role of Dual Models in the Dynamics of Russian Culture (up to the End of the
Eighteenth Century)’, in SRC, 4–5.

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conduct oneself correctly was to behave like a foreigner, that is to act in
an artificial way according to the norms of an alien life-style. It was as
necessary to bear these norms in mind as it was to know the rules of a
foreign language in order to be able to use it properly. 49

At the same time, Lotman argues somewhat tortuously, the nobleman was
obliged to retain the outsider’s ‘alien’ – that is to say, Russian – attitude to
the forms of a European life-style that he was assimilating, ‘for in order to be
constantly aware of one’s own behavior as foreign, it was necessary not to be
a foreigner’. ‘One did not have to become a foreigner, but to behave like one’.
Thus, it became ‘entirely typical of the Russian eighteenth century that the
members of the nobility passed their lives as if they were plays, conceiving
themselves to be forever on the stage’, while the common people ‘tended to look
on the gentry as if they were mummers, whom they watched from the pit.’50
Andreas Schönle and Andrei Zorin, in the important essay with which
they introduce their recent volume on the sense of self that developed among
the Europeanized elite in Russia from roughly 1762 to 1825, emphasize that
Lotman’s theory, while it ‘aptly captures the overall theatrical dimension
of courtly culture’, does not accurately characterize noble life or – what is
particularly important for our purposes – noble language use. The theory
rests on a dichotomy between the public sphere and private life that
was not intrinsic to the life of the nobility, in which the public and the
private were thoroughly intertwined […] Furthermore, [it] implies the
notorious antinomy between authenticity and artificiality, which not
only mischaracterizes the nobility’s ambivalent structures of feeling and
identity but also fails to account for the syncretic and, with regard to the
choice of language, macaronic ways in which the nobility often discharged
the codes of behavior and modes of expression fashionable in its times.51

Lotman’s claims that Russian culture is characterized by dualism and
that westernized Russian nobles acted out a role as foreigners in their own
land support a third notion: the Russian cultural case, and indeed Russian
49 Idem, ‘The Poetics of Everyday Behavior’, in SRC, 232–233.
50 Ibidem, 233–234; Lotman’s italics. Lotman cites no evidence for his claim about what ‘the
people’ thought or felt; indeed there may be none that is reliable.
51 Schönle and Zorin, ‘Introduction’, 12. In general, Schönle, Zorin, and Evstratov resist stark
‘binary mapping’ of the sort ‘which emphasized the ideological, cultural, and behavioral divide
between a thoroughly Westernized elite and the uneducated mass of people over which it ruled’
(ibidem, 10).

50 

The French L anguage in Russia

history, are exceptional, or in fact unique.52 This notion, which was implicit
or explicit in much classical Russian writing about the relationship of Russia
and the West and which we shall encounter at several points in this book,
has also had wide currency in scholarship.53 Strictly speaking, the assertion
that Russia is unique cannot be gainsaid, for it is a statement of the obvious.
After all, which state, region, city, or community, cannot be described as
unique, especially if – like Russia – it has an ethnically diverse population
and is culturally heterogeneous?54 Thus to be unique, in one sense, is not
to be exceptional at all. Claims about Russian uniqueness or exceptionality
may seem particularly weak, though, if it cannot be convincingly shown
that those features that are held to be peculiar to Russian culture really are
altogether lacking, or at least are poorly developed, in all the other cultures
that are being used as comparators. In fact, many of Lotman’s observations
about Russian culture, on close scrutiny, might seem equally applicable,
mutatis mutandis, to the culture of other societies, in Europe or on other
continents, either during the period in which Lotman was interested or at
other times. May we not find evidence in other cultures too, for instance, to
suggest that what is perceived as ‘new’ in fact has roots in the distant past?55
Surely the most superficial study of the toponymy of other countries would
make it impossible to uphold Lotman’s view that the frequency of the word
‘new’ in Russian place names demonstrates some distinctive tendency on
the part of Russians to perceive their history ‘as a chain of explosions’.56
What evidence do we have to suggest that the conscious or subconscious
ability of Russian nobles to convey meaning in a variety of behavioural
registers57 distinguished them from their peers in other lands? Did the
Russian nobility really differ from other elites when they theatricalized
their behaviour or performed their adopted roles before social groups which
52 Lotman additionally claims, incidentally, that a semiotic study of Russian culture has
exceptional value as a means of proving the validity of his theory of culture: see ‘Authors’
Introduction’, in SRC, xiii–xiv, and Lotman, ‘Theses towards a Semiotics of Russian Culture’.
53 ‘For very many Western historians of Russia’, Dominic Lieven has observed, ‘the country’s
uniqueness is a matter of faith. For many Russians it is the core of true religion itself’ (Lieven,
Empire, x). Among western historians on whose work we draw in this book, Geoffrey Hosking in
particular leans towards the exceptionalist viewpoint, both on account of the late and stunted
development of civic nationhood in Russia and on account of the comprehensive adoption by
the elite of a culture initially alien to it (Hosking, Russia, 156–157).
54 On heterogeneity as a characteristic of Russian culture, see ‘Authors’ Introduction’, in SRC,
xiii.
55 Lotman, ‘The Role of Dual Models’, in SRC, 7.
56 Idem, ‘Theses towards a Semiotics of Russian Culture’.
57 Idem, ‘The Poetics of Everyday Behavior’, in SRC, 235.

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were enthralled? Again, Lotman rightly points out that the imported forms
of everyday behaviour and the foreign languages which came into use
among the Russian nobility ‘altered their function in this process’. That is
to say, everyday norms which were native and natural in the West acquired
high prestige when they were transferred to Russia, where they increased
a person’s social standing, as did knowledge of foreign languages.58 Surely,
though, Russia is not the only place in which the function of imported
behaviour or language has altered in some way. Might one not expect to find
such alteration wherever and whenever an elite group seeks to differentiate
itself socially by use of a foreign language?
Lotman, then, seems to overlook or understate the possibility that what he
regards as the most significant characteristics of Russian culture might also
be observed elsewhere.59 In fact, international comparisons of the behaviour
of aristocratic elites in multi-ethnic empires and studies of elite bilingualism and of the development of cultural nationalism among oppressed or
backward groups in nineteenth-century Europe do yield plentiful evidence
of Russia’s affinities with its western neighbours, as well as its differences
from them, as we shall hope to show in our account of Russian francophonie
and attitudes towards it. We shall therefore not interpret the evidence of
Franco-Russian bilingualism that we offer in this book as corroboration
of a Lotmanesque grand thesis about the exceptional nature of Russian
culture, although we do not deny, of course, that every European example
of historical francophonie is bound to have certain local features.60
58 Ibidem, 233.
59 Lotman may even categorically rule out the possibility that such phenomena could occur in
the West. He confidently asserts, for example, that the ‘subjective “Europeanization” of [Russian]
life had nothing in common with any real convergence with Western life-style, and at the same
time definitely influenced the setting-up of anti-Christian forms such as had certainly never
been possible in the life of the Christian West’ (‘The Role of Dual Models’, in SRC, 21; our italics).
60 With regard to the argument about the degree to which Russia is an exceptional case, Schönle
and Zorin perhaps take a more Lotmanesque approach than we do, albeit with reservations.
Comparing Russia with Japan and Turkey, which also undertook rapid military, economic,
technological, and cultural modernization (in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth
century respectively) as a means of saving their countries from ‘annihilation’ by their more
advanced rivals, they argue that only in Russia did the state consider the top-down Europeanization of a narrow upper class ‘more effective, and often safer, than fundamental social and
political transformation’. The most distinctive feature of Russia’s experience of modernization
and westernization, which also separated it from the Japanese and Turkish models, was that
whereas ‘Meiji, Ottoman, and later Kemalist elites aspired to become similar to Europeans or
sometimes Americans, Russian nobles strove to be Europeans’ (cf., though, Lotman’s contention,
which we quoted above, that Russians strove to behave like Europeans). Moreover, the mental
outlook and subjective sense of self of the Europeanized elite which emerged in Russia, and

52 

The French L anguage in Russia

In sum, our examination of language use and language debate in imperial
Russia will take account of the framework within which Russian writers and
thinkers have discussed Russian culture and national identity, a framework
which sets Russia against an imagined external entity, ‘the West’, and replicates
this opposition within Russia itself. We shall also engage with the insistent
narrative in Russian literature and in scholarship on it, to which Lotman
made a particularly influential contribution, about the degree to which
Russian culture is exceptional, not least by virtue of the existence of this
tension within it. Our description of foreign-language use in imperial Russia is
bound to reveal the intensity of the Russian encounter with foreign cultures.
However, we shall not uncritically accept the emphasis on Russia’s alterity
which characterizes much discussion of this phenomenon or endorse the
view that linguistic and cultural diversity was as damaging on several levels
as it has often been thought to be. We shall pay attention to what Russia had
in common with other European nations as well as what made it different, to
what is transnational as well as what is nationally exclusive. In the broadest
perspective, we shall hope to show how francophonie in imperial Russia
contributed to the flow of information both from the west of the continent to
its east and from east to west, with the result that Russia became more closely
integrated into European society and cultural space, despite the emphasis in
Russian language debate on difference, division, and disorientation.

Empire, nation, and language
We need to locate our investigation of Franco-Russian bilingualism not
only in the discourse about the relationship of Russia to the West that runs
through Russian literature and thought and in the corpus of scholarship on
that discourse but also in the scholarly discussion of empires and nations
that has taken place over the last three or four decades. Pre-revolutionary
Russia, after all, was both a multi-ethnic empire and a nation. The very
existence of more than one Russian term for ‘Russian’ attests to difference
between state and nation, between a political entity and a cultural community, as Geoffrey Hosking in particular has pointed out.61 (The adjectives
which is the primary focus of the volume assembled by Schönle, Zorin, and Evstratov, ‘was a
completely new and distinctive social, cultural, anthropological, and psychological phenomenon’
(Schönle and Zorin, ‘Introduction’, 2–5; Schönle’s and Zorin’s italics). The problem of proving
exceptionality, when one cannot be omniscient, recurs.
61 Hosking, Russia, xix.

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that describe the imperial state and the nation are rossiiskii and russkii
respectively.) It will be important for us to bear this distinction in mind
and to consider at various points in our work which entity, empire or nation,
was the prime focus of the loyalty of the elite and what bearing that loyalty
had on linguistic consciousness.
An empire, Dominic Lieven contends, is ‘by definition large and diverse’. It
is both ‘a very great power that has left its mark on the international relations
of an era’ and ‘a polity that rules over wide territories and many peoples, since
the management of space and multi-ethnicity is one of the great perennial
dilemmas of empire’.62 In the Russian case, the aristocracy was itself multiethnic – a fact that is graphically illustrated in the Hermitage in St Petersburg,
in the gallery of portraits of over 300 high-ranking officers who served in
the campaigns of 1812–1814 against Napoleon.63 Moreover, in embracing the
empire-building project of Russia’s eighteenth- and nineteenth-century rulers,
and therefore accepting the western culture that Russian sovereigns encouraged it to adopt, this aristocracy took on an identity that was to some extent
supra-ethnic. The foreign-language use that conspicuously demonstrated this
cosmopolitan identity, and command of French in particular, gave Russia
sudden international cultural status, to be sure; it also served as a means of
unifying the Russian elite, aiding the assimilation of its diverse ethnic and
cultural elements, and conferring prestige on them at the same time.
There is no clear agreement as to whether, in the Russian case, the process
of empire-building, which began in the mid-sixteenth century under Ivan IV
(Ivan the Terrible), preceded or followed the making of the Russian nation.
In Hosking’s view, empire-building consumed so many resources and so
much effort that it ‘impeded the formation of a nation’, that is to say ‘Rossiia
obstructed the flowering of Rus [the old Russian nation]’.64 Lieven, on the
other hand, takes the view that while Russia was not a nation in the modern
sense in the 1550s, nevertheless it was a great deal nearer to being one than
most of the other peoples of Europe at that time, by virtue of the ‘unity of
dynasty, church and people which the term “Holy Russia” implied’.65 Gary
Hamburg also traces a conception of Russian identity that amounted to ‘a
prototype of integral nationhood’ at least as far back as the mid-sixteenth
century.66 However, irrespective of the extent to which a sense of nationhood
62
63
64
65
66

Lieven, Empire, 89, xiv.
See Offord et al., ‘Introduction’, in French and Russian in Imperial Russia, vol. 1, 1–2.
Hosking, Russia, xix.
Lieven, Empire, 253.
Hamburg, Russia’s Path toward Enlightenment, 76.

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The French L anguage in Russia

had developed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Muscovy, account
had to be taken in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the new
relationship that Russia had with her western neighbours after the reforms
introduced by Peter the Great. This reconsideration of nationhood was
bound to be affected, especially in the nineteenth century, by the rise of the
nation as the most effective focus for political loyalty. It was also affected,
of course, by the European ideas and currents to which Russia was now
being exposed, including the development of nationalism.
The sense of solidarity that underlies national consciousness may be
derived from many sources, such as a shared religion or attachment to a
type of political institution or way of life. Very often it is associated with
language.67 The embryonic nationhood of Muscovy already had a linguistic
element, as well as religious, territorial, and political elements. The Book
of Royal Degrees, Hamburg points out, stressed the mortal threat posed to
Rus’ by a godless ‘foreign tribe’, the Tatars, who used a ‘language unknown’
and ‘forced the alien tongues of barbarians’ on the clan or people (rod)
who inhabited this land.68 However, it was in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries that language came to be seen in some quarters as an
essential and distinctive attribute of an ethnic group that was capable of
becoming a nation. Interest grew in the origins and history of languages, and
the qualities of one’s own vernacular were extolled and other vernaculars
were disparaged.69 A prominent role in the new discussion of the origins
and functions of language was played by German representatives of the
counter-current to the Enlightenment, especially Johann Georg Hamann and
Johann Gottfried Herder.70 ‘Has a people, especially an uncultivated people,
anything dearer than the speech of its fathers?’ Herder asked rhetorically
in his Letters for the Advancement of Humanity. ‘In it reside all the riches of
its thought, its tradition, history, religion, and principles of life, all its heart
and soul. To take its speech from such a people or to abase it is to take away
its only imperishable property.’71 Fichte, in his patriotic Addresses to the
67 This was especially the case with communities that were becoming aware of themselves as
nations in the nineteenth century: see Seton-Watson, Nations and States, 9–10. See also Lieven,
Empire, 172.
68 Hamburg, Russia’s Path toward Enlightenment, 75–76.
69 For a summary of such developments across early modern Europe, and of the interest in
national cultures that accompanied them, see Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe,
Chapter 1.
70 On this discussion and its relevance in the Russian context, see Hamburg, ‘Language and
Conservative Politics in Alexandrine Russia’, especially 121–123.
71 Herder, Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität, vol. 1, 146.

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German Nation (1807), goes further. He seems to regard the German language
as indicative of the superiority of the Germans themselves over other races:
the French, because German has fewer Latinate borrowings, and the other
Teutonic races as well, because ‘the German speaks a language which has
been alive ever since it first issued from the force of nature, whereas [they]
speak a language which has movement on the surface only but is dead at
the root’.72 A language, for Fichte, not only expresses national character,
inasmuch as its speakers are the mouthpieces of the people’s collective
knowledge. It also determines the people themselves: people, Fichte argues,
‘are formed by language far more than language is formed by people’.73
The concurrent development of national consciousness and language
consciousness among peoples in early modern Europe was bound up with
other processes whose importance in nation-building projects has been
emphasized by students of nationalism such as Benedict Anderson.74 One
such process is the development of a standardized and polyfunctional
literary variety of the language in question. As Stephen Barbour has pointed
out, a codified standard variety which is clearly differentiated from others
gives a language ‘a kind of focus and identity that it may have not possessed
before’. Consequently, ‘the growth of nations and the sharp demarcation of
languages are actually related processes’.75 Another process connected to
the development of national consciousness and language consciousness is
the emergence of a literary community capable of producing an exemplary
corpus of writings. Ethnicities turn into nations (although not all do), Adrian
Hastings has argued, when the written form of their vernacular is regularly
employed for the production of an extensive living literature.76 A further
stimulus for the formation of the consciousness we are describing is the
growth of a print culture, with publishing houses, periodicals, and critics
(as arbiters of taste and good practice), through which the new writings
can be disseminated. Russia began to undergo all the processes we have
mentioned during the eighteenth century, especially during the second half
of the century.77 These processes prepared the ground for the creation, in the
nineteenth century, of a native literature, written in Russian, which served

72 Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, 68. This passage is quoted by Edwards, Multilingualism, 131. See also Hamburg, ‘Language and Conservative Politics’, 122–123.
73 Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, 55.
74 Anderson, Imagined Communities.
75 Barbour, ‘Language, Nationalism, Europe’, 13.
76 Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood, 12; see also 19–20.
77 See especially Marker, Publishing, Printing and the Origins of Intellectual Life.

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as a foundation for the imagined nation that was being constructed, or rather
reconstructed in the wake of Russia’s eighteenth-century westernization.
It is worth pausing here to make two further points about the role of
language consciousness in the development of national consciousness in
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia. First, it may be that language
assumes particular importance as a basis for national consciousness if
other possible sources of a sense of unity, such as religious affiliation or
the perceived ideal nature of a polity, are for some reason hard to agree
upon. In Russia, the authority of both the Orthodox religion and autocratic
government was severely challenged, and opinion in the elite was radically
divided as a result, by the sudden influx of western ideas in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. Nation-building was also complicated to an
unusual degree by geographical factors. Nations can have historical existence, Ingrid Kleespies has argued in a stimulating recent monograph on
the topos of nomadism in Russian culture, only when they inhabit a clearly
defined territorial space or homeland.78 However, in the Russian case the
very centre of the state shifted, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, from
Kiev to more northerly cities, first Vladimir and then Moscow. Subsequently,
continuous imperial expansion and the existence of marginal regions in
which nomadic enemies or independent Cossacks roamed made it impossible
to say precisely where borders lay in the endless Eurasian steppe. As Vera
Tolz has also emphasized, territorial vastness was a central feature of Russian
national discourse from the eighteenth century on, and a source of pride in
that discourse, but it made the issue of national definition problematic.79
In these circumstances, language, as manifested in the national literature
that was coming into being in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
may have provided a particularly strong centripetal force as the modern
conception of nationhood was being formed.
Secondly, we shall argue that the presence of French in eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Russia, paradoxical as it might seem, actually assisted
the development of the Russian language and the formation of Russian
nationhood in various ways. It provided lexical and phraseological material
and stylistic models for the development of the Russian literary language.
It was a vehicle for generic models, subject-matter, plots, and themes that
could be used by writers creating the literature through which Russian
consciousness would eventually find expression. It may even have nurtured
that complexity of vision, receptivity to diverse ways of viewing the world,
78 Kleespies, A Nation Astray.
79 Tolz, Russia, 159, 162–164; Kleespies, A Nation Astray, 195, n. 13.

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which endowed classical Russian literature with the universality that writers who bemoaned Franco-Russian bilingualism admired in their own
culture.80 Its presence also wounded national pride and may consequently
have stimulated native literary creativity at the time when other European
nations were beginning to prize the languages associated with their core
ethnic groups, or rather standardized varieties of them.
Thus far we have been discussing the sense of nationhood and various
ways in which language consciousness and language itself are bound up with
it. However, we need also to take account of the frequent evolution of national
consciousness into nationalism, which influential historians have associated
with modernity and which became a powerful force in European politics
in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.81 In an important study
of eighteenth-century Russian culture written over fifty years ago, Hans
Rogger made a distinction that is still useful between national consciousness
and nationalism, each of which, he argued, was ‘characteristic of a distinct
period of Russian history’. Although they share common features, these
phenomena differ in their scope, purpose, and nature:
National consciousness is […] a striving for a common identity, character,
and culture by the articulate members of a given community. It is the
expression of that striving in art and social life, and characteristic, therefore, of a stage of development in which thinking individuals have been
able to emerge from anonymity, to seek contact and communication with
one another. National consciousness presupposes extensive exposure to
alien ways; it presupposes a class or group of men capable of responding
to that exposure; it requires, moreover, the existence of a secular cultural
community or an attempt at its formation. In Russia, these conditions
were met, could only be met, in the eighteenth century.
Nationalism goes beyond the search [for] or the creation of a national
consciousness. In nineteenth-century Russia, as elsewhere, it is an
inclusive system of thought, an ideology, which on the basis of a specific
national experience attempts to provide answers to moral, social, and
political questions. It is more than an awareness of national identity,
more than a search for the bases of national being; it has found these and
80 We shall develop this point in the last section of Chapter 9.
81 The modernity of the phenomenon is stressed in the classic studies by Gellner, Nations and
Nationalism, and Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780. For a challenge to the
‘modernist’ view of the emergence of ‘nations’, see Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood,
Chapter 1, especially 8 ff.

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The French L anguage in Russia

proclaimed their eternal validity. It is a philosophy, a value judgement,
a metaphysic. Its basis is belief, not consciousness. However tolerant it
may be of other beliefs, it usually values what is Russian more highly
than that which is not.82

It will also be useful for us to bear in mind the distinction that has been
made, by Anthony Smith among others, between ‘political’ and ‘cultural’
forms of nationalism.83 The proponents of political nationalism may seek to
build loyalty around a political system or institutions, legal principles, or a set
of values. Statesmen, legislators, and agitators tend to predominate among
them. The doctrine of Official Nationality, promulgated by the authorities
in the Russia of Nicholas I from 1833 and appealing to autocracy, Orthodoxy,
and the vaguer concept of nationality (narodnost’) as the foundations of
the Russian state, exemplifies nationalism of this type.84 The proponents
of cultural nationalism, on the other hand, aspire to regenerate what they
suppose is – in Smith’s words – a ‘community of common descent’ in which
birth, family ties, and native culture are of paramount importance.85 In place
of ‘the legal and rational concept of citizenship’, writes Suzanna RabowEdling, who has studied the Slavophiles as representatives of this type of
nationalism, cultural nationalists substituted ‘the much vaguer concept of
“the people”, which could only be understood intuitively’.86 Regarding ‘the
people’ as a ‘final rhetorical court of appeal’, they cherish popular vernacular
culture. For the most part, they are members of an intelligentsia, thinkers,
artists, and scholars rather than politicians. The importance of language to
them as a basis for national identity is demonstrated by the presence among
their number of lexicographers, philologists, and folklorists.87 This exclusive,
cultural or ethnic conception of a nation would become widespread in the
nineteenth-century Russian literary community and intelligentsia.88
We should now return, towards the end of this discussion of language
and nationhood, to two related points that we broached in the first section
of this introduction when we were outlining some of the views that have
82 Rogger, National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia, 3–4.
83 See especially Anthony D. Smith, National Identity, Chapter 1. See also Hutchinson, The
Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism, Chapter 1.
84 On Official Nationality, see especially Riasanovsky, Nicholas I and Official Nationality in
Russia.
85 Anthony Smith, National Identity, 11.
86 Rabow-Edling, Slavophile Thought and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism, 64–65.
87 Anthony Smith, National Identity, 12.
88 On the intelligentsia, see the last section of Chapter 1 below.

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been put forward about the supposedly detrimental effects of the use of
French by the Russian nobility. The first of these points concerns the ways
in which identity can be imagined. Nationalism of the cultural variety
tends to generate the so-called ‘primordialist’ conception of collective
identity as a fixed phenomenon determined by blood-ties, shared descent,
and a particular language and culture. However, as Paul Robert Magocsi
has argued, a ‘situational’ or ‘optional’ conception of identity, which allows an individual consciously to emphasize or de-emphasize an identity
as circumstances dictate, is as widespread as the primordialist view. In
most social settings, Magocsi points out, people operate with a network
of multiple social and political loyalties: to family or tribe, occupational
group, church, clubs, village or city, region or state, and, in multi-national
states, to various national identities at the same time.89 To groups that were
deeply affected by the contrastive approach to identity encouraged by the
rise of nationalism, such as the nineteenth-century Russian literary community and intelligentsia, the primordialist view was no doubt attractive.
To the cosmopolitan nobleman of eighteenth-century Russia, on the other
hand, multiple, hybrid, or fluid identities (servant of the Russian Empire,
family patriarch, grand seigneur, European aristocrat) might have seemed
quite feasible and unproblematic. We therefore do not take it as a given
that different identities are mutually exclusive or that it is psychologically
difficult or unsettling for an individual simultaneously to accommodate
various cultural influences.90
The second point concerns language choice and the signals about loyalty
that it might be thought to transmit. The motivation for learning a language
that is not the mother tongue may be integrative, that is to say use of a
foreign language is a means of indicating solidarity with another community.
Eighteenth-century Russian aristocrats may indeed have felt that their
command of French established various bonds: with their social peers in
France and other European countries, with supporters of the European
Enlightenment, or even with France as a nation under the ancien régime.
However, when Russian nobles had their children taught French, in the
eighteenth century and beyond, their primary concern was no doubt to
ensure that their offspring would be well prepared for life within their own
Russian class, in which command of French was de rigueur for success in
high society and the upper echelons of government service. This motivation
89 Magocsi, The Roots of Ukrainian Nationalism, 45–46.
90 There is also an emphasis on ‘fluid, shifting, hybrid, and multiple identities’ in Schönle,
Zorin, and Evstratov (eds), The Europeanized Elite in Russia (see 13).

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for language-learning might be seen as largely instrumentalist: a choice is
made for pragmatic purposes and does not necessarily entail any emotional
allegiance to the people mainly associated with the language in question or
the polity they inhabit.91 In any case, the aristocratic culture of the ancien
régime with which the eighteenth-century Russian noble might have felt an
affinity was destroyed by the revolution that began in 1789. Consequently, for
nineteenth-century Russian nobles, the living French language had different
associations. French could just as easily be associated with Napoleon or with
economic, social, and cultural developments that the aristocracy detested,
such as the rise of capitalism and bourgeois society under the ‘July Monarchy’
of Louis-Philippe (1830–1848), or with revolutionary disturbances (in 1830
and 1848), or with the development of socialist ideas and realist literature
characterized by physiological sketches on life among the lower classes.92
If nineteenth-century Russian nobles continued to place high value on the
French language, then, it was not because they loved France as a nation or
admired contemporary French civilization.
Thus, by the early nineteenth century, we suggest, French had been
assimilated by Russian society as an internal language, as it were, to
the extent that users of it in society did not necessarily regard it as an
alien phenomenon. Once a language is viewed in this way, as the natural
property of a group, the question of whether its users are showing allegiance to a foreign people or power and disloyalty to their own may
seem meaningless to members of the in-group themselves. Those who
observe the practice from outside the in-group, of course, may see things
quite differently.

Sociolinguistic perspectives
We turn next to questions explored in this book which fall within the
purview of sociolinguistics and for discussion of which the writings of
sociolinguists provide a useful framework. We are concerned, after all,
91 On the question of whether language choice was conscious, see in particular the second
section in Chapter 6 below, which deals with personal correspondence. Metalinguistic comments
about language choice are scarce in the eighteenth century in the milieu in which French was
most frequently used at that time.
92 The multiplicity of the associations that language use may have is well illustrated by the
case of the Francophone nationalist intelligentsia in the Romanian lands in the mid-nineteenth
century: see Mihaila, ‘The Beginnings and the Golden Age of Francophonie among the Romanians’,
especially 346 ff.

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with the key sociolinguistic question famously formulated long ago by
Joshua Fishman: ‘Who Speaks What Language to Whom and When?’93 As
we shall show, French – in both spoken and written forms – was used in
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia in many domains and had many
functions. For much of that period, or at certain times within the period,
it was a language of diplomacy and a medium for social engagement with
foreigners. It was a lingua franca that enabled subjects of the Russian Empire
to transmit a certain image of their country to the outside world, to conduct
cultural propaganda, or to win support for a political or social point of view,
loyalist or oppositional. Knowledge of French facilitated communication
with members of the imperial elite who were Russian subjects but were
not Russophone or for whom Russian was a second language. French also
commonly served numerous purposes among ethnic Russians themselves.
It was a court language, a prestige language among the nobility, a society
language, a language of education, a language of intimacy in the family or
among friends, a language of internal administration for discussion of foreign
affairs, and a literary language. Other subjects that have an important place
in sociolinguistics, besides language use and language choice, are of central
interest to us too. In particular, we dwell on language attitudes and linguistic
ideologies, for ‘language, and discussions about language, provide an instructive view of broader issues of power, authority, and national identity’.94 We
shall therefore consider sociolinguistic concepts that pertain to instances
of language contact and reactions to such contact. As we are engaged in a
diachronic study of language use and language attitudes in a distant period,
the writings of historical sociolinguists are particularly relevant, and will
be introduced at the beginning of the section on methodology below. In
this section, we broach some general questions relating to language use,
language choice, and language attitudes: bilingualism, ideological issues
surrounding language choice, diglossia, and language loyalty.
Bilingualism is a staple subject of sociolinguistics and central to this
project, which deals with a multilingual section of Russian society. We
should therefore consider the term at the outset, referring to the types and
degrees of bilingualism that sociolinguists identify. First, we emphasize
that we are concerned here with bilingualism as a societal and political
question, not with its interest from the neurological, developmental, or
psychological angles, from which it can also be studied.95 Secondly, there is
93 This is the title of a ground-breaking article by Fishman in La Linguistique (1965), 67–88.
94 Gorham, ‘Linguistic Ideologies, Economies, and Technologies’, 168–169.
95 Romaine, Bilingualism, 7–8.

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a distinction to be made between ‘societal’ and ‘individual’ bilingualism.96
In the case of imperial Russia, we are dealing mainly with the phenomenon
of societal bilingualism, insofar as a substantial stratum of the noble estate
aspired to have a command of French, but a bilingual society is of course
made up of bilingual individuals. We therefore need to consider, thirdly,
what constitutes a bilingual individual. In fact, there is a wide spectrum of
bilinguals, including heritage speakers, speakers who acquire their second
language after infancy, and speakers who do not have the same level of
command of all languages in their repertoire. Defining the competence
of these various types of speaker is a thorny issue: how well does a user
need to know a language in order to be described as ‘bilingual’? Functional
bilingualism, it has been pointed out, may be interpreted in a ‘maximalist’
way (users are able to undertake a wide range of activities and have a wide
range of capacities in the two languages) or in a ‘minimalist’ way (they are
‘able to accomplish a restricted set of activities in a second language with
perhaps only a small variety of grammatical rules at [their] disposal and a
limited lexis appropriate to the task in hand’).97
The distinction between maximalist and minimalist def initions of
bilingualism is important for us, because different cultures, as Romaine
reminds us, ‘may embody different notions of what it means to be a competent
member of a particular language community’.98 It is possible that when we
read in our primary sources about the incompetence of members of the
elite in Russian the authors of the sources in question are not telling us that
members of the elite were completely unable to speak Russian. Rather they
mean that individual speakers failed, when using their mother tongue, at
least in certain domains, to meet maximalist criteria which by no means
all speakers whom sociolinguists might now classify as bilingual are able
to satisfy in both the languages they know. We also need to consider what
sort of competence is being measured. Can a user sustain the same level of
linguistic performance across all the functions of reading, writing, listening,
and speaking? Fluency may not be developed equally in all areas, and indeed
it may not be needed at all in some of them.99 In fact, identical competence in
two languages, or ‘symmetrical bilingualism’, is unlikely to occur at societal
level, for, as Romaine explains, any ‘society which produced functionally
96 For in-depth treatment of societal bilingualism, see Hoffmann, Introduction to Bilingualism,
157–174.
97 Beardsmore, Bilingualism, 12–13.
98 Romaine, Bilingualism, 16.
99 Edwards, Multilingualism, 2–3.

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balanced bilinguals who used both languages equally well in all contexts
would soon cease to be bilingual because no society needs two languages for
the same set of functions’.100 Bearing all these points in mind, we use the term
bilingualism in this book to mean functional competence in two languages
that does not demand full native-level fluency or symmetrical command.101
It is pertinent also to mention here sociolinguists’ classification of bilingualism as ‘additive’ or ‘subtractive’: that is to say, the learning of another
language either represents an expansion of the user’s linguistic repertoire,
providing an extra tool without adversely affecting command of the first
language acquired, or it pushes the first language into the background.
Additive bilingualism, John Edwards observes, ‘occurs principally where
both languages continue to be useful and valued; a classic example is found
in the bilingualism of aristocracies and social elites in systems in which
it was considered natural and proper that every educated person know
more than one variety’.102 In many cases, as we shall see, Franco-Russian
bilingualism was ‘additive’, although the negative discourse about it, to
which we have referred, suggests that it tended to be ‘subtractive’, with
knowledge of Russian supposedly fading as a result of the superimposition
of knowledge of French. Finally, the second language, which is added to the
mother tongue, may be described as ‘untutored’ or ‘tutored’, that is to say
it may be acquired through mere contact with users of it or through study,
which in turn may either be motivated by personal interest or prescribed as
an element in an educational curriculum. The French acquired by members
of the Russian nobility was certainly ‘tutored’ (hence the prominence we
give in this study to educational matters).
It is also important that we take a sceptical view of some of the opinions
voiced about the effects of bilingualism, such as the belief that it inevitably
has a subtractive effect, whether these opinions be expressed by members
of the bilingual society in question or by the authors of subsequent studies
of it. After all, different communities are prone to evaluate the effects of
bilingualism quite differently on a spectrum ranging from beneficial to
pernicious. The positive effects sometimes attributed to bilingualism have
included cognitive benefits such as mental flexibility, superiority in concept
formation, and more diversified mental abilities, as well as the social or
even artistic benefit of enhanced sensitivity to other cultures and points
100 Romaine, Bilingualism, 19.
101 For a short discussion of what constitutes bilingualism, see also Myers-Scotton, Multiple
Voices, 38–40.
102 Edwards, Multilingualism, 59.

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of view.103 On the other hand, numerous negative effects have also been
attributed to it. Bilinguals learn neither language as well as they might, it
has been claimed. The mental effort devoted to learning a second language
is supposedly diverted from other important learning tasks. Bilingual
children, it has been asserted, are more prone than monolingual children
to stutter.104 At the societal level with which we are concerned in this work,
bilingualism has come under scrutiny for supposedly orienting speakers
unduly towards a foreign culture and obscuring their true, innate nature.
Forgetting or neglecting one’s native language skills, it would frequently be
alleged in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia, was tantamount to
jeopardizing Russia’s chances of freeing itself from western influence and
blazing a unique trail of its own. Equally, bilingualism may seem to pose
a threat to a dominant group: it can be perceived not only as weakening
identity but also as legitimating ‘an alternative point of view to the mainstream by sanctioning the use of another language and by implication the
cultural values it symbolizes’.105 What has had particular resonance in the
Russian context and scholarship on it is the common suspicion, to which
we referred earlier, that bilingualism produces split personalities. This is a
suspicion which Paul Theroux fans when he presents bilingualism as a sort of
disease: being bilingual, he claims apropos of Anglo-Welsh bilinguals (albeit
frivolously, one hopes), is ‘often a form of schizophrenia, allowing a person
to hold two contradictory opinions in his head at once, because his opinions
remain untranslated’.106 A more cosmic prejudice against multilingualism,
Romaine has pointed out, is embedded in the Christian foundation myth
in the story of Babel in Genesis, according to which linguistic diversity is a
divine punishment.107 Here, however, we take the view expressed by Edwards
that multilingualism, pace those who are wary of it, ‘is not the aberration
supposed by many (particularly, perhaps, by people in Europe and North
America who speak a “big” language)’; it is, rather, a normal condition and
an ‘unremarkable necessity for the majority in the world today’.108
103 Romaine, Bilingualism, 112, 114; see especially Chapter 6 (241–287), on bilingualism as
a positive or negative force in cognitive, social, or academic development. See also Valian,
‘Bilingualism and Cognition’.
104 Research over the past 50 years, far from bearing out warnings about the dire consequences
of bilingualism for children’s cognitive development, has revealed its positive developmental
effects: see Bialystok, ‘The Impact of Bilingualism on Cognition’.
105 Romaine, Bilingualism, 251.
106 Paul Theroux in The Kingdom by the Sea, quoted by Edwards, Multilingualism, 225.
107 Romaine, Bilingualism, 321, referring to Genesis, 11:1–9.
108 Edwards, Multilingualism, 1. We see no reason to modify this view some twenty years after
Edwards expressed it.

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Opinions about bilingualism, then, express certain linguistic ideologies,
by which we mean ‘cultural conceptions of the nature, form and purpose of
language, and of communicative behaviour as an enactment of a collective
order’.109 Here it is helpful to call to mind Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the
linguistic market-place, where different ways of speaking have different
values. In a multilingual market-place the choice of language depends on
what value a language has in a certain context, and those who lack the
legitimate competence are excluded where it is required. This value is
ascribed to the different languages available on the basis of notions that
have been constructed about what the languages are like and what they are
suitable for rather than on the basis of any inherent features in them.110 And
yet, language choice does have real social consequences, notional though
the perceptions of the worth of a language might be, and speakers must
adhere to the rules prescribed by cultural convention if they wish to gain
cultural capital through their language use.
When two or more languages coexist in a speech community, one language is likely to be considered more adequate or appropriate than others
for certain purposes or in certain situations. We must accordingly keep in
mind the concept of diglossia, which describes this state of affairs. Charles
Ferguson wrote a much-cited article on this subject, with the Arab-speaking
world in particular in mind,111 and it has attracted more recent scholarly
attention.112 Franco-Russian bilingualism, however, cannot easily be classified as diglossia as Ferguson defines it, that is to say as
a relatively stable language situation in which, in addition to the primary dialects of the language (which may include a standard or regional
standards), there is a very divergent, highly codified (often grammatically
more complex) superposed variety, the vehicle of a large and respected
body of written literature, either of an earlier period or in another speech
community, which is learned largely by formal education and is used for
most written and formal spoken purposes but is not used by any sector
of the community for ordinary conversation.113
109 Gal and Woolard, ‘Constructing Languages and Publics’, 130.
110 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 55, 57, 107.
111 Ferguson, ‘Diglossia’.
112 For brief introductions to diglossia, see relevant sections in the works by Edwards (2009)
and Coulmas (2013) that are cited in our bibliography. Hudson (1992) provides a bibliographical
review of the subject that is still useful. For a fairly up-to-date account of the debate on Ferguson’s
work, see Snow (2013).
113 Ferguson, ‘Diglossia’, 336 (the passage quoted is in italics in the original).

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We might more readily describe the Russian situation as diglossic if we
accepted the classification of Fishman, who is inclined to regard bilingualism as individual and diglossia as societal and who considers societal
normification of bilingualism as ‘the hallmark of diglossia’.114 However, we
do not think our findings bear out a view of imperial Russia as a clearly
diglossic society even in Fishman’s terms, partly because the conventions
determining language choice do not seem to have been as rigid as is often
suggested. At least, they were not inflexible in the male sphere: our evidence
suggests that breaches of linguistic etiquette by noblewomen – for example,
in using Russian to men to whom they were not married – may have been
more strongly discouraged.115
We allude, finally, to the notion of language loyalty, which may come into
play when more than one language is available in a speech community. Uriel
Weinreich, in his classic study of languages in contact, likens the relationship between language and language loyalty to the relationship between
nationality and nationalism, which we discussed in the previous section.
A language, like a nationality, may be thought of as a set of behavior
norms; language loyalty, like nationalism, would designate the state of
mind in which the language (like the nationality), as an intact entity,
and in contrast to other languages, assumes a high position in a scale of
values, a position in need of being ‘defended’.116

The defence of which Weinreich speaks may be conducted with the aid of
various mechanisms, which are also much studied by sociolinguists and
which we shall find in abundance in the Russian case. These mechanisms
include heightened interest in standardization, eulogies to the language
being defended (often bolstered by an assumption which sociolinguists
generally reject, namely that languages have inherent qualities or defects),
linguistic purism (reflected, for example, in complaints about pollution
of a language by loanwords or other foreign elements), and ridicule of
code-switching (that is to say, alternation between languages or varieties
within a single utterance or text). For sociolinguists, these mechanisms
‘are phenomena of major importance requiring systematic treatment’.117
114 Fishman, Sociolinguistics, 81–83, 88.
115 On differences between male and female usage, and also for a survey of the literature on
diglossia, see Dmitrieva and Argent, ‘The Coexistence of Russian and French in Russia’.
116 Weinreich, Languages in Contact, 99.
117 Ibidem.

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Furthermore, we must bear in mind that these mechanisms are connected
to questions of power, because
language choice and attitudes are inseparable from political arrangements, relations of power, language ideologies, and interlocutors’ views of
their own and others’ identities. Ongoing social, economic, and political
changes affect these constellations, modifying identity options offered to
individuals at a given moment in history and ideologies that legitimize
and value particular identities more than others.118

In studying such phenomena, mechanisms, and connections, we recognize
that language choice and attitudes to languages and their functions are
intertwined and that language ideologies themselves are linked to other
ideologies which have currency at any given time.119

Methodological considerations
As is evident from preceding sections of this introduction, our examination of
the history of the French language in Russia is interdisciplinary, falling both
in the field of historical scholarship and in the field of sociolinguistics. We
need now to consider to what extent the approaches of these two disciplines
are compatible and can be combined within a single study. In the process,
we shall touch upon a few other methodological questions.
It may no longer be true that the history of language is usually kept
rigidly apart from conventional political, economic, and social history, as
Seton-Watson complained it was in the 1970s.120 Many historians have taken
a keen interest in the social or political history of language over the last forty
years.121 Indeed, a relatively new discipline, historical sociolinguistics, has
emerged, which benefits from an inherently multidisciplinary approach.122
However, it probably remains the case that historians, when they touch upon
118 Pavlenko and Blackledge, ‘Introduction’, 1–2.
119 Ricento, Ideologies, Politics and Language Policies, 4.
120 Seton-Watson, Nations and States, 11.
121 See especially the pioneering works written or edited by Burke and Porter (1987, 1991, and
1995), Corf ield (1991), Robert Evans (1998), and Burke (2004). Language has also necessarily
featured in the writings of various students of nationalism, including Seton-Watson (1977),
Anderson (first published in 1983), Barbour and Carmichael (2000), and Kamusella (2009).
122 On the problems and opportunities presented by this discipline, see Steffan Davies et al.,
‘Language and History, Linguistics and Historiography’.

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linguistic matters, do not routinely draw on sociolinguistic literature which
could provide a firm framework for the study of the history of language as
a social, political, and cultural phenomenon. They may find themselves in
difficulty as a result of this omission, or may for other reasons speak loosely
about linguistic matters.123
Historians, admittedly, cannot conduct their research in the same
way as sociolinguists who deal with contemporary usage and who take a
synchronic approach rather than the diachronic approach that historians
tend to prefer. After all, sociolinguists are able to devise their own tools,
such as questionnaires and recorded interviews, which by their nature are
unavailable to historians (and to historical sociolinguists as well, come
to that), in order to elicit answers to the questions they pose. They can
collect copious, firm, factual data of the sort prized by social scientists.
That is not to say, of course, that statistical information is unavailable
to historians and historical sociolinguists, or that it cannot be compiled.
We use some information of this sort in this study in order to illuminate
certain areas of the history of French in Russia. We draw, for instance, on
figures compiled by Vladislav Rjéoutski on the numbers of pupils studying
foreign languages in the Noble Land Cadet Corps and on the quantity of
articles in different languages in publications of the St Petersburg Academy
of Sciences. It is also possible to gain some idea of the number of books in
123 The sort of weakness in treatment of linguistic subject-matter in historical writing that we
have in mind is exemplified in a description by Figes of the undeveloped state of the Russian
literary language up until some not very clearly specified moment in the early nineteenth century.
According to Figes’s account, eighteenth-century Russian had ‘no set grammar’ (this statement
overlooks the work of eighteenth-century grammarians, including Lomonosov) and ‘no clear
definition of many abstract words’ (although by 1794 a six-volume dictionary produced under the
aegis of the Russian Academy had begun to address the need for lexical codification). Written
Russian was ‘a bookish and obscure language’ (students of the poetry of Lomonosov, the drama
of Fonvizin, or the prose fiction of Karamzin may disagree!). The ‘spoken idiom of high society’
was ‘basically French’ (our italics; it is not clear what is meant by ‘basically’ here). There were
‘no terms in Russian for the sort of thoughts and feelings that constitute the writer’s lexicon’.
(Were there really no such terms? For an explanation of how a part of this lexicon was created
in Russian from the end of the seventeenth century onwards, see Zhivov, ‘Love à la mode’.) No
basic literary concepts ‘could be expressed without the use of French.’ (What is meant by ‘the
use of French’? If Figes means French loanwords were introduced, then it might be pointed out
that lexical borrowing is a commonplace linguistic phenomenon, that a loanword itself becomes
a part of the language that borrows it, that Russian borrowed words from other languages too,
and that the practice of calquing was much used in addition to direct borrowing.) ‘[V]irtually
the whole material culture of society had been imported from the West’, and consequently there
were ‘no Russian words for basic things’ such as articles of western clothing. (In fact, there were
words for these things: many of them were loanwords, like the English words ‘samovar’ and
‘sputnik’, and ‘intelligentsia’ come to that.) See Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 50.

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various languages that were published in Russia over particular periods
and of the numbers of readers who subscribed to particular periodicals
there. Nonetheless, historians and sociolinguists do not have access to
so much reliable quantitative information as sociolinguists who work on
present-day practice. As they must make do with ‘imperfect data’,124 they
cannot precisely define the number or calculate the proportion of nobles
in imperial Russia who used French in the drawing-room or the nursery,
or determine what proportion of their utterances were in one language
or another. They are bound to fall back on the more impressionistic data
provided by such sources as memoirs and travellers’ accounts, making due
allowance in each case for the more or less transparent intent or prejudices
of the author of the source in question.
It is very important also to note that whereas sociolinguists investigating contemporary usage are able to produce an accurate description of
spoken language and measure competence in it, historians and historical sociolinguists are at a disadvantage in this regard. Using the limited
number of documents that have fortuitously survived, they can evaluate
Russians’ written competence in French, provided that they can be sure that
a document was produced without the aid of a native speaker of French.
For information on oral usage and competence, on the other hand, they
are dependent on the opinions of observers of the sort mentioned above,
for we cannot take written language as an accurate reflection of spoken
language. Those opinions, moreover, may be highly subjective and amount
only to hearsay. Nor do we know, as a rule, on what criteria or how much
evidence observers based their judgements. In some cases, observers may
not have been well qualified to evaluate Russian linguistic achievement in
languages that were foreign to both parties.
Thus, for reasons which relate to the methodology that can be used and
the types of evidence that are available for the study of historical phenomena,
some subjects that are commonly examined by sociolinguists who are
interested in contemporary usage are distinctly unpromising from the
perspective of historians, if not altogether impossible for them to investigate.
Such subjects – to give examples only from the particular sociolinguistic
field, plurilingualism,125 which is of greatest interest to us in this study
– include the cognitive consequences of bilingualism, evaluation of the
124 Joseph, ‘Historical Linguistics and Sociolinguistics’, 70.
125 Although the term ‘plurilingualism’ is often used as a synonym of ‘multilingualism’, it seems
to us to have a use to denote competence in more than one language but not necessarily in as
many as the term ‘multilingualism’ might imply.

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positive or negative effects of bilingual education, and measurement of
individuals’ relative oral competence in different languages. All the same,
historians and sociolinguists do have much in common. Social, political, and
cultural historians, when they examine communities where some degree of
plurilingualism can be observed, may benefit just as much as sociolinguists
if they keep in mind Fishman’s question about the functions of different
languages and the circumstances in which choices about language use are
made. Staple concepts used by sociolinguists (for instance, bilingualism,
diglossia, language consciousness, purism, and code-switching, to list only
those we have already mentioned) can help historians to organize their
discussion of texts in this or that language or in a mixture of languages.
Historians and sociolinguists may find it equally illuminating to study the
provision made for foreign-language teaching in a country’s educational
system and the timing and nature of a pupil’s exposure to a second language.
They share an interest in relations between classes and between men and
women. The work of both types of scholar may bear on the real or perceived
social, intellectual, and psychological consequences of bilingualism, be
they positive or negative, such as individuals’ increased social influence,
greater access to wealth and power, and enlarged cultural horizons, on the
one hand, and social exclusion, sense of grievance, cultural disorientation,
anomie, and conflicting loyalties, on the other. Within their respective
disciplines, historians and sociolinguists examine phenomena, such as
nationalism and language loyalty, which may turn out to be analogous. In
any case, language use and language choice, we emphasize, are inseparable
from the social and cultural processes in which historians are interested.
Linguistic elements, Viktor Zhivov has argued, exist in the consciousness
of speakers and writers ‘not as abstract means of communication but as
indicators of social and cultural positions’.126
When we consider the social or cultural implications of language use and
language choice, as opposed to the purely practical imperative of finding a
medium in which one’s utterances can be understood, it is useful, finally,
to bear in mind Mikhail Bakhtin’s reflections on speech genres. In an essay
published in the 1970s, before the discipline of sociolinguistics had developed
very far, Bakhtin held it against specialists in linguistics that they reduced
the active role of the other in speech communication to a minimum.127 In
fact, Bakhtin argued in a spirit quite in harmony with the sociolinguist’s
concern to relate language use to a social or cultural context, any concrete
126 Zhivov, Language and Culture, 4; see also 7.
127 Bakhtin, ‘The Problem of Speech Genres’, 70.

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utterance should be seen as ‘a link in the chain of speech communication
of a particular sphere’. Utterances, he maintained,
are not indifferent to one another, and are not self-sufficient; they are
aware of and mutually reflect one another […] However monological the
utterance may be (for example, a scientific or philosophical treatise),
however much it may concentrate on its own object, it cannot but be,
in some measure, a response to what has already been said about the
given topic […] The utterance is filled with dialogic overtones […] After
all, our thought itself – philosophical, scientific, and artistic – is born and
shaped in the process of interaction and struggle with others’ thought […]
The speaker is not the biblical Adam, dealing only with virgin and still
unnamed objects, giving them names for the first time […].128

Being part of a dialogue, each utterance possesses a quality which Bakhtin
classified as ‘addressivity’. That is to say, it is inevitably directed, if only
implicitly, at some actual or imagined reader or listener.
Bakhtin was not concerned, in the essay to which we have referred,
with language choice, and the principal subject-matter of his writings as a
whole was literature rather than social life. Nevertheless, his remarks on
the inter-relatedness of utterances, past, present, and future, in a particular
sphere and on speakers’ or writers’ conception of their addressee also have
a bearing on our discussion of Russian plurilingualism and plurilinguals’
language choice. For one thing, what is said or written in French reverberates in a lasting way both in the cultural and intellectual content of
Russian discourse and in linguistic borrowing, especially in lexical and
phraseological loans. Bakhtin’s remarks are also of obvious applicability
when it comes to the choice of French as the conventional vehicle for certain
types of written expression, such as noble correspondence and amateur
personal documents, including the diary and the récit de voyage (travel
account), or as the vehicle of choice for international debates. What he
has to say about the linguistic manifestations of class consciousness and
social differentiation is apposite for our discussion of the role of French in
the construction of noble social identity, especially since Bakhtin himself
underlines the particular applicability of his notion of the ‘concept of the
speech addressee’ to a society dominated by an aristocracy. Lastly, we
shall come across instances where the use of French quite clearly implies
a conception of the addressee on the part of the author of the utterance, or
128 Ibidem, 91–93; italics in the original.

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The French L anguage in Russia

at least places on the addressee an imagined obligation to respond to the
author in a certain way.129
We argue, then, that social, political, and cultural historians and theorists,
on the one hand, and sociolinguists, on the other, have many overlapping
interests. Sociolinguists, to be sure, are able to use certain tools and methods
favoured in the social sciences that are unavailable to historians, or that
can be deployed by historians only to a limited extent. Nonetheless, there
are enough theories, findings, and insights that are relevant on both sides
of the disciplinary boundary for us to be able to integrate subject-matter
and themes in a single work that straddles this boundary. The sub-title
of our work implies that our findings may be couched primarily in the
terms of historical studies rather than sociolinguistics, if indeed such a
distinction needs to be made. And yet, any study of language as a dimension
of social, political, cultural, or intellectual history must, we believe, pay
attention to the categories and debates of sociolinguists, and, if it does, then
it may also claim a place within the now developing sub-field of historical
sociolinguistics.

Literature as a primary source
We have already commented on the need to bear in mind the obvious fact
that whenever we examine language use in a speech community that existed
in a period beyond living memory we are entirely reliant on written sources.
However, we need also to remember that the written language itself – which
is not to be taken as a mere record of spoken language, incidentally, but
as a medium with its own independent existence130 – has many varieties.
One broad variety is used for largely practical purposes (for example, in
administrative documents or diplomatic correspondence131). Another has
literary purposes. It is shaped by aesthetic considerations and is perpetuated by texts which have become canonical and create collective memory,
national narrative, myth, and tradition. Between these two extremes there
is a whole intermediate band of types of text which may no longer be felt
to belong to the category of belles-lettres but did to some extent fulfil an
artistic function in the period, or part of the period, with which we are
129 See, e.g., our discussion of a letter by Andrei Rostopchin in the third section of Chapter 4
below.
130 Romaine, Socio-Historical Linguistics, 14–15.
131 We focus on such texts in Chapter 5 below, on the use of French in the diplomatic world.

Introduc tion

73

concerned. Private correspondence was a significant element in this band:
the common noble habit of writing drafts before sending a letter to its
addressee attests to the partly aesthetic function of some texts which were
neither of a wholly practical nor an exclusively literary nature. Written
sources of these various types may not have equal value as evidence for
both threads of our investigation, that is to say, for our account of language
use, on the one hand, and language attitudes, on the other.
For our account of language use, it may be prudent, on the whole, to
attach more weight to documents which exemplify it than to documents
which purport to describe it. There is, after all, an enormous corpus of extant
sources written by subjects of the Russian Empire in French. The corpus
includes a wide range of documents of the more practical kind, such as
teaching materials, library catalogues, and police reports, besides diplomatic
materials. It also includes literary works and many types of writing that
are in the intermediate zone between the non-literary and the literary to
which we have referred, especially various forms of ego-writing, such as
the personal diary and the récit de voyage.132 It also contains a prodigious
quantity of personal correspondence. This is a particularly valuable source
for the study of usage, for several reasons. Either French or Russian may
be found in individual letters, or some combination of the two languages,
depending on who is writing to whom, the nature of the relationship between
writer and addressee, the context, and the type of subject discussed. The
range of possible topics is very wide, from conventional social situations, the
character of acquaintances, and the health of friends or relations to political
questions and practical matters such as estate management. So too is the
range of relationships between correspondents, who could be members of
the same family, friends, colleagues, equals in social rank, or superiors and
inferiors, and so forth. Private letters may therefore provide insight into the
factors governing language choice and code-switching, differences within
individual families and between generations, and differences between the
linguistic habits of men and women. As documents that were not written
for publication, they also have the merit that their authors were likely to be
writing in a relatively spontaneous and unguarded way (although account
also needs to be taken of the constraints dictated by epistolary etiquette).
When we come to sources which are of a literary or semi-literary nature
and which were written in Russian,133 then we shall need to bear in mind
132 We deal with Russian texts of these sorts in Chapter 6.
133 i.e. the sort of sources discussed in Chapters 8 and 9 below in which Russians debated their
use of French and its effects.

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The French L anguage in Russia

that discussion of language use in them is coloured by language attitudes. We
do not at all mean by this to say that we shall find no valuable information
on Russians’ use of French in documents of this kind, especially in such
non-fictional texts as memoirs and diaries. While some such texts make only
occasional reference to language use, others (for example, the memoirs of
Filipp Vigel’,134 which cover the period from Vigel’’s childhood in the 1790s to
his retirement from government service in 1840) contain numerous passages
describing and shrewdly commenting on it. Again, the voluminous diary of
Petr Valuev, who occupied major ministerial posts in the 1860s and 1870s,
continuously exemplifies the practice of code-switching.135 Nevertheless,
we do need to remember that such texts, as examples of self-conscious
ego-writing produced for posterity, are a form of self-presentation and selfjustification and are therefore likely to reflect personal biases and prejudices.
However, it is when we use Russian literature (by which we mean here, for
instance, satirical articles, drama, and prose fiction) that we have to consider
most carefully how reliable this source can be as evidence of social, cultural,
or linguistic practice. Literary products of these kinds are highly crafted
forms of writing, in which the narrator is not necessarily to be identified with
the author and in which – especially in the nineteenth century – elaborate
frames were often constructed around narratives, so that readers may have
to decide whose words in the text should be considered most authoritative.
Furthermore, we cannot be sure that the words placed by writers in the
mouths of f ictional characters approximate to actual linguistic usage:
writers might invent or exaggerate certain linguistic habits, such as the
use of loanwords and code-switching, if it suits their artistic or polemical
purpose. At the very least, we need to explore the context in which a literary
text was produced, in order to satisfy ourselves that we have understood its
author’s position in a contemporary debate. These qualifications about the
value of literary sources as evidence of language use are important, because
the critical narrative about Russian francophonie to which we have referred
unfolds chiefly in sources of this sort, from plays by Aleksandr Sumarokov
and Denis Fonvizin in the mid-eighteenth century to novels by Lev Tolstoi
and Fedor Dostoevskii in the late nineteenth.136
134 Vigel’, Zapiski. Vigel’’s memoirs were first published posthumously in the 1860s.
135 Valuev, Dnevnik P.A. Valueva.
136 We should add that literary texts can represent reality only within the limits within which
authors are permitted to write for public consumption in a particular state. It was considerably
easier under the conditions of censorship that obtained in the Russia of Nicholas I, for example,
to explore in depth the cultural tensions and personal foibles to which the westernization of
the elite gave rise than it was to analyze the social, economic, and moral effects of serfdom.

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75

The point we have just made needs to be underlined, moreover, because
many commentators, while approaching their subject from quite different
theoretical angles, have treated literary sources as if they faithfully reflected
reality. Readings of literary texts as social commentary were commonplace
in Soviet scholarship. Thus the doyen of Soviet dix-huitiémistes, Georgii
Makogonenko, interpreted Fonvizin’s play The Brigadier, an early example of
satirical treatment of Russian Gallomania and francophonie, as an ‘unmasking’ of the ‘parasitic life’ of the Russian nobility.137 Likewise, Kirill Pigarev
asserted that when Fonvizin denounced ‘gentry cosmopolitanism and
servility towards things foreign’ he was stigmatizing an ‘everyday social
phenomenon that had become typical of the gentry class’.138 Some western
and post-Soviet scholars, for all their differences with Soviet scholars, have
used literary texts in a similar way. David Welsh, for instance, sees a straightforward connection between drama and cultural reality when he asserts that
Gallomania of the sort Fonvizin was mocking ‘was so widespread in Russia
that there is hardly a comedy between 1765 and 1823 which does not contain
satirical references to it’.139 Much more recently, Alexander Etkind has relied
on Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and Tolstoi’s War and Peace as the sole basis
for sweeping assertions about language use in nineteenth-century Russia:
that the Russian of ladies of high society was typically ‘worse than’ their
French, that ‘French was the language of women and family life’, and that
‘Russian was the language of men, of the military service and the household
economy’.140 Lotman, while approaching the literary text from a point of
view different from that adopted by scholars who observed the pieties of
Marxism-Leninism, also treated literary characters as illustrations of ‘real
norms of behaviour’, facts of Russian life predating the texts in which they
are situated and living beyond those texts. The boundary between the text
and the ‘extratextual empirical reality’ which the semiotician wishes to
reconstruct (and which is itself perceived as a text that must be decoded)
may therefore seem blurred in his scholarship too.141
137 Makogonenko, Denis Fonvizin, 142. Quoted by Hamburg, Russia’s Path toward Enlightenment,
439.
138 Pigarev, Tvorchestvo Fonvizina, 94.
139 Welsh, Russian Comedy, 49. See also May Smith, The Influence of French on Eighteenth-Century
Literary Russian, 377.
140 Etkind, Internal Colonization, 16. Some of the shortcomings of comment on linguistic matters
that we have already mentioned are again apparent here. It is not clear, for example, whether we
are dealing with the spoken or written form of language or what it means to say that someone’s
Russian was ‘worse’ than their French. If French was the ‘language of family life’, moreover, then
it was presumably the language of men as well as women.
141 ‘Authors’ Introduction’, in SRC, x; Lotman, ‘Gogol’s Chlestakov’, ibidem, 178.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Our practice in this book will be to take due account of the type of text
with which we are dealing in any particular instance, the circumstances in
which the text was written, the attitudes that authors probably had towards
their material, and the aims they may have had when they wrote the work
in question. Awareness of such factors helps us to understand how social
reality is refracted in a text. In the case of literary texts, we ought also to
take account of their sheer literariness and their relationship with other
texts, a relationship in which Russian Formalists such as Boris Eikhenbaum
and Viktor Shklovskii took great interest. We should then be alert to the
fact that an abundance of references in a literary text to phenomena such as
Gallomania, Gallicized speech, and language-mixing does not necessarily
prove that those phenomena were ubiquitous in society. Such references
might equally show that ridicule of French-speaking and French fashion
was a common topos in European literature from the seventeenth to the
nineteenth centuries.142 We thus concur with the more cautious view of the
relationship between art and reality that is taken by Figes at certain points
in his history, as when, for example, he counsels against treatment of art as
‘a window on to life’ or ‘a literal record of experience’.143
In sum, we do not dispute that classical Russian literature is an extremely
valuable source for our study of the history of French in Russia. The reflections of the literary elite on language use, as our final chapter will
show, are woven into this literature and have become part of the larger,
authoritative narratives about national culture and destiny that Russian
writers of the golden age created. At the same time, we may have to accept
that the evidence with which this corpus of literary sources furnishes us
is more useful for our account of language attitudes than for our enquiry
into linguistic, social, and cultural practice.144 We shall certainly need to
contextualize literary sources, viewing them against an ample social and
cultural background and historical circumstances at the time when they
were written. Broadly speaking, the perceptions about language use that
142 We discuss this subject in more detail in the section on comic drama in Chapter 8.
143 Figes, Natasha’s Dance, xxvi, 104; see also 101, where Figes rightly points out that we cannot
take Tolstoi’s observations in War and Peace as ‘an accurate reflection of reality’, however much
the novel ‘might approach that realist ideal’.
144 Language use is not the only subject of study in which it is dangerous to attach too much
credence to literary evidence. As Priscilla Roosevelt has suggested, social and cultural historians
have also been unduly influenced by the powerful negative stereotypes established by literary
portrayals of ‘the hedonistic, cruel, or improvident aristocrat, the ignorant, coarse, or helpless
smallholder, or the “superfluous man”, as Russian intellectuals dubbed the many eccentric or
aimless nobles to be found in the provinces’ (Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate, xv).

77

Introduc tion

found expression in mid-nineteenth-century Russian literature reflected
the development of an essentialist view of language as an attribute of ethnic
and national identity and the passing of cultural authority in Russia from
courtiers and nobles of cosmopolitan outlook to a literary community and
intelligentsia affected by the rising cultural nationalism we have mentioned.
*
We have tried in this introduction to describe some of the features of the
negative discourse about the use of French by the Russian nobility that
has come down to us through major works of Russian literature and some
scholarship on Russian culture. We have associated the predominantly
negative treatment of Russian francophonie with a highly influential contrastive conception of Russian national identity. According to this classic
paradigm, Russia is defined in opposition to ‘the West’. A corollary of it
is the assumption that imperial Russia itself was internally divided into
a westernized elite and a mass that cleaved to different, native values.
We have also considered the relevance of certain political ideas, notably
conceptions of empire and nation, to our enquiry. In particular, we have
drawn attention to the effect of the growth of national consciousness and
cultural nationalism on language choice and perceptions of language use
at certain historical junctures. It has been our aim to set the scene for a
nuanced picture of the use of French in imperial Russia that will look beyond
received wisdom and generalizations which conform to social and national
stereotypes. Our next step will be to outline in more detail the historical
background against which we believe this picture should be seen.

Chapter 1
The historical contexts of Russian francophonie
The spread of French in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Europe
In the course of the eighteenth century, the Russian nobility was transformed, as we shall see in later sections of this chapter, from an unrefined
service class, whose slavish deference to the autocrat had frequently
been scorned by western visitors to Muscovy, into a class whose upper
stratum, at least, was a culturally sophisticated, self-respecting corporation
with numerous contacts and aff inities with western peers. 1 While this
transformation was taking place, it was France that happened to provide
the most widely admired models for Europe’s royal courts, aristocratic
society, and literary and learned communities. Naturally, the French
language was the principal vehicle for these models on foreign soil. The
spread of French across Europe and its function in the dissemination
of elite French culture (we use the term ‘culture’ in a broad sense) were
described long ago by Ferdinand Brunot in his massive History of the
French Language.2 More recently, Marc Fumaroli has paid nostalgic tribute
to the French language and the cultural achievement associated with
it up until the French Revolution of 1789.3 Here, as background to our
survey of the historical contexts in which French was adopted in Russia
and subsequently used there, we shall draw attention to the factors that
signif icantly contributed to the spread of French language and culture
across Europe from the grand siècle, the age of Louis XIV, whose personal
rule lasted from 1661 to his death in 1715. 4
First, French was associated in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Europe with a way of life unrivalled on the continent at that time in its
1 We emphasize that we are not speaking here of the whole of the nobility, a considerable
proportion of which was still illiterate in the reign of Catherine II. On gradations within the
noble estate, see the fourth section of this chapter.
2 Brunot, Histoire de la langue française dès origines à 1900.
3 Fumaroli, Quand l’Europe parlait français. The book has been translated into English with
the insensitively Eurocentric title When the World Spoke French. Our quotations from this work
below are from the English edition.
4 We draw in this section on work of our own and the work of other scholars that has been
published in Rjéoutski et al. (eds), European Francophonie.

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The French L anguage in Russia

refinement, gaiety, good taste (bon goût), and comfort (douceur de vivre). This
way of life was cultivated at the sumptuous court of Louis XIV at Versailles
and more generally by the aristocracy of France under the ancien régime.
It was associated above all with Paris, the city par excellence in the postRenaissance, pre-industrial age in which francophonie flourished and the
place where the knowledge, skills, and resources required to sustain the new
refinement were concentrated. Indeed, the art of living well (l’art de vivre)
was distinguished by urbanity, in the literal sense of ‘urban life’ as well as
in the sense of courtesy or politeness (politesse).5 Fumaroli eloquently lists
the numerous threads in the great web of factors which in large measure
account for the simultaneous pre-eminence of the French monarchy and
Paris and the relative ‘universality’ of the French language in Europe until
the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789:
the authority and intelligence of an excellent diplomatic network, the
quality of the translations of every important European book published in
French in Paris, Amsterdam, and London, the prestige of the etiquette of
the premier court in the known world, the authority of the royal academies
and of the Salon of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture; but also, in
Paris, the attraction of the great sales of artworks and the quality of
their experts, the magnetism exerted throughout the world by an urban
aristocracy that had raised the leisures of private life to the rank of a fine
art of living, served by artists from the first master of the hunt to the
last kennel keeper, from the chef to the gardener, from the dressmaker
to the jeweler, from the wigmaker to the perfumer, from the painter to
the architect, from the poet of light verse to the philosopher – director
of conscience and leader of thought – from the ballerina to the great
actor, from the playwright to the novelist, from the tutor to the lady’s
companion, not to mention the gaiety of fairs, festivals, and the daily
life of the streets of Paris, the charm and good manners of its actresses
and grisettes.6

Crucial to the new refinement were eloquence and the art of conversation. Louis-Antoine Caraccioli, a Frenchman descended from a branch
of a Neapolitan family, who in the 1770s recorded the enthusiasm of the
seventeenth-century European elite for French culture, congratulated
himself and his peers on the new-found verbal facility they had acquired
5
6

We are indebted to Anthony Lodge for this point.
Fumaroli, When the World Spoke French, xxvi.

The historical contex ts of Russian fr ancophonie

81

from the French source, resorting in the process to crude stereotyping of a
kind that we shall repeatedly encounter:
The world has been seduced by the way people talk in France. It is amenity
itself speaking, candor itself that laughs, what is agreeable mingles with
what is useful, what is news with what is unspeakable, and conversation moves from one subject to the next as imperceptibly as the most
delicate nuances, among the tenderest colors happily blended. […] An
Englishman never used to have any subject but that which concerned his
government; an Italian talked only about music; a Dutchman only about
his commercial interests; a Swiss gentleman only about his country; a
Pole about his freedom; an Austrian about his lineage. Now there is a
unison of voices for the ways of conversation. We speak of everything,
and we speak well.7

The style of life adopted by the French court and nobility and the aura
emanating from Versailles and Paris go a long way to explaining why French
was spoken at the courts of eighteenth-century rulers such as Frederick II
of Prussia (reigned 1740–1786), Joseph II of Austria (Holy Roman Emperor,
1765–1790), Gustav III of Sweden (1771–1792), and the grand dukes of Parma,8
as well as Catherine II of Russia. Meanwhile, Paris provided definitive
models of sociability, such as the academy, the salon, and the theatre, for
other national hubs of Francophone society and culture, such as Berlin,
Stockholm, Turin, Vienna, and – in Russia – St Petersburg. Thus, French
elite culture and its lingua franca tended to erase national distinctions
while underscoring social division. France’s representatives, of course, were
delighted by the ubiquity of French in polite society. ‘I’m in France here’,
Voltaire wrote to one of his correspondents in 1750 from Prussia, where
Frederick had recently ordered the Berlin Academy of Sciences to start
using French in place of Latin. ‘People speak only our language. German is
for soldiers and horses; you only need it for the road.’9
However, l’art de vivre and douceur de vivre cannot easily be separated from
a second factor which assured the prestige of French in eighteenth-century
Europe, namely the originality, range, and importance of the corpus of
7 Ibidem, 360–361, quoted from Caraccioli, L’Europe française.
8 On language use in this Italian duchy, see Minerva, ‘The Two Latin Sisters’, 137–139.
9 Voltaire to the Marquis de Thibouville, 24 October 1750, in Voltaire, Les œuvres complètes de
Voltaire, ed. by Théodore Besterman, vol. 95, 375. On the development of court and aristocratic
social life in Russia and the use of French in it, see especially Chapters 3 and 4 below.

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The French L anguage in Russia

literature written in that language.10 By the end of the grand siècle, this corpus
included Descartes’s Discourse on Method, Pascal’s Thoughts, the tragedies
of Corneille and Racine, Molière’s comedies, the fables of La Fontaine, the
maxims of La Rochefoucauld, the Characters of the moralist La Bruyère, the
letters of Mme de Sévigné, Bossuet’s sermons and funeral orations, Boileau’s
satires and Poetic Art, and Fénelon’s Telemachus. To this legacy, French
writers of the Enlightenment, the siècle des Lumières, added a rich stock
of social, political, historical, and moral literature, as well as further plays.
Montesquieu’s Persian Letters and On the Spirit of the Laws, Voltaire’s Henriad,
his History of Charles XII, Letters on the English, and Candide, Rousseau’s
New Héloïse, The Social Contract, Émile, and Confessions, the Encyclopaedia
of Diderot and d’Alembert: these and many other eighteenth-century works
written in French circulated throughout the continent, from Prussia and
Sweden to Italy and the Romanian Lands (Illustration 1).
Knowledge of the literature of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
France, as well as elegance and refined manners, embellished court life;
indeed it was essential if monarchs’ claims to be enlightened were to seem
plausible. Thus, Catherine II, who (ostentatiously) played the role of enlightened monarch with accomplishment,11 drew extensively on Montesquieu’s
Spirit of the Laws in the Instruction (Nakaz) that she wrote for deputies to
the Legislative Commission she convoked in 1767. She corresponded with
Voltaire and in 1773–1774 conversed in person with Diderot, whom she had
invited to St Petersburg. And yet, members of the ‘Republic of Letters’, whose
achievements added such lustre to French civilization, were not necessarily
supportive of aristocratic privilege, let alone of the ancien régime. Many
writers shared an aesthetic sensibility with the social elite and similarly
prized taste and refinement, to be sure. At the same time, concepts that
came to the fore in eighteenth-century French intellectual life (for example,
reason, virtue, public utility, love of the fatherland) helped to undermine
the old order. Likewise in Russia, the literary community and intelligentsia
that the westernization of Russian elite culture brought into being would
eventually, in the nineteenth century, mould a public opinion inimical to
the autocratic regime and detrimental to the survival of the social structure
on which noble privilege was based.12
10 We use the word ‘literature’ here, and in many other places in this volume, in the broad
sense of ‘letters’ or ‘belles-lettres’.
11 See especially the second section of Chapter 7 below.
12 On the intelligentsia and definition of the term itself, see the last section of this chapter
and notes 119 ff. below.

The historical contex ts of Russian fr ancophonie

83

Illustration 1 Title page of a copy of a late eighteenth-century edition of
Rousseau’s Émile, first published in 1762, in which Rousseau set
out his views on education. There was great interest in this work in
Russia in the age of Catherine II.

This copy, kindly reproduced for us by the Russian National Library, belonged to a branch of the
Tolstoi family.

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The French L anguage in Russia

A third factor which assisted the spread of French in seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century Europe was the development of a discourse originating in France, and accepted elsewhere, about the qualities of the French
language itself.13 Sometimes these qualities were explained by reference to
historical, extra-linguistic conditions, but sometimes they were explained
in a way that modern sociolinguists by and large reject, by reference to
the supposedly intrinsic properties of the language or to the character
of the people who spoke it. In fact, this discourse had begun long before
the eighteenth century. As early as 1549 Joachim du Bellay had notably
claimed that French could serve as the vehicle for a literature at least equal
in merit to that written in Italian.14 Further bold claims about the qualities
of French and its consequent suitability as a universal language were made
in the seventeenth century. For example, Louis Le Laboureur affirmed in
his treatise of 1669, The Advantages of the French Language over Latin, that
French had clarity because its syntax reflected the ‘order of thought which is
that of Nature’. Being the most ‘natural’ language, Le Laboureur maintained,
French was also the most ‘accomplished’.15 Two years later, the French Jesuit
Dominique Bouhours developed assertions of this sort into an argument
about the desirability (and likelihood) of the universal use of French. Only
French, one of the characters in his Conversations between Ariste and Eugene
(1671) opined, possessed the qualities required in a language fit to play this
role. Considering ‘the [state of] perfection in which [French] has existed
for some years now’, Bouhours wonders, ‘are we not bound to acknowledge
that it has something noble and august about it, which makes it almost the
equal of Latin and raises it infinitely above Italian and Spanish, the only
living languages that can reasonably [hope to] compete with it?’16 French
is superior to all other modern languages, Bouhours believes, because it is
guileless, clear, concise, pure, polite, better able to express tender feelings,
and more natural.17
This stream of linguistic patriotism took on fresh momentum in the
eighteenth century, as the spread of French across Europe gathered pace.
Voltaire himself extolled French and its native speakers. ‘Of all the languages
13 On this discourse, see especially Argent et al., ‘European Francophonie and a Framework
for its Study’, 10–15.
14 Du Bellay Défense et illustration de la langue française.
15 Le Laboureur, Avantages de la langue française sur la langue latine, 174.
16 Bouhours, Les entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène, 40.
17 Ibidem, 47–63. Bouhours tends to present his observations about how people, in his opinion,
use French as statements about inherent virtues of the language. On thought about language
in the French classical age, see especially Siouffi, Le génie de la langue française.

The historical contex ts of Russian fr ancophonie

85

of Europe’, he wrote, ‘French is bound to be the most general, because it is
the most fitting for conversation: it has taken its character from that of the
people who speak it.’18 Thirty years after Voltaire’s visit to Berlin, Frederick
II approvingly underlined the pre-eminence of French, providing in the
process a striking example of the argument against bilingualism on the
grounds that it has detrimental cognitive effects:
And now this language has become a master-key which lets you into all
houses and towns. Travel from Lisbon to St Petersburg and from Stockholm
to Naples speaking French and you will be understood everywhere. Having
just this one language you make a saving in the number of languages you
would need to know, which would overload your memory with words,
in place of which you can fill your memory with [other] things, which
is far preferable.19

Perhaps the most important step towards the establishment of a conceptual
link between the French language and notions of civilization, though, was
taken when the Royal Berlin Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts invited
participants in a competition of 1783 to explain what had made the French
language universal, why it deserved this privileged position, and whether it
could maintain it. Of the two authors who shared the prize, Johann Christoph
Schwab and Antoine de Rivarol, it was the latter who became the more
famous, thanks to his treatise On the Universality of French. Rivarol does
adduce extrinsic reasons for the spread of French, such as the central geographical position of France between north and south, the early development
of a press there, the high reputation enjoyed by French academies, industry,
and fashions, and the support lent by Louis XIV to the arts and sciences.
At the same time, Rivarol’s argument in favour of French as a universal
language is coloured by linguistic essentialism. There are many qualities
that make up the génie (genius) of the language. Like the French people,
it has ‘grace’ and ‘politeness’. It is ‘manly’, ‘sure’, ‘honest’, and ‘reasonable’.
Its word order (subject, verb, object) is ‘natural’. From this naturalness it
derives clarté (clarity), an attribute so characteristic of the language that
what is not clear, Rivarol famously declared, is not French. Indeed, so well
equipped was the French language to become the tool of civilization that
18 Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, in Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 19, 566.
19 Frederick, De la littérature allemande, 78–79; the translation is our own. Frederick’s work
appeared simultaneously in French and German. On this work by Frederick, see Böhm, ‘The
Domains of Francophonie’, 180–182.

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The French L anguage in Russia

it should be regarded not as the language of the French people alone, but
as a universal endowment, ‘the language of the human race’.20
There was one other important factor that helped to carry the French language abroad, but it had nothing to do with the allure of French social life, the
authority of French literary culture, or the supposedly inherent qualities of
the French language or people. French was transported by émigrés. Many of
the émigrés who settled in Northern European countries (especially England,
the Netherlands, and Prussia) were French Protestants, the Huguenots, who
were fleeing from religious persecution in France after Louis’s revocation,
in 1685, of the Edict of Nantes, which had previously afforded them freedom
of worship in the Sun King’s Catholic realm. Eighteenth-century Russians
came across these Francophone Protestants in the course of the foreign
travels they themselves were beginning to make. An early beneficiary of
such contact was Ivan Shcherbatov, who had been sent to London by Peter
the Great, probably in 1716, to study navigation. Denied the opportunity to
enroll in the Royal Navy, Shcherbatov applied himself while in London to
learning French from a private tutor who was doubtless a Huguenot refugee
and to conversing with the émigré Francophone community there.21 Some
of the Huguenot refugees (though probably not more than 500 persons in
all22) went to Orthodox Russia at the moment when Russia was opening
itself up to western influence and found employment there, mainly in the
army, the navy, or the medical profession.
A larger number of emigrants from eighteenth-century France, though,
were Catholic, and they brought with them expertise in such f ields as
military matters, engineering, the silk and tapestry industries, and the
production of mirrors and luxury products, especially cosmetics. Numerous services began to be associated with French knowledge and skill,
ranging from hairdressing to cookery and education, and there was strong
demand for them among the European aristocracy. This Catholic wave of
emigration helped to spread the French language, as the émigrés used it
20 Rivarol, De l’universalité de la langue française; see especially 10, 28–29, 73, 85. For recent
discussion of the ‘universality of French’, see also Böhm, ‘The Domains of Francophonie’, 182–183.
21 See Rjéoutski and Offord, ‘Teaching and Learning French in the Early Eighteenth Century’.
Extracts from 23 of Shcherbatov’s letters to his tutor are reproduced with kind permission of
the Russian National Library (RNB) in St Petersburg on our project website at https://data.bris.
ac.uk/datasets/3nmuogz0xzmpx21l2u1m5f3bjp/Ivan%20Shcherbatov%20text.pdf).
22 This is a finding from a recent project on French-speaking émigrés in Russia during the
reign of Peter the Great, to be published in Inostrannye spetsialisty v petrovskoi Rossii, ed. by
Rzheutskii [Rjéoutski] and Guzevich. Jürgen Kämmerer suggests that the number of Huguenots
settling in Russia was even smaller: see Kämmerer, Rußland und die Hugenotten im 18. Jahrhundert
(1689–1789).

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87

for their professional purposes wherever they went. Several thousand such
Frenchmen settled in Russia in the course of the eighteenth century, and
in welcoming them, as in so many other ways, Russia followed a practice
that other European nations had adopted.23
There are, of course, numerous other factors that account for the spread of
French in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and help to explain
the varying degrees to which French penetrated particular countries or
regions or the differences in the purposes it served, the associations it
bore, the prestige it enjoyed, and the resistance it provoked. Dynastic
links or marriage into French aristocratic families often played a role, as
in Piedmont and Poland.24 Sometimes the presence of Jesuits and other
religious orders in educational institutions gave francophonie a boost, as in
late seventeenth-century Parma and Siena, eighteenth-century Madrid, and
eighteenth-century Warsaw, Cracow, Lublin, and Vilnius in the Kingdom of
Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.25 French texts were disseminated
through a flourishing international book trade, which had important bases
in the Netherlands in particular. Educational ideas, especially the notion of
the honnête homme, and the popularity of the Grand Tour as the culmination
of a noble’s upbringing, also helped to spread the French language and
French culture.26 In the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first
two decades of the nineteenth, the presence of Napoleon’s Grande Armée
naturally increased exposure to French and made it necessary for other
peoples to know it (for example, in the Netherlands, Piedmont, and other
parts of Italy27), although foreign invasion could also generate resistance to
the language of the occupier. In the case of the Romanian Lands, the spread
of French was assisted by the presence of Francophone Russian officers in
Moldavia and Wallachia from the time of the Russo-Turkish wars in the late
eighteenth century; later, from the mid-nineteenth century, generations
of the emergent Romanian intelligentsia would experience France at first
23 For over 6,000 biographical articles on French and French-speaking Swiss who arrived in
Russia in the eighteenth century, see Mézin and Rjéoutski (eds), Les Français en Russie au siècle
des Lumières. However, there were undoubtedly more than this number of French-speaking
immigrants in Russia during the eighteenth century.
24 Rossebastiano, ‘Knowledge of French in Piedmont’, 89–90; Serwański and Napierała, ‘The
Presence of Francophonie in Poland’, 310–316. On the languages of courts and ‘the geopolitics
and sociology of diglossia’, see Burke, ‘Diglossia in Early Modern Europe’.
25 Minerva, ‘The Two Latin Sisters’, 133–134; Sanz-Cabrerizo et al., ‘Francophonies in Spain’,
254; Serwański and Napierała, ‘The Presence of Francophonie in Poland’, 318–319.
26 On educational practices, see especially Chapter 2 below.
27 Van Strien-Chardonneau, ‘The Use of French among the Dutch Elites’, 150–151; Rossebastiano,
‘Knowledge of French in Piedmont’, 87–88; Minerva, ‘The Two Latin Sisters’, 140–143.

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The French L anguage in Russia

hand as students there.28 All the factors we have mentioned in this section,
then, combined to put French in the ascendancy among the living European
languages in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Since some of
those factors, moreover, were operative in many different parts of Europe, the
continent’s institutions and elites, including the Russian court and nobility,
acquired a certain sense of community, a shared culture, understanding,
and experience.
In sum, the eighteenth century is of great importance in the history of
the spread of the French language, both in Europe generally and in Russia
in particular. Francophonie was strongly associated with the courts of
eighteenth-century monarchs who wished to be regarded as enlightened
and with the cosmopolitan European aristocracies that flourished in that
century. It was also in the eighteenth century, of course, that the cultural
and linguistic effects of the French contribution to the Enlightenment were
most widely and strongly felt and that the discourse about the universality of
the French language reached its climax. In many countries outside France,
including Russia, aristocracies continued to enjoy the style of life cultivated
by the French elite under the ancien régime well into the nineteenth century,
and the French language retained its status as a language of courts and high
society and as an international lingua franca. However, the Romantic countercurrent to the Enlightenment and the rise of nationalism in the first half of
the nineteenth century affected language attitudes, sharpened consciousness
of vernacular varieties, and generated resistance to the predominance of
French. At the same time, the position of the nobility, the social stratum
which had most valued French as a prestige language, began to be weakened
in many European countries by economic, social, and political change in the
industrial age. For these reasons, francophonie started to take on different
connotations in the nineteenth century, although French continued to serve
as a transnational medium for influential ideas and culture even after its
value as cultural capital for the social elite had begun to decline in the eyes
of increasingly self-conscious groups lower in the social hierarchy.

The westernization of Russia in the eighteenth century
The French language and the culture with which it was associated arrived in Russia as the country was being transformed from an isolated,
28 Mihaila, ‘The Beginnings and the Golden Age of Francophonie among the Romanians’,
343–347.

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89

inward-looking realm into an expanding great power which defined itself
as European and derived strength from its numerous new connections
with the western world.29 The accounts left by sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury foreign envoys to Muscovy, such as the Austrian Sigismund von
Herberstein, the Englishman Sir Giles Fletcher, and the German Adam
Olearius, had described a benighted land on the margin of the European
landscape in which an oppressive autocrat ruled over a servile nobility and
a dull, unenterprising populace.30 For the Puritan Fletcher in particular,
Muscovy, which he visited in 1588–1589, was a barbarous other, the dystopian
antipodes of Elizabethan England. Its manner of government was ‘much after
the Turkish fashion’ and ‘plain tyrannical’.31 It lacked legal norms and was
corrupted by false religion. It was economically backward, because wealth
was plundered by the autocrat and his officials, and the people therefore
had no incentive to labour. The morals of the people were perverted: the
country overflowed with ‘whoredoms, adulteries, and like uncleanness of
life’.32 Most importantly from our point of view, Muscovy’s contact with
the Western European world (as opposed to the Commonwealth of Poland
and Lithuania, the Eastern European Orthodox fold, and, of course, Tatar
khanates to the east and south) was slight, at least before the second half of
the seventeenth century. Russians, Fletcher remarked, attempted to leave
Muscovy on pain of death and foreigners’ entry into it was severely restricted:
You shall seldom see a Rus a traveller [sic] except he be with some
ambassador or that he make a scape out of his country, which hardly he
can do, by reason of the borders that are watched so narrowly and the
punishment for any such attempt, which is death if he be taken and all
his good confiscate […] Neither do they suffer any stranger willingly to
come into their realm out of any civil country for the same cause, farther
29 On the point in this process at which French established itself, see the following section.
French was not the foreign language that seemed to be of greatest use and interest in Russia in
the reign of Peter the Great. For recent discussion of the degree to which pre-Petrine Muscovy
was isolated, see the doctoral thesis by Tat’iana Chernikova, ‘Protsess evropeizatsii v Rossii vo
vtoroi polovine XV–XVII vv.’ Chernikova thinks it possible to talk of Europeanization as early as
the fifteenth century, and certainly in the sixteenth. She shows that a considerable number of
foreigners practising various professions and crafts were invited to Russia in that early modern
period and argues that the great majority of them were invited by the Russian government.
30 Herberstein, Description of Moscow and Muscovy, 1557; Fletcher, Of the Rus Commonwealth;
Olearius, The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia.
31 Fletcher, Of the Rus Commonwealth, 30. On Fletcher’s work, see also Offord, ‘Sir Giles Fletcher’s
View of Muscovy’.
32 Fletcher, Of the Rus Commonwealth, 155–156.

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The French L anguage in Russia

than necessity of uttering [i.e. exporting] their commodities and taking
in of foreign doth enforce them to do.33

Still in the seventeenth century, Muscovy could seem to European travellers
a world apart. It is perhaps symptomatic of Muscovite introspection, as
western visitors saw it, that the only question about life beyond Russia’s
western borders that the then Patriarch of the Russian Church, Nikon,
thought to ask a Dutch visitor in the 1660s related to the church bells in
Amsterdam.34
Of course, to draw attention to foreigners’ accounts of the difference of
Muscovy from Austrian and German lands or England in the early modern
period is not to prove that Muscovy remained altogether untouched by
western practices and culture before the eighteenth century. During the
seventeenth century, a style of church architecture developed that was
influenced by the western Baroque manner. Clocks and carriages were
imported. The practice of portrait-painting was introduced.35 Men of learning
such as the poet and dramatist Simeon Polotskii appeared.36 Statesmen such
as Afanasii Ordin-Nashchokin learned foreign languages and advocated
greater economic and cultural contact with the West.37 Private libraries
with books in foreign languages began to be collected. Contacts proliferated
in the reign of Tsar Alexis in particular, and Kiev served as a major conduit
for the increasing western influence after its acquisition, together with
left-bank Ukraine,38 from the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania as
a result of the Treaty of Andrusovo in 1667. Thus, the eighteenth-century
westernization we are about to describe represented a rapid acceleration
of a process that had already begun rather than a complete replacement of
the old with the new, as Peter and his supporters liked to suggest and as the
description of Peter’s reforms as a ‘revolution’ might imply.39 Nevertheless,
the changes that Russia underwent from the time when Peter became its
sole ruler, in 1696, were indeed very wide-ranging.
33 Ibidem, 68.
34 Billington, The Icon and the Axe, 158.
35 See Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Imagery.
36 For a recent account of Polotskii’s writings, see Hamburg, Russia’s Path toward Enlightenment,
191–203.
37 For a fine sketch of Ordin-Nashchokin’s ideas and activity, see Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia,
vol. 3, 334–351, and for more recent brief discussion of them, see Hamburg, Russia’s Path toward
Enlightenment, 205–206.
38 i.e. Ukrainian territory to the east of the River Dnepr.
39 As argued by Cracraft, The Revolution of Peter the Great.

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91

The overriding motive for Peter’s modernization of the backward state
he inherited was pragmatic: modernization was a pre-requisite for continuation of the empire-building which, like western cultural innovation, had
been gathering pace in the seventeenth century. It is therefore useful, as
we consider Russia’s eighteenth-century westernization, to bear in mind
the territorial expansion that accompanied it, especially under Peter and
Catherine II. 40 This expansion took place mainly at the expense of Sweden,
Turkey, and the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania. First, Russia was
victorious in the prolonged Great Northern War that Peter fought against
Sweden (1700–1721), in which the Russian defeat of the Swedish army at
Poltava in the Ukraine in 1709 was a defining national moment.41 As a result
of this war, Russia established itself as a major Northern European power,
with egress into the Baltic Sea. In the south, Russian territory was greatly
extended by the acquisition of land along the northern shore of the Black
Sea and in the North Caucasus, as a result of Catherine’s two Russo-Turkish
Wars (1768–1774 and 1787–1791). In 1783, Russia also annexed the Crimea,
which – from a formal point of view – had been independent since 1774 and,
before that, subject to the Ottoman Empire. To the west, large stretches of
Polish territory in White Russia, Livonia, Lithuania, and north-western
Ukraine were incorporated into the Russian Empire as a result of three
partitions, carried out in 1772, 1793, and 1795 together with Prussia and, in
the case of the first and third partitions, with Austria as well.
This territorial expansion was clearly conceived as empire-building and
proudly celebrated as such. In 1721, at the triumphant conclusion of the war
with Sweden, Peter assumed the title imperator (emperor), a borrowing from
Latin, invoking perhaps the example of the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire,
whose title enjoyed the greatest prestige in the system of international relations at that time.42 The military prowess and martial valour on which empirebuilding depended were repeatedly lauded by eighteenth-century Russian
writers, whatever their intellectual or political complexion. The ode (in the
hands of Mikhail Lomonosov and Gavrila Derzhavin, for instance) and epic
poetry (written by Mikhail Kheraskov) served this purpose well. The acme
of the tradition of glorification of imperial conquest is the twelve-volume,
40 In our account of empire-building and westernization in this section we draw on some of
our previous work, viz. Argent et al., ‘The Functions and Value of Foreign Languages’, 11–16.
41 It is worth pointing out, in order to underline the continuity of Russian expansion since the
sixteenth century, that this was the second Northern War: the first had been fought against the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Peter’s father, Alexis, from 1654–1667 and it was concluded
with the signing of the above-mentioned Treaty of Andrusovo.
42 We are indebted to Sergei Karp for this point.

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The French L anguage in Russia

though still incomplete, History of the Russian State (1818–1829) to which
Karamzin devoted the last twenty-five years of his life (Illustration 2). Here
Karamzin argued that the autocrats of late medieval Muscovy, especially
Ivan III (reigned 1462–1505), whom he heroized, had steered Russia towards
a destiny that would eclipse even that of ancient Rome. 43
Empire-building benef ited most directly from modernization in the
military sphere. With the help of numerous foreign mercenaries and advisers, Peter reorganized, re-equipped, and retrained the army. He also created
a navy which enabled Russia to become a maritime power in the Baltic
and, in due course, the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. 44 At the
same time, he founded institutions and introduced practices intended to
marshal the human resources, raise the taxes, and develop the technological capacity required to support this military effort and transform Russia
into a major European power. At the administrative level, he reorganized
the bureaucracy into ‘colleges’ conceived according to models developed in
Sweden and other European countries. The colleges began to function in
1719, each with responsibility for a major branch of state activity, such as
foreign affairs, trade, or collection of revenue. In 1722, Peter introduced a
Table of Ranks, inspired by Danish, Prussian, and Swedish models, which
assigned state servants in the armed forces and the civil service and at
court to one of fourteen classes. Again, the titles in this table, such as
admiral, general, kamerger, and kantsler (admiral, general, chamberlain,
chancellor), like new designations of social rank, such as baron and graf
(baron, count), pointed to the western provenance of Peter’s reforms.
Rapid technological progress, much of it overseen by foreigners, made it
possible sharply to increase extraction of coal and iron, to engage in new
types of manufacturing, and to undertake monumental building projects,
most notably the construction of St Petersburg, the new capital on the Gulf
of Finland on which work was begun in 1703. Academic and educational
institutions were established to promote and disseminate scientific and
cultural advances, including the Academy of Sciences, which was opened in
St Petersburg shortly after Peter’s death in 1725, following consultation with
the German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
Underlying Peter’s reforms, Priscilla Roosevelt has argued, was an assumption that technology and culture are inseparable: Peter ‘came to assume that
43 Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva Rossiiskogo; see especially vol. 6. On this work, see Offford,
‘Nation-Building and Nationalism in N.M. Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State”’.
44 On Peter’s reforms, see Anisimov (1993), Hughes (1998), and Dixon (1999). For a discussion
of ‘modernization’ in eighteenth-century Russia, see Dixon, especially 1–26.

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93

Illustration 2 Portrait of Nikolai Karamzin by Vasilii Tropinin, 1818.

Image reproduced for us by the Russian National Library from Russkie portrety, vol. 1, 58.

to think like a European – that is, to understand western technology, warfare,
and statecraft – Russians must learn to act like Europeans’. Hence, he set out
to force the Russian nobility to behave and dress in a new way,45 requiring

45 Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate, 8–10.

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The French L anguage in Russia

selected subjects, for example, to attend social gatherings.46 Social and cultural
westernization continued under the empresses who ruled Russia for all but
a few years during the remainder of the century after Peter’s death in 1725.
Indeed, under Elizabeth and, in particular, Catherine II, the projection of an
image of Russia as a power with a refined society and a culture of a western
kind came to play an important part in the imperial project. Gatherings on
the French model, such as soirées, salons, and balls, would eventually become
commonplace among the social elite. Women, who – as Herberstein had
noted47 – had lived a cloistered existence in pre-Petrine Muscovy, became
prominent, indeed admired, participants in the new society. Dress changed,
from the time when, in 1699, Peter began to issue edicts requiring his noblemen
to wear European clothes, so that by the age of Catherine II fashionable
costume, coiffure, and vestimentary accessories gave the social elite a thoroughly western outward appearance. The extension of the meaning of the
Russian word svet (literally ‘world’) to include the concept of high society (Fr.
monde) reflected these social and cultural changes. Belles-lettres developed
too. Throughout the century, and particularly during its second half, Russian
writers (Antiokh Kantemir, Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Fonvizin, Derzhavin,
Karamzin, Ivan Krylov, and many others) created native examples of classical
and modern European literary genres such as satire, the meditation, tragedy,
comedy, the elegy, the metaphysical poem, the fable, and, eventually, prose
fiction, as well as the ode and the epic to which we have already referred. A
periodical press began to appear and to express a rudimentary form of public
opinion. Catherine herself encouraged this development, at least until gentle
mockery of morals began to give way to what seemed like criticism of the
social order or political institutions.

The introduction of foreign languages into eighteenth-century
Russia
The reception of western culture and practices in Russia required and
inevitably entailed increased familiarity with living Western European
languages – Dutch, English, French, German, Italian – which had been little
known in the seventeenth-century Muscovite realm, where, incidentally,

46 On these gatherings, see the first section of Chapter 3 below.
47 Herberstein, Description of Moscow and Muscovy, 1557, 40–41.

The historical contex ts of Russian fr ancophonie

95

no university yet existed.48 These languages were the media through which
Russians would learn in the eighteenth century about innumerable subjects
that were now of interest to them, such as weaponry, military strategy,
ship-building, navigation, fortification, civilian architecture, mathematics,
medicine, governance, taxation, mining, industrial production, pedagogy,
geography, history, literature, the polite society that was coming into being,
dress, cuisine, taste, fashion, and leisure pursuits. Translators with knowledge
of foreign languages were needed, to be sure, in order to acquaint Russians
with the enormous stock of printed information on such practical matters,
not to mention the literary, artistic, and musical heritage of the West. The
task was infinite, though, and so there was no alternative, if Russians were
to draw extensively on this stock, but to learn to read writings in the original
or in an intermediary language. In any case, communication with the
foreign soldiers, seamen, engineers, architects, diplomats, doctors, scholars,
and teachers who flooded into Russia as it remade itself from around 1700
required that Russians develop oral proficiency in other European languages,
for few of these foreigners had Russian when they arrived there. Nor could
study abroad be undertaken without a good knowledge of the language of
the country in which the student was based, or at least a good knowledge
of one of the most widely used international languages of the time, that is
to say Latin, French, or German.
However, the increased communication between Russia and the West
in the eighteenth century did not take place in only one direction, and so
foreign languages were not merely vehicles for the passive reception of
foreign culture, a process which in due course, especially in the nineteenth
century, would generate a distinctive Russian culture for the modern age.
Russian knowledge of foreign languages also made it possible for Russians
now to attempt to transform their country in the western imagination by
projecting an image radically different from the image that foreigners had
received from Herberstein, Fletcher, Olearius, and other writers who had
not visited Russia themselves but willingly reused negative stereotypes. 49
Post-Petrine Russia presented itself as a ‘European power’ – the words are

48 The experience of a Russian embassy to France in 1668 vividly illustrates Russian ignorance
of French and the way in which it could weaken the position of diplomats and complicate
their mission. See Schaub, ‘Avoir l’oreille du roi’, especially 220–221. On the development of
language expertise in the Russian diplomatic community in the late seventeenth century and
the eighteenth, see the first three sections of Chapter 5 below.
49 See, e.g., John Milton’s Brief History of Moscovia, written in the mid-seventeenth century, in
Complete Works of John Milton, vol. 8, 474–538. Milton depended heavily on Fletcher’s account.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Catherine’s, from her Instruction50 – ruled by an enlightened monarch.
Throughout the eighteenth century, the Russian court and elite would
seek recognition of Russia by other Europeans as a civilized member of
their community. Command of the most widely used languages of that
community was an important credential for acceptance in it, entitling
the Russian Empire to the same degree of respect in the cultural sphere as
its military successes brought it in the diplomatic sphere. Such command
enabled Russian writers themselves to participate in the European Republic
of Letters and to advertise their achievement to a foreign readership, either
through translation or in articles and private correspondence written in
languages with which that readership was familiar. Thus, Russians’ newly
acquired facility in foreign languages and their confident, extensive use
of them deeply affected others’ perceptions of them, and their own selfperception too, at both the national and the personal level.51
Various foreign languages entered the Russian linguistic market-place
as eighteenth-century rulers sought to bring about rapid modernization of
their realm, nobles adopted western practices, Russians projected a new
image of their country to the western world, and the flow of human and
commercial traffic increased in both directions. Dutch, as the language
of a major sea-faring nation whose naval and commercial prowess had
impressed Peter, had utility in the domain of maritime engineering, as
attested by some linguistic borrowings from this period.52 German had many
practical functions, in fields such as metallurgy, mining, and medicine.53 For
much of the eighteenth century, it was taught as widely as French, or even
more widely, in some public educational institutions.54 It was used in the
Academy of Sciences, in which most of the early cohorts of scholars were from
German-speaking lands.55 It was learned in the age of Catherine by some of
the country’s ablest students, who were sent to study in German universities.
Most importantly, German was the mother tongue of a substantial section of
the Russian imperial elite, especially families from the Baltic region, which
had come under Russian rule as a result of Russia’s eighteenth-century
expansion. (Baltic German families would prove particularly loyal to the
50 [Catherine II], Catherine the Great’s Instruction (Nakaz) to the Legislative Commission, 43.
51 On the use of foreign languages, and French in particular, to project certain images of Russia
to European readers, see Chapter 7 below.
52 Nautical loans from Dutch include gavan’, dreif, matros, shturman, verf’ (harbour, drift,
sailor, navigator, shipyard).
53 See Dahmen, ‘The Use, Functions, and Spread of German’.
54 Rjéoutski and Offord, ‘French in Public Education in Eighteenth-Century Russia’.
55 See the last section of Chapter 5 below.

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97

imperial regime and provide it with a stock of military and civilian personnel
out of all proportion to the size of their community in the population of
the empire.) Italian too became part of the linguistic repertoire of some
Russian nobles, partly because of its importance in the field of fine arts
(it was learned, for example, by students of the Academy of Fine Arts in
St Petersburg) and its preponderance in the domain of music even after
French had prevailed in other spheres of European culture. It was also an
important diplomatic language in the Mediterranean world and a lingua
franca for European dealings with the Turkish court.56 English would be
valued by sections of the Russian nobility, particularly in some circles which,
in the latter part of the nineteenth century, were keen to display their social
superiority, but it did not attain the position that one might have expected,
given the considerable diplomatic and commercial presence of Britain in
eighteenth-century Russia and the intermittent Anglomania of Russian
nobles, especially in the early nineteenth century.57 Latin too had some
currency in eighteenth-century Russia as a language of scholarship in the
Academy of Sciences and it also began to appear in mottos and inscriptions
(for example, on the statue that Catherine II erected to Peter, the famous
‘bronze horseman’ in St Petersburg).58
Although French was already, perhaps, the principal language of transnational communication in Europe by the time Peter the Great died in 1725,
and although knowledge of foreign languages had become an important
asset for the Russian elite by that date, it was not until the middle of the
century that the elite noticeably leaned more towards French than any
of the other foreign languages we have mentioned. From that point on,
though, they embraced French and French culture whole-heartedly. There
was no nation in Europe, Diderot observed, which was Gallicizing itself
more quickly than the Russian nation, both with regard to language and
practices.59 No doubt one reason for the ascendancy of French in Russia was
the fact that the Empress Elizabeth herself had a fine command of it, having
learned it in childhood from a Francophone lady at her father’s court.60 At
the beginning of her reign, moreover, Elizabeth’s francophonie may have
56 See, e.g., the following: Cremona, ‘Italian-based Lingua Francas around the Mediterranean’;
Varvaro, ‘The Maghreb Papers in Italian Discovered by Joe Cremona’; Bély, L’Art de la paix en
Europe, 411.
57 See Cross, ‘English – a Serious Challenge to French in the Reign of Alexander I?’
58 See Vorob’ev, Latinskii iazyk v russkoi kul’ture XVII–XVIII vekov; Rjéoutski, ‘Latinskii iazyk
v dvorianskom obrazovanii v Rossii 18 v.’
59 Dulac and Karp (eds), Les Archives de l’Est et la France des Lumières, vol. 1, vi.
60 Anisimov, Empress Elizabeth, 10.

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served a political purpose: it helped to distance her from German-speaking
claimants to the throne after the death of the Empress Anna in 1740 and
subsequently to differentiate her court from that of Anna, whose detested
favourites and leading statesmen (Bühren, Münnich, and Ostermann)
were Germans.61 However, Elizabeth’s leaning towards French culture was
lasting. As empress, she presided over a court where French theatre troupes
frequently performed French comedy62 and where, as a visiting Frenchman,
La Messelière, observed in 1755, Russian courtiers spoke French ‘comme à
Paris’ (as in Paris).63 It is also notable that proficiency in French and the habit
of using it developed in the middle decades of the century among certain
noble families – the Vorontsovs, the Shuvalovs, and the Razumovskiis – in
which there were men who were close to Elizabeth and who flourished
during her reign, or at certain times during it.64
Other factors also helped to consolidate the adoption of French among
the Russian social elite from around the middle of the century, besides
its use at court. Two formative figures in the history of modern Russian
literature, Vasilii Trediakovskii, a poet, writer on prosody, and translator,
and Kantemir, a satirist and diplomat, had spent long periods in Paris,
the former as a student at the Sorbonne from 1727 to 1730 and the latter
as head of the Russian diplomatic mission from 1738 until his early death
in 1744. Their familiarity with French literature perhaps helped to direct
the attention of Russia’s fledgling literary community towards France in
the early stages of its development. In any case, French literature provided
the aesthetic doctrine, Neoclassicism, and the chief generic models for the
Russian writers who in the eighteenth century began to lay the foundations
for a national secular literature. At the geopolitical level, a diplomatic rapprochement between Russia and France took place at the beginning of the
Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), the juncture at which Russia began decisively
61 Bühren (Biron in Russian) had demanded that all correspondence with him be conducted
in German: see Rogger, National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia, 93. At the same
time, we should not overstate the difference between the courts of Anna and Elizabeth in
terms of linguistic practice. All Anna’s German favourites and statesmen did have French and
frequently used it in their official capacities. It was Anna, moreover, who first invited a French
theatre troupe (from Germany) to the court.
62 See the second section of Chapter 3 below and the work by Alexeï Evstratov on which we
draw in it.
63 Quoted in Cross (ed.), Russia under Western Eyes, 194.
64 On Mikhail Vorontsov and Ivan Shuvalov, Francophile courtiers under Elizabeth, see
Anisimov, Empress Elizabeth, 211–230. Shuvalov became Elizabeth’s favourite in the late 1740s.
Mikhail Vorontsov was Vice-Chancellor and later Chancellor under Elizabeth. On foreignlanguage use among the Vorontsovs, see Tipton, ‘Multilingualism in the Russian Nobility’.

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to establish itself as a major European power. The fact that Catherine II,
who came to the throne after the brief reign of her husband Peter III, which
followed the death of Elizabeth in 1761, was herself a foreigner also helped
to fix the Russian gaze on the western world where French culture was in
the ascendancy.65
However, of all the reasons why French came to be the most highly valued
foreign language among the eighteenth-century Russian elite, perhaps the
most important was the transformation of nobles from servitors cowed by an
all-powerful ruler into members of a self-conscious corporation possessing
initiative of its own. As the main agents through whom the imperial state
westernized Russia, nobles (or at least, members of the high nobility and,
insofar as they could, the middling nobility) emulated their European peers
and adopted their means of demonstrating corporate distinctiveness, including their language practice. For social advancement within this stratum, or
simply for the maintenance of social status within it, command of French
came from the mid-eighteenth century to seem an essential commodity,
and nobles were prepared to invest heavily in it. They devoted considerable
material resources to their children’s acquisition of this cultural capital, to
use Pierre Bourdieu’s concept, which could in turn be translated back into
material capital, for mastery of French was a qualification for advancement
in lucrative careers in branches of state service, as well as for success at court
and in high society. Before closely examining this social transformation
and its cultural effects, though, we should make two further points about
the adoption of francophonie by the eighteenth-century Russian nobility
which it will be worth bearing in mind as our narrative unfolds.
First, the range of intermediaries of various nationalities who were
involved in the transmission of western practices and products to eighteenthcentury Russia was very wide, as we might expect, given the extent of
social and cultural innovation among the elites there. To mention only
intermediaries who were French or Francophone, there were diplomats from
aristocratic families, such as the Baron de Corberon and the Comte de Ségur,
other members of the cosmopolitan high nobility, such as Charles-Joseph,
Prince de Ligne, the encyclopédiste Diderot, the German-born journalist
and art critic Friedrich Melchior Grimm, the future pre-Romantic writer
Bernardin de Saint Pierre, and the future historian Pierre-Charles Levesque.
There were also many Francophone visitors or emigrants of other social
strata who were attracted by the commercial opportunities presented
by the new tastes of the Russian nobility. These included publishers and
65 On Catherine’s French and her use of it, see the second and third sections of Chapter 3 below.

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book-sellers,66 who could meet the demand for works of foreign literature
and western periodicals, haberdashers, dress-makers, milliners, hairdressers, perfumers, furniture makers, wine merchants, cooks, pastrycooks,
and representatives of numerous other trades. We gain an insight into the
diversity of the commerce in which such intermediaries were engaged and
of the consequent extent of novelty in Russian material culture from an
inventory of goods shipped from Rouen to St Petersburg in 1747 for a French
Huguenot, Jean Dubuisson, who was known chiefly as a wine merchant but
who clearly saw a market for other products too. His shipment included sets
of trimmings for ladies’ dresses, mantillas, costumes for masked balls, hats,
armchairs, couches, chests of drawers, mirrors, brushes, walking-sticks,
tassels, sword knots, stockings, powder, combs, nails, pins, needles, and
ink-wells.67 Some of the entrepreneurs engaged in such commerce must
have been among the ‘swarm of French of every complexion’ whom La
Messelière was dismayed to find in St Petersburg, ‘the majority of whom,
having been in trouble with the police in Paris, [had] come to infest the
northern regions’.68 All the Francophone visitors or immigrants, whatever
their social origins and personal reasons for being in Russia, were in some
sense, indirectly or directly, responsible for the development of Russian
francophonie. Many of them, irrespective of their pedagogical qualifications,
found employment as teachers in institutions such as the Noble Land Cadet
Corps (founded in St Petersburg in 1731) and the various boarding schools
that appeared in St Petersburg or Moscow or as tutors and governesses in
private noble households.69
The nobility’s apparently willing embrace of foreign cultural practice
and products requires us to reflect on a second point, namely the extent
to which eighteenth-century westernization, at least in the cultural
sphere, was driven by the autocratic state. It is arguable that in Peter’s
time westernization in all domains was generated mainly by political will
from above rather than by any spirit of enterprise and enquiry from below:
‘progress’ came about ‘through coercion’, to use the sub-title of Evgenii
Anisimov’s important biography of Peter.70 In the years following Peter’s
death, on the other hand, the nobility developed a greater intellectual and
cultural independence. Affected by changes in conceptions of human nature,
66
67
68
69
70

On whom, see Rjéoutski, ‘Les libraires français en Russie au Siècle des Lumières’.
See Zakharov, Zapadnoevropeiskie kuptsy v rossiiskoi torgovle XVIII veka, 193–194.
Cross, Russia under Western Eyes, 194.
Rjéoutski, ‘Les écoles étrangères dans la société russe’.
Anisimov, The Reforms of Peter the Great.

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Igor Fedyukin has argued, nobles came to be viewed by the state (and by
themselves) as ‘entitled, by their praiseworthy ambitions and love of honor,
to make decisions regarding their own lives and the public good in general’.
Motivated by ambition and encouragement rather than coercion, they were
transformed from servitors into autonomous subjects.71 Thus, individuals,
as well as the state, began to take important initiatives.72 What nobles did
was in harmony, to be sure, with the policy of sovereigns oriented towards
the West, that is to say with the ‘state project of Europeanization’, as Schönle
and Zorin have called it.73 However, nobles needed little or no prompting
from higher authority in order to innovate, particularly in such areas as
the education of their children, the development of forms of sociability,
and language practice. The evidence we shall produce of the receptivity
of the high nobility to western ideas and culture and the richness of the
cultural life with which it filled its social sites suggest more than mere
compliance with the wishes of sovereigns. In particular, the serious-minded
and diligent attempt to acquire foreign languages, exemplif ied by the
upbringing that nobles gave their children, if they could afford to do so,
leads us to believe that the emergence of an elite that was cosmopolitan yet
patriotic in outlook was the outcome of noble initiative just as much as the
stroke of a royal pen. Indeed, the state itself, it has been argued, fostered
‘individual initiative while also tying the nobility to its political mission
to contribute to the governance of the country’,74 in ways that we examine
in the following section.
71 Fedyukin, ‘From Passions to Ambitions’, 26, 41–44.
72 See, e.g., the recent volume by Fediukin [i.e. Igor Fedyukin] and Lavrinovich (eds), ‘Reguliarnaia akademiia uchrezhdena budet…’
73 Schönle and Zorin def ine the nobles’ role in this project thus: ‘promoting the greatness
of the Russian empire in the international arena militarily or diplomatically, contributing to
running the empire administratively, fostering the spread of European decorum and elegance
in society, furthering the advance of knowledge and education, establishing new institutions,
experimenting with new technologies, and the like’ (Schönle and Zorin, ‘Introduction’, 9–10).
74 Ibidem, 7. Schönle and Zorin thus ‘restore a degree of agency to the elite, despite its outward
subservience to the monarch’ (ibidem, 15). They also emphasize the ‘crucial importance of
education’ in the formation of a nobility that ‘would assimilate the inner compulsion to render
service to the monarch’ (ibidem, 6–7). We strongly agree with this view, as implied by the fact
that we place our chapter on teaching and learning French near the beginning of this book.
Education was a vital tool in the modernization of Russia, which was conceived, as Schönle
and Zorin also point out, ‘as a significant step toward enlightenment, interpreted mostly in
universalist terms’ (ibidem, 2). We should add that a class whose self-esteem depended on
attainment of a high level of culture was bound to respect education, specifically an education
which prioritized the acquisition of the foreign languages that gave access to the cultural models
the class most admired.

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The golden age of the nobility
Peter the Great had required lifelong service of all his nobles, from the
age of fifteen, and their advancement, as his Table of Ranks made clear,
depended on service rendered to the state rather than on the historical
status of their clan.75 Subsequent rulers, though, began to lessen the onerous
demands Peter had made on the nobility. In a manifesto of 1736, ‘On Entry
of Noble Children into Service and their Retirement from it’, the Empress
Anna reduced the term of service to twenty-five years and raised the age
at which it began to twenty; she also granted one or more sons in a family
the right to remain at home to manage the estate.76 Then, in Elizabeth’s
reign, legislation was drafted for the establishment of noble privileges such
as economic concessions, monopolies in the metal industry and distilling,
and the granting of loans.77 The most far-reaching measure of this type was
the edict ‘On the Granting of Freedom and Liberty to the Whole Russian
Nobility’, which was issued by Peter III in 1762, less than two months after
he had ascended the throne and some four months before he was deposed by
Catherine and murdered. In the preamble to this edict, or manifesto as it was
known, it was argued that the coercive attitude of Peter the Great towards
his nobility, although it had brought much benefit to Russia by introducing
enlightenment and inducing diligent service, could now be relaxed. The
edict emancipated the nobles from compulsory military or civilian service
and granted them the right to travel abroad (although they still required
permission to travel, inasmuch as they had to obtain a passport78). Nobles
who were off icers could retire, although they would still be obliged to
serve in time of war or within three months of the beginning of a military
campaign (Article 1). Nobles who had not reached officer rank could retire
if they had served for twelve years (Article 8). In a provision that illustrates
75 A useful overview of the duties and rights of the Russian nobility is provided by Madariaga
in her essay in a two-volume collection edited by Scott (1995), which is itself a rich comparative
source on the pan-European history of the class. Other important studies in English include
those by Raeff (1966) and Robert Jones (1973). Lieven (1992) provides valuable information
on the Russian aristocracy in his comparative examination of the role and fortunes of the
English, German, and Russian nobilities in the age of industrial development and the rise of
nationalism. The classic Russian monographs on the subject are by Romanovich-Slavatinskii
(a nineteenth-century work reprinted in 1968) and Troitskii (1974). We also refer below to more
recent work by Marasinova and Ivanova, as well as Lamarche Marrese.
76 ‘O poriadke priema v sluzhbu shliakhetskikh detei i uvol’neniia ot onoi’ (31 December 1736):
PSZ, no. 7142.
77 Anisimov, Empress Elizabeth, 60 ff.
78 We are grateful to Sergei Karp for pointing out this fact.

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the conception of the nobility as an international European corporation,
the edict also permitted nobles to serve other European sovereigns and to
retain whatever rank they had attained abroad when they came back to
Russia (Article 5). Nobles were obliged to return to Russia if summoned, on
pain of sequestration of their estates (Article 4), but the only other obligation
imposed on them was to ensure that they or their children received an
education, in Russian or other European institutions or from well qualified
tutors at home (Article 7).79
In 1785, Catherine II issued a ‘Charter’ of her own, confirming the privileges granted by Peter III, such as the right to retire from service, to travel
abroad, and to serve foreign powers (Articles 17–19). Indeed, Catherine’s
charter went further than Peter’s manifesto in defining noble exemptions
and privileges. Noble rank was not only hereditary but also inalienable
except in the event of commission of specified crimes that were considered
incompatible with noble status (4–6). Nobles could not be deprived of their
noble rank or of honour, life, or property except through trial by peers (8–12).
They were exempt from corporal punishment (15) and personal taxation
(36). They were entitled to dispose of their property however they pleased
(22). They could buy villages (26), sell wholesale whatever was grown or
produced on their estates (27), set up factories on their property (28), exploit
mineral resources discovered on their land (33), and own, buy, or build
houses in towns (30).80
The manifesto of Peter III and the charter of Catherine II are generally
regarded as important landmarks in the history of the Russian nobility. As
such, they need to be borne in mind in this socio-cultural study of language
practice, in which language use and language attitudes among that class have
a central place. How much difference, though, did these pieces of legislation
actually make to the way that nobles led their lives? What effect did they have
on the way nobles saw themselves? Was the noble estate uniformly affected
by them? And to what extent were these sovereigns’ policies (that is to say,
purposeful action from above), as opposed to initiatives undertaken by the
nobles themselves (in other words, more or less spontaneous action from
below), responsible for the development of the nobility into a corporation
of a western sort?
79 ‘O darovanii vol’nosti i svobody vsemu Rossiiskomu Dvorianstvu’ (18 February 1762): PSZ,
no. 11,444. This piece of legislation is discussed in Schönle and Zorin, ‘Introduction’, 5–7.
80 ‘Zhalovannaia gramota dvorianstvu’, more formally known as ‘Gramota na prava, vol’nosti
i preimushchestva blagorodnogo rossiiskogo dvorianstva’, available at http://www.hrono.ru/
dokum/1700dok/1785gramota.php. The numbers in brackets in this paragraph refer to articles
in the charter.

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It can safely be said, perhaps, that the manifesto and charter helped
members of the upper stratum of the nobility to cultivate themselves, as
the manifesto of Peter III explicitly encouraged them to do, and that as a
result they gained a new sense of self-respect (amour-propre, in French
terminology, calqued in Russian as samoliubie).81 Using the leisure they
enjoyed and the revenue they received from estates cultivated by serf labour,
which they alone among the Russian social classes were entitled to exploit,
they travelled widely. If in the age of Peter the Great Russian nobles generally
went abroad for professional reasons on the instructions of the sovereign,
in the age of Catherine II they travelled most often for personal fulfilment
and on their own initiative, in emulation of the westerner undertaking the
Grand Tour. They adopted the habits of other nobilities. As Lieven comments,
while comparing Russian aristocrats with their Austrian counterparts,
they ‘read the same books, dressed in similar clothes, shared common
amusements, and conversed easily with each other in the French language
in fashionable salons and spas across the continent’.82 Most importantly
from our point of view, Russian nobles adopted the manner of speaking,
and – quite literally, as Lieven notes in passing – the language of their new
peers in other European countries. Mastery of French became an essential
accomplishment for the young Russian nobleman or noblewoman, along
with refined manners, the art of entertaining conversation, and an ability
to draw and dance, and also to fence (in the case of boys) or (in the case
of girls) to sing and play musical instruments. It secured entry into the
European social elite. Access to this elite, moreover, ensured familiarity with
its code of honour as well as its norms of social behaviour. The good name
that a sense of self-worth entitled one to expect became a key component
in the social identity of the Russian nobleman, as of his European peers. If
necessary, he would defend his honour through duelling, calculating that
the physical risk of doing so was outweighed by the risk to his reputation,
his cultural capital, if he did not.
It may be doubted, though, whether very many Russian nobles were
able to take full advantage of the opportunities which the new legal rights
they were granted in the second half of the eighteenth century afforded
them. For most eighteenth-century nobles, Lamarche Marrese has argued,
such opportunities were limited, even after 1762, since they were indebted
81 Amour-propre is not to be confused with egoistic self-love (amour de soi, or sebialiubie).
Fonvizin is already contrasting the two concepts in his play The Minor, first performed in 1782:
see Nedorosl’, Act III, Scene 1, in Fonvizin, SS, vol. 1, 132.
82 Lieven, Empire, 163.

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and depended on patronage.83 Indeed, according to statistics produced
by Irina Faizova, the number of nobles who actually availed themselves
of the opportunity to retire from service did not increase dramatically
after 1762.84 Elena Marasinova too has wondered whether the manifesto
of 1762 was really a transformative moment for the nobility, or rather, in
what way it was transformative. Instead of seeing it as marking a decisive
shift in the balance between noble obligations and privileges, she prefers
to interpret it as an attempt to persuade the nobility to develop in ways
useful to the absolute monarchy, by raising the prestige of education and
bolstering the authority of the system of ranks.85 If after 1762 service changed,
strictly speaking, from a legal obligation into a moral one, then there was
still a strong incentive to perform it, Marasinova argues, because serving
the empress and the ‘fatherland’ came to be considered a privilege which
earned royal favour, confirmed worth, and was associated with access to a
refined way of life.86 As to whether the manifesto of 1762 was the decisive
enabling factor for those nobles who did use leisure to cultivate themselves
(by travelling abroad, for instance), it should be pointed out that some
aristocrats were already doing this before Peter III issued his manifesto. It
is questionable, then, whether the privileges granted by Peter III and only
affirmed over two decades later by Catherine II in themselves brought
about a major qualitative and quantitative change in the practice of large
numbers of nobles after 1762.
There is one point in our aforegoing discussion of nobles’ obligations,
rights, habits, and self-image which we must develop and re-emphasize
before proceeding to aspects of the nineteenth-century historical context
that are important to our study. Although Peter’s manifesto of 1762 and
Catherine’s charter of 1785 set out privileges that were – theoretically – to be
enjoyed by the whole noble estate and although these documents strongly
differentiated the noble estate from all other social strata, nevertheless the
Russian landed nobility was itself variegated. The motley character of the
nobility is evident from a reading of Catherine’s charter, which on one level
83 Lamarche Marrese, ‘“The Poetics of Everyday Behavior” Revisited’, 714.
84 Faizova, ‘Manifest o vol’nosti’ i sluzhba dvorianstva, 107–111; cited by Lamarche Marrese,
‘“The Poetics of Everyday Behavior” Revisited’, 714.
85 Marasinova, ‘Vol’nost’ Rossiiskogo dvorianstva’, 24.
86 Ibidem, 28–31. Schönle and Zorin too argue that the manifesto ‘proposed a kind of moral
compact, whereby legal emancipation would in fact strengthen the internalized ethos of dedication and active service on behalf of the monarch and the fatherland’, and that the manifesto was
therefore ‘more about internalized duty than about freedom’ (Schönle and Zorin, ‘Introduction’,
6).

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is concerned with the administrative problem caused by the fact that men
had been ennobled over the centuries in many different ways. Article 91
explicitly acknowledges that Catherine’s nobles might have noble status
either because they have inherited it or because it has been granted to them
by the sovereign. Diversity within the estate is also recognized implicitly in
the careful listing, in the last section of the charter, of the numerous types
of proof of noble status that would be officially acceptable and indeed in
the admission at the end of Article 91 that there may be yet other types of
proof that have not been described in the document. We shall identify some
of the differences within the noble estate and then explain why they are
significant for our discussion of noble language use.
First, an enormous gulf separated the high aristocracy from the petty
gentry. As Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter has pointed out, the nobility extended from the aristocratic courtier who stood at the foot of the throne
to the odnodvorets, a man from the lowest ranks of ennobled servitors
who owned a humble farmstead with only a few serfs.87 Eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Russian literature, fictional and non-fictional, contains
much evidence of the existence of this social range and of consciousness
of hierarchy within it. Such consciousness is strikingly exemplified by a
memoirist’s recollection that a provincial landowner required neighbours
of inferior social rank to use the servants’ entrance to her manor house.88
Inequalities within the noble estate – which were greater, it has been
claimed, than the inequalities in the mid-nineteenth-century English or
German nobilities89 – can be attributed in part to the socially rigidifying
effect of the Table of Ranks introduced by Peter the Great. The Table even
prescribed the modes of address to be used when addressing persons of a
particular rank. However, inequalities could also be defined in terms of
wealth. The most firmly established criterion for measurement of nobles’
wealth up until the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 was the number of adult
male serfs owned by a family. Nobles who owned more than 5,000 such serfs
were considered enormously rich; those owning between 800 and 5,000 were
thought to be extremely well-off; those with between 200 and 800 were
regarded as prosperous; an adult male serf population between 80 and 200
was considered average; an estate with fewer than 80, on the other hand,
was not self-sufficient. Most Russian nobles, it should be noted, fell into the
87 Wirtschafter, Social Identity in Imperial Russia, 36. The point is made by Nikolai Turgenev
in his work La Russie et les russes (see vol. 2, 27), to which we refer in Chapters 4 and 7 below.
88 Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate, 159.
89 Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, 42.

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last two categories.90 Indeed, on 52 percent of the estates of the provincial
gentry there were 20 male serfs or fewer in 1766–1767, while on 34.7 percent
there were between 21 and 100. At the other end of the spectrum, only a
minute proportion of serf-owning nobles (about one percent on the eve of
the emancipation of the serfs in 1861) could be called grands seigneurs.91
The proportion of nobles who could afford exposure to education, travel,
books and periodicals, services provided by foreigners, and Europeanized
society on a scale that would have enabled them to master French was
therefore very small.
Secondly, even among families of comparable rank and wealth, status
might vary depending on such matters as the lineage and antiquity of a family, the reasons for its original ennoblement, and whether it had continued
to provide meritorious service over many generations. At the pinnacle
of the nobility in eighteenth-century Russia stood families such as the
Golitsyns, Naryshkins, Sheremetevs, Tolstois, Volkonskiis, and Vorontsovs,
which had accumulated wealth and power as a result of prolonged loyalty
and service to pre-Petrine autocrats. Other families among the wealthiest
and most powerful band of the elite had only begun to prosper much more
recently and were vulnerable, at least for a while, to the disdain with which
the blue-blooded may treat the nouveaux riches. The Menshikovs, Orlovs,
Panins, Potemkins, Razumovskiis, Riumins, Shuvalovs, and Zubovs, for
instance, owed their eminence to the grants of land and serfs that munificent
eighteenth-century sovereigns were wont to award to their courtiers and
favourites. The Demidovs, Goncharovs, Stroganovs, and other families had
also acquired their wealth in recent times, but not through royal patronage:
they had profited from new commercial opportunities which had presented
themselves in such fields as mining, arms manufacture, and cloth and salt
production as Russia began to modernize. Such families might raise their
social status by marrying into the older aristocracy.92 The degree to which
differences of these kinds mattered to Russian nobles in the eighteenth
century is illustrated by assertions or discussions in works of literature,
such as Kantemir’s second satire and Fonvizin’s plays, and by debates at
Catherine’s Legislative Commission about whether lineage or meritorious
90 Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate, xiii; see also 158–159 on differences within
the nobility. On noble wealth as measured by serf-ownership in the period leading up to the
emancipation, see Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, 42–43, and Roosevelt, Life on the Russian
Country Estate, 233–234.
91 Ivanova (ed.), Dvorianskaia i kupecheskaia sel’skaia usad’ba, 182, cited by Schönle and Zorin,
‘Introduction’, 9; see also Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime, 178.
92 Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, 37.

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service was the better criterion for ennoblement and for continuing enjoyment of noble status.93
Thirdly, a family’s style of life varied depending on whether the family
had the means to spend much time beyond its rural estate and, indeed,
outside Russia. The British traveller Robert Lyall, who lived in Russia in
the years immediately after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, perceived a
marked difference in conduct and manners between the aristocratic upper
stratum of the nobility and the lower stratum, especially those who were
‘untravelled’.94 The horizons of nobles who had a mansion in one of Russia’s
two relatively large and cosmopolitan cities, St Petersburg and Moscow,
where families in the higher echelons of the nobility commonly spent the
winter months, were bound to be broader than those of nobles who for
one reason or another spent almost all their lives in the countryside. Then
again, the nobility of St Petersburg, where the court resided and the organs
of central government were located, could be perceived as quite different
even from the Muscovite nobility, for which a marked preference shines
through in the writings of such influential literary figures as Alexander
Herzen and Tolstoi. There were differences too in the quality of social life
enjoyed by nobles in different rural regions of the empire, depending on
the distance of the region from a metropolis and the density of its local
noble population. In the fertile agricultural provinces of the heartland
(for example, Iaroslavl’, Kaluga, Kostroma, Kursk, Orel, Riazan’, Smolensk,
Tambov, Tula, Tver’, Vladimir, and Voronezh) the estates of peers were
not so few and far between, or the distance to Moscow or St Petersburg
so forbidding, as in provinces such as Kazan’, Penza, Samara, Saratov, and
Simbirsk in the Volga region, on the periphery of European Russia.
We should also bear in mind that the Russian nobility was ethnically
heterogeneous, as well as socially diverse. By the mid-eighteenth century
it had absorbed not only many Tatars, descendants of the Central Asian
nomads who had invaded Russia in the thirteenth century, but also nobles
from territory into which it had expanded in the seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries, in the course of its empire-building, especially
Ukrainians and Germans. Many western immigrants who had entered
Russian service had also been admitted to the nobility. There was no
people in Russia or Asia from whom individuals have not entered Russian
93 ‘Na zavist’ i gordost’ dvorian zlonravnykh’, in Kantemir, Sobranie stikhotvorenii, 68–88;
Offord, ‘Denis Fonvizin and the Concept of Nobility’, especially 20–26; Madariaga, Russia in
the Age of Catherine the Great, 170 ff.
94 Lyall, The Character of the Russians, vi–vii.

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service and consequently been ennobled, the memoirist Vigel’ observed, so
that the noble estate in Russia had become a ‘mongrel’ class that differed
markedly from other estates, Vigel’ supposed.95 Thus, with respect to the
ethnic diversity of its nobility, Russia exemplifies a pre-modern type of
empire, as it has sometimes been defined, in which the elite might have
little or no sense of solidarity with subordinates of similar ethnic origin
but might well ‘accept, assimilate or cooperate with the aristocracies of
the initially peripheral regions’ of the empire.96 It should be added that
after Peter’s reforms the imperial Russian nobility was diverse from the
confessional point of view as well: foreign Catholics and Protestants
were assimilated into the cosmopolitan ruling class without being put
under pressure to convert to Orthodoxy or to absorb specifically Russian
cultural values.97
The existence of such diversity in the noble stratum is important from our
point of view, because it tends to invalidate generalized statements about
nobles’ opportunities to acquire foreign languages and about their use of
them and level of competence in them. The ability of different families to
meet the costs of ensuring that their children mastered foreign languages
– especially the cost of employing foreign tutors or governesses and, ideally,
arranging journeys abroad and further tuition there – varied greatly. It
followed that families which could not afford such expenditure, or which
lived an isolated existence in the countryside and had infrequent contact
with Francophone peers, found themselves at a disadvantage in the struggle
for plurilingual competence and the benefits it could bestow. The diversity
of opportunity to master French may partly explain some of the grumbling
comments made by members of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury literary community about Russian francophonie and about the
supposedly idle or incompetent foreign tutor residing in the aspiring noble
household. After all, many members of the literary community came from
quite modest levels of the estate or from a non-noble background, including
the poet Derzhavin (who was brought up in the remote province of Kazan’)
and Fonvizin, whose father – Fonvizin is careful to point this out in a short
autobiography – could not afford to hire private tutors to teach him foreign
languages.98 Again, the translator and dramatist Vladimir Lukin, author of a
95 Vigel’, Zapiski, vol. 1, 289.
96 Lieven, Empire, xv; see also 249–250.
97 Ibidem, 250.
98 See [Fonvizin], The Political and Legal Writings of Denis Fonvizin, 33. On the attitude of
Fonvizin and other writers to French-speaking among the nobility, see Chapter 8 below.

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particularly scathing attack on Russians’ adoption of the French language,99
was the son of a poor nobleman who was a court servant.
We should add, finally, that the embryonic educated class and literary
community in eighteenth-century Russia contained not only middling or
low-ranking noblemen, as well as aristocrats, but also men who were not
of noble origin at all. In the relatively meritocratic age that began with
the reforms of Peter the Great, many significant men of letters originated
in social strata beneath the nobility: for example, the economist Ivan
Pososhkov, the orator, dramatist, and churchman Feofan Prokopovich,
the poet and translator Trediakovskii, the scientist and poet Lomonosov,
and the dramatist and fabulist Krylov. Thus, already in the eighteenth
century, and even before the age of Catherine II, we see signs of a process
that would become conspicuous, and would be much commented upon,
in the middle of the nineteenth century. So-called raznochintsy (people
of various non-noble ranks) would emerge in the intelligentsia that was
coming into being, and they would eventually reject the habits and values
of the nobility. Language education and practice also differed in the two
groups of which the intelligentsia was composed.100
We shall return to the subject of the literary community and the emergence of an intelligentsia of mixed social origin in the last section of this
chapter, in order to consider the further development of these groups in
the second quarter of the nineteenth century, under Nicholas I. Before that,
though, we should pause briefly on Russia’s involvement in the Napoleonic
Wars in the early nineteenth century and the Decembrist Revolt which
followed the death of Alexander I in 1825, since we shall frequently have
occasion to mention these matters in our account of Russian francophonie
and reactions to it.

The Napoleonic Wars and the Decembrist Revolt
The Franco-Russian hostilities of the Napoleonic age began under Paul,
in 1799, when Russia participated in the Second Coalition against France,
and they resumed under Alexander I in 1805–1807. A combined Russian
and Austrian army was defeated by Napoleon at Austerlitz in December
1805. A further major battle was fought between Napoleon’s army and a
joint Russian and Prussian force at Eylau, in East Prussia, in February 1807.
99 See the third section of Chapter 8 below.
100 On the different priorities in language education, see the following chapter.

The historical contex ts of Russian fr ancophonie

111

(On this occasion the outcome was inconclusive.) In June of the same year,
Napoleon decisively defeated a Russian army at the Battle of Friedland, also
in East Prussia. Hostilities temporarily ceased with the Treaty of Tilsit in
July 1807, when Russia and France became allies and Alexander secretly
agreed to join Napoleon’s Continental System against Britain. However,
in June 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia. In the ensuing struggle for national
survival, the Russian army under Kutuzov slowed, but did not halt, the
advance of Napoleon’s Grande Armée at Borodino, where a bloody battle
involving about a quarter of a million troops was fought on 7 September.
A week later Napoleon entered Moscow, which in the following days was
severely damaged by a fire thought to have been started by the Russians
themselves during their mass exodus from the city. The invasion ended in
November and December with the retreat of the disjointed remnants of
Napoleon’s starving army, harried by guerrilla attacks and ill-equipped for
conditions in the Russian winter.
It was only to be expected that military conflict with France would
accentuate the criticisms that Russian writers had been expressing for some
time about their compatriots’ Gallomania. There are indeed indications
in early nineteenth-century and later Russian writings of various kinds
that the war with France dampened the ardour of the Russian nobility for
French civilization, in the broadest sense of the term, and for the language
that was the vehicle for it. Gallophobia, expressed partly through criticism
of Russians’ francophonie, was much in evidence, for example, in works by
Fedor Rostopchin, who would be the governor of Moscow when the Grande
Armée occupied it in 1812 and who is thought to have instigated the arson
there.101 Vigel’ noted the linguistic effect of the increased patriotism on high
society on the eve of renewed war with Napoleon in 1812:
aristocratic ladies began in French to extol Russian and to express a desire
to learn it or to pretend to show that they knew it. People explained to
them and to courtiers that Russian had been distorted, infected, stuffed
with words and turns of phrase borrowed from foreign languages and
that ‘Beseda’ [The Symposium] had been formed with the sole aim of
restoring and preserving its purity and immaculacy; and they all got
down to being its main champions.102
101 We deal in more detail with the views of Rostopchin in the fifth section of Chapter 8 below.
102 Vigel’, Zapiski, vol. 1, 359–360. Vigel’ is referring in this passage to the conservative literary
society Symposium of Lovers of the Russian Word, set up in St Petersburg in 1811 (see also Chapter
8 below).

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The French L anguage in Russia

The French theatre in St Petersburg, which had been a popular venue for high
society in the early Alexandrine period, began to empty as French troops
approached Moscow and the sovereign, who had never liked this theatre
much, took the opportunity to close it.103 Women owning fashion shops in
Moscow were forbidden to use French in the signs in their boutiques, when
Rostopchin was governor of the city.104 Even in provincial Penza, in the
autumn of 1812, ladies showed their patriotism by putting on sarafans and
kokoshniki and by refusing to speak French.105 Tolstoi evokes this cultural
reaction to the war that Napoleon waged against Russia by having characters
in War and Peace resolve to fine people for using French words and to donate
the proceeds to a charitable foundation.106 Pushkin, who, unlike Tolstoi,
lived through the Napoleonic Wars himself, also reports in an unfinished
novel, Roslavlev, that Moscow nobles resolved to stop speaking French.107
And yet, such gestures were plainly superficial and temporary, and it
is striking that conservative patriots such as Rostopchin, despite their
fulminations against French culture and Russian francophonie, continued
to speak French in noble social venues and to correspond in French among
themselves.108 Moreover, the persistence of francophonie in high social, military, and official circles long after 1815 and the importance that continued
to be attached to French in the education of noble children suggest that
the experience of war against France had little lasting effect on the value
the nobility attached to French language and culture. There were, however,
other historical factors at work which would strain the loyalty of some of the
nobility to the regime, weaken the homogeneity of the educated elite, and
call into question the value of noble culture and the practices associated
with it, including the use of a foreign language for social purposes.109
103 Ibidem, vol. 2, 54.
104 N.I. Turgenev, La Russie et les russes, vol. 1, 14.
105 Vigel’, Zapiski, vol. 2, 21. A sarafan is a sleeveless dress worn by a peasant woman and a
kokoshnik (plural kokoshniki) is a peasant woman’s head-dress.
106 Voina i mir, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 11, 177.
107 Roslavlev, in Pushkin, PSS, vol. 8, pt 1, 153. See also Offord, ‘Treatment of Francophonie in
Pushkin’s Prose Fiction’, 209.
108 As Lotman notes, the growth of patriotic feeling that characterized late eighteenth- and
early nineteenth-century Russian noble culture did not conflict with the similarly dynamic
spread of the French language among the nobility. On this paradox (as it seems to us, although
it did not seem paradoxical to many nobles at the time), see Lotman, ‘Russkaia literatura na
frantsuzskom iazyke’, 353. On Rostopchin’s French writings, see the fifth section of Chapter 6
below. On the linguistic views of other conservative nationalists, see Chapter 8, where we discuss
the seeming contradiction between linguistic Gallophobia and actual language practice.
109 The threat posed to aristocracies by loss of homogeneity in the elite is discussed by Lieven,
The Aristocracy in Europe, 5–6.

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113

Chronologically speaking, the first of these historical factors to which
we should call attention was a parting of the ways between the autocratic
polity, on the one hand, and the social and cultural elite, on the other. The
eighteenth-century nobility had on the whole been supportive of the imperial project pursued by Russian sovereigns, despite the heterogeneity of the
estate, the existence of tensions within it, and occasional manifestations of
political opposition, the most notable of which was Aleksandr Radishchev’s
attack on the arbitrariness of autocratic power and the inhumanity of
serfdom in his Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow (1790).110 It was in
the years following the victory over Napoleon, though, that the sense of
collective noble solidarity with the autocratic state clearly began to break
down. After 1815, Alexander I committed himself to a Holy Alliance of
conservative powers (Austria and Prussia, as well as Russia) determined
to maintain the old monarchic order in Europe. At home, he gave free
reign to reactionary advisers such as Aleksei Arakcheev, a parade-ground
disciplinarian. When army officers – representatives of the military and
social elite, whose education had inculcated in them a sense of civic responsibility – returned from the final campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars in
1814–1815 with a favourable impression of life in Western Europe, they were
dismayed to find that their homeland was destined to remain backward
and oppressive. An acute sense of disillusionment set in amongst them,
giving rise, from 1816 on, to the formation of a succession of secret societies
(a Union of Salvation, a Union of Welfare, a Northern Society based in
St Petersburg, a Southern Society in the Ukraine). Freemasonry, which
from the age of Catherine had encouraged Russian nobles both to improve
themselves morally and to perform philanthropic deeds (and which also
provided a model for secretive organization), underwent a revival.111 Projects
for political reform were drafted: Nikita Murav’ev set out a detailed plan
for a constitutional monarchy with representative assemblies and a federal
structure on the American model, while Pavel Pestel’, in his unfinished
Russian Law, envisaged an authoritarian republic on the French Jacobin
model.112
This dissatisfaction and the yearning for moral improvement and social
and political change – to which Tolstoi alludes in the first part of his epilogue
110 Radishchev, Puteshestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu.
111 See Rjéoutski and Offord, ‘Foreign Languages and Noble Sociability’, on which we draw in
Chapter 4 below. On the literature on Freemasonry in Russia, see n. 51 in that chapter.
112 Murav’ev, ‘Konstitutsiia’, and Pestel’, ‘Russkaia Pravda’, in Vosstanie dekabristov, vol. 7.
Short extracts from each project are published in English in Leatherbarrow and Offord (eds), A
Documentary History of Russian Thought, 42–58.

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to War and Peace 113 – eventually found expression in the disastrously
ill-conceived mutiny that became known as the Decembrist Revolt. On
14 December 1825, shortly after the sudden death of Alexander I, officers
of the Northern Society leading some 3,000 men refused to swear an oath
of allegiance to Nicholas, who had assumed the throne after it had been
disclosed that his elder brother, Constantine, had declined it. At the end of
the day, loyal troops fired upon and dispersed the rebellious soldiers, who
had gathered in Senate Square in St Petersburg. A protracted investigation
was conducted, at the conclusion of which five leaders of the St Petersburg
insurrection and of a slightly later revolt by the Southern Society were hanged
and over a hundred other mutineers were sentenced to various terms of hard
labour, exile, or service in disciplinary battalions. Although the social origins
of the Decembrist officers were quite varied,114 many of the leaders of the
revolt belonged to families that were highly placed in the Russian social and
official world. They included, for example, the princes Evgenii Obolenskii,
Sergei Trubetskoi, and Sergei Volkonskii (whose mother was a lady-in-waiting
at court), the baron Veniamin Solov’ev, and Count Zakhar Chernyshev, as
well as the brothers Matvei and Sergei Murav’ev-Apostol, whose father had
been a diplomat, and Pestel’, whose father had served from 1806 to 1818 as
governor-general of Siberia. The participation of members of such eminent
families in the revolt, and the sympathy felt for the mutineers by members
of other such families who were not directly implicated, suggested that the
monarchy was beginning to suffer a dangerous loss of moral authority.115
The world inhabited by these members of the imperial elite was cosmopolitan and plurilingual. The Murav’ev-Apostol brothers had studied in a
Parisian boarding school in their childhood. Members of the Decembrist
circles had had frequent social contact with French men and women during
the Napoleonic Wars. Trubetskoi was married to the daughter of a French
immigrant. Nikita Murav’ev used French as his domestic language, although
his wife was Russian. In any case, several Decembrists, it should be noted,
113 See especially Chapter 14, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 12, 281–286.
114 For a discussion of this point, see Grandhaye, Les décembristes, 47–52.
115 There is a large literature on the Decembrist Revolt, which is usually regarded as the opening
episode in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement. For accessible introductions to
the insurrection and its pre-history, see the now quite old works by Mazour (1962) and Raeff
(1966). There is a more recent study in French by Grandhaye (2011). There are useful biographies
of two of the leading Decembrists, Ryleev and Pestel’, by O’Meara (1994 and 2004 respectively).
The def initive works in Russian on the authors of the two main Decembrist projects are by
Druzhinin, who focuses on Nikita Murav’ev (1985), and Nechkina, who focuses on Pestel’ (1955
and 1982).

The historical contex ts of Russian fr ancophonie

115

were not ethnically Russian, and for some of them Russian was not their first
language. The Poggio brothers, Aleksandr and Iosif, for instance, were sons
of an Italian settler in the polyglot and cosmopolitan city of Odessa, while
Andreas von Rosen belonged to a German-speaking Baltic noble family.
And yet, as political rebels who drew inspiration from contemporary events
such as the uprising of 1820 against the restored monarchy of Ferdinand VII
in Spain and the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire
that began in 1821, the Decembrists were prone to a cultural nationalism
that made some of them (Aleksandr Bestuzhev, Pestel’, and Volkonskii, for
example) reflect on language use.116 Thus already towards the end of the
reign of Alexander I, a part of the social elite was experiencing an alienation
that went further than politics. In the following reign, this alienation would
merge with a more general disaffection in the wider educated elite, the social
composition of which was changing as a result of the influx of non-nobles,
who were increasingly called upon to meet the administrative, professional,
and technological needs of the expanding empire and modernizing state.

The literary community and the intelligentsia in the age of
Nicholas I
Shocked by the Decembrist Revolt, Nicholas I immediately set about ensuring
that there would be no recurrence of the political dissidence that had been
allowed to develop in the years after the Napoleonic Wars. A staunch believer
in the legitimacy of autocratic power, he immediately introduced measures
designed to restrict freedom of expression and to discover the earliest signs
of dissent. In 1826, he tightened censorship, and by 1848 there were as many
as twelve agencies entitled to impose it. In the same year, he established
a new police body, the Third Department of the Imperial Chancery, with
Count Benckendorff as its first head.117 This institution, which depended
on a host of informers as well as its own gendarmerie, was responsible for
surveillance of persons considered subversive, or potentially so, including
religious sectarians and foreign subjects in addition to political opponents of
the regime. The closing years of Nicholas’s reign – the so-called ‘seven dismal
years’ (mrachnoe semiletie) from 1848 to 1855 – were particularly repressive,
since Nicholas was concerned to ensure that popular insurrections of the sort
116 On Bestuzhev and language consciousness after the Napoleonic Wars, see the fifth section
of Chapter 8 below.
117 On language use in the Third Department, see the penultimate section of Chapter 5 below.

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that had taken place in 1848 in France, various parts of the Austrian Empire,
Germany, and Italy did not spread to Russia. Many members of circles
discussing utopian socialist ideas in St Petersburg in the late 1840s – the socalled Petrashevskii circles, to which the young Dostoevskii belonged – were
severely punished. In 1849, Nicholas sent Russian troops into Hungary to
crush a revolt that was taking place there against the Habsburg monarchy.
And yet, for all his efforts, Nicholas failed to prevent the emergence
of an independent public opinion which would help in the long run to
undermine both the old noble way of life and the empire itself. There now
began a cultural awakening which found expression in the development of
a rich and original literary tradition. It was in the age of Nicholas, after all,
that Pushkin, whose poetry is of seminal importance in Russian literature,
produced most of his œuvre and that the poet and prose-writer Lermontov
and the novelist, short-story writer, and dramatist Nikolai Gogol’ produced
all of theirs. The novelists Ivan Goncharov, Turgenev, Dostoevskii, and
Tolstoi all began their literary careers in the 1840s or early 1850s too. Nor
did these writers merely establish a literary canon. They are also credited
with having brought into being the standard modern Russian language, and
their works have continued to furnish examples of good linguistic usage,
as attested by the numerous quotations from them in the dictionary of the
Russian language published by the Academy of Sciences.118
The classical literary corpus developed together with an equally vigorous
tradition of thought on aesthetic, moral, social, theological, and, in the final
analysis, political questions. Examples of both types of writing, poetry and
fiction, on the one hand, and belles-lettres and sociopolitical journalism,
on the other, were published side by side in voluminous periodicals, the
‘thick journals’ (tolstye zhurnaly) which sprang up in the age of Nicholas and
proliferated in the freer conditions, Russia’s first age of glasnost’ (openness),
after the death of Nicholas in 1855 and Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War
(1853–1856). The group that generated the tradition of sociopolitical literature
would come to be known as the intelligentsia (intelligentsiia; the English
word is of Russian origin).119 This group should not be entirely equated
118 See, e.g. Chernyshev et al. (eds), Slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo iazyka, 17 vols
(Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1950–1965).
119 We use the term ‘intelligentsia’ in this book to mean a force that is both intellectually
independent and socially and politically engaged. It should be noted, though, that definition
of the term is fraught with difficulty. In English, the word has tended to be used in a pejorative
sense, as attested in a work of 1916 by H.G. Wells, whose Mr Britling defines it as ‘an irresponsible
middle class with ideas’ (the example is given in the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn, vol.
7, 1070). With regard to the Russian intellectual community, on the other hand, the term has

The historical contex ts of Russian fr ancophonie

117

with the literary community, especially in the age of Nicholas: it would be
wrong, for example, to attempt to attribute to Pushkin or Lermontov the
sort of moral engagement that came to be regarded as characteristic of the
intelligentsia.120 Nevertheless, it often happened that the same individual
(for example, Herzen, Dostoevskii, or Tolstoi) was both a creative writer, on
the one hand, and a polemical journalist, commentator on current affairs, or
pamphleteer, on the other. Both literatory (men and women of letters) and
intelligenty (intellectuals), moreover, generally shared a sense of civic duty
and high moral purpose and were equally liable to official disapproval or
punishment for the expression of views unpalatable to the authorities. As
a rule, both types of writer were far removed from the political authorities
(although there were exceptions, of course). Indeed, they tended to think, as
the Soviet dissident Andrei Siniavskii put it, that they ‘should not become a
part of power, rather [they] should observe power from the outside’.121 At the
same time, they acquired great cultural and moral authority by seeming to
express the conscience of the nation – an authority that official persecution
of them tended only to increase.
The development of the literary and intellectual community under
Nicholas I reveals a fracture among the cultured elite itself, an additional
parting of the ways. Alongside those nobles who remained more or less
unquestioningly loyal to the autocratic state, a well-read, free-thinking
republic of the written word was coming into being, and the citizens of
this republic did not necessarily belong to the nobility. Many members of
the literary community and intelligentsia (for instance, the leading critic
generally had a more positive meaning, as it does in the writings of Isaiah Berlin, who greatly
admired most of its mid-nineteenth-century representatives, about whom he wrote in the essays
collected in Russian Thinkers (2008). Gary Hamburg, in a wide-ranging reconsideration of the
concept, attempts to resolve the problems associated with use of the term by arguing that many
different sorts of ‘intelligentsia’ existed: see Hamburg (2010). The problematic nature of the term
is compounded by its retrospective application: it seems not to have come into common use
until the 1860s (the minor prose writer Boborykin claimed to have coined it in that decade), but
thinkers such as Belinskii who flourished much earlier, in the 1830 and 1840s, are now generally
considered to have belonged to it. There is a large literature on the concept, besides the works
of Berlin and Hamburg. Many essays written as long ago as the 1960s and 1970s, when there was
much interest in the subject among western scholars, are still of value: see, e.g., the items in
our bibliography by Billington (1960), Malia (1961), Nahirny (1962), Pollard (1964), and Confino
(1972), and also Raeff’s book The Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia.
120 Nonetheless, we would not attempt to define ‘the great writers’, such as Dostoevskii, Tolstoi,
and Chekhov, in opposition to the radical intelligentsia, as is done by Morson: see his ‘Tradition
and Counter-Tradition’, especially 141–148.
121 Sinyavsky, The Russian Intelligentsia, 2. Siniavskii does not make the distinction that we
make here between the intelligentsia and the literary community.

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Vissarion Belinskii, the dilettante Vasilii Botkin, the historian Mikhail Pogodin, the historiographer and critic Nikolai Polevoi) were from professional,
merchant, or even peasant families.122 Admittedly, the major men of letters
of the age of Nicholas (Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol’, Goncharov, Turgenev,
the young Dostoevskii and Tolstoi, along with Timofei Granovskii, Herzen,
and many others) were all noblemen, albeit noblemen born into different
strata within the estate. However, even nobles might repudiate, or at least
might cease wholly to share, the noble ethos once they felt themselves to
be part of the literary and intellectual community. The nobleman’s sense
of duty could still be directed towards an imperial fatherland (otechestvo),
of which nobles were the pre-eminent metaphorical sons. Members of the
new literary and intellectual elite, on the other hand, were more likely to feel
that they served the nation of which they had been encouraged to conceive
by the thought and literature of the European Counter-Enlightenment and
the Romantic period. They were intent above all on discovering Russia’s
distinctiveness or originality (samobytnost’) and solving the riddle of its
destiny. At its grandest, their mission was to explain the significance of
Russia’s role in some universal system of the sort propounded by Hegel in
his philosophy of history. Confident that they were better qualified than the
noble estate or self-interested statesmen to formulate Russia’s identity and
needs, they convinced themselves that they were more entitled than any
other group to speak for the nation.123 Although the controversy between
so-called Westernizers and Slavophiles may obscure the fact, many writers
and thinkers right across the political spectrum thus subscribed to a form of
cultural nationalism. As Herzen famously asserted in his autobiographical
masterpiece My Past and Thoughts, Westernizers and Slavophiles resembled
the imperial two-headed eagle: they looked in different directions, but the
heart that beat in its breast was the same.124
The fracture in the educated elite was reflected in differences in values
as well as primary allegiance. The forms of cultural capital prized by the
literary and intellectual community, we might say, differed from those
prized by nobles, even though many members of the community were of
noble origin and something of the noble code of values was still apparent
122 In the late 1850s and 1860s, after the death of Nicholas I in 1855 and Russia’s defeat in the
Crimean War, the proportion of raznochintsy in the intelligentsia would increase, and among
the raznochintsy there would be many sons of clergymen, most notably Nikolai Chernyshevskii
and Nikolai Dobroliubov.
123 The point is well made by Frede, Doubt, Atheism, and the Nineteenth-Century Russian
Intelligentsia, 137.
124 Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, vol. 2, 511.

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119

in the speech or conduct of men such as Pushkin, Herzen, and Tolstoi.
Whereas the nobility sought signs of favour from the sovereign and craved
approval in the beau monde, both domestic and international, the esteem
that mattered to writers and thinkers came from fellow writers, critics,
reviewers, readers, and the European literary and intellectual fellowship.
Many writers and thinkers professed to dislike the society that the high
nobility frequented, perceiving it as artificial, affected, and hypocritical,
and to prefer a simpler and supposedly more authentic way of life.125 They
abhorred materialism (in the sense of love of worldly goods), deploring both
the conspicuous consumption of the upper nobility and, for good measure,
the cupidity attributed to the western bourgeoisie. They cultivated instead
an unmercenary air.126 Social conscience and altruism stood higher in their
code of values than personal honour. Inverting the values of the politically
loyal nobleman, they might even regard punishment by the authorities, as
Ingrid Kleespies has shrewdly observed with Herzen in mind, as a ‘visible
and highly prized mark of tsarist disfavor’.127
What is most important for our purposes, the language that the literary
community and the intelligentsia valued most was not French but Russian.
There were several reasons for this preference. First, many members of the
mid-nineteenth century cultural and intellectual community simply lacked
the high level of active oral proficiency in foreign languages, especially
French, that nobles were able to display in their exclusive social venues. Take,
for instance, Belinskii, who shaped the development of Russian literature
in the 1830s and 1840s and who is regarded as the first major example of the
morally and socially engaged intellectual. Being the son of a poor military
doctor, Belinskii was largely dependent on plurilingual noblemen such as
Pavel Annenkov, Mikhail Bakunin, Granovskii, Herzen, and Ivan Turgenev
for his information about the French and German philosophical and literary
developments that shaped his interpretations of Russian literature. That is
not at all to say that plurilingualism had no use in the intelligentsia, for it was
a means of direct access to modern European literature and ideas. Belinskii
himself tried to improve his knowledge of French in the 1840s so that he
would be able to read George Sand and Pierre Leroux, among other authors,
in the original.128 It could not, however, be a crucial marker of collective
125 This attitude was not new in the nineteenth century; it was also a common trope in Russian
eighteenth-century literature.
126 See Offord, ‘Worshipping the Golden Calf’.
127 Kleespies, A Nation Astray, 160.
128 Panaev, Literaturnye vospominaniia, 242, 243.

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identity or personal status in a meritocratic grouping that welcomed people
from social backgrounds where it was difficult or impossible, as a rule, to
acquire command of foreign languages at an early age.
Secondly, non-noble members of the emergent literary community
and intelligentsia did not aspire to achieve the elite social status of which
command of French – like refined manners, titles, and coats of arms – was
emblematic. On the contrary, they displayed indifference to such status.
As for members of the community who did originate in the nobility, some
spoke rather apologetically about their social origin129 or even attempted to
‘simplify themselves’ (oprostit’sia) by adopting the dress and habits of the
common people.130 The sense of standing outside or being estranged from
the pre-eminent social class naturally entailed rejection of the linguistic
practice of that class. As representatives of a new social grouping that aspired
to speak for the nation as a whole, literatory and intelligenty, as we shall
see, mounted a sustained attack on the linguistic habits of the nobility.131
It is no coincidence that the attack reached a crescendo in the second half
of the nineteenth century, when the nobility found its pre-eminence in the
educated elite more seriously threatened than ever before and after it had
lost its exclusive right to own land cultivated by serf labour.
Thirdly, nations, as we have pointed out, were beginning in the nineteenth
century to be associated with particular ‘peoples’,132 and the language of
the core people of the nation was coming to be seen as a fundamental
attribute of the nation’s identity. As the principal representatives of the
cultural nation, members of the literary community and intelligentsia were
therefore keepers and developers of the nation’s linguistic heritage, as well
as vessels for Russia’s social and political conscience. It was essential, if they
were to play this role, that they create a literary corpus in Russian, and the
importance of the contribution made by the corpus that they did create to
the formation of the modern Russian sense of nationhood can hardly be
exaggerated.133 By contrast, nobles who continued in the mid-nineteenth129 Note, e.g., the negative tone of remarks made by the writer Ivan Panaev in his literary
memoirs about his youthful noble self and the circles in which he moved in his youth: Panaev,
Literaturnye vospominaniia, 145.
130 Tolstoi, in his later life, exemplifies the yearning for such simplification.
131 See especially Chapters 8 and 9 below.
132 A ‘people’ is understood here as a body of men, women, and children comprising a particular
ethnic group and cultural community, rather than the subjects of a particular king or other
ruler, or the body of citizens of a particular country. For these and other definitions of ‘people’,
see Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn, vol. 11, 504–506, especially §§ 1a-d, 4a, and 5.
133 The point is emphasized by Hosking, Russia, 286–311.

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121

century age of nationalism to use French for social and domestic purposes
seemed poorly qualified to speak on behalf of the Russian nation, as opposed
to the Russian Empire.
Finally, it is worth pointing out that the essence of the nation – many
mid-nineteenth-century writers and thinkers came to believe – was to be
found in its purest form among the common people (narod), especially in
the mass of the peasantry, whose life had been untouched by the ways of
the refined society of the upper social stratum. This statement would hold
good for numerous classical writers and thinkers at various points on the
political spectrum, including Herzen, Bakunin, Dostoevskii, and Tolstoi, as
well as the Slavophiles. The literary community and intelligentsia became
intensely interested in this popular mass. The shift of attention away from
the drawing-rooms of St Petersburg and towards the izba (peasant hut), the
antipodes of the world of the nobility, was reflected in numerous publications
of the immediate post-Nicholaevan period, some of which were the outcome
of labours dating back many years. These publications included tales about
peasant life, historical scholarship about the history of serfdom, the peasant
commune, and peasant rebellions, and collections of folk songs, fairy tales,
popular legends, myths, and oral epos.134 Popular speech received its share of
attention too: in 1862, the lexicographer Vladimir Dal’ published a collection
of over 30,000 proverbs and sayings of the Russian people, which might
be regarded in some sort as a repository of their collective originality and
wisdom.135 We must remember that the popular mass, of course, was not
Russophone throughout the Russian Empire: ethnic minorities in many
regions (for instance, Estonians, Georgians, Jews, Kalmyks, Maris, or nonRussian Slavs such as Ukrainians) might have little or no Russian or they
might function to some degree as bilinguals. Nevertheless, the bulk of the
peasant mass within the Russian heartland – and the element of it in which
the literary community and intelligentsia were primarily interested – was
Russian and monolingual, and this fact too helps to explain the diminishing
value of Franco-Russian bilingualism among Russian writers and thinkers
in the second half of the nineteenth century.
*
134 For examples of fiction on the peasantry, see the following: Wortman, The Crisis of Russian
Populism; Glickman, ‘An Alternative View of the Peasantry’; Offord, ‘Literature and Ideas in
Russia after the Crimean War’. For examples of the other types of publication mentioned here,
see Offord, ‘The People’, 252, 261 (nn. 44–49).
135 Dal’, Poslovitsy russkogo naroda.

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The language use we shall describe and the language attitudes whose development we shall trace in this book need to be seen against the background
of social and cultural processes that were taking place in Russia in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We have therefore briefly described
the Europeanization of the Russian nobility in the eighteenth century,
which began during the reign of Peter the Great as part of a programme
of empire-building accompanied by sweeping modernization of the state
Peter inherited. We have drawn attention to the divisions within that class,
stressing that command of French was primarily an accomplishment of its
upper echelons and that this accomplishment required resources that made
French-speaking socially exclusive. We have broached the question of the
extent (limited, we believe) to which royal action was the crucial factor in the
emergence of a plurilingual, outward-looking nobility in eighteenth-century
Russia. Viewed over the whole of the long period we survey, the stock of
this nobility as the pre-eminent social estate in the empire declined. On
the other hand, the stock of the literary community and the intelligentsia
as pre-eminent cultural and moral representatives of the nation rose. Differences in language use and language attitudes mark these developments,
and discussion of those differences is woven into the grand narrative about
national destiny that so strongly colours the literature and thought that
burgeoned in pre-revolutionary Russia.

Chapter 2
Teaching and learning French
Command of French became a necessary attribute in the social and private
world of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russian nobility, whether
it was for use at social gatherings, visiting the theatre, travelling, reading, or
simply keeping a private diary. However, other languages – most importantly
German, English, Latin, and, of course, Russian – were also widely used and
were in some sense in competition with French in Russia in the imperial
period. In this chapter, we shall consider which languages various social
groups or individuals chose to learn, or chose to have their children taught,
and what their choices tell us about conceptions of social and cultural
identity. The learning of one language or another will thus be treated as
indicative of the way in which groups or individuals inscribed themselves in
an ‘imagined community’, to use Benedict Anderson’s expression. Conceived
as a form of cultural capital, the languages in question had different values
in the minds of those who learned them, and we shall look closely at these
differences, exploring the main social and cultural oppositions between
them. We shall also seek to show that the way in which French was learned
in the noble milieu was affected by certain ideas and values that were dear
to the nobility, such as notions about friendship, politeness, and style, and
by preoccupation with nobles’ principal activity, engagement in sociability.
First, though, we shall provide a chronological survey of the development of
the teaching of French in Russia, from the end of the seventeenth century
to the beginning of the twentieth.

An overview of French teaching in Russia
There was little teaching of modern languages, properly speaking, in Russia
before the eighteenth century.1 This fact can be explained by the cultural
isolation of the country: the few merchants who came to trade in Russia had
to set about learning Russian in order to conduct business, as was the case,
for example, with merchants from the Hanseatic cities. Russians, moreover,
were apprehensive about the presence of ‘schismatics’ in Orthodox schools
1 On the beginnings of language teaching in Muscovy in the second half of the seventeenth
century, see the first section of Chapter 5 below.

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and therefore excluded foreigners from the staff even though there were
virtually no indigenous teachers. The Russian state needed people with
knowledge of modern languages, to be sure, especially for negotiations
with diplomats from other countries and for translation. However, in the
seventeenth century these needs were still limited, and were met chiefly
by the Chancery of Foreign Affairs (Posol’skii prikaz), which carried out
translation for the purpose of compiling the main Russian journal of the
time, Vesti-Kuranty, a source of information on the outside world which
was aimed at the tsar and his immediate entourage.2 Even when the policy
of rapid modernization pursued by Peter the Great raised the demand for
translators to an unprecedented level, the supply of language specialists did
not immediately increase. No instruction in French or other living foreign
languages was offered in the majority of the state educational establishments in Peter’s time, such as the elementary schools (the so-called tsifirnye
[cipher] and arifmeticheskie [arithmetic] schools), the Naval Academy in St
Petersburg, or the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy in Moscow.
Other European countries (for example, Holland, the German lands,
Sweden, Poland, and England) were ahead of Russia in the teaching of French
at the turn of the century. In certain countries, there was a long tradition
of use of French in professional domains, for example in the legal domain
in England (although interest in French diminished there at the end of the
Middle Ages).3 In the Low Countries, where relations with France were
close and French was the main language used to conduct them, French had
been learned since the Middle Ages and began to be taught in earnest in the
sixteenth century, in the first instance in auxiliary schools which were tolerated by the municipal authorities (whereas in official schools Latin reigned).
In the last third of the sixteenth century, after the invasion of part of the Low
Countries by the Spaniards, there was an exodus of Protestant Francophone
refugees to the Northern Low Countries, which further consolidated the
position of French there.4 Then, in the seventeenth century, French gradually
became Europe’s lingua franca.5 In Sweden, it was becoming difficult to
make a good career in the administration without knowing French, and
2 On the Posol’skii prikaz and Vesti-Kuranty too, see the first section of Chapter 5.
3 See Kibbee, For to Speke Frenche Trewely.
4 Riemens, Esquisse historique de l’enseignement du français en Hollande du XVIe au XIXe
siècle; Frijhoff, ‘Le français et son usage dans les Pays-Bas septentrionaux jusqu’au XIXe siècle’;
Swiggers, ‘Regards sur l’histoire de l’enseignement du français aux Pays-Bas’.
5 For further details, see Siouffi, ‘De l’“universalité” européenne du français au XVIIIe siècle’;
Brunot, Histoire de la langue française dès origines à 1900, vols 5 and 8, pts 1 and 2; Rjéoutski et
al. (eds), European Francophonie.

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manuals for the military, in fortification and so forth, were for the most part
written in French.6 Again, if one wanted to earn one’s living as a tutor or
governess in Sweden, command of French was essential. Besides boarding
schools for the nobility, private schools specializing in commercial studies
and aimed at the middle class were developing, and French was available
in these too.7 In some places groups of religious worshippers contributed to
the spread of French teaching, as was the case in Poland, to which French
nuns were invited following the matrimonial alliances of kings of Poland
with France.8 In Italy too, French was taught in the seventeenth century,
for example in nobles’ colleges in Piedmont and in the Duchy of Parma, in
Rome, where scholars and ecclesiastics cultivated it from the beginning
of the century, and in Florence and other major centres.9 Often it was a
royal court that served as a catalyst in stimulating the teaching of French,
whether because of dynastic links with France or because of a predilection
for a certain court model in which entertainments in French, such as the
theatre, played a central role. At the same time, French did meet with some
stiff resistance, and in universities and the Jesuit colleges which had spread
all over Catholic Europe Latin continued to have pride of place.
As far as the teaching and learning of French in Russia is concerned, we
should slightly revise the chronology that has hitherto been accepted when
scholars have referred to the spread of French there. Small groups of people
were already learning French in the reign of Peter the Great, in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These were mainly members
of families close to the reforming tsar and foreign families in the service of
Russia, but French was also taught in at least one school supported by the
state, the school of Pastor Johann Ernst Glück,10 who trained individuals for
work on foreign affairs. French was not taught, on the other hand, in the
Catholic or Protestant schools set up in foreign parishes in Moscow and St
Petersburg, which attracted a noble Russian clientèle and and which offered
Latin and German instead.11 After Peter’s death, French began to be taught in
the School of the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg and in the Noble Land
Cadet Corps, alongside German and Latin. French was thus recognized in
6 See Chaline, ‘L’art de la fortification en Europe centrale et la francophonie’.
7 Hammar, L’Enseignement du français en Suède, 11–12.
8 Nikliborc, L’enseignement du français dans les écoles polonaises au XVIIIe siècle, 21, etc.
9 Minerva, ‘Les précepteurs français dans les maisons nobiliaires et les collèges en Italie’.
10 For more details on this school and on foreign-language learning in the Petrine age, see the
first section of Chapter 5 below.
11 Kovrigina, ‘Inovercheskie shkoly Moskvy XVI–pervoi chetverti XVIII v.’; Florovskii, ‘Latinskie
shkoly v Rossii v epokhu Petra I’.

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the immediate post-Petrine period as a language of culture that could not be
ignored. It would also be taught at the University of Moscow (founded in 1755)
and the Institute for Noble Maidens in St Petersburg (the Smolny Institute,
founded in 1764), which was the first public educational institution for girls
in Russia. Not that knowledge of foreign languages could be taken for granted
before Catherine’s reign, even among the great noble families. The memoirist
Vigel’ provides evidence of the scarcity of French-speakers before the 1760s,
when he refers to Prince Sergei Fedorovich Golitsyn, who belonged to a very
distinguished branch of the Golitsyn clan and who at the end of the reign of
Elizabeth studied at the Cadet Corps, where he learned German. It was only
after he had left the Cadet Corps that Golitsyn acquired a good knowledge
of French, through circulation in society. Knowledge of languages was ‘not
a trifling thing at that time’, Vigel’ remarks: ‘it led to advancement’.12
Nor should the spread of French in public education in eighteenth-century
Russia obscure the fact that the teaching of the language was still largely
confined, in the middle of the century, to the two major cities of the country,
St Petersburg and Moscow. Outside these ‘capitals’, there were few centres
where living foreign languages were taught. Admittedly, the remote city
of Ekaterinburg in the Urals became a centre of foreign-language teaching
in the 1730s, thanks to the work of the statesman Vasilii Tatishchev, but
this was an unusual case at that time. Moreover, the only languages that
Tatishchev introduced were Latin and German, the latter being considered
important for the mining industry which was developing in the region and
which drew its technology and part of its labour force from Germany.13
Language-learning did spread further into the Russian provinces during the
reign of Catherine II, not only through private tuition and private boarding
schools but also through the development of public educational institutions
for the nobility. However, we may surmise that it was difficult to find local
teachers, if we are to judge by an attempt that was made in Moscow in 1784
to recruit a French teacher for a school for the nobility that had been opened
in Kursk the previous year.14
The events of the late eighteenth century, starting with the revolution
in France, temporarily discredited French, which came to be viewed as
a possible vehicle for subversive ideas. Under Paul, all trade in French
books was accordingly banned and the teaching of French in public educational institutions was prohibited. Metropolitan Gavriil of Novgorod (Petr
12 Vigel’, Zapiski, vol. 1, 73. On Vigel’ and his memoirs see the first section of Chapter 4 below.
13 Safronova, ‘V.N. Tatishchev o vazhnosti izucheniia inostrannykh iazykov’.
14 IRLI, f. 265, op. 2, d. 1578.

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Petrov-Shaposhnikov) sent dioceses a letter explaining the reasons for this
prohibition: ‘Your seminarists are learning French, but as experience has
shown that those of them who are ill-intentioned abuse their knowledge
of that language I am instructed to write to your Holinesses that you be so
good as to cease to give classes in this subject.’ It is hard to tell whether such
‘abuse’ of French had really been brought to light, but clearly the authorities
were attempting to alter the image of the language in order to make it
seem a vehicle for the ideas of revolutionary France. These measures did
not remain in force for long, though, and from 1797 the teaching of French
was gradually reinstated.15
For a long time, the main obstacle to the teaching of French in Russia was
the scarcity of language teachers. Russian teachers of foreign languages were
very rare in the eighteenth century, and so institutions and individuals had
to employ foreigners for this purpose. These foreigners, at least those who
worked in state institutions, were of many different origins; they included
Germans, Italians, Swedes, and others as well as French and Swiss men and
women. Since many of them knew no Russian, they taught French through
another foreign language, usually German. The first Russian teachers of
languages appeared in state institutions around the middle of the eighteenth
century, but they remained in a minority, so that foreign languages continued
to be taught almost exclusively by foreigners, in private boarding schools
and in the home as well as in public educational institutions. This state
of affairs gave cause for concern in the 1780s, when an important reform
of public education that was being undertaken by the Commission for
the Establishment of Popular Schools touched upon the organization of
teaching in the Institute for Noble Maidens. Recognizing that the teaching
delivered by foreigners at the institute was not satisfactory, not least because
it contributed to ignorance of Russian among the pupils, the commission
aimed to replace most of the foreign teachers with Russians. French was
also taught mainly by foreigners at the Noble Land Cadet Corps, the Naval
Cadet Corps, and the Page Corps.
This situation persisted in the nineteenth century. At the Tsarskoe Selo
Lycée, where Pushkin studied, the French language and French literature
were taught by the Swiss David Boudry, a brother of Jean-Paul Marat, the
leader of the radical Montagnard faction during the French Revolution. At
the University of St Petersburg, which was founded in 1819, it was taught by
the Frenchmen Jean Tillot, Antoine Dugourt, Charles de Saint-Julien, Jean
15 Quoted by Kislova, ‘Le français et l’allemand dans l’éducation religieuse en Russie au XVIIIe
siècle’, 56.

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Fleury, and others. (The first Russian lecturer in French, Fedor Batiushkov,
was not appointed until 1895!) At the Law School and the Nicholas Institute
for Orphans, the French teacher was the same Fleury.16 At the Institute of
the Corps of Communications Engineers, there was Saint-Julien, at the Mary
Institute and the Institute for Noble Maidens, Alphonse Jobard, a former
professor of the University of Kazan’, and at the Gatchina Orphans’ Institute
and the Demidov Lycée, Jules Perrault, who later became a lecturer at the
University of St Petersburg. This list of institutions in itself shows how much
the provision for teaching of French expanded in the nineteenth century.
We can also be sure that teachers’ expertise and experience increased
considerably over time, not least because in the nineteenth century there
was a larger pool of French-speakers settled in Russia from whom teachers
could be selected. Several of these teachers (for example, Boudry, Fleury,
and Saint-Julien) authored textbooks on French language or literature.17 The
preponderance of foreigners among foreign-language teachers in Russian
institutions continued, though: in 1900, the majority of teachers of French
in Russian secondary schools were still of French or Swiss origin.18
The employment of numerous foreigners in educational roles gave rise to
concerns, especially in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
about the extent to which children’s sense of identity might be affected
by the education they provided, particularly when education took place
in the family home.19 Opposition to ‘French’ education was pronounced
in the upper echelons of the bureaucracy in the Alexandrine age: Admiral
Aleksandr Shishkov, Count Rostopchin, Admiral Nikolai Mordvinov, and
other Russian statesmen spoke in their writings of the ills that came of
education by foreigners. Mordvinov, for example, recommended that attachment to their country and their language be inculcated in young noblemen,
and advised Alexander I
to make the court a model of love for all good Russian things – language,
faith, customs, and rituals. To this end, the use of the French language,
16 On the career of Fleury and his French manuals, see Vlasov, ‘Zhan Fleri’.
17 Boudry was the author of Premiers principes de la langue françoise ou nouvelle grammaire,
2 vols (1812) and Abrégé de la grammaire françoise (1819). Saint-Julien wrote several manuals,
including Histoire et littérature des sciences, cours professé à l’Institut des voies de communications
(1836) and Cours méthodique et général de composition (1845). Fleury’s Grammaire en action went
through many editions in Russia. See Goëtz, ‘De précepteur privé à professeur en titre à Tsarskoïé
Selo’; Vlasov, ‘Zhan Fleri’, 56–57; Grigor’ev, Imperatorskii Sankt-Peterburgskii universitet, 140.
18 Piccard, L’enseignement de la langue française, 7.
19 Rjéoutski, ‘Le précepteur français comme ennemi’, 31–39.

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French things, and French rituals should be discontinued at court and in
all parts of society, for they greatly weaken national spirit and love of our
fatherland and, to the attentive observer of human deeds, they portend
doleful consequences.20

Mordvinov proposed that nobles be forbidden to take foreigners into their
houses as tutors and that tutors only be allowed to give private lessons on
condition that they knew Russian. It was extremely important to him that
various disciplines should be taught in Russian. He regarded an education
provided by foreigners and education outside Russia as damaging and
believed that Russia was already experiencing the harmful effects of these
practices:
The best foreign educators, unfamiliar with the spirit of the Russian
people and having no strong filial feeling for Russia or devotion to it,
cannot give the Russian youth a good upbringing or prepare useful sons
of the fatherland, even if they have good intentions. What, then, could one
expect of the crowd of unskilled, mercenary, and perhaps ill-intentioned
vagrant teachers to whom the Russian nobility entrust the formation of
the minds and hearts of their children? The pupils of these mentors will
be true citizens of the world; that is to say, they will have no fatherland of
their own, nor their own language or customs, nor will they know their
country’s decrees, or their obligations, or understand their blood ties.21

Mordvinov is particularly critical of the boarding schools run by foreigners
because, he says, children come out of them with an imperfect knowledge
of French, superficial and sometimes false knowledge of what they have
studied, and only a few accomplishments in dancing and music. The children
who have been exposed to such an education are alien and quite often
flaccid in body and spirit. Mordvinov’s vocabulary (blood ties, body, spirit,
flaccidity, and so forth) reflects an assumption that individuals are bound
exclusively and naturally to their native country and helps him to imagine
an opposition between the sturdiness and sound morality of the Russian
nation and the softness and immoral character of the French.
We can be sure that Mordvinov is addressing his criticism first and foremost to people of his own social level, because it was mostly in the highest
strata of Russian society that families had their children educated at home
20 Arkhiv grafov Mordvinovykh, vol. 4, 398–399.
21 Ibidem, 400.

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by foreign tutors. According to statistics compiled recently by Aleksandr
Feofanov, Russian boys whose fathers were in the army and had reached
one of the first three ranks in the Table of Ranks (that is to say, the ranks
from field marshal to lieutenant-general) were less and less likely during the
second half of the eighteenth century to be sent to one of the state schools
for the nobility, such as the Noble Land Cadet Corps. Other educational
pathways were increasingly preferred, such as education at home, or abroad
(during the Grand Tour), or at the Page Corps, which was a far more elite
institution, from the social point of view, than the Cadet Corps.22
The need to have oversight of foreign tutors, of whom a large proportion
taught French in family homes, would become an intermittent political
preoccupation of the Russian authorities. Compulsory examinations for
tutors were introduced and attempts made to turn tutors into virtual state
functionaries. Greatly concerned by recurrent disturbances in Europe, the
authorities tended to see the French tutor as an agent of revolution who,
under the cover of an educational post, sought to inculcate dangerous ideas
in Russian nobles, whom the authorities regarded as pillars of the regime.
Thus, the ultimate aim of the government was to reduce the community of
tutors, if not altogether to destroy it, and to control the ideas that its members
spread among the nobility.23 It is symptomatic of these tendencies that
French teaching materials produced specially for Russian children began
sometimes to include sections on the history of Russia. A textbook entitled
The Friend of the Russian Youth, written by a certain L. Thibaut, a teacher
of French language at the Larin Gymnasium, provides a good example. In
addition to a summary of the history of Russia, Thibaut offers a section on
the ‘beautiful features of Russian history’, and his work as a whole represents
an apologia for the ‘heroes’ of Russian national history and a glorification of
the ruling dynasty.24 However, there was no chance, in the early nineteenth
century, of replacing instruction at home by French men and women with
instruction delivered by Russians in educational institutions, for there were
not enough Russians capable of teaching French. This was one of the reasons
why in the 1810s Paul’s widow, the Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna, set
up a class in the Moscow Orphanage to train Russian women to teach in the
22 We refer here to a paper presented by Aleksandr Feofanov at a conference ‘Beyond the
Traditional Historiography of Education in Russia’ which was held at the German Historical
Institute in Moscow on 27–28 January 2017.
23 Solodiankina, ‘Les précepteurs français parmi les autres éducateurs étrangers en Russie en
1820–1850’.
24 Thibaut, L’Ami de la jeunesse russe; see especially 38–46 (‘Beaux traits de l’histoire de Russie’)
and 152–210 (‘Histoire de Russie’).

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houses of the nobility, including the provincial nobility. In spite of the fact
that ‘French’ education was stigmatized in public discourse at that time,
French was taught much more intensively in this estate than German, 25
having become the nobility’s most important language.
From being a language of elites, French gradually became a language
of culture as well. There were notable differences, though, between the
uses of French among the high nobility, especially before the decline of
elite francophonie, and its use by broader strata of the Russian population
as teaching of the language spread across a whole network of academic
institutions. In the case of the nobility, the French language became a
central feature of the educational and aesthetic system of the class, and
indeed command of French became a part of a noble’s identity. It also served
as a vehicle for all major European cultures, which became accessible to
the elites through French much more often than through translation into
Russian. For lower social strata, on the other hand, French was a linguistic
tool that offered access not to the culture of a cosmopolitan aristocracy but
to French culture per se, which in the nineteenth century was increasingly
regarded as the property of a single nation whose boundaries, both territorial
and imaginary, were more clearly defined in people’s minds than they had
been before. Knowledge of French, moreover, could be useful for some
professional purpose. This contrast was reflected in the ways in which
French was learned, which depended heavily on the learner’s social level.
In the families of the high and middling nobility, French was acquired
through practice as well as tuition – during walks with tutors, in various
forms of sociability, such as salons and the theatre, through reading books,
by travelling abroad, for example during a Grand Tour, and so forth. The
nobility could therefore practise its French in a variety of settings where
the boundaries between formal tuition and sociability were not always
clearly demarcated, whereas the lower social strata learned the language
mainly in the classroom.
In gymnasia (gimnazii, i.e. secondary schools) and real schools (real’nye
uchilishcha, i.e. non-classical secondary schools), by the end of the nineteenth
century, French was learned mainly through translation and study of grammar. The textbooks used in these schools ‘were completely devoid of interest’,
a French-language master recalled; the grammar and vocabulary studied in
them were ‘absolutely arbitrary’ and had no connection with the teaching
aims.26 Class sizes were very large (often there were 50 pupils in a class).
25 Lavrinovich, ‘Soediniaia “blagosostoianie s obshcheiu pol’zoiu”’.
26 Piccard, L’enseignement de la langue française, 12–13.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Teachers, to make a living, had to teach for 30 or even 40 hours per week,
and the standard of instruction suffered as a result.27 French was studied for
two or three hours a week, alongside German and, in the classical gymnasia,
Latin, Greek, and sometimes, as an option, English, with the result that pupils
made slow progress.28 Teaching was focused on reading and comprehension
of a foreign text, whereas in the privileged schools the pupils were already
so advanced in French when they entered that, according to an expert in
the Ministry of Education, they needed to be taught ‘as if it was the pupils’
mother tongue’, with emphasis on extensive reading of canonical literature
and written expression in French, to which the gymnasia and real schools
paid less attention.29 Clearly, then, the way in which French was learned in
public schools was far removed from the way it was absorbed in ‘good’ society
and privileged schools, such as the Tsarskoe Selo Lycée, the Page Corps, and
the Imperial Law School,30 where the aims of tuition were also quite different.
As the number of learners of French increased and the social base from
which they originated widened, language study became more theoretical,
with emphasis on grammar, even in the Cadet Corps and the Institute for
Noble Maidens. One consequence of this development seems to have been
loss of fluency in French. A teacher at the Catherine Institute in St Petersburg
(founded in 1798) compared the generation of pupils who studied in young
ladies’ institutes in the 1860s and 1870s with those who studied there at the
end of the nineteenth century and found that the earlier generation spoke
French fluently and ‘with an accent with which one could find no fault,
and, for the most part, astonishingly correctly’. The later generation, on
the other hand, ‘barely mumble a few short replies’, he complained, ‘and,
if they want to launch themselves into a sophisticated conversation, then
the barbarisms and solecisms with which their language is studded soon
show that they have made an imperfect study of French’. However, these
latter pupils, having learned French ‘as a dead language’, did have a better
theoretical knowledge of it than the former.31 The same observer tried
to identify the causes of what he did not hesitate to call the ‘decay of the
French language in Russia’. Formerly, ‘one scarcely heard people speaking
any language other than French in all the salons’, he declared, but by the
end of the nineteenth century French had become the exception. Linguistic
27
28
29
30
31

Ibidem, 7–9.
Ibidem, 10–11.
Du Loup, Rapport à son Excellence le ministre de l’Instruction publique, 18.
Ibidem, 7.
Fondet, L’enseignement de la langue française en Russie, 3.

Teaching and learning French

133

patriotism had played a large part in this change. ‘Patriots will tell you’, he
continued, writing in 1895,
that this is a legitimate return to the national language, which is more
harmonious and richer than French, and which did not deserve the disdain
that had long been heaped upon it. Such ideas had an impact, there was a
sort of reaction, or rather people were borne from one extreme to another,
and that is where we still are now.32

The change in the model for the teaching of French and the social background of people learning it may also be illustrated by reference to the
network established by the Alliance Française, which began to operate in
Russia in the early twentieth century and which, besides having a presence
in Moscow and St Petersburg, had by 1913 set up some thirty branches across
the country. French was now a language that represented the culture of
France and its values. The Alliance offered lectures on literature, science,
music, and other aspects of French culture, as well as language courses.
The lectures delivered by literary and scientific personalities from France
and Belgium, such as Frantz Funck-Brentano, Pierre Paul Leroy-Beaulieu,
Jean Richepin, and Émile Verhaeren, attracted hundreds of listeners. It was
no accident that the Alliance, like the Institut Français (founded in 1912),
relied on the French colony that had been established in Russia and on the
French authorities (the French ambassador was honorary president of the
St Petersburg branch of the Alliance Française). These organizations were
the figureheads of ‘francophonie’ (the word had already been coined by
Onésime Reclus), instruments of what we should now call ‘soft power’ that
France could exercise in the race for hegemony in the world. This policy was
grounded in the tradition of Franco-German competition that grew more
intense after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871.33
The social base of these organizations in Russia reflected the diversity
of the Russian Francophone community by this time. On the one hand, the
core public attracted by these bodies, especially the public attending courses
mounted by the Alliance Française, was made up of the daughters of families
belonging to the petty bourgeoisie and officials of modest rank. The language
courses were followed exclusively by women – a fact that reflected both
the position of women in the educational system, for universities remained
closed to them, and the state of the labour market, in which women who
32 Ibidem, 5.
33 See Medvedkova, ‛‟Scientifique” ou ‟intellectuel”?’

134 

The French L anguage in Russia

could teach French were much in demand in schools in the public sector as
well as in private education. On the other hand, the people sitting on the
boards directing these organizations were, in the main, high Russian officials
and persons from the imperial court. Such protection for new institutions
was important, to be sure, but we should not forget that the St Petersburg
court always remained the nerve-centre of Russian francophonie.34
After the cataclysms of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War and
the emigration of a large proportion of the French-speakers in the elite, the
teaching of French would decline in the Soviet Union. The French Slavist
André Mazon, who was sent by the French minister of education to observe
developments in the USSR in the 1920s, concluded that there was ‘not one
establishment in ten that had a teacher qualified to teach French on its
staff’. If one could choose a language to learn at school (German, English, or
French), ‘local needs’ almost always dictated the choice of German or, more
infrequently, English. In higher education institutions, students confined
themselves to pursuing the language they had begun to learn at school, which
was almost always German or English. French studies at universities, Mazon
wrote, mainly attracted ‘young women who belonged for the most part to the
old society’.35 French fared a little better in evening classes, for which those
attending paid a fee, but there too the public was almost entirely female.36 A
certain M. Parain, acting as an observer in the Ukraine, reported that in 1926
there was only one institution in Kiev that was teaching French, a college
which had about 15 pupils studying the subject, while there were about 30
studying English and 150 studying German. In Odessa, which had been a
centre of francophonie in Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution, French
was taught only at the Pedagogical Institute, the Economics Institute, and
the Infantry School. The degree course lasted only two years, with two hours
of tuition per week, and when the students completed it, Parain claimed,
they knew ‘next to nothing’. ‘French influence, or rather French taste’, he
wrote, survived ‘in the higher intellectual milieu’, at the Academy of Sciences,
among learned Francophiles (especially Orientalists) who had been brought
up before the revolution.37 The new generation of Russian scholars, who were
34 Rjéoutski, ‘L’Alliance Française à Saint-Pétersbourg’; idem, ‘L’Institut Français de
Saint-Pétersbourg’.
35 Report of 15 June 1927: Institut de France, fonds André Mazon, no. 6780, fol. 417.
36 In Leningrad, the most important courses were directed by the linguist Lev Shcherba, a
pupil of Baudoin de Courtenay, and in Moscow by Klavdiia Ganshina. Both of these individuals
were eminent French specialists educated before the October Revolution.
37 Institut de France, fonds André Mazon, no. 6780, fols 124–125, report by M. Parain on his
visit to the Ukraine, 1 December 1925.

Teaching and learning French

135

of humble social origin, had hardly been taught French at all, and this led to a
sharp reduction in Russian contact with French men of learning.38 ‘Beyond the
previously bourgeois intellectual and learned world’, Parain continued, ‘there
can be no question of French influence, other than influence of a practical
nature, except in cities such as Leningrad (i.e. the former St Petersburg),
Moscow, or Odessa, where there has been a tradition’.39 There were evidently
social as well as political reasons for this abandonment of French, which, as a
language of elites, seemed suspect to Communists. However, there were also
practical considerations: Germany was more open to trade with the USSR,
and ‘the Union was concerned above all to produce men who knew those
living languages that would make the biggest contribution to its industrial
and commercial future’, as Mazon was told by Ian Riappo, a high-ranking
official in the Commissariat for Education in the Ukraine. 40 The Bolshevik
Revolution, Mazon noted with some bitterness,
has swept away knowledge of French at the same time as the society that
availed itself of it [French]; it has brought to power a large number of men
who, during their [years of political] exile, had acquired a German or
Anglo-Saxon culture; it has turned the youth, whose watchword is to be
positive and realistic, to the study of other languages which are thought
[in the USSR] to be of more immediate use, German and English. 41

We shall now explore in greater depth the social and cultural distribution
of languages in education in imperial Russia, focusing principally on the
eighteenth century, when French turned from a language of the second order
into the main language of the Russian elite. Bearing in mind our emphasis
on the plurilingualism of the elite, we shall consider the position of French
vis-à-vis that of German, Latin, English, and Russian.

French versus German
For a good part of the eighteenth century, French was not the main foreign
language studied in Russia, for German was firmly established there. For
one thing, German was the first language of the majority of foreigners
38
39
40
41

Rjéoutski, ‘Le français des scientifiques en URSS’.
Institut de France, fonds André Mazon, no. 6780, fol. 125.
Ibidem, fol. 419.
Ibidem, fol. 408.

136 

The French L anguage in Russia

resident in Russia. Moreover, relations between Russia and Germanophone
countries were close. The annexation of the Baltic provinces by Peter the
Great following the Great Northern War also brought into the bosom of
the empire an important group of Baltic nobles whose mother tongue was
German. In these circumstances, it was unsurprising that German attracted
such interest in Russia, especially in public education. 42 Thus the history
of foreign-language learning in Russia during the Enlightenment may be
seen as a narrative about the advance of French in competition with other
languages, particularly German. Sometimes French developed at the expense
of German and sometimes in parallel with it. It is therefore problematic to
speak of ‘French Europe’, 43 as far as Russia is concerned, at least until the
mid-eighteenth century. The norm in Russia was plurilingualism rather
than bilingual competence in French and the vernacular. However, the
same could be said of several other European countries. The percentage of
pupils studying different foreign languages in Swedish military schools in the
early nineteenth century, for example, shows that French was facing strong
competition not only from German but also from English. 44 In eighteenthcentury Bohemia, the nobility used German and French, sometimes Czech,
and even Latin, but each language had its special space. 45 We also find
plurilingualism in the Low Countries, where French was the language of
the elites and the bourgeoisie in the eighteenth century but German and
English were close behind. 46
Statistical information on the publication of language textbooks suggests
that although Russians began to take a serious interest in French as early
as the 1750s, the number of such works grew rapidly in the 1780s. 47 Interest
in German went back further than this, to the seventeenth century, but
with German too the number of textbooks increased in the second half of
the eighteenth century, from the 1760s, peaking in the 1780s and 1790s. We
may therefore assume that in the last third of the eighteenth century wider
sections of the population began to think it worth studying the two main
42 Koch, Deutsch als Fremdsprache im Rußland des 18. Jahrhunderts.
43 This is the title of the famous book by the Marquis Louis-Antoine Caraccioli to which we
referred in the first section of Chapter 1 above.
44 Östman, ‘French in Sweden in the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’,
280–281.
45 Cerman, ‘Le Précepteur français en Bohême au temps des Lumières’.
46 Frijhoff, ‘Amitié, utilité, conquête?’, 30–31.
47 See Vlasov, ‘Les manuels utilisés dans l’enseignement du français en Russie au XVIIIe siècle’;
Glück and Pörzgen, Deutschlernen in Russland und in den baltischen Ländern vom 17. Jahrhundert
bis 1941, xxxix, xl. The number of such publications may have been boosted by the easing of
restrictions on printing in 1783.

Teaching and learning French

137

foreign languages in Russia, especially, no doubt, the middling and petty
nobility and ‘people of various ranks’, the raznochintsy.
It was also in the second half of the eighteenth century that French and
German began to enter religious education, often on the initiative of a clergyman who had himself mastered these languages. For instance, French was
taught in the Nizhnii Novgorod seminary from some time around 1753, in the
seminary in Riazan’ from 1765 or 1766, in the Voronezh seminary from the
1770s, and at the St Alexander Nevskii Seminary in St Petersburg from at least
as far back as 1772. In the Ukraine, French was taught at the college in Khar’kov
in 1736–1741, and then again from 1768. It is possible that the introduction
of tuition in these two languages in Russian seminaries was linked to the
‘Instruction to the Commission Established by Us concerning the Domains of
the Church’, dated 29 November 1762, in which the sovereign deplored the low
educational level of the clergy. Even if languages were not expressly mentioned
in this instruction, study of them was undoubtedly seen as a possible means
of raising the general cultural level of the priesthood.48 Knowledge of French
was a sign of culture that could serve to counter the image that nobles had
of an untutored clergy, while Latin was no longer regarded by the nobility as
a sign of culture. What Karamzin says about churchmen on the occasion of
his visit to the Trinity Monastery of St Sergei near Moscow shows very well
how the display of knowledge of foreign languages could favourably affect
the impression that the clergy made on a nobleman:
Apart from the classical languages, they study French and German here.
This is commendable. Those who need to preach ought to know Bossuet
and Massillon. Some of the monks spoke French to me, and the important teachers mixed some French phrases into their conversation. They
demonstrated that learning is welcoming: they walked around with me
and showed me everything with sincere obligingness. Learning imparts
an air of nobility to people of any station. 49

The competition between French and German is well illustrated by the case
of the Cadet Corps, the main nursery of the Russian nobility. Up until the
48 French and German were not off icially introduced into the seminaries and spiritual
academies until the issue of a regulation in 1798, though, and still only as optional subjects.
See Kislova, ‘Le français et l’allemand dans l’éducation religieuse en Russie au XVIIIe siècle’,
51–56.
49 Karamzin, ‘Istoricheskie vospominaniia i zamechaniia na puti k Troitse i v sem monastyre’,
at http://az.lib.ru/k/karamzin_n_m/text_1070oldorfo.shtml. Quoted by Kislova, ‘Le français et
l’allemand dans l’éducation religieuse en Russie au XVIIIe siècle’, 72.

138 

The French L anguage in Russia

reign of Catherine II, German was the first language studied there.50 Over a
period of roughly 30 years, from the 1730s to the 1760s, French was learned
by between one third and two thirds of the Russophone pupils, whereas
practically all of those pupils learned German. To understand the surprising
unpopularity of French in the main Russian noble school in the middle of the
Enlightenment, we need to take account of the social level of the pupils, who
came for the most part from the middling and petty nobility, especially after
the reform of the Corps, in the 1760s, when the number of pupils increased
considerably. Their families were far removed, socially and culturally, from
the centre of the nascent Russian Francophone world, the St Petersburg court.
There are other reasons too why French was not more popular at the Cadet
Corps, especially the presence of numerous German-speaking teachers in
this institution. These teachers did not have a command of Russian and
therefore taught French mainly through the medium of German; Russian
pupils consequently had to learn German before they could tackle French.
On the whole, the Russian authorities supported the teaching of German.
It would seem that in 1732 German was compulsory for Russian pupils and
that Russian was virtually compulsory for pupils from Baltic families. The
insistence that each of the main groups of the nobility in Russia should
learn the language of the other shows a desire to bring them together culturally. This rapprochement was regarded as a means of creating stability in
the empire. In 1773, the Senate sent an edict to the University of Moscow,
the Noble Land Cadet Corps, the Naval Cadet Corps, and the Academy
of Sciences, regretting the fact that the Russian nobility had insufficient
knowledge of German. The senators regarded acquisition of this language
as a priority for the state. The chief reason they gave for this view was the
need to integrate the Baltic provinces in the empire. The Senate also ordered
that priority be given to German over other languages in these institutions,51
which suggests that in fact German was no longer pre-eminent.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, German was also the main
language of instruction at the Cadet Corps, whatever the mother tongue of
the pupils. In April 1734, there was only one Russian teacher who taught a
50 See the statistics for the period 1731–1764 in Rjéoutski, ‘Native Tongues and Foreign Languages
in the Education of the Russian Nobility’.
51 RGA VMF, f. 432, op. 1, d. 70, fols 2–2 v. There is another version of the same edict, dated
9 September 1773, in PSZ, vol. 19, 818–819, no. 14036, and it is this published version, which differed
considerably from the version found in RGA VMF, that had the force of law. The edict, in its published
form, outlines the potential advantages of knowledge of German for men pursuing a career in the
civil service, thus betraying concern that German was widely considered less useful than some
other foreign languages (the author(s) no doubt had French in mind) in professional life.

139

Teaching and learning French

non-linguistic discipline and one German teacher of mathematics who knew
a little Russian.52 In 1737, almost all the books used for teaching subjects
other than languages were in German or, less often, Latin. Only in the
geometry class did they use a Russian textbook, which had been translated
from German by one of the teachers.53 Nor was this situation exceptional,
as Kristine Koch (Dahmen) has shown; German was also used for teaching
various subjects in the school attached to the Academy of Sciences. Thus,
from being a foreign language in Russia, German became one of the main
languages of instruction and played a role similar to that played by Latin in
Jesuit colleges and European universities. There were considerable misgivings about this state of affairs, for many pupils had a poor understanding
of what their teachers were saying.54
In private education, on the other hand, German was already starting to
give way to French by the middle of the eighteenth century. From the 1720s
and 1730s, French was being introduced in circles whose members were
most exposed to western influences and had opportunities to rub shoulders
with foreigners.55 According to data (incomplete, admittedly) collected
by a commission that was set up in 1757 by the St Petersburg Academy of
Sciences to scrutinize applications for permission to teach in families and
private educational institutions, French was taught more frequently than
German in St Petersburg families:56

All families surveyed
Families of Russian
nobles surveyed

Number of
families

Families with
children
studying both
French and
German

Families with
children
studying only
French

Families with
children
studying only
German

30
23

7
5

16
14

7
4

This preponderance of French in teaching in the home is explained by the
fact that the St Petersburg families who employed tutors at this time were
often highly placed and close to the court. In some families the study of
52 RGADA, f. 248, op. 1, d. 396, fol. 29.
53 Sukhomlinov, Materialy dlia istorii Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, vol. 3, 464–465.
54 Koch, Deutsch als Fremdsprache im Ruβland des 18. Jahrhunderts, 155–168.
55 On the study of French in families close to Peter the Great, see the first section of Chapter
5 below.
56 SPbF ARAN, f. 3, op. 9, d. 80 (1757–1758).

140 

The French L anguage in Russia

German was abandoned or at any rate receded into the background. The
historian Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov seems not to have learned German
to a high standard, and never used it in his correspondence, even if he did
not question the need for a Russian nobleman to know this language.57 On
the whole, though, the Russian aristocracy continued to learn German. In
the family of the Bariatinskii princes, for example, the sons and daughters
learned it alongside French in the 1770s.
Both French and German were also studied during Catherine’s reign
in numerous boarding schools opened by foreigners in St Petersburg and
Moscow. The pupils in these schools were mainly the children of foreign
merchants and craftsmen and, if they were Russian, the children of officers
and officials of middling or low rank (lieutenant, captain, collegiate assessor,
postman) or, very occasionally, the sons of Russian merchants.58 In those
families which featured in the documents of the commission set up in 1757,
there was only one Russian merchant family whose children were learning
German. We may therefore conclude that Russian trades-people rarely
learned living languages in the eighteenth century. However, we know little
about the languages used by the petty nobility at this time, for there are few
documents relating to the private sphere of this milieu. Some members of this
group were illiterate throughout Catherine’s reign and we may doubt whether
such nobles were in a position to master foreign languages. The instructions
(nakazy) submitted by provincial nobles when Catherine convoked her
Legislative Commission in 1767 rarely raise questions relating to education,
which is in itself revealing. Such questions are broached for the most part
in the instructions of nobles from the province of Moscow and provinces
in the Ukraine. Foreign languages are not often mentioned, but when they
are it is German and French that the nobles have in mind.59
At the Noble Land Cadet Corps, French was the main language studied by
the end of Catherine’s reign, if we are to judge by the number of times it was
used by cadets to congratulate the director on the occasion of his birthday
or the New Year. In 1773, Nicolas-Gabriel Clerc (subsequently known as the
historian Le Clerc), who at that time was director of studies at the Corps,
described French as ‘the language which, after Russian, it is most important
for the pupils to have a thorough knowledge of’.60 For the second age group
57 See Offord and Rjéoutski, ‘French in the Education of the Nobility’.
58 Rjéoutski, ‘Les écoles étrangères dans la société russe au siècle des Lumières’, and additional
information kindly provided by Galina Smagina.
59 Kusber, ‘Kakie znaniia nuzhny dvorianinu dlia zhizni?’, 277, 279.
60 Tableaux des Exercices et des Etudes de Messieurs les cadets […]. The title of each table ends
with an indication of the age group in question (du Second âge, etc.). These are weekly timetables

Teaching and learning French

141

(from nine- to twelve-year olds), there were sixteen hours of French classes in
reading and writing per week, as against four and a half hours for Russian. For
the youngest age group (six- to nine-year olds), these figures were quite logically
reversed, bearing in mind the attention that needed to be given to mastering
their national language. For the third age group (twelve- to fifteen-year olds),
four hours were allocated to Russian and ten to French, divided between
grammar, dictation, and reading. It was only from this age that pupils started
learning German, for three hours per week. For the two highest age groups
(fifteen- to twenty-one-year olds), French classes (and German classes too)
disappeared, as the cadets were expected to have mastered the language by
that stage. The only exercise that pupils had in these languages at this level was
translation from French and German into Russian, and that was for no more
than one hour per week. They did have to continue to study Russian, though,
with three hours of grammar. Twenty minutes each week were also devoted
to Church Slavonic.61 The speeches delivered to all cadets on occasions such as
holidays and celebrations in the late 1780s and early 1790s were invariably in
French.62 In general, it became common practice in educational institutions
to give speeches in French at special occasions,63 thus symbolically marking
the place accorded to French in Russian education, both before and after the
Napoleonic invasion. And yet, if German began to give ground to French,
trilingualism in Russian, French, and German remained the rule, not RussoFrench bilingualism, as is often assumed when one speaks of this period.
At the Naval Cadet Corps, on the other hand, the sailors rarely learned
more than one foreign language. Thus in 1771–1772, only 17 out of 45 Russophone pupils were learning French, 14 German, and 10 English. In 1778,
the picture was much the same: 22 out of 47 pupils were learning French,
22 German, and only eight English. Nor does the level of command of the
languages studied seem to have been very high in this institution, at least
in the years to which we refer.64 Nonetheless, here too greater importance
was attached to French than to German during Catherine’s reign, as we may
included by Betskoi in Les plans et les statuts des différents établissements, vol. 2; see Kouzmina,
‘Les langues vivantes dans les établissements éducatifs russes au siècle des Lumières’, 15. It is
not clear whether this plan was put into practice.
61 Kouzmina, ‘Les langues vivantes dans les établissements éducatifs russes au siècle des
Lumières’, 15–17.
62 These conclusions are based on analysis of documents in RNB, Manuscripts Department,
f. 1059 (Cadet Corps). In the early days of the Corps, in the 1730s, speeches were written in three
languages, namely German, French, and Latin.
63 Grigor’ev, Imperatorskii Sankt-Peterburgskii universitet, 43.
64 RGA VMF, f. 432, op. 1, d. 23 (1770–1771), fols 154–158; d. 5 (1762–1783), fols 1–26. The list does
not contain the names of all the cadets who were studying in the Cadet Corps.

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The French L anguage in Russia

see from an initiative taken by the director of the Corps, Ivan GolenishchevKutuzov. In February 1774, he ordered that a theatre be set up. He envisaged
this as a place that would help pupils ‘to acquire the freedom of manner,
spontaneity of action, confidence in conversation, and grace of movement
which are not only seemly for noble youths but which they really must
have’.65 The director mentioned only two languages in which cadets might
stage plays, Russian and French. Productions, he stated, should ‘not be put
on in Russian alone, but in French too, as the more widely-used language and
the one which has the best theatrical works’.66 This experiment evidently
yielded good results, and in 1777 Golenishchev-Kutuzov required all cadets
to take part in the theatre, except those who were ‘incompetent, lazy, badly
behaved, or scruffy’. It seems that by this time performances were staged
not only in Russian and French but in other languages that the cadets
were studying as well, for the theatre was regarded as helping to advance
‘knowledge of foreign languages and ability to converse in them’.67
At the Institute for Noble Maidens, according to its ordinances, the
number of hours per week devoted to study of the two main languages
learned was as follows:68
Language First age group
(6–9 years old)

Third age group Fourth age
Second age
(13–15 years old) group
group
(16–18 years old)
(10–12 years old)

French

7 hours, then
6½ hours, for
reading and
writing

German

4 hours for
reading and
writing

3 hours for
grammar, reading,
and dictation,
plus 1 hour for
writing
2 hours for grammar, plus 1 hour
for reading books,
and dictation

1 hour for reading 1 hour for reading
books
books

2 hours for
grammar and
writing, 2 hours
for grammar and
translation

4 hours for grammar, translation,
and reading
books

It may seem surprising that the number of classes in French should be reduced
to almost nil during the last six years of study, whereas the number of classes
65 Ibidem, f. 432, op. 1, d. 103, fol. 42.
66 Ibidem, fols 42–42 v.
67 Ibidem, fol. 44.
68 Cherepnin, Imperatorskoe vospitatel’noe obshchestvo, vol. 3, 136–137. The number of hours
for non-noble girls was slightly different (ibidem, 138–139). This schedule was adopted in 1783.

Teaching and learning French

143

in German should be increased during the last three years. No doubt it was
thought that pupils had effectively finished learning the French language
by the time they reached the age of twelve. Classes over the next six years
pursued different aims, such as development of the girls’ knowledge of French
literature. In any case, the girls could make further progress in French by
attending other courses that were taught in it and through conversations in
French with members of staff. All in all, French was in a stronger position
than German at the Smolny, but we should not forget that this institution was
very close to the court where French played a central role. Besides, French
was undoubtedly considered more important than German for a young
noblewoman who was being prepared for a prominent role in noble society.
In aristocratic families, as opposed to educational institutions, the teaching methods used were based on direct communication with the pupil in the
foreign language in question, which made for rapid linguistic progress. This
helps to explain why there were already Russian aristocrats with an excellent command of French by the mid-eighteenth century.69 Other practices
adopted by the high nobility also accelerated language acquisition. French
was often the main and sometimes the only language of communication
within the family circle. During the reign of Catherine, it also became, in
many households, the language of tuition for many non-linguistic subjects,
such as geography, mathematics, history (including Russian history), and
literature. Examples from numerous noble families, including the Bariatinskiis, the Durnovos, the Golitsyns, the Sablukovs, and the Stroganovs, bear
witness to this fact (Illustration no. 3). Evidently, this was also the case in
the royal family. The Grand Dukes Alexander and Constantine were taught
geography and mathematics in French by Charles Masson and history by
Frédéric-César de Laharpe. Later, in the nineteenth century, the future
Emperor Nicholas I and the Grand Duke Michael studied politics in French
with the academician Heinrich Storch, who was German, and read Greek
and Roman authors in French with Du Puget. Archives preserve several
textbooks that tutors wrote for their pupils on these subjects.70
69 Rjéoutski, ‘Le français et d’autres langues dans l’éducation en Russie au XVIIIe siècle’, 32–36.
70 e.g. ‘Tableau Chronologique – historique et géographique avec deux cartes de l’Empire de
Russie. A Mr Alexandre Sabloukoff […], 22 octobre 1800’ [by J.-B. de Résimont], RNB, Manuscripts
Department, Fr. Q IV, no. 165; ‘Tableau des événements les plus remarquables de l’histoire de
Russie suivi d’une description topographique de ce vaste Empire, S. Pétersbourg, année 1800’,
RGB, Manuscripts Department, f. 95, no. 1457 (167), written for Nikolai Dmitrievich Durnovo
(1792–1828), another pupil of Résimont, who was the son of a marshal of the court and would
later become a military officer. See also translations of information on Russian history from
Russian into French which Durnovo made when he was twelve years old: ibidem, f. 95, nos 1456a

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The French L anguage in Russia

Illustration 3 Map of Portugal drawn by Princess Nina Bariatinskaia (1785).

Image held in the Russian State Library, Manuscripts Department, f. 19, k. 284, d. 3, fol. 4, and
reproduced with their permission.

Nor should we overlook the importance of reading habits in noble families,
and in particular the existence of the library in the noble house, for the
development of a child’s facility in French and the maintenance of that
facility into adulthood. Children in aristocratic families started reading
books in French in early childhood, and their acquisition of writing ability
in French depended to a considerable extent on this experience. However,
reading French was not conceived merely as a tool in the study of subjects
in the educational curriculum, such as history or geography, but as part
of a broader upbringing.71 (That is not at all to say that a ‘French’ upbringing invariably had the effect of excluding Russian books from the young
nobleman’s reading.72) The extent to which the Russian aristocrat became
(141) and 1456b (142). Durnovo wrote all his diaries in French: RGB, f. 95, nos M.9535(90)–M.9551
(106) (1811–1828).
71 For examples, see Rjéoutski (ed.), Quand le français gouvernait la Russie, 43, 45, 59, 75
(Golitsyns), 316–317 (Protasovs), 349 (the family of Lev Tolstoi), etc.
72 Thus Jacques Démichel, the governor of Baron Grigorii Stroganov’s son, wrote in his plan
for the education of his pupil that there should be books in Russian in the young baron’s library

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immersed in literature in French has yet to be properly studied, but there
is reason to suppose that the amount of literature read by members of the
upper stratum of the Russian nobility in French from the age of Catherine
exceeded the amount they read in other languages, including Russian and
German, and that this reading had a deep effect. The many catalogues
of private libraries which have survived, either as published books or in
collections of the documents of individual noble families, clearly attest to
the importance of nobles’ French reading, although the preponderance of
books in French in them was no doubt due to the general prestige of the
French book in Russian noble culture as well as to the demand for French
literature among Russian noble readers. We know from many examples, such
as the families of Alexander Pushkin and Lev Tolstoi, that noble children
often had access to libraries in which the French book had pride of place.73
As French gained ground and became more widely known, its use as a
language of instruction spread to public educational institutions. In Catherine’s reign, Clerc taught history to cadets at the Cadet Corps in French. At
the University of St Petersburg, the Orientalists Jean-François Demange and
François-Bernard Charmoy delivered their courses in French. From 1810, a
whole cohort of French engineers (Pierre Bazaine, Alexandre Fabre, Charles
Potier, Maurice Destrem, and others) and the Spanish engineer Agustín de
Betancourt taught their courses in French at the St Petersburg Institute of
the Corps of Communications Engineers. In fact, the majority of courses
so that he could have exercise in his native language: ibidem, 139–140.
73 We can glean the importance of French books in the libraries of Russian aristocrats from
the archives of a family such as the Bariatinskiis. Not only were the titles of the books in library
catalogues belonging to the Bariatinskiis in French; the titles of the catalogues themselves were
in French too, as a rule (see RGB, Manuscripts Department, f. 19, op. 5, dd. 31–32, Catalogue des
livres de la bibliothèque du prince W. Bariatinsky (no date); d. 37, Catalogue des livres de français
du prince Wladimir Bariatinsky (no date); d. 38, Catalogue de la Bibliothèque du prince Wladimir
Bariatinsky (1863); dd. 259–261, Catalogue général de la bibliothèque du Feld-maréchal Prince
Bariatinsky (1873–1876).) Moreover, the family archives contain collections of manuscripts in
French, as well as collections of French books: we find dozens of hand-written notes in French, for
instance, on a wide range of topics from infantry and military studies to pharmacy, gymnastics,
and cheese-making in France (ibidem, dd. 93–98, 110). References to French books or books in
French were also to the fore in the readers’ diaries kept by members of the family (ibidem, dd.
131, 132). It is no surprise that aristocrats, nurtured on literary models written in French and
having access to such copious quantities of them, should take their first literary steps in that
language, as exemplified by extant texts written by Ivan Ivanovich Bariatinskii (ibidem, d. 133,
Les aventures tragiques et comiques. Conte de fée. Autographe de Ivan Ivanovitch Bariatinsky
(no date)). It is probably symptomatic of the general evolution of reading habits that by the end
of the nineteenth century members of this family seem to have read not only French, English,
and Italian books, but Russian books as well (ibidem, dd. 27, 30).

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The French L anguage in Russia

in this institution were delivered in French at least until the early 1830s.74
Furthermore, French books were used in abundance in Russian institutions
for the teaching of various disciplines. At the University of St Petersburg,
for example, works by Louis Lefébure de Fourcy, Augustin Louis Cauchy,
Gaspard Monge, and Sylvestre François Lacroix were used for the teaching
of algebra, geometry, and differential calculus; theoretical mechanics was
taught from the works of Louis-Benjamin Francœur, the ‘physiology of plants’
from works in French by a Swiss scholar, Augustin Pyramus de Candolle,
and zoology from the works of Henri-Marie Ducrotay de Blainville.75 This
widespread use of French as a teaching medium clearly presupposed a good
prior knowledge of French on the part of the students.

French versus Latin
If the plurilingualism of the high Russian nobility gave it an affinity with
other nobilities in Northern Europe, there is nevertheless at least one feature
which made the Russian situation different from that in other countries:
there was no tradition of learning Latin in the noble milieu. (Orthodox
ecclesiastics, on the other hand, did learn Latin.76) What, then, was the
relationship between Latin and French in the Russian social and cultural
landscape?
According to Max Okenfuss, Latin ceased, in eighteenth-century Russia,
to be part of a broad humanist culture and became instead a branch of
practical knowledge that was necessary for people serving the state.77 The
nobility more or less eschewed the opportunity to learn Latin in such a hub
of Latin culture as the university attached to the Academy of Sciences in St
Petersburg. (This university was founded in 1724; it had very few students.)
There was also a gymnasium attached to the Academy, at which we find
quite a few representatives of the Baltic and Russian nobility.78 Latin was
one of the basic subjects taught in this school, along with German, French,
arithmetic, geometry, and geography, but most of the Russian pupils opted

74 D.Iu. Guzevich and I.D. Guzevich, Karl Ivanovich Pot’e (1785–1855), 57, 96, 226.
75 Grigor’ev, Imperatorskii Sankt-Peterburgskii universitet, 131.
76 Freeze, The Russian Levites, 83–85; Kislova, ‘Latin as the Language of the Orthodox Clergy
in Eighteenth-Century Russia’.
77 See Okenfuss, The Rise and Fall of Latin Humanism in Early Modern Russia, especially 213–214.
78 Materialy dlia istorii imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, vol. 1, 217–226, 325–343; D.A. Tolstoi,
Akademicheskaia gimnaziia v XVIII stoletii, 32.

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instead for living foreign languages (French or German, and occasionally
both of them).79
In the Cadet Corps too, there was little interest in Latin among Russophone pupils. This was in spite of the fact that in the 1730s, when the
Corps was founded, contacts between this institution and the Academy
of Sciences were very close, a fact that plainly affected both the breadth
of the approach to nobles’ education in the Corps and the place accorded
to Latin in the Corps as a language needed for acquisition of knowledge in
certain fields. The Corps taught civil law, for example, for which books in
Latin were used. Latin was also one of the languages in which speeches were
delivered at a public examination, at which academicians were present.80
Despite these efforts, the number of Russian pupils in the Cadet Corps who
studied Latin was negligible. In 1732, the figure was just one percent, in 1737
4 percent, in 1748 13 percent, and in 1764 (in the cohort of pupils graduating
from the Corps) 6.5 percent.81 The situation remained unchanged at the
end of the eighteenth century: in several dozen volumes of excerpts from
various writings and greetings written by cadets to the director of the
Corps in the last years of the reign of Catherine, we have found only one
example of the use of Latin.82 Against the background of ubiquitous and
numerous records in French, German, and Russian, this single greeting in
Latin speaks volumes: Latin was a tribute to the existence of a tradition of
broad education, but in reality Latin studies were stagnating in the Corps.
As in the gymnasium of the Academy of Sciences, so in the Cadet Corps the
indifference of the nobility to Latin correlates with their interest in living
languages and, above all, French.
The picture in the University of Moscow was broadly similar. A noble
gymnasium and another gymnasium for raznochintsy were attached to
the university, and both publicly-funded and self-funded (svoekoshtnye)
pupils studied in these schools. There were particularly large differences
in the percentages of pupils from different backgrounds who studied Latin,
Greek, and French.83 An overwhelming majority of the publicly-funded
pupils studied Latin and Greek, but only one fifth of them studied French.
Among the self-funded noble pupils, these proportions were reversed: less
than one fifth of these pupils studied Latin, and still fewer studied Greek,
79 Materialy dlia istorii imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, vol. 1, 226–230, 330–343.
80 RGADA, f. 248, op. 1, d. 396, fols 17 v., 71–76, 543.
81 RGVIA, f. 314, op. 1, d. 1654, fols 1–176, 306–384 (a list containing 79 names in all); d. 2178.
82 RNB, Manuscripts Department, f. 1059 (‘Compliments du nouvel an. 1790’).
83 RNB, Manuscripts Department, Hermitage Collection, 500, pt 1, M.V. Priklonskii, Director
of Moscow University, 1776.

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The French L anguage in Russia

whereas more than half were studying French. Among the self-funded
raznochintsy, considerably less than half the pupils were studying living
foreign languages, whereas the figure for Latin was 65 percent. The most
likely explanation for this difference is the fact that the publicly-funded
pupils in the gymnasia were being prepared for university entry, for which
knowledge of Latin was obligatory. Many of the self-funded pupils from the
nobility, on the other hand, did not expect to become university students,
and these, we may suppose, were the ones not learning Latin. We thus see
that a significant social contrast was in play when pupils were deciding
which languages to study.
Nor was Latin popular at court or, on the whole, among the nobility who
had their children educated at home, as we see from the data collected by
the commission set up in 1757 in the Academy of Sciences, to which we
referred earlier, and by a second commission set up in Moscow University
in the same year. Admittedly, Peter Alekseevich, the grandson of Peter the
Great and the future Peter II, learned Latin and even used it to help him learn
French (by making notes on French grammar in Latin!).84 At the end of the
eighteenth century, though, it was not felt necessary for the grandsons of
Catherine II – the Grand Dukes Alexander (the future Emperor Alexander
I) and Constantine – to study this subject. Indeed, one of their teachers,
the famous Laharpe, openly opposed the study of it, and the empress was
at one with him on this. All the same, some eighteenth-century aristocrats
did learn Latin, not least because ignorance of the language could prove a
problem during an educational journey abroad, forcing young nobles to take
extra-curricular lessons from university professors, which could be done
in French or German. This is precisely what Baron (subsequently Count)
Aleksandr Sergeevich Stroganov did when he arrived in Geneva, having no
prior knowledge of the language. In the age of Catherine too, a few aristocrats
learned Latin, for instance the young Princes Boris and Dmitrii Golitsyn.
For the princes’ mother, Natal’ia Petrovna Golitsyna, knowledge of Latin
was a sign of a good education, and Prince Boris himself believed that Latin
was ‘necessary for people who want to possess sound knowledge’.85 In the
early nineteenth century, Count Aleksandr Stroganov, the grandson of
Aleksandr Sergeevich and son of Pavel Aleksandrovich Stroganov and Sof’ia

84 RGADA, f. 2, op. 1, d. 25, fol. 11. We are grateful to Ol’ga Kosheleva for this information.
85 Letter of 19 March 1791 from Boris Golitsyn to Natal’ia Golitsyna: RGB, Manuscripts Department, f. 64, k. 93, ed. khr. 45, fols 1–2. We are grateful to Stefan Lehr for drawing our attention
to this source.

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Vladimirovna Stroganova, née Golitsyna, also learned it.86 Indeed, Latin
gained some currency among nobles brought up in the Alexandrine age: as
Lotman observed, many of the Decembrists (for example, Gavriil Baten’kov,
Matvei Dmitriev-Mamonov, Ivan Iakushkin, Aleksandr Kornilovich, Nikita
Murav’ev, Mikhail Orlov, Nikolai Turgenev) had a good knowledge of the
language.87 Another Decembrist, Mikhail Lunin, was able not only to read
Latin but also to write it, as attested by an extant letter that he wrote to
Misha, the son of his fellow Decembrist, Sergei Volkonskii, for whom he
devised an educational curriculum which included the study of Latin from
the age of ten.88 (Lunin’s deep knowledge of Latin may be partly explained
by his interest in Catholicism.) Even the future Slavophile Iurii Samarin
received excellent instruction in Latin, along with French, from his governor
Adolphe Pascault during his boyhood in the 1820s.89
Latin was notably absent from the curriculum in the Smolny Institute,
where French and German were studied, as we have said, and where French
had pride of place. This fact probably reflected traditional European views
of women as beings who were intellectually weaker than men and might
struggle to master a language that was considered exceptionally difficult.
It was no doubt also a consequence of the relatively limited educational
opportunities available to women, since university – one of the centres of
Latin culture – was closed to them at that time.90 Having acknowledged
the generally low level of interest in Latin among the Russian nobility,
though, we do not see any fundamental difference between the treatment
of boys and girls as regards the study of languages in noble upbringing. In
eighteenth-century Russia, unlike Western and Central Europe, both boys
and girls studied modern languages, first and foremost French and German.
The situation in the Ukraine and White Russia, however, was not the same
as the situation in Russia. In the reigns of Catherine II and Alexander I, Jesuit
colleges in White Russia offered a curriculum that was substantially different
from that on offer in the main state schools for the nobility in Russia. The
major difference concerned the role of Latin, which was central in Jesuit
colleges. For many nobles living in White Russia (and in St Petersburg, where
Jesuits also taught in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries),
86 Rjéoutski and Somov, ‘Language Use among the Russian Aristocracy’, 75.
87 Lotman, Pushkin, 554–555.
88 Lunin, Pis’ma iz Sibiri, 147–149, 265; see also 469.
89 Ivanova, ‘Domashniaia shkola Samarinykh’. We are grateful to Ol’ga Solodiankina for
drawing our attention to this source.
90 However, some French pedagogues (e.g. Fénelon and the Marquis de Lambert) believed that
noble girls too should study Latin.

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Latin was a pathway to the study of ancient history and literature. Knowledge
of these subjects enabled pupils to become acquainted with republican
ideas, and it is probably no coincidence that several pupils educated in
these schools would subsequently take part in the Decembrist uprising of
1825. Orthodox colleges in the Ukraine, which were strongly influenced by
the Jesuit model of education, offered a similar curriculum. Unlike Russian
church seminaries, which nobles rarely attended, colleges in Ukraine were
not closed to certain strata or professions, and the Ukrainian elite regularly
sent their children to them.91
In their reluctance to learn Latin, the eighteenth-century Russian nobility
found support among the powers that be. In the new ordinances written
for the Cadet Corps in 1766, Ivan Betskoi – who was closely associated with
Catherine II and served as her de facto minister of education – proposed
to rid the Corps of it as of an unnecessary burden on which the ‘best part
of life’ might be spent.92 Of course, Betskoi was familiar with the view of
Enlightenment thinkers, for whom Latin was a symbol of an old way of
thinking characteristic of people who were resistant to change and to a
more practical education that could quickly be applied in professional
life. Betskoi insisted instead on the study of two living foreign languages,
French and German.
While they did not study Latin, Russian nobles did, as we have emphasized,
study modern foreign languages, especially – and, increasingly – French. For
the Russian nobleman, French came in the second half of the eighteenth
century to occupy the place that Latin had long occupied in Western European culture. It was the new lingua franca of Europe, and it enabled the
nobility to gain access to the broadest spectrum of educational disciplines
and professional knowledge, thanks to the quantity of books written in
French or translated into it. Nobles’ predilection for French should also be
explained by reference to the cultural codes that were linked to Latin and
French in Russia at that time. Latin was associated with a social stratum
below the nobility. For the intelligentsia of various ranks in the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries, Lotman observed, ‘Latin was the same
sort of password-language as French was for the nobility’.93 Nikolai Grech,
91 See Posokhova, Pravoslavnye kollegiumy na peresechenii kul’tur, traditsii, epokh; Rouët de
Journel, Un Collège de Jésuites à Saint-Pétersbourg; Blinova, Iezuity v Belarusi; Inglot, Obshchestvo
Iisusa v Rossiiskoi Imperii. We are grateful to Denis Kondakov for drawing our attention to the
last two of these studies.
92 [Betskoi], Ustav imperatorskogo shliakhetnogo sukhoputnogo kadetskogo korpusa, 2nd
pagination, 53.
93 Lotman, Pushkin, 554.

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reminiscing about the Senate’s Junkers’ Institute in the late eighteenth
century, reported a more disparaging view: the cadets did not learn Latin
because ‘they called Latin a doctor’s language which was unseemly for
nobles!’94 It is true that in the eighteenth century Latin could attract nobles
who moved away from their social roots and started to mix in a university
environment. A similar change would take place in the nineteenth century
with the introduction by the government of gymnasia with a bias towards
classical languages and the culture of antiquity. The gymnasia would in
time become the only possible path to a university education, which was
becoming a condition for entry to certain posts in state service. In the reign
of Alexander I, though, the gymnasium was open to all estates and had
little appeal for the nobility, which continued to be educated in boarding
schools,95 where Latin, as a rule, was not taught. All the same, as we have
seen, some noble families did have Latin taught to their children in the
Alexandrine age and beyond.

French (and English) versus Russian
For a long time, Russian did not exist in noble education as a discipline in
its own right. Some young nobles entering the Cadet Corps in the 1730s and
1740s were illiterate in their mother tongue, although they could read and
sometimes even write in French or German, which tells us much about priorities in noble education before Catherine II came to the throne.96 However,
even in the middle of the eighteenth century an image was beginning to
take shape of Russian as a European language endowed with many qualities,
including qualities of the sort that were ascribed to French. A speech on
the subject of the French language which was delivered by an obscure
foreign-language teacher in the University of Moscow, a Frenchman named
Guillaume Raoult, at a formal gathering attended by many representatives
of the Muscovite nobility in 1757 is illuminating in this respect.97 Raoult
presented his subject from within the French, indeed European, tradition
94 Grech, Nikolai Grech, 154. We are grateful to Iurii Vorob’ev for drawing our attention to this
point.
95 Maksimova, Prepodavanie drevnikh iazykov v russkoi klassicheskoi gimnazii XIX–nachala
XX veka, 16–17. Latin, however, was taught in the Tsarskoe Selo Lycée; Pushkin, who studied at
the lycée, was able to read Roman authors fluently.
96 We are grateful for information provided by Igor’ Fediukin in this connection.
97 RGADA, f. 199, op. 2, d. 805, fols 1–2 v. We are grateful to Dmitrii Kostyshin for drawing our
attention to this document.

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of language discourse that spoke of the ‘genius’ of the French language, a
discourse which would find its definitive expression in the essay submitted
by Rivarol for the competition of the Berlin Academy in 1783. However,
Raoult praised Russian too, according it a status far above that of a language
that was suitable merely for speaking to horses, as Frederick II of Prussia
famously said of German. Russian, then, began to be seen not only as the
official language of the empire but also as one of the major languages of
Europe. It became customary for speeches in the university to be delivered
in three living languages, Russian, French, and German, as well as Latin.98
The rising status of Russian was also reflected in the proposal made in
the 1760s by Betskoi that all teaching other than language tuition should be
carried out solely in Russian in the Cadet Corps, where previously it had often
been conducted in German. In order to justify this policy, Betskoi invoked
contemporary ideas about the way in which knowledge is assimilated.
Learning can only be successful, he argued, if it takes place in one’s native
language. Furthermore, Betskoi advocated the study of Church Slavonic, the
liturgical language, as a means of teaching pupils ‘to write Russian correctly
and eloquently and thereby better to understand our holy books’.99 There
may therefore have been a religious dimension to decisions about language
choice, and language choice was thus being associated with national identity,
since religion and national identity had traditionally been closely bound up
with one another in Russia. At the same time, Betskoi was bringing to Russia
a debate that was taking place in France, where French and Latin were seen
as rivals and Latin was increasingly giving way to French as the language
of instruction in academic institutions attended by nobles. Supporters of
instruction in the mother tongue wanted learning to be rapid and to yield
practical results. If Roman literature and history were to continue to be
included in the curriculum, they should be studied in the native language,
in French in this instance, especially since all the main Greek and Roman
authors had been translated into French. The mother tongue facilitated
the nobility’s access to the ‘sciences’ (that is to say, knowledge in general),
whereas Latin demanded so much effort that young nobles were ‘repelled’
by them.100 Betskoi constructed the same sort of opposition in Russia, except
that since Latin played little or no role in the education of the Russian
98 See also the discussion of the topos of pride in the Russian language in the second section
of Chapter 8 below.
99 [Betskoi], Ustav imperatorskogo shliakhetnogo sukhoputnogo kadetskogo korpusa, 2nd
pagination, 50 (italics in original).
100 See N. le Gras, L’Académie Royale de Richelieu, a son Eminence (1642) in the BNF, Arsenal
4-H-8289, 23–30. We are grateful to Andrea Bruschi for drawing our attention to this source.

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nobility in the age of Catherine its place was taken there by German, in the
first instance, and then increasingly by French.
Several reforms now brought Russian into the foreground. In the 1780s, a
Russian Academy was founded, which began, under the guidance of Princess
Dashkova, to compile a dictionary of the Russian language.101 A new reform
of public teaching institutions attempted to do what Betskoi had begun,
to ensure that all subjects with the exception of languages were taught in
Russian. It is not clear whether these initiatives yielded results in the short
term. Betskoi himself admitted that it was impossible to find Russophone
teachers for all disciplines, and it was a long time before his wish that all
subjects be taught in Russian could be realized. Perhaps we should therefore
be cautious in our assessment of the impact that the initiatives of the authorities had on the place of Russian in the public education of the nobility. The
complaints of some senators in 1773 about the gradual abandonment of
German in public educational institutions would also seem to indicate that
the wishes of the authorities were sometimes to no avail. Be that as it may,
we can say that by the end of Catherine’s reign Russian had been put on an
equal footing with the other two main languages, French and German, at
the Cadet Corps. The cadets had an excellent command of it, as we see from
a book containing hundreds of greetings that they addressed to the director
in Russian, as well as in French and German. The widely held belief that
nobles were so Gallicized at this period that they were ignorant of their own
language surely has no foundation, at least if we judge by pupils’ language
competence in public educational institutions for the nobility.
While stressing that competence in Russian was widespread in the
nobility, we should also acknowledge that Russian may in general have
had greater importance in public education than it had in education in
the home (which remained the most important form of upbringing in the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially for the high nobility).
We find several instances of almost exclusive preference for French in
Russian aristocratic households in the age of Catherine. In the family of
Princess Natal’ia Golitsyna, for example, the education of the children and
communication between parents and children and between the family and
its circle of friends of the same rank almost always took place entirely in
French. Again, in the home of the Princes Bariatinskii, even Russian history
– which was no doubt perceived, in the 1770s, as a means of consolidating the
children’s sense of identity – was taught in French rather than Russian.102 All
101 See the second section of Chapter 8 below.
102 RGB, Manuscripts Department, f. 19, op. 284, d. 5.

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the subjects learned by the girls in the Bariatinskii household at this time
(history, mythology, geography, literature, mathematics) were learned for
the most part in French as well, except languages, where Russian appeared
alongside French, German, and even Italian.103
Attachment to Russian, on the other hand, became commonplace in
Pushkin’s generation among nobles brought up in the Alexandrine age
and during the Napoleonic Wars. Aleksandr Stroganov, the son of Pavel,
had instruction in Russian language and literature and read Russian works
which inspired patriotic feeling in him, such as Matvei Kriukovskii’s play
Pozharskii (1807), Kheraskov’s epic poem The Rossiad, and the speech made
by Peter the Great to his troops before the Battle of Poltava (1709). He had
several Russophone tutors who taught him non-linguistic subjects in Russian,
something which would have been almost unthinkable in the mid-eighteenth
century when his grandfather was being educated.104 Russian was learned
now as a subject in its own right, through reading (of literary texts, in the
main) and writing.
Furthermore, some Russian nobles, while continuing to prefer French for
correspondence, made efforts to perfect their Russian in adult life. This was
the case with Boris Golitsyn, one of the so-called ‘Franco-Russian writers’.
Elizaveta Mukhanova, who would marry Prince Valentin Shakhovskoi,
used Russian in her diary, although it cost her more effort to write in this
language than it did to write in French. She wished to improve her Russian:
‘I certainly want to read the whole of the New Testament, once in Russian
and then in Church Slavonic’, she declared; ‘I love my native language and
want to consolidate my knowledge of it.’105 Boris Golitsyn’s sister Sof’ia, who
became Countess Stroganova after her marriage to the above-mentioned
Pavel, also commended the study of Church Slavonic as well as Russian.
In 1819, for example, she wrote to her daughter (albeit in French!): ‘I am
delighted that you are working at Slavonic, it’s the key to Russian, and then
again it is so beautiful that this reason alone ought to be enough to [make
one] study it.’106
Paradoxically, in many families this new determination to learn their
national language and read the literature of their country entailed almost
no change in private communication, which always took place in French,
103 Ibidem, dd. 2–8.
104 On linguistic education in this family, see Rjéoutski and Somov, ‘Language Use among the
Russian Aristocracy’.
105 Letter of 25 September 1823, quoted from Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski,
184.
106 RNB, Manuscripts Department, f. 669, no. 54, fol. 4.

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so that French remained at the core of noble education. This applies to
the Stroganovs during the first half of the nineteenth century. Natal’ia
Shakhovskaia (the daughter of the above-mentioned Elizaveta Shakhov­
skaia, née Mukhanova) and Natal’ia’s cousins Sof’ia Murav’eva, Praskov’ia
Golynskaia, and Matil’da Golynskaia barely used Russian in their private
communication, for which French was used, with some other languages,
such as English, German, and Italian, sometimes mixed into it. This practice
reflected the balance of their educational curriculum, which continued to
diversify linguistically but strangely brushed the native language to one
side.107 It would therefore seem that patriotic feelings could coexist with a
preference for French in everyday communication.
Most subjects continued to be studied in French in the first half of the
nineteenth century, as we know from information on the Golitsyns, the
Kerns, the Sollogubs, the Stroganovs, and other families. The French Abbé
Froment taught history, geography, and botany in French to the Davydovs,
Gur’evs, and Kochubeis. In the family of Aleksandr Dmitriev, a brother of
Ivan Dmitriev, a well-known poet and statesman, Russian was taught every
Saturday, but most time was devoted to French and German and other
subjects such as geography, ancient history, and mythology, which were
taught in French. Fedor Samarin studied geography and Russian history
in French in his youth, in the late eighteenth century, and went on to use
French extensively as an adult, writing travel diaries and historical and
religious works in that language. His son Iurii did not study Russian in the
early stages of his education, in the 1820s, as his French governor, Pascault,
noted in a diary of the boy’s lessons that he kept. ‘Although he’s in Russia,
he’s learning very little of his own language’, wrote Pascault, regretting what
he thought was excessive use of French in the private life of this family. ‘No
doubt, the first reason for this is that I am always with him. But if I were
the only person, absolutely the only person to speak French to him, perhaps
one would see some progress in Russian’.108 Ironic as it might seem, it was
partly on the initiative of this French governor that a teacher of Russian was
employed for the young Iurii, which enabled this future Slavophile to acquire
a sound knowledge of his national language. French was similarly dominant
in the household of the Barons von Meyendorff, a noble family from the Baltic
region. Excellent command of French enabled the Meyendorffs to integrate
themselves quickly in Russian high society, for they still had a poor command
107 Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 190.
108 ‘Samarin, Iurii Fedorovich’, in RBS, vol. 18, 134. We are grateful to Ol’ga Solodiankina for
bringing this information to our attention.

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The French L anguage in Russia

of Russian in the early nineteenth century. In the Alexandrine period, the
children in this family corresponded with their mother in French and in
general still used French as a language of intimacy, thus pushing their mother
tongue, German, to one side.109 Russian continued to be neglected in some
noble families in the age of Nicholas I. The domestic language in the family
of the mother of the memoirist Elena Khvoshchinskaia, the Bakhmetevs, for
example, was French, and the teachers employed in it were all foreigners.
The children were punished when they spoke Russian (a red cloth tongue
would be attached to their chests), and lessons in Russian were ‘consigned to
oblivion’.110 Even the children of Lev Tolstoi were educated, in the 1870s, by an
army of foreign teachers (English, French, German, and Swiss), and although
they did learn Russian French remained the linchpin of their education.111
In another highly placed family, the Kurakins, ample attention was
devoted to Russian in the children’s education, despite the fact that French
still predominated at home. Although they spent their early childhood in
France, during the 1840s, Elizaveta Kurakina and her brother Boris, children of the diplomat Aleksei Kurakin, were taught most subjects (Russian,
geography, ancient history, Russian history, mathematics, natural history,
physics, and botany) in Russian by a Russian teacher. Elizaveta polished her
knowledge of her native language by translating The Travels of Anacharsis
the Younger in Greece from French into Russian.112 It is also noteworthy that
one of the reasons why the family returned to Russia was to enable them to
give ‘a Russian education’ to Elizaveta’s brother Boris.113 Nevertheless, the
family’s domestic language at this time was still French, as we can see from
Elizaveta’s memoirs, for when she quotes what a member of the family said
she usually does so in French, even though she wrote the memoirs in Russian.
Incidentally, Elizaveta’s attainment in French, for which she attended classes
while she was living in France, seems to have been on a par with that of her
French peers, if her reminiscences are to be believed: ‘And you say after this
that the Russians are Cossacks!’, her teacher exclaimed in admiration.114
109 Rjéoutski and Offord, ‘Family Correspondence in the Russian Nobility’.
110 Khvoshchinskaia, ‘Vospominaniia Eleny Iur’evny Khvoshchinskoi’, RS, 1897, no. 3, 518.
Khvoshchinskaia’s mother, who was born in 1822, claimed to have had only seven lessons in
Russian, and those from a Little Russian priest who could not pronounce the Russian words for
‘five’ and ‘Friday’ properly (ibidem).
111 Polossina, ‘Les précepteurs dans la vie et l’œuvre de Léon Tolstoï’.
112 Naryshkina, Moi vospominaniia, 45–46, 53. Naryshkina is Elizaveta Kurakina’s married
name.
113 Ibidem, 67.
114 Ibidem, 57.

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157

We do, however, find evidence that the use of French as a language of
intimacy was not universal in the Russian aristocracy. The late eighteenthcentury prince Mikhail Shcherbatov, for instance, did not generally correspond in French either with members of his own family or with other
Russians. The few letters that he did write in French to his son Dmitrii
had a pedagogical purpose. In one of these letters, Shcherbatov explicitly
broached the question of language choice and the reasons for learning a
language. French seems indispensable to him, because it is ‘a present si
repandue en Europe et par consequent necessaire tant pour la conversation,
que pour l’instruction a cause du grand nombre de bons auteurs qui ont
écrit en cette langue […]’ (now so widespread in Europe and consequently
necessary as much for conversation as for instruction, owing to the large
number of good authors who have written in this language […]).115 ‘C’est
pour cella’, Shcherbatov says, ‘que je vous conseille en ami et en père de
vous appliquer a lire les bons auteurs français, et a tacher de former votre
stile sur ces bons auteurs’ (That is why I advise you as [your] friend and
father to apply yourself to reading good French authors and trying to
form your style on these good models).116 The reasons that Shcherbatov
puts forward for learning French, then, relate to its function as a lingua
franca and to the literary qualities of French authors as well as to the
demands of style. 117 Shcherbatov declines to see French as a language
which could potentially serve the needs of all types of communication
and supplant Russian. It is quite possible that this point of view was linked
to his criticisms of the practices and forms of sociability introduced into
Russia by the westernization forced on its society, although his pessimistic
work On the Corruption of Morals in Russia does not seem to contain any
direct comments on the excessive use of French in Russia. At any rate,
Shcherbatov’s habit of eschewing French in correspondence is not isolated,
for even in the reign of Catherine II we find corpora of letters by members
of the elite which were written entirely in Russian.
Most frequently, perhaps, it was not a question of the exclusive use of one
language or the other, French or Russian, but of some form of multilingualism
in which different languages fulfilled different functions. For example, a
noble might speak in French to another noble but in Russian to a priest or
115 RGADA, f. 1289, op. 1, d. 517, fols 12–13, 33–34, 174–174 v. We have retained Shcherbatov’s
orthography. Shcherbatov’s letters to his son have been published, in Russian translation, in
Shcherbatov, Izbrannye trudy, 108–116, and they are reprinted in idem, Perepiska kniazia M.M.
Shcherbatova, 352–354, 357–361, 366–368. The quotation is taken from 357–358.
116 Ibidem, 357.
117 On style, see the following section of this chapter.

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The French L anguage in Russia

a merchant. Or again, noble men might speak Russian among themselves
but French to a noble woman. At other times, the functions might overlap
or might even be interchangeable. In their everyday communication, for
instance, nobles might switch from French into Russian without really
sensing that the languages were to be used for different purposes.118 The
complexity of patterns of language use was compounded by the fact that
different generations of the Russian aristocracy attained different levels of
command of French. This can be seen in the cases of the Golitsyns and the
Stroganovs. Natal’ia Petrovna Golitsyna wrote in French that was fluent
but spelt almost phonetically (some examples are given in the following
section). This fact no doubt reflected the way in which aristocratic women
of Natal’ia’s generation had been educated during the reign of Elizabeth
or the early part of the reign of Catherine II: they were already thoroughly
acquainted with French but had barely learned to write the language. On
the other hand, Golitsyna’s children, boys and girls alike, acquired a more
highly tutored form of French during their education in the 1770s and 1780s.
They probably emerged as bilinguals, although this assumption is difficult
to prove because hardly any documents written by them in Russian can be
found, at least from the period when they were being educated. Aleksandr
Stroganov’s father, Baron Sergei Stroganov, corresponded with his son in
Russian during the 1750s because Sergei, while he could read French, was
not able to write it. As for Aleksandr Stroganov himself, he often exchanged
letters with his son Pavel in Russian, but in this case for quite a different
reason: having been born and brought up in France, Pavel had a much better
command of French than of Russian, at least when it came to writing, which
obliged the father to take steps to correct the asymmetry of his son’s language
competencies. The Grand Tour of Russia that Aleksandr arranged for his
son was intended not only to familiarize Pavel with his country but also
to perfect his knowledge of his native language. This was an innovation in
aristocratic education in Russia. Pavel’s son, also Aleksandr, had an equal
command of the two languages and was able to express himself elegantly
in French as well as Russian, even if he rarely used written Russian outside
classes.119
We should add, finally, that while French still had priority in the early
nineteenth century and German generally continued to be studied (though
less than previously and usually after French), more and more families were
now employing English or Scottish teachers. Already in Catherine’s reign,
118 On code-switching, see especially Chapter 6 below.
119 Rjéoutski and Somov, ‘Language Use among the Russian Aristocracy’.

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English was being learned in the Golitsyn 120 and Stroganov families.121 And
yet, even when Anglomania took hold among the Russian nobility, in the
Alexandrine age, attraction to English culture did not necessarily imply
knowledge of English.122 Admittedly, interest in English does seem to have
increased in the early nineteenth century, as the examples of several noble
families indicate.123 One sign of the fact that there were now quite numerous
Russians who could read English was the foundation, in 1822, of a short-lived
review entitled The English Literary Journal of Moscow by the Scotsman
James Baxter, who was a tutor in the Kireevskii family. The editor of this
periodical explained that it was intended to help those who spoke English
and were learning it but could not keep abreast of new publications in English
literature. He noticed ‘the marked attention now paid throughout Europe,
but particularly in Russia, to the study of the language of England’.124 In
order to help Russians who did not feel sufficiently comfortable in English,
though, the editor provided a French translation of the texts published
in the review, thus recognizing the continuing function of French as an
intermediary language.125
At the close of the reign of Catherine II, then, differences in linguistic
practice were to be found not only between the nobility, the clergy, and the
raznochintsy, but also within the nobility itself. Different strata of the nobility
shared the taste for French. However, aristocratic education seems to have
placed less emphasis on knowledge and use of the national language (even
if the image of a Russian nobleman who did not know his native language
120 i.e. the family of Princess Natal’ia Petrovna and Prince Vladimir Borisovich Golitsyn.
121 Pavel Stroganov studied it, as did his children by his marriage to Sof’ia Vladimirovna, née
Golitsyna.
122 Cross, ‘English – a Serious Challenge to French in the Reign of Alexander I?’
123 e.g. in the families headed by the following nobles: Ivan Petrovich Wul’f, Governor of Orel
from 1808 to 1812 (the family was from Tver’ Province); Senator Zakhar Nikolaevich Posnikov;
Prince Pavel Alekseevich Golitsyn; General Paissii Sergeevich Kaissarov (the Englishwoman Claire
Clairmont taught in all these families in the 1820s); Senator Ivan Matveevich Murav’ev-Apostol,
the father of two of the Decembrists; Vera Ivanovna Khliustina, née Tolstaia (a family from Kaluga);
Princess Mar’ia Fedorovna Bariatinskaia; Major-General Mikhail Fedorovich Orlov, one of the
Decembrists; and General Nikolai Nikolaevich Raevskii junior (the Englishman Thomas Evans, a
teacher at the University of Moscow, taught Murav’ev-Apostol, Khliustina, Bariatinskaia, Orlov,
and Raevskii). We are grateful to Ol’ga Solodiankina for all this information. On the teaching of
English in these families, see also the following: Alekseev, ʻMoskovskie dnevniki i pis’ma Kler
Klermont’; Claire Clairmont et al., The Clairmont Correspondence; Pavlov, ‘Evans’.
124 Alekseev, ʻMoskovskie dnevniki i pis’ma Kler Klermont’, 527.
125 This venture was short-lived, though. We are grateful to Ol’ga Solodiankina for information
on this subject too. On Baxter and this journal, see Alekseev, ʻMoskovskie dnevniki i pis’ma Kler
Klermont’, 527–528.

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The French L anguage in Russia

is a caricature). English was also being introduced among the aristocracy.
In public educational institutions (from which the middling and petty
nobility profited most), on the other hand, good provision was made for
study of Russian from the age of Catherine. The teaching of English was not
universal in these institutions, nor would it be introduced for a long time
to come in the main educational institutions for the nobility, such as the
Cadet Corps and the Tsarskoe Selo Lycée.126

Acquiring social and cultural codes by learning French
As we saw in the case of Mikhail Shcherbatov, it was one of the educational
aims of noble parents to equip their children to develop the art of writing
letters in French. Practice in this art, and in particular the repeated use of
certain rhetorical formulae, also enabled children to absorb notions and
values associated with noble society. The extant writings of the Golitsyn
family again provide revealing examples.
One of the recurrent themes of the correspondence of Natal’ia Golitsyna’s
family is friendship and the mutual attachment of the children and their
mother. Natal’ia herself is constantly evoking these feelings. However, she
never broaches the subject for its own sake, but always in connection with
the children’s performance in their studies and behaviour, as in the following
passage (which also illustrates her eccentric spelling):
mon cher Boris je vous crois trop resonable et trop datacheman a vos
parans […] apropos mon cher ami je veux vous prevenir conssernan
votre écriture […] pour ce qui est de mon amitiez je vois que vous ne
lambissionne pas ainsi je n’en dit rien, je ne puis conssevoir comman vous
avez si peu dembition […] si mes prieres peuvent quelque chose sur vous
et que vous avez quelque atacheman pour moi, taché de vous conduire de
fasson a me faire avoir des nouvelles satisfésante […] continue seuleman
a vous conduire de meme, a mon retour je tacherez au tems que je puis
vous temoigné ma reconnoissance et vous prouvé mon amitiez […]127
(my dear Boris I think you are too reasonable and too fond of your parents
[…] apropos of which I want to forewarn you, my dear friend, about your
writing […] regarding my friendship, I see that you don’t covet it and
126 At the Naval Cadet Corps, English teaching stagnated during the reign of Catherine II.
127 RGB, Manuscripts Department, f. 64, k. 83, no. 2, fols 10–11 v.

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so I don’t say anything about it, I can’t conceive how you have so little
ambition […] if my entreaties can have any effect on you and you have
any affection for me, try to conduct yourself in a way that will enable me
to receive some satisfactory news […] carry on conducting yourself only
in the same way, on my return I shall try as much as I can to show you
my gratitude and prove my friendship […])

Teachers in turn borrow this vocabulary and speak of their pupils as their
friends and well-wishers. Indeed, friendship was held up as the ideal relationship between teachers and children. This use of the language of friendship,
for which French is the vehicle, was relatively new in Russia. At roughly the
same time, the French nobility was using the same method in the education
of its children, linking ‘affection’ and ‘friendship’ to ‘merit’ in its discourse.
From their earliest years, children would learn to channel their feelings for
their parents by using codified forms which often remained unchanged
even when the child became an adult.128 The discourse found expression not
only in collections of letters but also in French pedagogical treatises, which,
well before Rousseau, were read by the Russian nobility as it borrowed the
language of friendship as an element of noble culture and the culture of the
honnête homme in general. Thus, in a tract which was written expressly for
young nobles and which was well known in Russia, the Abbé Jean Baptiste
Morvan de Bellegarde commended friendship as a form of sociability that
a young noble should adopt.129 Aleksandr Stroganov clearly followed such
advice, filling his youthful letters in French with invocations of friendship:
C’est un criminel, mon cher Sarasin [i.e. one of Stroganov’s Genevan
acquaintances], honteux des fautes qu’il a commise vis-à-vis du meilleur de
ses amis qui vien devan vous comme devan son juge entendre sa sentence,
oui très cher ami s’est le Baron cet homme que vous avés comblé de votre
amitié c’est lui qui vien vous demander Million et Million de pardon pour
la faute la plus grossiere qu’il ay pu commetre c’est-à-dire par [pour] avoir
été si longtems sens [sans] vous donner de ses nouvelles.130
(This is a criminal, my dear Sarasin, ashamed of the mistakes he has
committed in relation to the best of his friends, and he comes before you
128 See Grassi, ‘Un révélateur de l’éducation au XVIIIe siècle’, especially 176.
129 Bellegarde, L’éducation parfaite, e.g. 46–47. On Bellegarde’s treatise, see also the first section
of Chapter 3 below.
130 RGADA, f. 1278, op. 1, d. 5, fol. 54.

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The French L anguage in Russia

as before his judge to hear his sentence, yes, my dearest friend, it is the
baron who is this man on whom you have bestowed your friendship, it
is he who comes to beg millions of pardons for the grossest mistake he
has been able to commit, that is to say for having gone so long without
giving you any of his news.)

It was through French and in rhetorical formulae borrowed from people with
whom he corresponded, and no doubt from books as well, that Stroganov
learned such attitudes towards the other, both concepts and emotions.131
This sort of posture remained important for Stroganov throughout his life,
not merely in his dealings with his peers but also in his relations with people
who were not on his social level. The vocabulary of friendship is conspicuous,
for example, in his exchanges with his son’s teacher, Gilbert Romme.132
Another aim of educational correspondence conducted in French was
to inculcate politesse, or politeness, one of the aristocracy’s most cherished
accomplishments (Illustrations no. 4 and 5). The letters of the young brothers Boris and Dmitrii Golitsyn to their mother are full of time-honoured
formulae which reflect the polite social relations usual in their milieu:
J’assure Papa de mes respects et vous prie de me croire avec la plus vive
impatience de nous revoir Maman, Votre tres obeissant f ils Pr. Baris
Galitzin.
(I assure Papa of my respects and ask you to believe me [when I say] that
I cannot wait for us to see each other again, mother, Your most obedient
son, Prince Boris Golitsyn.)
Je vous prierais, maman, de leur passer mes compliments.
(I would ask you, mother, to pass my compliments to them.)
C’est sans contredit un des hommes que j’estime le plus et si quelque
sentiment en moi peut balancer celui de l’amitié que j’ai pour lui, c’est
l’estime.
(He is unquestionably one of the men for whom I have the greatest esteem,
and if some feeling in me may balance the feeling of friendship then it is
esteem. [Boris is praising his brother Dmitrii in this passage.])133
131 Rjéoutski and Somov, ‘Language Use among the Russian Aristocracy’, 67. On learning
emotions, see Zorin, ‘Import chuvstv’; idem, Poiavlenie geroia.
132 Frede, ‘Friends: Gilbert Romme and the Stroganovs’.
133 RGB, Manuscripts Department, f. 64, op. 93, d. 43, fols 1 v., 33 v., 35–35 v.

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Illustration 4 Draft of a letter addressed by Prince Dmitrii Golitsyn to his mother
Princess Natal’ia Golitsyna.

Image held in the Russian State Library, Manuscripts Department, f. 64, k. 94, d. 28, fol. 1 (1780, St
Petersburg), and reproduced with their permission.

There are numerous examples of this kind, in which high Russian families
give expression to politesse through the conduit of French and with an array
of linguistic formulae. Take, for instance, the following letter written by
Nina Bariatinskaia to her mother in 1782:

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The French L anguage in Russia

Illustration 5 Exercises in French writing designed to inculcate politesse. The
exercises were done by Stepanida Baranova, who was raised in the
Bariatinskii family (1781–1785).

Image held in the Russian State Library, Manuscripts Department, f. 19, k. 284, d. 7, fol. 12, and
reproduced with their permission.

Ma tres chere Maman,
Je vous suis très-sensiblement obligé des nouvelles marques que vous
me donnez de votre affection par vos bons et judicieux conseils, je ne
manquerai pas d’en prof iter, et d’étudier soigneusement ce que vous
estimez que je dois apprendre, je vais apprendre, je vais m’y appliquer
avec d’autant plus de soin, que je me ferai toujours un très-grands plaisir
de suivre en toutes choses vos sentimens, et de vous marquer par une
entiere déférence à tout ce qu’il vous plaira de me prescrire, que je suis
avec toute la soumission que je vous dois, ___ et avec un tres proffond
respect,
Ma très chere Maman, Votre très soumise fille et respectueuse amie.134

134 Ibidem, f. 19, op. 284, d. 2, fol. 130 v.

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(My very dear mother, I am extremely obliged to you for the new tokens
you give me of your affection by your good and sensible advice, I shall not
fail to profit from it, or to study carefully what you think I should learn,
I shall learn, I shall apply myself to this with all the more care as I shall
always take very great pleasure in following your feelings in all things and
in showing you through complete deference to what it may please you to
prescribe for me that I am following them with all the obedience I owe
you, and with the deepest respect, my dear mama, Your very obedient
daughter and respectful friend.)

In addition to friendship and politeness, nobles took pains to develop an
aesthetic sense in their children. This aesthetic dimension to noble education
is apparent at an early stage in the exchanges between Natal’ia Golitsyna
and her children. Even if the mother herself wrote in French that was far
from perfect, nonetheless she aimed in her correspondence to inculcate
good style in her children. In general, correspondence, and writing in French
more generally, became the centrepiece of the children’s education in this
family, revealing in the process the place of the art of letter-writing in the
culture of the nobility. It is not surprising that although the exchanges of
letters between the children and their mother were quite frequent, the
children rarely wrote their letters without producing a rough draft first,
for a letter had to make an impression by virtue of its style.135 The French
language was not merely a sign of social distinction for the nobility,136 but
also a form of cultural capital which put Russian nobles on the same level as
their western peers and gave them the right to enter the high society of all
European countries. Correspondence in French had a particularly important
function in this milieu, going beyond a simple exchange of information: the
letter had to provide evidence of an excellent education and knowledge of
the codes that were accepted by cultivated people. It is therefore no surprise
that Natal’ia Golitsyna was constantly assessing her children’s style. ‘Je suis
tres contan mon cher Dmitrie de votre lettre’ (I am very happy with your
letter, my dear Dmitrii), she writes. ‘Le stil et lécriture en est tres jolie’ (the
style and the writing of it are very nice). And again: ‘ je n’ai rien à dire de votre
écriture et de votre stil, jen suis parfaiteman contante’ (I have nothing to
say about your writing and your style, I’m perfectly happy with them). And
yet again, perhaps with a sting in the tail on this occasion: ‘Je suis contante
135 Ibidem, f. 64, k. 83, no. 2; see also Rjéoutski, ‘L’éducation d’une jeune fille dans une grande
famille de la noblesse russe’.
136 See the fourth section of Chapter 4 below.

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The French L anguage in Russia

de votre lettre mon cher Boris, pour ce qui est du stil je le trouve trop bien
pour pouvoir me flaté qu’il soit de vous’ (I am happy with your letter, my
dear Boris, as far as the style is concerned I find it too good to be able to
flatter myself that it is from you).137 We thus see that language study went
together with learning about emotions and forms of sociability and helped
to nurture certain values which enabled the aristocracy to mark itself off
even within the noble stratum.
Among the Golitsyns, as among the Stroganovs, then, French was learned
from the start as both their language of intimacy and the main tool of noble
sociability. Just how close the link was between the French language and
Russian noble sociability we see from the recollections of Vigel’ about the
point in his own education at which he was made to enter Mme Forceville’s
boarding school in 1798:
I very much wanted to study at the University boarding school; but French,
which the higher estate at that time spoke in the main, and almost exclusively, was a signboard [vyveska] advertising the perfection of an upbringing; I expressed myself poorly in it and those educated in the University
were not famed for their knowledge of it. Mlle Dubois remarked on this
and added that young people emerged from the hands of Mme Forceville as
real French people. Calculating that I was destined to be a man of society
and a military man rather than a scholar and lawyer, my sister [who had
married into the Saltykov family and was overseeing Vigel’’s education]
felt that it really would be better to hand me over to the French.138

Command of French, finally, was also bound up with the concept of the
honnête homme, the sociable man whose character it was the purpose of
noble education to form.139 According to the dictionary of the Académie
Française (1694), an honnête homme was an agreeable man who embodied
various qualities thought to be necessary for life in society. In the Encyclopédie he was similarly defined as ‘a polished man who wishes to please: the
honnêtes gens of a city are those persons in it who are above the people,
who have property, a reputation as upright, and honourable birth, and who
have had an education’.140 There is thus a sense that the honnête homme
137 RGB, Manuscripts Department, f. 64, op. 83, d. 2, fols 7, 26, 28.
138 Vigel’, Zapiski, vol. 1, 61.
139 Rjéoutski (ed.), Quand le français gouvernait la Russie, 124–125, on which we have drawn
here.
140 Encyclopédie, vol. 1, 136 (in the entry ‘adjectif’). However, the author of another article in the
Encyclopédie expressed reservations about describing someone with polished manners as an

Teaching and learning French

167

belongs to a different social milieu from the populace at large and has had
an upbringing which inculcates in him the qualities needed to move in
‘good’ society. These qualities usually comprise a tincture of both the arts
and sciences, but at the same time it is emphasized that knowledge that
is too deep and specialized needs to be avoided, for it smacks of pedantry,
which is intolerable in a man of society.
In Russia, the notion of the honnête homme had a central place in the
educational programmes followed by the governors hired to teach noble
children, and it was to be assimilated through study of French literary
examples and through instruction that also took place in French. It influenced the curriculum of the main public institution for the education of the
nobility, the Noble Land Cadet Corps, where students studied some subjects
which may have seemed far removed from the needs of the military but
which were nonetheless necessary for the honnête homme. The concept was
invoked in recommendations and self-recommendations. When, in 1761,
Prince Nikolai Dolgorukii gave Chevalier Jean Desessart a testimonial for
his good and loyal services, he wrote that the governor had proved himself
an honnête homme.141 Desessart, for his part, made use of this notion to
make himself more attractive to subsequent employers, promising, when
he signed a new contract in 1765, to give his pupil the knowledge needed
by ‘l’honneste homme, l’homme aimable et le bon citoyen’ (the honnête
homme, the agreeable man, and the good citizen).142 Laharpe invoked the
concept too, when in 1784 he outlined his pedagogical ideas to Catherine
II, undertaking to develop it in the Grand Duke Alexander, along with the
concept of the ‘citizen’.143 The notion of good citizenship to which Laharpe
refers, finally, was often implicit in the concept, together with the ideal
of noble sociability. When Pushkin speaks of Karamzin’s History of the
Russian State as ‘not only the work of a great writer but also the heroic deed
[podvig] of an honnête homme [chestnogo cheloveka]’,144 for example, he is
not underlining the pleasing side of Karamzin’s character but Karamzin’s
concern for the public good, a concern which is perceived as a moral virtue.
Ivan Dolgorukov had had in mind the same quality in a poem he wrote in

honnête homme. This was an abuse of the expression which, the author maintained, indicated
‘the progress of corruption’ in society (see the entry ‘honnête homme’, Encyclopédie, vol. 8, 287).
141 AVPRI, f. 7, op. 3, d. 127, fol. 11.
142 Ibidem, fols 12–12 v.
143 His Mémoire is published in Sukhomlinov, Issledovaniia i stat’i po russkoi literature i pro­
sveshcheniiu, vol. 2, 143–164.
144 ‘Otryvki iz pisem, mysli i zamechaniia’, in Pushkin, PSS, vol. 11, 57.

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The French L anguage in Russia

memory of Ivan Shuvalov, the founder of the University of Moscow.145 The
concept is difficult to define, to be sure, both because it did not often appear
in children’s correspondence or written exercises and because it overlapped
with the social and emotional characteristics of a society man, who prized
friendship and politeness. And yet, we may be sure that it was absorbed,
both as a social practice and as a sort of moral obligation, through the French
language and education to which Russian noble children were exposed.
The association of francophonie with the social code of the aristocracy,
finally, is well illustrated by a passage in Boyhood, the second part of an
autobiographical trilogy, in which Lev Tolstoi, who was born in 1828, considers his upbringing in the 1830s and 1840s. The move of a noble family from
their provincial estate to Moscow marked the beginning of a new phase in
a child’s development. ‘Politeness’ and relations in society would henceforth
have a special place and would be bound up with the French language
and a ‘French’ education. In the Tolstoi household, a ‘French dandy’, who
knew how ‘des enfants de bonne maison [children from a good family]
should be brought up’, replaced Karl Ivanych, a kindly German who was
quite unversed in the ways of society and who, in the caustic words of the
narrator’s grandmother, could only teach the children ‘Tirolean songs’. It is
significant that the boy’s grandmother, in Tolstoi’s narrative, refers to this
German educator as diad’ka146 rather than guverner (governor) and that the
latter role is taken on by a Frenchman who understands society’s cultural
and linguistic priorities.147
*
The teaching of French in Russia began much earlier than is sometimes
supposed, but only in a milieu close to the tsar and in a school established in
connection with Russian foreign affairs. French was introduced in a number
of public educational institutions immediately after the death of Peter the
Great, but it was not until the reign of Catherine II that it really took wing
in them, whereas in aristocratic families it was successfully learned from
at least as early as the reign of Elizabeth. There is thus a certain imbalance
between the public and private spheres.
145 Ivan Mikhailovich Dolgorukii, ‘Na konchinu Ivana Ivanovicha Shuvalova’.
146 Literally ‘old uncle’; the word denoted a retired soldier who helped to look after a boy in a
noble household.
147 Otrochestvo, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 2, 23–24. On the demands that families in high society made
of the governor, who himself needed to be a man of society and to possess society’s manners,
see Berelowitch, ‘Les gouverneurs des Golitsyne à l’étranger’.

Teaching and learning French

169

In the course of the eighteenth century, French became an integral
part of the identity of the Russian nobility, in a way that it was not for
other social groups. The Russian bourgeoisie – if the term can be used in
relation to eighteenth-century Russia – scarcely learned foreign languages
at all during the eighteenth century. The clergy was conversant mainly
with Latin and was only just beginning to learn French and German in the
second half of the century. From this point of view, the contrast between
the linguistic behaviour of different social groups was more marked than in
many European countries. (One might cite the example of Sweden, where
non-nobles made up more than half of the authors who used French in the
second half of the eighteenth century.148) The contrast is also apparent when
we consider knowledge of Latin: neglected by the Russian nobility, Latin
became an important cultural marker for many raznochintsy and for the
clergy. The nobility, for its part, gained access to the classical heritage simply
by appropriating French, which had become a medium for that heritage.
Thus, the struggle that was waged against Latin by theoreticians of noble
education in the West was won in Russia without a battle.
The rise of French in Russia occurred at the expense of German, which had
had pride of place in the educational system until the beginning of the reign
of Catherine II. And yet, if German ceded first position to French, it never
disappeared from Russian education and continued to accompany French
almost everywhere. In the late eighteenth century and the nineteenth,
English and sometimes Italian were added to the list of foreign languages
studied, which suggests some cultural reorientation. Thus, the Russian nobility was a multilingual social group rather than a group that was bilingual in
French and Russian, as has often been claimed. It is true, though, that Russian
and French were the main languages for noble communication and this fact
was already reflected in the ways in which French was learned. At the same
time, it became normal – and a growing sense of national consciousness
helped in this respect – to learn one’s mother tongue, not only in public
educational institutions, but also in noble families, which had not been
the case in the first half of the eighteenth century, when Russian did not
exist as an academic subject. Judging by the history of language learning in
Russia, it is difficult seriously to claim that the ‘Gallicized’ Russian nobility
was ignorant of Russian in the age of Catherine and beyond.
French did prevail over Russian in the education of the high nobility
under Alexander I and, as before, it was used as an intermediary language
for a variety of subjects, especially literature, geography, and history, but
148 Östman, ‘French in Sweden in the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, 283.

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sometimes also mathematics, botany, and so forth.149 So paradoxically,
neither the efforts made during Catherine’s reign nor the patriotic upsurge
during the Napoleonic Wars, and particularly at the time of the invasion
of Russia by the Grande Armée, led to any significant improvement in
the position of Russian in this milieu. Not that the Russian authorities
abandoned their plan to alter the balance of languages in the education
of the Russian nobility, quite the contrary. During the early part of the
nineteenth century, they endeavoured to introduce Latin as a possible
alternative to French, which increasingly came to be seen as a language
capable of inspiring dangerous ideas within a section of the Russian nobility.
Already in the reign of Alexander I, though, Russian nobles tried to avoid
being educated in public institutions such as gymnasia, where Latin (which
nobles did not regard as essential to their cultural identity) had a prominent
place in the curriculum but where dancing (which nobles did consider an
important ‘noble art’) was not taught. Thus, by the early nineteenth century
the Russian nobility had absorbed an ideal of education which was not
altogether consistent with imperial language policy and which deterred
them from attending institutions where they would be exposed to values
the government wished to promote. This was a perverse outcome, since the
French style of education favoured by the nobility seemed to be a product of
the westernization of Russian society that the monarchy itself had initiated.
In the course of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the
twentieth, French would be learned in Russia according to two models. For
nobles, the language was always inseparable from ideas associated with
the culture of their own class, such as friendship, politeness, and style,
whereas for the bourgeoisie it was more of a lingua franca, a professional
language, and a language of culture. The broadening of the social base of
those learning French led to the decline of Russian francophonie by the
end of the nineteenth century even if, in privileged milieus, there was
always a good command of it. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 sounded
the death-knell of the teaching of French, both for the Russian elites, who
left the country or were forced to adapt themselves to the new regime by
149 It is worth adding in this connection that it was often through French that Russians learned
about the literatures of other modern countries, especially Britain, whose languages were less
well known to Russian aristocrats than French or German in the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. Like many nobles of his generation, Pushkin, for example, acquired knowledge of
English literature, but almost entirely through French translations of it. The mediating role of
French in helping Russians to become aware of other European cultures inevitably left a mark
on the outlook of Russian nobles, on the set of concepts with which they operated, and, in the
final analysis, on the language (Russian as well as French) that they used in speech and writing.

Teaching and learning French

171

abandoning part of their cultural capital, and for the Russian population
as a whole, who turned towards German, which was judged more relevant
in the new political situation.

Chapter 3
French at court
The discovery of sociability
Russia, Isaiah Berlin once observed, ‘was a latecomer to Hegel’s feast of the
spirit’. Whether ‘humane culture’, as Berlin contended, therefore ‘meant more
to the Russians [than] to the blasé natives of the West’ is a moot point. We
may safely say, though, that it is a distinctive feature of Russian cultural,
literary, and intellectual history that the lateness of Russians’ arrival at the
feast had at least one important chain of consequences.1 The achievements
of many phases of European cultural and intellectual development became
known in Russia in rapid succession, or more or less simultaneously, with
the result that ideas could flourish there in conditions different from those
in which they had originated and that they could bloom in unexpected
configurations.2 This outcome is apparent in the history of the reception
of ideas and literary movements and genres in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury Russia. It may also be evident in the history of the reception of
cultural models such as courtly behaviour and gallantry, the introduction
of types of social gathering such as the salon and the literary circle, and the
development of notions about sociability, manners, conduct, and taste. It is
particularly worth bearing in mind that the conceptions of correct social
behaviour adopted by the Francophone aristocracy, on the one hand, and
pre-Romantic and Romantic notions about sensibility, the corruption of
morals by modern civilization, and the importance of vernaculars to an
ethnos, on the other, all arrived in Russia within a relatively short time-span.
Belief in the importance of a certain type of sociability and a certain manner of conducting relations with one’s peers, we have already suggested, was
a distinguishing trait of members of the Russian nobility, whose eighteenthcentury evolution as a westernized corporation we described in our survey
of the historical contexts of Russian francophonie. This belief informed the
upbringing that noble families provided for their children as they prepared
1 Something similar may no doubt be said of the history of other nations that lay outside the
mainstream of European civilization at the time of the Renaissance and in the early modern
period.
2 On Isaiah Berlin’s œuvre on Russian thought, see Offord, ‘Isaiah Berlin and the Russian
Intelligentsia’, at the beginning of which this point is made.

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them, in ways discussed in our chapter on teaching and learning French, to
play a role worthy of their station. It will help us to structure our discussion
of the function of French in Russian high society, in our following chapter, if
we continue to bear in mind the notions of sociability and social relations we
have outlined. Here, though, in the first of two closely related chapters, we
should dwell on language practice at court, for it was the court that furnished
the principal model for aristocratic sociability and conduct.
The generic model of aristocratic behaviour with which Russians belatedly
became familiar in the eighteenth century was the man whose accomplishments and pleasing demeanour enabled him to win praise and favour in the
refined society at or near a royal court. Baldassare Castiglione had already
described this exemplar in the late Renaissance in his Book of the Courtier
(1528), in which knowledge of many languages, especially French and Spanish,
was highly recommended.3 Another sixteenth-century Italian gentleman,
Stefano Guazzo, gave those who aspired to enter polite society copious advice
on the art of conversation between nobles and non-nobles, young and old,
men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and children, and so forth. 4
Castiglione’s and Guazzo’s books were both translated from Italian into
French soon after they had first been published,5 and in the course of the
seventeenth century it was in France that the art of civilized sociability was
most assiduously cultivated. The savoir vivre for which the French elite became
renowned, particularly during the long reign of Louis XIV, entailed not only
enjoyment of the comforts of life (les douceurs de la vie) but also gentleness
in relations with one’s peers (la douceur envers le prochain). French authors
themselves – notably Antoine Gombaud, Chevalier de Méré – held forth on
the art of making oneself agreeable to others.6 The man frequenting polite
society would require the ability to make conversation characterized by grace,
refinement, gaiety, and wit. He would have to be able to engage his interlocutor
and to improvise. He would need originality and an indefinable quality, a je
ne sais quoi.7 This distinctive way of behaving, conversing, and mixing with
3 Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, 147.
4 Guazzo, La civil conversazione (1574), translated as The Civile Conversation.
5 For a list of the very numerous translations of The Courtier into other languages in the
century after its first publication, see Burke, The Fortunes of the ‘Courtier’, Appendix 1.
6 Gombaud was the author of works on the ‘honnête homme’: see Gombaud, Œuvres posthumes
de M. le chevalier de Méré. For a useful list of French works on civility, manners, conversation,
gallantry, and the conduct of the honnête homme, see Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila
po-frantsuzski, 32, n. 34.
7 We have drawn in this paragraph on Grechanaia’s characterization of the French social
world in Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski; see especially 8–10, 34–35.

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175

one’s peers, being exclusive and difficult to acquire, represented a form of
cultural capital that marked those who mastered it as socially superior. It
also accorded considerable status to men in the civilian world, loosening
the link between aristocratic prestige and military valour, and to women.8
The central role of women in the social world surrounding the early
modern court is strikingly apparent in Castiglione’s Courtier, the third book of
which is largely devoted to the grace that women bring to gentle society and
the courteous attentiveness, or galanterie (gallantry), with which gentlemen
should treat them. From the seventeenth century, moreover, women also
began, in France, to play a prominent part as hostesses in the salon, an
institution which functioned, Antoine Lilti has argued, as ‘a kind of interface
between court society, elite networks, and the literary sphere’ and which
was strongly shaped by the court’s values and practices.9 A typical salon
would meet regularly at a private house, which became a semi-public arena
where social boundaries were relatively porous, with members from various
backgrounds. Its exclusive purpose was sociability, and conversation would
be its main pastime, although other activities, such as recitals, lectures,
and theatrical and musical performances, were common, depending on
the interests of the hostess, or salonnière. Both men and women would
attend, but it was the salonnière who brought participants together and set
a distinctive tone.10 Over a long period from the seventeenth century to the
early nineteenth, leading salonnières – the Marquise de Rambouillet, Mme
de la Fayette, Mlle de Scudéry, the Marquise de Lambert, Mme de Tencin,
Mme Geoffrin, Mme du Deffand, Mlle de Lespinasse, Mme Necker, Mme
d’Épinay, and others – achieved renown by presiding over circles, above all in
Paris, that were distinguished by their individual social mix and intellectual
or artistic interests but united in their allegiance to aristocratic culture.11
We are not concerned here with the scholarly debate that has taken place
about the part played by women in shaping the Enlightenment through
their role as salon hostesses.12 Lilti’s distinction between the society of
8 Berelowitch shows that the great families looked for ease in society and knowledge of the
world in candidates for the post of tutor to their children, because these were qualities they
thought it necessary to instil in young aristocrats: see Berelowitch, ‘Les gouverneurs des Golitsyne
à l’étranger’.
9 Lilti, ‘The Kingdom of Politesse’, 5, 11.
10 Seibert, ‘Der literarische Salon: ein Forschungsüberblick’.
11 For sketches of some of these salonnières, see Goodman, The Republic of Letters, 74–84.
12 Dena Goodman has claimed, for example, that a ‘cultural history of the French Enlightenment
must also be a feminist history, because it challenges the conceptualization of intellectual
activity as the product of masculine reason and male genius’ (ibidem, 2–3).

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aristocrats and the society of writers and intellectuals, though, contains
insights that seem pertinent, mutatis mutandis, in the nineteenth-century
Russian context.13 The fact that men of letters frequented the salons of
eighteenth-century Paris, Lilti contends, does not prove that the salon was a
central institution in the so-called ‘Republic of Letters’.14 It is more accurate,
he argues, to look upon the salons as ‘aristocratic bastions’ that provided a
social space for le monde or the beau monde. They were regions of a ‘kingdom
of politesse’, rather than literary and intellectual venues. The philosophes
were attracted to them because they wished to reach an audience beyond
the world of learning, especially in elite society, and they were welcomed
there provided that they conformed to aristocratic norms.15
Turning to the development of sociability in Russia, we find evidence
of the induction of Russian noblemen into western social networks,
and the usefulness of knowledge of French for that purpose, from as far
back as the early eighteenth century. The diplomat Andrei Matveev, who
represented Russia in Holland, for example, left some notes on a visit
that he made to France in 1705–1706. Besides some remarks on France’s
political structure, the French court, and so forth, Matveev commented
on social life among the French aristocracy. He noticed that women played
a major part in this social milieu and enjoyed equality with men in it.
Plays were staged in aristocratic households and aristocrats themselves
took part in them, not least in order to help them to improve their diction
in the French language. People could circulate freely at social gatherings
and could play cards or converse at them without attracting suspicion. 16
Another early Russian visitor to the West, Ivan Shcherbatov, revelled in
the new opportunities for social intercourse which abounded in London,
if only one had English or French. In the letters that he wrote in French
as a pedagogical exercise to the teacher whom he found for himself,
Shcherbatov described his entry into the public sphere of theatres, public
houses, and coffee-houses, of which there were many around Charing
Cross, where he had his lodgings, and several of which catered for London’s
French community.17
13 See especially the last paragraph of this section.
14 Lilti is taking issue here with Dena Goodman. On his differences with Goodman, see
especially his book Le monde des salons, 55–57.
15 Lilti, ‘The Kingdom of Politesse’, 1–3.
16 Matveev, Russkii diplomat vo Frantsii, 198. On Matveev’s discovery of social life in the West,
see Haumant, La Culture française en Russie, 19.
17 RNB, Manuscripts Department, Hermitage Collection, French Manuscripts, no. 105, partially reproduced at https://data.bris.ac.uk/datasets/3nmuogz0xzmpx21l2u1m5f3bjp/Ivan%20

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177

The initial impulse for the development of European forms of sociability
in Russia came from the sovereign himself. The interest of Peter the Great in
promoting sociability among his nobles is indicated by an edict of 1718 laying
down rules for the conduct of assamblei. These were gatherings that could
take place for business and pleasure at private houses. People attending them
(including women as well as men) were at liberty to talk about whatever
they wanted and to come and go as they pleased. The edict explained the
origin of the word assamblei and thus, implicitly, the origin – or at least,
one of the origins – of this social innovation: ‘Assamblei is a French word,
which cannot be expressed in Russian with a single word’.18
The edict on assamblei had nothing to say about foreign-language use, but
since the participants in such gatherings included associates of Peter who
did show an interest in learning French the introduction of the new social
practices could not have been altogether unconnected with the development
of new linguistic skills.19 In any case, the subject of foreign-language acquisition and use did receive considerable attention in a longer contemporaneous
document, the so-called Honest Mirror of Youth, or Guide to Worldly Manners,
a manual on polite behaviour which was printed on Peter’s orders in 1717,
the year before the promulgation of the edict on ‘assemblies’.20 Designed for
use in the upbringing of the young nobleman and noblewoman, The Honest
Mirror contained injunctions about respecting and obeying parents, keeping
promises, and behaving with modesty and restraint, exhortations not to
belch or cough in people’s faces, tell lies, or speak ill of the dead, and advice on
how to converse, sit at table, eat, blow one’s nose, and comport oneself in the
street.21 The young nobleman was urged to become proficient in languages,
Shcherbatov%20text.pdf. See also Rjéoutski and Offord, ‘Teaching and Learning French in the
Early Eighteenth Century’.
18 ‘O poriadke sobranii v chastnykh domakh, i o litsakh, kotorye v onykh uchastvovat’ mogut’
(26 November 1718): PSZ, no. 3246. In fact, such gatherings had been introduced in St Petersburg
before this edict was issued (Komissarenko, Kul’turnye traditsii russkogo obshchestva, 128). On
these social gatherings, see also Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 28–29.
19 On this development, see the first and third sections of Chapter 5 below.
20 Iunosti chestnoe zertsalo ili pokazanie k zhiteiskomu obkhozhdeniiu. See the description
of this book in Pekarskii, Nauka i literatura v Rossii pri Petre Velikom, vol. 2, 381–383. On
possible sources for this book and its position vis-à-vis pre-Petrine edif icatory literature,
see Bragon, ‘Traditsionnoe vospitanie i novyi etiket dlia molodezhi Petrovskoi epokhi’. The
emergence of new forms of sociability in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
was accompanied in Europe more generally by the appearance of such treatises on polite
conduct: see Montandon (ed.), Bibliographie des traités de savoirs-vivre en Europe, and Carré,
‘Les traductions anglaises d’ouvrages français sur le comportement et l’éducation des femmes
au XVIIIe siècle’.
21 See, e.g., Iunosti chestnoe zertsalo, §§ 1, 5, 7, 11, 47, 49 ff., 57, 58.

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The French L anguage in Russia

as well as in horse-riding, dancing, and fencing.22 To this end, adolescents
were instructed always to speak foreign languages among themselves. One
practical advantage of knowing foreign languages was that nobles would be
able to conceal their thoughts from servants. Another was that they would be
able to differentiate themselves from ‘ignorant blockheads’.23 However, the
manual also introduced the notion of the blagochestnyi kavaler, a Russian
prototype of the honnête homme, who should be humble, polite, and capable
of making good conversation.24 Ability to speak foreign languages was part
of this set of skills, mastery of which in turn equipped the young nobleman
to become a courtier.25 A further article in the manual indicated the high
value attached to linguistic attainment:
Adolescents who have come from foreign regions and have learnt languages at great expense, they should imitate and try not to forget them
but to become more prof icient in them by reading useful books and
mixing with others and sometimes writing and composing [komponovat’]
something in them, so as not to forget the languages.26

It was only with the ascendancy of the French cultural model in the postPetrine era, though, that Russians became fully acquainted with the notion
of gallantry. ‘Love’, Zhivov wittily observed, ‘appeared in Russia quite late,
somewhere around the end of the seventeenth century, and at first it had
virtually no voice or words with which to express itself’. That did not mean,
Zhivov hastened to add, that ‘up until then Russians had lived like wild
animals and that there had been no love among them’, but that ‘there was no
cultural tradition of amorous relationships or the words to go with them: the
Russians had no troubadours, no Petrarch, not even a Boccaccio’. When love
did ‘invade public space’, in the Petrine age, ‘the art of courtship and gallant
dialogue was almost entirely lacking’ and it needed to be quickly learnt, for
love, it now turned out, was a skill as well as a feeling.27 The main teachers of
this skill, as of so many other skills in Europe at this time, were the French,
and translations from French therefore became the main teaching aids. The
most important of these were Paul Tallemant’s allegorical novel Journey to
the Island of Love (1663), which was published in Trediakovskii’s translation
22
23
24
25
26
27

Ibidem, § 18.
Ibidem, § 27.
On formation of the honnête homme in Russia, see the last section of Chapter 2 above.
Iunosti chestnoe zertsalo, § 18.
Ibidem, § 30.
Zhivov, ‘Love à la mode’, 214.

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179

in 1730, and Jean-François Dreux du Radier’s Dictionary of Love (1741), which
was revised by Aleksandr Khrapovitskii and published in a Russian version
in 1768.28 By painstakingly comparing Trediakovskii’s and Khrapovitskii’s
texts, which record different stages in the development of gallant language
in Russia, Zhivov has illustrated the effect of Europeanization in the sphere
of social relations there.29
Post-Petrine Russia also embraced French salon culture, though not for
a long while after Peter’s death, despite Peter’s encouragement of western
sociability. Extended circles of friends did begin to meet in the second half
of the century for the sake of being sociable.30 Already in the early part
of the reign of Catherine II, for example, Aleksandr Sergeevich Stroganov
held social gatherings in his palatial house on Nevskii Prospekt, where
Russian and foreign guests, including men of letters, discussed and heard
addresses in French on learned topics and enjoyed lavish hospitality.31
However, such gatherings were not salons in the proper sense, for women
did not take part in them, it seems, or at least women were certainly
not the centre of attention at them.32 It is only from the beginning of
the nineteenth century that the salon as a social and cultural venue of
the sort long known in France truly established itself in Russia. Notable
salonnières abounded: Sof’ia Bobrinskaia, Avdot’ia Elagina née Iushkova
(Kireevskaia during her first marriage), Aleksandra Khvostova (a niece of
28 Tallemant [also known as Tallement], Voyage de l’isle d’amour, translated by Trediakovskii
as Ezda v ostrov liubvi; Dreux du Radier, Dictionnaire d’amour, translated by Khrapovitskii as
Liubovnyi leksikon.
29 Zhivov, ‘Love à la mode’. On Khrapovitskii’s language in his translation of du Radier, see
also Kochetkova, ‘Kniga Dre diu Rad’e Dictionnaire d’Amour v russkom perevode’. Kochetkova
stresses that Khrapovitskii’s written Russian was close to spoken Russian and that in this
respect Khrapovitskii was ahead of his time (825). Although Kochetkova does not make the
point explicitly, we may suppose that Khrapovitskii was influenced by the French original he
was translating, since the written language in France was closer to the spoken language than
written Russian was to spoken Russian in Khrapovitskii’s time and since du Radier’s work was
indeed written in a language close to spoken French. However, in the spirit of the Catherinian
age, Khrapovitskii inserted some rather Gallophobic passages in his translation, criticizing the
overwhelming cultural influence of France in Russia (827–828). Kochetkova draws attention to
the seeming paradox that criticism of Russians’ submission to French cultural influence was
expressed through a translation of a French book (829).
30 Bernstein, ‘Women on the Verge of a New Language’, 209. See also Rosslyn, ‘Making their
Way into Print’, 412.
31 See Rjéoutski and Somov, ‘Language Use among the Russian Aristocracy’, 69–70.
32 It may be that the gatherings at Stroganov’s house in Paris during the second of his long
sojourns in the French-speaking world were nearer to what we normally understand as a salon,
but we have little information on them.

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The French L anguage in Russia

the poet Kheraskov, who hosted a St Petersburg salon attended by Joseph
de Maistre, the Piedmontese ambassador to Russia from 1803 to 1817),
Evdokiia Rostopchina (wife of one of the sons of Fedor Rostopchin), and
Zinaida Volkonskaia.33 Aleksandra Rosset, on whose memoirs we draw
in the following section, was hostess of a salon frequented by Pushkin,
Viazemskii, Gogol’, and Lermontov.34 There may have been some linguistic
difference between ‘aristocratic’ salons and ‘literary’ salons (for example,
those hosted by the poets Anton Del’vig and Vasilii Zhukovskii and the
prose writer Vladimir Odoevskii). (Not that it is easy to establish a clear
borderline between the two types; after all, some literary salons were
organized by noblemen and noblewomen who were close to the court
and the aristocracy.) At any rate, the primary language of conversation
in many salons, especially salons with literary leanings (such as those
hosted by Del’vig, Ekaterina Karamzina (Karamzin’s second wife), and
Smirnova-Rosset) was not French but Russian.35
Adoption of the French language in the salon, as well as the practices of
the French model of the institution, was encouraged by the international
nature of society in St Petersburg, the seat of the empire’s court and its
diplomatic and cultural centre, and also by the increased presence of
French nobles in Russia as they fled from France after the outbreak of the
Revolution in 1789. In fact, some Russian salonnières were the wives of
French émigrés. Agrafena Bibikova, for instance, whose late eighteenthcentury salon was frequented by diplomats, including the Comte de Ségur
and the Comte de Coblenz, was married to Jean-François de Ribeaupierre,
who had come to Russia in the 1770s and served as adjutant to Catherine’s
favourite, Grigorii Potemkin. Aleksandra Kozitskaia, who hosted an influential literary salon in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s, was the wife of Count
Jean-François-Charles de Laval de La Loubrerie.36 Russian salonnières,
according to contemporary accounts, tried to carry on the tradition of
politesse which the revolution had supposedly destroyed in France, while
33 On Volkonskaia’s salon, see Saikina, Moskovskii literaturnyi salon kniagini Zinaidy Volkonskoi.
On Volkonskaia’s prose fiction, see the last section of Chapter 6 below.
34 Mézin and Rjéoutski (eds), Les Français en Russie au siècle des Lumières, vol. 2, 725. Not all
Russian salons, it should be noted, were presided over by aristocratic women: Pushkin’s father,
for example, hosted a literary salon that was visited by Joseph de Maistre.
35 Bunturi, ‘Peterburgskii literaturnyi salon v russkoi kul’ture pervoi treti XIX veka’. The
question of language use in Russian salons has not been much investigated to date; see, though,
the doctoral thesis by Elena Palii, ‘Salon kak fenomen kul’tury Rossii XIX veka’, and idem,
‘Russkaia salonnaia kul’tura XIX veka’, as well as the contribution by Bunturi that we have just
cited.
36 Mézin and Rjéoutski (eds), Les Français en Russie au siècle des Lumières, vol. 2, 482–483.

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181

French émigrés, for their part, found that the salon offered an opportunity
to continue the noble way of life to which they had been accustomed.37
Two further points need to be made to complete our sketch of the context
in which French became the primary language of the court and aristocratic society in Russia. First, together with the models of court life and
sociability that Russia adopted in the eighteenth century there also came
a powerful tradition of opposition to those models. As Peter Burke points
out, a critique of Castiglione, in which Northern European unease about the
culture of performance was pronounced, can be traced back to the sixteenth
century.38 This critical tradition became well established in France, where
the court’s vices were particularly associated with Italy and where some
writers complained about the Italianization of the French language. It was
probably introduced into Russia through French polemical or pedagogical
writings such as Bellegarde’s Perfect Education (1710), which appeared in a
Russian translation that was published in 1747 and republished in 1759 and
again in 1775. Bellegarde does not reject the court as an institution, but he
does warn his young readers against vices thought to be characteristic of
courts, such as intriguing and insincerity.39 We do not know whether the
dramatist Fonvizin was aware of Bellegarde’s work, but he too expressed
loathing of the flattering courtier through Starodum, his main mouthpiece
in his play The Minor (1782). 40 A similar distaste for court life is implicit in
the selection of texts in a miscellany of French writings assembled some
time before 1783 by a Russian whose identity we do not know. Here the
court is depicted, through excerpts from La Bruyere’s Characters, a letter
addressed to Comte de Bussy, and a sonnet by an anonymous author, as a
wretched world of flattery, falsehood, and deception, ‘a country where joys
are visible but false, and sorrows hidden but real’. 41
As for the salon, its manners – as a form of stylized behaviour practised
by a privileged group – became a target both for more self-critical members
of elites themselves and for outsiders who resented this exclusive set or
who simply made cultural or literary capital of their own out of scorning
it. Molière, for instance, is already ridiculing cultural pretentiousness
(préciosité) in several of his comedies in the second half of the seventeenth
37 Chistova, ‘Pushkin v salone Avdot’i Golitsynoi’, 190.
38 Burke, The Fortunes of the ‘Courtier’, 99–116, especially 113–115.
39 Bellegarde, L’éducation parfaite, 43–44.
40 See especially Act V, Scene 1 of the play, in Fonvizin, SS, vol. 1, 167–169. On the influence of
Fénelon, Stoicism, and Confucianism on Fonvizin, see Offord, ‘Denis Fonvizin and the Concept
of Nobility’, 26–30.
41 RGB, f. 183, op. 1, d. 1482. The quotation from La Bruyère is on fol. 46 v.

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The French L anguage in Russia

century. 42 However, it was Jean-Jacques Rousseau who gave the greatest
impetus to criticism of salon society in the middle of the eighteenth century
through his discourses on the corruption of morals and on inequality. 43
We shall repeatedly encounter this tradition of censure of polite society
in works of classical Russian literature up to two centuries after Molière.
Krylov, for example, adapted one of Moliere’s plays for this purpose in his
one-act comedy A Lesson for Daughters (1807), as D. Brian Kim has shown.
By boldly rewriting Molière’s Affected Young Ladies, Krylov exhorts Russians
of the Napoleonic period not to succumb to the sort of Gallomania that
has induced the two young sisters whom he portrays to fall in love with
a servant because of his Gallicized appearance and his (unsuccessful)
attempts to express himself in French.44 The high value attached to feeling
and naturalness by late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russian
writers who were inspired by the Sentimentalist and Romantic movements
also encouraged the representation of the beau monde, with its formality
and etiquette, as hypocritical and shallow. These writers would have readily
agreed with the moral with which Molière’s Affected Young Ladies ends:
‘On n’aime ici que la vaine apparence’ (Vain appearances are all that people
love here). 45
Secondly, bearing in mind Lilti’s distinction between the aristocratic
social arena of the Parisian salon and the literary and intellectual arena
of the ‘Republic of Letters’, we should beware of equating the social life of
the aristocratic drawing-room, in which women were centres of attention,
with the entirely male literary societies or political circles that sprang
up in the Alexandrine age. Still less should we confuse the noble salon or
soirée with the circles frequented by writers, critics, and the embryonic
intelligentsia that emerged during the reign of Nicholas I, especially in the
1840s. The latter gatherings were venues not for polite, uncontroversial
conversation but for impassioned debate about philosophy, literature,
and the so-called ‘accursed questions’ (prokliatye voprosy), such as the
existence of God and national identity and destiny. Discussions at them,
42 Les précieuses ridicules (first performed in Paris in 1659), L’école des femmes (1662), and Les
femmes savantes (1672).
43 J.-J. Rousseau, Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750) and Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité
parmi les hommes (1755); see Goodman, The Republic of Letters, 35–36, 39, 54–56.
44 Molière, Les précieuses ridicules, adapted by Krylov as Urok dochkam: see Kim, ‘Seduction,
Subterfuge, Subversion’.
45 On the Russian literary critique of high society, see especially Chapters 8 and 9 below,
although the subject is also broached in our discussion of women’s prose fiction in French in
the last section of Chapter 6 below.

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183

which could go on long into the night, were increasingly conducted in
Russian, because the literary and intellectual communities – although
they did contain many nobles – were losing the stamp of aristocratic
culture or, to put it another way, the connection between belles-lettres
and mondanité was weakening. In any case, influential actors who entered
the intelligentsia in the age of Nicholas, as we have pointed out, 46 were of
non-noble origin, had not been educated by foreign tutors and governesses,
and either were not Francophone or had a limited command of French.
Women, incidentally, played a much more peripheral role in these circles
than they did in the aristocratic drawing-room, or were altogether absent
from them.

French as a sign of the status of the Russian court
For the Romanovs, as for the Habsburgs, Lieven has pointed out, the establishment and maintenance of their empire as a European great power was
‘the single overriding priority’: their ‘sense of pride, self-image and legitimacy
was linked absolutely and inescapably to the great power status of their
dynastic empires’.47 For a power situated on Europe’s periphery and perceived
in a negative way by those representatives of the continent’s cultural centres
who occasionally visited it, knowledge of foreign languages and possession
of a lingua franca were pre-requisites for success in this political competition
and in the cultural diplomacy which played an important part in such
competition. As a matter of fact, Russia’s connections with foreign courts
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were predominantly with the
German world rather than with France. 48 (The influence of this world is
reflected in the fact that the Russian terminology for court roles was of
German origin. 49) However, from around the middle of the eighteenth
century, it was the then prevailing French cultural model of polite society
that was embraced by the Russian court (as it had been by German courts).
The example set by the court was followed by the metropolitan aristocracy,

46 See the last section of Chapter 1 above.
47 Lieven, Empire, 159.
48 We provide some examples in the penultimate section of this chapter.
49 Within the second level of the Table of Ranks, for example, ober-kamerger, ober-gofmarshal,
ober-shtal’meister, ober-egermeister, ober-gofmeister, ober-shenk, ober-tseremoniimeister, oberforshneider, and, at lower levels, kamerger, kamer-iunker, kamer-fur’er, kamerdiner, mundshenk,
tafel’deker, konditer, and so forth.

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and gradually French culture spread from St Petersburg and Moscow through
the nobility more generally.50
It was in the reign of Peter’s daughter Elizabeth, it will be recalled, that
French cultural influence began to prevail at the Russian court and French
visitors to St Petersburg started to take note of Russian prowess in the
French language.51 One important instrument in the cultural and linguistic
Gallicization of Elizabeth’s court was the French theatre troupe that took
up residence in St Petersburg in the 1740s. French actors had started to
appear in Russia as early as the 1720s, at the court and elsewhere, but there
was no permanent troupe in the country at that stage. In the 1730s, a troupe
of Italian comedians and actors appeared, and there was also a German
troupe, but it was dismissed after the death of the Empress Anna. Since the
repertoire of the German troupe had consisted largely of French plays, we
may assume that when an invitation was extended to the French troupe from
Kassel, at the beginning of the 1740s, it was because the court wished to see
French plays performed in French. The invitation to the Kassel troupe was
formally issued in the reign of Elizabeth, who, besides being Francophile
herself, had benefited from the support of French diplomats at the time of
the coup d’état that brought her to power in 1741, but the decision to issue it
had already been taken by Löwenwolde, the Grand Marshal of the Russian
court, before the coup. Löwenwolde’s personal tastes probably played a part
in this decision. However, as Alexeï Evstratov has recently argued in his
authoritative study of the Francophone court theatre in Russia, the desire
to have a French troupe in residence in St Petersburg no doubt reflected a
broad political aim as well.52
French theatre troupes, Evstratov points out, had begun to tour in foreign
countries from as early as the 1670s, and the number of them permanently
abroad increased around the beginning of the eighteenth century. By the end
of the 1730s, five European courts – those at Brussels, Hanover, The Hague,
Mannheim, and Munich – had a French troupe in residence.53 The Russian
court, then, was resolving to follow a developing trend in cultural politics
at quite an early stage, before other major European courts had begun to
host French troupes. The Saxon ambassador, who had previously acted as
50 The pioneering work on the spread of French culture in Russia, La Culture française en
Russie by Émile Haumant, still deserves attention, even though it was written over a hundred
years ago.
51 See the third section of Chapter 1 above.
52 In this discussion of French theatre at the Russian court, we have drawn heavily on Evstratov’s
monograph, Les Spectacles francophones à la cour de Russie.
53 Ibidem, 30, 34.

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185

an intermediary in the recruitment of Italian actors for the Russian court,
thought that the Russian initiative sprang from the empress’s wish ‘to make
her court and her state shine’.54
In his dedicatory epistle to his play The Orphan of China (1753), Voltaire
clearly expressed his view of the significance of the spread of the French
theatre in Europe:
So we see that no sooner had Peter the Great brought orderly government
to Russia and built St Petersburg than theatres were set up there. The
better Germany has become, the more we have seen it adopt our plays.
The few countries in which they have not been received during the past
century have not joined the ranks of civilized countries.55

The last phrase speaks volumes about the relationship that became fixed in
the public consciousness between theatre, especially French theatre, and a
monarch’s stature. The éclat of a court and its ‘civilized’ character, to which the
presence of French theatre contributed, were trump cards when a monarch’s
prestige was being considered and a country’s image was being constructed.
Louis XIV recognized the value of such cultural diplomacy: expenditure on
such things ‘might seem unnecessary’, he observed, but in fact it made ‘a very
advantageous impression of magnificence, power, wealth, and grandeur’ on
foreigners.56 That courts should compete with one another, moreover, seemed
in eighteenth-century Europe a perfectly logical thing. Travellers and diplomats
compared courts, and monarchs and courtiers cared about the pre-eminence of
their own. The Empress Anna was voicing a hope, or an anxiety, typical of rulers
of her time when, in the 1730s, she asked a French officer who was a prisoner of
war whether he found her court splendid and whether the court of France was
more so.57 Thus the Russian court, by the mid-eighteenth century, was seeking
to surpass the model of the premier court in Europe, the court at Versailles. It
was not enough, though, to dazzle foreigners with the material magnificence
of the court; it was also necessary for the court to show refinement, and the
staging of French theatre, which was accessible to all distinguished foreigners,
was at that time the best means of doing so.
When, in 1763, Voltaire’s Zaire was performed at the Russian court theatre
by courtiers themselves, and, what is more, in French, the British ambassador,
54
55
56
57

Quoted by Evstratov, ibidem, 34–35.
Quoted by Evstratov, ibidem, 57.
Quoted by Evstratov, ibidem, 58.
Ibidem, 59.

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The French L anguage in Russia

the Earl of Buckinghamshire, provided a long description of the occasion
in a dispatch and ended with the following passage:
The elegance and magnificence of the whole was such that what may appear
a laboured description is but barely doing justice to it. When we consider
how very few years have elapsed since the politer arts were first introduced
into this country, and how considerable a part of that time they have been
but little cultivated, it will appear very extraordinary that a performance
of the kind can have been planned and executed in a few weeks.58

Even if the aim of these words was to flatter Catherine II, who, as the
ambassador well knew, read the correspondence of foreign diplomats,
nonetheless they clearly expressed the connection in contemporary minds
between the presence of a theatre and the ‘civilized’ character of a court.
Not that foreigners were the only people at whom performances were aimed.
Russians themselves, both the court and ‘the city’, were also part of the
theatre-going public. They too were supposed to associate the court and
monarch with magnificence and refinement, and to assimilate the models
of behaviour that the theatre furnished, for the theatre, according to the
ideas of Baron Jakob Bielfeld, one of Catherine’s favourite authors, was a
civilizing entertainment.
The Francophone court theatre, then, played an important part in the
projection of royal power, to which Richard Wortman has devoted a classic
study. That is not to say that this particular cultural importation derived its
symbolic potency from its alien character and that it therefore exemplified
the practice that Wortman describes of associating ‘the ruler and the elite
with foreign images of political power’.59 In this instance, we believe, the
potency of the innovation lay primarily in its symbolic alignment of the
Russian court with European courts and in a desire to measure Russia
against European competitors – an aspiration to which we shall return when
we come to consider early Russian writing in French and the concurrent
development of a literature in Russian.
In 1756, some fifteen years after the arrival of a resident French troupe
at the Russian court, a Russian troupe appeared there. This development
reflected the growing belief that Russian too was a language capable of
bearing a literature of quality and it raised the vernacular to the status
of a language that could also be considered among the most ‘civilized’. In
58 Quoted by Evstratov, ibidem, 79–80.
59 See Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 1–2.

French at court

187

fact, though, the Russian troupe was much less generously funded than the
French troupe and the Russian court theatre lacked the prestige enjoyed
by its French counterpart. The theatre management even went so far as to
withhold information about the order of the performances when a Russian
comedy and a French comic opera were being staged on the same evening,
so that the auditorium would not empty at times when the Russian troupe
was performing. Not that the French troupe was exempt from criticism by
foreign visitors to St Petersburg. Russians apparently took such criticism
badly, for the understandable reason that any comments which seemed to
put the leading troupe of the Russian court on a par with a provincial French
troupe could be construed as demeaning to the court itself.60
French cultural and linguistic influence was consolidated at court
during the age of Catherine, although Catherine herself was by no means
Francophile. As the daughter of a German prince, she learned French as a
child from her Huguenot governess, Mlle Cardel, before coming to Russia
in 1744, at the age of fourteen. Her knowledge of French, as Georges Dulac
has demonstrated in a detailed examination of her correspondence with
Friedrich Melchior Grimm, to whom she was very close, was profound. She
had read widely in French literature (including the writings of authors who
wrote before the classical age) and was well-versed in the language of the
theatre. She could deploy arcane and archaic vocabulary, colourful proverbs,
and idiomatic expressions, had a sensitivity to register that enabled her to
use the language playfully, and was able to coin words herself for expressive
or humorous effect.61
Catherine’s mastery of French was an important asset in her campaign
to establish Russia as a European power whose credentials for respect were
cultural as well as military. The capacity of the court to attract distinguished
visitors (Grimm, the Prince de Ligne, Gustav III of Sweden, Francophone
diplomats, and so forth) depended on the status of St Petersburg as a European cultural centre,62 and that status in turn depended on the ability
60 Evstratov, Les Spectacles francophones à la cour de Russie, 49–55.
61 Dulac, ‘The Use of French by Catherine II in her Letters to Friedrich Melchior Grimm’, 51–56.
Grechanaia points out that Catherine’s written French, formed by Huguenot governesses who
may have preserved late seventeenth-century usage, had a slightly archaic flavour and that
her style, according to de Ligne, had ‘more clarity than lightness’ (Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia
govorila po-frantsuzski, 114).
62 Even the staging of plays by pupils at the Smolny Institute could be used to underline this
status. The empress often took high-ranking guests, such as Gustav III, to the institute when
plays were performed in French there, thus showing foreigners the best side of the Russian
educational system and displaying Catherine’s personal pedagogical mission. On the function
of French as a vehicle for cultural propaganda, see Chapter 7.

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The French L anguage in Russia

of those who inhabited it to speak excellent French. Catherine herself set
an example, corresponding in French with other sovereigns (Frederick II,
Gustav III, and Maria Theresa of Austria), men of letters (d’Alembert, Buffon,
Diderot, Marmontel, and Voltaire), and well-known social figures, such as
de Ligne and Mme Geoffrin, whom Catherine admired.63 Indeed, Catherine
liked to see herself as a salonnière. (She herself, incidentally, served as a model
for Mme Necker, who praised Catherine for having no taste for pleasure!)64
Catherine was also well aware of what we might call the propagandistic value
of her French correspondence, especially her correspondence with Voltaire.65
Both she and Voltaire realized that their letters soon became widely known
among European intellectuals and took this fact into account when framing
their communications. In this respect, there is a sharp contrast between
this correspondence and Catherine’s correspondence with Grimm, which
was much less public and much more intimate.66 It is no coincidence, for
instance, that Catherine’s letters to Voltaire are better written and contain
fewer mistakes than her letters to Grimm: her aim in them was to present
herself as an exemplar of the enlightened sovereign.67

French as a court language under Catherine II
We can gain a good insight into the use of French as a spoken language at
the Russian court, from the age of Catherine onwards, from the memoirs of
courtiers, who often quoted what they heard there. Of course, we need to
treat this information with caution, like any evidence that comes to us from
memoir literature. However, it is hardly likely that the memoirists wrote
down utterances in French if in fact they were produced in Russian, even
if we may question the accuracy of some of the utterances that are quoted.
One such source which sheds light on the use of French at court is the
diary of the aforementioned Khrapovitskii, who served as Catherine’s

63 The drafts of many of Catherine’s letters to such personalities are kept in Russian archives,
e.g. RGADA, f. 5, op. 1, dd. 145, 152–154, 156, 157, 158, etc. Our references here are drawn from
Les Archives de l’Est et la France des Lumières, ed. by Dulac and Karp, vol. 1, 27, and the RGADA
catalogue.
64 Goodman, The Republic of Letters, 82.
65 See [Catherine and Voltaire], Voltaire – Catherine II.
66 [Catherine and Grimm], Catherine II de Russie – Friedrich Melchior Grimm.
67 For fuller discussion of Catherine’s aptitude as a propagandist, see the second section of
Chapter 7 below.

French at court

189

secretary of state.68 Judging by this diary, Catherine quite often addressed
her courtiers of Russian origin in French. In June 1785, for example, she
responded with the following witticism to a remark by Lev Naryshkin,
who had opined that the language of parrots was just as complex as human
language: ‘Je ne savois pas cela; je donnerais à la Perruche la survivance de
votre charge!’ (I didn’t know that; I’ll give the parrot this post when you
die).69 Indeed, one has the impression that conversations in the presence
of courtiers quite often took place entirely in French. With reference to
September 1789, for example, Khrapovitskii writes:
while the Empress was dressing, Lev Naryshkin spoke about the books
Vie privée d’Antoinette de France [the private life of Marie Antoinette
of France] and l’histoire de la Bastille [the history of the Bastille] which
had just come out [and Catherine said]: ‘Ce sont des libelles et je ne les
souffre jamais [They are libels and I can’t abide them]’.70

Catherine frequently addressed Khrapovitskii himself in French as well.
Thus, in September 1786, she said as she walked past him: ‘Bonjour, Monsieur.
Il fait bien froid’ (Good day, Sir. It really is cold)71 and, on another occasion, ‘Je
vous fatigue trop, je ne vous ménage guère’ (I tire you out too much, I don’t
take good enough care of you).72 There are a great many such instances, and
we see from them that French was an everyday means of communication
between the empress and her secretary of state.73 Khrapovitskii commonly
spoke to Catherine in French too: ‘I said’, he writes for instance, ‘C’est un dessein prémédité’ (It’s a deliberate plan),74 or again, ‘I said que les circonstances
s’eclairciront et la diète de Stockholm fera voir ce, qu’il faut faire’ (that
circumstances will become clearer and the diet in Stockholm will make it
68 Khrapovitskii, Pamiatnye zapiski A.V. Khrapovitskogo. We give priority to this work in this
section because it appears to serve as a relatively full and illuminating source of information
on Catherine’s spoken usage. It should be borne in mind, though, that the period to which
Khrapovitskii’s diary relates is the latter part of Catherine’s reign, and we cannot rule out the
possibility that language practice at court and Catherine’s own linguistic habits changed over
the decades during which she was on the throne. A thorough study of Catherine’s language use
and linguistic competencies would need to consider this possibility, as well as drawing on a
much wider range of sources than we use here.
69 Ibidem, 6.
70 Ibidem, 207.
71 Ibidem, 14.
72 Ibidem, 93.
73 Ibidem, 29, 46, 53, 77, etc.
74 Ibidem, 120.

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The French L anguage in Russia

obvious what must be done).75 Or take the following exchange about events
in Paris in 1789: ‘I [said]: “c’est une véritable Anarchie” [it’s absolute anarchy].
“Yes! ils sont capables de pendre leur Roi à la lanterne, c’est affreux” [they
are capable of hanging their King from a lamppost, it’s shocking].’76
At the same, it seems clear from Khrapovitskii’s diary that Catherine
often had recourse to Russian and that code-switching was a common
phenomenon in her speech. Reacting to news of murders in Little Russia in
April 1787, the empress said: ‘Cela est affreux [That’s shocking]. A lot has to
do with bad government.’77 There are instances of even more complicated
language-mixing, although it is difficult, we repeat, to be sure how reliable Khrapovitskii’s records are. Take, for example, the following note of
November 1788 about Catherine’s comments on the madness of the British
king: ‘I think on peut être étouffé [one may find it suffocating], because it’s
intolerable to be with mad people; I experienced that with Prince Orlov;
it’s excruciating for a sensitive person: on pourra devenir fou [one could go
mad oneself]’.78 The question therefore arises whether Catherine’s language
choice was determined by subject-matter or context. We may suspect the
operation of certain factors, conscious or sub-conscious, which can often be
seen also to affect language choice and code-switching in the speech and
writing of other Franco-Russian bilinguals.79 At the same time, we come
across instances where no hard-and-fast rules seem to apply or where we
can adduce no very clear reason for the choice made other than personal
preference, mood, or whim, or the ultimate status of one language or another
in the individual’s linguistic repertoire.
French tends to be used by Catherine, it seems, when affairs of state are
being discussed, especially foreign affairs.80 This is the domain in which
French most commonly occurs in Khrapovitskii’s diary (and after all, dealing
with affairs of state was Khrapovitskii’s principal responsibility). French
occurs too in discussion of court affairs and of other people, for example
75 Ibidem, 156; see also 157, 167.
76 Ibidem, 206.
77 Ibidem, 27.
78 Ibidem, 141. It is possible that Khrapovitskii was ‘translating’ parts of Catherine’s utterances
into Russian without indicating the fact.
79 See especially the second section of Chapter 6 below for examples in letters of members of
the Golitsyn and Vorontsov clans.
80 Khrapovitskii, Pamiatnye zapiski, 80, 82, 84, 90–92, 133, 134, 150, 154, 176, 194, 200, 202, etc.
In some cases, Khrapovitskii even provides in their entirety Catherine’s replies in French to
officials’ reports (e.g. 132). He also quite often gives the replies in French that Catherine sent to her
Western European correspondents (e.g. 160) and notes and letters to diplomatic representatives
of the Russian Empire (e.g. 164, 173, 174, etc.).

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191

the poet Derzhavin: ‘It is difficult for Her Majesty to hold it against the
author of the ode for writing “Felitsa”, cela le consolera [that will console
him]. I reported Derzhavin’s gratitude – on peut lui trouver une place [a
place can be found for him]’.81 (The phrases in French evidently convey the
words spoken by the empress herself here.) French is also used, as one might
expect,82 in discussion of works of literature or scholarship, for example
a dictionary compiled by Theodor Janković de Mirijevo: ‘“Cela montrera
la filiation des mots [This will show the filiation of words]”. I [said]: “de
cette filiation des langues s’ensuivra la derivation des peuples, engloutis
par les temps fabuleux [when this filiation of languages is established we
shall also understand the derivation of peoples who have been swallowed
up by the times of which fables tell]”.’83 French is the vehicle for medical
subject-matter as well (as we repeatedly find in records of the language
use of Franco-Russian bilinguals in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
Russia).84 Thus Catherine comments, speaking about her health: ‘on n’a
plus de barre sur la poitrine’ (the tightness in my chest has gone now) and
‘je suis plus ramassée’ (I’ve picked up a bit).85
Judging by the evidence in Khrapovitskii’s diary, Catherine is also
particularly inclined to resort to French when it offers some set locution
that enables her to express an idea in a striking way.86 Take the following
cases (bearing in mind, though, that it is always possible that Khrapovitskii
himself is choosing which expressions to record in French): ‘je mettrais
la main au feu’ (I would swear [to it]; literally ‘I would put my hand in
the fire’), ‘qui s’excuse s’accuse’ (he who apologizes accuses himself), and
‘payer les pots cassés’ (pay the piper; literally ‘pay for the broken pots’).87
French is the medium, moreover, for witty or derogatory remarks about
81 Ibidem, 198. ‘Felitsa’ was a daringly light-hearted ode that Derzhavin wrote in praise of
Catherine.
82 It is possible, as Angelina Vacheva has suggested to us, that the use of terminology that was
available in French but not yet established in Russian was a factor, or even the decisive factor,
in choice of language in this sort of instance.
83 Khrapovitskii, Pamiatnye zapiski, 210.
84 See the second section of Chapter 6 for a further example, from the correspondence of
Semen Vorontsov in the 1760s.
85 Khrapovitskii, Pamiatnye zapiski, 77, 92. Medicine is another f ield (like literary and
intellectual life) in which French provided terminology and phraseology in a field of foreign
knowledge that Russia was beginning to receive in the eighteenth century. In any case, most
medical practitioners in Russia at this time were foreign.
86 We are grateful to Angelina Vacheva for pointing out to us that Catherine uses German
phrases in the same way in letters written to Grimm in French, and that these letters were often
constructed as if they were part of a conversation.
87 Khrapovitskii, Pamiatnye zapiski, 47, 61, 133.

192 

The French L anguage in Russia

other people. In December 1789, for example, we find the following entry
in Khrapovitskii’s diary: ‘Her Majesty didn’t speak well of Alekseev, the
governor of Astrakhan’: ‘Il va se casser le nez’ (He’s going to come a cropper;
literally ‘He’s going to get his nose broken’).88 Again, apropos of the war of
1788–1790 with Sweden, Catherine quips: ‘Le roi de S. est enfuit comme un
chien qu’on chasse de la cuisine, les oreilles pendantes et la queue entre
les jambes’ (The king of Sweden ran away like a dog being chased out of
the kitchen, ears down and tail between his legs).89 Speaking around the
same time about the King of Prussia, she says: ‘Il est fait pour être mené’ (He
was made to be led).90 However, it is not always a desire to express herself
vividly that prompts Catherine to opt for French. When she remarks of
Novikov that ‘C’est un fanatique’ (He’s a fanatic),91 for instance, she may be
using French simply because she feels that the loanword fanatik had not
yet taken root in Russian.92
Khrapovitskii’s diary, then, leads us to believe that Catherine used French
every day and in many different situations, especially when certain types
of subject-matter were being discussed or for certain types of remark. That
said, it is not always easy to find an explanation for Catherine’s preference
for French over Russian other than that at some level French seemed to her
more like her native language than Russian, or even German, or simply that
French was for some reason uppermost in her mind at a particular moment.93
No doubt Catherine could in most cases have expressed an idea in Russian
just as well as in French, and her recourse to French in straightforward
utterances cannot plausibly be linked to linguistic competence. Nor does
context invariably help us to explain the choice. Often the phrases that
Khrapovitskii records in French were spoken when only he was present,
and so there was no need for Catherine or for him to use French as a society
language, the language of a court displaying itself, or a lingua franca which
foreign guests could understand. Thus, when the death of Admiral Greig
prompts her to lament in October 1788 that ‘C’est une grande perte, c’est
88 Ibidem, 45.
89 Ibidem, 203.
90 Ibidem, 122.
91 Ibidem, 121.
92 It was not until the early nineteenth century that this word began to appear in dictionaries
of the Russian language: see Etimologicheskii slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo iazyka, compiled
by Shaposhnikov, vol. 2, 474.
93 That is to say, for example, if she had just been reading a French book or reading or writing
a letter in French. Here, perhaps, we are merely describing linguistic behaviour that is typical
of people with great facility in more than one language.

French at court

193

une perte pour l’état’ (It’s a great loss, it’s a loss for the state),94 the most
compelling explanation for her choice of French might be the simplest:
French is the language that comes most readily to her at that moment, for it
was effectively her mother tongue. Indeed, there is evidence that Catherine
herself viewed it as such. She was proud of the fact that she spoke and wrote
French fluently at a very young age (the age of three, she claimed!) and
constantly flaunted her knowledge of it. Even when she wrote to her father as
she was preparing for her religious conversion, she composed two letters in
French and only one in German.95 She wrote many works in French, besides
her famous Instruction, her autobiography,96 and the correspondence that
she conducted in French with the numerous individuals we have mentioned
above. These works included notes on a broad range of subjects, such as law,
finance, and administration.97 French was a family language for her too, and
a significant part of her correspondence with her son, the future Emperor
Paul I, and her daughter-in-law was conducted in it.98 It is tempting, finally,
to suggest that the pre-eminence of French in the linguistic repertoire of a
sovereign who ruled Russia for over 34 years consolidated the position of
this language there, both as a ‘society’ language and a language of intimacy
among the aristocracy who were affected by court culture.
In addition to Khrapovitskii’s diary, we may draw on the equally wellknown notes of Semen Poroshin, who was one of the tutors of Catherine’s
son, the Grand Duke Paul. Poroshin’s notes are even more detailed than
Khrapovitskii’s, but Poroshin had a much less sure command of French, and
so we cannot rule out the possibility that his records of conversations in
French are less complete than Khrapovitskii’s. Poroshin himself sometimes
used French, as we see from an entry from October 1764 when the Grand
Duke was about ten,99 and so did Paul, although one has the impression
that he used it less than his mother (admittedly, he was still very young
at this time). Evidently, French was used in certain conversations at the
‘junior’ court. On 16 October 1764, for instance, Count Nikita Panin, who
94 Khrapovitskii, Pamiatnye zapiski, 122.
95 We are grateful to Angelina Vacheva for the point about the status of French in Catherine’s
repertoire and the evidence that supports it. See also her book Potomstvu Ekaterina II, especially
386, 399.
96 RGADA, f. 1, op. 1, dd. 20–24, 26; these and the references in the following two footnotes are
drawn from Dulac and Karp (eds), Les Archives de l’Est et la France des Lumières, vol. 1, 25–26, 30,
as well as from RGADA catalogues. On Catherine’s autobiographical notes, see the third section
of Chapter 6 below.
97 e.g. RGADA, f. 1, op. 1, d. 24; f. 10, op. 2, dd. 226, 227, 229–239, 245, 246, etc.
98 RGADA, f. 4, op. 1, dd. 114, 115.
99 Poroshin, Semena Poroshina zapiski, 39.

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The French L anguage in Russia

had just received the Turkish ambassador, told the heir to the throne about
the Ottoman Empire over dinner, and in French, it would seem: ‘Speaking
of the Turks, His Excellency said: “c’est un empire formé par le brigandage
et soutenu uniquement par la jalousie de ses voisins [it’s an empire formed
through brigandage and kept going only because its neighbours are at loggerheads with one another]”.’100 French also occurs quite often in paraphrases
of what had been said by others, many of them foreigners.101 Sometimes
Poroshin introduces so much French text that we may assume that the
whole conversation, not just the passages quoted, was in French.102 However,
French is also present as part of the background of life at the ‘junior’ court,
in reading, and in the society entertainments that were available to the
Grand Duke, above all the theatre. Paul went to the court theatre almost
every day, and most of the plays performed in it were in French.
If French was used less by the Grand Duke than it was at the ‘senior’
court, then that may have been because Paul’s tutors were trying to instil
patriotic ideas in him, successfully it seems. Poroshin records the content of
a conversation of September 1764 which provides an insight into the young
heir’s attitude to the mixing of French and Russian and to the excessive use
of French by Russians:
Over tea we struck up a conversation about the blending of foreign words
into our language. His Royal Highness very wittily said that some Russians
stir so many French words into their conversations that it seems as if it
is Frenchmen who are speaking and that they use some Russian words
among the French ones. They [i.e. the Grand Duke] also said that some
[Russians] are so weak in their native language that they are translating
everything, word by word, from a foreign language, both when they speak
and when they write.103

Paul seems to have firmly believed that Russians allowed too much interference from French in their speech. When conversing at table, Poroshin
remarks, Paul ‘deigned to mix French words with Russian ones, taking off
people who really speak like that’.104

100
101
102
103
104

Ibidem, 77.
e.g., ibidem, 68, 69, 71.
e.g., ibidem, 71.
Ibidem, 14.
Ibidem, 69–70.

French at court

195

French at the nineteenth-century court
In the nineteenth century, the tradition of using French at court, far from
disappearing, took on new life. On one level, the persistence of French at court
can be explained by the fact that French served as the principal diplomatic
language of the early nineteenth-century European world105 and the simplest
means of communication with the numerous distinguished foreigners resident
in St Petersburg. It was not surprising, for example, that the correspondence
that Alexander I conducted with the Polish Prince Adam Czartoryski106 should
have been entirely in French, a language they shared. And yet, we should
perhaps see this language choice as something more than a simple solution de
facilité. After all, French must have seemed a natural medium for social and
intimate communication between these two people, for it was closely bound
up with social codes to which they both subscribed, such as the notion of
friendship, which was vividly expressed in their letters.107 It was also natural
that French should have been used in the ‘Unofficial Committee’ which
gathered at the court for several years after Alexander I came to the throne
in 1801. The committee included, besides Alexander himself and Czartoryski,
Count Pavel Stroganov, Nikolai Novosil’tsev, and Count Viktor Kochubei.
These four confrères of Alexander were all aristocrats who had received a
‘French’ education and travelled in Europe in the 1780s and 1790s. They had
spent a good deal of time in France (in the case of Czartoryski, Kochubei,
and Stroganov) or in England (in the case of Novosil’tsev and Stroganov).
Moreover, French was the most appropriate language for discussion
of the sort of questions that interested the Unofficial Committee, such
as the use of a constitution as a means of avoiding arbitrariness in the
management of affairs of state and as a means of firmly basing the whole
state apparatus on infrangible laws. Alexander and his companions derived
their knowledge of such matters, first and foremost, from French literary
sources. French therefore not only provided them with a common language
(in the presence of the Pole Czartoryski) but also enabled them to avoid any
vexing terminological confusion, since the Russian political lexicon was
105 On language use in the diplomatic domain, see Chapter 5 below.
106 [Alexander I], Alexandre I-er et le prince Czartoryski. Correspondance particulière et conversations. 1801–1823. For a biography of Czartoryski, see Zawadski, A Man of Honour.
107 On this notion, see also the last section of Chapter 2 above and Chapter 4 below. The point is
confirmed by the fact that Alexander’s correspondence with several Russians was also conducted
in French. We may suppose, moreover, that French was a more natural written language for
Alexander, who had several Francophone teachers, including Laharpe. Certainly his written
French was distinguished by its naturalness and elegance.

196 

The French L anguage in Russia

relatively poorly developed at that time. The point is borne out by discussion
of a ‘Charter to the Russian People’ that was written by Aleksandr Vorontsov
in 1801. Vorontsov produced a first draft in Russian, and this was translated
into French. Novosil’tsev then composed a detailed French draft, which was
discussed in the committee. Next, the definitive French text was translated
into Russian. Finally, stylistic revisions were made – chiefly by Vorontsov
and Alexander’s close adviser Speranskii – to this new Russian version.108
Irrespective of the social composition of the court (and we are dealing
here with men and women from the upper nobility, for whom French for
long remained in a sense a professional language), one is bound to say that
the court of the Russian Empire was extremely cosmopolitan in its make-up.
As a rule, the Russian emperors and members of their families married
representatives of foreign monarchies, chiefly German monarchies, in both
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Alexander I, for example, was wedded to Louise-Marie-Auguste (known after her conversion by the Orthodox
name Elizabeth Alekseevna), who was the daughter of Charles Louis, the
Hereditary Prince of Baden. Nicholas I married Princess Charlotte of Prussia
(Alexandra Fedorovna after her conversion). The Grand Duke Michael, also a
son of Paul, was married to Princess Charlotte of Württemberg (who after her
conversion was known as the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna). Alexander II
married Maximiliane Wilhelmine Auguste Sophie Marie of Hesse-Darmstadt
(subsequently Empress Maria Aleksandrovna). The list could be extended,
for it was not only emperors and their brothers and sisters who married
representatives of European royal families, but their children as well. For
these cross-bred families, French was one of the preferred means of communication, if not the only means. Nor should it be forgotten that there were
an enormous number of foreigners at the court, and not merely diplomats.
French was the main language for communicating with these foreigners
too. It was used even when neither interlocutor was a native French-speaker.
Further memoirs attest to the persistence of French as the main language
of communication at the Russian court during the reign of Nicholas I – despite
the policy of cultural Russianization encouraged from the early 1830s by the
doctrine of Official Nationality – and also during the reign of Alexander
II after Russia’s defeat by French and British forces in the Crimea in the
mid-1850s. For example, both Aleksandra Smirnova-Rosset, who was a ladyin-waiting at court in the reign of Nicholas I, and Elizaveta Naryshkina, née
Princess Kurakina, who was a lady-in-waiting at the courts of three emperors
108 See Safonov, ‘A.N. Radishchev i “Gramota Rossiiskomu narodu”’. We are grateful to Sergei
Pol’skoi for this information.

French at court

197

from the mid-nineteenth century, quite often report the utterances of people
from their aristocratic milieu, and a considerable number of their quotations
in French relate to life at court. Thus Smirnova-Rosset records an exchange
at a ball at the Anichkov Palace in St Petersburg in 1845, where the Emperor
Nicholas had begun by flirting with Baroness Krüdener but then began to
court Elizaveta Buturlina. Smirnova-Rosset – somewhat mischievously, one
assumes – addressed Baroness Krüdener in the following way:
‘Vous avez soupé, mais aujourd’hui les derniers honneurs sont pour elle.’
‘C’est un homme étrange,’ dit-elle, ‘il faut pourtant que ces choses ayent un
résultat, et avec lui il n’y a point de fin, il n’en a pas le courage, il attache une
singulière idée à la fidélité. Tous ces manèges avec elle ne prouvent rien.’109
(‘You have supped, but the final honours go to her today.’
‘He’s a strange man’, she said, ‘but these things must have an outcome,
and with him there is no end, he does not have the heart for it, he has a
peculiar idea of fidelity. All these stratagems with her prove nothing.’)

As a rule, conversations between courtiers and the Empress Alexandra
Fedorovna (who, as we have said, was of German origin) were conducted
in French. Reminiscing about the Empress Elizabeth Alekseevna, the wife
of Alexander I, Smirnova-Rosset says:
it was rather strange that E[lizaveta] A[lekseevna] became more affectionate towards her [i.e. the future Empress Aleksandra Fedorovna]
when an heir was born. ‘Ce devait être un moment affreux pour elle,110
et cependant depuis ce moment elle [est] devenu [sic] plus affectueuse
pour moi [said Alexandra Fedorovna]. Quand mon fils est né, après un
moment de bonheur, j’ai pensé au sort qui l’attendait: il était destiné à
régner. [That must have been a terrible moment for her, and yet from that
moment she became fonder of me. When my son was born, after a moment
of bliss, I thought of the fate that awaited him: he was destined to rule.]’111

Other members of the imperial family use French too, as we see when
Smirnova-Rosset asks the Grand Duchess Maria, the daughter of Nicholas I, to
109 Smirnova-Rosset, Dnevnik, 9.
110 Alexander I and his wife did not have any sons, and both the daughters of this marriage
died in childhood.
111 Smirnova-Rosset, Dnevnik, 10.

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The French L anguage in Russia

intercede with the emperor on behalf of Gogol’. Having given birth prematurely,
Maria forgot Smirnova-Rosset’s request and said, as the memoirist reports it:
‘Parlez vous-même à l’Empereur [Speak to the Emperor yourself]’. At a
soirée, I told Her Majesty [i.e. the wife of Nicholas I] that I was planning
to petition the sovereign, but she said to me: ‘Il vient ici pour se reposer,
et vous savez qu’il n’aime qu’on lui parle affaires; s’il est de bonne humeur,
je vous ferai signe et vous pourrez laisser votre demande [He comes here
to relax, and you know that he does not like people talking business to
him; if he is in a good mood, I’ll make a signal to you and you’ll be able
to make your request]’. He arrived in a good mood and said: ‘Journal des
Débats is printing des sottises [silly things]. C’est une preuve que j’ai bien
agi [That shows I’ve done the right thing].’112

French was all the more important during the foreign trips made by court
society. Sof’ia Kiseleva, to whom the Grand Duke Michael introduced
Smirnova-Rosset in Marienbad, said to her: ‘J’ai connu votre mère. Nous
étions à Odessa, toute notre famille et Isabelle Valevsky, la femme de Serge
Gagarin, que vous connaissez’ (I knew your mother. We were in Odessa,
our whole family and Isabelle Valevsky, the wife of Serge Gagarin, whom
you know).113 Of course, other languages were used too: there is evidence
that Nicholas I spoke at court receptions in French, Russian, German, and
even English, depending on whom he was talking to.114 (He was said by a
competent judge to speak French and German, as well as Russian, with a
very pure accent and elegant pronunciation.115) The Empress Alexandra
Fedorovna also sometimes used other languages, apart from French and
Russian. In the 1830s, for example, she had occasion to speak English with the
American envoy George M. Dallas.116 Another of Nicholas’s daughters, Olga,
confirms that for the most part they spoke French in the family, although
the elder children spoke French more, while the three younger brothers
spoke Russian,117 perhaps in order to display patriotic feeling.118
It was rulers themselves who quite often set the tone, although they could
not entirely change linguistic practice single-handed. As Smirnova-Rosset
112
113
114
115
116
117
118

Ibidem, 60–61.
Ibidem, 76.
Zimin, Povsednevnaia zhizn’ imperatorskogo dvora.
Tiutcheva, Pri dvore dvukh imperatorov, vol. 1, 102.
Zimin, Povsednevnaia zhizn’ imperatorskogo dvora.
Ibidem.
As suggested to us by Ol’ga Edel’man.

French at court

199

noticed, French was spoken at the court under Alexander I, but Nicholas
started to speak Russian more frequently.119 Priding herself on the quality of
her Russian and finding it strange that people in St Petersburg were surprised
that Russian ladies might be proficient in their native language, SmirnovaRosset noted that Nicholas always spoke to her in Russian.120 Pushkin also
wrote that in 1834, when Nicholas conversed with him at a ball, the emperor
did not mix languages and that he spoke Russian well, ‘not making the usual
mistakes and using authentic expressions’.121 Under Nicholas’s successor
Alexander II, on the other hand, French again became fashionable at court,
whereas under Alexander III, Russian came into its own once more.122
As Smirnova-Rosset shows, not all courtiers or, more precisely, not all
individuals appearing at court, had the same high level of proficiency in
French, although even those who did not know the language very well clearly
felt a need to say something in it, for it was perceived as an indispensable
sign of entitlement to move in high society. She describes a revealing episode that took place on 12 March 1845 at a court supper at which she was
seated beside Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich. For the most part, they spoke
in Russian, because, Smirnova-Rosset observes, ‘the Field Marshal is not
conspicuous by his eloquence in French, and in fact he is not eloquent in
Russian either’. Nonetheless, Paskevich too turned to French at one point:
‘He started speaking French apropos of Bohemia: “Vous avez lu, comment
cela?” [You’ve read, what’s it called?].’123
The persistence of French at court at the end of the Nicholaevan period
and beyond is confirmed by Naryshkina, who was close to Elena Pavlovna
and who generally conveys the words of the Grand Duchess in French.
When Naryshkina’s aunt expressed surprise that Elena Pavlovna had invited
Naryshkina’s mother to become the chief lady-in-waiting (gofmeisterina)
at her daughter’s court, for example, the Grand Duchess replied: ‘Il y a
longtemps que je l’espionne’ (I’ve been spying on her for a long time).124 Again,
119 Baron Fircks reports that Nicholas tried to raise the status of Russian by requiring that it
be used for discussion of public affairs, by using it himself more often than Alexander I, and by
expecting people to reply to him in the language in which he had asked them a question. This
ensured that Nicholas’s courtiers knew Russian better than Alexander’s but it did not stop society
continuing to use French almost exclusively and speaking Russian only to people who did not
know French, that is the servants, the petty bourgeoisie, and the common people (Fircks, Le
nihilisme en Russie, 74; see Chapter 7 below on Fircks and this work of his).
120 Smirnova-Rosset, Dnevnik, 480.
121 Pushkin, PSS, vol. 12, 320, quoted from Smirnova-Rosset, Dnevnik, 702.
122 Zimin, Povsednevnaia zhizn’ imperatorskogo dvora.
123 Smirnova-Rosset, Dnevnik, 12.
124 Naryshkina, Moi vospominaniia, 67.

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The French L anguage in Russia

when the young Grand Dukes Nicholas and Michael (sons of Nicholas I) were
sent to the Crimea, their mother, Empress Alexandra Fedorovna said sadly,
as they were taking leave of her: ‘Toutes les familles ont là tout ce qu’il y a
de plus cher. Nous devons aussi y envoyer les nôtres’ (All families send what
is dearest to them there [i.e to the front]. We must send our own too.).125
It is clear from other sources as well that conversations between members of
the royal family and Francophone Russians were still conducted in French in
the age of Alexander II. Another memoirist, Khvoshchinskaia, recalls Alexander
addressing her grandmother Tat’iana Potemkina thus, when the aged woman
tried to get up to greet him: ‘Je vous supplie, chère M-me Potemkine, ne vous
dérangez pas!’ (I beg you not to put yourself out, my dear Mme Potemkin).126
Not that everyone at court spoke perfect French, it seems. In fact, the Grand
Duchess Alexandra Iosifovna, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Altenberg and
wife of Nicholas’s son Constantine, spoke it poorly, according to the perfectly
Francophone diarist Anna Tiutcheva.127 Nor, evidently, was the court immune to
the normal practice of language-mixing that purists detested: an eighteen-yearold woman who was taken into the Winter Palace in the 1850s while Tiutcheva
was a lady-in-waiting there spoke a strange mixture of French and Russian
which was apparently quite acceptable in Muscovite society at that time.128

French as a royal language
There are several other ways, finally, in which French was associated with
the imperial family, besides the fact that it was spoken at court. One sign
of its cachet as a royal language was its use when members of the family
were received at public institutions. Thus, when the Grand Dukes Alexander
and Constantine visited the Artillery Cadet Corps in St Petersburg late in
Catherine’s reign, a theatrical performance arranged by the cadets in their
honour was presented entirely in French. An extant manuscript of the
programme for this play prepares the audience thus:
le grand prètre dans son costume parait occupé du culte, mais lorsqu’il
voit les grands Ducs il s’avance, et leur dit:
125 Ibidem, 79.
126 Khvoshchinskaia, 1898, no. 5, 418. See also many instances in Valuev’s diaries: Dnevnik P.A.
Valueva, vol. 1, 136, 149, 198–199, 213–214, 217, 240, 241; vol. 2, 274, etc.
127 Tiutcheva, Pri dvore dvukh imperatorov, vol. 1, 108.
128 Ibidem, 86.

French at court

201

Venez; Princes chéris, espoir de cet empire;
Entrez au temple d’Apollon;
De vos brillants destins vous pourrez vous instruire,
Comme Alexandre a fait dans le temple d’Ammon.
Ces parvis, où les Dieux veulent que je les serve,
Ne s’ouvrent, il est vrai, qu’a des héros fameux;
Mais vous enfants de Paul, élèves de Minerve
Un jour vous serez grands comme eux.
J’en lis sur votre front des présages heureux;
C’et [sic] pour vous qu’Apollon dans ce séjour réserve
Ses Oracles sacrés et ses dons précieux.129
(the high priest in his robes seems busy with the rites of worship, but
when he sees the Grand Dukes he steps forward and says to them: ‘Come,
dear Princes, the hope of this empire, enter into the Temple of Apollo;
you will be able to discover your brilliant destinies, as ALEXANDER [the
Great] discovered his in the Temple of Ammon. These parvises before the
church, where the Gods wish me to serve them, are open only to famous
heroes, it is true; but you, children of PAUL and pupils of MINERVA, will
one day be great like them. I read happy omens on your brows; it is for
you that Apollo keeps his sacred oracles and precious gifts.’)

Of course, the decision to have the cadets stage a play in French may
have had a didactic purpose for the cadets themselves, but it is unlikely
that this was the only reason for the choice of language on this occasion,
since the cadets were also learning German. The status of French as a
royal language is also indicated by the fact that numerous writings were
composed in French for the court or contained dedications in French to
emperors and members of the imperial family.130 There are in addition
many instances where works which were performed on the court stage
129 RNB, Manuscripts Department, Hermitage Collection, French Manuscripts, f. 999, op. 2, no.
46 (Fête donnée à Leurs Altesses Impériales Messeigneurs Alexandre Paulovitche et Constantin
Paulovitche, Grands-Ducs de Russie), fol. 2.
130 e.g. [Estat], Lali et Sainval (1784, with a French dedication to the Grand Duchess); l’abbé
Comte de Lubersac, ‘Discours sur l’utilité et les avantages des monuments publics et tous les
genres etc. […]’ (RNB, Manuscripts Department, f. 999, op. 2, Fr. 116); Luzier, Les noces de Mars
(1796, with a French dedication to Platon Zubov, one of the major figures at the court of Paul);
Bertin de Antilly, ‘Ode à Pierre le Grand […]’ (RNB, Manuscripts Department, f. 999, op. 2, Fr. 32);
Loëillot, ‘Annales de l’empire de Russie, dédiées à S.M. l’Impératrice Elisabeth’ (St Petersburg,
1801, RNB, Manuscripts Department, f. 999, op. 2, Fr. 115); Gay, Vers adressés à l’Empereur des
Russies […] (1808).

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The French L anguage in Russia

in other foreign languages – for example, a cantata in Italian, which was
sung at court in 1802 – were translated into French rather than Russian
for members of the audience who did not have a command of the other
foreign language.131
French was also a private language for oral and written communication
within the royal family, although here too it was used alongside other languages, namely Russian, German (it will be recalled that many members of
the family were themselves of German origin), and increasingly, towards the
end of the imperial period, English. French was frequently used, for example,
in personal correspondence and even in private reflection in diaries and
notebooks. We shall try to shed light on the incidence of French and other
languages among the Romanovs in the nineteenth century by considering
some of the many extant texts written by members of the family, both male
and female, Russian and foreign.132
First of all, we should highlight common features found among all generations and in the writings of almost all members of the imperial family in
the nineteenth century. All of the Romanovs, including the women among
them, carried out duties of state which entailed a considerable volume of
official correspondence. The overwhelming majority of such letters were
written in Russian. The exception is sovereigns’ diplomatic correspondence,
which was usually conducted in French.133 Another common factor was
that the various generations of the Romanovs all corresponded with other
European monarchs. This correspondence too was usually conducted in
French, except insofar as German members of the Russian royal house
quite often (though not always) wrote to their relations in German. This
pattern, as we shall see, would not change until the reign of Nicholas II, at
the end of the nineteenth century, when English was used more and more
in such correspondence.
Turning to the letters of individual members of the imperial house, we
find that a significant part of the correspondence of Alexander I with other
131 Ariane et Bacchus (1802).
132 The documents we have used are kept in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF).
Our survey is partly based on examination of inventories (opisi) of collections ( fondy), in which
the language of a document is almost always indicated (when there is no such indication, the
language of the file is Russian), as well as on scrutiny of many files in these collections. Our
conclusions need, of course, to be treated with caution inasmuch as our experience has shown
that the contents of files have not invariably been described with complete accuracy by the
archivists who have compiled the inventories.
133 We deal in more detail with letters of these types, and with the differentiation of official
from private correspondence by means of language choice, in Chapter 5, on the role of French
in the official domain.

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203

members of the family was in French.134 In general, Ol’ga Edel’man has
observed, a distinction was drawn between Alexander’s official correspondence, which was expected to be conducted in Russian, and more private,
unofficial letters, in which French was used. Thus in 1820, the emperor’s
brother, the Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich, wrote to Alexander in French
about the mutiny that had occurred in October that year in the Semenovskii
Life Guards Regiment in St Petersburg, probably signalling by his choice of
language that he was expressing a personal opinion.135
French was also the base language in the correspondence and diaries
of Alexander’s sister, Maria Pavlovna, the Grand Duchess of Saxe-WeimarEisenach, who left Russia as a young woman and lived out her life in
Weimar.136 Maria made her children keep diaries in French as well, and
her own and their governess’s constant inspection of these diaries helped
the children to perfect their French style. Maria’s correspondence with the
Swiss governess who had brought her up, Jeanne Mazelet, served the same
purpose: Mazelet often corrected the style of her pupil even after Maria had
grown up and married. Maria’s own diary was a vehicle for self-analysis, but
at the same time the ready-made formulae of the French language which
were expected to be used in accordance with societal conventions allowed
her to hide her true feelings in it.137 French also aided Maria’s integration
into European culture, offering an elaborate lexicon with which to describe
learning and the arts.138 Familiarity with epistolary novels such as JeanJacques Rousseau’s Julie, or the New Héloïse and with the letters of writers
such as Mme de Sévigné enabled members of the royal family, and of course
Russian nobles, to describe recurrent and very similar situations with a large
variety of expressive resources.139 Russian, incidentally, is virtually absent
134 RGADA, f. 1, op. 1, dd. 3 (1798), 10 (1812–1813), 11 (1807–1813), 13 (1797), 14 (1786–1789), 15 (1788),
16 (1790) (letters to Alexander from his father, mother, or sister, either before or after he became
emperor); GARF, f. 679, op. 1, d. 76, Empress Maria Fedorovna to Alexander I (1808–1810, Fr.); d.
115, Alexander I to the Empress Maria Fedorovna, his mother (1810, Fr.). For the sake of economy,
we hereafter omit ‘op. 1’ in most references to holdings in GARF in this section, since there is
only one opis’ in each collection to which we refer, with the exceptions of ff. 601 and 678.
135 e.g. GARF, f. 679, d. 42. We are grateful to Ol’ga Edel’man for sharing her thoughts on this
letter with us.
136 Her diaries have been published in part: see Maria Pavlovna. Die frühen Tagebücher der
Erbherzogin von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach.
137 The point is made by Katja Dmitrieva and Viola Klein in their introduction to the source
cited in the previous note.
138 Ibidem, 7. Maria Pavlovna’s diaries, like a considerable portion of her correspondence, are
kept in the Thüringisches Hauptarchiv Weimar, Grossherzogliches Hausarchiv A XXV.
139 This point too is made by Dmitrieva and Klein: see Maria Pavlovna, 8.

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The French L anguage in Russia

from Maria Pavlovna’s diaries and very rare in her correspondence. She
corresponded in French both with her mother and her brothers, Alexander I
and the Grand Duke Constantine. On the whole, she switches to Russian only
in two sorts of situation: first, when she gives way to reminiscences about her
childhood and, secondly, when she conveys political news. In the latter case,
she no doubt uses Russian in the interests of secrecy, as a language known
to relatively few foreigners, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars.140
Maria’s brother, Nicholas, the future Emperor Nicholas I, also kept a
personal diary in French while he was Grand Duke,141 in which he recorded
much information about his everyday life, his ‘junior’ court, the trips on
which he was sent for education and pleasure, his impressions of theatrical
performances, and much else besides. However, Russian words abound in
this French diary. As a rule, these were personal names and words for things
which Nicholas probably found it difficult to denote in French, such as
drozhki, iunker, oboz, panikhida, sherengi (a droshky, or low open carriage; a
cadet; a string of carts or sledges; a funeral service; files or columns), or which
he may otherwise have associated with a Russian environment, such as
nesposobnyi (incapable, incompetent).142 Nicholas’s personal correspondence,
when he was grand duke and later when he was emperor, was also in French
as a rule, and not just when he was corresponding with other members of
the royal family 143 but also when he was exchanging letters with certain
courtiers and other people such as the historian and writer Karamzin.144
However, there were letters in Russian too. That was the language, for
instance, in which he corresponded with the heir to the throne, perhaps
because inculcation of an awareness of his son’s momentous future role
was in a sense a formal matter that transcended the domain of personal
relations in the family.145 On the whole, the division of correspondence into
140 Ibidem, 34.
141 GARF, f. 672, dd. 42–49 (1822–1825). This diary (or rather, set of notebooks) has been published
in Russian translation as [Nicholas I], Zapisnye knizhki velikogo kniazia Nikolaia Pavlovicha,
1822–1825.
142 Ol’ga Edel’man has pointed out to us the military connotation of this word, as a formal
description of unsuitability for military service.
143 GARF, f. 672, d. 339 (to his mother, the Empress Maria Fedorovna, 1818); d. 345 (to his brother
Michael, 1847); and d. 354 (from his wife, the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, 1833). Alexandra
Fedorovna kept her diary in her native German (GARF, f. 672, dd. 409–423 (1822–1860)). Nicholas
had an excellent command of German but his language of written communication with Alexandra
was French.
144 GARF, f. 672, d. 341 (1826).
145 GARF, f. 678, op. 1, dd. 819–822 (1838–1853); letters from the heir to Nicholas I are partly in
Russian and partly in French: f. 672, d. 352 (1825–1828). For correspondence between Nicholas I

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205

different spheres, personal and official, and the use of French and Russian
respectively in those spheres, is more clear-cut in the reign of Nicholas I
than it had been under Alexander I.
Nicholas’s children, for their part, generally corresponded with one another in French.146 As for Nicholas’s wife, the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna,
who was the daughter of the Prussian King Frederick William III, she too
often corresponded in French, with members of the royal family among
other people.147 However, she kept her diary, notebooks, and album in her
native German (although she did sometimes use French and Russian in
her notebooks)148 and she conducted her correspondence with her German
relations in that language too.149 The importance of French and German in
the life of Nicholas’s family is revealed even by such minutiae as the choice of
language in poetry composed for the birthdays of the emperor’s children.150 It
is also worth noting that an exercise-book belonging to Nicholas’s daughter,
the Grand Duchess Maria, which contained religious texts, was in German.151
It is equally instructive to examine the linguistic repertoire of the
Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna. Born Princess Charlotte of Württemberg,
as we have said, Elena Pavlovna had been brought up in Paris and was an
eminent member of the royal family during the reigns of both Nicholas I
and Alexander II. She wrote notes in French on the Decembrist Revolt,152
the education of women,153 and the French Revolution of 1789.154 She also
kept a diary in French155 and wrote a French draft of memoirs on her life.156
She corresponded in French with many members of different generations
of the royal family, including the Grand Dukes Constantine Pavlovich and
her husband Michael, the above-mentioned Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna,
the Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich, and the Grand Duchess Olga
and Grand Duchess Aleksandra Iosifovna (the wife of the Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich),
in Russian as well as French, see f. 672, d. 353 (1847–1852).
146 GARF, f. 672, dd. 502, 503, 509; f. 678, op. 1, d. 823а.
147 e.g. GARF, f. 672, dd. 460–462. However, Russian too sometimes appears in this
correspondence.
148 See, e.g., GARF, f. 672, dd. 409, 410, 412–423, 426, 428, 431, 432, 572–574.
149 e.g. GARF, f. 672, dd. 434–441.
150 GARF, f. 672, d. 486 (1832).
151 GARF, f. 672, d. 489 (1860).
152 GARF, f. 647, d. 20 (1825).
153 GARF, f. 647, d. 21 (no date). See also her notebook written mainly in French: ibidem, d. 28
(1865).
154 GARF, f. 647, d. 22 (no date).
155 GARF, f. 647, dd. 23 (1838), 24 (1839), 25 (1849), 26 (1849–1850).
156 GARF, f. 647, d. 27 (no earlier than 1839).

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Nikolaevna.157 The overwhelming majority of the letters written by members
of the Russian aristocracy to Elena Pavlovna were also composed in French:
these came, for example, from princes of the Bariatinskii, Bibikov, Bludov,
Buturlin, Dolgorukii, Gagarin, Golitsyn, Gorchakov, Kozlovskii, Kurakin,
Lovich, Odoevskii, and Vasil’chikov clans, barons and princes from the von
Lieven family, counts of the Apraksin, Golovkin, Orlov, Pahlen, Rostopchin,
Sumarokov, Tolstoi, Uvarov, and Vorontsov families, and various Demidovs,
Kiselevs, Lanskois, and Miliutins.158 German occurs in Elena Pavlovna’s
correspondence too, albeit less frequently than French, as we see from letters
that she addressed to or received from Prince Augustus of Württemberg,
other members of the House of Württemberg, and the Grand Duchess
Sophie of Baden.159 However, Elena Pavlovna also learned Russian and read
a great deal in it, as we can see from numerous extant notes written in that
language on affairs of state and from copies of works by Prince Mikhail
Shcherbatov, Karamzin, and other writers which are to be found in her
personal archives.160
The son of Nicholas I, the future Emperor Alexander II, learned English as
well as French and German, and even used it as the medium for the study of
certain subjects, such as British history.161 He also learned Polish, not only
because the Russian emperor was formally the sovereign of Poland too but
because the Polish question was becoming increasingly important in Russian
politics.162 Alexander kept his diary in Russian 163 but used French in his
correspondence with many members of his family, for example, his German
wife, the Empress Maria Aleksandrovna,164 and his aunts Anna Pavlovna
(the Queen of the Netherlands, who was the daughter of the Emperor Paul)165
and the aforementioned Elena Pavlovna.166 However, there were some
157 GARF, f. 647, dd. 652, 659, 661, etc. With the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, who was also of
German origin, she corresponded mainly in German, sometimes switching to French: ibidem,
d. 645.
158 See GARF, f. 647. We do not give more precise references on these sources because the
number of files in question is very large.
159 GARF, f. 647, dd. 647–649.
160 GARF, f. 647, dd. 42, 44, 46, 47, 50, 51, 55, 56, 58, etc. We cannot be sure that Elena Pavlovna
read the writings in question, but their presence would seem to indicate an interest in them
on her part. On Elena Pavlovna’s plurilingualism, see also the discussion of her involvement in
affairs of state and public life in the penultimate section of Chapter 5.
161 GARF, f. 678, op. 1, d. 246 (1834).
162 Murov et al. (eds), Dvor rossiiskikh imperatorov, vol. 1, 407–408.
163 GARF, f. 678, op. 1, dd. 268–290 (1826–1840).
164 GARF, f. 678, op. 1, dd. 711 (1867–1877), 781–795 (1851–1879).
165 GARF, f. 678, op. 1, d. 742 (1838–1865).
166 GARF, f. 678, op. 1, d. 761 (1834–1880).

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207

members of the royal family to whom he wrote in Russian, most notably
the heir to the throne.167 One has the impression that Alexander II used
French much more in correspondence with female members of the family
than with male members of it.
The son of Alexander II, the future Alexander III, on the other hand,
was exposed to more Russian influences in his upbringing. His teachers
and mentors (among whom the presence of the arch-conservative thinker
Konstantin Pobedonostsev was strongly felt) placed emphasis on things
that they believed would distance him from the westernized court and
that they defined as national.168 Alexander therefore studied the Russian
language and Russian literature intensively in his youth 169 and, unlike
his father, he used Russian a great deal with the other grand dukes. Some
courtiers recalled that he started to speak Russian at court before he
became emperor, and his example no doubt influenced language use
there.170 The foreign languages he learned were French, German, and
English.171 He seems to have studied most subjects through the medium
of Russian, except for history, which he studied through German. 172
He also kept his notebooks, for the most part, in Russian.173 Letters to
relations he tended to write in either Russian or French, but he did use
Russian quite frequently in letters to members of his family, or they
wrote to him in Russian, as attested by correspondence with his sons,
the Grand Dukes Nicholas and Michael, his brother the Grand Duke
Nicholas Aleksandrovich, his f irst cousins the Grand Dukes Michael
Mikhailovich and Nicholas Konstantinovich, and his uncle the Grand
Duke Michael Nikolaevich.174 Interestingly, we detect more instances
of correspondence with female members of the family in Russian in the
generation of Alexander III than we did in the generation of his father,
167 e.g. GARF, f. 678, op. 1, dd. 700 (to Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich, 1878), 701 (to his
mother, Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, 1830–1857), 710 (to Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich,
1862), 729, 731, 732 (from Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich to his father, Alexander II, various
years). See also dd. 771–774 (Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich to Alexander II, 1835–1861),
805–808 (Grand Duke Michael Nikolaevich to Alexander II, 1863–1880), and 816 (Grand Duke
Nicholas Nikolaevich to Alexander II, 1855–1879).
168 Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 253.
169 GARF, f. 677, dd. 198–207 (1855–1864).
170 Murov et al. (eds), Dvor rossiiskikh imperatorov, vol. 1, 413.
171 GARF, f. 677, dd. 208–220 (1855–1864).
172 GARF, f. 677, dd. 221–227 (1858–1862).
173 GARF, f. 677, dd. 253–308 (various years).
174 See, in order of correspondents, GARF, f. 677, dd. 900 (1884–1892); 919 (1876–1894) and 920
(1876–1894, 1894); 918 (1859–1865); 901 (1890–1891); 921 (1894); and 902 (1865–1888).

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Alexander II.175 There are also many letters that were written to Alexander
III by Russian aristocrats in Russian, perhaps because of the resurgence
of nationalistic patriotism during his reign after the assassination of his
father in 1881, although we do often come across French too in aristocrats’
letters to him.
The son of Alexander III, the Crown Prince Nicholas, as we have already
noted, corresponded with his father almost exclusively in Russian. However
his early letters in Russian, from the middle of the 1870s when he was about
seven or eight years old, are full of grammatical errors which make it clear
that Russian was not his first language.176 He kept his diary in Russian as
well, both before and after his accession to the throne,177 although we also
find a sprinkling of other languages (mainly French and English) in it.178
The correspondence of Nicholas with other members of the royal family,
like that of his father Alexander III, contained many letters in Russian, and
not only when the letter-writers were men.179 From his mother, Empress
Maria Fedorovna, the widow of Alexander III, Nicholas received letters in
both French and Russian.180 His wife, the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna,
wrote to him mainly in English, which is explained by the fact that she was
a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, at whose court she had been brought
up.181 More surprising is the fact that letters received by Nicholas from the
Grand Duchess Alexandra Georgievna, the wife of the Grand Duke Paul
Aleksandrovich, were also in English.182 (Alexandra Georgievna was the
daughter of the Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinovna Romanova, the Queen
of Greece, and her husband the King of Greece, George I.) Likewise, English
was the language used in letters sent to Nicholas by the Grand Duchess Elena
Vladimirovna, the daughter of the Grand Duke Vladimir Aleksandrovich
175 e.g. with his daughter, the Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna (GARF, f. 677, d. 935 (1891,
1894)); with his first cousin, Olga Konstantinovna, the Queen of Greece (f. 677, dd. 936 (1866–1894)
and 937 (1882–1894)); and with the Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, his aunt, Queen of Württemberg (f. 677, d. 938 (1866–1892)).
176 GARF, f. 677, d. 919. For example, Nicholas often forgets to decline nouns and uses Russian
syntactic calques from French. His Russian correspondence from the 1890s, on the other hand,
is almost flawless (ibidem).
177 GARF, f. 601, op. 1, dd. 217–266 (1882–1918).
178 See his published diaries: [Nicholas II], Dnevniki imperatora Nikolaia II, 1894–1918. See also
http://www.rus-sky.com/history/library/diaris/1894.htm.
179 See, e.g., letters from the Grand Duchess Militsa Nikolaevna, Princess of Montenegro and
wife of Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich (GARF, f. 601, op. 1, d. 1300 (1914–1915)), and his sister Olga
Aleksandrovna (f. 601, op. 1, d. 1316 (1890–1918)).
180 GARF, f. 601, op. 1, dd. 1294–1297 (1879–1917).
181 GARF, f. 601, op. 1, dd. 1147а–1150 (various years).
182 GARF, f. 601, op. 1, d. 1145 (1883–1891).

French at court

209

(that is to say the granddaughter of Alexander II), who was married to the
son of King George of Greece and Olga Konstantinovna.183 Nicholas II also
received letters in English from Prince Maximilian of Baden, who was a
relation of his,184 and Victoria of Baden, who was Queen of Sweden,185 and
he corresponded in that language with the King of Romania.186 Although
French too was often used in Nicholas’s correspondence with crowned
monarchs, English thus occupied an important place in his correspondence
with other royal families, which probably reflected changes in education
in high society and, more generally, the balance of power in Europe at the
turn of the century.
The signs of change that we have detected in language choice in the imperial family, and in particular the emergence of English as one of the languages
of the family by the turn of the century, can also be found in the correspondence of Nicholas’s sister, the Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna.187 Olga
was brought up by an English governess, and, unlike members of previous
generations of the Romanov family, she kept her diary in English, or at any
rate she did so when she was a child.188 She also received letters in English
from a considerable number of people outside her family circle,189 among
them members of the Russian aristocracy such as Count Iurii Aleksandrovich
Olsuf’ev and Sof’ia Sheremeteva,190 although some aristocrats wrote to her
in Russian too.191 Other members of the royal family also corresponded
in English at this period. Thus, the Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna,
who was Danish by birth but was closely connected with the British royal
house (her sister was the wife of King Edward VII), wrote to her daughter in
English.192 Similarly, the Grand Duchess Xenia Aleksandrovna used English
in correspondence with her sister.193
This analysis of correspondence in the royal family during the long
nineteenth century conf irms the impression created by memoirs that
the Russian court was a truly multilingual environment. French, as the
183 GARF, f. 601, op. 1, d. 1256 (1906–1913).
184 GARF, f. 601, op. 1, d. 1161 (1886–1914).
185 GARF, f. 601, op. 1, d. 1196 (1908).
186 See GARF, f. 601, op. 1, d. 1123 (no date). More examples of royal correspondence in English
could be given.
187 See, e.g., the letters Olga received from Nicholas in GARF, f. 643, d. 45 (1891–1917).
188 GARF, f. 643, dd. 2–19 (the diaries cover the period from 1894 to 1904).
189 GARF, f. 643, dd. 61, 63–70, 72–74, 79, 83, 91, 93, 99, etc.
190 GARF, f. 643, dd. 101 (1893–1900) and 121 (1898–1900) respectively.
191 GARF, f. 643, d. 119 (Irina Sheremeteva and Sergei Sheremetev, 1901–1903).
192 e.g. GARF, f. 643, dd. 34 (1886–1905), 35 (1906–1914), 36 (1915).
193 GARF, f. 643, dd. 38 (1886–1889), 39 (1900–1903), 40 (1909–1914), etc.

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The French L anguage in Russia

language of high society and as a language associated with the royal family
had an important place there, but Russian, German, and, increasingly,
English were also widely used. The major linguistic distinction that we can
observe is between the official and private correspondence of members of
the royal family: on the whole, the former was conducted in Russian and
the latter in French. However, as time went by, members of the imperial
family used Russian more and more, even in their private correspondence
and particularly when the correspondence was between male members of
the family. This trend certainly reflected the growing status of the Russian
language in the period in question. As for differences between male and
female usage, they did not remain constant over the whole period we have
surveyed, nor do they tend to reveal a relative lack of proficiency in Russian
among women. The corpus of documents we have used attests, moreover, to
the centrality and vigour of the Russian language in life at the highest level
of the Russian state. This finding – together with ample evidence of the keen
interest of many members of the royal family in numerous aspects of Russian
national life194 – makes it difficult to argue, pace some representatives of
the nationalistic and radical traditions of Russian thought, that the court
was an altogether alien institution on Russian soil.
There is one further aspect of language use in the domain of the court
and the royal family which deserves comment. At the opposite end of the
spectrum which runs from the personal domain revealed in private correspondence and diaries to the public domain in which the royal family
displayed its power and charisma, we find ample documentation on royal
ceremonial events. In this documentation too, French became highly visible,
partly, of course, because its use enabled the royal family to project an
image of itself beyond Russia’s borders but also, no doubt, because it was
important in the domestic realm to associate the royal family with this
prestige language. Already in the eighteenth century, for example, French
was used in accounts of the coronations of Russian monarchs, although the
versions of a description of the coronation of the Empress Elizabeth issued
by the Academy of Sciences in different languages in 1745 would seem to
suggest that French was not at that time considered the most important
medium for such matters.195 In the nineteenth century, on the other hand,
194 See also the penultimate section of Chapter 5, on language use for official purposes.
195 Fifteen hundred copies were made of the Russian version of this description, 300 of the
German, and 200 of the Latin, but none was issued in French. It was indicated, though, that a
French copy was being prepared. See Buck, ‘The Russian Language Question in the Imperial
Academy of Sciences’, 198, and Sukhomlinov, Materialy dlia istorii Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk,
vol. 6, 548.

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211

such descriptions were invariably produced in French, as well as Russian,
and were accompanied by a stream of other publications, many of which
were also in French.196 We have, for instance, descriptions or celebrations
of the coronation of Alexander I, the arrival of Nicholas I in Moscow for
his coronation and the event itself, the coronations of Alexander II and
Alexander III, and so forth. Similar documents describe the funeral of the
wife of Alexander I, the Empress Elizabeth Alekseevna, in 1826197 and the
wedding ceremony of the future Alexander II in 1841.198
Nor was it only coronations, funerals, and weddings that could be lavishly
publicized in such ways. There were also spectacles that celebrated these and
other events and that were themselves worthy of description. Particularly
notable were firework displays, which became popular in the middle of the
eighteenth century at precisely the time when Elizabeth’s court seems to
have been considering how best to present itself. It is no coincidence that
one of the major European firework-makers, Giuseppe Sarti, was engaged
by the Russian court in 1755. These striking spectacles were akin in their
function to court theatre, projecting royal power urbi et orbi. Accounts of
them were translated into German and French (and published in bilingual
Russo-German and Russo-French versions), as was done in 1759,199 and
sent to other European courts. After all, such events and accounts could
draw attention to the achievements of the Russian sovereign, as they were
manifested in the Seven Years’ War, for instance, and to the shortcomings of
Russia’s enemies. Petr Shuvalov specifically demanded that the descriptions
be translated into German and French, although the Academy of Sciences,
which compiled them, was not always able, at this period, to provide a
translation into French, since there were times when the Academy did not
have an experienced Russian-French translator at its disposal.200 By the
196 e.g. Platon, Discours adressé à l’Empereur Alexandre I-er le 15. Sept. 1801 […] (1801); P***,
Les Manes de Pierre le Grand au couronnement d’Alexandre […] (1801); Couronnement de S.M.
l’Empereur Nicolas I-er (1826); Programme du cérémonial confirmé par S.M. l’Empereur Nicolas
I, pour son entrée solennelle […] (1826); Programme du feu d’artifice […] (1826); Ancelot, ‘Ode sur
le couronnement de l’Empereur Nicolas I’ (1826); Description du sacre et du couronnement de
Leurs Majestés Impériales […] (1856); Murat, Le couronnement de l’Empereur Alexandre II (1857);
Marque, Le couronnement du Tzar Alexandre III (1883); Description du sacre et du couronnement
de L.M.I. l’Empereur Alexandre III […] (1887).
197 Programme du cérémonial confirmé par Sa Majesté l’Empereur pour la réception du corps de
feu Sa Majesté l’Impératrice Elisabeth Alexeiewna […].
198 GARF, f. 678, op. 1, d. 5 (1841).
199 The French title was Description des représentations allégoriques du feu d’artifice […].
200 Kostin, ‘Stikhotvornye nadpisi v opisanii feierverkov 1758 i 1759 godov’. We are grateful to
Andrei Kostin for his additional advice on this subject.

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The French L anguage in Russia

age of Nicholas I, of course, the Russian authorities had no such difficulty
in producing a French version of the description of a f irework display
like that which marked the end of the festivities surrounding Nicholas’s
coronation.201 Even menus for grand ceremonial banquets could fulfil a
propagandistic function. Designed by well-known artists and written in
French, they attested to the refinement of the court, as well as its wealth.
Take, for example, the menu for a banquet of 24 May 1883 on the occasion
of the coronation of Alexander III (Illustration 6). It is perhaps indicative
of the resurgent nationalism in government circles in the late nineteenth
century, though, that the dishes served at another dinner, which was held
in the Great Kremlin Palace three days later, were characteristic of Russian
cuisine and that the menu for this dinner was presented in Russian.202
*
During the reign of Peter the Great, Russians discovered a new model of
sociability, just as they were discovering – as we saw in our preceding
chapter – a new way of educating members of the nobility. This model was
primarily of French origin. In the first instance, the importation of new
forms of sociability evidently took place without the French language being
adopted. However, it is perhaps no coincidence that it was in the circle of
people who, at the tsar’s behest, were probing new forms of sociability that
we first notice a desire among the elite, as far back as the Petrine period,
to learn French.
The French language became an important component of court culture
during the reign of Peter’s daughter, Elizabeth, and the introduction of drama
at that time underlined the court’s ‘civilized’, European character. During the
reign of Catherine II, the French theatre became one of the chief venues at
which the monarch’s majesty and power could be demonstrated, as Alexeï
Evstratov has shown. More broadly, French served, in the second half of
the eighteenth century, as more than an item of décor at court. It became
an indispensable attribute of the court’s everyday life. It was a vehicle not
201 Programme du feu d’artifice […] (1826).
202 The menus for these two banquets are to be found in the Russian National Library (RNB,
Cartography Department, Il’in Collection: V.M. Vasnetsov, Diner du 24 mai 1883). The nationalistic
mood of the reign of Alexander III was reflected in the conspicuously native architectural style
of the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood which was erected on the spot where terrorists of
The People’s Will mortally wounded Alexander’s father, Alexander II, in St Petersburg on 1 March
1881. It is also significant that Alexander III was the first Russian tsar since the seventeenth
century to wear a full beard.

French at court

213

Illustration 6 Printed menu for the coronation dinner of 1883, with a painting by
Viktor Vasnetsov.

Reproduced with permission of the Russian National Library.

214 

The French L anguage in Russia

just for social interaction with foreigners of high social origin but for social
communication among members of the Russian royal family themselves, as
the examples of Catherine and her son Paul show. From this point on, French
would also be associated with the court in the public mind, a fact corroborated
by the theatrical performances staged in honour of members of the royal family
and by numerous tributes to them. This function of French is apparent in
descriptions of ceremonial at events connected with the life of the Romanovs.
In the nineteenth century, French was perhaps the main vehicle for
sociability among members of the multi-national Romanov family, with
its many branches. Its role as a lingua franca, though, was less important
than its role as a royal language and a language of society. Many members
of the family had a perfect command of German too but nonetheless chose
French for communication among themselves and with those who were
close to them. Thus, the choice of French should be seen not primarily as
a pragmatic decision forced upon a family whose members spoke various
mother tongues, but rather as a badge of identity and a means of imagining
and presenting themselves as members both of a European royal family
and of the outward-looking, cosmopolitan elite of the Russian Empire. This
choice may well have helped to affirm the political and cultural superiority
of the Russian ruler, who belonged to a monarchic tradition which, from
the fifteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, was bolstered, as Richard
Wortman has argued, by an association with foreign images of political
power. Not until the second half of the nineteenth century do we see the
French language regress somewhat as a language of intimacy in the Russian
royal family, both because Russian was gaining ground and because English
was being introduced. For all the importance of foreign languages at the
Russian court, though, we should not underestimate the place of Russian
there. It never vanished from the linguistic landscape. It was present as a
medium for social intercourse for many members of the family, especially its
male members, for whom it served as their clearest means of identification
with Russia. Above all, it served as their main bureaucratic language, and
all the Romanovs devoted themselves to affairs of state.
In a later chapter we shall examine the function of both French and
Russian in the Russian official realm, and shall look more closely at their
use by monarchs in that realm.203 Before that, though, we should consider
the use of French in noble society, or rather in the aristocratic stratum of
the nobility, whose members needed little prompting to follow the example
of sociability set by the court.
203 See Chapter 5 below.

Chapter 4
French in high society
Cultural and linguistic practice at the Russian court set an example which
men and women in the higher ranks of the nobility, as it turned out, followed
with zest and without being compelled to do so. They embraced a European
cultural identity, cultivating politesse and refinement. They adopted other
European languages of their own accord and ensured – insofar as their
financial resources permitted – that their children had the access to foreign
tutors, governesses, books, and opportunities for foreign travel which would
enable them to acquire a high level of competence in those languages, and
in French in particular. In showing this independent interest in the field of
education, and in insisting that language learning should be central in their
children’s curriculum, the great aristocratic families were acting in parallel
with the court. (It was the lower-ranking nobility on whom the monarchy
needed to exert pressure, if it was to ensure that they too would adopt the
western cultural model.) Nobles’ adult reading habits then deepened the
knowledge of western culture that their upbringing had instilled in them and
kept them abreast of European developments in everything from philosophy,
belles-lettres, politics, economics, and agriculture to social life, fashion, and
coiffure.1 To be sure, their education and reading equipped noblemen for
various types of service – especially in diplomacy, the upper ranks of the
civil administration, and the officer corps – and, in a more general sense,
prepared them to be worthy representatives of their empire. At the same
time, this upbringing disposed them (both men and women) to a certain kind
of sociability that was emblematic of their social class and exclusive to it.
It is the function of French in nobles’ performance of their social role to
which this chapter is devoted. For the most part, we are dealing here with
linguistic usage, rather than language attitudes, insofar as usage can be
accurately established at this remove. We therefore rely as far as possible on
sources – especially memoirs and materials from family archives – which
yield what seems to be factual information.2 When we come to consider
1 On Russian fashion journals, the use of French and French linguistic influence in them,
and the importance of French fashion to the Russian aristocracy, see Vassilieva-Codognet, ‘The
French Language of Fashion’. On the French language and the world of fashion in Russia, see
also Borderioux, ‘Instruction in Eighteenth-Century Coquetry’.
2 Memoirs are a better source for this purpose than literary fiction not because they are less
imbued with preconceptions but because for the writer of fiction language preference may serve

216 

The French L anguage in Russia

the use of French as a marker of the social identity of the nobility, on the
other hand, we stray into the more subjective domain of perceptions and
need to take account of the conscious or possibly sub-conscious biases that
our sources may contain.

The place of French in the noble’s linguistic repertoire
While it is true that French had a special place among the foreign languages
that Russians acquired, the upper reaches of the post-Petrine nobility might
be best characterized, we have argued, as plurilingual rather than merely
bilingual, especially if we accept a less strict definition of plurilingualism
or bilingualism than symmetrical competence in all forms of all or both the
languages in question.3 We find much written evidence of plurilingualism
in noble correspondence, diaries, accounts of journeys, and other sorts of
text. 4 In the diary of Count Valuev, who occupied high ministerial posts
under Alexander II, for example, we come across numerous expressions in
English (‘desultory conversation’, ‘distinguished guests’, ‘criket-match’ [sic],
‘humbug’, and ‘meddling’5) and Italian (‘sotto voce’ [in an undertone], ‘e tutti
quanti’ [and everyone], and ‘in fiocchi’ [in [my] best clothes]6), besides myriad
words, phrases, and reported remarks in French and occasional reported
utterances in German.7 Of course, not all nobles went so far as Field Marshal
Petr Saltykov and his wife, who, in the mid-eighteenth century, seem to
have expected their daughters to compose letters of identical content in
Russian, French, German, Italian, and English.8 Again, few members of
high society, in all probability, could emulate Aleksandra Dolgorukaia, a
as a means of characterization, as we shall see in Chapter 9, which deals with the classical novel,
novella, and short story. See also our discussion of sources in the last section of our Introduction.
3 For a more detailed treatment of the role of different foreign languages in Russia in the
long eighteenth century, see Argent et al., ‘The Functions and Value of Foreign Languages in
Eighteenth-Century Russia’ and the cluster of articles on language-use in the same issue of RR.
4 On texts of these kinds, see the second and third sections of Chapter 6 below.
5 Dnevnik P.A. Valueva, vol. 1, 97, 210, 246, and vol. 2, 375. See also vol. 1, 58, 69, 78, 95, 110, 205,
252.
6 Ibidem, vol. 1, 207, 245, 70.
7 e.g. ibidem, vol. 1, 290, vol. 2, 330. Valuev is also particularly fond of locutions in Latin, such
as ‘[p]rincipium finis’ (the beginning of the end), ‘[s]ignum temporis’ (a sign of the time), ‘in toto’
(in total), ‘semper idem’ (always the same), and ‘conditio sine qua non’ (an essential condition),
some of which may have become common currency in the discourse of the educated European
elite, particularly in the bureaucracy (ibidem, 71, 112, 199, 215, 237; see also vol. 1, 58, 72, 73, 232;
vol. 2, 268, 376).
8 Lamarche Marrese, ‘“The Poetics of Everyday Behavior” Revisited’, 723.

French in high socie t y

217

young lady-in-waiting at the court of Alexander II, who is said to have had
an exceptionally fine knowledge of five or six languages.9 However, the
recollections of both foreigners and Russians do confirm the impression of
a society in whose upper echelons plurilingualism, over a long period, was
unexceptional. English was described by Martha Wilmot, who stayed on
Dashkova’s estate in the early 1800s, as Dashkova’s fifth language.10 Russian
society appeared to Wilmot as ‘a Tower of Babel […], and it seems as if Russians had the talent born with them of speaking all fluently, for t’is [sic] quite
common to hear four or five at one dinner Table’.11 Some forty years later,
an Englishwoman named Charlotte, who worked for about three years as a
governess for an aristocratic family which had an estate in the province of
Orel, noted in a similar vein that ‘four languages are nothing for one person
here’.12 The princess in the household in which she lived, Charlotte observed,
has great powers of conversation; will talk English with the greatest fluency
to one, then rise, and seating herself by a German, converse in that language
with the same ease, next with a Russian, (and from her it comes soft and
flowing,) at the same time using French to another of the party […]13

This facility in foreign languages (which evidently did not preclude fluency
in Russian, it will be noted) was achieved through provision of the sort of
education we have discussed: Charlotte’s charge, the English governess
remarks, ‘speaks four languages with ease, and knows something of Italian;
she naturally mixes idioms and locutions; but I have noticed that even little
children always address a person in the right language where they can, and
more correctly than one would imagine’. Languages, then, were ‘acquired
so intuitively from foreigners resident in the country, that but little study
[was] required to bring the practice to perfection in every way’.14
9 Tiutcheva, Pri dvore dvukh imperatorov, vol. 1, 92.
10 Martha and Catherine Wilmot, The Russian Journals of Martha and Catherine Wilmot, 117,
cited by Tipton, ‘Multilingualism in the Russian Nobility’, 115.
11 Martha and Catherine Wilmot, The Russian Journals of Martha and Catherine Wilmot, 26,
quoted by Tipton, ‘Multilingualism in the Russian Nobility’, 174.
12 Anon., Russian Chit Chat, 12. This rather clumsily compiled work, consisting of letters written
to various people in Britain, diary entries or notes from a notebook, and concluding addenda, all
punctuated by translated excerpts from Russian literary works and sermons, would have been
of particular interest for a British readership a few years after the governess’s stay in Russia, at
the time of the Crimean War. The family who employed her appear to belong to the Davydov
clan, some of whose estates were in Orel Province.
13 Ibidem, 33–34. We have retained the author’s punctuation in this quotation.
14 Ibidem, 51, 178.

218 

The French L anguage in Russia

For all their plurilingualism, the Russian nobility accorded special status
to French for both verbal and written communication in society and in the
family, as well as for the purpose of communicating with foreigners.15 We
shall shortly dwell on the main social settings in which the use of French
was widespread or, at times, de rigueur and on some of the connotations
that its use had in those settings. By way of introduction to the use of French
in aristocratic society, though, we shall briefly consider the broad insight
into this subject that can be gained from the valuable memoirs of Vigel’, on
whose linguistic education we have already commented.16
Vigel’ was socially active during the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas
I. He held various government posts and was well connected in society and
literary circles as well as officialdom. His voluminous, candid, and often
trenchant reminiscences are an exceptionally rich source of information on
the importance of French as a social language in Russia during the first half
of the nineteenth century, because they have a broad sweep, as regards both
time-span and subject-matter, and because they contain much comment on
linguistic practice among the elite. Their value is enhanced, for our purposes,
by the ambivalence of Vigel’ towards the phenomenon of Russian francophonie, which he views from different vantage-points. While he took pride in
his own command of French and demonstrated the wit that won admiration
in Francophone society, his references to French-speaking members of that
society are often barbed, placing those individuals in an unflattering light.
Vigel’ frequently mentions the linguistic attainment of individuals who
inhabited the grand monde and asserts that prowess in foreign languages,
especially French, was the prime qualification for entry into it in St Petersburg in the early Alexandrine age. A ‘perfect knowledge of French’, along
with ‘the manners of high society’ and ‘great ignorance of everything else’,
he caustically remarks, is the distinguishing trait of a Russian aristocrat.17
Unfortunately, the value attached to French as an indicator of merit also
made society ‘accessible to people who should not have been seen in it,
such as foreigners of all sorts, speculators and tricksters [aferisty], and even
actors [!]’.18 No one better exemplified what was simultaneously pleasing and
deserving of censure in the grand monde, its charm and its superficiality,
than the Francophone aristocrat Prince Fedor Sergeevich Golitsyn, in whose
15 On the use of French for certain types of writing as well as for certain types of verbal
interaction, see Chapter 6.
16 See the last section of Chapter 2 above.
17 Vigel’, Zapiski, vol. 1, 227.
18 Ibidem, 164.

French in high socie t y

219

family Vigel’ himself spent some of his formative years. Golitsyn had not
been well educated, Vigel’ writes:
he had, however, acquired in high society that good tone which gives a person
endowed with wit so many means of displaying it and a person who does
not have it the means to conceal his deficiencies. Most of all, it enables one
to circumvent awkward questions which could reveal one’s ignorance; if
one has the most superficial knowledge one might pass as someone almost
learned. In France, where [Golitsyn] was born, it [bon ton] could cover up
vices and even wrongdoing until the revolution destroyed it as a useless
mantle. Our young aristocratic travellers, the Shuvalovs, the Belosel’skiis,
the Chernyshevs, brought it to us long ago, but it was above all émigrés who
spread it in the best society. Prince Fedor Golitsyn was educated in it; and
since the French language was the only vehicle of bon ton, without which,
even to this day, it has not been able to exist among us, he expressed himself
in that language as freely and pleasantly as I had ever heard before.19

Indeed the clan to which Golitsyn belonged had collectively played a leading
role in establishing a Francophone aristocratic culture in which birth and
connections were more highly prized than service and position in the Table
of Ranks. This culture had been brought to Russia straight from the Parisian
district of St Germain by Natal’ia Petrovna, the famous ‘Princess Moustache’
on whom Pushkin is assumed to have modelled his anonymous countess,
the aged relic of another epoch, in his tale ‘The Queen of Spades’.20 Taking
up the torch that was being extinguished in France as the ancien régime
ended there, Natal’ia Golitsyna rekindled it in the North, with the help of
hundreds of refugees from French society and the French clergy.
Vigel’ describes this transfer across national boundaries in terms consonant with the notion of cultural capital. Metaphorically speaking, he writes,
a joint stock company was formed
in which titles, wealth, and credit at court, knowledge of the French
language, and, even more than that, ignorance of Russian were invested.
Having appropriated important privileges, this company named itself
high society and started to adapt the rules of the French aristocracy to
Russian mores just as successfully as the marchionesses of Senneval and
19 Ibidem, 77–78.
20 See the last section of Chapter 2 above on Natal’ia Petrovna’s inculcation of French aristocratic
taste and values in her children.

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The French L anguage in Russia

the viscountesses of Jussac in today’s French vaudevilles are reborn on
our stage as Avdot’ia Dmitrievnas and Mar’ia Semenovnas. Catherine
[II] welcomed this society, seeing it as one of the bulwarks that protected
the throne from free-thinking, and Paul I even acted as its patron, while
reserving the right to pummel its members mercilessly, which the French
kings had not been able to permit themselves to do.21

The use of French, then, was an important element of the strict code which
regulated the conduct of the social, official, and cultural worlds in which Vigel’
was well connected, as his numerous vignettes of notable functionaries, social
figures, and writers demonstrate. At the same time, Vigel’ took a jaundiced
view of these worlds. This ambivalence tempts us to consider him as a prime
example of the sort of split personality that the cultural westernization of the
Russian elite, it is supposed, typically created. Certainly, we glimpse in his
memoirs some of the dilemmas that beset the elite in late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century Russia whenever they had to reflect on social or national
identity and allegiance. However, these dilemmas may be largely explained in
Vigel’’s case by his status as an outsider in several of the domains in which he
found himself. Although he had close connections with the aristocracy, having
been educated for much of his childhood alongside the children of families in
the eminent Golitsyn and Saltykov clans, he clearly disliked this social stratum,
perhaps nursing a grievance as a result of his early dependency on them.
The aristocracy, he remarked, as if he was not part of it himself, was ‘a fairly
faithful copy of a French original: it concealed its pride under politeness and
its lax morality under decorum’.22 Not that Vigel’ had any obvious respect for,
interest in, or affinity with the non-noble social classes.23 Nor did he have any
truck with liberal ideas, let alone with the Decembrists, despite his proximity
to free-thinking men in the Alexandrine and Nicholaevan ages.24 As far as
his sense of nationality was concerned, he clearly felt himself to be Russian,
although ethnically he had foreign roots (his father was a Swedish Estonian).
His sense of exclusion was no doubt accentuated by other personal factors.
He seems not to have been a popular man, partly because contemporaries
found him difficult and arrogant but probably also because of their prejudice
against his homosexuality. It is clear from his memoirs that he was acutely
21 Vigel’, Zapiski, vol. 1, 90.
22 Ibidem, vol. 2, 5.
23 See the first page of Allen McConnell’s introduction to the reprint of Vigel’s memoirs by
Oriental Research Partners (1974), ibidem, vol. 1 (unpaginated).
24 Vigel, Zapiski, vol. 2, 269.

French in high socie t y

221

ashamed that he had been seduced in his teenage years by a French governor
in the Golitsyn family, the Chevalier Romain de Belleville.25
The memoirs of the above-mentioned Khvoshchinskaia, which are also
of value to us for several reasons, bear witness to the persistence of French
in the beau monde of St Petersburg in the post-Crimean period, long after
the literary community and intelligentsia, as we shall see,26 had come to
deplore the practice of French-speaking as a social and domestic practice
among the Russian nobility.27 When, in the mid-1860s, Khvoshchinskaia
comes to the capital as a girl to visit her grandmother, Potemkina, she is
introduced to Potemkina’s guests thus:
‘C’est la fille de Iurka.’ [This is Iurka’s daughter.]
‘On le voit bien par la ressemblance’ [One can certainly see the likeness],
the old women replied, politely nodding at me.
‘Et a-t-elle du talent comme son père?’ [And is she talented like her father?],
one of them asked.
‘Elle a une très belle voix et va la travailler ici; après le thé elle nous
chantera.’ [She has a very beautiful voice and is going to work on it here;
after tea, she’ll sing for us.]28

By tacitly resorting in her memoirs to the common practice of code-switching
for the purpose of reporting speech in the language originally used by the
speaker in question, Khvoshchinskaia reliably indicates that French-speaking
remained normal practice in the high metropolitan society that the Potemkins frequented.29 Further evidence of the persistence of francophonie in this
society in the 1860s and 1870s is supplied by Valuev’s voluminous diaries,30
not to mention the literary evidence furnished by Tolstoi in Anna Karenina.31
25 Ibidem, vol. 1, 81–82, 134.
26 See Chapter 8 below.
27 Published in nine instalments at the very end of the nineteenth century, Khvoshchinskaia’s
memoirs, like those of Vigel’, ranged over a long period from the age of Nicholas and reflected
the author’s experience of life in different strata of the nobility, as her family circumstances
changed. (Her abrasive and prodigal father, the composer and choirmaster Iurii Nikolaevich
Golitsyn, squandered the wealth of his branch of the family.)
28 Khvoshchinskaia, ‘Vospominaniia Eleny Iur’evny Khvoshchinskoi’, RS, 1898, no. 5, 415; see
also 420.
29 For further examples of code-switching, see the second section, on noble correspondence,
in Chapter 6 below.
30 See e.g. Dnevnik P.A. Valueva, vol. 1, 71, 92. See also the third section of Chapter 6, where we
examine this diary as an example of multi-lingual ego-writing, for numerous further examples.
31 See the fourth section of Chapter 9 below.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Mid-century guidebooks for foreigners intending to visit St Petersburg affirm
the point: ‘French is the language of society’, John Murray’s Handbook for
Travellers in Russia, Poland and Finland informed prospective tourists in
1865, although English too was by this time ‘generally understood’.32

French in the sites of noble sociability
The domains in which French was most widely used as a social language, and to
which we now turn, were of course those very venues or sites of noble sociability
that were imported as a result of cultural westernization. The sites are familiar
to readers of classical Russian literature, especially prose fiction, which of all
literary forms had the greatest claim to social realism.33 They are also amply
described in letters, diaries, albums, and other documents preserved in family
archives, and it is on these non-fictional sources that we shall mainly draw here.
One such site was the ball. It was at a ball given by Countess Sof’ia Tolstaia
(wife of the poet Aleksei Tolstoi) that the seventeen-year-old Khvoshchinskaia made her entry into St Petersburg society in the late 1860s, and the
hostess took the débutante under her wing with the reassuring words ‘C’est
votre premier bal, il faut que vous vous y amusiez’ (It’s your first ball, you
must enjoy yourself).34 Another venue was the salon or the soirée, where
the host (or more probably the hostess) might arrange various imported
entertainments, such as the performance of French romances, in which
Natal’ia Kurakina, née Golovina, excelled in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries.35 Games of wit ( jeux d’esprit) might also be played at
such occasions. Valuev gives us a glimpse of this sort of entertainment, and
the use of French at it, in a diary entry about an event he attended in 1874:
Then I went to a soirée, for the sovereign at Madam Moira’s. Incidentally,
there was a game of secrétaire in which various ladies and gentlemen took
part and which produced some good witticisms. For example. Quel est le
32 Murray, Handbook for Travellers in Russia, Poland and Finland, 46, quoted by Lieven, The
Aristocracy, 138.
33 For treatment of these sites by Ivan Turgenev and Tolstoi, see Chapter 9 below. Other
examples are to be found in Griboedov’s Woe from Wit, Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, Lermontov’s
Hero of Our Time, and the works of many other classical writers.
34 Khvoshchinskaia, ‘Vospominaniia Eleny Iur’evny Khvoshchinskoi’, RS, 1898, no. 6, 642.
35 RGB, Manuscripts Department, f. 183, op. 1, d. 1549. See also Argent, ‘Noble Sociability in
French’. Kurakina herself hosted a salon in Paris in 1812 and wrote a travel diary in French: see N.I.
Kurakina and F.A. Kurakin, Souvenirs des voyages de la princesse Natalie de Kourakine, 1810–1830.

French in high socie t y

223

plus grand bonheur? – Celui que nos envieux nous supposent. Qu’est ce
qu’une femme incomprise? – Celle qui comprend la vie autrement que
son mari. Quand un crocodile veut être aimable, que fait-il? – Il mord,
mais sans tuer. Qu’est ce qu’une grande symphonie? – L’éléphant de la
musique. Pourquoi la terre tourne-t-elle autour du soleil? – Par curiosité.36
(What’s the greatest happiness? That which those who are envious of us suspect we have. What is a woman who is misunderstood? One who understands
life in a different way from her husband. What does a crocodile do when it
wants to be liked? It bites without killing. What is a great symphony? The
elephant of music. Why does the Earth go round the sun? Out of curiosity.)

The theatre was another social site in which French came to the fore.
The staging of plays in French was a traditional social entertainment in
aristocratic circles from at least as far back as the reign of Catherine II. (In
this respect, among others, there was no clear dividing line between life at
court and the life of major aristocratic families which followed the model
laid down by the court.) For example, a governess employed in the 1780s in
the Chernyshev family, into which Natal’ia Golitsyna was born, mentions
performances in French which were put on by members of the family in
their palatial residences.37 A play written by the family’s French governor,
Duvignau, on the model of works by the eighteenth-century dramatists
Arnaud Berquin and Louis Carmontelle, was staged in 1811, to celebrate
Natal’ia Petrovna’s nameday, and members of the family themselves acted in
it, along with relations and close acquaintances from the Apraksin, Saltykov,
and Stroganov families.38 This domestic theatrical tradition persisted in the
Russian aristocracy for many years. Naryshkina recalled that in her childhood, in the middle of the nineteenth century, they performed Scribe’s plays
The Young Lady to be Married and The Truthful Liar.39 As late as the reign of
Alexander II, the continuing popularity of the French theatrical repertoire
conspicuously prompts switches from Russian into French in Valuev’s diary:
Evening at the theatre Le fils de Giboyer [Giboyer’s Boy40], a lot of talk about
this play […] It makes an impression, although there are a lot of incongruities
36 Dnevnik P.A. Valueva, vol. 2, 305–306.
37 RGB, Manuscripts Department, f. 64, op. 106, d. 3, fol. 29 v.
38 Ibidem, op. 79, d. 13.
39 Naryshkina, Moi vospominaniia, 86. The French titles of Scribe’s plays are La demoiselle à
marier and Le Menteur véridique.
40 This is a comedy by Émile Augier.

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The French L anguage in Russia

both in the character of Giboyer, détestable auteur et рèrе sublime [a
detestable author and sublime father] and in the character of Fernande
dont l’esprit a changé de sexe et qui ignore ce que c’est que les sexes [whose
spirit has changed sex and who doesn’t know what the sexes are].41

At the opera, the restaurant, and the horse-races too members of the high
nobility mingled and demonstrated their right to be present by using
French. All these settings, incidentally, serve as locations for scenes which
Tolstoi sprinkles with utterances in French in either War and Peace or Anna
Karenina, or in both these novels. 42
A further venue where French flourished was the spa, to which Russian
aristocrats flocked in the nineteenth century. Indeed, they developed their
own versions of this venue in recently colonized territories in the Caucasus,
for instance at Piatigorsk, where Lermontov’s ‘Princess Mary’, one of the
components of his Hero of Our Time, is set. Equally, the spa was an international European venue where the Russian aristocracy could rub shoulders
with European peers. Again Tolstoi, in Anna Karenina, provides a literary
example of the behaviour of Francophone society at it. We may reasonably
suppose that when in the middle of the century Nadezhda Barteneva wrote
in French to her sister Praskov’ia from Bad Kissingen in Bavaria, where she
was taking the waters, she was using the lingua franca of the international
elite with whom she was consorting each day, including the ethnically
diverse elite of the Russian Empire who were well represented there. Among
those she had recently met, Barteneva named
les Adlerberg, les Wiazemsky, dont je t’enverrai les vers en souvenir de
Kissingen, les Ramzay, les Cancrine, Marachette, accompagnement obligé,
Marenhiem, Stackelberg de Turin, qui arrive aujourd’hui etc. etc. Je ne
te parle pas de nouvelles connaissances dont une grande pianiste Mme
Delphine Knight.
(the Adlerbergs, the Viazemskiis, whose verses in memory of Kissingen
I’ll send you, the Ramsays, the Kankrins, Marachette, her inevitable
accompaniment Marenhiem, Stackelberg from Turin, who is arriving
today, etc. etc. This is not to mention new acquaintances, including a
great pianist, Mme Delphine Knight.)
41 Dnevnik P.A. Valueva, vol. 1, 202. For further examples, see 191, 199, 249.
42 On treatment of francophonie in these novels, see the third and fourth sections of Chapter
9 below.

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225

Not that the treatment Nadezhda was undergoing at the spa, let alone the
strain of observing the niceties of this society, was restorative! She was
suffering, Nadezhda complained, from ‘une humeur massacrante, une fatigue
horrible et une lourdeur insurmontable sans compter les frais d’amabilité
et de politesse, les tribulations mondaines de visites reçues et rendues
pour éviter lesquelles ont [on] fuit la capitale’ (a very bad temper, horrible
tiredness, and an unconquerable sluggishness, without counting the cost
of amiability and politeness, the social tribulations of visits received and
rendered, which one flees from the capital to escape). 43
As we have observed in our discussion of language use at court, so too in
the aristocracy at large French functioned not only as a language of society
but also as a language of intimacy, a medium of communication in the
private sphere. This function is attested by playful texts that have survived
in family archives. In papers belonging to the Miatlev family and dating
from the turn of the nineteenth century, for example, we find a humorous
family ‘newspaper’ entitled ‘Le Barbet Scrutateur’ (The Beady-Eyed Spaniel),
which contains family news, anecdotes, and a hand-drawn title page. 44
A mid-nineteenth-century collection of letters and notes belonging to
Vladimir Shcherbatov and his wife, who lived in Stuttgart, where Vladimir
was attached to the Russian diplomatic mission, appears to offer another
example of playful use of French among people who were evidently close
to one another. A member of the Gagarin family sent the Prince a message
in French written out in Cyrillic script. 45 Similarly, Aleksandr Bobrinskii
left notes from a game in which participants would write plays and stories,
one person beginning the work and another continuing it after a few lines,
with wordplay and puns, as in the following example: ‘Lui aussi avait aimé
Julienne; il l’avait aimé, comme une julienne, toute pleine d’herbes du
printemps et de carottes amoureuses’ (He too had loved Julienne; he had
loved her like a julienne [soup], full of spring herbs and amorous carrots). 46
French was also commonly used for witty verses, impromptu remarks
43 N.A. Barteneva, ‘Pis’ma k Praskov’e Arsen’evne Bartenevoi’, GARF, f. 632, op. 1, d. 54, fols
50 v., 51, 51 v. The Adlerbergs, Ramsays, Kankrins, and Stackelbergs, as well as the Viazemskiis,
were all subjects of the Russian Empire.
44 IRLI, f. 196, no. 18. It is worth noting an example of a provincial news book that was passed
between two neighbouring families, the Chikhachevs and Chernavins, in the Province of
Vladimir in the 1830s. Although it was written mostly in Russian, it also featured some French
(Antonova, An Ordinary Marriage, 236).
45 RGB, f. 347, k. 3, d. 1, fol. 441.
46 RGIA, f. 899, op. 1, d. 37, fol. 21 v. This material dates from the second half of the nineteenth
century.

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The French L anguage in Russia

or aphorisms in the albums which families or individuals kept in their
drawing-rooms and the compilation of which was a favourite pastime. 47
Take, for example, the following lines written in the album of a Moscow
family of the late 1830s or early 1840s:
L’amant différent chez chaque nation.
Quand un objet fait résistance,
L’Anglais fier et vain s’en offense,
L’Italien est désolé,
L’Espagnol est inconsolable,
L’Allemand se console à table
Et le Français est tout consolé.
P.
9 octobre 1841. 48
(Each nation has a different sort of lover. When an object offers resistance,
the vain and haughty Englishman takes offence, the Italian is disconsolate,
the Spaniard is inconsolable, the German finds solace at the table, and
the Frenchman is completely consoled.)

Nor should we overlook the Masonic lodge as a cosmopolitan venue to which
plurilingualism gave nobles access, both outside Russia and within the
empire. Freemasonry had been introduced into Russia in the mid-eighteenth
century, mainly from British and German sources in the first instance, and
for most of the age of Catherine II it was allowed to flourish. For idealistic
Russians of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it was a source
of spiritual comfort, enlightened ideas, and humanistic values. It attracted
men who were close to or trusted by Catherine, including Khrapovitskii,
Aleksandr Bibikov, who commanded the forces that put down the Pugachev
Revolt, and Ivan Elagin, who was director of the imperial theatres from
1766–1779. Among men of letters, it was associated in particular with Nikolai
Novikov, who through his satirical journalism and activity as publisher,
editor, and philanthropist played a major role in the creation of a reading
public in Russia.49 Catherine herself did not approve of Freemasonry, which
she considered at best eccentric, and following the outbreak of the French
47 On albums, see also the end of the third section of Chapter 6 below.
48 ‘Souvenir’, RGB, Manuscripts Department, f. 183, op. 1, d. 1679, fol. 16.
49 On Novikov, see especially W. Gareth Jones, Nikolay Novikov.

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227

Revolution she ceased to tolerate it. However, it underwent a strong revival in
the age of Alexander I, despite the resistance of some conservative nationalists, including Fedor Rostopchin, who harboured a suspicion of Masons
as carriers of seditious alien ideas.50 Numerous lodges sprang up, or were
invigorated, in the early 1800s, for instance The Lodge of United Friends,
The Palestine Lodge, The Three Virtues, The Elizabeth and Virtue, The
Alexander and Beneficence, and two Grand Lodges into which the Russian
directorial body split in 1814, namely the Grand Provincial Lodge and the
Grand Lodge of Astraea. Among the men who frequented these lodges there
were prominent aristocrats, such as the Princes Il’ia Dolgorukov, Sergei
Trubetskoi and Sergei Volkonskii, and notable future men of letters, such as
Petr Chaadaev and Aleksandr Griboedov. Despite the prevailing reactionary
climate in Russia after the Napoleonic Wars, Alexander I continued to allow
Masonic activity up until 1822, when finally an edict was passed banning
the lodges and secret societies in general.51
Membership of Masonic lodges, both in Russia and abroad, enabled
Russian noblemen to socialize with foreigners of various origins and to build
international cultural networks.52 Already in the eighteenth century numerous Russians, including individuals who subsequently became eminent, are
known to have belonged to or visited lodges across Europe, from Stockholm,
Warsaw, and Berlin, to Naples and Oxford.53 Many joined or visited lodges in
France, where they found themselves on diplomatic postings or as students
in educational institutions or simply as tourists on the Grand Tour, and some
became prominent in French Freemasonry. For example, the Francophile
Aleksandr Stroganov, a future president of the Russian Imperial Academy
of Arts and Director of the Imperial Libraries, represented a lodge based in
Besançon and all the lodges of the Franche-Comté region at the founding
50 Rostopchin wrote a tract in French against the Freemasons (1811), published later as ‘Zapiska
o martinistakh’.
51 There is a large literature on the history of Russian Freemasonry. The first major study of the
subject was made by the pre-revolutionary scholar Pypin (1916). Other important studies include
Vernadskii (1917) and Bakounine (1967). Recent scholarship includes the following book-length
studies: D. Smith (1999), Serkov (2001), Faggionato (2005), and Breuillard and Ivanova (eds) (2007).
For the claim that Masonic motifs strongly affected aspects of nineteenth-century Russian
culture, from religious revival in the post-Napoleonic period to Decembrism and Herzen’s
thought, see Billington, The Icon and the Axe, 242–252.
52 On Masonic sociability, see, e.g., Beaurepaire, L’Autre et le Frère, and idem, L’Espace des
francs-maçons.
53 For a list of Russians who were members of foreign Masonic lodges in the eighteenth century,
and also foreign members of Russian Masonic lodges, see Serkov, Russkoe masonstvo, 990–995.
See also Rjéoutski and Offord, ‘Foreign Languages and Noble Sociability’.

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The French L anguage in Russia

meeting of The Grand Orient of France (Grand Orient de France) in 1773 and
he subsequently occupied leading positions in that organization. He was
also one of the founders of The Lodge of United Friends (Les Amis Réunis) in
Paris and a member of another well-known Parisian lodge, The Nine Sisters
(Les Neuf Sœurs), whose other members included Voltaire, the Comte de
Mirabeau, Benjamin Franklin, several prominent scientists and artists,54 and
Gilbert Romme, a future tutor to Stroganov’s son Pavel and a participant in
and eventual victim of the French Revolution.55 In the lodges established in
Russia (in which Russians returning from abroad often participated), Russian
members also mingled freely with non-Russian members (‘non-Russian’
either in the sense that they were subjects of foreign states, including many
Frenchmen, or in the sense that they were subjects of the Russian Empire
who were not of Russian ethnic origin).56
For Russians participating in or communicating with Masonic lodges
outside Russia, French, as the European lingua franca, may have been
the most frequently used language. It was the language, for example, in
which Elagin and Kurakin conducted or drafted correspondence with
the Swedish Grand Lodge when in the late 1770s they were discussing the
possibility of Russian Freemasons joining the Swedish system. It was also
the language used in a Swedish licence authorizing the establishment of a
directory in St Petersburg in 1780.57 Within Russian lodges too bilingualism
and plurilingualism were important assets for Russian Freemasons. The
increasing prominence of Germans in Russian official and social circles in
the eighteenth century, the presence of a German community inside Russia,
the status of German lodges in the international Masonic movement, and
the relative geographical proximity of the German world to Russia – all
these factors ensured that German was much used in Russia in the Masonic
domain, as in other social domains. The Moscow Rosicrucians (whose
order had been founded in Prussia) naturally used German, especially for
conduct of relations with their German brethren, and translated Masonic
54 For further details, see Rjéoutski and Offord, ‘Foreign Languages and Noble Sociability’,
unpaginated text and n. 14.
55 Stroev, ‘Gilbert Romme et la loge des Neuf Sœurs (juillet 1779)’. On this lodge, see also
Amiable, Une loge maçonnique d’avant 1789, la loge des Neuf Sœurs.
56 On the composition of the membership of lodges in St Petersburg and Moscow during
Catherine’s reign, see Rjéoutski and Offord, ‘Foreign Languages and Noble Sociability’, Serkov,
Russkoe masonstvo, 943–995, and Rjéoutski, ‘Les Français dans la franc-maçonnerie russe au
siècle des Lumières’. Serkov’s lists cover the whole of the eighteenth century but relate mainly
to the reign of Catherine II.
57 Pypin, Russkoe masonstvo, 154–155, 158.

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229

documents from German.58 However, from an early stage in the history of
Russian Freemasonry, French was a working language in which members of
Russian lodges or visitors to them might make speeches, write documents
such as rules and regulations, charters, constitutions, and descriptions of
rituals, draw up minutes of meetings, conduct correspondence, compile
membership lists, and sing hymns. In 1760, for example, Ivan Shuvalov’s
secretary, Baron de Tschudy, who was himself a prominent French Mason,
made a speech in French at one of the St Petersburg lodges.59 French was
used even among the Russian Rosicrucians. Nikolai Kraevich, for instance,
wrote his main mystical works in that language.60
Later, in the Alexandrine age, French was the working language in the
Lodge of United Friends, which had been founded in St Petersburg in 1802
in accordance with the French system of Freemasonry, and at the Friends of
the North, into which Vigel’ was inducted, even though the Grand Master,
Aleksandr Zherebtsov, was Russian.61 In the Palestine Lodge, founded in St
Petersburg in 1809, proceedings were also conducted in French, and not until
1813 was Russian adopted as a second working language, under pressure from
its Russian members. Although the war against Napoleon had the effect of
stimulating an increase in the number of translations of Masonic ceremonials
into Russian, French continued to be much used in lodges in the years immediately after the end of the wars. The Orpheus Lodge, founded late in 1818,
for example, used French for speeches, rules, minutes, and books of ritual,
and The Three Virtues Lodge produced minutes in French as well as Russian.
When in 1818 a Freemason from Berlin was instructed to collect information
on Russian lodges the answers to the questions that had been formulated for
him in German were provided in French.62 Even in a lodge in which there
were many German members, The Alexander and the Triple Salvation, which
was founded some time before the middle of 1817 and survived until 1822,
58 Kondakov, Orden zolotogo i rozovogo kresta v Rossii, 61–62, 64, 72–76, 78–80, 82, 212, 221–222,
etc.
59 ‘Discours prononcé à la Loge S. T. à Pétersbourg, le premier mars 1760, vieux style, à un
travail d’apprenti’, in [Baron de Tschudy], L’Étoile flamboyante (1766), vol. 2, 35–40.
60 A mystical novel written by Kraevich in French was published in a Russian translation by
Lopukhin under the title Luch blagodati, ili Pisaniia N.A.K. (no date or place of publication).
Some of Kraevich’s writings were first published by N.V. Repnin and Kraevich in a book that
appeared under two different titles, Les fruits de la Grâce, ou les Opuscules spirituels des deux
F. M. du vrai Systeme (1790) and Les fruits de la Grace ou Opuscules spirituels des deux amateurs
de la Sagesse (also 1790). See Pliukhanova, ‘Kraevich Nikolai Aleksandrovich’.
61 Vigel’, Zapiski, vol. 2, 115 ff.
62 For information on language use in these and other lodges, see, e.g., Pypin, Russkoe masonstvo,
384 ff., 413–414, 420, 429, 531, and Brachev, Мasony v Rossii, Chapter 9.

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The French L anguage in Russia

French was used both for formal documents describing rites and rituals and
as the language in which to conduct them.63 Francophonie, then, was a useful
tool for Russians when they entered the Masonic world, whether it was in a
foreign setting or in the Russian Empire and whether they were mixing with
foreigners or other Russians, just as it was when they attended balls, soirées,
the theatre, the opera, and the spa, or when they conversed more informally
and playfully in the aristocratic drawing-room.
Finally, it is worth pausing briefly to consider the linguistic competencies
of the Decembrists and their wives, both because the Decembrist movement,
if it can be called that, grew out of the activity of Masonic lodges in the
post-Napoleonic part of the reign of Alexander I and because the higher
ranks of the imperial army were closely connected with high society. It has
been said that certain Decembrists were much more competent in French
than in Russian; indeed, they found it excruciatingly difficult, it has been
claimed, to testify to the investigating commission in the vernacular.64
Up to a point this claim is no doubt true, but we need in this connection
to take account of the fact that the collection of officers indicted for their
part in the revolt reflected the multi-ethnic nature of the Russian Empire.
It would not be surprising if men of non-Russian origin, such as the Baltic
Baron Andreas von Rosen or the Poggio brothers from the cosmopolitan
city of Odessa, who were of Italian extraction, had imperfect or halting
Russian. More important still, it is evident from testimonies written in their
own hand that many of the Decembrists – for example, Pavel Avramov,
Nikolai Basargin, Nikolai and Pavel Bobrishchev-Pushkin, Andrei Ental’tsev,
Vasilii Ivashev, Aleksandr Kornilovich, Semen Krasnokutskii, Aleksandr
Kriukov, Vladimir Likharev, Nikolai Lorer, Vasilii Norov, Sergei Trubetskoi,
and Ferdinand Vol’f – had a good knowledge of Russian. Indeed, Kondratii
Ryleev, one of the five men hanged for their role in the revolt, had achieved
63 See the extracts from the charter of this lodge published at https://data.bris.ac.uk/datasets
/3nmuogz0xzmpx21l2u1m5f3bjp/Free_masonry%20text.pdf (Free_masonry_text). The original
charter is at RGB, f. 183, op. 1, d. 808. See also Rjéoutski and Offord, ‘Foreign Languages and Noble
Sociability’.
64 See, e.g., Lotman, ‘Russkaia literatura na frantsuzskom iazyke’, 361. The claim is bolstered by
stories of the difficulties caused by leading conspirators’ ignorance of Russian when they found
themselves in Siberia. Non-Francophone guards, for instance, apparently became suspicious
when Sergei Volkonkii’s wife Mariia, who joined him there, spoke to him in French in order to
speed up their communication. Again, the wife of Nikita Murav’ev, Aleksandra (Alexandrine),
incurred the wrath of a drunken Cossack by interjecting some French, in which she was more
fluent than in Russian, into a conversation with her husband. See Sutherland, The Princess of
Siberia, 172–173, 240–241; Sutherland does not precisely indicate her sources for these pieces of
information, though.

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231

prominence in the Russian literary community as a journalist and civic poet.
Only a small number of the Decembrists wished to write their testimonies
or letters to the investigating commission in French. Those who did came
for the most part from the wealthier stratum of the nobility.65 Thus Mikhail
Bestuzhev-Riumin requested that the investigating committee ‘me permettre
de faire les réponses en français; car je dois avouer à ma honte que j’ai plus
d’habitude de cette langue que du Russe’ (allow me to make my replies in
French, for I must admit, to my shame, that I am more accustomed to using
that language than Russian).66 And indeed, Bestuzhev-Riumin did initially
write his testimonies and letters in French.67 Nevertheless, he was well able
to respond in Russian when ordered to do so, and his Russian was lucid and
contained few mistakes.68 His friend Matvei Murav’ev-Apostol, who was the
son of a man who had served as a diplomat and senator, also testified in
Russian as well as in French.69 Admittedly, his Russian testimonies contained
some spelling mistakes, occasional grammatical errors,70 and uncertainties
(for instance, he inserted some words in brackets because he was evidently
not sure that the Russian expression he had used was correct 71), but in
general his Russian too was fluent and correct.
No neat or comprehensive pattern of language use, then, can be obtained
from studying the huge corpus of extant papers relating to the Decembrists.
All we can safely say is that language competencies among them, as members
of the officer corps of the imperial army, confirm our impression of the
complexity and heterogeneity of language practice among the cosmopolitan elite of the multi-ethnic empire at the end of the first quarter of the
nineteenth century. Nearly all the Decembrists who belonged to the higher
social echelons were plurilingual, having a command of both French and
Russian, and, in many cases, German too. (Few knew English or Italian,
though.) We may add that the authors of both the main political projects
associated with Decembrism, Nikita Murav’ev and Pestel’, although they
themselves may have been at least as comfortable in French as in Russian,
65 There were exceptions, such as Basargin, whose family possessed only about 50 serfs
(Vosstanie dekabristov, vol. 12, 285–286). Basargin’s French is not without mistakes, though.
66 Ibidem, vol. 9, 69.
67 Ibidem, 41–46, 69–72, 95–96, 139.
68 Ibidem, 74–78, 81–92, 98–100, etc.
69 Ibidem, 183–192, 224–244, etc. (in Russian); 192–197, etc. (in French).
70 e.g. ‘v pervykh chisel dekabria’, ‘vylezaet iz okoshko’ (ibidem, 231, 237; our underlining to
indicate errors).
71 e.g. ‘nichego ne bylo pridumannogo (pas de préméditation)’, ‘bol’shaia sobstvennost’ (la
grande propriété)’ (ibidem, 186, 228).

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The French L anguage in Russia

regarded Russian as a unifying force and a source of national identity in
their imagined future polities, and envisaged possession of Russian as a
qualification for Russian citizenship.72

The spirit of the grand monde and social relations in it
The prevalence of French at the social venues we have mentioned is not
explained merely by linguistic competencies, for we should not imagine
that a majority of the Russian nobility were unable to converse in Russian.
Rather, it was due to the fact that French was inextricably bound up with the
culture of the noble social sphere. Use of French conveyed a sense or claim of
entitlement to belong to that sphere, and it was prudent constantly to remind
one’s superiors, peers, and inferiors of that entitlement. Francophonie, then,
was a marker of social identity, and we shall discuss this function of it in
the following section. First, though, we shall briefly consider the tone and
nature of the conversation for which French seemed the natural vehicle
and to which many Russian nobles, as we have seen in our earlier chapter
on teaching and learning French, were habituated from their early years.
The skilled speaker of French in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
European society was endowed with a stock of phrases with which to interact
with others in a polite way, that is to say, to introduce people to one another,
pay compliments, offer congratulations, issue invitations and accept or
decline them, express gratitude, make promises and requests, apologize, take
leave, offer condolences, and so forth. More or less formulaic expressions
serving these purposes abound in recollections of social conversations
among ‘Europeanized’ Russians, as in the following examples: ‘mon frère
d’armes’ (my brother in arms); ‘Elle est charmante, charmante votre nièce’
(She is charming, charming, your niece); ‘je ferai pour vous tout ce qui
sera en mon pouvoir’ (I’ll do everything in my power for you).73 Of course,
such locutions occurred in the written as well as the spoken language; in
72 Hosking, Russia: People and Empire, 178, 180. It is of interest in this connection that Pestel’
moved from a Masonic lodge which conducted its business in French to a Russian-speaking
one, although it is possible that language preference may not have been the sole cause of this
switch, inasmuch as Pestel’ may have wanted to mix with people who were more likely to share
his political views: see Grandhaye, Les décembristes, 54, and O’Meara, The Decembrist Pavel
Pestel, 41–42.
73 All these examples are taken from the memoirs of Anna Kern: see Kern, ‘Vospominaniia
Anny Petrovny Kern’, 231, 236. For discussion of French in the letter of condolence, see Tipton,
‘Multilingualism in the Russian Nobility’, 53.

French in high socie t y

233

particular, they pervaded noble letter-writing, a written form of the language
of society, alongside other formulae that were peculiar to the epistolary
genre, such as those with which letters might begin or end. Take, for example,
the following formulae that are used by Natal’ia Golitsyna in letters to her
children: ‘je suis charmé d’apprendre que…’ (I am delighted to learn that),
‘j’espère que vous me donnerez de la satisfaction’ (I hope you will give me the
satisfaction), ‘tâchez de donner de la consolation à la mère qui vous adore’
(try to give some comfort to the mother who adores you), ‘je désirerai pouvoir
vous témoigner le plaisir […]’ (I shall want to be able to indicate to you the
pleasure […]), and so forth.74 Beyond such ready-made locutions, French
might simply provide le mot juste, as Valuev observed: ‘It is with incredible
légèreté [lightness of touch], the precise word is lacking in Russian, with
which he [Aleksandr Gorchakov, the minister of foreign affairs] plays his
role in today’s circumstances.’75 Indeed, Valuev (like Catherine II a century
earlier76) frequently resorted to French when he needed an aphorism or an
expression to sum up a feeling or situation: ‘Chacun son métier’ (Each to
his trade), ‘Gouverner c’est prevoir’ (To govern is to foresee), ‘Je n’aime pas
le gros rire’ (I don’t like loud laughter), ‘folle journée’ (a mad day), or ‘tâter
le terrain’ (to put out a feeler).77
Nimble use of the phraseological stock available to those adept in high
society helped to structure conversation there, but communication in
this milieu also had a distinctive tone and style. Although serious topics
might well be touched upon at the sort of noble social gatherings we have
mentioned, the type of conversation conducted at them, as Lilti has written,
with regard to the salon in eighteenth-century Paris, was
very different from the model of scholarly discussion. One had to be
seductive and witty, and one was not allowed to contradict others. The
goal of the conversation was not to join in a cooperative exercise aimed
at advancing the progress of learning, as in the Republic of Letters, but
rather to participate in a collective entertainment.78

Consequently, the most sought-after participants, irrespective of their
learning or literary achievements, were accomplished performers and
74 Rjéoutski, ‘L’éducation d’une jeune fille dans une grande famille de la noblesse russe’. See
also the section on French in Russian letter-writing (i.e. the second section) in Chapter 6 below.
75 Dnevnik P.A. Valueva, vol. 2, 375.
76 See the third section of Chapter 3 above.
77 Dnevnik P.A. Valueva, vol. 1, 63, 75, 79, 207, 242.
78 Lilti, ‘The Kingdom of Politesse’, 4.

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raconteurs, like the Neapolitan Abbé Ferdinando Galiani, whose exuberant
conversation, as Lilti characterizes it, might be accompanied ‘by gestures,
jokes, and imitations’ and who might be able ‘to defend paradoxical ideas
with compelling and witty arguments’.79 Fedor Rostopchin, by all accounts,
was an acknowledged Russian master of this histrionic art.80 Successful
conversationalists could find bons mots with which to characterize other
members of society, such as somebody whom Chicherin described as ‘le
roi du rire’ (the king of laughter).81 The most daring among them might
sail close to the wind, as did Khvoshchinskaia’s overfamiliar father, Iurii
Golitsyn, when he was asked by a superior to kiss his shoulder rather than
his face. ‘Oh! Je suis enchanté de le faire’, Golitsyn replied, ‘car je n’aurai pas
le désagrément d’être piqué par votre menton, qui n’est pas toujours bien
rasé’ (Oh, I’d be delighted to do that, because then I won’t have to suffer the
unpleasant experience of being pricked by your chin, which isn’t always
cleanly shaven).82
The function of French as a language of cynical wit, like so many other
aspects of foreign-language use in imperial Russia, is well illustrated in
Valuev’s diary. In numerous instances, Valuev switches from Russian into
French because French seems the most appropriate vehicle for observations
which exemplify the wit on which society prides itself, or because French
was the society language in which the bons mots in question were uttered.
Consider, for instance, the following quip about the rebellious Poles in 1861:
they ‘have long been looking for an opportunity pour se faire mitrailler [to
have themselves gunned down]. The aim is obvious. People in Europe will
start talking about the Polish question again.’83 Or take the following small
selection of more or less caustic comments about other people, all of them
recorded in entries in Valuev’s diary for 1861:
I met Count Murav’ev-Amurskii at Lanskoi’s. Il n’a plus allures d’un astre
ascendant [He no longer looks like a rising star].84
Prince Gorchakov, as always, dans le vague et dans un monde de phrases
[in a haze and in the world of words].85
79
80
81
82
83
84
85

Ibidem.
On his ‘memoirs’, see the fifth section of Chapter 6 below.
Chicherin, ‘Iz moikh vospominanii’, 509.
Khvoshchinskaia, ‘Vospominaniia Eleny Iur’evny Khvoshchinskoi’, RS, 1897, no. 3, 531.
Dnevnik P.A. Valueva, vol. 1, 69.
Ibidem, 82.
Ibidem, 119.

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The thought that I can escape from him [the Archbishop of Vilnius] here
m’а mis de bonne humeur pour toute la durée de notre entretien [put me
in a good mood for the whole of our conversation].86
Under the influence, perhaps, d’un verre de vin généreux sur un estomac
un peu faible [of a generous glass of wine on a rather weak stomach],
Prince [Aleksandr] Gorchakov was so vain that it was comic.87
He [Fedor Paskevich] thinks the Poles have fond memories of his father.
Il serait désobligeant de tâcher de le désabuser [It would be unkind to
try to disabuse him].88

A brief and unflattering character sketch of the sort that a French moralist might once have enjoyed producing calls for the French language too:
‘Finance Committee in the morning. I drove over to Golovnin’s. He came to
my place in the evening to let me know what he was undertaking. Intélligent,
insinuant, méthodique, froid, égoïste, peu agréable’ (intelligent, ingratiating,
methodical, cold, egoistic, not very likeable).89 A switch into French seems
equally appropriate for a generalized remark that Valuev conceives almost
as a maxim, after the manner of La Rochefoucauld: ‘There are people who
are repelled by any fervour. Toute vivacité les effarouche, toute véhémence
leur suscite un malaise’ (Any vivacity frightens them, any vehemence makes
them uneasy).90
Since match-making was an important function of the social gatherings
of the imported grand monde, French was also perceived as a language
of courtship, and the tradition of galanterie to which we have referred,
supplemented by French romantic fiction, furnished a lexicon and tone
for flirtation. We gain an impression of this conversational genre from a
letter of 1791 in which the Polish Countess Théophilie Lubomirska describes
an encounter that she says she had during an evening walk in the gardens
of the Peterhof Palace in the environs of St Petersburg. A man she names
Cléon, whose advances she had been trying to avoid, managed to corner
her and declare his love. She describes Cléon as ‘Jeune beau enjoué spirituel
mais malin vain et fourbe’ (a sprightly and witty young beau but a vain and
86
87
88
89
90

Ibidem, 125.
Ibidem, 126.
Ibidem, 129.
Ibidem, 137.
Ibidem, 255.

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The French L anguage in Russia

cunning rascal) who had no genuine feeling for her but was merely hoping
to make a gratifying conquest. In the dialogue that she claims took place,
she confounds her stumbling admirer with her witty responses:
‘Je vous avois cru un instant plus dangereux, Monsieur; j’ai lu dans les
romans, que les femmes se fachaient dans la circonstance ou je me trouve.
Je ne comprends pas pourquoi. Votre air embarasse [embarassé] me fait
de la peine mais c’est [ce] n’est pas celle qui n’ait de l’interet.’
(I had thought for a moment that you were more dangerous, Sir; I have
read in novels that women lose their temper in situations like the one
in which I find myself. I don’t understand why. Your embarrassed look
pains me, but that’s not what is uninteresting.)

Having rejected the ever more desperate entreaties of Cléon, who is eventually driven to ask what he has done to make himself so detested, Lubomirska
administers the following coup de grâce: ‘Vous ètes comme votre sexe petri
d’amour propre. Ne vous flates [flattez] donc pas qu’on vous abhore. On ne
vous aime pas voila tout le mystere’ (Like all of your sex you are eaten up
with self-conceit. Don’t flatter yourself that you are loathed. You are not
loved; that’s all the mystery there is to it).91 Lubomirska plainly theatricalizes
her description of this encounter. No doubt there is much poetic licence in
this letter, whose author shows how she responds adroitly to male attention
that is both wanted and unwanted. Cléon is evidently not the real name of
her pursuer but a conventional literary name for a galant, as attested in the
Dictionary of Love by Dreux du Radier that Khrapovitskii had translated.92
Whatever the accuracy of Lubomirska’s record of the conversation, though,
her letter does seem to exemplify aristocratic acceptance of French as a
language of flirtation in which men and women might flatter, entreat,
succumb, rebuff, or reproach. The use of Russian for flirtation in the beau
monde, we might add, was to be avoided as a practice that was likely to seem
disrespectful to a woman.
French tended also to be associated with certain aristocratic practices
or behaviour, such as ballroom dancing, card-playing, and gambling,93 as
91 Théophilie Lubomirska, ‘Zapisnye tetradi’, RGB, f. 183, op. 1, d. 1486 (a, b), fols 42, 43, 43 v.
92 See Zhivov, ‘Love à la mode’, 230.
93 For an interesting discussion of the attitude of the future Decembrists towards such aristocratic entertainments after the Napoleonic Wars, see Lotman, ‘The Decembrist in Everyday
Life’, in SRC, 106–108.

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well as with certain social formulae, a style of conversation, and types of
interaction, such as courtship. The association is well illustrated in a letter
on the practice of duelling, which Mikhail Vorontsov thought it necessary
to broach with his son Semen in 1842. In his letter, Mikhail grapples with
the fact that there are reckless nobles (bretteurs; the French word gave rise
to the now obsolete Russian breter) who will fight duels on trivial pretexts
and he tries to persuade his son only ever to resort to this practice if there
is no other way of defending his honour:
il restait à toucher un point délicat, et n’ayant pu le faire alors, je remplis
ce devoir dans ce moment. Nous n’avons jamais eu de conversation avec vs
[…] sur des duels, quelque [quelle que] soit l’horreur d’une [qu’une] société
civilisée devrait ressentir pour une coutume aussi barbare et aussi antichrétienne […]; je ne puis songer à l’idée de vs demander votre parole d’honneur
de ne jamais vous battre; dans la societé telle quelle est faite dans notre tems
il peut arriver des cas où un homme bien né est obligé de se battre parce
que, s’il ne se battait pas, la societé dans laquelle nous vivons le regarderoit
comme déshonore [déshonoré] l’usage et les préjugés lui mettraient sur le
front une tâche d’infamie qui l’empecherait de se montrer […]94
(it remains for me to touch on a delicate matter, and having been unable
to do it before, I fulfil this duty now. We have never had a conversation
about […] duels, whatever the horror that a civilized society ought to feel
for such a barbarous and anti-Christian custom […]; I cannot contemplate
the idea of asking you to [give me] your word of honour that you will
never fight; in society such as it is in our time, cases may arise where a
well-born man is bound to fight because if he did not then the society in
which we live would regard him as disgraced and custom and prejudices
would stamp on his brow a stain of infamy that would prevent him from
showing himself […])

Now, it is true that Mikhail writes to his son in French on other subjects too;
it is not that he has switched into French on this occasion for the purpose of
discussing duelling. In any case, the type of letter Mikhail is writing in this
instance (a letter containing advice which a father considers it his duty to give
his son) tended to be composed in French, as many other examples attest.95
94 Quoted by Tipton, ‘Multilingualism in the Russian Nobility’, 195.
95 See, e.g., our comments on Mikhail Shcherbatov’s letters to his son in the fourth section of
Chapter 2 above.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Nonetheless, the subject-matter (a set of ideas which concern the standing
of the nobleman among his peers, his sense of honour, and a noble practice
designed to uphold it) seems particularly to require this linguistic choice,
the more so since the ideas in question are of western provenance. Indeed,
it is likely that the subject-matter was familiar to the nobility primarily
through exposition and discussion of it in French.
The use of French is also apt when an aristocrat wishes implicitly to
underline a sense of social solidarity with an interlocutor or correspondent
or to appeal to someone by whom he or she hopes to be considered an
equal.96 Such use of language choice as a means of implicitly defining a
certain social relationship may be observed among Decembrists who found
themselves under arrest after the failure of their mutiny in 1825. When
they appealed in Russian to members of the investigating commission in
the hope of alleviating their lot then they were in effect making a formal
request, but if they appealed in French they were attempting to open a
dialogue with a social peer.97
We find yet another striking example of the use of French for this sort
of solidarizing purpose, as we might describe it, in a letter of 1888 in which
Count Andrei Rostopchin, the son of Fedor, begs a fellow nobleman, Count
Anatolii Davydov, to lend him some money.
Monsieur le Comte,
Le 25 du mois passé j’ai eu l’honneur de vous adreser, à votre résidence
d’Otrada, une lettre que je dois croire perdue, puisque jusqu’à présent
vous n’y avez pas répondu d’aucune façon. Je vous y décrivai l’horrible
position dans laquelle je me trouve, harcelé par des créanciers et ayant
une femme, que j’adore, grièvement malade et dont je ne puis adoucir les
souffrances, n’ayant pas la possibilité de payer ni médecins, ni médecine.
La veille de sa mort, monsieur le Comte votre père, a rempli un acte de
charité chrétienne en me prêtant six cent roubles […] Aujourd’hui je me
vois dans une situation encore plus atroce, car à mes propres chagrins
se joint l’état de ma femme, qui me déchire l’âme. Si ce n’est pour moi,
du moins pour elle, venez à mon secours et envoyez-moi cette somme
[…] Excusez mon insistance et expliquez-vous la par le dicton: нужда
96 See, e.g., Baudin, ‘Bilingualism in Aleksandr Radishchev’s Letters’, 127, for an illuminating
discussion of language choice in Radishchev’s letters to his patron, Aleksandr Vorontsov.
97 We are indebted to Ol’ga Edel’man for this point. For examples of supplicatory letters in
French, see the two by Iosif Poggio that are published in Vosstanie dekabristov. Dokumenty, vol.
12, 156–159.

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239

пляшет, нужда скачет… Elle est bien forte cette нужда, puisqu’elle me
fait sauter par-dessus toutes les convenances sociales et la rougeur au
f[r]ont me force à importuner une personne qui ne me connait pas, sur
la simple certitude que j’ai affaire à un gentilhomme accompli.
Recevez avec bienveillance l’expression de ma haute et parfaite
considération.
Comte Rostoptchine.98
(Your Lordship the Count,
On the 25th of last month I had the honour to send you a letter at your
residence in Otrada. I am bound to think the letter has been lost, because
you have not as yet replied to it in any way. In it I described to you the
horrible position in which I find myself, harried by creditors and having
a wife, whom I adore, who is gravely ill and whose sufferings I cannot
mitigate because I am unable to pay either for doctors or medicines. On
the eve of his death, His Lordship the Count, your father, performed an
act of Christian charity by lending me 600 roubles […] Today I see myself
in an even more appalling situation, for in addition to my own woes there
is the state of my wife, which I find heart-rending. If not for me, then at
least for her come to my assistance and send me this sum […] Excuse my
insistence and explain it by the saying: need makes one do things one would
not have wanted… It is very acute, this need, because it makes me skip all
the social conventions and the blush on my face forces me to importune
a person who does not know me, [which I do] simply because I am sure
I am dealing with an accomplished gentleman.
Be so kind as to accept my greatest respect, Count Rostopchin.)99

The use of French here enables Rostopchin, who has fallen on hard times,
to maintain his dignity in an embarrassing situation and to underline the
shared status and values of writer and addressee. After all, Rostopchin
too is a count and he speaks the same language as Davydov. Both men are
members of the same European corporation. Indeed, they both belong to the
Russian branch of it, and Rostopchin may even feel that his interpolation of
a short Russian saying in his otherwise French text strengthens their bond
still further. And how, finally, could another ‘accomplished gentleman’ who
was conscious of his worth refuse a request on which the wellbeing of a sick
noble lady might depend?
98 RGB, f. 219 (Orlov-Davydov), k. 60, d. 81, fols 3–3 v.
99 Italics in this translation indicate the parts of Rostopchin’s text that were written in Russian.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Opponents of the imported culture would seize upon the association of the
French language with aspects of social interaction in the grand monde, such
as flirtation, of which they did not approve and with the disingenuousness
or spitefulness of society conversation. They would link French, for example,
with a love of sexual display and immodesty that seemed improper and
shocking in the Russian context. The formality embedded in the French
speech habits that Russians adopted in the eighteenth century could also
create unease, as Russian literary representations of the grand monde will
reveal.100 Strange as it might seem, given the fact that social relationships
were already highly stratified in Russia by the Table of Ranks, the respectful
distance that French politesse established between society’s individual
members could seem to Russians cold and inauthentic.
On the linguistic level, an enduring sense that the foreign social model
imposed an unnatural formality on Russians is manifested by the perceived
differences between French second-person personal pronouns and their
Russian equivalents. The French aristocratic practice of addressing and being
addressed by most interlocutors with the plural second-person pronoun vous
was maintained in Russian Francophone circles, in both speech and writing.101 Indeed, the habit of addressing a single person in the plural number
became established in Russian too in the eighteenth century and rapidly
took hold in educated circles. However, the habit was not universally pleasing
to patriots; Fonvizin, for example, rails against it through his mouthpiece
Starodum, in his play The Minor, and praises plain-speaking Petrine courtiers
who, he supposes, still used ty to address a single interlocutor.102 Russians
evidently continued throughout the nineteenth century to feel that the
second-person pronouns available in the two languages (tu and vous in
French, ty and vy in Russian) were not entirely congruent.103 Individuals
whom etiquette required a speaker or writer to address as vous in French
might therefore be addressed as ty in Russian in order to avoid intolerable
formality or to indicate real intimacy.104 Pushkin muses on the nuances
100 On negative representations of Francophone high society, see Chapters 8 and 9 below.
101 As we see from all the examples we have already provided and from the epistolary practice
of the nobility, of which we give examples in the second section of Chapter 6 below.
102 Nedorosl’, Act III, Scene 1, in Fonvizin, SS, vol. 1, 130. In fact, the use of vy, Zhivov contends,
was already widespread in Peter’s time, as attested by many examples in Peter’s letters and
those of his contemporaries (Zhivov, Language and Culture, 169 n.).
103 On this incongruence, see especially Friedrich, ‘Structural Implications of Russian Pronominal Usage’.
104 For a good example of the incongruence, see a letter written by a young woman who treats
the poet Zhukovskii as a trusted father-figure. In Russian she addresses him only with singular
pronominal forms (ty, tvoe, tebia, tebe) but when she switches into French (presumably the

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241

of the Russian pronouns in a short poem of 1828, contrasting the empty
formality imposed by social politesse, as it seemed to the Russian ear, and
the passion felt by the poet in love:
Пустое вы сердечным ты
Она, обмолвясь, заменила
И все счастливые мечты
В душе влюбленной возбудила.
Пред ней задумчиво стою,
Свести очей с нее нет силы;
И говорю ей: как вы милы!
И мыслю: как тебя люблю!105
(With a slip of the tongue, she replaced an empty vy with a heartfelt ty, and
awakened all the happy dreams in an enamoured soul. I stand before her
pensively, unable to take my eyes off her; and I say to her, how sweet you
(vy) are, but thinking how I love you [tebia, i.e. the accusative form of ty].)

The use of French in Russian society, then, did not indicate personal warmth
so much as recognition that interlocutors shared a small, privileged social
space in the vast empire. This recognition and the mutual respect implied
by the use of French and its vocabulary of politesse were quite compatible
with an undertone of personal malice, reflected in the waspish remarks that
revealed a speaker’s wit, the mischievous insinuation that fed the gossip on
which the beau monde feasted, and the condescension that reminded an
addressee of fine social gradations. A switch from French into Russian, we
might finally add, could in certain circumstances indicate the withdrawal
language in which they had conducted the conversation to which she refers) she uses the
plural pronoun (‘Vous dites que voulez me servir lieu de père!’): see Zeidlits, ‘Iz knigi “Zhizn’
i poeziia V.A. Zhukovskogo”’, 58. For further examples of pronominal usage in letter-writing,
see the second section of Chapter 6 below. For literary examples of incongruence in French and
Russian pronominal usage, see the section on Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina (i.e. the fourth section)
in Chapter 9 below.
105 ‘Ty i vy’, in Pushkin, PSS, vol. 3, 103. On Pushkin’s pronominal usage in French, see Nina
Dmitrieva, ‘Pushkin’s Letters in French’, 187. On the subject of Russian pronominal usage,
Khvoshchinskaia rues changes which indicated the declining social standing of the nobility
in the post-reform period. After the emancipation of the serfs, noble children were instructed
to use ty forms to their parents and vy forms to peasants. These changes reversed the previous
norms and, in Khvoshchinskaia’s opinion, introduced over-familiarity into relations between
noble parents and their children and undue deference into nobles’ attitudes towards peasants
(Khvoshchinskaia, ‘Vospominaniia Eleny Iur’evny Khvoshchinskoi’, RS, 1897, no. 5, 370).

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The French L anguage in Russia

of respect from a person who had fallen outside the charmed circle. Mariia
Volkonskaia, née Raevskaia, the daughter of one of the heroes of the Napoleonic Wars and a member of one of the most respected noble families of
the first Alexandrine age, reports a striking example of such a switch in her
account of her journey into voluntary exile in Siberia, where she went to
join her husband Sergei Volkonskii after he had been sentenced to 20 years
of penal servitude for his part in the Decembrist Revolt. When Volkonskaia
arrived in Irkutsk, the local governor, Johann Gottfried Zeidler, addressed her
in French (with a strong German accent, for he was a native of East Prussia).
However, when she insisted, against Zeidler’s wishes, on continuing her
journey further east to her husband’s place of exile, he switched to Russian,
thus emphasizing how far, as the wife of a criminal, she had fallen.106

Francophonie and social identity
We return now to the subject of the role of language in identity formation,
which we broached in our discussion of the education of the Russian nobility.
An individual’s identity is a potentially complex amalgam of more or less
conscious notions and allegiances in which linguistic competence and loyalty
may play a part, alongside numerous other factors such as nationality, social
class, professional network, gender, sexuality, religion, cultural affiliation,
and age. These possible components of a person’s self-conception cannot be
arranged in any definitive hierarchy, for their weight and relative importance
vary from one individual to another, from group to group, and from one place
and time to another. We can say, though, that the significance of language in
the amalgam tended to increase, at least in the minds of European literary
and intellectual elites in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
as national consciousness grew stronger, ethno-nationalism became a
powerful cultural and political force, and the nature of aristocracies changed
and their political dominance was threatened by the rise of bourgeoisies
and intelligentsias.107
106 See Sutherland, The Princess of Siberia, 150, 153, who gives a fuller account of this encounter
(presumably on the basis of a manuscript version of Volkonskaia’s memoir) than that contained
in [Mariia Volkonskaia], Zapiski kniagini Marii Nikolaevny Volkonskoi, edited by her son and
published in 1904, 35.
107 There is a large body of work on the relationship of language and identity. Joseph (2004)
provides a clear and comprehensive introduction. Silverstein (1979) first studied the link between
the perception of a person’s language use and perception of their personality, as language is
a signif icant part of the construction of their identity. Anderson’s seminal work Imagined

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243

Besides serving as a medium of communication, language also functions,
it has been observed, as ‘a common marker of ethnic identity, and an integrating symbol for group unity and distinctiveness’.108 Both of these semiotic
functions of language use are of interest in our study of the history of French
in Russia. The first of them, which bears on the formation of the nation as
a cultural entity, is best discussed when we turn to the language attitudes
of the nineteenth-century Russian writers who constructed the modern
Russian cultural nation, because the treatment of languages – in Benedict
Anderson’s words – ‘as emblems of nation-ness, like flags, costumes, folkdances, and the rest’,109 was rife in their discourse.110 The second function,
the use of French as a ‘badge’ of social identity, on the other hand, properly
belongs here, in our consideration of the social and cultural practice of the
nobility.111 Of course, the use of French, like styles of dress and the adoption of
family coats of arms, gave the nobility a European social identity, for French
was the predominant language of European civilization and the Republic
of Letters.112 At the same time, as Lotman observed, French functioned as a
sign of corporate exclusivity,113 hence its inculcation in the noble child from
an early age and hence also the fact that use of it was repeatedly deplored
by critics of noble culture, from whichever angle – conservative, liberal, or
radical – they made their criticisms.
For the purpose of discussing the role of French-speaking as a means
of establishing social identity and affirming entitlement to belong to the
Communities connects language specifically to national identity. The interplay between language,
identity, and the use of and attitude towards foreign words has been studied by Duszak (2002).
Gasparov (2004) examines the history of thought on language and identity in Russia. Most
general handbooks of sociolinguistics include introductions on language and identity: see, e.g.,
Mesthrie’s Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics (2011) and Meyerhoff’s updated edition of
Introducing Sociolinguistics (2015). The comprehensive reference guide to the field of historical
sociolinguistics, the Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics edited by Hernández-Campoy and
Conde-Silvestre (2012), also includes a section on the subject.
108 Törnquist-Plewa, ‘Contrasting Ethnic Nationalisms’, 220.
109 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 133. Anderson’s italics.
110 On language attitudes and conceptions of national identity, see the conclusion of Chapter
8 below.
111 The term ‘badge’ belongs to James Billington, who, in his grand cultural history of Russia,
observed long ago that the Russian aristocracy ‘used French culture to establish a common
identity. The French tongue set them off from both the Russian- or Ukrainian-speaking peasantry
and the German-, Swedish-, or Yiddish-speaking mercantile elements of the empire’: see Billington, The Icon and the Axe, 219.
112 On the function of French as a means of joining Europe, see also the fourth section of Chapter
6.
113 Lotman, ‘Russkaia literatura na frantsuzskom iazyke’, 352.

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The French L anguage in Russia

nobility, the evidence from belles-lettres seems less problematic than we
believe it is for the description of linguistic practice. This is because, as we
have said, we are dealing now with perceptions about the nature of the community to which individuals thought they belonged, or to which they would
have liked to belong, or against which they wished to measure themselves.
(These perceptions are of course shot through with received stereotypes,
images, myths, prejudices, and patterns of thought.) That is to say, we are
examining the more or less conscious self-fashioning of a social group and
individuals within it. Nonetheless, we draw here only on comments made by
writers in non-fictional or semi-fictional works as we illustrate perceptions,
at different points in the period in which we are interested, about the degree
to which the use of French helped to differentiate the Russian nobility from
other classes or – and this is also important – to differentiate groups within
the multi-layered nobility itself. By avoiding evidence from fiction at this
stage, we have more direct access to the authors’ own opinions, although
we shall still need to take account of factors that might have made authors
accentuate the negative effects of the noble practice of French-speaking.
Fonvizin, one of the major men of letters in the age of Catherine II, offers
us an insight into the importance of a command of French as an indicator
of social worth at an early date in the history of Russian francophonie. In a
brief autobiography that he wrote towards the end of his life, he describes
an encounter that he had in his youth in a theatre in St Petersburg ‘with the
son of a certain personage’. (Judging by the context provided in Fonvizin’s
narrative, this episode must have occurred around 1760.) The ‘very manner’
of this personage, Fonvizin wrote,
impressed me by his evident sense of self-worth. He asked me if I could
speak French. When I responded that I could not, his interest in me
seemed to pass rather quickly. Apparently he considered me ignorant and
improperly schooled. So he began taunting me […] This whole episode
taught me how necessary it was for a young man to know French. I immediately undertook the study of the language.114

Some 65 years later, the young Aleksandr Nikitenko, who would become a
government official, censor, writer, professor, and notable diarist, observed
the zenith of this linguistic development in Muscovite high society. With
misgivings similar to those of Fonvizin, he remarks in a diary entry for 1826
114 We have taken this translation from [Fonvizin], ‘Sincere Confessions of My Thoughts and
Deeds’, in The Political and Legal Writings of Denis Fonvizin, 41.

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on behaviour at a typical soirée, where participants in the grand monde ‘conform slavishly to fashion in [their] speech, opinions and conduct’. Mastery
of French is mandatory for those who would display the ‘adroitness’ and
‘amiable manner’ prized in this social milieu, where women, in Nikitenko’s
opinion, were the most accomplished performers:
here is the guiding rule for this ‘adroitness’ and ‘amiability’: ‘dress and
position your feet, hands and eyes as Madame French Governess has
instructed you. Don’t give your tongue a moment’s rest while keeping
in mind that French words should be the only sounds released by this
human clavichord, a clavichord which is set in motion only by a frivolous
mind.’ Indeed knowledge of French serves as an entrée into the most
‘refined’ salons. It frequently determines your status in the eyes of an
entire community and frees you, if not forever, then at least for a while,
from the necessity of displaying other very serious claims to the public’s
attention and good will.115

Nikitenko, who came from a family of serfs belonging to the Sheremetevs
and was discomfited by society’s brittle decorum, clearly felt the exclusivity
of the Francophone monde as keenly as his slightly older contemporary
Vigel’, another outsider, and remarked in a similar manner on the degree to
which proficiency in French could mask personal shortcomings. A French
tutor could guarantee success in high society for the children of the most
prominent families, he mused, but only chance determined their morality.116
The subject was also addressed, and at greater length, at various points
in a three-volume work, Russia and the Russians, which was written, in
French, by Nikolai Turgenev while he was an émigré in France during the
reign of Nicholas I. As if they felt their prerogatives, personal appearance,
and clothes were not enough to indicate their superior social position,
Turgenev explained, nobles (or at least members of the high nobility) ended
up ‘repudiating the national language and adopting the use of a foreign
language, even in private life, the life of the family’. This language practice,
Turgenev argued, had detrimental effects. For one thing, the social elite thus
took on the air of a race of conquerors who had imposed themselves on the
nation by force, bringing with them instincts, tendencies, and interests that
were different from those of the majority. (One is reminded of the distinction
115 We have used here the translation of the diary done by Helen Jacobson: see Nikitenko, The
Diary of a Russian Censor, 4. The original can be found in Nikitenko, Dnevnik, vol. 1, 11.
116 Nikitenko, The Diary of a Russian Censor, 2.

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made by French champions of the nobility under the ancien régime between
conquering Franks and native Gauls.117) For another, repudiation of the
Russian language accentuated the ‘isolation’ of the Russian nobility and
thereby made the march of civilization in Russia more diff icult, since
the nobility was the engine of progress there. (Turgenev seems to follow
Montesquieu in his conception of the role of the nobility, but uses an image
that was apt in the industrial age.) Admittedly, Russian was the vehicle for
‘high literature’, as vernaculars were for such literature elsewhere, but ‘the
national language’, Turgenev contended, did not percolate into other regions
where literature ordinarily softens mores, making for polite manners and
more agreeable social relations. In particular, private and intimate literature,
which is the ‘echo’ of social and family life, could not be written in Russian,
Turgenev asserted, nor could those who had adopted a foreign language and
foreign formulae and ways of speaking invariably conduct elegant private
conversation in Russian. There was no way of saying ‘Madame’, ‘Monsieur’
in Russian, for instance, Turgenev claimed.118
What makes Nikolai Turgenev’s negative interpretation of the consequences of noble francophonie in Russia particularly interesting is the fact
that Turgenev is by no means a nationalistic patriot. On the contrary, he
deplores jingoism and xenophobia.119 He is outward-looking and has no desire
to deflect Russia from the path it has been following since the time of Peter
the Great with a view to modernization.120 Nor does he wish to dissuade
Russians from learning foreign languages. He does believe, though, that
their main purpose in doing so should be to facilitate relationships with
other countries, to enable them to acquaint themselves with the literatures
of other civilized peoples, and to assist their own progress in the arts and
sciences. Russians’ ill-judged and insensitive use of French for conversation
and correspondence among themselves, on the other hand, has the adverse
effects of reducing the number of domains in which the native language is
used and of promoting a ‘factitious and deceitful civilization which is the
scourge of true civilization’. Up to a point, then, Turgenev objects to the use
of French by the Russian nobility in public and private social interaction
on the grounds that it impedes the development of the Russian language
(which he regards, in an essentialist way, as rich and beautiful), preventing
117 Boulainvilliers, Histoire de l’ancien gouvernement de la France, 33–36.
118 Turgenev, La Russie et les russes, vol. 2, 31–33. On private literature in French, see the third
section of Chapter 6 below.
119 Ibidem, vol. 2, 204–205. Turgenev conceded, though, that the tendency of the Russian
government to appoint foreigners who had little merit encouraged xenophobia.
120 Ibidem, vol. 3, 10.

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247

it from becoming polyfunctional. Those who advocate the advantages of a
‘national education’ should practise what they preach, Turgenev believes,
placing Russian at the core of the curriculum, although he doubts whether
the need to cultivate the national language will actually be felt until either
a judiciary or a pluralist political arena has truly emerged in Russia.121
A passage in Lev Tolstoi’s pseudo-autobiographical trilogy Childhood,
Boyhood, Youth, written in the 1850s at the beginning of his literary career,
brutally underlines the continuing significance of francophonie as what
Bourdieu would see as a form of the cultural capital that the nobleman
needed in the social market-place. Drawing attention to the status that the
French language still enjoyed in Russian high society while he was growing
up, in the 1840s, a now repentant Tolstoi confessed that his ‘favourite and
principal system of division’ of the human race at that time ‘was into people
comme il faut [who behave properly] and comme il ne faut pas [who do not
behave properly].’
The latter I subdivided into those inherently not comme il faut and the
lower orders. The comme il faut people I respected and looked upon as worthy to consort with me as my equals; the comme il ne faut pas I pretended
to despise but in reality detested, nourishing a sort of injured personal
feeling where they were concerned […] My [Tolstoi’s italics] comme il
faut consisted first and foremost in having an excellent knowledge of
the French tongue, especially pronunciation. Anyone who spoke French
with a bad accent at once aroused my dislike. ‘Why do you try to talk like
us when you don’t know how?’ I mentally inquired with biting irony.122

Seen through the lens of cultural theorists such as Lotman who are interested
in norms of social behaviour, francophonie was thus a tool used by the
nobleman for the purpose of self-fashioning, a ‘social sign’, or part of the
performance required to maintain social standing. Together with other
attributes of noble identity, appearance, and forms of behaviour, such as
long, well-kept, clean fingernails and an ability to bow, dance, converse, and
cultivate an air of refined, supercilious ennui, facility in French furnished
evidence, for the young Tolstoi, of membership of a corporation that was
closed to the profane.123
121 Ibidem, vol. 2, 33–34.
122 For this quotation, we have used the translation by Rosemary Edmonds in Tolstoy, Childhood,
Boyhood, Youth, 268.
123 Lotman, ‘Russkaia literatura na frantsuzskom iazyke’, 351.

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Substantially the same point was made in the late 1860s, and in a way
that was equally critical of Francophone nobles, by a Baltic German baron,
Theodor Fircks. In an anti-nihilist tract written in French, Fircks described
the French language as a sort of Masonic sign by means of which people
who belonged to a certain world and aspired to be comme il faut could
recognize one another. People who knew French, Fircks argued, could regard
themselves as part of a civilized and elegant minority, a distinct nation which
lay within the Russian nation but was isolated from it by its habits, material
interests, political aspirations, and language use. The two nationalities,
representing society, on the one hand, and the people, on the other, could
have no mutual sympathy. Monolingual Russians, especially if they had
a little education, detested ‘la classe dénationalisée, la société devenue
française’ (the denationalized class, society that had become French). Society,
for its part, despised everything that was Russian and valued only what
came from abroad, especially from France, whose fashions, ways, customs,
and language it aped.124
There is a passage in his diary where Valuev too, like Nikolai Turgenev,
Tolstoi, and Fircks, reflects on the habit of French-speaking among the
Russian elite. For a period in the early months of 1868, Valuev suffered from
a serious eye infection, and on days when he was unable to read or write he
dictated entries for his diary to his second wife, Anna Ivanovna Vakul’skaia,
who was the daughter of a man from Riga,125 in what was evidently Valuev’s
124 Fircks, Le nihilisme en Russie, 74. Fircks makes it clear that French was not the only foreign
language that was used on Russian soil and argues that knowledge of other foreign languages
also conferred advantages on users of them. He identifies four categories of inhabitants according
to language use: first, the aristocracy, courtiers, people with a ‘brilliant’ education, in short
‘society’, who spoke French to the virtual exclusion of Russian (so Fircks maintains); second,
industrialists, pharmacists, factory managers, and subaltern employees, who spoke German but
did not know Russian or have any desire to learn it; third, other ‘privileged’ races, including some
with a superior civilization who had been incorporated in the empire as it expanded to what
Fircks thinks were its natural limits, and who spoke Finnish, Polish, Tatar, Greek, Armenian,
or Bulgarian; and fourth, the unprivileged race of people who spoke Russian, the national
language, use of which indicated various types of inferiority, that is to say, inferiority in level of
civilization, social position, and civil rights (ibidem, 78). This is another very schematic account
of language use that needs to be treated with caution. Did the elite really only speak French,
for example, and were all of the first three groups to which Fircks refers altogether ignorant of
Russian? However, the point to note here is that Fircks affirms a hierarchy in which command
of French confers the highest status (in the eyes of the social and bureaucratic elite, including
himself) and Russian monolingualism ensures the lowest (except in the eyes of the increasingly
populist intelligentsia, which Fircks despised). We return to Fircks in the last section of Chapter
7 below.
125 Dnevnik P.A. Valueva, vol. 2, 234 n. and 250 n.

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249

main domestic language, French. ‘It has occurred to me more than once’,
Valuev mused,
that it is not natural that French should have come to be the language of
the world which has the greatest influence among us. Chinese would suit
us much better. I am sorry that I don’t know it. It would be wonderfully
fitting, judging by what I know about China and what I see here, with
our needs, our ideas, and even our passions.126

Although Valuev thus affects to be puzzled by the sway of French in his
milieu, there is in truth no mystery about it: French is emblematic of the
international aristocratic culture that Russia imported in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries. This is a culture, moreover, with which
Valuev clearly identified himself, by repeatedly switching from Russian
into French in order to reflect on the manners of high society and the
accomplishments or faults of those who inhabited it. His own mastery of
society’s linguistic code bolstered his sense of self-worth, to which his diary
was a continuous testimony. An entry of 1874 is telling in this respect. ‘He
speaks freely and well’, Valuev comments after he has met the Hungarian
statesman Count Gyula Andrássy, who ‘expresses himself accurately and
touches on ticklish questions, avec une aisance de bonne compagnie qui
n’appartient qu’à ceux qui ont l’habitude de s’y trouver en première ligne’
(with that easy manner of people of high society which belongs only to
those who are used to finding themselves in its first rank).127 By shifting
into French at this point, Valuev explicitly acknowledges the worthiness of
his urbane new acquaintance, to be sure, but he also implicitly underscores
his own sense of belonging in the same international society.
We should bear in mind that the writers whose remarks on the significance of Russians’ use of French we have quoted had their reasons – even in
the non-fictional works from which these remarks are drawn – for underlining or exaggerating the social division that Russian cultural borrowing
and foreign-language use caused. Turgenev’s statements about Russian
francophonie, for instance, are situated for the most part in a volume in
which Turgenev is advocating the emancipation of the serfs, long before this
measure began to be discussed in earnest by the government. It therefore
serves his purpose to highlight noble detachment from the nation as a whole.
As a political exile, he is in any case alienated from the loyalist aristocracy
126 Ibidem, 241.
127 Ibidem, 297.

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The French L anguage in Russia

(and possibly somewhat out of touch with the development of Russian
society and cultural circles in the 1830s and 1840s). His comments on the
absence of Russian in private writing of various sorts, it might be added,
are not borne out by the extant archives of noble families. Tolstoi, when he
writes Youth, is looking back on his past at a period in his life when he was
turning against the values of the aristocracy to which he belonged. (He may
nevertheless have continued to harbour the prejudice he deplores in Youth:
in War and Peace, Lotman believes, he ascribed to Speranskii, the son of a
priest, a poorer command of French than Speranskii actually had.128) As
for Fircks, he uses his tract on ‘nihilism’ in Russia to present a schematic
account of language use which chimes with the partisan two-nation account
of Russia in the 1860s that was also being propounded at that time by the
so-called Native-Soil Conservatives.129
There is no doubt that the ability to use a foreign language was a source
of pride to the Russian social elite and helped symbolically to differentiate
the nobility from other social groups and to differentiate strata within the
nobility itself. At the same time, the degree to which cultural borrowing,
including language use, actually separated the elite from the mass of the
population may be overstated in the narrative offered by nineteenth-century
Russian cultural nationalists and in the Lotmanesque interpretation of
Russian culture. We have already referred to some factors that did help to
bind the nation together.130 Moreover, linguistic differentiation between
elite and mass was only one of many aspects, albeit a highly visible one,
of what seems an overwhelming assertion of the supremacy of the upper
class. After all, the Table of Ranks imposed a highly stratified structure on
Russian society and deeply affected social consciousness. Most important
of all, nobles were separated from the majority of the population by their
exclusive and jealously protected right to own serfs and by their de facto
ability to treat their peasants and servants as chattels. The extent of their
power over these fellow human beings is well illustrated by their effective
right to maintain harems of serf girls, as did Herzen’s father.
Nor does noble French-speaking appear so socially divisive if we accept
that nobles did have sufficient competence in Russian to communicate
effectively with their non-Francophone social inferiors. Evidently, it did not
seem to the anonymous English governess whom we cited earlier that the
multilingualism of the Russian aristocracy at which she marvelled in the
128 Lotman, ‘Russkaia literatura na frantsuzskom iazyke’, 352.
129 See the last section of Chapter 9.
130 See the first section of our Introduction above.

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1840s precluded ‘intercourse between the proprietors and the cultivators of
the soil’; Russian landowners, she believed, were generally ‘more accessible’
than the English.131 Indeed, there is abundant evidence to deter us from
concluding that the dominance of French in certain social venues and within
the private family circle made for widespread and profound ignorance of
their mother tongue among the Russian nobility, despite Vigel’’s waspish
remark about the pains that aristocrats took to be ignorant of Russian.
The man of letters Petr Viazemskii, born in 1792, tells us that his father,
Andrei, spoke French more than Russian, like almost all educated people
of his time, but nevertheless was perfectly capable of speaking Russian to
people of a generation born before the middle of the eighteenth century
and brought up without knowledge of French. Andrei would fluently and
accurately translate into Russian all the thoughts and turns of phrase that
took shape in his mind in French.132 Even some Russians who were brought
up abroad, such as Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov, the son of the Russian
ambassador in London in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
were well able to use their mother tongue, thanks in Mikhail’s case to his
exposure to a devoted Russian nanny for most of his childhood.133 Most
importantly, we should bear in mind the fact that it was from this very caste
of perfectly Francophone noblemen that there emerged the major poets and
men of letters – Karamzin, Zhukovskii, Viazemskii, Pushkin, Tiutchev, Ivan
Turgenev, and Lev Tolstoi are outstanding examples – who in the nineteenth
century created the modern Russian literary language and the classical
literary canon. It is difficult, we therefore contend, to sustain the view that
by inculcating French in their children the nobility suppressed knowledge
of Russian, either by design or through indifference towards the vernacular.
It might just as well be argued that the Russian noble upbringing had the
positive effect of stimulating cognitive abilities and broadening horizons
and that it thus contributed to Russia’s extraordinary cultural flowering
in the late imperial period.
We also question whether nobles were as conflicted by their adoption of
a foreign language as one might suppose from the language debate that took
place in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russian literature. Perhaps we
need in the first instance to challenge the assumption that bilingualism
131 Anon., Russian Chit Chat, 68.
132 Viazemskii, ‘Ocherki i vospominaniia’, 307.
133 Tipton, ‘Multilingualism in the Russian Nobility’, 184, where it is argued that Mikhail’s
proficiency in colloquial Russian may have contributed to the loyalty that Mikhail is known to
have inspired as an officer in the Russian army.

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necessarily fractures identity. Bilinguals, Judith Oster has observed, ‘do not
automatically belong to two cultures; one can speak a second language in
specific contexts or places, quite unrelated to one’s cultural identity’.134 In
any case, how simple and monolithic is identity? Can identity not be hybrid
and multifaceted? Only if we believe that some sort of binary choice has to
be made (in this instance between Russian and non-Russian identity) do
concerns about conflicted personalities and anomie really make sense. Last
but not least, how stable and durable is identity? Under certain pressures
people may be forced to arrange the factors that determine their sense of
themselves in some sort of hierarchy and to give precedence to one or some
of them, but in normal circumstances they may not have to choose between
different facets of a complex identity.
If bilingualism did give rise to the sort of inner conflict that classical
Russian writers and thinkers divined and students of them love to analyze,
then that conflict seems rarely to have caused nobles much angst when
they expressed their thoughts in their informal private writings. Nobles
code-switch repeatedly in their correspondence, often conforming silently
to certain rules,135 but rarely think it worth commenting on the fact. Admittedly, a noblewoman of the 1820s, Mariia Mukhanova, did wonder why
she was writing in French,136 but such cases seem rather exceptional. Few
reflections on language choice are to be found in the hundreds of letters
written by various members of the Vorontsov clan that have been studied
by Jessica Tipton.137 Emilie Murphy, likewise, notes in her examination of
Russian noblewomen’s travel diaries that whilst the women commented on
their use of English, German, Italian, and Russian, they did not comment on
their use of French.138 We are inclined, then, to agree with Michelle Lamarche
Marrese that on the whole noblemen and noblewomen experienced little
tension between a European identity and a Russian identity: ‘even nobles who
were immersed in European culture’, Lamarche Marrese wrote, ‘perceived
no opposition between their assimilation of foreign customs, manifested
in their frequent recourse to foreign languages, and their allegiance to
traditional forms of Russian culture’.139 No doubt this relaxed attitude
towards bilingualism and language-mixing was due to the fact that ‘the
134 Oster, Crossing Cultures, 60. One can also identify with a second culture and still be monolingual, Oster adds.
135 On these rules, see especially the second section of Chapter 6 below.
136 Quoted by Lamarche Marrese, ‘“The Poetics of Everyday Behavior” Revisited’, 701.
137 Tipton, ‘Multilingualism in the Russian Nobility’, 254.
138 Murphy, ‘Russian Noblewomen’s Francophone Travel Narratives (1777–1848)’, 104.
139 Lamarche Marrese, ‘“The Poetics of Everyday Behavior” Revisited’, 737.

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use of French was associated with gentility and proper noble behavior,
rather than rejection of national culture’.140 The identity that was being
expressed by the adoption of a foreign culture, including a foreign language,
we therefore maintain, was predominantly social rather than national,
pace the cultural nationalists and detractors of the nobility who deplored
Russian francophonie.

French beyond the metropolitan aristocracy
We should briefly consider, finally, how far the francophonie we have been
describing spread. We have in mind both the geographical and the social
extent of French-speaking in imperial Russia, although to some extent the
distinction between these two types of measurement is blurred, since French
travelled with its bearer. We are hampered in this task by the nature of the
sources available to us at this distance in time from our subject. We cannot
confidently infer that a phenomenon was negligible on the grounds that the
surviving documentation that might attest to its existence is exiguous by
comparison with the volume of texts (such as memoirs and papers in the
archives of prominent and long-lasting noble families) which have enabled
us to describe the use of French at court and among the metropolitan elite.
We are also obliged for practical reasons to place some limits on the scope
of this study. Nonetheless, questions need to be asked about the boundaries
of Russian francophonie, even if we do not have the means to provide full,
satisfying answers to all of them.
As far as the geographical reach of French in Russia is concerned, the
main hubs of Russian French-speakers were St Petersburg, the seat of the
court and the new political capital, and Moscow, the ancient capital and
historical centre of the powerful autocratic state that had emerged in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.141 However, the most prominent families
generally retired to their rural estates for the spring and summer months.
Provincial noble families who wished to maintain their social status or
aspired to improve it, for their part, needed to acquire and display this mark
of prestige, if they could afford to do so. Consequently, the noble manor
house, or usad’ba, whose culture has been so thoroughly and memorably
described by Priscilla Roosevelt, became an island of European civilization
140 Ibidem, 729.
141 It was during that period that an empire began to be built, even though it was not yet
designated by that name.

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in the vastness of rural Russia.142 We know from memoirs and other sources
of information how rich the social, artistic, and intellectual life of these
nests of gentry could be in places distant from St Petersburg and Moscow,
such as the homes of the Glinkas in the province of Tver’, the Griboedovs
in Smolensk, or the Tolstois at Iasnaia Poliana in Tula Province, let alone
the Golitsyns and the exceptionally wealthy Sheremetevs in many different
locations.
French remained the domestic language of Francophone aristocratic
families, of course, when they left metropolitan society, temporarily or
even permanently. Potemkina continued to address her granddaughter in
French, as she had in St Petersburg, when the girl stayed on her estate in
Khar’kov Province.143 Family members corresponded with one another in
French when they were in different places, as did Natal’ia Petrovna Golitsyna,
for instance, when she visited one of the family estates while her children
remained in St Petersburg. French was also used by many nobles who retired
to the countryside and then rarely left it. Extant letters written in the first
quarter of the nineteenth century by Aleksandr Bakunin (the father of the
future anarchist Mikhail), for example, attest to this nobleman’s continuing
preference for French in domestic correspondence. Although his estate at
Priamukhino was in the province of Tver’, the capital of which was regarded
in Russian literature as a typical provincial town,144 European languages
and ideas flourished there. Aleksandr was well able to write in Russian
and did not avoid it, especially when he mentioned distinctively Russian
subject-matter, such as a document certifying that a payment had been
made to exempt a serf from military conscription.145 However, he routinely
used French to express himself on a wide variety of everyday domestic
topics, ranging from the choice of a children’s nanny, the sale of oats, and
employment of workers for a factory to advice to his brother-in-law about
financial matters.146 Something similar may be said of Valerii Levashev, a
142 The point is made by Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate, xii, who speaks of the
rural estate as ‘the crucible of Russian high culture’ (318). Whether this development was due
to a flow of nobles to their country estates which was itself caused by the emancipation of the
nobility from compulsory service in 1762 is a moot point (see the fourth section of Chapter 1
above).
143 Khvoshchinskaia, ‘Vospominaniia Eleny Iur’evny Khvoshchinskoi’, RS, 1898, no. 7, 161.
144 Frazier, Romantic Encounters, 181. Tver’ is the supposed setting for Dostoevskii’s novel The
Devils (on which, see the final section of Chapter 9 below).
145 GATO, f. 103, op. 1, d. 1395, fols 25, 32.
146 Ibidem, fol. 23 v. On the multilingual nature of the environment in which Bakunin brought
up his children, see his (Russian) poem ‘Osuga’: see http://www.booksite.ru/usadba_new/world/
fulltext/stihi/97.htm.

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255

somewhat conscience-stricken nobleman of the mid-nineteenth century
who came from a highly educated family with literary connections and who
retired to the estate he had inherited in the province of Nizhnii Novgorod.147
Although we have not been able to study the incidence of French in the
Russian provinces in any systematic way, we do have sources that provide
snapshots of the probable interest in acquiring French across large swathes
of European Russia at certain times. One such source relates to the period
when the fashion for French-speaking among the aristocracy was near
its peak. In 1793, after the execution of Louis XVI in France, all French
people in Russia were made by the Russian authorities to swear an oath
of allegiance to the French monarch. In this connection, the authorities
drew up a register of all immigrants from France, of whom there were no
fewer than two and a half thousand. The majority of these were living in
St Petersburg or Moscow. Many of them were teaching French in private
households, which supports the belief that the capital cities were the chief
centres of Russian francophonie. Several hundred French people, though,
were living in the provinces. We do not have full data for all provinces,
but the lists that are available do clearly show that a considerable number
of French people residing in the provinces were working as governors or
governesses in families.148 We are also able to see in what sorts of family
they were employed.
In the province of Nizhnii Novgorod, for instance, we find French men and
women (whose names we give in brackets) in the families of the governor
himself, Ivan Savinovich Belavin (Antoine Devot, who by this time had been
working as a teacher in Russia for fourteen years), Nikolai Cherkasskii149
(Jean Baptiste Belliard and his wife), and a court councillor 150 by the name of
147 For an example of Levashev’s use of French, see the letter published at https://data.bris.ac.uk/
datasets/3nmuogz0xzmpx21l2u1m5f3bjp/Levashov%20text.pdf (the original is at GARF, f. 279, op. 1,
d. 69). On the possible reasons for this nobleman’s use of French (which could not have had to do
with maintaining a position in society, since Levashev was reclusive), see Offord and Rjéoutski,
‘Family Correspondence in the Russian Nobility’. It is possible that French was more readily used
by Russian nobles in the mid-nineteenth century for conventional epistolary purposes than for
conversational purposes, although in the absence of a large volume of reliable records of oral
linguistic practice in distant epochs we cannot be sure that this was the case.
148 Namen der in Gouvernement von Nijni-Novgorod sich aufhaltenden Franzosen; Verzeichniss
der im Gouvernement von Iziaslaw sich befindlichen Franzosen; Verzeichniss der in Gouvernement
von Saratow befindlichen Franzosen; Namen derjenigen Franzosen und Französinnen, die sich im
Gouvernement von Wologda aufhalten. These lists survive as booklets in the Russian National
Library (RNB). They were probably published separately. As a rule, it is indicated in a list that
the person named is a teacher, but in other cases the profession is not given.
149 Presumably Bekovich-Cherkasskii.
150 This is a civilian rank of the seventh class, equivalent to the army rank of lieutenant-colonel.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Proskudin in the village of Bogorodskoe (Pierre Deran and his wife). On the
estate of a certain Major Kozlovskii there was Jeanne Marie de Bonnegarde.
In the province of Saratov, a Frenchman (François Demoiselle) was teaching
children in the household of Court Councillor Ivan Il’ich Ogarev, who was the
economic director of the region,151 while Marie Muller was employed in the
Abalduev family in the village of Ulreika. In the province of Vologda, there
were French teachers in the families of Prince Ukhtomskii (Jean-Baptiste
de Résimont152), Colonel V. Beresnikov (Jean-Pierre Dubert), M. Klement’ev,
who was a naval captain of the third rank 153 (Elisabeth Montard), Lieutenant
Briancheninov (Julie Radiace), and the wife of one Colonel Menshekov
(Annette Marque). In Iziaslav Province, in the western part of the Ukraine,
French teachers were to be found in considerable numbers in Polish families,
including families of lower social rank as well as those of the titled nobility,
such as the Princes Sanguszko (Anne Servante), the Counts Proto-Potocki
(Jean Berger), and the Princes Lubomirski (Joseph Ainesquin). There were
also a few Russophone households in which French teachers worked in the
province of Iziaslav, such as that of a certain Colonel Vlasov (Anne Busquet).
While these scraps of information do not allow us to make broad generalizations with much confidence, they do seem to support our impression that
the study of French in the Russian provinces was still the exception rather
than the rule around the end of the eighteenth century. At the same time,
we see that French teachers were appearing not only in families belonging
to the high nobility but also in the households of military men of relatively
modest rank, from lieutenant upwards. It is also of note that the number of
teachers seems to have been greater in Russia’s Polish lands.154
151 One of Ogarev’s sons, Nikolai Ivanovich, would become a privy councillor and senator.
According to Senator Aleksandr Kochubei, Nikolai Ogarev was an enlightened and efficient man
and a true philosophe, brought up to follow the ideas of Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He
married a niece of Novosil’tsev, one of the circle of men close to Alexander I in the early years
of his reign. See http://tatiskray.ru/index.html?4/065.htm.
152 Résimont would subsequently become a teacher in the families of the Sablukovs and
the Durnovos. He compiled handwritten textbooks for his pupils and would later become an
outstanding engineer.
153 Also known as lieutenant-captain, this is a naval rank of the eighth class, equivalent to the
rank of major in the army.
154 A similar picture emerges from an analysis carried out by Maiia Lavrinovich of the posts
available in provincial noble households, around 1820, for young women who had studied at a
school for prospective teachers set up in St Petersburg by the Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna.
The greatest number (six) of requests for teachers, who would be expected to teach French
among other subjects, came from families in the western province of Smolensk. Four requests
came from Simbirsk and three each from the provinces of Kaluga, Kursk, Tver’, and Voronezh.
Most of the posts were in families of the middling or lower gentry (at the sixth, eighth, ninth,

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257

It is tempting also to suggest that French had relatively wide currency
among the nobility in the Baltic region, although the subject requires further
investigation. As early as the 1730s, immediately after the Noble Land Cadet
Corps had been founded in St Petersburg, we see that the Baltic nobility
seemed more interested than the Russian nobility in the study of French.155
As far as language practice in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries is concerned, we find noble families from the Baltic region, as
well as aristocratic families in the metropolises, in which French was not
only studied but actually became the chief language of communication
within the family. One such family was that of the Barons von Lieven, which
was elevated to princely rank at the beginning of the reign of Nicholas I in
recognition of the services of Charlotte von Lieven, who had been governess
to the children of the Emperor Paul. Another was the clan of the Barons von
Meyendorff, members of which made good at the Russian court not least,
perhaps, because of their excellent French.156
French also functioned in the Baltic region, during the Alexandrine age,
as a vehicle for the collective discussion of the interests of the nobility, as attested by a memorandum submitted to the Diet of Courland in 1817 by Georg
Friedrich von Fircks, the Marshal of the Nobility in Goldingen (Kuldiga), one
of the capitals of the Duchy of Courland. Reporting the intention of Alexander
I to grant personal liberty to the serfs in the Baltic provinces, Fircks seized
the opportunity to seek benefits for the region more generally. He urged the
diet to press for fundamental laws and inviolable rights for all social groups,
the establishment of a supreme court empowered to try cases in the light
of local laws and customs and in the local language (which was Latvian),
and a commission to make proposals about the future relationship between
the different classes in the region and between the region and the imperial
state. Firck’s memorandum reveals a strong sense of the religious, cultural,
and linguistic difference of Courland – and by implication the other Baltic
provinces (Estland and Livonia) – from Russia. One therefore suspects not
and twelfth ranks in the Table of Ranks). The applicants were evenly divided between the
civilian and military spheres. These were families whose access to the best teachers of French
was limited by their place of residence and their relatively modest f inancial resources. See
Lavrinovich, ‘Soediniaia “blagosostoianie s obshcheiu pol’zoiu”’.
155 See the data on the numbers of Baltic and Russian pupils studying French at the Cadet
Corps in 1732 and 1737 in Rjéoutski, ‘Le français et d’autres langues’, 29.
156 See Offord and Rjéoutski, ‘Family Correspondence in the Russian Nobility’, together with
examples of the Meyendorffs’ family correspondence in French from the middle of the age of
Alexander I. These documents are reproduced on our project website at https://data.bris.ac.uk/
datasets/3nmuogz0xzmpx21l2u1m5f3bjp/Meyendorff%20letters%20text.pdf with the kind
permission of GARF, where they are housed in f. 573, op. 1, d. 437.

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The French L anguage in Russia

only that French was a language in which the traditionally German-speaking
nobility of the region were competent but also that it functioned as a cohesive
imperial language which was more palatable than Russian to a loyal and
valuable minority who had a sense of partial autonomy.157
We should bear in mind too just how exceptional the Europeanized society
of the noble manor house must have seemed in provincial Russia. The point
might be illustrated with reference to the province of Tambov, situated in the
fertile black-earth region some three hundred miles south-east of Moscow.
Scattered around the province were sites of great cultural sophistication:
the estate at Mara belonging to the family of Evgenii Baratynskii, a close
friend of Pushkin and himself a poet in the so-called Pushkin Pleiad; the
Chicherins’ estate at Umet; the Krivtsovs’ estate at Liubichi. Used to receiving
the latest works of Pushkin and Balzac, Krivtsov’s wife apparently found St
Petersburg society relatively shallow when she repaired to the capital for the
winter of 1834–1835.158 Boris Chicherin, who would become a major liberal
thinker, describes in his memoirs the sparkling cultural and intellectual life
of these estates. Here, deep in the Russian countryside, Chicherin’s mother
carried on an affectionate correspondence in French with Krivtsova, her
‘sœur de choix et d’affection’ (sister of choice and affection).159 Such estates,
though, must have stood out as glaringly untypical. Pushkin, in Eugene
Onegin, Lermontov, in A Hero of Our Time, and Turgenev, in Rudin, all imply
that Tambov is the epitome of a tedious provincial backwater.160
In one sense, the rural estates of Europeanized nobles (distant as many
estates were from St Petersburg and Moscow) cannot be accurately described
as provincial environments at all, since their owners, in many cases, moved
between the provinces and the capitals, and indeed between Russia and
Western Europe, bearing Europe’s cultures and languages with them.161
The lives of nobles of this order were insulated from the humdrum existence at which writers enjoyed poking fun, as Gogol’ did when he had his
narrator in Dead Souls (1842) exclaim, as he described the attire of a group
of ladies at a provincial ball, ‘No, this is not the provinces, this is a capital
city, it’s Paris itself!’162 It may even be – although we do not have sufficient
157 RGB, f. 183, op. 1, d. 286, especially fols 2 v.‒3, 23 v.‒26 v.
158 Chicherin, ‘Iz moikh vospominanii’, 517–518.
159 Ibidem, 507; see also 515, 517–518, 520.
160 Evgenii Onegin, Canto 5, Stanza 27, in Pushkin, PSS, vol. 6, 109; ‘Bela’, in Lermontov, IP (1963),
vol. 2, 382; Rudin, in Turgenev, PSSP, vol. 6, 353.
161 Lounsbery, ‘“No, this is not the Provinces!”’, 262.
162 Mertvye dushi, in Gogol, PSS, vol. 6, 163; quoted by Lounsbery, ‘“No, this is not the Provinces!”’,
273.

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259

evidence to say so with confidence – that provincialdom was defined as
much by social station as by place of residence and that ignorance or poor
knowledge of French was felt to be a marker of provincial status.163 It is
therefore important to ask not merely how far French spread geographically
in Russia but also how far it spread socially, within the noble stratum and
beyond it. We cannot say, in answer to this question, that French was the
language only of the high aristocracy. The Francophone Bakunins and the
Levashevs, whom we mentioned above, or the families of Herzen, Karamzin,
and Pushkin, were not in the same grand social rank as the Chernyshevs,
Gagarins, Golitsyns, Kurakins, Naryshkins, Potemkins, Sheremetevs,
Stroganovs, Tolstois, Volkonskiis, Vorontsovs, and other great clans whose
members make frequent entrances in our history. Nor can we say, though,
that French was a language that was widely used by the whole noble estate
over the century and a half on which our study is focused.
It is difficult to ascertain how far French percolated into the families of
the middling or lesser nobility, who made up perhaps 80 percent of the class
and many of whom did not own enough serfs to do more than subsist on their
estates, to which they were confined by their economic circumstances.164 We
have much less information about the unglamorous lives of these families
than about those of the great nobility. Some knowledge of French must have
spread among this stratum as schools, both public and private, appeared
in the second half of the eighteenth century in such provincial centres as
Belgorod, Bogoroditsk, Kursk, Orel, and Tula.165 We also know that those
sons of the lower nobility who studied at institutions such as the Noble Land
Cadet Corps (where a majority of students, from the mid-1760s on, came from
the petty gentry) learned French, and German too, to a high standard.166
Something similar might be said of the girls who studied at the Smolny
Institute. By mastering French, as well as acquiring good manners, they
could rise socially above their gentry background and might, on graduating
from the institute, end up at court or marry advantageously, as did Evgeniia
Sergeevna Smirnova, a captain’s daughter who in 1787 married the poet
Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Dolgorukov. However, the total number of such
students was hardly sufficient to bring about a significant change in the
proportion of French-speakers in this social stratum as a whole. The fact
163 We are grateful to Sara Dickinson for raising this question.
164 Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate, xiii.
165 Glagoleva, ‘“Gramote i pisat’ obuchen”’, forthcoming. Glagoleva examines the educational
level (of which the standard reached in French was considered indicative) attained by nobles
in certain Russian provinces.
166 See Chapter 2 on language study at this institution.

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The French L anguage in Russia

that French did not quickly spread throughout the nobility is amusingly
illustrated by the case of Anna Labzina, née Iakovleva, who was born in
1758 and who may not have been altogether exceptional. The daughter of a
middling nobleman who was an official in the mining service, Labzina (as
she became known after her second marriage) was brought up on a country
estate in the Urals region, east of the River Volga. That is to say, she came
from a place and a social level where there was little or no access in the first
half of Catherine’s reign to the Gallicized education that the great clans
and the nobility resident in the metropolises of St Petersburg and Moscow
were beginning to favour. When, in the 1770s, she arrived in Moscow, Anna
thought that the roman everybody was talking about in the capital was a
person, rather than a genre of French literature with which young ladies
were becoming infatuated.167
Of one thing we can be sure, though, when we consider the social distribution of French-speakers in imperial Russia: formidable obstacles stood in
the way of nobles who were not well-to-do when they tried to ensure that
their children would have a command of French. Accumulation of this
cultural capital required a supply of economic capital which members of the
middling and lower nobility either did not have or must have struggled to
obtain. Families in this stratum may not have been able to afford to employ
language teachers. As Ol’ga Glagoleva observes, the provincial nobleman
Andrei Bolotov was dismayed not to be able to hire a French governess for
his daughter Elizaveta, who was born in 1767.168 Some noblemen of this
station might teach their children themselves, as did Andrei Chikhachev,
who apparently had imperfect French but tried hard to learn any new
words he encountered and was his son’s first tutor in that language.169 Even
if tutors were available to such families, their quality may have decreased
the further away from the capital cities a family lived and the more meagre
the funds at its disposal.170 Nor was it really sufficient merely to employ a
167 Labzina, Vospominaniia Anny Evdokimovny Labzinoi, 48. For translated extracts from her
ego-writing, see Russian Women, 1698–1917, ed. by Bisha et al., 119–122, 243–248; biographical
information is on 118–119. Together with her second husband, Labzina played a prominent role
in the Masonic movement in Alexandrine Russia. It is not obvious, incidentally, that any of the
metropolitan Russians with whom she came into contact after her arrival from the provinces
found it difficult to communicate with Labzina as a result of her monolingualism.
168 Glagoleva, ‘Dream and Reality of Russian Provincial Young Ladies’, 37, 26.
169 Antonova, An Ordinary Marriage, 165. Nonetheless, the provincial gentry were consuming
and contributing to an active and independent print culture, as Antonova’s detailed study of
the life of this modest nineteenth-century family in the province of Vladimir indicates (ibidem,
35).
170 Kusber, ‘Kakie znaniia nuzhny dvorianinu dlia zhizni?’, 286.

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Francophone tutor or governess. Teachers of accomplishments associated
with the style of life of the European nobility, such as singing, dancing,
and playing musical instruments, were required as well, and even drama
teachers, for performance in theatrical productions schooled a pupil in polite
and elegant behaviour.171 Nor, finally, did expenditure end with payment for
tuition of all sorts. The very way of life of the charmed Francophone circle
required participation in the types of sociability we have described, with
all the expense (on fashionable clothes, servants, and means of transport)
that that entailed.172
*
The high Russian nobility, we have argued, might be better described as
plurilingual rather than merely bilingual. Nevertheless, French had a special
place in the noble’s linguistic repertoire. It was a pre-requisite for success
in high society, where it was conspicuously deployed at all the main sites
of noble sociability, from the ball and the drawing-room to the theatre,
the opera, the spa, and – in the ages of Catherine II and Alexander I – the
Masonic lodge. It was associated, in society, not only with politesse and the
values and sensibility which an aristocratic upbringing sought to inculcate
but also with light-heartedness, a desire to amuse rather than to enlighten,
and a wit that could be used to cutting effect. As many reminiscences attest,
the ability to speak it with ease in society helped to define an aristocrat, at
least until wider educational opportunities spread knowledge of it across a
broader social spectrum and reduced the exclusivity of this accomplishment.

171 As the director of the Naval Cadet Corps was aware: see the second section of Chapter 2
above.
172 We have little information on the study of languages in the merchant class. On the introduction of the teaching of modern languages in ecclesiastical educational institutions in the
eighteenth century, see the second section of Chapter 2 above.

Chapter 5
French in diplomacy and other official domains
In the two preceding chapters, we have examined the use of French at the
Russian court and in Russian high society, the principal domains in which
francophonie served as a marker of social prestige and an expression of an
outward-looking, pan-European identity. However, that same aristocracy
which emulated the habits of the court, frequented the social venues we
have identified, and circulated among European peers also occupied most
of the high offices in the civilian administration of the Russian Empire and
the high ranks in its armed forces. Nor was the boundary between the social
life of the aristocracy and its life in imperial service rigid. Members of the
same charmed circle met in different settings, social and professional, and
they corresponded in different capacities, as both friends and colleagues. It
was only to be expected, therefore, that they should to some extent function bilingually in the official or military realm as well as in the social
realm – or rather, that male members of the elite should function in this
way, for women, whose conspicuous introduction into the social sphere can
be associated with the rise of francophonie in Russia, were entirely absent
from the professional sphere. We therefore aim in this chapter to form an
impression of the extent to which French was part of Russia’s official life,
as well as its social life, to discern the limits of its penetration in the official
sphere, and to sense the pace of its progress there.
We shall go about this task mainly by studying language practice in
the field of diplomacy, using a small part of the enormous extant archival
holdings of documents that relate to the conduct of Russian foreign affairs. By
focusing on this field, through which Russia’s formal relations with the European world expanded and developed and were maintained in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, we thus complement our investigation of the role
of foreign languages in the Europeanization of the Russian elite in the social
and cultural spheres. After some introductory remarks on the ascendancy of
French as Europe’s principal diplomatic language in the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries, we consider foreign-language use in Russia before
the age of Peter the Great and the development of language instruction,
during Peter’s reign, for men serving in offices dealing with foreign affairs.
Although French is not usually associated with the Petrine period, we suggest
that it was in fact at that time that the foundations for knowledge of French
in the Russian diplomatic community were laid. In the second section of the

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The French L anguage in Russia

chapter, we examine language choice in the treaties that Russia concluded
during the eighteenth century, placing this subject in a broad European
context in which French was supplanting Latin as a diplomatic language.
In the third section, we dwell on the increasing familiarity with French in
the Russian diplomatic community and its use for the conduct of relations
with other powers, looking briefly at its occurrence in the correspondence
of certain multilingual Russian diplomats of the first half of the eighteenth
century, in diplomatic ceremonial, and in diplomatic documents. Not that
the adoption of French for diplomatic purposes precluded the use of other
foreign languages in the diplomatic domain. In fact, various languages were
employed in exchanges (both oral and written) with foreign diplomats in
Russia during the first half of the eighteenth century. In our fourth section,
we note the influx of loanwords of French origin which accompanied the
rise of French as the pre-eminent language of Russian diplomacy in the
mid-eighteenth century. In the fifth section, we turn to the use of French as
a language of internal communication for the management of foreign affairs
in the reign of Catherine II. Continuing to explore this extension of the use
of French for internal purposes, we devote the sixth section to comparison
of the way in which nineteenth-century Russian diplomats and officials who
dealt with foreign affairs communicated with one another, on the one hand,
and the way in which they communicated with officials serving in other
branches of the administration and institutions of the Russian Empire, on
the other. The correspondence on which this comparison is based helps us
both to define the parameters within which French was used in the official
domain and to gain further insight into the role of language choice in marking the boundary between the official and private spheres. Next, we briefly
consider a few examples of the use of French – in royal correspondence, in
the Third Department which was established in 1826 after the Decembrist
Revolt, and in verbal discussion of government business in the 1860s – for
official purposes outside the diplomatic community and the realm of foreign
policy. Finally, we explore the use of French as a working language in the
Academy of Sciences which, although it was of course a scholarly body, was
also an imperial and bureaucratic institution and therefore, in some sense,
an official domain.
Our sketch of the use of French for official purposes outside the diplomatic
domain will be somewhat impressionistic, for at least two reasons. First,
the volume of relevant primary source material that survives (thanks to the
fact that it is official and consequently has been carefully preserved) is far
larger than we can tap in a single chapter of this general investigation of the
history of French in Russia. Secondly, the area we are entering is perhaps

French in diplomac y and other official domains

265

even less well surveyed in secondary literature than some other areas of
the territory we are exploring. There are therefore pertinent questions
which we do not properly address here but which future studies may be
able to answer. Just how widely was French used in the upper reaches of the
administration outside the department that dealt with foreign affairs? Was
the ethnic composition of the imperial bureaucracy, in which non-Russian
personnel, particularly members of the Baltic German nobility, played a
prominent role, an important determinant of language choice? To what
extent was French known among the legal profession and the clergy, and for
what purposes was it ever used in those milieus? Incomplete as our survey
of French in the official domain of imperial Russia might be, nonetheless
it does support one of the overarching conclusions of our monograph. The
adoption of French by post-Petrine Russian noblemen for various purposes
by no means turned them into an estranged caste of alien monolingual
beings who struggled to express themselves in a half-forgotten vernacular.

The Chancery of Foreign Affairs and language training for
Russian diplomats
Across the continent with which Russia became more closely connected
during the eighteenth century, French had already become one of the major
languages of diplomacy, together with German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish. Indeed, in the course of the eighteenth century, it became Europe’s
pre-eminent diplomatic language, and it continued to occupy that position at least up until the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Various political and
cultural factors help to explain its growing currency and status in European
diplomacy over the period with which we are concerned. These factors
include the declining power of the Vatican and of Spain under Charles
II, who reigned from 1665 to 1700, and the differences between German
dialects, which complicated communication between diplomats within
the Holy Roman Empire and encouraged the use of a lingua franca there.
The prestige of France, meanwhile, was increasing, and Paris was in the
ascendant as a diplomatic centre during the reign of Louis XIV. Moreover, the
relatively relaxed French manner of conducting diplomatic business, which
contrasted with the formal and circumspect style associated with Spanish
diplomacy, was becoming popular across the continent and soon came to be
accepted as standard.1 The popularity of the French model of noble education
1

Black, A History of Diplomacy, 75.

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The French L anguage in Russia

also contributed to the emergence of French as the international language
of diplomacy, since in many European countries the most distinguished
diplomatic positions were traditionally reserved for the representatives of
social elites. By the late seventeenth century, these elites often had a very
good command of French and, at the same time, had become reluctant to
undergo formal tuition in Latin. Of course, in some European countries,
such as Russia, exposure to the French educational model had not yet taken
place. In any case, Russia was only just beginning to reshape its diplomatic
system on the European model. This it achieved by establishing permanent
diplomatic representation in the main European countries (it had had hardly
any missions there until the eighteenth century), creating new diplomatic
ceremonial practice on European lines (it followed practice at the French
court in particular), and providing training, including the teaching of foreign
languages, for those serving in the diplomatic corps.2
From the age of Peter the Great, Russia too, like other European countries,
would increasingly use French for diplomatic purposes both as a language in
which Russian representatives could communicate with foreign diplomats
and as a language of internal communication within the department of the
administration that dealt with foreign affairs.3 By the reign of Alexander I, a
century later, French was indisputably the dominant means of both external
and internal communication in that department.4 For much of the seventeenth
century, though, Russians had scarcely had any knowledge of or recourse to
French, even in direct negotiations with France. Muscovy’s need for people
with knowledge of foreign languages had largely been met by foreigners.
Expatriates from Polish lands often taught Latin and Polish, though we do
not know much about their activity.5 Moreover, most of the translators and
interpreters who worked in the Russian Chancery of Foreign Affairs in the
first half of the seventeenth century were of foreign origin. Under Michael
2 On the reconstruction of the diplomatic system in Russia, see Ageeva, Diplomaticheskii
tseremonial imperatorskoi Rossii XVIII v., 32–38.
3 The name and functions of the department of the administration that dealt with relations
with foreign countries changed over the period we are examining. In the seventeenth century
it was known as the Chancery of Foreign Affairs (Posol’skii prikaz, literally ‘ambassadors’
chancery’). Following the administrative reorganization undertaken by Peter the Great and his
establishment of ‘colleges’, or ministries, in 1718, the department in question was the College
of Foreign Affairs (Kollegiia inostrannykh del). In 1802, this college was subordinated to the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministerstvo inostrannykh del) set up by Alexander I, and in 1832,
under Nicholas I, the college was formally abolished and absorbed into the Ministry.
4 Judging by the documents published in the series Vneshniaia politika Rossii XIX i nachala
XX veka. Dokumenty rossiiskogo ministerstva inostrannykh del.
5 Voevoda, ‘Iazykovaia podgotovka diplomatov i perevodchikov’, 20–21.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

267

Romanov, for example, only seventeen out of 69 translators and interpreters
in this department were Russians, and few of these learned Western European
languages or received any financial support from the department while they
were training.6 From around the middle of the century, languages did begin
to be taught in several institutions (from or at the dates given in brackets),
namely: the Andreevskii Monastery (1646?), the Chudov Monastery (1650s–
1660s), the Spasskii Monastery (1665), the Printing School (1681), the school
run by the two Greek Leichoudes brothers (1685–1694) in Moscow, and the
Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy that arose out of that school.7 Several former pupils
of these institutions became translators at the Chancery of Foreign Affairs.
However, the only languages taught in these institutions were Latin and
Classical Greek, and – in the second Leichoudes’ school (1697–1700) – Italian.
Although no detailed study has been made of the languages used in the
chancery during the second half of the seventeenth century, we do have some
indirect information on that score. Ingrid Maier, who has examined extant
issues of Vesti-Kuranty, the handwritten digest of articles from European
newspapers that was prepared for the tsar and his entourage from the 1620s,
came to the conclusion that the foreign languages used most frequently
during the reign of Tsar Alexis were German, Dutch, and Polish. Searching
in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents (RGADA), she found 466
newspapers in German, 123 in Dutch, 28 in Polish, and one in Latin for the
period 1660–1670. She notes the surprising disappearance of Swedish, which
had commonly been used in the preceding period. Newspapers in French
did not appear until 1693, with one exception in 1676.8 There were certainly
some individuals at the chancery in the second half of the seventeenth
century9 who could translate from French, but it seems that there was
6 Kunenkov, ‘Perevodchiki i tolmachi’. Kunеnkov speaks of two translators who had knowledge
of Western European languages in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. Beliakov finds
only two translators and four interpreters who had knowledge of English in the whole of the
reign of Tsar Alexis, and most of these were of English or Scottish origin: Beliakov, ‘Spetsialisty
po angliiskomu iazyku v Posol’skom prikaze’, 15–16.
7 Voevoda, ‘Iazykovaia podgotovka diplomatov i perevodchikov’, 20–21. On the school of the
Leichoudes brothers, see Ramazanova, ‘Bogoiavlenskaia shkola Likhudov’, idem, ‘Brat’ia Likhudy
i nachal’nyi etap istorii Slaviano-greko-latinskoi Akademii’, and the recent book by Chrissidis,
An Academy at the Court of the Tsars.
8 See Vesti-Kuranty, ed. by Maier, 74–76. Beliakov thinks that translators from English were the
second or third most important group in the Chancery of Foreign Affairs in the second half of the
seventeenth century, if we are to judge by their salaries: see Beliakov, ‘Spetsialisty po angliiskomu
iazyku v Posol’skom prikaze’, 16. On Vesti-Kuranty, see also the first section of Chapter 2 above.
9 A collection designated ‘Arrival of Foreigners in Russia’ contains occasional documents in
French that were translated into Russian from the 1680s: RGADA, f. 150.

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no more than one such translator there at any one time. As for Russian
diplomats, not only did they themselves often lack French; sometimes,
when they visited France, the interpreters who accompanied them did not
know that language either.10
More generally, seventeenth-century Muscovites had scant knowledge
of the world beyond Muscovy’s borders. Some, it is true, had been abroad
even before the age of Peter the Great, particularly to Poland, the Germanspeaking lands, and even Italy, but only in small numbers. In Peter’s reign,
though, signif icant numbers of young men began to be sent to foreign
countries to learn new skills, trades, and professions. For example, a cohort of
courtiers was dispatched in 1697–1699, 45 of them to Italy and 22 to England
and Holland. In 1702, an even larger number were sent from Arkhangel-Gorod
to Holland to study nautical matters. In the years 1712–1715, a large group of
young noblemen from the highest Russian families (the Golovins, Naryshkins,
the Princes Cherkasskii, Golitsyn, Dolgorukii, Urusov, and so forth) studied
navigation in Rotterdam and Zaandam (where Peter himself had briefly
observed shipbuilding technique during his Grand Embassy to the West in
1697). Then in 1716, a group of Russian artists went to Venice, Florence, and
other European cities. Naturally, many of the Russians who studied abroad
in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries acquired a command
of foreign languages and adapted themselves to foreign ways of life. Some
of them went on to become diplomats, although the original purpose of
sending them abroad had not been to prepare them for a diplomatic career.
One notable example, to whom we shall have occasion to return, was Prince
Vasilii Dolgorukov, who spent several years in France, having arrived there
in 1687 with an embassy that included his uncle Prince Iakov Dolgorukov
and Prince Iakov Myshetskii.11 Another was the above-mentioned Prince
Ivan Shcherbatov, who studied French in London with a French-speaking
personal tutor to whom we referred earlier.12 Shcherbatov seems to have
10 This was the case with the Russian embassy that went to France in 1654: Konstantin Machekh­
in, the leader of this embassy, had no French, nor did his translator Boldvinov. Machekhin’s
speech to the king was translated into Flemish (i.e. Dutch) and then into French: see Martens,
Recueil des traités et conventions conclus par la Russie avec les puissances étrangères (hereafter
Martens), vol. 13, xxiii. Similar difficulties arose during another Russian embassy to France, in
1668: see Schaub, ‘Avoir l’oreille du roi’.
11 RBS, vol. Dabelov–Diad’kovskii, 511–522 (article by V. Korsakova). We shall continue to use the
form ‘Dolgorukov’, a common version of the family name Dolgorukii, in the text of this chapter.
However, in references to archival documents in our footnotes and in the first section of our
bibliography, we shall retain the form Dolgorukii if that was the form used in the description
of the document in question.
12 On Shcherbatov’s study of French, see the first section of Chapter 1 above.

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269

applied himself to the study of French very diligently, for in quite a short time
he wrote about 120 letters in that language and made several translations
from French into Russian, including one of a work by John Law.13 Another
notable statesman – although in this case not a diplomat – who benefited
from lengthy sojourns abroad while he was a child and young man was Ivan
Betskoi. A son of Prince Ivan Trubetskoi, Betskoi was born out of wedlock
while his father was a prisoner of war in Sweden, where he was educated
up to the age of twelve, after which he was sent to Denmark to continue
his education.14 In 1721, he served as secretary to Russia’s ambassador in
Paris, the above-mentioned Vasilii Dolgorukov, and he remained in the
French capital as a student from 1722 until 1726. He then entered service
under his father, who was governor of Kiev, with instructions to conduct
correspondence ‘in the German and French languages, because he [was]
skilled at that’.15
Of course, French was not the only foreign language that engaged the
attention of Russian students abroad and of Russia’s budding diplomats.
Some studied Italian, which, as we have already noted, was an important
diplomatic language in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,
especially in the Mediterranean region. Prince Petr Golitsyn, who would
serve as the Russian minister in Vienna from 1701 to 1706 and later as a
senator and president of the College of Commerce, learned Italian while he
was a student of navigation in Venice. Count Petr Tolstoi, who would become
one of Peter’s most trusted diplomats, was also sent to Venice, in 1697, in
order to study navigation and he too learned Italian there. Prince Boris
Kurakin spent some time in Venice as well, studying various sciences and
languages. He would subsequently serve as a Russian representative at the
Holy See and the court of the Elector of Hanover, minister plenipotentiary
in London, minister to the United Provinces of the Netherlands, and, finally,
Russian ambassador in Paris.
Nor was it only the sons of the elite who went abroad to study and who
eventually found themselves in a diplomatic career because, or partly
because, they had acquired proficiency in foreign languages. One of the
best-known non-nobles who followed this career path was Petr Postnikov,
the son of an official in the Chancery of Foreign Affairs. Postnikov (who,
13 See Troitskii, ‘“Sistema” Dzhona Lo i ee russkie posledovateli’.
14 On Betskoi, see the third section of Chapter 2 above. It was common practice in the Russian
nobility to give illegitimate children a truncated form of the family surname, as in this case.
Other examples include Pnin (Repnin) and Rontsov (Vorontsov).
15 Quoted from RBS, vol. Betankur–Biakster (article by P. Maikov), 5.

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The French L anguage in Russia

incidentally, would become the first doctor of medicine in Russia) had been
educated at the Leichoudes’ school, where he studied Greek and Latin. He
went on to defend a thesis at the University of Padua, where he learned
Italian and French. In 1697–1698, he accompanied Peter’s Grand Embassy,
serving as an interpreter and arranging accommodation. During this stay
in the West, he was sent to Versailles, no doubt because he knew French,
even though Peter himself did not visit France during this foreign trip. When
Peter urgently returned to Russia in August 1698 to put down the revolt of
the strel’tsy, or royal musketeers, Postnikov was ordered to go to Vienna
with another official, Prokofii Voznitsyn, to hold talks with the Turks. At
first, he absented himself in Naples but he was required to return at once to
Vienna, where it was impossible to do without him, as Voznitsyn explained:
Otherwise you should fear the sovereign’s anger, because you have been
instructed to be with me on the Turkish committee, and it can’t take place
without you, and there will be no-one to do the business, and there is a
new Turkish ambassador, the Greek Mavrocordatos: you’ve been assigned
to this business because on top of everything else you can speak to him
in Greek, Italian, French, and Latin, and he knows all those languages.16

When he went back to Russia, Postnikov continued to work for the Chancery
of Foreign Affairs, while also practising medicine. His role was to translate
and write ‘the necessary letters in Latin, French, and Italian in the Chancery
of Foreign Affairs as the need arises’.17 He also produced the first translation
of the Koran into Russian, from a French translation of the original.18 In
1701, he was ordered to go abroad again, this time to France, to the court of
Louis XIV, where he busied himself with the recruitment of skilled people for
employment in Russia and the procurement of instruments, French clothing,
and so forth. He continued to serve as a Russian diplomatic representative
in Western European countries until 1710. Nor was his knowledge of foreign
languages, especially French, Postnikov’s only ‘cultural capital’. Another
Petrine diplomat, Andrei Matveev, who met him in Paris, noted that he also
had a good knowledge of ‘European affairs’, which he had acquired while
studying abroad and travelling round the continent.19
16 Quoted from Krylov, ‘Petr Postnikov’. On Postnikov, see also Zapol’skaia and Strakhova,
‘Zabytoe imia: Petr Postnikov’.
17 Ibidem.
18 Postnikov’s translation was done from the French translation by André Du Rieu.
19 Quoted from Krylov, ‘Petr Postnikov’. A brother of Postnikov’s (who was also called Petr, it
seems!) attached similar importance to the study of foreign languages, especially French, which

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271

Postnikov, then, would seem to bear out the impression of Peter’s reign
as a relatively meritocratic time when men from different social strata
could make good and occupy responsible positions. What the men who
flourished under Peter had in common was commitment to Peter’s reforms
and sympathy with his outward-looking mentality. It is striking how many
of them, irrespective of their social background, were involved at one time
or another in the conduct of foreign affairs, acquired a good command of
foreign languages, and took part in missions abroad.20
It was also in the Petrine age that language training designed specifically
to prepare future diplomats and translators in the Chancery of Foreign
Affairs began to develop. There is evidence of official interest in such training as early as 1701, when one of the translators in the chancery, Nicolaus
Schwimmer, was asked to open a school whose pupils would be obliged
to serve at the chancery after they had completed their studies.21 From
1703, moreover, the chancery ran another school with a particular focus on
languages. This was the school founded by a prisoner of war, the German
pastor Johann Ernst Glück, who reported directly to the chancery’s highest official. French was introduced in Glück’s school on the orders of the
tsar, which suggests that it was felt in the chancery that knowledge of this
language was becoming a priority.22
he had studied in France for seven years, starting in 1702. Given the social success of the first
Postnikov, the second Postnikov’s wager on foreign languages, and French in particular, seems
to be no coincidence.
20 We should add that among those who were close to Peter, there were quite a few people who
knew French, some of whom served as diplomats, such as the following: the naval officer Konon
Zotov (1690–1742), who carried out diplomatic assignments in France from 1715; Vasilii Suvorov
(1705–1775), who was a translator in Peter’s time and who at the age of nineteen translated a book
about Vauban from French (Vasilii Suvorov was the father of the famous military commander);
and Sergei Volchkov (1707–1772), who was a translator in the Chancery of Foreign Affairs and who
would go on to translate a number of books by the Dutch jurist Grotius, the above-mentioned
Bellegarde, and others, as well as compiling a French-German-Latin and Russian dictionary.
Mention should also be made of three Volkov brothers (Grigorii, Petr, and Boris), who were sons
of a high-ranking official in the department of foreign affairs. These brothers studied foreign
languages, both in Russia and abroad, including French, German, Dutch, Italian, and Latin, and
became involved in foreign affairs in some way: both Grigorii and Petr carried out diplomatic
missions in Europe and both Petr and Boris translated from various languages for the Chancery
of Foreign Affairs, compiling political news from foreign newspapers and providing material for
the first Russian newspaper, Vedomosti. See O nemetskikh shkolakh v Moskve v pervoi chetverti
XVIII v., 237–241.
21 RGADA, f. 150, op. 1 (1703), d. 1, fol. 54. Young men were sent to this school by the chancery
to learn German, Latin, and French (but it is not certain that French was actually taught there!).
22 Ibidem, fol. 9 v.

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The French L anguage in Russia

It is possible that the increased interest in foreign-language learning in
the early years of Peter’s reign was to some extent encouraged by western
educational practice in the training of diplomats. After all, many European diplomats had a good command of the main languages in which
international negotiations were conducted. It has been emphasized, for
example, that almost all the diplomats who took part in the discussions
that resulted in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 had Latin,23 which – as we
shall see shortly – was perhaps the most important diplomatic language
in seventeenth-century Europe as a whole and which educational institutions for future diplomats in France insisted their pupils should know.24
Manuals for aspiring ambassadors, of which there were many in Europe
in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, laid considerable
emphasis on the need for a diplomat to know foreign languages (German,
French, Italian, and Spanish, as well as Latin, were identified as the most
important).25 The existence of Russian translations of such books tells us
that they were known in Russia too.26
It is also apparent, finally, that foreign languages were beginning in
the Petrine period to occupy an important place in the lives of certain
Russian families who showed a particular interest in foreign affairs and
inclined towards career paths, a cultural outlook, and an education for
their children that reflected that leaning. The Francophone Golovin clan
illustrates the point. Fedor Golovin was chancellor and effectively directed
Russia’s foreign policy from 1699 until his death in 1706. He helped to further
the career of Petr Shafirov, who had a very good command of French and
who served first as a translator at the Chancery of Foreign Affairs and then
as vice-chancellor or deputy minister of foreign affairs. Fedor Golovin’s
son Aleksandr married Shafirov’s daughter, Natal’ia. It is likely that family
connections and interests influenced Aleksandr Golovin, who did not
23 Braun, La connaissance du Saint-Empire, 209. On language choice in the set of treaties which
make up the Peace of Westphalia, see the following section of this chapter.
24 e.g. the Political Academy founded in France in 1712: see Waquet, Le Latin ou l’empire du
signe, 123.
25 e.g. Callières, De la manière de negocier avec les souverains: see Braun, La connaissance du
Saint-Empire, 209.
26 A work of 1703 on ambassadorial ceremonial practice at the French court (Philipp Ludwig
von Zinzendorf’s Eines hohen Ministri Curieuse Relation Von Dem gegenwärtigen Zustand deß
Königreich Franckreichs Ort) was translated into Russian in 1714 by Andrei Matveev, one of
Peter’s most prominent diplomats: RGADA, f. 93, op. 1, d. 5 (1704). This work was the basis for
Matveev’s minute on this subject. Postnikov translated a work of 1680 by Abraham de Wicquefort,
L’Ambassadeur et ses fonctions: RGADA, f. 93, op. 1, d. 3 (1713). For information on these translations,
see Ageeva, Diplomaticheskii tseremonial imperatorskoi Rossii XVIII v., 30–31.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

273

become a diplomat himself, when in the late 1720s he invited a French
tutor named Pirard to teach his children French. The Kurakins provide
a further example. In 1712, the distinguished diplomat Boris Kurakin, to
whom we referred above, sought a French governor for his son, Aleksandr.
The Frenchman who was found for this post, M. d’Ormanson, proposed to
teach his pupil Latin, French, German, and Italian. Aleksandr would go on
to become a diplomat and statesman.27 Not that we should exaggerate the
role of professional considerations in shaping the language education that
was emerging: no doubt some families were learning French because it was
already coming to be regarded as a prestige language among European elites.
This was the case in the royal family and in the families of some of Peter’s
close associates who were not directly involved in diplomacy themselves,
such as the families of the Princes Aleksandr Menshikov, Boris Golitsyn,
and Nikita Repnin. We might add that the ‘French’ model of education had
been adopted even earlier by Ukrainian elites, as we see from the case of
Petr Apostol, the son of the Hetman of the Ukraine: Apostol left a diary that
was written entirely in French, in which he recorded his impressions of his
stay in St Petersburg in 1725–1727.28

The gradual rise of French in European and Russian treaties
The Peace of Westphalia, which brought the Thirty Years’ War to an end,
showed what a major part Latin still played, and how modest the role of
French was, in European diplomacy in the mid-seventeenth century. It
was in Latin that the treaties that made up the Peace were for the most
part composed. Nor did French play a particularly important part in the
negotiations that led up to the Peace. For one reason or another, diplomats
from the Holy Roman Empire, other German political entities such as
Hanseatic cities, Poland, and Sweden eschewed the use of French even with
French diplomats, often preferring Latin.29 Nor was the Peace of Nijmegen
in 1678–1679 a turning point in the use of French as Europe’s diplomatic
language, as Ferdinand Brunot showed. French was indeed employed at
times (for example, by the English and Dutch representatives) during these
27 Arkhiv kn[iazia] F.A. Kurakina, vol. 4, 441–445.
28 ‘Apostol P.D. Dnevnik’.
29 On the language of the treaties that made up the Peace of Westphalia and the languages
used in the negotiations that preceded them, and also on the scholarly literature on language
use at this congress, see Braun, La connaissance du Saint-Empire, 204–237. See also Brunot, ‘Les
Débuts du français dans la diplomatie’.

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The French L anguage in Russia

negotiations, but no more than was normal for the period, and although the
treaty between France and Holland was drawn up in French other documents
produced at the end of the negotiations were still written in Latin. Nor again
did the negotiations in Ryswick in 1697 bring about a material change of
practice: the resulting treaty between France and Holland was once more
in French, but that between France and the Holy Roman Empire was, as
usual, in Latin.30
The most significant change occurred in 1714 at Rastatt, where the treaty
was concluded that brought an end to the hostilities between France and
the Holy Roman Empire during the War of the Spanish Succession. Marshal
de Villars, who prepared the ground for these negotiations on the French
side, was not an experienced Latinist. The Viennese diplomats headed by
Prince Eugene of Savoy, for their part, had no interest in protracted and
tiresome discussions about the meaning of terms and they quickly signed
a treaty in French. Admittedly, a separate article stipulated that the use of
French should not be thought to set a precedent for subsequent negotiations,
and indeed further treaties concluded by France after 1714 were drawn up
in Latin (for example, the Treaty of Versailles with Poland in 1735). Other
countries too continued to use Latin in treaties (for instance, Sweden and
Britain in 1737 and Sweden and the Ottoman Empire in 1756). However,
the use of French in treaties, especially when they were multilateral, was
already becoming the norm, as exemplified by those between France and
the Holy Roman Empire which were signed in Vienna in 1735 and 1736 and
the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle between Britain and Holland, on one side, and
France, on the other, which ended the War of the Austrian Succession in
1748.31 The frequent use of French during diplomatic ceremonies had helped
to pave the way for this change in the language of diplomatic documents: as
French travellers in Poland in the 1680s had noted, the ministers of the main
European countries used that language when they paid their compliments
to the king.32
Thus, several traditions may be observed in language practice in early
eighteenth-century European diplomacy. The Holy Roman Empire, Sweden,
and Poland adhered to the use of Latin in diplomatic documents (which did
not preclude the use of French in audiences). For Britain and Holland, it was
30 Some other treaties at this time were already being drawn up in French, such as a trade
treaty of 1647, the Concert of The Hague in 1659, and a navigation treaty of 1666.
31 Waquet, Le Latin ou l’empire du signe, 121–122; Brunot, ‘Les Débuts du français dans la
diplomatie’.
32 Brunot, ‘Les Débuts du français dans la diplomatie’.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

275

customary to use French. Spain used its national language. Lastly, Italian
was widely used in the Mediterranean region, especially by diplomats of the
Ottoman Empire. However, Latin by now had drawbacks as an international
diplomatic language. Differences in the way that it was pronounced in
different parts of Europe had become so great, for example, that а Latinspeaking Frenchman and a Latin-speaking Pole might well be unable to
understand one another.33 A widely-known living language was urgently
needed as a means of international diplomatic communication. The hour of
French had arrived, and the Treaty of Rastatt in 1714 portended its triumph.
The ascendancy of French in European diplomacy coincided with the
emergence of Russia as a major European power and soon affected Russian
linguistic practice in this domain. Up until the eighteenth century, foreign
powers had tended to use either their national language or Latin to communicate with Muscovy. This was the case with England, Spain, several
German states, and Poland.34 Latin had also been used in the Treaty of
Nerchinsk (1689), by which Russia and China established their border in
the Amur region, as Voltaire reports in his History of the Russian Empire
under Peter the Great on the basis of the primary sources with which he
had been furnished. This treaty followed negotiations conducted by two
Jesuits (a Portuguese and a Frenchman) who accompanied the Chinese
embassy and a German in the Russian embassy who spoke Latin.35 Bilateral
treaties between Russia and Austria were concluded as a rule either in Latin
or German.36 Various other German-speaking states, including some that
belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, naturally used German. During the
first half of the eighteenth century, for example, Brunswick, Holstein, and
Prussia usually drew up their treaties with Russia in that language,37 as did
some states outside the empire, such as Danzig.38 Of course, lingua francas
33 Ibidem, 701.
34 See RGADA, f. 44 (relations with Hamburg), 79 (Poland), 84 (Saxony), 97 (Switzerland).
35 Histoire de l’empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand, in The Complete Works of Voltaire, vol.
46, 568, 570. On Voltaire’s History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great, see also the first
section of Chapter 7 below.
36 e.g. Martens, vol. 1, 34–48, 112–127 (1726, 1727, 1739, Lat.), and 71–110 (1737, 1738, 1739, etc., Ger.).
37 For the sake of economy, we do not give the names of treaties here, just the country with
which Russia concluded the treaty, its date, and a reference to the relevant file in the archive. Nor,
in most cases, do we give the titles of documents as they appear in archival inventories: these are
provided in the first section of our bibliography at the end of the book. See AVPRI, f. 2, op. 6, dd.
686 (Brunswick, 1711), 696 (Holstein, 1727), 745 (Prussia, 1741). For the numerous treaties that were
concluded by Russia with Brandenburg, Prussia, Danzig, the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin,
and so forth in German, see Martens, vol. 5.
38 AVPRI, f. 2, op. 6, dd. 687 (Danzig, 1736), 688 (Danzig, 1764), 733 (Poland, 1733).

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The French L anguage in Russia

were used too. For a long time, Italian was an important medium for Russia’s
dealings with the Ottoman Empire and other Mediterranean countries, and
it was sometimes used in dealings with England as well.39 From the late
seventeenth century, Polish and Swedish diplomats increasingly resorted
to German as a lingua franca. 40 However, in the course of the eighteenth
century, European powers gradually turned to French as their preferred
language for diplomatic agreements with Russia, although national traditions
of language use in diplomacy continued to be felt while this process was
going on. We shall provide a few examples.
The treaty concluded at Greifswald in 1715 between Peter the Great and
George I, who became King of Great Britain and Ireland in 1714 but was
acting in this instance as the Elector of Hanover, was written in French. 41
(George I had grown up in Hanover and had a perfect command of French
as well as German. He resorted to French more than to English at the British
court42 and used it in his correspondence and in the conduct of relations with
other countries.) So too was a treaty of 1715 between Russia and Prussia, 43
although this case was exceptional at this period, for treaties with Prussia
continued to be written in German after that date. 44 French began to be
used in agreements between Russia and Austria as well, starting with a
document of 1743 which included Russia in a peace treaty signed by Prussia
and Austria in 1742. This was a de facto trilateral agreement, and it was
unexceptional for such documents to be written in French. 45 Russia was
a signatory to further such trilateral agreements in the 1750s, namely a
treaty of 1750 that included Britain in a defensive alliance between Russia
and Austria, for which provision had been made (in German) in 1746, 46
and a treaty of 1756 that bound Russia into a defensive alliance concluded
39 RGADA, f. 35.
40 RGADA, f. 79 (relations between Russia and Poland); AVPRI, f. 2, op. 6, d. 783 (Sweden, 1743).
41 Martens, vol. 9 (10), 31–35 (1715). From this time on, the Russian court dealt with the English
court in French: see ibidem, 41–43 and 44–45 (1720). This tradition was maintained under
Catherine I (ibidem, 57–59 and 60–62 (1726)), Anna (ibidem, 72–90 (1734)), and subsequent
Russian monarchs.
42 The use of French by British diplomats of that time, one of the biographers of George I
suggests, should not be attributed, or solely attributed, to the monarch’s personal linguistic
competencies and preferences: see Hatton, George I, 131.
43 Martens, vol. 5, 120–129 (1715).
44 See Martens, vol. 5, 161–168 (1717).
45 Martens, vol. 1, 130–133 (1743). For other multilateral treaties written in French, see AVPRI,
f. 2, op. 6, dd. 797 (Russia, Britain, and Holland, 1747), 807 (Russia, Prussia, and Austria, 1772),
etc.
46 Martens, vol. 1, 145–178 (1746), 178–183 (1750).

French in diplomac y and other official domains

277

in May that year between France and Austria. 47 The first purely bilateral
treaty between Russia and Austria dates from January 1757, 48 and almost
all subsequent treaties between these two powers were in French,49 as were
diplomatic documents addressed by Russia to the Viennese court.50 The first
bilateral treaty in French between Russia and Prussia was concluded around
the same time, in 1762; this was the peace treaty that came of Russia’s exit
from the Seven Years’ War after the accession of Peter III to the throne.51
Thereafter, virtually all treaties with Prussia were drawn up in French.52
An agreement of 1766 on Russian friendship and trade with Britain was
composed in French too.53
As late as the 1750s, there were clearly still some reservations about the use
of French in treaties, at least when France was one of the acceding parties,
even though the use of French was convenient and more or less unavoidable
if the agreement was multilateral. It was stipulated in a declaration of 1757,
for example, that the use of French in a document which included Russia
in a convention signed in March that year between Austria, France, and
Sweden54 should not serve as a precedent.55 Nonetheless, by the beginning
47 Ibidem, 188–201 (1756).
48 Ibidem, 201–212 (1757).
49 Ibidem, 224–251 (1760; this, admittedly, is another trilateral treaty between Russia, Austria,
and France); AVPRI, f. 2, op. 6, dd. 647 (Austria, 1760, a bilateral treaty). German reappears only
very rarely, as in a treaty of alliance concluded in 1760: AVPRI, f. 2, op. 6, d. 652 (Austria, 1760,
Russ., Ger., Fr.).
50 e.g. Déclaration de l’Empereur Pierre III communiquée à la cour de Vienne, sur la cessation
des opérations militaires contre la Prusse: see Martens, vol. 1, 304–308 (1762). Subsequent treaties
between the two countries relate to the time of Catherine II and were written in French: see
Martens, vol. 2.
51 Martens, vol. 5, 368–378 (1762).
52 See Martens, vol. 6. There are occasional exceptions, though, all of them in German, e.g.
‘Act of Guarantee provided by Russia for the treaty concluded between Prussia and the city of
Danzig in Warsaw on 22 February 1785’ (Martens, vol. 6, 124–131 (1785)) and ‘Convention regarding
boundaries and shipping along the River Memel concluded in Vilna between Russia and Prussia’
(ibidem, 300–307 (1802); see also 396–405 (1806)). There were similar exceptions in the case of
dealings with some other German states, for example the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
(ibidem, 346–350 (1805)). Some such examples date from the time of the Napoleonic Wars, and
we may wonder whether the return to German in these instances was due to political factors.
Practice was not consistent, though.
53 AVPRI, f. 161, op. 28, d. 72.
54 ‘Act of accession by Russia to the convention concluded on 21 March (NS) 1757 in Stockholm
between the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire and the Kings of France and Sweden’: see
Martens, vol. 1, 212–213 (1757).
55 AVPRI, f. 2, op. 6, d. 800 (1757). The text is in Martens, vol. 1, 223–224 (1757); our reference is
to 224.

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The French L anguage in Russia

of the age of Catherine II, the use of French had become the norm in Russia’s
treaties with other European powers, bilateral as well as multilateral, as it
had over roughly the same period in treaties between many other European
powers. There were exceptions, of course,56 but almost all of the treaties
that Russia concluded with Austria, Britain, Prussia, the United States of
America, and other states in the nineteenth century were written in French.57
It was not until the early twentieth century that a new era began: although
Russia continued to sign bilateral treaties in French,58 English now started to
appear, especially in multilateral treaties,59 for which French had previously
been the normal medium since the eighteenth century.

Turning to French for the conduct of Russian diplomatic business
Although it is clear with hindsight that French progressed at the expense of
other languages in the domain of diplomacy in early modern Europe, as we
see from the history of language choice in treaties during the first half of the
eighteenth century, for many years it coexisted alongside other languages. It
is equally apparent from the preceding section that language choice in this
domain was not always a straightforward matter, inasmuch as diplomats
did not invariably use the same language to representatives of a particular
power for all purposes. Treaties, for example, were not necessarily drawn
up in the language used in the verbal negotiations that preceded them. This
complexity of usage – which language a diplomat used, with whom, and
in what circumstances or documents – is well illustrated in the surviving
correspondence of several senior Russian diplomats active in the first half
of the eighteenth century, as is the importance that French already had in
the Russian diplomat’s linguistic repertoire.
Let us take, first of all, the case of the above-mentioned Vasilii Dolgorukov,
who served as Russian representative at the Danish court in the age of Peter
the Great. For a long time, treaties between these two powers were drawn
up in Danish or German.60 German was regularly employed in official
56 See, e.g., AVPRI, f. 161, op. 28, dd. 150 (1872, Russ., Ger.), 312 (1831, Russ., Pol.), 347 (1852, Russ.,
Ger.).
57 See, e.g., dozens of files relating to the nineteenth century in AVPRI, f. 161, op. 28.
58 e.g. AVPRI, f. 161, op. 28, d. 98 (Russ., Fr.).
59 AVPRI, f. 161, op. 28, d. 635 (Minutes of an international conference about seal-hunting, 1911,
Eng.); this conference took place in Washington, which was bound to affect language choice.
60 e.g. AVPRI, f. 2, op. 6, dd. 701 (Denmark, 1730; Ger.), 702 (Denmark, 1730; Dan. with translation
in Ger.), etc.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

279

documents (gramoty) that the King of Denmark sent to Peter the Great,
although, on the whole, these were written in Danish.61 It was also the
language that Danish diplomats in Russia generally used when they corresponded with the Russian department of foreign affairs.62 It was not until
1800, as far as we can see, that any treaty between Russia and Denmark was
composed in French.63 And yet, it is clear that in the early eighteenth century
French was already one of the major vehicles for communication between
the Russian diplomatic mission in Denmark and the Danish court and its
ministers. Documents written in French for the attention of Dolgorukov
included letters from Danish ministers (particularly Christian Sehested,
the grand chancellor of Denmark64) and papers relating to discussions
between Russia and Denmark about a possible alliance against Sweden
and a joint campaign against the Swedish army.65 (We also find a letter
in French on a personal financial matter that the Danish envoy in Russia
sent to Dolgorukov.66) Admittedly, French was not the only language used
in exchanges between Danish officials and Russian diplomats, for German
sometimes crops up in documents as well,67 but it was the main one.68
Discussions between Russian diplomats and representatives of the countries
with which they were dealing, then, might take place in one language (in
this instance French), while agreements between the countries might still
be drawn up in another.69
The case of Prince Antiokh Kantemir, to whom we also refer at several
other points in this book,70 is equally instructive for our present purposes,
especially because he was among the first to use French not merely as a professional language but also as a social lingua franca. Such individuals served
61 RGADA, f. 53, op. 4, dd. 2 (1707, Dan.), 3 (1711, Dan.); op. 5, d. 174 (1712, Ger.).
62 e.g. RGADA, f. 53, op. 5, dd. 1 (1700), 35 (1704), 84 (1708), 153 (1711), etc.
63 This is judging by files in the section on ‘Denmark’ in AVPRI, f. 2, op. 6, d. 718 (1800, Russ.,
Fr.).
64 RGADA, f. 53, op. 5, dd. 65 (1707, Fr.), 85 (1708, Fr.).
65 RGADA, f. 53, op. 5, dd. 99 (1709, Fr., Russ. trans.), 122 (1710, Fr.), 146 (1711, Fr., Russ. trans.).
66 RGADA, f. 53, op. 5, d. 157 (1711, Fr.).
67 RGADA, f. 53, op. 5, d. 121 (1710, Fr., Ger.).
68 We can also see from extant correspondence, incidentally, that French was the language,
or at least one of the languages, of internal communication between the Danish court and
Danish diplomats: see RGADA, f. 53, op. 5, d. 133 (1710, Fr.). This example of the use of French in
some European countries for internal discussion of foreign affairs is of interest here because it
foreshadows the adoption of this practice in Russia in the second half of the eighteenth century
(see the fifth section of this chapter).
69 RGADA, f. 53, op. 5, d. 164 (1711, Fr.).
70 See the third section of Chapter 1 above and the fourth section of Chapter 6 and the fourth
section of Chapter 7 below.

280 

The French L anguage in Russia

as intermediaries between cultures, as well as polities, and contributed to the
development of francophonie as an internal phenomenon in Russian culture.
Kantemir, as we said earlier, was the Russian envoy in London from 1732 to
1738 and then the ambassador in Paris, from 1738 until his early death in 1744.
One of the first texts that he sent from London to Moscow is a record of the
address he delivered to King George II when he presented his credentials to
the king in 1732. This address was in French. ‘Le Grand Cas et la Haute Estime,
que l’Imperatrice ma souveraine fait de la sacrée Persone de V.M.’, Kantemir
begins with panache, ‘lui ont rendues tres-agreables les assurances de Votre
amitié, faites de la part de Votre Majesté par M:r Rondau son Ministre’ (The
high opinion and great esteem that the empress my sovereign has for the
holy person of Your Majesty have made the assurances of Your friendship
that have been given on Your Majesty’s behalf by his minister Mr. Rondau
highly pleasing to her).71 Kantemir made a copy of his speech and commented
on it, in Russian, in letters he sent home at the time, explaining how the
king listened and responded to him (presumably also in French, although
Kantemir does not state this).72 French was probably also the language in
which Kantemir conducted his correspondence with British officials, if we
are to judge by a surviving letter that he wrote to an English ‘lord’, whom we
assume to be William Stanhope, 1st Earl of Harrington and the secretary of
state for the Northern Department in the cabinet of Sir Robert Walpole.73
Kantemir’s correspondence with compatriots, of course, followed different
rules, but it was not monolingual. When he was writing to imperial officials
of foreign origin, he invariably wrote in French. These officials included
Baron Johann Albrecht von Korff, president of the Academy of Sciences
in St Petersburg from 1734 to 1740, Korff’s successor Carl Hermann von
Brevern, and Johann Daniel Schumacher, a councillor in the Academy’s
administration and the Academy’s librarian.74 All these high-ranking officials were of German origin (Korff was born in Courland, Brevern in Riga,
71 RGADA, f. 1261, op. 1, d. 69, fol. 3. Kantemir’s address is reproduced with the kind permission
of RGADA on our project website at https://data.bris.ac.uk/datasets/3nmuogz0xzmpx21l2u1m5
f3bjp/Kantemir%20texts.pdf. The diplomat to whom Kantemir refers is Claudius Rondeau, the
British minister resident in St Petersburg from 1730 until his death. It seems that Kantemir’s
credentials, incidentally, were in English. ‘I dispatched someone to announce my arrival to
the master of ceremonies’, Kantemir writes, ‘and having received my announcement he was
with me in the afternoon and, in accordance with the practice here, took from me a copy of my
credentials in English to be passed to Lord Hamilton, the secretary of state’ (RGADA, f. 1261,
op. 1, d. 69, fol. 2).
72 RGADA, f. 1261, op. 1, d. 69, fol. 3 v.
73 Ibidem, fol. 5 v. This letter too was written in 1732.
74 Kantemir, Sochineniia, pis’ma i izbrannye perevody, vol. 2, 322–336.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

281

and Schumacher in Alsace). Kantemir corresponded in Russian, on the other
hand, with Andrei Nartov, a compatriot of Russian origin who directed
the Academy’s office.75 He also used Russian for internal correspondence
with his superiors in the diplomatic service, as we see from the large extant
volume of dispatches that he sent to Russia from London and Paris over
the years he spent in those capitals.76 Russian was the language, moreover,
that Kantemir generally employed in correspondence with other Russian
aristocrats, such as Ivan Shcherbatov, who succeeded him as the Russian
diplomatic representative in London in 1740–1741.77 In other words, French
had not yet supplanted Russian as a language of social intercourse between
Russian nobles who would have been capable of using it for that purpose.
Kantemir did use French, though, as a language of social intercourse
outside Russia, even when it might not have been the most natural lingua
franca for him, as his correspondence with various Italian men makes
clear. His Italian was of a very high standard, and certainly stronger than
his French, at least at the beginning of the long period he spent abroad,
just after he had arrived in London. And yet, he preferred to communicate
with his Italian friends in French, judging by extant letters to Giambattista
Gastaldi, the Genoese chargé d’affaires in London, Cavaliere Giuseppe
Osorio-Alarcón, the Sardinian ambassador, Vincenzo Pucci, who represented
Tuscany, and Giovanni Zamboni, the resident in London for the Landgrave
of the Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt. Kantemir thus adapted his own language
practice to that of the cosmopolitan milieu in which he moved in London,
where French was the language of sociability among Italians, who served
various European courts, and no doubt diplomats of other nationalities
as well. In the 1730s, this practice was still at variance with that in Russia,
where the habit of using French instead of the vernacular as a language of
polite sociability among the elite had not yet been adopted.
Looking at the diplomatic and other official correspondence of the abovementioned Prince Ivan Shcherbatov from the time of his postings in Cádiz
and Madrid in 1725–1726, we find further evidence of the spread of French
among Russian diplomats. A large number of Shcherbatov’s letters were
written in French. Such letters were addressed not only to Frenchmen, but
also to Germans and probably (in the case of those sent to Amsterdam) to
Dutchmen. Their recipients included merchants and bankers as well as
diplomats. Thus, Shcherbatov was already using French as a lingua franca
75 Ibidem, 336.
76 Ibidem, 97–314.
77 Ibidem, 315–321.

282 

The French L anguage in Russia

for communicating with diplomats representing other countries and with
other foreigners. However, his correspondence with Russian diplomats, like
Kantemir’s, was conducted exclusively in Russian. He too, incidentally, was
able to use other languages, besides French and his native Russian: from
time to time, he wrote letters in English or Spanish (the latter are evidently
addressed to Spaniards who were fellow noblemen).78
Another diplomat who was active in the 1720s and 1730s, Aleksei Veshniakov (who also served as Russian consul in Cádiz in the 1720s and who
was subsequently posted to Constantinople), followed the same informal
rule as Kantemir and Shcherbatov, writing to his compatriot Shcherbatov
in their native language. Veshniakov’s letters, though, offer evidence
not only of command of French among Russian diplomats in the second
quarter of the eighteenth century but also of the percolation of French into
their social sphere.79 In professional correspondence with Shcherbatov,
Veshniakov frequently switched into French. Sometimes only the date on
the letter was written in French, while the text was in Russian,80 but often
the passage in French was more substantial than that. In a letter written
to Shcherbatov from Constantinople in the 1730s, for example, Veshniakov
switched into French in the middle and then apologized for having done so
when he reached the end: ‘Pardonnez Monseigneur, si je finis en une langue
étrangere, je sçais qu’elle ne lui est pas et d’ailleurs plait’ (My apologies, Sir,
for ending in a foreign language, I know that it is not a foreign language for
you and besides you like it).81 Nor is this the only such apology.82 Veshniakov
thus shows that by writing to a fellow-Russian in French he felt that he
was transgressing a rule of a sort. It is hard in this case, as in some other
cases in Veshniakov’s letters, to explain the shift to French as a result of
a change in subject-matter.83 It is worth adding that neither Veshniakov
nor Shcherbatov was in France at the time when the letters in question
were written, for sometimes choice of language could be determined by
78 RNB, Manuscripts Department, f. 999, op. 1, no. 123-2.
79 On Veshniakov, see the site at http://www.rusdiplomats.narod.ru/turkey.html, which
provides a list of Russian diplomats in the Ottoman Empire.
80 RNB, Manuscripts Department, f. 999, op. 1, no. 123-2, fols 401–402 v. (14 April 1732, from
Pera (a district of Istanbul, now Beyoğlu)).
81 RNB, Manuscripts Department, f. 999, op. 1, no. 76, fols 397–398 v. (here fol. 398 v.; 18 March
1732, from Pera).
82 For another example, see ibidem, fols 408–409 (29 June 1732, from Pera). Veshniakov also
used French in his correspondence with Kantemir: see his letter to Kantemir published in French
in Grasshoff, Antioch Dmitrievič Kantemir und Westeuropa, 280.
83 On possible drivers of language shift in slightly later noble correspondence, see the second
section of Chapter 6 below.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

283

where the writer or recipient of a letter happened to be when the letter was
written. In other words, Veshniakov probably resorted to French because,
for an outward-looking diplomat, it was becoming the language of polite
sociability. We may also conjecture that Veshniakov’s sense of beleaguerment
in Constantinople, the capital of an empire which Russian representatives
perceived as oriental, hostile, and barbaric, encouraged him to practise the
language of the European polite society for which he must have yearned.84
It is interesting also to compare Veshniakov’s Russian usage to that of
another diplomat, Ivan Nepliuev, who served in Constantinople before
Veshniakov, from 1721 to 1734, and who would subsequently become a
senator and a minister. In his own letters to Shcherbatov, Nepliuev never
used French or any other foreign language, although he too may well have
learned foreign languages, since he had studied abroad, in Venice and
Cádiz. Nepliuev’s Russian orthography, by comparison with Veshniakov’s,
seems rather archaic: some letters are omitted, as indicated by a superscript
suspension mark, and others are detached from a word and written in above
the line.85 It seems indicative of wider and divergent views of the world
that Veshniakov always referred to the city to which he had been posted
as ‘Constantinople’, whereas Nepliuev used the Old Russian name of the
city, Tsar’grad. There is perhaps a connection between Veshniakov’s more
‘modern’ Russian usage and his francophonie, both of which suggest that
he was at ease with innovation and cultural borrowing. Veshniakov, it is
tempting to suggest, was one of the new men on whom the implementation
of Peter’s reforms would depend.
If French thus became a language in which some Russian diplomats
serving in European countries could already function comfortably by the
1720s and 1730s, its ascendancy as a language for the conduct and discussion
of foreign affairs inside Russia was perhaps less clear-cut in the first half
of the eighteenth century, although it did make progress there too. We
have little information on language use in the ceremonial surrounding the
reception of foreign diplomats in Russia, to take that aspect of diplomatic
life first, but isolated pieces of evidence suggest that French rarely featured
in such ceremonial in Peter’s reign. When in 1710, for example, the British
envoy Charles Whitworth, 1st Baron Whitworth, was elevated to the status
84 It is significant that, apart from Russian and French, Veshniakov used no other languages
in his correspondence with Shcherbatov, although both of the correspondents knew Italian
and seem to have had a good knowledge of Spanish (they exchanged documents in both those
languages). In other words, it was only French that had potential for them as a social language.
85 RNB, Manuscripts Department, f. 999, op. 1, no. 76, fol. 482.

284 

The French L anguage in Russia

of ambassador, he presented the text of his speech in English. In the course
of his audience with the tsar, after Whitworth had delivered his speech
(also in English), the secretary to the embassy read a translation of it into
Dutch (according to other sources it was German!), and then a Russian read
a translation of it into Russian. The tsar responded in Russian and his reply
was translated (possibly into German) by the vice-chancellor, Shafirov. In
a printed description of the ceremony composed by the Russian side (in
German), it was explained that Whitworth’s speech had been translated into
German during the audience ‘so that the foreign ministers [present] could
understand’ (radi vyrazumleniia).86 Finally, the speech was read in Russian
for the benefit of the Russians present.87 Similarly, at the farewell audience
of the Danish ambassador Grundt in 1710, the ambassador delivered his
speech in German.88 Even at an audience granted by the Empress Catherine
(the wife of Peter the Great and the future Catherine I) to the French envoy
Campredon in 1721, the latter gave his speech in German, explaining that
this language had been chosen because the French side thought they could
best express the feelings of His French Royal Highness for the empress in
that language, which Catherine herself understood.89
Nonetheless, French did soon begin to feature in diplomatic ceremonies
in Russia too. An audience granted in 1728 to the Spanish ambassador in St
Petersburg, the Duke of Liria, is of particular interest in this respect. The
duke made his speech in Spanish – as Spanish ambassadors traditionally
did – and the text of the speech was handed to the Russian side in Latin
translation. The vice-chancellor, Ostermann, replied to the duke in Russian.
However, once the most important formal part of the ceremony, at which
the national languages of the two sides had to be used, had ended, the
duke paid a compliment to the Emperor Peter II in French, whereupon
Ostermann replied, also in French. All the other speeches made by the
Duke of Liria on that day (for example, his speech in the presence of the
Grand Duchess Elizabeth Petrovna, the future empress) were also delivered
in French.90 It would seem, then, that French was becoming a convenient
means of communication among the diplomatic community in Russia too
in situations in which diplomats were not obliged to use the language of
their monarch.
86
87
88
89
90

Ageeva, Diplomaticheskii tseremonial imperatorskoi Rossii XVIII v., 153, 156, 158, 159.
Ibidem, 159.
Ibidem, 166.
Ibidem, 175.
RGADA, f. 1261, op. 1, d. 68, fols 2 v.–6 v.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

285

We also have reason to believe that by the early years of the reign of the
Francophone Empress Elizabeth the circulation of diplomatic documents
written in French was commonplace. From references to documents in
minutes of Russian ministerial meetings with foreign diplomats in the
mid-1740s, for instance, we find that where the language used is indicated
it is always a language other than French, from which we may deduce that
if a document was written in French it was not considered worth remarking
upon this fact. Nevertheless, a whole variety of languages besides French
were still used in Russian dealings with the foreign diplomatic community
in Russia. Thus on 21 August 1744, the Swedish ambassador, ‘with the
full authority given him by his master the King to discuss the defensive
alliance, presented a Swedish copy and a German translation […]’. Or again:
‘Taking out something written in Italian’, the ambassador complained to
the chancellor about the Russian resident in Constantinople, Veshniakov,
who had ‘made representations’ to the Porte.91 On 25 September 1744,
‘the Hungarian ambassador Count Rosenberg presented a Latin copy and
German translation of his new credentials as ambassador extraordinary’.92
In 1745, at a meeting with the Russian chancellor, the Bavarian minister
‘presented a copy of a declaratory note from his sovereign the elector
about the presentation of a document by his father the emperor [of the
Holy Roman Empire] in the Latin language’.93 Clearly, the Russian side
still quite often used German, or hoped to use German, when dealing
both with German diplomats and diplomats from other countries, even
though this practice did not always suit the other party. The Bavarian
Elector, for example, was asked to write to the Empress Elizabeth in that
language, to which the elector objected ‘that the deceased Emperor, while
he was Elector, always conducted his correspondence with other courts
in Latin’.94 The need for a more widely used diplomatic language was
underlined by another episode in 1745, when the Russian court unwisely
drew up a collective response to several European envoys in German. On
30 May, the British, Hungarian, and Dutch ambassadors, together with the
Saxon resident, were brought together in the chancellor’s house to hear
the response of Empress Elizabeth to a request they had submitted that
Russia join the Quadruple Alliance their countries had formed earlier that
year in support of their favoured candidate, Maria Theresa, in the War of
91
92
93
94

AVPRI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 1457, fol. 26.
Ibidem, fol. 45.
Ibidem, fol. 160.
Ibidem, fol. 182 v.

286 

The French L anguage in Russia

the Austrian Succession. This response was to be read to the envoys and
then handed to them in writing. Unfortunately, only the Saxon envoy had
sufficient German to understand it properly, so that the
English and Dutch ambassadors, having listened to [it], said that they
had so little knowledge of the German language that they were unable
to reply to it at the present time but that they would apprise [us] of their
opinion in due course.95

It is notable, finally, that diplomatic documents written in French in the
mid-eighteenth century (few of which are actually attached to records in the
archival files we have consulted) were still translated into Russian for the
College of Foreign Affairs at this period. Examples include a memorandum
about the possible conquest of Saxony that was sent to the British and Dutch
ambassadors96 and an account of 1744 by Francesco Santi, the master of
ceremonies at the Russian court, of the duty that was incumbent upon him
to notify the ministers of foreign courts that they should not approach the
empress directly.97 We might construe the practice of translating French
documents into Russian as evidence that not all of Russia’s high-ranking
diplomats knew French well in the mid-eighteenth century. The chancellor,
Count Aleksei Bestuzhev, and the vice-chancellor, Count Mikhail Illarionovich Vorontsov, did both have a command of French, to be sure, but
Bestuzhev’s predecessor, Prince Aleksei Cherkasskii, who had died in 1742,
was known not to be well acquainted with foreign languages. It is therefore
possible that the requirement that documents be translated from French
into Russian was Cherkasskii’s legacy. It seems more likely, though, that the
practice of translating French documents stemmed from a general rule that
Russian should be used in the internal correspondence and documentation
of the department that oversaw foreign-policy matters.98 Still in the last
years of the reign of Elizabeth, documents in foreign languages, including
French, were translated into Russian for the chancellor, even though the
person who held that post from 1758, Mikhail Vorontsov, as we have said,
was Francophone.99

95
96
97
98
99

Ibidem, fols 206–206 v.
Ibidem, fols 257–258.
Ibidem, fols 4–7 v.
Ibidem, fols 259–260 v. (memorandum) and 4–7 v. (report).
See AKV, bk 6, 392–416.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

287

The influx of French loanwords into Russian diplomatic parlance
The use of Russian in the internal correspondence of the department of
foreign affairs in the first half of the eighteenth century helped to contribute
to the flow of foreign vocabulary into Russian, to which a number of scholars
have already paid attention.100 Since our investigation is concerned with the
history of social and cultural practice rather than with lexicology, we shall
not examine this subject in detail or attempt to describe such matters as
the dating of borrowings or the ways in which they entered Russian, but a
few observations on loanwords in the diplomatic domain may nonetheless
be of some use here.
It would perhaps be more accurate to say that the seventeenth-century
Russian lexicon lacked equivalents for some of the concepts that were by
then current in European diplomacy than that the Russian diplomatic
lexicon as such was undeveloped. However, as contacts with diplomats
in Europe became more extensive and closer, it was inevitable that new
concepts and terms would be assimilated from the main languages of
international diplomacy. The general style of diplomatic correspondence
would change as well. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the
language of official correspondence used by men working in the Muscovite
Chancery of Foreign Affairs had elements of various registers, low and
colloquial as well as high. Linguists have detected numerous examples
of everyday speech that had become fixed in sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury diplomatic correspondence, which makes one suppose that there
were no strict rules governing the writing of reports or any standard
form for the keeping of records.101 We have only to compare diplomatic
reports from the second half of the seventeenth century with diplomatic
correspondence from, say, the mid-eighteenth century to see striking
differences. In the later period, there are no longer any traces of demotic
speech and the language follows a set format and contains a large amount
of diplomatic terminology. Terms are standardized and their variability
is limited (and consequently the chances of misreading are slight). This
outcome may have been due (albeit not exclusively) to reliance on the model
of European diplomatic correspondence, and on the French diplomatic
register in particular, as the number of direct and indirect loans from
French leads us to believe.
100 Works on this subject include those by Christiani (1906), Smirnov (1910), Fogarasi (1958),
Hüttl-Worth (1963), and Voloskova (1968) that are cited in our bibliography.
101 See Nikitin, ‘Delovoi iazyk russkoi diplomatii XVI–XVII vv.’

288 

The French L anguage in Russia

Loanwords from Western European languages, including diplomatic
terms such as audientsiia, konditsiia, konferentsiia, and negotsiatsiia, began
to enter Russian and become established in documents before the age of
Peter the Great,102 but this process accelerated in the Petrine period, when
Peter himself and his close collaborators used a large number of loanwords
in their own writings.103 These loanwords were often accompanied by glosses
that indicated the cultural position of the author or gave guidance to readers
about how they should behave and think.104 This process was assisted by
translations, especially from French and German, some of which were done
by diplomats.105 In many cases the new words in the diplomatic lexicon
did not fill a lacuna, for Russian already had words which expressed the
concepts in question.106 The process of replacing Russian diplomatic terms
with loans from Western European languages therefore reflected an ambition
to bring Russian terminology into line with an international standard. It is
probable, though, that the old word often had no association with the new
reality that Russian diplomats were discovering in Europe.107 Although the
process of borrowing seems to have slowed down after Peter’s time, it did
not stop altogether. The word diplomat, after all, was not borrowed from
French until the reign of Catherine II.108
A whole set of terms which had entered the Russian diplomatic lexicon by
the mid-eighteenth century came from French, although some of them had arrived much earlier than this and possibly via Polish or German. The following
102 See Voloskova, ‘Inoiazychnye slova v diplomaticheskoi terminologii’, 35. The terms we give
as examples mean ‘audience’, ‘condition’, ‘conference’, and ‘negotiation’ respectively.
103 Smirnov, Zapadnoe vliianie na russkii iazyk v Petrovskuiu epokhu; Cracraft, The Petrine
Revolution in Russian Culture, 276–283. The memoirs of Prince Boris Kurakin, an eminent diplomat
of Peter’s time, serve as a good example of a text in which there are numerous loanwords: see
Kurakin, ‘Zhizn’ kniazia Borisa Ivanovicha Kurakina im samim opisannaia’, and idem, ‘Zapiski
kniazia Borisa Ivanovicha Kurakina o prebyvanii v Anglii’. On foreign loanwords in Kurakin’s
memoirs, see Iasinskaia, ‘Iazykovaia lichnost’ kniazia B.I. Kurakina’.
104 Zhivov, Istoriia iazyka russkoi pis’mennosti, 984–990.
105 In addition to the translations done by Matveev and Postnikov to which we have already
referred, we should mention a treatise on international law written by another eminent Russian
diplomat of this time, Petr Shaf irov’s Rassuzhdenie, kakie zakonnye prichiny […]. Shaf irov’s
treatise was based on western sources.
106 The borrowing of terminology sometimes led to the appearance of doublets even for common
referents. For example, the word ambassador, in several variants, had currency from Peter’s time
alongside the term posol, and we also find ministr (minister) alongside poslannik. See Sergeeva,
‘Funktsionirovanie i razvitie russkoi diplomaticheskoi terminologii v XVIII veke’, 23–24, 27–28.
107 The loanword kur’er (courier), for instance, ousted gonets which, one might think, denoted
the same thing: ibidem, 37–38.
108 Ibidem, 42.

289

French in diplomac y and other official domains

examples are taken from the volume of summaries of meetings with foreign
diplomats for the years 1744–1745, which we used in the preceding section.
Some of these terms, of course, relate directly to the field of diplomacy.109
Russian loan

French source

English equivalent

аллиация
карактер
кредитив
медиация
негоциация
нота
нотификация
сондировать
шарже дезафер
штафета

alliance
caractère
lettres de créances
médiation
négociation
note
notification
sonder
chargé des affaires
estafette

alliance
quality
letters of credence
mediation
negotiation
note
notification
to sound out
chargé d’affaires
courier

Other borrowings had a wider meaning but were commonly used by
diplomats:
авертировать
акордовать
атенция
ауторизовать
инвитация
комиссия
конфиденция
куверт
сукцессор

avertir
accorder
attention
autoriser
invitation
commission
confidence
couvert
successeur

фрапировать

frapper

эвентуальный

éventuel

to warn, notify, advise
to grant
attention
to authorize
invitation
commission, i.e. assignment
confidence, i.e. secret
envelope
successor, e.g. the next
ambassador
to strike, i.e. to impress,
surprise
eventual

We find calques too, such as полная мочь (pleins pouvoirs, ‘full powers’).110
The examples we have cited occur in the documents we have consulted in
combinations of the following sorts: акордовать помощь (to grant help);
заключить аллиацию (to conclude an alliance); учинить инвитацию в
109 AVPRI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 1457, fols 13 v., 23–25, 32, 41, 41 v., 46, 48, 52, 53 v., 54, 62, 77, 95, 98, 114,
119, 128, 132, 133, 150 v., 151 v.
110 Ibidem, fols 22, 169 v.

290 

The French L anguage in Russia

принятии на себя медиации (to offer to mediate); иметь комиссию (to
have an assignment); сообщить в крайней конфиденции (to inform in
strict confidence); представить свою медиацию (to offer one’s mediation);
принять на себя медиацию (to take it upon oneself to mediate); and
учинить формальную нотификацию (formally to notify). It is worth noting
that loanwords are rarely accompanied by any gloss in these documents,
which would seem to indicate that by the middle of the century they had
firmly established themselves in the vocabulary of the Russian diplomat.

Language use in internal communications about foreign affairs
Many types of diplomatic document – for example, circulars, rescripts, letters
of recall, and replies to communications from foreign powers – demonstrate
that a variety of foreign languages continued to be used in the Russian
diplomatic sphere during the reign of Catherine II. Numerous circular letters
sent to Russian diplomats during the first half of Catherine’s reign were
written in French,111 which, as we have seen, was by this time becoming the
main language of international diplomacy. Sometimes, however, a German
version of the document was sent too, as in the case of a letter notifying
Russian diplomats of a meeting between Catherine and Joseph II of Austria.112
Right up until the end of Catherine’s reign, German was quite often used
in correspondence with the Swedish court as well.113 For circular letters
concerning the Ottoman Porte, as well as for the conduct of business with
Italian states, Italian was frequently the medium.114 In dealings with the
Crimea (which was not annexed by Russia until 1783), Tatar was sometimes
used.115 It will be noticed, though, that many of the documents to which we
have referred are communications that are directed not at representatives
of foreign powers but at members of the Russian community responsible
for the conduct of foreign policy and relations with other states. Whereas
during the reign of Elizabeth the correspondence of the College of Foreign
Affairs with Russian diplomats was generally conducted in Russian,116 in
111 To give just three examples: AVPRI, f. 2, op. 6, dd. 363 (1769), 367 (1770), 412 (1779).
112 Ibidem, d. 418 (1780).
113 Ibidem, dd. 601 (1796), 602 (1796), 603 (1795).
114 Ibidem, dd. 477 (1772), 597 (1784).
115 Ibidem, d. 580 (1765).
116 See, e.g., the following reports: to Russia’s representative in Paris, Bekhteev; from the resident
in Danzig, Musin-Pushkin (1757); and from the minister in Poland, Prince Mikhail Nikitich
Volkonskii (AKV, bk 34, 63–70, 71–72, 83–86).

French in diplomac y and other official domains

291

the age of Catherine the administration routinely communicated with its
own diplomats in French, and sometimes in other languages that we have
just mentioned. In other words, Russian diplomats more often resorted to
French as a language in which to communicate among themselves.
Surveying the collections of letters, including circulars, which were sent to
Russian diplomats in Catherine’s reign and the correspondence of diplomats
themselves, we can both trace the development of the habit of using French
as a language of internal communication in the diplomatic domain and
also, in many instances, come to understand the reasons for the choice of
language. Admittedly, many of the circulars sent to Russian diplomats were
still written in Russian. As a rule, these were documents that contained
information about domestic matters, such as the movements of the empress
and the heir to the throne (for example, Catherine’s visits to Tver’, Kazan’,
and Moscow), periods of mourning at court, appointments to various posts,
and the opening of the Legislative Commission.117 At the same time, more
and more circular letters were written in French (and very occasionally
German) during Catherine’s reign.118 Thus in 1767, a number of Russian
diplomats were sent a pamphlet in French (and Latin), explaining Russian
policy with regard to Polish ‘dissidents’. This material was accompanied by
a circular letter in French in which it was explained how diplomats should
disseminate it. The circular was probably intended to help the diplomat
formulate the arguments he was supposed to deploy:
Je vous envoye des exemplaires tant latins que françois de cette piece dont
vous ferez usage pour la publicité soit en la faisant lire chez vous soit en
en donnant des exemplaires à vos connoissances et vous en remettrez
surtout un exemplaire au ministre de la cour ou vous êtes […]
Vous l’accompagnerez de cette reflexion que comme l’Imperatrice ne veut
point qu’il y ait rien de misterieux dans les motifs de sa conduite elle a
permis à son ministère d’exposer les principes d’après lesquels elle a agis
jusqu’ici dans l’affaire des dissidents. En consequent de quoi Votre Cour
vous a enjoint de faire remarquer à celle où vous etes, que faisant un cas
particulier de son amitié et de sa confiance, il ne nous sera pas indifferent
de connoitre, qu’on rend public ces principes d’équité et de desinteressement qui reglent toutes les demarches de Sa Majesté Impériale.119
117 AVPRI, f. 2, op. 6, dd. 348, fols 3–5, 9–37, and 361, fols 5, 23, etc.
118 In two or three cases, German may have been chosen because it was the first language of
the official who wrote the document, as in missives of 1769 that were signed by ‘Stehlin’.
119 AVPRI, f. 2, op. 6, d. 348, fols 1–1 v.

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The French L anguage in Russia

(I am sending you copies, in Latin as well as French, of this piece of which
you will make use for publicity, either by giving copies of it to people to
read when they visit you or by giving copies of it to your acquaintances,
and you will in particular hand a copy of it to the minister of the court
at which you are based […]
You will accompany [these initiatives] with the thought that since the
empress wants there to be no mystery about the motives for her conduct
she has allowed her minister to reveal the principles which have hitherto
guided her actions in the matter of dissidents. In pursuance of which,
Your Court has enjoined you to make it known to the court where you
f ind yourself that we particularly value its friendship and trust, and
that we shall be interested to know that these principles of equity and
impartiality which govern all the steps taken by Her Imperial Majesty
are being made public.)

Another circular in French was devoted to the same subject in March 1767.120
A letter was also written in French to Russian diplomats in Europe
about
the scandalous scene created in London by the French ambassador, the
Comte de Châtelet, on the King’s birthday, when, by surprise and by means
of an outrageous act of violence, he grabbed the place of the Empress’s
ambassador at the public court ball right under the eyes of His Britannic
Majesty.

Once again, the intention was plainly to provide diplomats not only with
the arguments they should deploy but also with formulations of them in
the language in which they were likely to have to express them, that is to
say French. As in the case of the Polish ‘dissidents’, diplomats were being
given instructions in French as to how they should act: ‘This is not a formal
written declaration but a simple verbal communication, which has to do
solely with propriety and precaution’.121 French was evidently chosen for
the same purpose in a circular ministerial letter of December 1776 about
the failure of the Ottoman Porte to fulfil the conditions of a peace treaty:
‘In making this statement, it is not my intention to have it used in a formal
way; it is merely for your own information so that you should be in a better
position to demolish false explanations which different interests may give
120 Ibidem, fols 6–8.
121 Ibidem, f. 2, op. 6, d. 364, fol. 2 v.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

293

for this turn of events’.122 In a letter of June 1783 that was written in French
and sent to Russia’s ministers in Berlin and Copenhagen, there is a postscript
in Russian which makes the reason for the choice of French explicit:
I have written this letter in French on purpose so that Your Illustrious
Highness, in order best to explain its contents and to remove any possibility of misunderstanding on this matter, may read it to the ministry
of his Prussian [Danish] Majesty. On the one hand, there is no need for
you to hand over a copy of it, and, on the other hand, no objection need
be made if the person in the ministry of His Majesty with whom you will
deal on this matter wishes in your presence to make a note of it for his
own record; in due course, I shall expect from you, my M.G., a thorough
account of how the things you say have been received.123

It might be supposed that in some cases the choice of French can be explained by the fact that there were foreigners among the diplomats serving
the Russian Empire in Europe, but this explanation seems unlikely, since
such letters were not infrequently written in Russian too, no matter to
whom they were addressed.
Of course, even in the 1770s and 1780s we still find letters on matters of
foreign policy that were written in Russian. These are evidently cases in
which it was not necessary to show the document to foreign ministers.124
On the whole, though, we see a division of diplomats’ correspondence into
letters in French, which concern foreign policy, and letters in Russian, which
do not. However, this separation of official from unofficial usage was not
strictly observed for long. Letters in French begin to appear, for example, in
which the chancellor or vice-chancellor recommends Russian travellers to
diplomats, although such matters were not really official.125 We may assume
that Russian diplomats, who were at ease both in international diplomatic
circles and in European high society, were losing sight of the distinction
between the function of French as a professional diplomatic language and
as a language of society. They might even, in some cases, have been losing
sight of firm reasons for choosing one language or the other, if we are to judge
by late eighteenth-century documents in which the choice that was made
122 Ibidem, fols 23–23 v.
123 Ibidem, fols 60–60 v. (a letter in French), 65 (postscript).
124 e.g., a letter to diplomats in Munich and Frankfurt am Main about rumours of an intention
to recall Count Ségur and to appoint the Marquis de la Côte [?] in his place: ibidem, fol. 100.
125 There are many such letters: ibidem, fols 21, 26, 27, 29, 34, 37, 78, 80, 81, 82, 99–99 v. (1770s
and 1780s).

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The French L anguage in Russia

is hard to explain. Take, for example, the correspondence about diplomatic
matters between the eminent Catherinian diplomat Prince Nikolai Repnin
and the head of the foreign-policy department, Nikita Panin, which was
conducted now in Russian, now in French.126
The number of memoranda on diplomatic subjects that were written for
the foreign-policy department in French also increased during Catherine’s
reign.127 The language used in these memoranda was usually correct and
often elegant, as we see from an undated ‘Political History of Europe
(1740–1748)’ by Count (later His Serene Highness) Aleksandr Bezborodko,
who had de facto oversight of Russian foreign policy at the end of Catherine’s
reign:
La Russie triomphante de tous côtés, accède à la paix de Westphalie et la
détruit par son accession. Ce chef d’œuvre de la diplomatie, qui jusqu’alors
avoit lutté contre les efforts du temps, et tenu contre les plus grands
bouleversemens, qui avoit vu, sans se détruire, une puissance maritime
accéder au système, l’Espagne changer de maître, la Hollande de parti,
ce chef d’œuvre chancela entièrement à ce dernier coup.128
(Triumphant on all sides, Russia acceded to the Peace of Westphalia and by
its accession destroyed it. This masterpiece of diplomacy, which up until
then had battled against the strains of time and withstood the greatest
upheavals, which had survived the accession of a maritime power to the
system, a change of master in Spain, and Holland changing sides, this
masterpiece was completely brought down by this final blow.)

On 22 December 1787, Catherine II signed a rescript requiring that reports
(reliatsii) from Russian diplomats that went directly to the sovereign be
written in Russian, ‘excluding only those cases in which the essence of the
matter that is to be reported to them [i.e. the sovereign] demands precise
retention of the words of the language in which it was discussed’. This
circular was addressed to ministers, chargés d’affaires, and consuls who
126 AVPRI, f. 167, op. 509/1, d. 8, fols 3, 16–18, 23, 34–37. Sometimes the choice may be explained
by the need for secrecy: an uncoded part of a message might be written in Russian and a coded
part in French (no doubt because it was more accessible to the prying eyes of foreigners), as
prescribed by Catherine’s rescript of 1787 (see below). See the letter of 1798 (ibidem, fols 38–39
v.) for an example.
127 There are quite a few such documents in the collection held in the section ‘Political Writings’
in AVPRI: f. 2, op. 6, dd. 5588–5679.
128 ‘Histoire politique de l’Europe (1740–1748)’, in AVPRI, f. 133, op. 469, d. 7714, fol. 6.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

295

were ‘natural Russians’ (prirodnye rossiane).129 Catherine’s instruction was
plainly in keeping with the mood of the time.130 After all, it was in the 1780s
that reform of educational institutions was being carried out with the aim
of strengthening the teaching of Russian. The Russian Academy had been
founded and a dictionary (in which, somewhat paradoxically, the influence
of the French model was felt) was being compiled under its aegis.131 The
rescript, then, was one more manifestation of institutional support for the
Russian language at a time when francophonie was firmly establishing itself
in the upper stratum of Russian society. It is difficult to say what effect this
instruction actually had, but clearly a considerable proportion of diplomatic
correspondence continued to be written in French after it had been issued.
We see a similar reaction to the use of French, incidentally, at another
moment when Russian policy was taking a nationalistic turn, precisely a
century after Catherine’s rescript: in 1887, the minister of foreign affairs,
Nikolai Girs (who was of Swedish origin), ordered that French be replaced
by Russian, except when diplomats were notifying colleagues of discussions
with foreign ministers that had taken place in French.132

The triumph of French in the diplomatic community and the
limits to its use
By the early years of the reign of Alexander I, French had become the dominant language in the conduct of Russian diplomacy, despite the national
turn in official language use towards the end of the reign of Catherine II. It
prevailed in the internal correspondence of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
as well as in dealings with foreign states. Ministers of foreign affairs and
heads of departments in the ministry used it almost exclusively in their
correspondence with Russian diplomats in Europe.133 Of course, to state
129 AVPRI, f. 32, d. 702, fol. 10; Gosudarstvennost’ Rossii. Slovar’-spravochnik, bk 6, pt 2, 241. We
are grateful to Mariia Petrova for supplying us with this information.
130 It is notable, for example, that a neighbouring monarch, Joseph II of Austria, attempted from
1784 to introduce German as the language of administration in Habsburg lands where it was not
yet commonly used, such as Hungary and Galicia. For a useful summary (by Martin Votruba) of
Joseph’s plans and measures, see http://www.pitt.edu/~votruba/sstopics/slovaklawsonlanguage/
Austrian_Law_on_the_German_Langauge_in_Hungary_1784.pdf .
131 See the second section of Chapter 8 below.
132 AVPRI, f. 133, op. 470, d. 23 (1887), fol. 2. See Ocherki istorii Ministerstva inostrannykh del
Rossii: 860–1917 gg., vol. 3, 154–155.
133 Hundreds of documents attesting to this fact are published in Vneshniaia politika Rossii
XIX i nachala XX veka. It should be noted, though, that it remained entirely possible to use

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The French L anguage in Russia

that French was the pre-eminent language in Russian diplomacy in the
nineteenth century is hardly original, but it may be worth considering what
limits officials knowingly or unwittingly placed on its use, as these may not
previously have been recognized.
There is a great deal of material in the archive of the Russian embassy in
Constantinople which helps us to understand the rules governing language
choice in the correspondence of Russian officials during the nineteenth
century.134 Russian diplomats in Constantinople naturally used French
in their correspondence with the diplomats of other countries, such as
Persia, Prussia, Spain, and Sweden, who were also serving in the Ottoman
capital.135 Around the turn of the century, Russian monarchs, for their part,
were still sending instructions to Russian envoys at the Porte in Russian,
if we are to judge by rescripts from Paul in 1801 and Alexander I in 1803,
although a rescript of 1816 from Alexander was in French. Similarly, the
embassy’s correspondence with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
still conducted in Russian as well as French in the early years of Alexander’s
reign. From the 1830s and throughout the reign of Nicholas I, on the other
hand, it was almost always conducted in French. Russian diplomats in
Constantinople also used French, in the main, to correspond with Russia’s
consulates general in many cities in the Mediterranean region, such as
Aleppo, Athens, Beirut, Belgrade, Bucharest, Cairo, Damascus, and the
Dardanelles (although Italian, as the traditional diplomatic language of this
region, sometimes appears too in this correspondence). In this connection,
Russian within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the nineteenth century. In January 1813, for
example, the envoy in Washington, A.Ia. Dashkov, wrote a dispatch in Russian to the minister
of foreign affairs, N.P. Rumiantsev, while in 1814 the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I.A.
Veidemeir (Weidemeier), sent a memorandum to Secretary of State Nesselrode, also in Russian:
see Vneshniaia politika Rossii, first series, 1801–1815, vol. 7 (covering the years 1813–1814), 28–30,
113–114. Again, in the 1830s, we find a report in Russian from the consul in the Crimea to the Asian
Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: see Vneshniaia politika Rossii, vol. 17 (August
1830–January 1832), 301–302. Other languages too could still be used in Russian diplomats’ internal
correspondence in the nineteenth century. The Russian mission in Hamburg, for instance, used
German in its correspondence with Russian consuls elsewhere in Germany in the 1820s and 1830s,
probably because those consuls were for the most part ethnic Germans (Hagendorff, Koenke,
and A.D. Schepeler in Bremen, Jäger (?) in Cuxhaven, Johann Andreas Sandmann in Wismar,
and Schlözer in Lübeck). However, the mission in Hamburg always used French when writing
to diplomatic representatives of the Russian Empire in cities in other countries (Amsterdam,
Livorno, London, Philadelphia, and so on), even when those individuals were Germans (as was
Jacob Georg Benckhausen, the Russian consul general in London; the Russian consul in Rio de
Janeiro, Petr Petrovich Kielchen, may also have been a German): see AVPRI, f. 174, op. 545, d. 15.
134 AVPRI, f. 180, op. 1 (517), covering the years 1798–1853.
135 Ibidem, dd. 2302–2441.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

297

we should take account of the fact that many of Russia’s consular employees
were of foreign origin, as their surnames make plain.136 Moreover, the senior
management of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was itself highly
international in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Polish Prince
Adam Czartoryski, the German Count Karl Robert von Nesselrode, and the
Greek Count Capo d’Istria all served at one time or another as minister of
foreign affairs of the Russian Empire. In this multinational milieu, French
was a convenient lingua franca and no doubt a more acceptable means of
communication than Russian.
When diplomats in the Constantinople embassy corresponded with
Russian officials outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or with military
officers, on the other hand, their correspondence tended to be conducted
in Russian. The off icials to whom the diplomats wrote included civil
servants in other ministries and in provincial administrations. Many of
these correspondents, such as the provincial governors of Ekaterinoslav,
Kamenets-Podol’sk, Kazan’, Kiev, Poltava, and Saratov, occupied high service
ranks.137 We stress this point because it is very likely that all these officials
had a command of French. And yet, the diplomats did not use French when
they wrote to these colleagues outside the domain of foreign affairs. We
find similar practice in published documents that relate to other diplomatic
missions and officials in other bodies which had dealings with the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs. To cite just a few examples from 1815, Russian was used
in the following instances: by Russia’s envoy in Vienna, Gustav Stackelberg, when he wrote to the minister of finance, Dmitrii Gur’ev; by Prince
Grigorii Volkonskii, the governor-general, when he sent the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs some remarks on a memorandum from the Bokharan envoy
Azimzhan Muminzhanov; by the envoy in Madrid, Dmitrii Tatishchev, when
he wrote to Prince Petr Volkonskii, the head of the military headquarters
under Alexander I; and by a consul general in Iaşi, when he wrote to the
military commander and civilian governor of Bessarabia, Ivan Garting.138
The same practice was still in evidence in the 1830s. In 1831, for example,
the vice-chancellor, Nesselrode, wrote in Russian to the governor-general
of Western Siberia, Ivan Vel’iaminov, and the chief of naval headquarters,
Aleksandr Menshikov. The governor-general of Eastern Siberia, Aleksandr
Lavinskii, also wrote in Russian to Nesselrode. The Russian ambassador
in Paris, Prince Aleksandr Kurakin, corresponded in Russian with Field
136 Ibidem, dd. 557 (1800)–593 (1842).
137 Ibidem, dd. 2697 (1853), 2704 (1821), 2710 (1801–1802), 2925 (1827), 2928 (1831), etc.
138 Vneshniaia politika Rossii XIX i nachala XX veka, vol. 17, 201, 203–204, 290.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Marshal General Prince Aleksandr Prozorovskii.139 Thus in the official
world outside the part of the administration that dealt with foreign affairs,
linguistic practice still resembled that in the mid-eighteenth century, when
Petr Saltykov, the commander-in-chief of the army during the Seven Years’
War, his successor Aleksandr Buturlin, and Zakhar Chernyshev, another
renowned general of that time, all corresponded with the then chancellor,
Mikhail Vorontsov, in Russian, even though they were capable of writing
in French.140
That is not to say that French was never used in diplomats’ correspondence with officials in other ministries or with military officers. For one
thing, correspondence with imperial officials who were foreigners, such
as the governor of the city of Odessa, Duke Armand-Emmanuel Richelieu,
naturally tended to be conducted in French rather than Russian.141 When in
1805 the Polish Prince Czartoryski, who was at that time Russia’s minister
of foreign affairs, addressed himself to General Count Petr Tolstoi, he too
wrote in French, no doubt choosing the language that he found it easiest
to use.142 Sometimes French does also occur in the correspondence of
Russo­phone diplomats with Russophone officials in other departments or
Russophone military officers. One has the impression that this happens
chiefly in correspondence between men of the highest social origin. Thus
in 1812, Admiral Pavel Chichagov wrote to the minister of foreign affairs,
Count Nikolai Rumiantsev, in French as well as Russian, without explaining his choice and never mixing the two languages in a single letter.143 To
diplomats representing Russia in Vienna and Constantinople – Stackelberg
and Andrei Italinskii respectively – Chichagov also wrote in French. His
French is accurate, clear, and even colourful, as an extract from a letter to
Italinskii shows:
Par l’expédition d’aujourd’hui je vais vous fournir, Monsieur, de nouveaux moyens qui faciliteront, au moins pour les formes et l’étiquette,
vos premières démarches, auxquelles cependant j’attache une grande
importance. Car ce sont leurs résultats qui vous éclaireront au point de
vous faire apercevoir au juste ce qu’on peut se flatter d’obtenir, et ce que
l’on doit attendre.144
139
140
141
142
143
144

Ibidem, 279–280, 360, 361, 483–484; AVPRI, f. 133, op. 468, d. 1943.
АKV, bk 6, 356–391, 444–451.
AVPRI, f. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2900 (1811).
AVPRI, f. 133, op. 468, d. 1197, fol. 59.
Ibidem, d. 2014, fols 2 v., 7–8 v., 11, 39–41.
Ibidem, fol. 28 v.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

299

(With today’s dispatch I am going to furnish you, Sir, with new means
which will facilitate, at least as far as forms and etiquette are concerned,
your first steps, to which, however, I attach great importance. For it is
their outcomes that will enlighten you to the extent that you will see
exactly what one may feel sure of obtaining and what one should expect.)

It is possible that by writing to these diplomats in French Chichagov was
tacitly acknowledging that French was a diplomat’s professional language, a
hypothesis that seems to be confirmed by the fact that letters he addressed
in that same year to military men, including high-ranking officers, were
written in Russian.145
What determined the language choice of officials who switched between
French and Russian? The correspondence of Apollinarii Butenev and
Vladimir Titov, who represented Russia at the Porte for many years, and
Count (subsequently Prince) Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov (the son of the
former Russian ambassador in London and the governor of Novorossiisk in
the age of Nicholas I) helps us to answer this question.146 Official papers
sent to Butenev by Vorontsov from the governor’s office were always in
Russian. Butenev and Titov, for their part, also used Russian to provide
Vorontsov with information which one might describe as purely official,
such as letters about the loss of a merchant vessel in the Black Sea or the
financial accounts of the diplomatic mission. Similarly, a draft letter of 1841
conveyed news that had come from the Turkish quarantine authorities that
a fisherman who had died on the Black Sea had been found to have the
plague. The note ‘sur pap de Dep’ (on departmental paper) indicated that
this was a formal communication.147
Letters in French, on the other hand, tended to be unofficial. Thus, in a
letter of 1840, Vorontsov thanked Butenev for giving him news from Turkey
and explained how pleased he was to receive first-hand information.148
Similarly, a letter of 1841 that Butenev wrote to Vorontsov in French seems
more reminiscent of a salon conversation about politics than an official
report.149 Perhaps, then, the significance of a shift into French was that it
imparted a less formal, more intimate tone to correspondence. And indeed,
official news alternates in the correspondence of these men with personal
145 Ibidem, fols 23, 64, 66 (to Lieutenant-Colonel Polev, Vice-Admiral Nikolai Iazykov, who was
also the military governor of Nikolaev and Sebastopol, and Major-General Grigorii Engel’gardt).
146 AVPRI, f. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2886 (1839–1841, Russ., Fr.).
147 Ibidem, fol. 11.
148 Ibidem, fol. 4.
149 Ibidem, fol. 8.

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The French L anguage in Russia

news and requests. For example, in an undated letter, Vorontsov asked
Butenev, in French, to take under his protection a certain Miss Hunt, the
daughter of an English architect who lived in Vorontsov’s house, while she
was visiting Constantinople.150 Likewise, Vorontsov asked Titov and his wife
to entrust him with some personal errands which needed to be carried out
in St Petersburg, for which Voronstov was about to depart.151 The boundary
between the official and unofficial realms might be blurred, as in this
passage from Vorontsov’s letter:
Ma femme qui s’est toujours souvenu avec reconnaissance de l’obligeance
que lui a témoigné pendant son sejour à Consple Monsieur Bogdanoff, a été
enchantée hier d’apprendre son arrivée […] J’ai lu avec beaucoup d’interet
le paragraphe de votre lettre sur la proposition que pourraient faire
quelques negocians de Constple d’établir une communication réguliere
avec nous même toutes les semaines pour une subvention aussi minime
selon moi que de 50/m Rbls.152
(My wife, who has always remembered with gratitude the helpfulness
that Mr Bogdanov showed her during her visit to Constantinople, was
delighted to learn yesterday of his arrival […] I read with great interest
the paragraph in your letter about the proposal that some businessmen of
Constantinople may make to establish regular communication with us,
even every week, I think, for a subvention of as little as 50 roubles a month.)

Vorontsov followed the same pattern in later correspondence with Titov:
there are letters of a purely official nature in Russian on official notepaper and letters which, although they do discuss professional matters, are
relatively informal and written in French. In a letter of 1845, for example,
Vorontsov tells Titov in French how he feels about the emperor’s decision
to add a new post in the Caucasus to his responsibilities, how difficult it
is going to be for him to carry out all these responsibilities, and why he
cannot refuse to do what the emperor demands.153 Clearly, we are dealing
with a shift from the language of professional correspondence between
diplomats and Russian officials outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
to the language in which it was appropriate to conduct personal relations
150
151
152
153

Ibidem, fol. 20.
Ibidem, fol. 58.
Ibidem, fols 59 v.–60.
Ibidem, fol. 30.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

301

with a fellow member of high society. In Butenev’s correspondence with
the governor of the city of Odessa, Aleksandr Levshin, on the other hand,
French was not used (although Levshin, who had previously served in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and had visited France, had a fine command of
that language), because this correspondence was of a purely official nature.154

French and Russian in other official domains
The distinction we have observed in mid-nineteenth-century Russian official
practice between the use of French for the conduct of diplomatic business
and the use of Russian for business that did not concern foreign affairs seems
to hold good when sovereigns are involved. Diplomatic documents and
correspondence in the archive of Nicholas I, for example, are for the most
part in French, including Nicholas’s correspondence with his minister of
foreign affairs, Nesselrode.155 The same may be said of the reign of Alexander
II, who on the day of his accession to the throne made a speech to the
diplomatic corps in French,156 although in Alexander’s correspondence
German occasionally featured as well.157 On the whole, this state of affairs
persisted during the reigns of the last two Romanovs, Alexander III and
Nicholas II, although the latter, as we have seen, conducted some of his
correspondence with other European monarchs in English.158
Letters by monarchs and other members of the royal family which did
not concern diplomatic matters, on the other hand, tended to be written in
Russian. This was already the case under Alexander I, although the linguistic
division into different spheres – private and official – was perhaps not yet
as clear-cut as it would become under later emperors. For instance, Russian
was the language used, in the reign of Alexander I, for minutes of meetings
in the Legislative Department and the State Economy Department of the
State Council and in the Committee of Ministers. The chairman of the
Committee of Ministers, the minister of finance, military commanders – all
presented their reports to Alexander and wrote their official memoranda
in Russian. Alexander himself used Russian in his orders and rescripts
to the chairman of the State Council, the chairman of the Committee of
154 Ibidem, d. 2940 (1837–1839). On Levshin, see http://odesskiy.com/l/levshin-aleksandriraklievich.html.
155 GARF, f. 672, op. 1, d. 202 (1850–1853, Fr.).
156 GARF, f. 678, op. 1, d. 571 (1855).
157 Ibidem, dd. 499 (1863, Fr., Ger.), 500 (1867, Fr.), 502 (1867–1872, Fr.), etc.
158 See the last section of Chapter 3 above.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Ministers, the president of the Provisional Government of the Kingdom
of Poland, the minister of finance, military commanders, and governors.
Military men of various ranks generally wrote to one another in Russian,
including those who themselves belonged to the aristocracy and had an
excellent command of French.159 To an even greater extent, civil servants
of the highest rank used Russian when they addressed inferior officials.160
The official correspondence of Nicholas I, his manifestos, and the numerous
reports, memoranda, and summaries that he was constantly receiving
were also in Russian, in the main.161 Nicholas delivered a speech to the
Preobrazhenskii Life-Guard Regiment in Russian, although the life-guard
officers were bound to have had a command of French.162 The same can be
said of the situation in the reigns of Alexander II, Alexander III, and Nicholas
II: official documents – reports of one sort or another, memoranda from
ministers and high-ranking army officers, and other correspondence of this
sort – almost always came to the emperor in Russian.163
It is worth comparing the official correspondence of the emperors with
that of a prominent female member of the royal family who also often
concerned herself with affairs of state and charitable works, namely the
Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, whose plurilingualism we have already
mentioned.164 The numerous memoranda that Elena Pavlovna received
reveal the range of languages, above all Russian, in which she conducted
this business.165 As for the many notes in foreign languages in her archive
that were written in German or French,166 nearly all of these were from
foreigners, although some were from Russians. The latter, when they wrote
in a foreign language, always used French.167 The content of the documents
159 Vneshniaia politika Rossii XIX i nachala XX veka, vol. 7, 22–23, 54–55, 257–258, 273, 280,
321–322, 360–361, 374–375, 391–407, 539; AVPRI, f. 133, op. 468, d. 1943 (1808).
160 For example, the dealings of the minister of internal affairs, O.P. Kozodavlev, with the head
of the Odessan colonies, Loshkarev, were in Russian: Vneshniaia politika Rossii XIX i nachala
XX veka, vol. 7, 523–525 (17 (29) September 1815). We shall confine ourselves to these examples,
but a survey of other volumes in this series confirms this trend in later periods, e.g. the 1830s
(ibidem, vol. 17).
161 e.g., numerous memoranda written by Nicholas: GARF, f. 672, op. 1, dd. 69 (1831–1834), 82
(1841–1844), etc.
162 Ibidem, d. 87 (1845).
163 There were rare exceptions: see, e.g., GARF, f. 677, op. 1, dd. 370, 463.
164 See the last section of Chapter 3 above.
165 GARF, f. 647, op. 1, dd. 49, 53, 59. Some memoranda addressed to her were written in French:
see, e.g. ibidem, d. 126. In this case, the author, Sergei Lanskoi, who was the Russian minister of
internal affairs, was very close to Elena Pavlovna, which might explain his choice of French.
166 GARF, f. 647, op. 1; there are dozens of documents in each of these two languages.
167 See, e.g., ibidem, dd. 238 and 239 (no date), 251 (1853), 367 (1862).

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303

in French in Elena Pavlovna’s archive does not differ from that of documents
in other languages: the documents concern such matters as the state of the
Russian army, the difficulty of reorganizing the Naval Ministry, Russia’s
financial condition, the setting-up of a national bank, tax reform, and,
most commonly, education, Polish affairs, and the peasant reform.168 It is
clear, therefore, that German and French retained some place in affairs of
state in the mid-nineteenth century. No doubt this was mainly due to the
fact, in the case of the former language, that a large number of Germans
were resident in Russia and, in the case of the latter, that French was still a
lingua franca for many foreigners and the language of high society in the
Russian Empire. The reports of bodies that were connected in some way to
the imperial court and the requests of learned and musical societies were
often made in French,169 reflecting the perception in Russian society that
French was the principal language of the court and the royal family (and
perhaps also the perception of it as the language of women in high society).
No doubt we should also bear in mind, when considering the choice of
language by those who wrote to this grand duchess, that she was of German
origin. In sum, though, the case of Elena Pavlovna would seem to suggest
that women’s language use in the royal family was not substantially different
from men’s practice.
Our impression that Russian was the predominant language of internal
administration in the Russian Empire is also borne out by documents relating
to the activity of the Third Department and the Corps of Gendarmes, the
new secret police organs that were set up in 1826, following the Decembrist
Revolt.170 (The de jure head of the Third Department from its inception until
1844 was Aleksandr Benckendorff; its de facto director, though, was Maksim
von Fock, who oversaw the Department’s investigations and supervised its
agents up until his death in 1831.) As an institution concerned with internal
matters rather than foreign affairs, the Third Department invariably used
168 Minutes concerning German educational institutions in Russia or educational institutions
in the Baltic lands, though, were written in German.
169 e.g., GARF, f. 647, op. 1, dd. 274, 285, 312. However, such reports might be written in Russian
too (see, e.g., d. 295), while draft rules and regulations might be presented in German (e.g., d. 314).
Language choice may have been connected with the specific character of this or that society or
institution.
170 The pioneering Russian studies of the Third Department, produced in brief periods in the
first half of the twentieth century when Russian scholars had good access to archival sources
on the subject, are by Lemke (1908) and Isaak Trotskii (1930). The main history of the Third
Department in English is the study by Squire (1968), who did not have access to archival sources.
Whereas Squire writes an administrative history of the institution, Monas (1961) focuses on the
effect of the Third Department on the evolution of literature and journalism.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Russian for its own clerical documentation and for communications with
other government departments. Its decisions or instructions on the papers
it received were generally recorded in Russian as well, as were the bulk of
the reports it received from provincial gendarmes, most of whom had an
army background.171
Nonetheless, there were instances in the history of this government
department too when French was used or knowledge of it was needed. The
personal memorandum that Benckendorff sent to Nicholas I in January
1826 proposing the establishment of a ‘Higher Police’ under the command
of a special minister and inspector of a Corps of Gendarmes was written in
French.172 (Benckendorff had previously sent a memorandum, also written
in French, to Alexander I, on the need to create a gendarmerie on the French
model, but Alexander had not acted upon it.173) Most strikingly, French
was the language chosen for the first four annual surveys of the state of
public opinion, for the years 1827–1830, which were written by von Fock
and passed on by Benckendorff to the emperor.174 Odd as it may now seem,
Benckendorff and von Fock had an idealistic and even chivalric view of their
role as champions of upright subjects and expressed animosity towards
corrupt officials who masqueraded as Russian patriots. This attitude came
across in von Fock’s elegant ‘tableaux’.175 For example, the gendarmerie was
perceived, von Fock opined in his survey for 1829, as ‘the people’s moral
physician’.176 We find a further report, also written in French, and by the
same author, in response to a request from Nicholas for clarification of
certain points made in one of the surveys on the state of public opinion to
which we have just referred.177 Here von Fock provided a list of names of
members of the various ‘parties’ in Moscow and St Petersburg who caused
him concern. These included young men of letters, among whom there were
such unlikely bedfellows as Pushkin, Vladimir Odoevskii, and Viazemskii,
171 We are grateful to Grigorii Bibikov for this information, which is based on his knowledge
of the archival material on the Third Department in GARF.
172 The French original of this proposal is reproduced in an appendix in Squire, The Third
Department, 239–240.
173 Ibidem, 50.
174 The reports were entitled ‘Tableaux de l’Opinion publique’. They were published in Russian
in KA, vol. 37 (1929), 141–156 (report for 1827) and 156–169 (report for 1828), and vol. 38 (1930),
109–133 (report for 1829) and 133–145 (report for 1830). After von Fock’s death in 1831, the annual
reports were written in Russian. For a summary and discussion of these surveys, see Squire,
The Third Department, 201–205.
175 Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire, 207–208.
176 KA, 38 (1930), 132.
177 GARF, f. 109, op. 1a, d. 8, fols 30–32.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

305

the future Slavophile Ivan Kireevskii, and the future Official Nationalists
Pogodin and Stepan Shevyrev. More worryingly, from the point of view of
the Third Department, they also included certain young diplomats and
officers from illustrious backgrounds who, while they were not seeking to
overthrow the government, were known to think that Russia would benefit
from constitutional government.
It is not surprising, perhaps, that French was used at the highest level of
the Third Department in the early years of its existence, for both the officials
who were responsible for its formation and the early management of it were
members of the Baltic German nobility, not ethnic Russians. Benckendorff
belonged to a family that traced its origins to knights of the Teutonic Order
and whose members became Russian subjects in 1710, during the reign of
Peter the Great. He was educated at a Jesuit boarding school. He preferred
to use French rather than Russian in his personal correspondence,178 as
attested in some surviving notes of 1830–1831 to von Fock.179 He also chose
French for his memoirs.180 Maksim von Fock came from the same region of
the empire. His mother-tongue was German, but he too had a command of
French, as well as Russian (and Polish). French was the vehicle for a stream of
reports that he sent to Benckendorff immediately after the Third Department
had been set up, during Benckendorff’s absence from St Petersburg in the
summer of 1826.181
At the same time, knowledge of French was a matter of practical necessity
for those gathering intelligence on Russian subjects from agents abroad

178 We are indebted to Grigorii Bibikov for this point too.
179 GARF, f. 109, op. 1a, d. 35.
180 The first part of these memoirs, covering the years up to 1825, is housed in GARF (f. 728, op. 1,
d. 1353) and the second part (the continuation up to 1837) in SPbF ARAN (f. 764, op. 4, d. 5). The
memoirs have recently been published in a single volume in Russian translation: see Benkendorff,
Vospominaniia. They had previously been published in Russian in instalments in RA, RS, and
Istoricheskii vestnik (see the entries under ‘Benkendorf’ in the section of our bibliography on
published primary sources). Marina Sidorova has pointed out that although Benckendorff was
of German origin he rarely used German in everyday life except when as a child he spoke to his
mother and in correspondence about property matters with relations in the Baltic provinces.
Schooling at a French pension where classes were conducted in French, military service in the
elite Semenovskii Guards Regiment whose officers were French-speaking members of the high
aristocracy, and contact at court with the Francophone Empress Maria Fedorovna made French
indispensable for Benckendorff. At the same, time his written French, as can be seen from his
diaries, was fallible, containing frequent orthographic and stylistic errors and some semantic
mistakes. See Sidorova, ‘Novootkrytye memuary grafa Benkendorfa kak istoricheskii istochnik’.
181 Squire, The Third Department, 63–74. A Russian version of these letters was printed in RS,
vol. 32 (1881), 168–194, 303–336, 519–560.

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The French L anguage in Russia

(with whom the Third Department corresponded in French 182) and also
from agents reporting on many Russian subjects in Russia itself. Since
a major function of the Third Department was to keep members of the
Francophone aristocratic elite under surveillance (for members of that
elite had been ringleaders in the recent mutiny and were susceptible to
political and social ideas that posed a threat to the regime), knowledge of
French was required both for eavesdropping and for reading perlustrated
noble correspondence. As a woman named Annette who lived in Moscow
warned a friend in St Petersburg a week after the Decembrist Revolt, in a
letter written in French, there were many spies abroad. It would therefore
be unwise of her friend to leave letters such as the one in which Annette
expressed this concern lying around on her table for others to see – but
evidently Annette’s letter, which is preserved in the archive of the Third
Department, never reached its addressee!183
Then again, some of the most useful informants of the Third Department
were themselves Francophone nobles who had access to and were trusted
by those members of the elite whose views disturbed the authorities. Such
people might naturally submit the intelligence they gathered in French.
There are documents in both languages, and in various hands, for example,
that relate to the investigation into the Decembrists and its aftermath in
1826–1827.184 A particularly detailed and malicious denunciation came, in
1832, from a source who was obviously well-known to the unsuspecting
Turgenev brothers. Although the brothers had not all adopted ‘la livrée
des vautours jacobins’ (the plumage of Jacobin vultures), the informant
was convinced that Nikolai Turgenev, to whom we refer at other points in
this book (and who in truth held quite moderate political views),185 was ‘un
enragé, une harpie qui infecte par le toucher’ (an out-and-out radical, a harpy
who infects you if you touch him). Drawing on knowledge of what Nikolai
was doing in France, where he was by now a refugee, the informer recommended closer surveillance of Nikolai’s brother Aleksandr, who, the author
conjectured, might be acting as Nikolai’s treasurer in Russia.186 Perhaps the
use of French as a vehicle for sharing confidential information between noble
peers made the act of denunciation seem less undignified, more like the
fulfilment of a civic duty. Not that all informants felt as comfortable about
182 As we are also informed by Grigorii Bibikov.
183 GARF, f. 109, op. 1a, d. 3, fol. 2.
184 See the large collection of documents relating to the revolt: Vosstanie dekabristov (23 vols
to date).
185 See the fourth section of Chapter 4 above and the sixth section of Chapter 7 below.
186 GARF, f. 109, op. 1a, d. 37, fols 1–2 v.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

307

their collaboration with the Third Department as this enemy of Nikolai
Turgenev seems to have done. Someone who had been providing the Third
Department with intelligence about letters sent by exiled Decembrists
from Siberia to Moscow justified his own conduct. Writing ‘[e]n homme
d’honneur’ (as a man of honour), he reminded his addressee in the Third
Department that the gendarmes had promised to leave in peace a certain
Mlle Anastasie whom he had mentioned in his report and who of course
had no idea of his involvement in the investigation.187
Finally, we turn again to one of the most productive autobiographical
sources for our study, the diaries of Count Petr Valuev, a well-educated
and well connected nobleman who became a civil servant in the 1830s
and went on to serve as minister of internal affairs, from 1861 to 1868, and
minister of state property, from 1872 to 1879.188 Valuev’s adherence to the
common practice of switching codes for the purpose of reporting speech
in the language in which an observation was originally made provides us
with an insight into the persistence of the use of French at the highest level
of the official domain in the second half of the nineteenth century. It also
attests to the continuing predominance of French in discussion of foreign
affairs. At the same time, we may surmise on the basis of Valuev’s diary
that French had somewhat greater currency in oral discussion of official
business than it did in formal written records and correspondence.
It is evident, for example, that conversations Valuev had with the sovereign
in his ministerial capacity took place in French, irrespective of the fact
that his portfolio was domestic policy. ‘I was in the palace and saw the
sovereign at two o’clock’, he writes in an entry in April 1861 as his star was
in the ascendant.
Graciously received. An announcement about my appointment, expression
of confidence, an indication that the sovereign wants ‘de l’ordre et des
187 Ibidem, d. 39, fols 1–2.
188 The first volume of Valuev’s two-volume diary covers the years 1861–1864, and the second
the years 1865–1876. The value of this source for our linguistic history, as well as for political
historians, is enhanced by the fact that Zaionchkovskii’s edition of it is based on a text written
before Valuev reworked it for publication. It is therefore reasonable to view the multilingualism
that is on display in the diary, like the opinions expressed in it by Valuev, as a record of fairly
spontaneous language use, rather than merely an example of public performance, although
Valuev no doubt did also have readers of later generations in mind as he wrote. On Valuev’s
reworking and editing of the diary over a long period and on the history of the publication of
various parts of the diary, see Zaionchkovskii’s introduction in vol. 1, 8–13. We also use this
source in the first three sections of Chapter 4 above (on usage in high society) and the third
section of Chapter 6 below (on code-switching).

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The French L anguage in Russia

améliorations qui ne changent point les bases du gouvernement’ [order
and improvements which do not change the bases of the government],
an instruction to report on Friday with Lanskoi. I asked the sovereign to
support me in the difficult position in which current circumstances and
the position of the Ministry would place me and I requested permission to
express my thoughts frankly and plainly. His answer: ‘Je vous l’ordonne’
[I command you to do so].189

That is not to say that there was any breach in this case of what we have
found to be normal linguistic practice in the written language, according to
which Russian was used in correspondence between the sovereign and his
subjects about official matters outside the realm of foreign affairs. Indeed,
we may infer that it was usual for Valuev to correspond with Alexander II in
Russian, since in an entry in his diary for January 1876 (by which time he had
an economic portfolio) he specifically mentioned his preference for French
in a particular letter and the reason for it: ‘After dinner I wrote a note which
I intend to send to the sovereign on the fall in the exchange rate. The note
is in French, so that the source of it should remain unknown to Reutern.’190
However, in oral discourse, it would appear from Valuev’s diary, French
was widely used for discussion of matters of state at the highest level, and
not only when the subject was foreign affairs or when one of the participants
was not ethnically Russian. Valuev switched into French in his diary, for
instance, to report what had been said to him by colleagues on 21 February
1861, as a crisis was developing in Poland:
Prince Dolgorukov told me he was apprehensive about Polish affairs. ‘On
prend la chose trop légèrement chez nous’ [We are taking this too lightly].
‘Je suis heureux de vous l’entendre dire, mon prince. Jе tiens pour certain
que la chose est très grave’ [I’m glad to hear you say that, my prince. I have
no doubt that the situation is very serious]. ‘Chut! il n’en faut pas parler’
[Shush! We mustn’t speak about it]. Why ever not?
I.M. Tolstoi, who attended the committee in place of Prince Gorchakov
today, on the other hand, expressed himself as follows: ‘On n’a pas laissé
à [Mikhail] Gortschakoff [i.e. the Russian viceroy in Poland] le temps de
faire la bêtise de recevoir sa petition. Tout va bien. Il faudra seulement faire
aller ailleurs M.M. Fialkovski et c’ie’ [Gorchakov wasn’t given the time to be
189 Dnevnik P.A. Valueva, vol. 1, 104. For further examples, see vol. 1, 157, 181, 192, 205, 224, 291,
and vol. 2, 259–260, 330.
190 Ibidem, vol. 2, 331. Reutern was minister of finance from 1862–1878.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

309

so foolish as to accept its [presumably Poland’s] petition. All goes well. All
that needs to be done is to make Messrs Fijałkowski and Co. go away].191

Indeed, French appears to be Valuev’s prime – perhaps his exclusive –
language of communication with such Russian colleagues as Vasilii Dolgorukov, the head of the Third Department in the period 1856–1866, as well
as Gorchakov, the minister of foreign affairs from 1856 to 1882. At any rate,
it is the language in which remarks of theirs that Valuev records are always
couched in his diary.192 In many instances, this usage is consistent with our
finding that French was the preferred medium for discussion of foreign
affairs and diplomatic matters, but this explanation for the persistence
of French in high government circles will not always suffice, and we shall
shortly suggest other possible reasons for it.
First, though, it is worth pausing on an entry in Valuev’s diary for 13 March
1861, apropos of the worsening crisis in Poland, not only because it throws
light both on Valuev’s own apparently symmetrical bilingualism and on
some of the factors that generally drive code-switching but also because
it seems to show the use of French for deliberations in the government’s
highest consultative assembly, which was chaired by the sovereign. In an
account of a formal meeting of the Council of Ministers, which Valuev found
deplorably incoherent and inconclusive, there is a long passage in which he
reports the contributions of a succession of ministers, switching repeatedly
between French and Russian as he does so.193 The primary language of this
account is Russian, which Valuev uses to frame his personal minute of the
debate. When he records the contributions made by individuals, on the other
hand, he often shifts to what seems to be the language of the original utterance, especially when he is quoting more or less verbatim what an individual
has said. Sometimes, once he has switched to French, he continues in that
language even for a highly condensed summary of a speaker’s words. Late
in the entry, he again switches to French intra-sententially to record his
personal impression of the meeting as a whole: ‘They did not want to make
any concessions’, he comments, ‘and did not notice that they were making
them, they forgot que des concessions faites de mauvaise grâce sont les pires
que l’on puisse faire’ (that concessions made with bad grace are the worst

191 Ibidem, vol. 1, 73.
192 See, e.g., ibidem, vol. 1, 86, 214, 232, 241, 251, 253, 275, 291, 292; vol. 2, 316, 347, 380.
193 Ibidem, vol. 1, 84–85.

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The French L anguage in Russia

sort that one can make).194 This final shift to French may be explained by
the aphoristic nature of Valuev’s personal conclusion.195
There were several factors that no doubt encouraged continuing use of
French as a spoken language in the upper echelons of the government of the
Russian Empire. First, French remained the lingua franca of the world of
international diplomacy inhabited by foreign ministers who were Valuev’s
peers, such as Nesselrode (Gorchakov’s predecessor as minister of foreign
affairs) and Aleksandr Gorchakov himself. This was a world into which
the emperor was continually drawn. In any case, as a government minister
resident in St Petersburg, Valuev was constantly coming into contact with
foreign envoys, such as the British ambassador Lord Napier, and French was
the language in which he generally communicated with them.196
Secondly, Valuev’s duties as minister of the interior – and Valuev would
not have been an untypical minister in this respect – brought him into
contact with subjects of the empire who may not have used Russian as their
preferred language, such as marshals of the nobility of the Baltic provinces.197
Indeed, for some of his peers, such as Nesselrode, Russian was not a mother
tongue. It is always in French that this minister speaks to Valuev:
Count Nesselrode drove over to me. ‘Je vous avoue’, he said, ‘que si Dolgorouki et Mouravieff passent dans le camp Gagarine, j’y passe aussi.’
[I confess to you that if Dolgorukii and Murav’ev go over to the side of
Gagarin, so will I.] There are our convictions and statesmen for you!198

The abundance of men of German or Swedish origin – for instance, Berg,
Budberg, Gerngross, Kleinmichel, Krabbe, Krusenstern, Lambert, Reutern,
and various Adlerbergs, Korfs, Lievens, Meyendorffs, Oldenbergs, and Pahlens
– among the courtiers, diplomats, governors, ministers, officers, and officials
mentioned by Valuev in his diary underlines the prominence of non-Russians
in the high official and military milieus of the Russian Empire and makes
the preference for French in those milieus the more understandable.199
194 Ibidem, 87.
195 For further examples of reported speech, conversations, or statements in French in Valuev’s
diary, see, e.g., ibidem, 75, 76, 77, 82, 89, 94, 97, 101, 102, 105, 111, 119, 122, 123, 141, 142, 145, 170, 179,
244, 296.
196 Ibidem, e.g. 236, 242, 243.
197 Ibidem, 88.
198 Ibidem, 62.
199 A similar impression is created by the diary and memoirs of Anna Tiutcheva, where we
find mention of Essens, Radens, Tiesenhausens, and Totlebens as well as some of those German

French in diplomac y and other official domains

311

However, there is no doubt one further reason for the persistence of French
in the upper sphere of Russian government. This sphere overlapped with
the high social world, where French – whatever misgivings the literary community and intelligentsia might have had about francophonie, as we shall
see200 – was still considered a prestige language as well as an international
lingua franca. It is often difficult to say, as we read Valuev’s diary, whether
an encounter that he describes is official or social: in the charmed circle in
which such men moved, the boundary between a discussion in a committee
and a conversation in a drawing-room was not clear-cut. Consider, for
example, the following conversation with Mikhail Murav’ev, which took place
on 28 February 1861 and which we may assume to have been conducted in
French, since that is the language in which Valuev quotes Murav’ev’s words:
We talked, among other things, about the possibility of his leaving the
Ministry because of his explanations [ob’’iasnenii, i.e. self-justifications
or clearing-up of matters] with the sovereign. When I told him that I
thought he ought to wait until the new committee of people living in
the countryside started functioning he replied: mais vous concevez qu’il
m’est plus avantageux de m’en aller plutôt. Les choses n’iront pas. Il vaut
mieux être dehors avant la bagarre’ [but you see, it’s to my advantage
to go sooner. Things won’t work out. It would be better to get out before
the scrap begins].201

Or again, take Valuev’s entry on what appears to be a social meeting with
Dolgorukov:
Prince Dolgorukov, whom I saw at Prince Suvorov’s, spoke about Panin and
Stroganov, shrugging his shoulders, and tried to explain his own neutrality
or flaccidity by the fact ‘que c’était un parti pris chez l’empereur et que par
conséquent on aurait pu seulement faire une démonstration de principes sans
obtenir d’autre résultat que de rendre la position de s. m. plus embarrassante’
[that this was a preconception of the emperor’s and consequently he would
only have been able to make a show of principle, the sole outcome of which
would have been to make His Majesty’s position more embarrassing].202
families mentioned by Valuev: see Tiutcheva, Pri dvore dvukh imperatorov.
200 In Chapters 8 and 9 below.
201 Dnevnik P.A. Valueva, vol. 1, 76.
202 Ibidem, 88. Valuev’s social use of French extended, of course, beyond the sphere of colleagues
in government. Conversations could still be conducted in French by men of letters from high

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The French L anguage in Russia

In the spoken language, we therefore suggest, the unwritten rules of language
choice that obtained in official written usage may have been relaxed at this
high official and social level, and in any case the blurring of the boundary
between the professional and the social spheres could throw them into
doubt.

French at the Academy of Sciences
As we pointed out in the introduction to this chapter, the St Petersburg
Academy of Sciences may be treated, on one level, as an official institution,
like government departments, in which various languages were used at one
time or another for the conduct of its business (Illustration 7). However, the
Academy was of course also a scholarly body whose members produced
learned publications. Moreover, it was de facto a European institution,
conceived on the basis of European models and staffed, especially in the
eighteenth century, almost entirely by scholars and scientists from Western
and Central Europe. Even in the nineteenth century, there was a strong
non-Russian element among those members of its staff who were subjects
of the empire. Language use in the Academy was therefore affected by the
European scholarly tradition, in which Latin had long played a vital role,
and by recent or contemporary changes in European linguistic practice
in the scholarly and scientific domain. Thus, the progress of French in the
learned publications of the Academy during the period we examine in this
book can be explained only in part by the development of a Francophone
readership in Russia. Just as the preference for French as the language of
communication in the field of foreign affairs in Russia was due mainly to the
international standing of that language in eighteenth-century diplomacy,
so the principal reason for the advance of French for certain purposes in
the Academy of Sciences was the rising status of French as a language of
scholarly communication in Europe as a whole.203
The variety of languages used by European academies was felt in the
eighteenth century to hinder the unity of the Republic of Letters.204 In this
situation, French had a role to play in the world of learning and science, as
noble backgrounds who belonged roughly to Valuev’s generation, such as the poet Tiutchev, with
whom Valuev converses at the Viazemskiis one evening in 1861: ibidem, 79.
203 We are grateful to Tat’iana Kostina for her help with our work on this section and for drawing
our attention to a number of useful publications, and also to Galina Smagina for her valuable
suggestions.
204 See McClellan, ‘L’Europe des académies’.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

313

Illustration 7 View of the River Neva, including the buildings of the Academy of
Sciences.

Image available in David Rumsey Map Collection at www.davidrumsey.com and reproduced with
the permission of this collection. The illustration is from Plan de la ville de St. Pétersbourg avec ses
principales vües dessiné et gravé sous la direction de l’Académie Impériale des sciences et des arts, by
Mikhail Makhaev and Joseph Valeriani (St Petersburg, 1753).

Latin had previously done. For example, the reform of the Berlin Academy
carried out by Frederick II in 1744, which increased the role of French in the
activity and running of the Academy, raised the prestige of the institution
and facilitated the communication of its scholarly findings throughout
Europe. Two Francophone men were put in charge of this company of the
learned: Maupertuis, who became its president, and Formey, who was
its permanent secretary. Formey’s correspondence reflects the growing
role of French in academic exchanges during the eighteenth century: over
90 percent of his letters were written in French, the remainder being in
Latin, German, Italian, English, or Dutch. The works of German academicians were translated into French and included in the annual volume of
the History and Proceedings of the Berlin Academy.205 The Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences too, while publishing its proceedings in Swedish in
205 Bandelier, Des Suisses dans la République des Lettres, 18–19, 23.

314 

The French L anguage in Russia

the first instance, regularly translated these proceedings into French (and
German) in order that its findings should be more widely disseminated.206
As Christopher Buck has shown in a study of language use in the St
Petersburg Academy during the f irst half-century of that institution’s
existence,207 choice of language in the various branches of the Academy’s
activity was a complicated matter. The language chosen varied, depending on the type of activity, which ranged from the keeping of minutes,
the production of other internal documents, and correspondence with
Russian institutions and European learned societies to the Academy’s
publishing enterprise and its teaching. The internal documentation of
the Academy on its current activity and managerial matters was written
in Russian, although some other documents (relating to its printing press,
for example) might be produced in German, for German-speakers made
up the majority of the Academy’s employees throughout the eighteenth
century. The correspondence of the Academy with other Russian institutions was also generally conducted in Russian. Minutes of its ‘Conference’
(the body in which the Academy discussed its affairs and assessed the
outcomes of its research) were kept in Latin, although German and French
might be used in appendices. Departures from this rule depended on the
language competence and preferences of the president and the director
of the Academy who was in off ice at a particular time. Thus, after the
appointment of Baron Johann Albrecht von Korff as president in 1734,
the minutes started to be kept in German because Korff did not know
Latin. After the appointment of Count Kirill Razumovskii to this post in
1746, Latin was reinstated, because Razumovskii had learnt it in German
universities in which he had studied. In 1766, when Vladimir Orlov was
director, though, German was reintroduced, because Orlov did not have
Latin. It was not until 1773 that French began to be used for minutes,
and again the change was due to the preferences of the director: during
the absence of Orlov, management of the Academy was entrusted to the
deputy-director, Aleksei Rzhevskii, who was not strong in either German
or Latin. However, when Orlov returned to his post, no further change of
language ensued, probably because French henceforth played a major role
in the domain of learning, as in others.208
At public meetings of the Academy, which were not infrequently attended by Russian monarchs and courtiers, language choice was dictated
206 Sten, A Comet of the Enlightenment, 9.
207 Buck, ‘The Russian Language Question in the Imperial Academy of Sciences’.
208 SPb II RAN, f. 36, оp. 1, d. 792, fols 22–22 v.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

315

by convenience, that is to say it depended on the linguistic competencies of
the speaker and the audience. Often German was used, sometimes French
and Russian. When Razumovskii first attended the Conference in 1746, he
addressed the members of the Academy in Russian, while Schumacher,
who was de facto director of the Academy at that time, replied to him
in French, although Razumovskii understood German too. French was
evidently perceived as the language of polite intercourse in which it was
most seemly to address a highly-placed courtier. In accordance with the
Academy’s new statute of 1747, one paper was supposed to be read at public
meetings in Latin and another in Russian. This represented a new step in
the direction of recognition of Russian as a language of learned discourse.
However, there were few Russian members of the Academy, and so it was
decided in 1756 that French could be used when Russian academicians
were not present as it would be the language known to the largest number
of people. In 1764, Lomonosov proposed that when Catherine II or the heir
to the throne was in attendance at a meeting of the Academy the paper in
Latin be replaced with one in French or German. As Buck has observed,
French emerged as the main alternative to Russian because it was the
principal language of the court.209
It is worth pausing on the new regulations introduced in 1747, insofar as
the ideas they contain about the Academy’s language policy are of interest
to us. The regulations outline a clear policy with respect to language use in
the various areas of the Academy’s activity. The thrust of the innovations
was not merely to bring greater order to the Academy’s somewhat anarchic
language practice but also to reinforce the commanding position of just two
languages: Latin, as the traditional language of learning, and Russian, which
was drawing level with Latin as a language of academic communication. German and French, which, as we have seen, had played a not insignificant role
in the Academy, were now to yield ground to either Latin or Russian. Thus,
in accordance with Regulation § 19, ‘the journal, as well as all inventions,
and everything that is recorded in the Assembly of academicians should be
written in Latin or Russian, and French and German should never be used
there’.210 The teaching of subjects other than languages in the Academy was
henceforth to be carried out in Russian, whilst professors’ teaching was to
be done in Latin, and it was proposed that Russian be used for instructing
Russian pupils in other languages.

209 Buck, ‘The Russian Language Question in the Imperial Academy of Sciences’, 192.
210 Ustavy Rossiiskoi akademii nauk, 63.

316 

The French L anguage in Russia

It may be that we should associate the progress of Russian as a language
of learning with the conception of it, from as early as the 1740s, as a language
possessing positive qualities which could put it on a par with the main
European languages, including French, even though it was as yet imperfect
inasmuch as it lacked specialized terminology. We see here an early manifestation of linguistic patriotism, some time before the Russian reaction
to the extravagant use of French in high noble society that we examine in
later chapters. The French model of defending and extolling a language was
acknowledged by scholars of the Academy as an important point of reference.
Thus in 1735, Trediakovskii organized a ‘Russian Assembly’ in the Academy.
This assembly was the first translators’ organization in Russia. Its members
not only produced translations but also discussed and reviewed the work of
their fellow-translators. They were to attend meetings of the assembly, submit
their own translations for scrutiny, and offer criticisms of the translations
done by others. This was a modest enterprise, but Trediakovskii’s aims in
a number of ways replicated those of the French Academy, in particular
the ambition to compile a grammar, a guide to rhetoric, and a dictionary
of Russian.211 As Zhivov has pointed out, Trediakovskii, Vasilii Adodurov,
and Tatishchev subscribed, in many respects, to the programme of French
purism. The triumphant march of French through Europe set an example
which Russian academicians were prepared to follow as they laboured to
create a Russian literary language.212 As Lomonosov wrote in 1756:
Let us look at France alone, about which it is indeed possible to wonder
whether she has acquired the respect of nations through her power or
through the sciences, especially philology, refining and beautifying her
language by the industry of skilful writers. Her military power affects
largely neighbouring nations, while the use of her language not only
extends and reigns throughout Europe, but even serves in large part the
various European peoples in distant parts of the world for communication
as if they were one people.213

The lectures given by professors of the Academy of Sciences were open to
the public free of charge. They were intended to broaden the very narrow
211 Zhivov, Istoriia russkoi pis’mennosti, vol. 2, 1018.
212 Ibidem, 1017–1025.
213 This passage is from Lomonosov’s unfinished essay O nyneshnem sostoianii slovesnykh nauk
v Rossii (1756?); it is quoted by Buck, ‘The Russian Language Question in the Imperial Academy
of Sciences’, 218, whose translation we have used.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

317

audience that the Academy reached. In 1735, for example, on the initiative
of Korff when he was president, groups of pupils from the Cadet Corps
began to attend them. As a rule, though, these lectures were delivered
in Latin, which was known to very few Russians.214 However, attempts
were already being made in the 1740s to use Russian for lecturing at the
Academy. Lomonosov proposed that lecture courses be offered in Russian
on experimental physics, astronomy, and ancient and modern history in
order to attract a wider public, including students at the Noble Land Cadet
Corps and the Naval Cadet Corps.215 His proposal was taken up, if not for
very long, so that in 1746, the Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti (St Petersburg
Gazette) could report that
by decision of the President of the Academy of Sciences, His Lordship
Count Kirill Grigor’evich Razumovskii, a Full Chamberlain to Her Imperial Majesty and a Knight of the Order of St Anne, Mr Lomonosov, who is
also a professor of the said Academy, has begun to deliver public lectures
in the Russian language on Experimental Physics, which have been
attended by a very numerous gathering of military men and civilians
of various ranks, together with the President of the Academy himself
and several Knights of the court and other distinguished persons. 216

By the 1770s, professors of the Academy were giving public lectures in German and French (Wolfgang Ludwig Krafft, on physics) as well as Russian
(Petr Inokhodtsev, on mathematics).217 Around the same time, Anders Johan
Lexell, a Russian astronomer and mathematician of Swedish-Finnish origin,
delivered lectures in French which attracted members of the Russian nobility.218 One of the first steps taken by Princess Dashkova when she became
director of the Academy of Sciences in 1783, moreover, was to regularize a
programme of public lectures, and these lectures, Dashkova ordained, would
be exclusively in Russian, so that they would serve the national interest:
214 On lectures in the Academy during the first decades of its existence, see Kopelevich, ‘Pervye
akademicheskie studenty’.
215 Buck, ‘The Russian Language Question in the Imperial Academy of Sciences’, 203. On the
languages used for teaching in nineteenth-century Russia, see Chapter 2 above.
216 Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, 24 June 1746, no. 50, 6.
217 Smagina, ‘Publichnye lektsii Sankt-Peterburgskoi Akademii nauk’, 17–19.
218 Some of these lectures were published in St Petersburg in French: Lexell, Réflexions sur le
temps périodique des comètes en général, et principalement sur celui de la comète observée en 1770;
idem, Recherches sur la nouvelle planète, découverte par monsieur Herschel et nommée Georgium
Sidus. The latter work was translated into Russian, as Leksel’, Issledovaniia o novoi planete.

318 

The French L anguage in Russia

‘the sciences will be transferred into our own language, and enlightenment
will spread’.219 Dashkova’s initiative was part of the wider programme for
the advancement of Russian that also included the establishment, in 1783,
of the Russian Academy, which occupied itself with translation of works
from Western European languages into Russian and the production of a
dictionary of Russian. By insisting that professors of the Academy of Sciences
lecture in public only in Russian, Dashkova stimulated the development of
scientific vocabulary in the vernacular, the dearth of which troubled Russian
scientists such as the academician Nikolai Ozeretskovskii, who refused to
lecture on botany in his native language on the grounds that Russian had
insufficient terminology of its own in this field.220
As for the Academy’s publications, in the main they were in Latin in the
early stages of the institution’s existence, as exemplified by its Commentarii
(Transactions) and Novi Commentarii Academiae scientiarum imperiali (New
Transactions of the Imperial Academy of Sciences; abstracts were also printed
in Russian). Lomonosov advocated the use of Russian, as a language more
accessible to the Russian public, for publication of academicians’ reports
on their findings, but his proposal did not gain support. However, a sort of
popular science journal entitled Mesiachnye istoricheskie, genealogicheskie i
geograficheskie primechaniia v Vedomostiakh (Monthly Historical, Genealogical, and Geographical Notes in Gazettes) did appear in Russian from 1728 to
1742 and in 1755 the Academy founded a popular science and literary journal
in Russian under the title Ezhemesiachnye sochineniia, k pol’ze i uveseleniiu
sluzhashchie (Monthly Works that are of Use and Entertain). It was not
until the late 1770s that French appeared in a journal that continued the
tradition of the Commentarii, namely Acta Academiae scientiarum imperialis
Petropolitanae (Transactions of the Imperial St Petersburg Academy of Sciences), which was subsequently renamed Nova Acta Academiae scientiarum
imperialis Petropolitanae. (Latin, it will be noted, was still used for the title
of the journal.) We know that reports in French which were published in
219 Initiatives such as the organization of public lectures were undertaken elsewhere too, for
example in Moscow University, where it was not felt necessary to confine oneself to Russian
for this purpose, so that lectures were delivered in German and Latin as well: see Smagina,
‘Publichnye lektsii Sankt-Peterburgskoi Akademii nauk’, 19, 25.
220 A number of works appeared in Russian translation as a result of the organization of these
lectures in Russian, increasing the stock of Russian terminology on the subjects in question. Some
of these works were translated from French, such as J.A.J. Cousin’s Traité de calcul différentiel
et de calcul intégral, translated into Russian by S.E. Gur’ev as Zh.A.Zh. Kuzen, Differentsial’noe
i integral’noe ischislenie (1801): see Smagina, ‘Publichnye lektsii Sankt-Peterburgskoi Akademii
nauk’, 20–22.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

319

these transactions had by no means always been written in French in the
first instance, for it was often indicated that they had been ‘translated
from the Russian’, ‘translated from the German’, and so forth, which tells
us that French had been deliberately chosen as the language of scientific
communication. Each number of the transactions began with papers in
French, while the second part of the number was devoted to papers in Latin.
Writings relating to the history of the Academy, meanwhile, were published
in French, probably because they might be of interest to a wider public. The
two-part structure of the journal reflected the fact that this publication was
aimed at different sets of readers: first, an enlightened public which knew
French but may not have had Latin, in other words the ‘honnête homme’,
and secondly, a scholarly readership properly speaking. The increase in the
number of contributions in French and the consequently greater accessibility
of the journal induced the editors to change the language of its title, which
in the early nineteenth century became Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale
des Sciences de St. Pétersbourg.221 Attempts were also made at this time – the
time when the French language was flourishing in Russia – to emphasize
the importance of using Russian in scholarship and science. Thus in 1803,
thanks to Academician Ozeretskovskii, the Regulations of the Academy
incorporated the following paragraph, in which particular emphasis was
placed on the role of Russian:
Following the example of other learned societies, the Academy continues
to publish annually a single volume of its speculations in Latin or another
of the best known European languages as well as Russian; equally, it
should publish annually a single volume of Notes worthy of attention by
virtue of their practical utility, under the title of Technological Journal.222

In the Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale, articles or papers were to be
published in any languages other than Russian (contributions in Russian
were to be published in a separate series). Some statistics on the quantity
of articles and papers in specific numbers of these transactions during
the nineteenth century reveal changing trends in the Academy’s choice
of language for scientific communication in its publications. (The samples
are chosen at random from periods roughly fifteen to twenty years apart.)

221 The first volume of the new series did not come out until 1809, after a break of several years.
222 Ustavy Rossiiskoi akademii nauk, 83, 320.

320 
Articles and papers on particular
subjects in specific volumes of the
Academy’s transactions
Vol. 1 (1803–1806), mathematics
Vol. 1 (1803–1806), political sciences
Vol. 2 (1807–1808), mathematics
Vol. 2 (1807–1808), physics
Vol. 2 (1807–1808), political sciences
Vol. 10 (1821–1822), mathematics
Vol. 10 (1821–1822), physics
Vol. 10 (1821–1822), political sciences
Vol. 10 (1821–1822), history and philology
Vol. 7 (1845, new series), series 6, vol. 5,
natural sciences
Vol. 8 (1849), series 6, vol. 6223
Vol. 9 (1855), series 6, vol. 7
Vol. 17 (1872, new series)
Vol. 18 (1872)
Vol. 40 (1892–1893)
Vol. 41 (1892–1893)

The French L anguage in Russia

No. of
No. of
Total no.
No. of
of articles articles in articles in articles in
German
French
Latin
29
5
29
13
6
15
8
3
4
9

20
0
19
10
0
5
4
0
2
0

6
8
12
10
2
9

1
0
0
0
0
0

9
5
10
3
6
10
4
3
2
7
2
0
2225
3227
0
2

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
3
8224
10226
7228
2229
6230

Even this superficial glance at the numbers of publications in the various languages used by the Academy reveals some general trends. French
flourishes as a language of scholarship and science in Russia in the first
third of the nineteenth century. Around the middle of the century, Latin
almost completely disappears. At the same time, German comes into play as
a language of academic communication, putting great pressure on French.
The growing role of German in the Academy of Sciences in the nineteenth
century was due in large measure to the part played in it by scholars from the
Baltic region. The University of Dorpat (now Tartu, in Estonia) was a major
channel through which German-speaking scientists and scholars entered
the Academy, especially those working in the natural and exact sciences.
223 There is no separation of subject-matter in the journal from this point on.
224 All these articles are by the German-speaking naturalist Johann Friedrich von Brandt, who
was director of the Zoological Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
225 One of these articles is by a Russophone scholar.
226 All these articles are by German-speaking scholars.
227 Two of these articles are by Russophone scholars.
228 All these articles are by German-speaking scholars.
229 One of these articles was by a Russophone scholar and had been translated from Russian.
230 Two of these articles were by Russophone scholars. There is also an article in Russian in
this volume.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

321

According to the calculations of Ekaterina Basargina, 69 members of the
St Petersburg Academy were linked to Dorpat over the period 1801–1850.
In the 1860s, this perceived domination of German-speaking scholars in
the Academy began to cause resentment both in the press and the Russian
university world. The University of Dorpat acquired a reputation as a ‘hotbed
of Germanism’ in the Russian academic domain. Journalists claimed that
‘Russian scholars’ were not admitted to the Academy, forgetting – in a period
when a nationalistic mood was taking hold and an ethno-linguistic criterion
was coming to override the notion of citizenship – that scholars from the
Baltic region were subjects of the Russian Empire too. This atmosphere had
an effect on the development of government policy towards the Baltic provinces of the empire. Thus, from 1867, the teaching of Russian was bolstered
there and it became mandatory for officials in these provinces to use Russian
for the conduct of their business.231 Representatives of the universities
increasingly demanded that the Academy publish its works in Russian. Some
suggested that the Academy should return to Latin, which, in their opinion,
had no offensive connotations, whereas German – according to the historian
Vladimir Lamanskii, who was a professor at St Petersburg University – was
‘the language of another tribe’ as far as Russian subjects were concerned and
‘extremely dislikeable to the Slavo-Russian tribe that predominated in the
Russian state’ (sic).232 However, no substantive changes would take place in
this respect until the late nineteenth century, when a significant proportion
of academicians’ works, including their scientific treatises, came to be
published in Russian and the Academy’s main periodical began to appear
with a Russian version of its title, Zapiski Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, in
addition to its French title, Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences
de Saint-Pétersbourg. French, as we see from the statistics adduced above,
had not entirely lost its status as a medium for dissemination of research
outcomes, especially for Russian-speaking scholars.
Although the shift to French in the main journal of the Academy of
Sciences took place at a fairly late stage, members of the Academy had already
been using it quite often in the eighteenth century in correspondence with
European scholars and when they had wanted to publicize the Academy’s
achievements.233 The aforementioned astronomer Lexell wrote most of his
scientific works in Latin (although he sometimes had recourse to French
231 Basargina, ‘Proekty akademicheskoi reformy’, 46–47.
232 Lamanskii, ‘Evreiskaia kollektsiia i nepremennyi sekretar’ Akademii nauk’, quoted from
Basargina, ‘Proekty akademicheskoi reformy’, 48. Lamanskii’s remarks were made in 1866.
233 We go into more detail on this latter subject in the first section of Chapter 7 below.

322 

The French L anguage in Russia

as well),234 but his correspondence with scientists in other countries and
with some Russian scientists was for the most part conducted in French.235
When he undertook a major European journey in 1780 at the behest of the
Academy in order to familiarize himself with Europe’s observatories, he
also used French for the description of his journey that he published in the
Academy’s transactions.236 Nor was Lexell unique in this respect. Another
eminent academician, the German Peter Simon Pallas, also spoke in French
at public gatherings of the Academy and published several of his findings
in that language.237
Finally, the voluminous correspondence of the Swiss mathematician,
physicist, and astronomer Leonhard Euler enables us to appreciate the range
of languages at the disposal of a distinguished foreign member of the St
Petersburg Academy (and we should remember that foreign scientists and
scholars were in the majority at the Academy in the eighteenth century).
Although most of Euler’s scientific works were written and published in
Latin, his best known work of popular science, his Letters to a German
Princess on Diverse Subjects of Physics and Philosophy, which were first
published in St Petersburg, appeared in French.238 With some European
scientists (for example, Johann Bernoulli I, the German mathematician
Christian Goldbach, Lomonosov, and Mikhail Sofronov, who occupied a
junior post in the Academy), Euler corresponded in Latin. With the abovementioned Krafft, Gerhard Friedrich Müller, and Jakob Stählin (all of whom
were professors at the Academy), and with the Swiss mathematician Daniel
Bernoulli and the Academy’s librarian, Schumacher, he corresponded in
German. With Martin Knutzen, who occupied a chair of logic and metaphysics at Königsberg, he corresponded sometimes in Latin and sometimes in
German. However, French too is often used in Euler’s correspondence, both
on scientific and practical matters. He exchanged letters in this language, for
example, with French and Swiss scholars such as d’Alembert, the Genevan
naturalist and philosopher Charles Bonnet, the mathematicians Johann
234 e.g. Lexell, Recherches et calculs sur la vraie orbite elliptique de la Comète de l’an 1769.
235 Sten, A Comet of the Enlightenment, xi, xii, 8, 114.
236 ‘Voyage Académique’, Acta Academiæ Scientarum Imperialis Petropolitanae, 1780, no. 2,
109–110.
237 Pallas, Observations sur la formation des montagnes et les changemens arrivés au globe; idem,
Tableau physique et topographique de la Tauride.
238 Euler, Lettres à une princesse d’Allemagne sur divers sujets de physique et de philosophie. These
letters went through several editions and were translated into a number of European languages.
On the basis of Euler’s works, another St Petersburg scholar subsequently produced an algebra
textbook for the cadets in French: see Euler, Leçons d’algèbre à l’usage du Corps Imperial des
Cadets nobles.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

323

Bernoulli II of Basel and Jean-Baptiste Clairaut, the mathematician and
philosopher Marie Jean Nicolas Marquis de Condorcet, the astronomer and
cartographer Joseph-Nicolas Delisle, the physicist Jean Jacques d’Ourtous
de Mairan, the mathematician and physicist Joseph-Louis Lagrange, the
astronomer Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande, and the president of the
Berlin Academy of Sciences Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis. Euler also
used French in his correspondence with scientists and other people of other
nationalities, such as Germans (for instance, King Frederick II, Albrecht
von Haller, an anatomist and physicist from Göttingen, and a Frankfurt
book-dealer named König), António Ribeiro Sanches, a Portuguese doctor in
Russian service, and the Russian academician Stepan Rumovskii. He wrote
in French to other Russians too, such as Kantemir, office-holders or officials
at the Academy, such as Razumovskii and Count Orlov, and the secretary of
the Academy’s office, Grigorii Teplov, although he was capable of corresponding in Russian, as we see from his correspondence with the monolingual
Nartov, who directed the Academy for a short period.239 Euler’s case clearly
shows that even in matters that related purely to the world of science and
scholarship a man of learning did not invariably communicate in Latin in
the mid-eighteenth century but equally might use major modern European
languages, and that French had an important place in his repertoire, and
not merely for dealings with Frenchmen and Francophone Swiss.
*
In the reign of Peter the Great, Russian diplomacy started to adapt to the
changing diplomatic landscape in Europe as a whole, in which French was
supplanting Latin. A system of professional training, including language
training, began to be introduced for men working in the Chancery of Foreign
Affairs, although for a long time to come the study of languages would be
carried out in a way that was quite haphazard, often in the course of a spell
of tuition or work abroad. A generation of Russian diplomats with excellent
language skills soon appeared, and French occupied a prominent place
in their linguistic repertoire. Their number included Postnikov, Shafirov,
Ostermann, the Princes Dolgorukov, Boris Kurakin, Ivan Shcherbatov, and
Kantemir. Many of them quickly adjusted to the habit of using French in
society as well as in diplomatic service, and adoption of this habit may have
239 See the analytical catalogue of Euler’s correspondence, Leonhard Euler Briefwechsel.
Beschreibung, Zusammenfassung der Briefe und Verzeichnisse. See also Die Berliner und die
Petersburger Akademie der Wissenschaften im Briefwechsel Leonhard Eulers.

324 

The French L anguage in Russia

contributed to the development of the practice of using French as a language
of communication with compatriots inside Russia.
The rise of French as the language of Russian diplomacy took place over a
period of almost a hundred years. French began to be used in the drafting of
Russia’s treaties with other European powers in the mid-eighteenth century,
but other languages – especially German and Italian – would continue to
be used in other diplomatic documents until the end of the century and
even beyond. Meanwhile, French was increasingly used in correspondence
within the College of Foreign Affairs itself, or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
as it became. Catherine’s rescript of 1787 was a reaction to the shift that
was taking place – a shift which even imperial edicts could not check and
which would lead at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the almost
complete triumph of French in Russian diplomacy.
Documents dating from the nineteenth century enable us to make out
the line that separates the use of French as a professional language and
a marker of diplomats’ service identity, on the one hand, from the use of
Russian as a language of official correspondence among civil servants
outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on the other. However, this line of
demarcation was quite often breached by civil servants in the higher ranks
of the bureaucracy, for whom the unwritten law of language use in official
correspondence, where Russian was generally de rigueur, ran counter to
their habit of using French in society. In the correspondence of diplomats
themselves, or at any rate high-ranking diplomats, two registers – the
professional register and that of society – became confused.240
In the Russian world of science and scholarship French was also deployed
in several situations, as it emerged from the shadow of Latin. It was used
when the Academy came into close contact with the court (on the occasion
of public ceremonies, for instance), in correspondence with a number of
European scientists and scholars, and for promotion of the Academy’s
achievements (in European learned journals that were produced in French,
for example241). In the learned publications of the Academy itself it played
an increasingly prominent role, and by the early nineteenth century it had
thoroughly marginalized Latin. This development reflected the position
240 This is evident from the use of French by diplomats when they wrote memoirs about their
professional activity. See, for example, the memoirs of Petr Saburov, Russia’s ambassador in
Berlin, which were written in fluent, correct, and authentic French: AVPRI, f. 339, op. 81, dd. 1–3.
These memoirs have been published in English translation as [Saburov], The Saburov Memoirs:
or, Bismarck and Russia.
241 On the use of European journals in French to advertise Russian achievement, see the third
section of Chapter 7 below.

French in diplomac y and other official domains

325

of French as a language of academic communication in Europe as a whole.
By the mid-nineteenth century, though, German had gained a status in
the European academic domain that was similar to that which French had
acquired in the eighteenth century at the expense of Latin. The Russification
which took place in the reign of Alexander III (indeed it began earlier, in
the reign of Alexander II) touched the academic world too, but scientists
and scholars continued to use French and German as languages of science
and learning right up until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. After 1917,
French survived, for the most part, only in those old academic circles which
managed to accommodate themselves to the new regime, particularly
circles of Orientalists.242
In completing this outline of the linguistic behaviour of off icials in
various government departments of the Russian Empire and of language
use in the academic domain, we should perhaps consider what factors
impeded the spread of French beyond certain boundaries. In the first place,
a complete shift to French in the bureaucracy was of course impossible, if
for no other reason than that a large number of officials at the lower level
of the administration, and possibly some officials at the middling and even
higher levels as well, lacked the necessary linguistic capabilities.243 Even at
the highest level of government service people were to be found who had a
limited command of French, as Smirnova-Rosset attests when she refers to
Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich.244 Secondly, and more importantly, from the
eighteenth century on, regular attempts were made to elevate Russian to
the level of French and German, which were perceived as the most popular
and important European languages from the cultural point of view. There
were many such attempts: in the Academy of Sciences as early as the 1730s,
when the Russian Assembly was set up there by Trediakovskii; in the 1740s,
when the Academy adopted new regulations; in the 1750s, when Moscow
University was founded; in the 1760s, when attempts were made to Russify
teaching in Moscow University and the Noble Land Cadet Corps; and, in
particular, in the 1780s, when Dashkova pursued a policy of Russification
which prevented French from becoming an important language for public
lectures in the Academy of Sciences and when she began to preside over
the Russian Academy and started to oversee the compilation of its Russian
242 Rjéoutski, ‘Le français des scientifiques en URSS’. There is much material on this subject
in the André Mazon archive in the Institut de France.
243 On the standard of literacy among provincial off icials, see Glagoleva, ‘“Gramote i pisat’
obuchen”’.
244 As noted in the fourth section of Chapter 3 above.

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The French L anguage in Russia

dictionary. It was also in the 1780s that reforms were carried out which had
a substantive effect on the place of Russian in the system of public education and when, finally, Catherine signed her rescript requiring the use of
Russian by diplomats who could speak and write it. Nor did the institutional
advancement of Russian cease in the early nineteenth century, despite the
fact that it was then that francophonie reached its peak in Russian society.
Indeed, the promotion of Russian was encouraged by debates that took place
at that time about the role of the native language in the upbringing of the
empire’s children.245 In this climate, a more decisive shift towards French
as an administrative language was out of the question.
Perhaps it is also appropriate, finally, to ask how French came to reign in
the internal correspondence of Russian diplomats in spite of the linguistic
patriotism that affected even the upper spheres of the Russian state. From
the practical point of view of a professional diplomat, the switch to French
removed the burden of constant translation from one language to another.
We doubt, though, whether the switch to French was necessary as a means
of avoiding divergent interpretations of terms, for Russian diplomatic
language was already well geared, by the mid-eighteenth century, to the
transmission of shades of meaning in diplomatic texts, not least because
it had at its disposal a large number of borrowed terms. More important,
we think, was the combined effect of two other factors. First, in the course
of the eighteenth century French acquired the status of Europe’s foremost
diplomatic language. Secondly, the use of French in Russian high society,
in which diplomats moved, was reaching its peak in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries. Which of these two functions of French
played the more important role in its progress as an ‘internal’ language in
the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, though, is difficult to say for sure.

245 See the overview of French teaching in Russia in the opening section of Chapter 2 above.

Chapter 6
Writing French
Types of text and language choice in them
Cultural production in languages other than the writer’s mother tongue,
Peter Barta and Phil Powrie have pointed out, has become increasingly
widespread in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as the
‘fall of the Iron Curtain and ever-greater mobility across borders during
the postcolonial period have brought cultures into contact and languages
into productive frictions’.1 The phenomenon of bicultural writing, though,
is by no means new in western civilization, as Barta and Powrie emphasize, and in this and the following chapter we examine a major historical
manifestation of it, namely Russians’ use of French as a written language
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The corpus of extant texts on
which we may draw for this purpose is very extensive, so that we cannot do
more in this book than classify the types of text found within the corpus
and discuss some characteristic or particularly well-known examples. The
corpus has many elements. It contains a mass of informal correspondence
about personal and practical matters. It includes what might be called
‘literature’ in the broad sense of the term, that is to say elegant writing, or
belles-lettres, and this capacious element itself consists of many different
sorts of text: ego-writing, poems, drama, fiction, and discourse on moral,
aesthetic, philosophical, and other matters. It also comprises texts in which
the writer’s purpose is persuasion, that is to say texts that are in some way
propagandistic, polemical, or political, including texts that speculate on
national destiny.
It will be useful, as we approach texts produced by Russians in French, or
partly in French, to frame a question of the sort famously asked by Joshua
Fishman about language use in a multilingual setting:2 who uses which
language in what type of text, for what purpose, and at what stage in the
historical period we examine? It will help us, moreover, to address this
question and to understand the reasons why writers chose one language or
another for particular texts, if we bear in mind the ways in which various
kinds of ‘literature’ were conceived at one time or another. In particular, we
1
2

Barta and Powrie, ‘Introduction: Being In-Between’, 1.
Fishman, ‘Who Speaks What Language to Whom and When?’

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The French L anguage in Russia

may identify three types of literature in which the language choice made
by bilingual Russians was determined by quite different considerations.
First, there are texts which are indeed of a literary nature but which
were produced for consumption by a restricted readership, ranging from
the author alone to the family, the close social circle, or a gathering such
as the salon. Texts of this sort (on which we focus in the present chapter)
include private diaries, travel notes, albums, occasional verse, maxims,
dialogues, humorous essays, and other short literary forms. Being in many
instances examples of ego-writing, such texts function partly as means of
self-cultivation and self-reflection. They also, in most cases, serve a social
purpose, as material to be read aloud and as the starting-point for polite
conversation. (Even personal letters to an individual addressee could be
treated as documents that circulated within a select social or literary group,
and so our survey of different types of literature begins with personal
correspondence.) The production of texts of this nature is warranted by a
belief that writing – at least, in certain relatively light-hearted genres – is
an elegant accomplishment. As pieces aimed at a restricted sphere and not
intended for publication, such writings – like salon conversation – do not
often engage deeply with serious social, political, or even moral issues. The
vehicle of choice for them tended to be French, because it was among the
Francophone aristocracy that they were created and in the Francophone
monde that they circulated.3 However, even when French served as the base
language for such texts it was often not the only language used, and we shall
repeatedly come across instances of alternation and code-switching, which
are important phenomena in the picture of language use that we offer.
The amateur, social, and relatively private nature of this aristocratic
literature ensured that it was acceptable for women, who were discouraged
from taking part in public literary activity, to contribute to it; indeed literary
creation of this sort was to be encouraged as a feminine accomplishment.
(It was probably the nature of the literature that women were permitted to
produce, rather than – or at least, just as much as – any lack of female proficiency in Russian, that accounts for the fact that French was the language
of so much women’s writing in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
Russia.) Literature of this private or semi-private type, it should be added,
was by no means exclusive to Russia; on the contrary, it was commonly
produced by members of cosmopolitan aristocracies in other parts of Europe,
3 The ground-breaking works on this type of literature are Gretchanaia [Grechanaia] and
Viollet, ‘Si tu lis jamais ce journal…’ (2008) and Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski
(2010).

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329

sometimes for what Ivo Cerman has described as a perfomative purpose in
the drawing-room, salon, or coterie. 4 Examples include a diary and a tale by
the eighteenth-century Swedish nobleman Carl Gustaf Tessin (governor of
the future Gustav III), the letters of aristocratic women such as Marie Sidonie
Countess Chotek, Marie Josephine Windischgraetz, and Marie Augusta
Sternberg in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Bohemian
Lands, and the diary and correspondence of the nineteenth-century Prussian
Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau.5 We might also note, though, that
the practice of writing in French was not everywhere confined to such an
extent to the nobility, or more particularly the high nobility, as it was in
Russia. In Sweden, for example, as Margareta Östman has shown, about one
third of all authors using French for literary purposes were of non-noble
origin by the mid-seventeenth century. This proportion grew and exceeded
half of all authors in the period 1772–1809.6
Already in the age of Elizabeth, however, we observe the development
of a second, more dedicated and professional type of literary activity in
Russia, alongside the amateur, aristocratic, and often light-hearted mode
of production we have just described. The author begins to conceive of
writing as a vocation rather than an avocation and is engaged in a more
serious intellectual or moral enterprise. This type of author may have a
didactic purpose, namely to improve society’s mores, as the dramatist
Fonvizin, and indeed Catherine II herself, wished to do. He – for in the
overwhelming majority of cases the author engaged in this type of writing is
a man – may wish to spread enlightenment (as did Novikov), or to celebrate
imperial success (as did Lomonosov in odes and Kheraskov in the epos),
or to speak truth to power (as Derzhavin dared to do in his verse). He may
become involved in activities that promote the development of a literary
culture aimed at an expanding readership, such as translating, editing, and
the production of almanacs and journals – activities in which Karamzin
took a keen interest from the late 1780s to the early 1800s. Literary activity
of this second sort is not the domain of high society, although members of
high society may indeed engage in it; rather, it is the preserve of the nascent
literary community (and later, in the nineteenth century, the intelligentsia),
in which the aristocracy is not necessarily pre-eminent. The tension between
4 Cerman, ‘Aristocratic Francophone Literature in Bohemia’, 219–220.
5 Östman, ‘French in Sweden in the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’,
especially 290–291, 299–300; Cerman, ‘Aristocratic Francophone Literature in Bohemia’, 221–223;
Böhm, ‘The Domains of Francophonie and Language Ideology in Eighteenth- and NineteenthCentury Prussia’, 194–196.
6 Östman, ‘French in Sweden in the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, 283.

330 

The French L anguage in Russia

the amateur and increasingly professional attitudes towards literary production can be glimpsed, as Andreas Schönle has noted, in the disapproving
reaction of some of Karamzin’s aristocratic contemporaries to that author’s
exploitation of the Grand Tour (which had traditionally been considered
a means of completing the upbringing of the gentleman) as material for a
literary text through which Karamzin might establish himself as an author.7
Although writers who produced this more professionalized type of
literature might resort to French in particular instances or for particular
purposes, as we shall see, the language of choice for such literature was
predominantly Russian, not least because of its authors’ desire to reach a
relatively wide readership. The case for using Russian was strengthened,
in the early nineteenth century, by the influence of Romanticism, which
privileged national distinctiveness and investigation of the medieval and
early modern roots of the cultures of European peoples, particularly peoples
who were becoming aware of themselves as ethnic, cultural, and linguistic
communities. Above all, the choice of Russian was necessitated by the
development of a conception of literature as an expression of the distinctive
consciousness of the nation. Belinskii outlined this conception in his first
substantial essay in literary criticism, ‘Literary Reveries’ (1834). Here, under
the influence of Schelling, he argued that although Russia did have its
literary masterpieces it did not yet have ‘a literature’ as such, in the sense
of a coherent body of letters representing the nation’s inner life. 8 Since a
literature of the sort prized by Belinskii was closely identified with national
autonomy (samobytnost’, a word commonly used by the literary community
in the 1820s and 1830s) and the Geist of an ethnic group (narodnost’), only the
mother tongue of that people, or narod, could be the vehicle for it. It is the
urge to create a literature understood in this new way that made the use of
a foreign language particularly problematic in the eyes of the cultural community (creative writers, literary critics, readers, the emergent intelligentsia)
that was burgeoning in Russia in the second quarter of the nineteenth
century.9 Moreover, many of the individuals entering that community in
7 Schönle, Authenticity and Fiction in the Russian Literary Journey, 230–231, n. 57. The text in
question was Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveller.
8 ‘Literaturnye mechtaniia’, in Belinskii, PSS, vol. 1, 20–104, especially 22. The changing
conception of ‘literature’ is indicated by Belinskii’s use of the word literatura, incidentally, rather
than the term slovesnost’, which eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century writers had
tended to use to describe the national literary corpus.
9 The shift from an amateur, aristocratic interest in literary creativity, predominantly in
private ego-writing, to professionalized, public literary activity is a sequential development
only up to a point. Noble families and individuals continued to produce writings of the amateur

Writing French

331

the 1830s, including Belinskii himself, lacked a command of French and for
this and other reasons they felt out of place in the salon, where French was
spoken.10 It follows from what we have said about the more professionalized
literature that came into being in the nineteenth century that few, if any,
of the French texts discussed in this book are representative of this sort
of writing. On the other hand, many published literary texts written in
Russian do contain extensive reflections on Russians’ use of French, and
these texts we analyze in our closing chapters on language attitudes and
classical Russian prose fiction.
The third type of text that we identify in Russian literature, broadly
defined, is the text that is designed, in the last analysis, to persuade the
reader to accept a point of view. This type of text – an essay (perhaps
presented as a ‘letter’), a journalistic article, or a pamphlet – might be in
some way propagandistic or polemical.11 In writings of this sort (to which
our following chapter is partly devoted), language choice was determined
to a considerable extent by the nature of the readership the author hoped to
address. If the goal of such writing was presentation of Russia to the world
beyond Russia’s borders, as it often was, then French had the merit that it
enabled the Russian writer to reach the largest number of international
readers. Besides, the status of the French language and the authority of the
literature written in it could lend weight to the writer’s case. At the same
time, whatever was written in French was accessible to an elite Russian
readership as well as to a more general European one. There are also many
examples of speculation by Russians on broad historical matters for which
French was no doubt chosen partly because it was commonly used as an
international language for reflection of this sort. If, on the other hand, a
writer wished to reach a broader social section of the Russian population
(including, for instance, raznochintsy, who may have had no French or
only limited competence in it), then it was necessary to write in Russian.
In any case, polemical work directed at an internal readership, like poetry,
drama, and prose fiction, came in the nineteenth century to be conceived
as a contribution to national cultural life, and for this reason too Russian
was the most appropriate vehicle for it.
variety in spite of the fact that it was only literature of the more professionalized variety that
interested the bulk of the mid-nineteenth-century literary community and intelligentsia.
10 The tension in salon culture caused by the factionalization of the literary community in
the age of Nicholas I is noted by Lotman, ‘Russkaia literatura na frantsuzskom iazyke’, 366–367.
11 Writing of this sort in French is a very substantial part of the Russian corpus in French,
particularly after the first quarter of the nineteenth century, which falls outside the scope of
Grechanaia’s Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Before examining French texts that are representative of the types of
‘literature’ in the more conventional sense that we have described, though,
we should look closely at personal letters, for they too are a form of writing
about the self. Language choice in them was more complicated than is
sometimes supposed.

Language choice in nobles’ personal correspondence
Over a long period, from around the middle of the eighteenth century up
until the demise of the nobility with the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917,
letter-writing served both as a means of practical communication among
members of that class and as a means of expressing aristocratic values and
sensibility. Like other ego-documents, letters also helped nobles to fashion
themselves. They might even serve, up to a point, as props for aristocratic
social activity, inasmuch as they could be aimed, as we have said, not just at
a nominal recipient but at a larger audience to whom they could be read out.
Since letter-writing, like the art of polite conversation, was for all these
reasons an accomplishment that distinguished a well-educated noble, it was
essential that such a person be able to write in French, the principal medium
for display of noble conduct. The importance attached to cultivation of the
epistolary art in noble upbringing is indicated by the parental practice of
writing to children in French, to which we have already drawn attention.12
Mastery of epistolary technique involved the learning of formulaic openings
and endings (Mon cher ami [my dear friend], Votre humble serviteur [your
humble servant], Que Dieu vous garde [may God watch over you], and so
forth) and polite locutions, as well as appreciation of the uses of the postscript
and the importance of separation of topics by paragraphs.13 Such knowledge
and skill could be acquired from numerous French sources, such as the
well-known collection of Bussy-Rabutin’s correspondence with his friends
and family, in which Mme de Sévigné’s letters appeared for the first time.14
12 See the last section of Chapter 2 above.
13 Letters composed in French (or translated from German into French) as educational exercises
by pupils at the Noble Land Cadet Corps furnish further good examples of epistolary formulae:
‘J’ai l’honneur de vous presenter cette marque de ma soumission’, ‘je vous supplie très humblement
de m’honorer de…’, ‘C’est avec cette confiance, Monsieur que je vous prie d’agréer…’, ‘Puisque
mon malheur me prive des occasions de vous servir…’, and so forth (RGADA, f. 177 (1739), d. 70,
fols 17, 27).
14 Rabutin, Les Lettres de messire Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy. There was a copy of this
book in the library of Prince Ivan Shcherbatov (now in RNB: 6.58.11.10). We also find a reference

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333

Rousseau’s epistolary novel Julie, or the New Heloise (1761) offered useful
models of letter-writing in the sentimental manner.15 There were also many
copious Russian manuals on the subject.16 Or again, Russian nobles might
simply acquire their skills from contact with tutors, governesses, and other
correspondents, rather than from manuals.17
Being highly codified, the language of the letter in French could easily
be regarded as hackneyed and the sentiments it expressed as shallow. This
association of the French language with the style and content of communication in high society, as well as the very fact that the grand monde used a
foreign language to set itself apart, would in due course help to strengthen
the case of society’s literary detractors.18 Since French was formulaic, the
language of a ‘mature culture which had developed a comprehensive code
of conduct’, it could be used in a more automatic way than Russian, and
writing in it required less forethought and creative effort. It supplied a ‘set
of clichés ready for mechanical reproduction’.19 Pushkin, complaining of
to its use in French classes at the Academy of Sciences in 1736: Materialy dlia istorii imperatorskoi
Akademii nauk, vol. 2, 736.
15 Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, or, to use the title of the first edition, Lettres de deux amans,
habitans d’une petite ville au pied des Alpes […].
16 Pis’movnik, soderzhashchii raznye pis’ma, prosheniia, zapiski […] (1788, 1789, 1793); Polnyi
pis’movnik ili vseobshchii sekretar’ […] (1812–1813, 1827–1828); Noveishii, samyi polnyi i podrobnyi
pis’movnik, ili vseobshchii sekretar’ […] (1812–1813, 1815, 1822).
17 In any case, Russian letter-writing manuals do not appear to be much in evidence in the
libraries of Russian nobles: see Joukovskaïa, ‘La naissance de l’épistolographie normative en
Russie’, 679–680, cited by Tipton, ‘Code-Switching in the Correspondence of the Vorontsov
Family’, 135.
18 On the detractors, see Chapters 8 and 9 below.
19 Paperno, ‘O dvuiazychnoi perepiski pushkinskoi epokhi’, 150. Paperno’s article exhibits
several of the features that are common in the Lotman school of scholarship on classical Russian
culture. Thus, on the basis of a limited stock of cited sources, she makes some sweeping assertions,
contending, for example, that for men ‘French and Russian were two codes in a binary system’,
whereas for women they were ‘different elements in a single language’, and that women mixed
languages in their letters in a more disorderly way than men. She also focuses particularly on
evidence relating to the literary community. At the same time, her article, despite its brevity, may
be seen as programmatic for the study of bilingual correspondence in tsarist Russia. It contains
many thought-provoking propositions or insights, some of which are borne out by the further
evidence that we have adduced. She observes, for instance, that subjects’ letters to the sovereign
needed to be written in Russian if they concerned official matters; that the use of French between
people who were not social equals indicated that the communication lay outside the domain in
which the Table of Ranks held sway; that Russian, when used between people of the same rank,
might be the more intimate language, because it was not the language required by etiquette (see,
though, our discussion, in the sixth section of Chapter 5 above, of the correspondence between the
Russian diplomats Butenev and Titov); that French was a language of ritualized communication;
and that French was also the language of bons mots and elegant aphorisms.

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The French L anguage in Russia

the as yet undeveloped nature of Russian prose (a defect that he himself
began to address in his fiction in the 1830s), observed that ‘even in simple
correspondence [in Russian] we are forced to create turns of phrase to
clarify the most ordinary concepts, since our lethargy expresses itself more
willingly in a foreign language whose mechanical forms have long been
available and are known to everyone’.20
Personal letters are one of our most valuable sources of information on
Russian nobles’ emotional and spiritual life,21 of which they may provide a
more reliable picture than prose fiction. They are also a rich source for the
study of nobles’ language use. Given the widespread plurilingualism of the
Russian aristocracy, the preference for French over other foreign languages in
aristocratic correspondence reflects the exceptional worth of that language
as cultural capital.22 It by no means follows, though, that Russian noble men
and women were unable or reluctant to write letters in Russian as well. As
Lamarche Marrese concluded on the basis of her close examination of no
fewer than 30 archival collections of the papers of noble families, the huge
corpus of nobles’ personal correspondence shows that the ‘omnipresence of
French in polite society […] neither put an end to the use of Russian among
the elite nor transformed nobles into foreigners in their native land’. Many
nobles alternated between the two languages, and in the personal papers
of many others only letters in Russian survive.23 Nor is it true, as has been
claimed, that noble women in particular had lost or never acquired the ability
to write in their native language, as Pushkin seemed to suggest when he had
his Tat’iana Larina write her letter to Onegin in French, or that ‘the great
majority of women’s letters [in the ages of Alexander I and Nicholas I] were
written in French’.24 On the contrary, women too were prolific writers of
20 ‘O predislovii g-na Lemonte k perevodu basen I.A. Krylova’, in Pushkin, PSS, vol 11, 34.
The effect of the habit of writing letters in French can be seen, incidentally, in the Russian
correspondence of certain eminent men of letters. For instance, in letters written in Russian by
the poet Zhukovskii, especially letters on everyday topics, there are numerous calques, turns of
phrase, and syntactic constructions that are modelled on canonical French usage. It has been
suggested by Irina Viatkina that Zhukovskii’s Russian letters often seem to be a translation
that he has made from a French text he himself has composed mentally. For the formulation of
more abstract concepts, on the other hand, Zhukovskii often switches to French. See Viatkina,
‘Diglossiia russkikh marginal’nykh zhanrov’ (unpaginated abstract).
21 Marasinova, Psikhologiia elity rossiiskogo dvorianstva poslednei treti XVIII veka, 98–99.
22 As noted by Lamarche Marrese, ‘“The Poetics of Everyday Behavior” Revisited’, 729–730
(although she does not use the term ‘cultural capital’).
23 Ibidem, 724.
24 As claimed by Bernstein, ‘Avdot’ia Petrovna Elagina and Her Contribution to Russian Letters’,
216−217; Lamarche Marrese challenges the claim in ‘“The Poetics of Everyday Behavior” Revisited’,

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letters in Russian to estate managers and to officials, to whom they addressed
petitions and legal claims in respect of legacies and land disputes.25
Such competence in letter-writing in both languages is well illustrated
in the voluminous surviving correspondence of Catherine’s vice-chancellor,
Aleksandr Golitsyn, which has been studied by Wladimir Berelowitch.
Up until 1762, when he served in diplomatic posts in Holland, France,
and England, Golitsyn wrote many letters in French, including letters to
members of his family, brothers, and cousins as well as more formal letters.
In the 1760s and 1770s, on the other hand, he wrote more and more letters
in Russian, although he continued to write in French to his nephews, for
the pedagogical purpose we have mentioned. This shift from French to
Russian can be seen not just in Golitsyn’s letters in the official domain, in
which it was in line with Catherine’s policy of strengthening the position of
Russian as a language of administration, but also in his letters in the private
domain, such as those to members of his family, including his first cousin
Dmitrii Mikhailovich Golitsyn, who was Russia’s ambassador in Vienna.26
Aleksandr provided a rare comment on language choice in a letter written
in Russian in 1785 to one of his nephews, Mikhail Andreevich Golitsyn, in
which he enjoined Mikhail to switch to Russian now that he was entering
the world of service to the Russian state:
I approve of your efforts to attain an excellent knowledge of French, and
even more when it comes to Russian, especially as they [these languages]
are indispensable for the office for which you are preparing yourself and
you do well to correspond in Russian with all those who understand this
language. […] As for translation from French into Russian, that too is very
useful for you as a way of becoming stronger in both those languages.
[…] But as for your travel journal and the description of everything you
may see and hear which is worthy of attention, I would ask you to write
them down in French, for if you were to write them in Russian you would
come up against great, insurmountable difficulties.27

Aleksandr Golitsyn drives home his point about the importance of Russian
in the nobles’ repertoire in a further letter to Mikhail some two years later:
731. For Pushkin’s remarks on Tat’iana’s language use, see the first section of our Introduction
above.
25 Lamarche Marrese, ‘“The Poetics of Everyday Behavior” Revisited’, 736, n. 159.
26 Quoted by Berelowitch, ‘Francophonie in Russia under Catherine II’, 51.
27 Ibidem, 51–52.

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The French L anguage in Russia

‘In truth, it is a ridiculous and unbelievable thing that all your friends speak
and write French well when they return from foreign states but feel no shame
in not being able to speak or write their own language’.28
Given the availability of two languages for the conduct of correspondence,
what sort of factors influenced a writer’s decision to use one language rather
than the other in a letter? Sometimes, of course, the choice was determined
simply by the linguistic proficiency of the sender or addressee. As Jessica
Tipton shows in her study of language choice in the correspondence of three
generations of the Vorontsov clan, members of the family born in the reign
of Peter the Great – Mikhail Illarionovich and Roman Illarionovich – were
less likely than their descendants to use French, although Mikhail, as a
diplomat, needed it to communicate with foreigners and did write letters in
it (he may, however, have had help in composing them). On the other hand,
the children of Roman, who were born in the 1740s (Aleksandr, who served
for many years as president of the College of Commerce, Ekaterina Dashkova,
and Semen, who served for several decades as the Russian ambassador in
London), were comfortable in either language. Brought up in the early years
of the reign of Elizabeth, cosmopolitan in outlook, and closely involved in
affairs of state in the age of Catherine, they clearly perceived the use of
both languages as natural and switched between them without constraint
or self-consciousness.29
A further good example of changes in language use over the generations, in this instance during the second half of the nineteenth century, is
furnished by the Mansurov family, as Alexa von Winning has discovered.
The head of the first of the generations of this family on which we have
information was Pavel Borisovich, a landowner from the province of Penza
who served in the finance department of the imperial administration and
who was married to Ekaterina Khovanskaia. His son Boris Pavlovich was a
high-ranking official and member of the State Council who was married to
Princess Mariia Nikolaevna Dolgorukova. Another son, Nikolai Pavlovich,
was a full privy councillor and chamberlain. Among the third generation,
the son of Boris Pavlovich, Pavel Borisovich, was a diplomat (there were
also daughters), and the fourth generation included Pavel’s sons Boris and
Sergei. Now, members of the first two generations corresponded with one
other in French. Boris Pavlovich and Nikolai Pavlovich corresponded with
their father in French, as did their wives with their father-in-law. Boris
Pavlovich and his wife Mariia also wrote to each other in French during
28 Ibidem, 52.
29 Tipton, ‘Multilingualism in the Russian Nobility’.

Writing French

337

most of their married life, in other words, up until the end of the nineteenth
century. Indeed, Mariia conducted all her correspondence in French as a
rule. In correspondence with their children, on the other hand, Boris and
Nikolai switched to Russian, and from the 1860s this was the language in
which male members of the second generation and all members of the third
generation normally corresponded. The children of the third generation
always used Russian in their correspondence among themselves and wrote
in French only to their grandparents and their mother.30
We f ind another example of the use of French as a family language
late in the period we are examining in the correspondence of the famous
pianist, composer, and founder of the St Petersburg Conservatoire, Anton
Rubinstein, and his wife, Vera Aleksandrovna, whom Rubinstein married
in 1865.31 The couple corresponded in French and all of Vera Rubinstein’s
correspondence with her relations was in French as well. Vladimir Somov,
who has examined this correspondence, has noted that Vera had a complete
command of both French and Russian, and a better knowledge of French
than Anton, who came from a well-to-do Jewish family of German origin
living in the Ukraine. Vera tried her hand at literary translation from Russian
into French (Ivan Turgenev rated her translations as ‘Moscow French’).
As for Anton, who had spent some years in Europe in his youth and who
was constantly on tour abroad during his adult life, he used French and
German in his correspondence with his relations (he wrote only in German
to his mother) as well as with foreign composers and musicians. As in
the Mansurov family, so too in the Rubinstein family we see a change of
usage in the next generation, for Anton and Vera corresponded with their
children in Russian.32
When such bilingual writers, composing letters to equally bilingual
addressees, made a linguistic choice, numerous factors could come into
play. Their choice, moreover, was rarely random, for two languages never
fulfil exactly the same functions for a speaker. As Rodolphe Baudin has
30 GARF, f. 990, op. 1, dd. 31–36, 66–68, 70–72; op. 2, dd. 368, 409. We are indebted to Alexa
von Winning of the University of Tübingen for this account of practice in the Mansurov family.
31 Vera Aleksandrovna belonged on her father’s side to the Russified Georgian clan of the Princes
Chekuanov and on her mother’s side to the Razumovskii clan (her maternal grandmother was
an illegitimate daughter of Count Petr Kirillovich Razumovskii).
32 Somov, ‘Vera Aleksandrovna Rubinshtein’, especially 173–177; several original letters in
French are published in the appendix to Somov’s chapter (see 194–245). For yet another example
of correspondence between Russian subjects in French in the second Alexandrine age, see
Niqueux (ed.), Correspondance en français entre Alexis Konstantinovitch Tolstoï et Boleslav
Markévitch (1858–1875).

338 

The French L anguage in Russia

noted in a useful summary of the views of scholars who have studied Russians’ bilingual correspondence, the choice a letter-writer made between
French and Russian depended, most obviously, on such matters as the social
relationship between the writer and addressee and their respective genders,
the content of the letter, and the reaction the writer hoped to prompt in
the recipient.33 French, it is generally agreed, was the proper language to
use when writing to one’s parents, other older addressees, and addressees
who were not very well known to the writer. It was also appropriate for a
man to write in French to ladies other than his wife, including his fiancée.
On the other hand, French, as ‘the language of social relations expressed in
codified forms in salons, at the court and so forth, where open-heartedness
and intimacy were not really allowed’, could seem inappropriate in letters
to one’s spouse, other family members, and close friends.34 Russian was
therefore often preferred in letters to such addressees35 and also – since it
was the principal language of administration – in letters to civil servants,
especially to men of higher rank than the writer. As far as the role of content
in determining language choice was concerned, French was frequently
deemed most suitable for discussion of intellectual matters, for introspective
reflection, for flirtation and (in men’s letters) for joking with or about women.
33 We have drawn extensively on Baudin’s summary in this paragraph: see Baudin, ‘Russian or
French?’, 121–122. The subject of Russians’ bilingual correspondence has received more attention
than many other aspects of Russian francophonie. In the works by Paperno (1975, on which we
have already commented in n. 19 above), Maimina (1981), and Ekaterina Dmitrieva (1994), this
attention has been concentrated on the correspondence of men of the nineteenth-century literary
world. The subject has an important place in Marrese’s reexamination of Lotman’s conception
of noble identity (2010) and in Berelowitch’s discussion of Russian francophonie (2015). There
are also recent contributions by Tipton on the correspondence of several generations of the
Vorontsov family (2015 and 2017).
34 Baudin, ‘Russian or French?’, 121.
35 Take, for example, the case of Nikolai Raevskii, a renowned Russian general, who corresponded only in Russian with his uncle, Count Aleksandr Samoilov, a high-ranking official
under Catherine II, even though both Raevskii and Samoilov had a command of French. Raevskii
was very close to his uncle and French might have seemed inappropriate for the conduct of a
warm relationship. With his youngest son Nikolai, to whom he was also very close, Raevskii
corresponded in Russian as well. However, when he wished to reprove his son, he switched
to French. Nikolai Raevskii junior and his brother, on the other hand, both wrote to their
uncle and parents in French, not because their relations with their them were poor but out of
respect for them. See Arkhiv Raevskikh, vol. 1, 1–8, 11–21, etc. (letters from Nikolai Raevskii to his
uncle Samoilov), 229–231, 273, 280–281, 287 (Nikolai Raevskii junior to his father), 243 (father’s
admonishment in French), 246–247, 263, 274–276, 283–286 (Raevskii père to his son Nikolai),
269–272 (Aleksandr Raevskii to his father), etc. On the use of French in the correspondence
of this family, see Kseniia Klimenko, ‘Problema frantsuzsko-russkogo bilingvizma v Rossii v
pushkinskuiu epokhu’.

Writing French

339

Lotman plausibly claims that French was also the preferred language when
one was performing rituals associated with the noble code of honour, such as
challenges to a duel.36 Russian, on the other hand, would of necessity be used
in correspondence with monolingual estate managers about agricultural
and domestic subjects and might be preferred even between bilinguals for
discussion of such practical matters.
A recent study of Pushkin’s correspondence by Nina Dmitrieva bears out
many of these assumptions about epistolary etiquette. Pushkin corresponded
in French with his parents (with whom his relations were cool) and with
his sister. French was also the language he used, as convention required,
in his courtship of Natal’ia Goncharova, whom he married in 1831, and in
his correspondence with Natal’ia’s mother, which was laced with carefully
rehearsed clichés.37 On the other hand, he usually wrote to his brother, Lev,
in Russian, when he was on good terms with him, although he pointedly
switched to French in the 1830s when relations between them deteriorated
owing to Lev’s negligent handling of Aleksandr’s financial affairs while the
poet was in exile in the south of Russia and to the fact that Lev had run up
debts which Aleksandr had to settle.38 Pushkin’s letters to his literary friends
and kindred spirits (mainly men, but including some women), with whom he
felt unconstrained, were generally written in Russian too, although personal
preferences with some correspondents could also come into play. With Nikolai
Raevskii junior, for example, he usually corresponded in French, although the
two were close friends.39 Another exception was Pushkin’s correspondence
with Chaadaev, which was conducted in French, as Pushkin himself noted in
a letter of 1831: ‘Mon ami, je vous parlerai la langue de l’Europe’ (My friend,
I’ll speak the language of Europe to you)40 – an exception explained by the
fact that their letters touched upon grand questions of historical destiny,
for discussion of which French was deemed appropriate. In his supplicatory
correspondence with Nicholas I, which was conducted either directly or
through Count Benckendorff, Pushkin also used Russian, as convention
36 Lotman, ‘Russkaia literatura na frantsuzskom iazyke’, 365. Lotman bases his opinion on
Pushkin’s correspondence.
37 Nina Dmitrieva, ‘Pushkin’s Letters in French’, 179–183.
38 Ibidem, 175–176.
39 See, e.g., Arkhiv Raevskikh, vol. 1, 254–257 (Raevskii to Pushkin) and 258–261 (Pushkin to
Raevskii).
40 Pushkin, PSS, vol. 14, 187; Nina Dmitrieva, ‘Pushkin’s Letters in French’, 176. Pushkin’s
statement ‘je vous parlerai la langue de l’Europe’ serves as the title of the revised French version
of Grechanaia’s monograph on Russian francophonie (2012). On Chaadaev and the use of French
for historiosophical speculation, see the fifth section of Chapter 7 below.

340 

The French L anguage in Russia

required, but he tended to resort to French when dealing with ticklish subjects
or at particularly difficult moments in his relationship with the emperor. 41
However, we should not assume that the web of factors we have already
described provides us with a key to the reasons for language choice in all
circumstances. Even the location of the writer when he or she composes a
letter and the location of the addressee at that time, Tipton suggests on the
basis of her study of the Vorontsovs’ correspondence, may have a bearing. 42
The point is well illustrated by a letter written in French in 1850 by Nikolai
Bartenev to his sister Praskov’ia. Bartenev’s choice of language in this instance
is probably explained by the fact that Praskov’ia was a lady-in-waiting at the
imperial court. Nikolai is writing from the provinces, and to the court at that,
and evidently feels a need to write in French, as a nobleman’s career might
depend on it. However, the letter shows that French was not a language he was
altogether accustomed to using, for it obviously cost him much effort to write
it. His language is very simple, primitive even, and he makes a number of mistakes. He writes, for example, ‘il a monté à cheval’ (he got on his horse) rather
than ‘il est monté à cheval’, and ‘voila un homme tous a fais provincial’ (there’s
a completely provincial man for you) instead of ‘voilà un homme tout à fait
provincial’. He admits that he does not usually write in French: ‘Vous devez
être tres étonnez de ma lettre française. Je m’occupe ici et j’ai voulu vous fair
voir mes progrés’ (You must be amazed at my letter in French. I’m studying
[it] here and I wanted to show you what progress I’ve made).43
There are plainly many instances, moreover, when no clear criterion for
a bilingual writer’s choice is detectable. We should also be cautious about
accepting the received wisdom and generalizations we have described. The
factors influencing language choice could be even more complicated than
41 Nina Dmitrieva, ‘Pushkin’s Letters in French’, 183–186. It had been normal to address
Alexander I, on the other hand, in French, because – it is suggested by Lotman – Alexander
acknowledged by this means the equality of people of good society: Lotman, ‘Russkaia literatura
na frantsuzskom iazyke’, 361. Zhukovskii, like Pushkin, we might add, corresponded in both
French and Russian with a member of the royal family, in this case the Empress Alexandra
Fedorovna, the wife of Alexander I. He used French both for subject-matter which required
no particular emotional engagement and when writing about moving episodes in his life,
evidently employing French as a sort of emotional filter which placed no onus on the empress
to express strong feelings. However, in situations in which some compassion on Zhukovskii’s
part was required (for example, on the death of the daughter of the emperor and empress), he
switched to Russian, which, by virtue of the fact that it bore fewer clichés, seemed better able
to convey genuine emotion. Extant rough drafts of Zhukovskii’s letters to the empress show
that he sometimes wavered over his choice of language. See Viatkina, ‘Diglossiia russkikh
marginal’nykh zhanrov’ (unpaginated).
42 Tipton, ‘Multilingualism in the Russian Nobility’, 49, 99, 129, 152–153, 252.
43 GARF, f. 632, op. 1, d. 55, fols 2–2 v.

Writing French

341

the rules thought to be prescribed by etiquette, and the implications of the
preference could be even more nuanced than our examples from Pushkin’s
letters seem to show.44 For one thing, as various scholars have pointed out,
conventions might be breached in order to achieve certain purposes or to
affect the recipient in some way. Use of French where Russian might have
been appropriate could conceal a writer’s true feelings behind French clichés
or conceal real intimacy behind trite expressions of affection. 45 Or again,
writers might adapt themselves to the sensibility of the person they were
addressing, as did Aleksandr Golitsyn in a letter of 1791 to Praskov’ia Golitsyna,
née Shuvalova, who was herself a Francophone writer. Although by the 1780s
Golitsyn was writing mainly in Russian, as we have seen, it still seemed
appropriate to him, Berelowitch surmises, to choose French for letters to this
avowedly Francophone lady: the use of French allowed him to employ a light,
gallant style suffused with ‘Franco-femininity’ and to pose as a courtier. 46
Yet more complex factors come into play in letters written by Radishchev
to his powerful patron Aleksandr Vorontsov from Siberia, to which Catherine
II had exiled him for publishing his subversive Journey from St Petersburg
to Moscow. In a penetrating analysis of the factors determining language
choice in some seventy extant letters between these two correspondents,
Baudin finds that Radishchev’s language choice cannot be explained in a
wholly satisfactory way by characterizing French as a language suitable
for the conduct of a semi-official relationship between a protégé and his
patron and Russian as a language to be used between relatives and close
friends. Language choice in this corpus of letters was not determined
purely by the identity of the addressee, since some of Radishchev’s letters
to Vorontsov, his superior, were written in Russian and some of his letters
to family members, his intimates, were written in French. Nor was choice
determined entirely by the content of a letter, for Radishchev sometimes
resorted indiscriminately to one language or the other to discuss a whole
range of subjects. In the last analysis, Baudin argues, more subjective factors
which relate to the writer’s current anxieties and state of mind sometimes
44 It should also be noted that the epistolary practice of men of letters (who feature prominently
in existing studies of Russians’ bilingual correspondence, such as those by Paperno (1975) and
Lotman (1994)) is not necessarily typical of noble practice as a whole. Littérateurs had aesthetic
preoccupations, of course, and often crafted their letters carefully. Pushkin treated some of
his letters as literary experiments and produced several versions of them before sending them
(Nina Dmitrieva, ‘Pushkin’s Letters in French’, 172–173).
45 Baudin, ‘Russian or French?’, 122, summarizing points made by Lotman (‘Russkaia literatura
na frantsuzskom iazyke’, 365–366) et al.
46 Berelowitch, ‘Francophonie in Russia under Catherine II’, 53.

342 

The French L anguage in Russia

prevailed. First, when Radishchev feels a sense of guilt towards Vorontsov
for not complying with his instructions he uses Russian (and a subservient
mode of address: ‘My dear Sire, Count Aleksandr Romanovich’) as an implicit
means of subordinating himself once more to his patron in the Russophone
imperial administration. When, on the other hand, Radishchev is liberated
from this burden, reversion to French helps him to restore a certain ‘utopian
equality’ to their relationship, as implied also by the simpler form of address,
‘Monsieur’.47 Secondly, the use of French, once he reaches his final Siberian
destination, may serve for Radishchev as a means of retaining his identity
as a civilized European in a wilderness where he is surrounded by wild
beasts and people who seem barely to differ from beasts, except insofar
as they have language (whose value, however, they do not understand). 48
Bilingual writers needed not only to make a language choice for each
individual letter (or, more generally, each individual text) that they produced
but also to decide whether they would mix languages, or switch codes, within
a single document. Such language-mixing may have been frowned upon in
formal texts, because it was considered a sign of familiarity. 49 Thus the fact
that code-switching in Radishchev’s letters to Aleksandr Vorontsov is very
limited, as Baudin points out, is an indication of their unequal relationship.50
Pushkin, as Lotman reminds us, even rebuked his brother, Lev, for mixing
languages in a letter: ‘you ought to be ashamed of yourself my dear’, he wrote
to him in 1822, when he was close to him, ‘for writing a letter half in Russian
and half in French’, as if he were a female cousin from Moscow (moskovskaia
kuzina).51 (Pushkin’s gibe makes code-switching sound provincial and
unworthy of a metropolitan aristocrat.) However, Pushkin himself, pace
Lotman, was quite often guilty of the same sin.52 Indeed, the practice of
code-switching – on which many Russian writers poured scorn for a hundred
years from the mid-eighteenth century53 – was extremely common in letters
between people who were close to one another.
47 On the use of French to imply friendship and a semblance of social equality, even between
people who were plainly not social peers, see the reference to relations between Aleksandr
Stroganov and his son’s tutor in the fifth section of Chapter 2 above.
48 Baudin, ‘Russian or French?’, 125–129.
49 Maimina, ‘Stilisticheskie funktsii frantsuzskogo iazyka v perepiske Pushkina i v ego poezii’,
61–63.
50 Baudin, ‘Russian or French?’, 124.
51 Pushkin, PSS, vol. 13, 35; Lotman, ‘Russkaia literatura na frantsuzskom iazyke’, 365; Nina
Dmitrieva, ‘Pushkin’s Letters in French’, 186.
52 Nina Dmitrieva, ‘Pushkin’s Letters in French’, 186–187.
53 On attitudes expressed by the literary community towards code-switching, see Chapters
8 and 9 below.

Writing French

343

Just as there were many factors that helped to determine language choice
for a letter as a whole, so too certain clearly identifiable factors tended
to precipitate code-switching within a letter, as Tipton’s investigation of
language choice in the correspondence of the Vorontsov family strongly
suggests. Correspondents switch, for example, in order to report speech in
the language that was evidently used by the speaker in question. Dashkova
follows this practice when she tells her elder brother Aleksandr about a
conversation she has had with the Russian ambassador in Paris, Count
Morkov, about their younger brother Semen, who seems to have been
slandered. ‘Je lui ai demandé’ (I asked him), she writes,
si l’on était content encore de Сенюша; il m’a dit oui, mais dis-je, je crois
qu’il a eu des réprimandes, mais c’est qu’il est aussi trop entier et trop
chaud; et puis il me dit en Russe: ‘давно здесь не были, так не знают
или забыли здешний образ мыслей’.
(whether he was still happy with Seniusha; he replied yes, but I said I
thought he had had some scoldings, but that the problem is that he’s
also too headstrong and hot-headed; and then he said to me in Russian:
‘he hasn’t been here for long, so he doesn’t know the way we think round
here, or he’s forgotten’.)54

There was also a tendency to switch from French into Cyrillic in order to
render Russian patronymics, diminutive forms of personal names (Seniusha,
diminutive of Semen, in the quotation above), place-names, weights and
measurements, and other culture-specific things, such as edicts, official
posts or positions, foodstuffs, or ubiquitous insects! The following examples
from letters written by Dashkova illustrate the point:
Avant hier j’ai prêté serment en présence du capitaine-исправник
(The day before yesterday I took an oath before the head of police)
[…] avant de me coucher avec des тараканы
(before going to bed with cockroaches)
54 AKV, bk 5, 200, quoted by Tipton, ‘Code-Switching in the Correspondence of the Vorontsov
Family’, 136 and 148, n. 5. The italics in the French passage are in the original. The underlining
in the translation is our own, to indicate the matter that was written in Cyrillic in the original
passage. For an example of code-switching in the other direction but for the same purpose, see
Tipton, ibidem, 137. For examples of code-switching for reported speech in Pushkin’s letters, see
Nina Dmitrieva, ‘Pushkin’s Letters in French’, 186–187.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Si mon éxil doit durer, envoyez moi, je vous prie, des semences, огурцов,
моркови, гороху, капусты, кресс-саладу et quelques autres.
(If my exile must continue, please send me some seeds, cucumbers, carrots,
peas, cabbages, cress, and a few other things.)55

Similarly, Semen Vorontsov, despite his cosmopolitanism, switches into
Russian when referring to the Orthodox faith, to which he remained intensely
loyal. Thus in a letter of 1826 which is written in French, and in which he
vilifies the Decembrists as ‘jeunes Étourdis Élevés par des outchitels Français’
(thoughtless youths raised by French teachers56), he suddenly resorts to
Russian to praise the great ‘Russian God’ (Bog Ruskoi) who, he supposes, will
protect his country from its enemies.57 Correspondents might also switch from
Russian into French in order to close a letter with an appropriate epistolary
formula, although we should not assume that they did this because Russian
was unsuited to the expression of the sentiments the formula expressed,
for Russian versions of such formulae were clearly in evidence early in the
age of Catherine and were taken up by Russians who were not bilingual.58
Sometimes the need to switch, or anticipation of it, would make for an
extended passage in Russian in a text in which French otherwise predominated. In the following passage in a letter written by Semen Vorontsov in
1764, for example, the word shlafrok (a recent Russian borrowing from
German) seems to trigger the switch out of French, which, as we have already
noted, was the language customarily used by the Russian elite for discussion
of medical matters:
Il m’a saigné donc du bras droit et très-heureusement, et au bout de deux
jours je fus quitte du mal de tête; mais j’en ai été quatre sans pouvoir mettre
l’habit et rien faire avec la main droite: car, comme c’était la première fois
de ma vie que cela m’arrivait, je ne savais après comment m’y prendre, и
55 AKV, bk 5, 238, 244, 248. For an example from a letter written by Dashkova’s elder sister
Elisaveta Polianskaia, see ibidem, bk 21, 460. These illustrations are all used by Tipton, ‘CodeSwitching in the Correspondence of the Vorontsov Family’, 139–141, where further examples are
to be found, and 148, nn. 12–14. Underlining in the translations is again our own, to indicate
the matter that is in Cyrillic in the original. For similar examples in Radishchev’s letters, see
Baudin, ‘Russian or French?’, 123.
56 Semen uses the Russian word ‘ouchitel’, in transliterated form, in a disparaging way.
57 Quoted by Tipton, ‘Code-Switching in the Correspondence of the Vorontsov Family’, 142
and 149, n. 17.
58 Ibidem, 137–138. For some examples of code-switching in letters written by Aleksandr
Golitsyn’s brother Mikhail, and explanations of them, see Berelowitch, ‘Francophonie in Russia
under Catherine II’, 53–56.

Writing French

345

на другой день, заснувши, я так ее разбередил, что два дни после того
правою рукою я действовать был не в состоянии и другого надевать
как шлафрок. Pardonnez moi, mon cher, tous ces détails ennuyeux, mais
je ne les ai faits qu’en connaissant votre amitié pour moi.
(So he bled my right arm and very successfully too, and after two days my
headache went away; but I had four [days] when I couldn’t put on my clothes
or do anything with my right hand: because, as it was the first time in my
life that this had happened to me, I didn’t know how to cope afterwards,
and the next day, after falling asleep, I aggravated it so much that for the
next two days I couldn’t move my right arm and put on anything other
than a dressing-gown. Excuse me, my dear fellow, for all these trying
details, but I only include them because I know your friendship for me.)59

The prevalence of code-switching in the informal correspondence of
Dashkova and her siblings would seem to suggest that the members of this
generation of Vorontsovs were fully bilingual in French and Russian.60 In
this respect they differed from their uncle Mikhail, whose language use
implies a diglossic situation, in which French was preferred to Russian for
certain clearly definable purposes.61
We should of course beware of generalizing on the basis of evidence,
however detailed, on the practice of one family. However, similar patterns
to those that we have described can be found in the letters of other bilingual
nobles; indeed Tipton’s research reveals these patterns in the letters of
outsiders corresponding with the Vorontsov family. Members of the Bakunin
family, whose estate was located in Tver’ Province, are another case in point.
Although they too, like the Vorontsovs, write many letters exclusively in one
language or the other, they also sometimes switch from French into Russian
when they use place names, patronymics, or diminutives of forenames,
mention units of measurement (of temperature, for instance), deal with
such practical matters as estate management, and cite Russian proverbs
or convey name-day greetings.62
It is also worth commenting, finally, on pronominal usage in letter-writing,
because Russian correspondents might often sense non-equivalence between
59 AKV, bk 32, 81; quoted by Tipton, ‘Code-Switching in the Correspondence of the Vorontsov
Family’, 142–143 and 149, n. 18. Underlining in the translation is our own, as is bold font in the
French and Russian original to highlight the word shlafrok.
60 Tipton, ‘Code-Switching in the Correspondence of the Vorontsov Family’, 135.
61 Tipton, ‘Multilingualism in the Russian Nobility’, 49.
62 GATO, f. 103, op. 1, d. 1395.

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The French L anguage in Russia

the French second-person personal pronouns tu and vous and related forms
(ton, votre, and so forth), on the one hand, and the grammatically equivalent
Russian forms (ty and vy, tvoi and vash), on the other.63 Use of the formal
second-person Russian pronoun vy to an addressee with whom the writer
was on intimate terms could feel intolerably frigid.64 Thus in a letter to Anna
Kern, for whom Pushkin famously had a passion at one time, the poet could
not help slipping from one pronoun to the other: ‘Votre conseil d’écrire à
S[a] M[ajesté] m’a touché comme une preuve de ce que vous avez songé à
moi – je t’en remercie à genoux’ (Your advice that I write to H[is] M[ajesty]
touched me as a proof of what you thought of me and I thank you on my
knees).65 Pushkin’s friend Viazemskii also preferred to break the normal
epistolary rule by addressing his fiancée as tu in a letter that he wrote to her,
as custom dictated, in French, and she too thereafter addressed Viazemskii
with the more familiar pronoun, while continuing to write to him in French.66
Anticipation of the awkwardness of vous as a means of addressing someone
close might even sometimes explain the use of Russian in preference to
French. In an affectionate Russian postscript to a letter of 1824, for example,
Pushkin was able to address his sister Ol’ga as ty, whereas vous had seemed
appropriate in an addendum that he addressed to her in French which
accompanied a letter he wrote to her husband in Russian in 1822.67
Language choice in letters, then, could be a purely practical matter,
reflecting the competence of writer and recipient, but there were numerous
other factors that often came into play. Something similar may be said of the
various forms of ego-writing that also served as props for noble sociability
and tools of noble self-fashioning, to which we now turn.

Language use in diaries, travel notes, memoirs, and albums
The corpus of documents written by Russians in French during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that might be described as examples
63 On the social implications of pronominal choice, see also the third section of Chapter 4
above.
64 On this implication of pronominal usage, see also the fourth section of Chapter 9 below,
for examples of allusions to the problem in Tolstoi’s fiction.
65 Pushkin, PSS, vol. 13, 229, quoted by Nina Dmitrieva, ‘Pushkin’s Letters in French’, 187; our
use of bold.
66 Nina Dmitrieva, ‘Pushkin’s Letters in French’, 187.
67 Ibidem, 176. In the French addendum we have mentioned, Pushkin may simply have been
following convention or he may have been mockingly imitating the empty chatter of society.

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of ego-writing is so large that it has been claimed that the bulk of Russian writing in French is autobiographical.68 It is possible that this claim
underestimates the volume of other types of text produced in French or
that it excludes from consideration certain types of document (diplomatic
texts and correspondence, articles in the periodical press, propagandistic
and polemical writings) of the sort we deal with in other chapters of this
book.69 In any case, the claim is unverifiable. However, it is not altogether
implausible, if we treat personal letters as in some sense autobiographical
texts, as well we might, for it is certainly true that the boundaries between
private correspondence and ego-writing are blurred.
The types of ego-writing most abundantly exemplified by extant texts
written by Russians in French are the personal diary, the récit de voyage,
the memoir, and the album, all of which provided satisfying and socially
acceptable means of self-realization for noble women as well as noble men. We
shall pause briefly on the characteristics of each of these types of ego-writing.
However, it is worth prefacing our remarks by saying that we are not dealing
here with a set of strictly defined genres but with texts which may share
common features and may individually contain disparate elements, ranging
from records of everyday activities, recollections of things the author has
heard, and copies of passages he or she has read to the author’s own reflections.
The diary, to begin with that type of text, may be regarded variously as
historical testimony, an autobiographical document, or a literary genre.70
It comes in various forms: besides the diary with consecutive entries
chronologically arranged, for example, there are epistolary diaries which are
addressed to a specific recipient, to be sent either in instalments or as a complete work once finished.71 It may be aimed, moreover, at different spheres,
the private or the public. Of course, some diaries really were intended to be
read only by their author.72 Usually, though, Russian noblewomen’s diaries
of the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth had a
specific addressee, such as a sister, friend, lover, or husband, and often they
were intended to be read aloud to a circle of family and friends. The récit
de voyage, like the personal diary, might be written for the more or less
exclusive pleasure or interest of the author, or even as an educational exercise
supervised by a foreign tutor,73 or again, it might be intended to be read at
68
69
70
71
72
73

Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 20.
See especially Chapters 5 above and 7 below.
Paperno, ‘What Can Be Done with Diaries?’, Russian Review, 63 (2004), 561.
Viollet, ‘Aux frontières de la correspondance’, 73–76.
Viollet, ‘À la rencontre des journaux personnels’, 12.
Gretchanaia [Grechanaia] and Viollet, ‘Si tu lis jamais ce journal…’, 28.

348 

The French L anguage in Russia

some social gathering. It often attested to the completion of a nobleman’s
or noblewoman’s education, the development of their character, and the
expansion of their cultural horizons. Like many diaries and récits de voyage,
memoirs too might vary in the degree to which they were conceived as
private or public texts. Containing detailed accounts of the author’s personal
life, including comments on feelings and health, they were often addressed
to the writer’s children. At the same time, many memoirs were aimed at
posterity and not meant to be read during the author’s lifetime. Such texts
conveyed what were supposed to be the author’s honest, unbiased views
directly to future generations, thus serving as an educative resource or as
a potentially important source for historiography. The album, on the other
hand, was usually more unambiguously public in character than the diary
or travel account, or even the private memoir, for the keeping of an album
presupposed that many individuals would contribute to it and that it would
be shown off in the drawing-room or salon. In ego-documents in general,
the degree of artifice varied, depending to some extent on the number of
readers they were expected to reach. As for language choice in them, their
semi-public character tended to dictate the use of French, at least when
they were written by women, because that was the predominant language
of the refined aristocratic society for which they were produced. However,
since such documents could range over so many different subjects, Russian
might sometimes seem more appropriate, and much ego-writing produced by
Russians does contain some combination of these two languages. It should
be noted, finally, that there is a near-complete absence of metadiscourse in
the ego-writing we examine. Language use and choice are rarely mentioned,
which again suggests to us that the authors of these texts were bilingual
(or plurilingual), made instinctive choices based on common linguistic
practice, and experienced little or no sense of conflicted cultural identity.74
The most thorough study of Russian noblewomen’s diaries has been
carried out by Elena Grechanaia and Catherine Viollet, who have published excerpts from numerous texts which illustrate subject-matter and
linguistic practice that were typical in the genre.75 The habit of keeping an
autobiographical diary, which was borrowed from French culture, emerged
in Russia in the mid-eighteenth century and spread rapidly towards the
century’s end. Whereas in France, though, the majority of diary writers
belonged to the tiers état, that is to say the commons or middle class, in
74 The last of these points is made in relation to memoirists by Herold, ‘Russian Autobiographical
Literature in French’, 3.
75 Gretchanaia [Grechanaia] and Viollet, ‘Si tu lis jamais ce journal…’

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Russia it was nobles who kept diaries.76 Grechanaia and Viollet detect a
clear gender divide in language use in this type of text in Russia in the late
eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth: men’s diaries, they
find, are predominantly written in Russian, whereas women’s diaries are
usually written in French.77 However, it is important to note that women too
sometimes used Russian for this form of writing, as did Natal’ia Stroganova,
for example, in a family chronicle she continued for over fifty years after her
mother’s death in 1760.78 In any case, Russian was nearly always present to
some degree in women’s diaries (increasingly so in the nineteenth century),
as in the diary of Smirnova-Rosset, which we used as a source on language
practice at court, and in the bilingual epistolary diary of Anna Kern (née
Poltoratskaia).79 This language-mixing confirms the impression that women
were able to express themselves in Russian;80 the prevalence of the French
language in this and other literary genres and in certain social settings
cannot usually be explained as merely an illustration of women’s linguistic
competence in French and relative incompetence in Russian.
Some of the typical features of Russian women’s diaries of the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and illustrations of points we
have made about such matters as language competence and language use in
different domains can be found, to take one example for close examination,
in the diary of Anastasiia Iakushkina. This text was written in 1827 and is
almost entirely in French.81 It is a private, epistolary diary, which Anastasiia
sent to her exiled Decembrist husband, Ivan Iakushkin, whom she was
hoping eventually to join in Siberia. It serves two particular purposes for
the young author (Iakushkina was around 20 years of age when she wrote it).
First, Iakushkina used her diary to express her innermost private feelings,
‘les plus petits replis de mon triste coeur’ (all the tiniest recesses of my sad
heart), including her love for her husband. (She says that she conceals the
existence of the diary even from her mother, who was living in the same
household.) French is an appropriate medium for this purpose because,
besides serving as a social and domestic language for the Russian nobility,
76 V’olle [Viollet] and Grechanaia, ‘Dnevnik v Rossii’, 19.
77 Ibidem, 24.
78 Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 148–149.
79 Ibidem, 176–177. For further examples of women’s bilingual or multilingual diaries, see
177–192.
80 Gretchanaia [Grechanaia], ‘Mémoires et journaux intimes féminins rédigés en français’,
163.
81 The diary is in GARF, f. 279, op. 1, d. 119. It was published in Russian translation as Iakushkina,
‘Dnevnik Anastasii Vasil’evny Iakushkinoi’ in Novyi mir, no. 12 (1964), 138–152.

350 

The French L anguage in Russia

it was also a language in which romantic sentiment and devotion were
commonly expressed. After all, French texts such as the epistolary novel
and the literary style used in them provided models for Russian women
wishing to write in this vein while keeping within appropriate bounds of
feminine expression. For Iakushkina, the status of French as a language of
love is enhanced by the fact that she evidently does not speak French in her
daily life with those closest to her: Russian is the domestic language she uses
with her children, servants, and mother. She says she has told her young
son Viacheslav about her love for his father in French (‘comme j’aime papa’
[how I love papa]), but she then has to translate her remarks into Russian
(kak ia papu liubliu) to make Viacheslav comprehend them fully.82 At the
same time, the Francophone diarist may abandon French, the sanctioned
language of love, when expressing heightened emotion.83 Thus Iakushkina
sometimes switches into Russian to incorporate in her diary affectionate
terms such as dushka (darling) and milushka (dearest) which she may have
used in face-to-face conversations with her husband.84
Secondly, Iakushkina’s diary enabled her to define herself and her roles,
as diarists commonly do.85 She uses it to demonstrate that she can fulfil the
roles expected of her by society, that is to say that she will be obedient to
her husband, whom she portrays as a strict male figure who has clear views
about how she should behave publicly as a woman, wife, and mother. She
provides reports of her sons’ wellbeing and behaviour, showing that she is
carrying out her duty and obeying Ivan’s wishes: ‘le soir comme je te l’avais
promis je dessinais a [sic, i.e. pour] Wecheslas’ (in the evening I have done
drawings for Viacheslav as I promised you I would), she writes. Furthermore,
she recounts how she upbraided her sons’ nanny, but remained perfectly
ladylike throughout the incident. She can run a household with authority
and grace, we may infer. Thus, the diary is a place where Iakushkina can offer
proof of appropriate feminine conduct and portray herself in an ideal way.86
Language use in Iakushkina’s diary resembles that in other examples of
this genre. Like other women diarists, Iakushkina is poor at distinguishing
homophonous forms and is consequently prone to grammatical error in
French word endings. She writes, for example: ‘j’était [étais]’ (I was) and
‘Dieu m’avait inspirait [inspiré]’ (God had inspired me).87 Her diary also
82
83
84
85
86
87

Iakushkina, ‘Dnevnik Anastasii Vasil’evny Iakushkinoi’, 147–148.
Gretchanaia, ‘Mémoires et journaux intimes féminins rédigés en français’, 163.
Iakushkina, ‘Dnevnik Anastasii Vasil’evny Iakushkinoi’, 143.
Savkina, ‘Pishu sebia…’, 98–103.
Gretchanaia and Viollet, ‘Si tu lis jamais ce journal…’, 49–51.
GARF, f. 279, op. 1, d. 119, fol. 1.

Writing French

351

contains frequent instances of code-switching, which was common in
diaries as well as private letters, especially from the 1820s onwards, it seems,
when use of Russian was becoming more common in nobles’ texts. The
shift from one language to the other is driven by the same factors that we
have observed in personal correspondence, such as reference to toponyms,
personal names, and distinctively Russian objects or phenomena.88 Thus, like
Semen Vorontsov, Iakushkina retains the Russian word for ‘dressing-gown’
within her predominantly French text, albeit in a slightly different form
(shlaforok), because she is referring to a distinctively Russian everyday
garment. Code-switching into Russian also occurs as Iakushkina describes
life with her children. ‘Les enfants qui ont beaucoup d’esprit’, she writes, ‘ne
sont pas dolgoveshni’ (children who are too clever don’t live long). Although
she starts the sentence in French, Iakushkina no doubt has in her mind the
Russian saying zateilivye rebiata nedolgovechny, which may have been used
in conversation with the children.89 She also switches codes, as writers were
liable to do, when she quotes either her children or herself as she interacts
with the children or their nanny, using what was no doubt the original
language of the utterance quoted.
Noble men – for example, the Baltic German diplomat Petr Meyendorff
in the f irst half of the nineteenth century90 and Mikhail Semenovich
Vorontsov91 and, as we have seen, Petr Valuev in the second – also wrote
diaries that have survived, although not so commonly as women. (The
diaries of Meyendorff and Vorontsov were written in French, Valuev’s, for
the most part, in Russian.) These men too conceived of their diaries both
as private record and reflection, on the one hand, and as a possible means
of communication with posterity, on the other, as Meyendorff intimates in
a (perhaps slightly disingenuous) prefatory note (Avis au Lecteur) written
in Göttingen in May 1816:
I take such pleasure in busying myself with memories of time that I have
spent pleasantly, thinking of what I have seen that is beautiful and good,
88 V’olle [Viollet] and Grechanaia, ‘Dnevnik v Rossii’, 25; Gretchanaia [Grechanaia] and Viollet,
‘Si tu lis jamais ce journal…’, 41; Grečanaja [Grechanaia], ‘L’usage du français et du russe dans
les journaux féminins’, 22.
89 See the entry in the dictionary of Russian sayings compiled by Vladimir Dal’, which is
available at http://www.gumer.info/bibliotek_Buks/Culture/dal/06.php. Iakushkina spells the
Russian word dolgovechnyi incorrectly, as our transliteration shows; one of the mistakes (‘sh’
for ‘ch’) reflects the pronunciation of the word.
90 GARF, f. 573, op. 1, d. 467 (1816? Fr.).
91 RGADA, f. 1261, op. 1, d. 45 (1854 and no date, Fr., Russ.).

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The French L anguage in Russia

that I believe I shall not be wasting my time if I make a collection of
memories that are already so dear to me and will be all the more so later
on. This is enough to make those into whose hands this book might fall see
that it would be indiscreet to read a journal that is written only for me.92

Like women’s diaries again, men’s diaries exhibited plurilingualism, manifested in code-switching. Take, for example, the following trilingual entry
from 1856 in a diary kept by a member of the Prussian Bünting family, which
lived and served in the Russian Empire.93 In this instance, the base language
of the diary is German, but French and Russian also occur:
Mittwoch Okt 17.
Spät morgens ist M. Кузнецов wieder abgegangen, wie es schien, sehr
erfreut von unserer Bekanntschaft et nous invitent instamment de
regarder sa maison à Каширское comme la nôtre.94
(Wednesday 17 October.
Mr Kuznetsov left again late in the morning, very happy to have made our
acquaintance, it seemed, and urges us to look on his house at Kashirskoe
as our own.)

Thus, Russian names (the surname ‘Kuznetsov’ and the toponym ‘Kashirskoe’) are given in Cyrillic, according to the common practice we have
already observed. There is also an intra-sentential switch from German
into French. One assumes that the diarist makes this switch in order to
replicate precisely the speech he is reporting, and no doubt French was the
language spoken by Kuznetsov on this occasion, either because convention
favoured the use of that language for an invitation extended to a social peer
or because French served as a lingua franca between German and Russian
nobles in the empire.
Bilingualism – indeed plurilingualism – and code-switching are also in
evidence in the accounts of travels, the récits de voyage that so many Russian
noblemen and noblewomen wrote in the second half of the eighteenth
century and the first half of the nineteenth. French was commonly used
92 Translated from the French original at GARF, f. 573, op. 1, d. 467, fol. 2.
93 One of the diarist’s descendants, Nikolai Georgievich Bünting, became governor of Tver’,
where he was murdered in 1917.
94 GATO, f. 103, op. 1, d. 3135a, fol. 121 v. The diary deals mainly with military life and campaigns
but also includes long passages on emotions, particularly grief and love, as well as on day-to-day
activities.

Writing French

353

in this genre too, irrespective of which country the traveller was visiting
(Germany and Italy were destinations just as popular as France). The predominance of French in this sort of text can be explained both by the fact
that the Grand Tour was an aristocratic rite of passage and by the existence,
by the late eighteenth century, of influential models of travel-writing in
French, especially Charles Dupaty’s Letters on Italy (1788).95 Early examples of
travel accounts written by Russians in French include notes made by Baron
Aleksandr Stroganov on his journeying in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy
in 1752–1753, Prince Aleksandr Kurakin’s Recollections of a Journey to Holland
and England in 1770–1772, some meticulous, drily factual observations
by the teenage Prince Aleksei Golitsyn, who studied at the University of
Leiden in the 1780s, and Prince Boris Golitsyn’s notes on a journey in Italy
and France in 1791–1792.96 Many of the numerous accounts of travels in
the West that were written by Russians in French in the last quarter of the
eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, like so many other
forms of private journal, were produced by young aristocratic women. Some
of these women – for instance, Dashkova, Natal’ia Golitsyna, and Natal’ia
Kurakina – became well-known public figures, but a larger number of
them – Ekaterina Liubomirskaia, Sof’ia Murav’eva, Varvara Turkestanova,
Elizaveta Vasil’eva, and many others – remained little-known.
To point to the plethora of récits de voyage that were written in French,
especially by women, is by no means to say that no such accounts were
written in Russian. Fonvizin, as a major man of letters who was already
expressing wounded national pride and ridiculing Francophone fops in
the middle of the reign of Catherine, pointedly used Russian for a cycle of
‘letters’ written in 1777–1778, during a long stay in France, and addressed to
Count Petr Panin, the brother of Fonvizin’s highly-placed patron Nikita.97
95 Charles Mercier-Dupaty, Lettres sur l’Italie.
96 RGADA, f. 1278, op. 4, d. 77 (Aleksandr Sergeevich Stroganov’s diary of his journey); Aleksei
[but the author is in fact Aleksandr] Kurakin, Souvenirs d’un voyage en Hollande et en Angleterre
par le P. A.K. durant les années 1770, 1771 et 1772; RGB, f. 64, k. 113, d. 3 (Boris Golitsyn’s notes on
his journey round Italy, 1791–1792, Fr., It.). See also Pavel Stroganov’s diary of a journey abroad in
1785 (RGADA, f. 1278, op. 1, d. 345), the beginning of a French diary on a journey by Petr Miatlev
in Russia (IRLI, Manuscripts Department, f. 196, op. 1, d. 19 (1819)), and the undated diary of a
member of the Samarin family (possibly Fedor Vasil’evich Samarin (1784–1853), the father of
the Slavophile Iurii) about a tour of Germany, Switzerland, and Italy (RGADA, f. 1277, op. 1, d.
144). On the first three of these writers, see Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski,
140–146.
97 Pis’ma iz vtorogo zagranichnogo puteshestviia (1777–1778), in Fonvizin, SS, vol. 2, 412–495.
Although these ‘letters’ were not published in their author’s lifetime, Fonvizin no doubt had a
wider contemporary readership in mind, not just Petr Panin.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Dashkova, despite her multilingual competence and love of displaying it,
also resorted to Russian to describe a journey she made round the south
of England in 1770.98 Russian featured in bilingual or plurilingual récits de
voyage as well, just as it did in other forms of ego-writing. Aleksei Bobrinskii,
Catherine’s illegitimate son by Grigorii Orlov, deployed three languages,
French, Russian, and German, in a diary that he kept while he was travelling in Europe in 1783–1786, using French, Grechanaia observes, for more
or less dispassionate notes about his journey but resorting to Russian for
spontaneous emotional outbursts.99 Again, Russian was frequently used in
women’s travel narratives in which the predominant language was French.
As Emilie Murphy has shown, women repeatedly followed the normal
practice of switching into Russian to render proper nouns, cite proverbs or
sayings, or refer to Russian institutions, units of currency, cuisine, and the
Orthodox religion or its practice.100 They also indicated in their texts that
they were willing to use Russian when speaking to their compatriots during
their travels, sometimes as an exclusive language that any foreigners who
were present would not be able to understand, sometimes to express deep
emotion, and sometimes because this was a pleasant way of reminding
themselves of their native land during a long stay abroad.101
Nor did the women who recorded their impressions of the places they
had visited confine themselves to use of French and Russian. In many of
their accounts, which display similar patterns of language use, Murphy
finds examples of code-switching into, or other evidence of knowledge of,
other European languages, especially – in ascending order of the number
of cases – German, English, and Italian.102 The women make references to
their knowledge of these languages, or insert words and phrases in them
into their texts, not only in order to quote things people have said but also,
no doubt, to lend an air of authenticity or exoticism to their narratives and
to demonstrate their familiarity with local customs and their ability to
communicate with natives in the countries they visit.103 Different languages
are thus chosen to construct an image of the diarist, as a well-read person,
a capable traveller, a witty commentator, and, above all, a multilingual
cosmopolitan.
98 ‘Puteshestvie odnoi rossiiskoi znatnoi gospozhi po nekotorym aglinskim provintsiiam’.
99 Bobrinskii, ‘A.G. Bobrinskii, Dnevnik. 1779–1786’. See Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila
po-frantsuzski, 163–164.
100 Murphy, ‘Russian Noblewomen’s Francophone Travel Narratives (1777–1848)’, 111–112.
101 Ibidem, 110, 115, 116.
102 Ibidem, 104.
103 Ibidem, 107–110.

Writing French

355

Russians also began to write memoirs in French in the second half of the
eighteenth century and continued often to use French for this purpose up
until the 1830s, from which point Russian took precedence.104 Catherine II
herself produced an example of the genre.105 She seems to have been well
read in literature of this kind: she knew the memoirs of Queen Christina
of Sweden and d’Alembert, for example, and also – judging by similarities
of style and content detected by Grechanaia – those of Anne Marie Louise
d’Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier.106 Claiming to report what she has seen
and heard, Catherine supplied detailed descriptions of her daily life, travels,
and illnesses, and the people around her. As to why she chose to write
her memoirs in French, it may have been partly because she had a better
command of it than of Russian, Grechanaia surmises.107 However, the use of
French did have many advantages in a text of this kind, besides Catherine’s
facility in it and the fact that it was a language habitually used by the Russian
elite for reading and social intercourse. It enabled Catherine, for example,
to present herself as an androgynous honnête homme, who exhibited traits
associated with both genders and aspired to live by the values of courteous
sociability.108 By using what was perceived as the language of ladies of good
society, Angelina Vacheva suggests, Catherine was also able to merge with
an enlightened norm, to present her exceptional personality within the
bounds of convention, thereby averting the possible rebuke that she was
driven by ambition. Again, French was a repository of terms, expressive
resources, and subject-matter that were familiar to all enlightened people of
that age and a medium through which all human knowledge from classical
antiquity onwards, it seemed, was accessible to them. Most importantly,
it was a vehicle through which Catherine could reach the largest possible
readership and it therefore served as a ‘key to the immortality that the
empress sought’.109 In particular, as Monika Greenleaf has pointed out,
Catherine needed to engage with the European public in order to rebut
104 Herold, ‘Russian Autobiographical Literature in French’, 7.
105 Catherine produced four different versions of her memoirs; they date from 1756, the early
1760s, 1771, and 1791. The memoirs were f irst published by Herzen on his Free Russian Press
in London, as Zapiski imperatritsy Ekateriny II. All four versions of the text were published
in Sochineniia imperatritsy Ekateriny II, vol. 12. On the literary context of this work and on
Catherine’s sources, allusions, and ‘narrative strategies’, see Vacheva, Potomstvu Ekaterina II.
106 Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 193, 194.
107 Ibidem, 199.
108 Ibidem, 197.
109 These words belong to Vacheva, to whom we are indebted for the points made in the three
sentences preceding the indicator to this note, which Vacheva has generously outlined to us in
a personal communication.

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The French L anguage in Russia

negative accounts of her rise to power and ensure that her own version of
history did not go unheard.110
After Paul acceded to the throne in 1796, French-language memoirists
largely concerned themselves with depicting their disappearing social world
and defending their reputations.111 For example, Dashkova recorded her
version of Catherine’s reign and her own role in it for posterity and described
the Russian way of life for readers who may not have been familiar with it.112
Other memoirists too, particularly participants in the events of 1812 such
as Pavel Chichagov, Fedor Rostopchin, and Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov,
resorted to French as a means of reaching a foreign readership.113 Topoi used
by earlier memoirists, such as the notions of propriété, simplicité, honnêteté,
and politesse (propriety, simplicity, integrity, politeness), remained important
for nineteenth-century memoirists, Kelly Herold has argued, but now authors
sometimes invoked these qualities to distance themselves from the state and
to establish their status as outsiders.114 Thus Aleksandr Vorontsov, writing
a memoir a few months before his death in 1805, vented his indignation at
the ‘gouvernement absolu et assez immoral’ (absolute and quite immoral
government) and deplored the state of ‘un pays ou il n’y a presqu’aucune
opinion publique’ (a country where there is almost no public opinion).115
We see here the beginnings of a tradition of using French as a means of
110 Greenleaf, ‘Performing Autobiography’, 409. It should be added that Catherine also tried her
hand at writing playlets in French, as well as plays in Russian. Styled as ‘proverbes’ (proverbs),
these playlets were composed in the late 1780s, with topical comment, for performance in
select Francophone society, which included eminent foreigners such as the French ambassador,
Louis-Philippe, Comte de Ségur, at the Hermitage or in private apartments. Among them we
find Un Tiens vaut mieux que deux tu l’auras (1787), Les Flatteurs et les flattés (1788), Le Voyage de
Monsieur Bontemps (1788), and Il n’y a pas de mal sans bien (also 1788). See Sočinenija imperatricy
Ekateriny II, vol. 4. See also O’Malley, The Dramatic Works of Catherine the Great, and Evstratov,
Les Spectacles francophones à la cour de Russie, 235–238.
111 Herold, ‘Russian Autobiographical Literature in French’, 118.
112 Ibidem, 139. Dashkova’s work was f irst published in English as Memoirs of the Princess
Daschkaw (1840). The original French version of her memoirs was first published, under the
title Mon Histoire, in AKV, bk 21 (1881), 3–365. For a useful discussion of Dashkova’s presentation
of her public and private selves, see Heldt, Terrible Perfection, 69–76; this discussion is located
within a broader examination of Russian women’s autobiographical writing (64–102).
113 Chichagov, Memoires de l’amiral Tchitchagoff; Fedor Rostopchin, La vérité sur l’incendie de
Moscou; Mikhail Vorontsov, ‘Avtobiografiia’. Discussed by Herold, ‘Russian Autobiographical
Literature in French’, 129, 144–145.
114 Herold, ‘Russian Autobiographical Literature in French’, 152.
115 Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 204. These memoirs, however, were not
intended for public consumption, although Vorontsov does imagine some sort of reader when he
criticizes his own ‘négligence de style’, a cliché intended to demonstrate the author’s sincerity:
ibidem, 203.

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inscribing an author in a public sphere outside the official realm, a sphere
whose development the government would try – especially in the age of
Nicholas I – to inhibit through rigorous censorship. This oppositional tradition
would live on in the mid-nineteenth century in polemical writings in French,
including some work of an autobiographical nature, and in Russian-language
memoirs, most notably Herzen’s masterpiece My Past and Thoughts.116
Although it is different from the diary, the récit de voyage, and the memoir
in certain respects which we mentioned above, the album can equally be
considered a vehicle for self-display, a means of identity formation, and
a refuge for female creativity.117 Grechanaia has identified three types of
album that were to be found in the extant collections of the personal papers
of Russian nobles. One type uses literary quotations and hand-written
entries by many individuals to create a specific world inside the album
and sustain the self-image of the owner. Next, there are albums written by
a single individual. Lastly, some albums are authored by an individual but
combine quotations and reflection.118 The women who kept albums clearly
saw nothing unusual in a mélange of native and imported styles. Most
importantly from our point of view, it was commonplace to use a mixture
of languages, as we see from Vadim Vatsuro’s study of examples of this type
of text that date from the first half of the nineteenth century. French is used
frequently for verse and quotations, but other languages feature as well,
including Russian.119 Thus an early nineteenth-century album belonging to
a member of the Naryshkin family which contains fables, verses, passages
on history, and even drawings of parks and flowers, has entries in French,
Russian, Italian, and English and translations of English quotations into
French.120 Another album, dating from 1812–1814 and belonging to Evdokiia
Lizogubova, has a mixture of French and Russian entries.121 It contains
French linguistic play, both in crossed-out draft form and in completed

116 Herold, ‘Russian Autobiographical Literature in French’, 208. On the continuing use of
French to express oppositional views (as well as loyalist views) to a European readership in the
mid-nineteenth century, see especially the last two sections of Chapter 7 below.
117 Gretchanaia [Grechanaia], ‘Fonctions des citations littéraires dans les albums féminins
russes rédigés en français’.
118 Ibidem, 438. There were also musical compilations, like an album of 1834 belonging to Praskov’ia
Barteneva, which contains pieces in various genres and languages (for example, Russian prayers
and folksongs and French and Italian romances after the current fashion): see RNB, f. 48, d. 2.
119 Vatsuro, ‘Literaturnye al’bomy v sobranii Pushkinskogo doma (1750–1840-e gody)’, 8.
120 IRLI, Manuscripts Department, r. 1, op. 42, d. 76.
121 Ibidem, d. 36. Vatsuro, ‘Literaturnye al’bomy v sobranii Pushkinskogo doma (1750–1840-e
gody)’, 7.

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The French L anguage in Russia

entries, such as the following, where the question ‘avez-vous aimé’ (have you
loved) is abbreviated thus, using the names of letters of the French alphabet:
AV
vous
M E?122

The relatively public nature of the album did not preclude the insertion of
highly personal material. An album dating from the 1820s and belonging
to Evdokiia Golenishcheva-Kutuzova, a noblewoman who moved to Tver’
Province in the late 1820s and married the poet Fedor Glinka, illustrates
the point.123 It is full of entries of a conventional kind in different hands
and languages: there are verses, prayers, and drawings, some in French,
others in Russian, Italian, English, Greek, and Church Slavonic. Suddenly,
though, the reader finds entries that seem to be of a very private nature:
Golenishcheva-Kutuzova writes in French about her birthday presents and
worries about her mother’s illness.124 These entries are followed by a few pages
of Russian poems, before we come to another diary entry, in French, about a
dream125 and then Italian verses which continue until the end of the album.
As a genre, then, the album seems to have served as a space in which
women could cultivate and present themselves in the best possible light
publicly, within the small aristocratic domain. It could also incorporate
private reflection – or rather, such reflection might be felt to enhance the attractiveness of the public persona of the album’s owner. The French language
had an important function in the genre, serving its playful and flirtatious
purposes, indeed contributing to its eroticization. And yet, it was not so
much francophonie as ‘polyphony’, as Gitta Hammarberg has observed,
that was the hallmark of the album, from the linguistic point of view.126
In sum, the large corpus of texts that may be classified as ego-writing
of some kind reflects the bilingualism, indeed the plurilingualism, of the
Russian social elite. As in the case of letter-writing, so too in ego-writing
the decision to use or not to use French depended on numerous factors,
which no doubt included knowledge of models for a given type of writing,
the preferences of the private circle to which the author belonged, and
122
123
124
125
126

IRLI, Manuscripts Department, r. 1, op. 42, d. 76.
GATO, f. 103, op. 1, d. 1115.
Ibidem, fols 66 and 66 v.
Ibidem, fol. 73.
Hammarberg, ‘Flirting with Words’, 300. Hammarberg’s essay is a rich source on this genre.

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calculations about the appropriateness of one language or the other for a
specific purpose. The fact that French was widely used for amateur writing
of this sort, at least in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was
due in particular to the association of such writing with the Francophone
aristocratic milieu and to acceptance in that milieu that women were entitled
to express their feelings in this way, indeed that their reputations were
enhanced by display of this accomplishment.
Ego-writing, like nobles’ personal correspondence, straddled a boundary
between the private and the public spheres that was often blurred. Personal
as the reflections recorded in diaries and récits de voyage might seem, they
too, like letters, memoirs, and albums, were often aimed at a coterie of social
peers. However, it was not only a close circle of relations and friends with
whom Russian nobles wished to communicate. Some also strove to engage
with social peers and intellectual and cultural figures across the continent.
Such distinguished individuals might be reached through somewhat more
public forms of written communication in which the language-mixing we
have observed was not appropriate, and it is to these forms that we turn in
the following section.

Writing French to join Europe
Literary endeavour, besides being a popular private or semi-private activity among the nobility, served as a mode of participation in European
aristocratic life and literary and intellectual culture. It could function as
an expression of that same sociability that was manifested in attendance
at certain types of gathering, such as the salon and the Masonic lodge, to
which we have already drawn attention.127 It was thus one of the means by
which Russia, through its eighteenth-century social elite, began belatedly
to join the European community.128
Salons, in France, Russia, and elsewhere, were connected with the literary
world in various ways. For one thing, the honnête homme, who frequented this
sort of social gathering could distinguish himself as such by displaying some
literary as well as conversational accomplishment.129 Salons also attracted
men of letters, since the reading and discussion of belles-lettres was a common
127 See the third section of Chapter 4 above.
128 The function of writing in French as a means of bringing Russia into Europe and creating
a shared past is noted by Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 23.
129 Ibidem, 10.

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The French L anguage in Russia

activity in them. The attendance of a notable representative of the Republic
of Letters, moreover, graced a salon and enhanced its reputation, especially if
he dedicated a work to the salonnière or sang her praises in it.130 Various short
literary genres were associated with this social venue. They ranged from the
light-hearted to the serious, but not too serious, for the primary aim of this
society, as we have emphasized, was always to entertain. Epigrams, fables,
eclogues, maxims, epistles, sonnets, elegies, and odes might be heard with
pleasure in the salon, and much occasional poetry (vers de circonstance)
was produced for recital in it. Musical culture flourished alongside literary
culture, and so texts in genres such as the ballad, the madrigal, the rondeau,
and the chanson or the chansonnette circulated here too.
It is not surprising, given the cosmopolitan and multilingual nature of
the social environment with which such literature was associated, that texts
in languages other than French might also be read there. This was the case
both in France, where poems are found in Italian, Spanish, and Latin as well
as French, and in Russia, where texts in French and texts in Russian might
both be read and where languages were sometimes mixed in the same text.131
Linguistic purity, it should be added, was valued in the salon, sometimes to
such an extent that usage could be mocked as precious, as it had been by
Molière. The spoken usage of this site of refined secular society therefore
set a standard for written usage in correspondence, memoirs, and poetry.132
Literature of the sort associated with social gatherings – a varied collection
of works which tended to be short, entertaining, and elegant, and in which the
subject of erotic love was prominent – became familiar to Russians as soon
as they encountered contemporary Western European culture in the early
eighteenth century. The appeal of such a literature to them is illustrated by
Trediakovskii’s choice of Paul Tallemant’s Journey to the Island of Love (1663), a
renowned exemplar of gallant writing, as a work to translate for the emergent
Russian readership when he returned from a period of study in Paris in the
late 1720s.133 Trediakovskii also appended 33 occasional poems he himself had
130 Lilti, Le monde des salons, 178–181.
131 Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 46–47.
132 Ibidem, 11.
133 Voyage de l’île d’Amour, translated by Trediakovskii as Ezda v ostrov liubvi (1730), available
at http://az.lib.ru/t/talxman_p/text_1663_le_voyage_a_lile_damour-oldorfo.shtml. On the
vocabulary of gallantry that was introduced into eighteenth-century Russia through this work,
and also through Khrapovitskii’s revised version (1768) of Dreux du Radier’s Dictionnaire d’amour
(1741), see Zhivov, ‘Love à la mode’. See also Grechanaia’s extended commentary on Trediakovskii’s
translation of Tallemant’s work and related issues in Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 36–58.
Grechanaia even suggests that the success of Trediakovskii’s book contributed to the spread of
French in Russia (ibidem, 58, n. 95).

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361

composed to his translation of Tallemant’s work. The majority of these poems
dealt in some way with love, and 17 of them were in French, replete with the
clichés of gallant language, such as douceurs, feux, flammes, ravissements, and
tendresses (sweet things, fires, flames, raptures, acts or words of tenderness).134
However, it was not until the middle of the reign of Catherine that a
generation of Russian nobles matured who had not only learned foreign
languages but had studied in western universities and undertaken a Grand
Tour. Their upbringing, which had equipped them with all the talents an
aristocrat was supposed to possess, including the ability to maintain a
witty conversation in French, enabled them to shine in high society in
Paris and Europe’s other cosmopolitan social centres. Some went further
still, mingling with prominent figures in Francophone literary circles and
engaging in activity that was uncommon for aristocrats of that era: they
not only composed poems but also wrote critical articles, and translated
works of literature, in the broad sense in which we have used the term. For
some Russian aristocrats, entry into European high society and entry into
the Republic of Letters during the Enlightenment were thus concurrent,
overlapping experiences. Literary writing in French, for such men, was a
means of consolidating their association with both the social and cultural
worlds of Western Europe and of maintaining these connections from afar.
Thus, for the eighteenth-century Russian aristocrat, Wladimir Berelowitch
has pointed out, French in its written form was not merely
a language of communication intended to reach distant readerships,
because these Russian aristocrats, for the most part, did not dream of
truly winning over a French public, any more than they aimed at a public
of Russian readers: rather, their writings fit into networks of sociability
and aimed at recognition within an order of distinction.135

The yearning of Russian aristocrats for inclusion in the western social and
cultural universe is apparent from the essentially dialogic nature of some
Russian literary writing in French, such as the admiring verses that Andrei
Shuvalov addressed to Voltaire (1765) and to the French playwright and critic
Jean-François de La Harpe (1773). Likening Voltaire to both Plato and Virgil,
Shuvalov eulogized the sage of Ferney for cultivating reason and the arts
in the tranquillity of his retreat, far from ‘la cabale et sa haine / L’éclat des
134 There was also one poem in Latin in Trediakovskii’s collection; the remainder were in
Russian. See also Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 58–77.
135 Berelowitch, ‘Francophonie in Russia under Catherine II’, 50.

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The French L anguage in Russia

cours, les caprices des Rois’ (the cabal and its hatred, the clamour of courts,
the whims of kings).136 The flattering tone of such texts invites the attention
and approval of their recipients, and the high quality of the French in which
they were written greatly improved the chances that such petitioning would
achieve these ends. We might regard such literary experimentation in French,
on one level, as a form of self-promotion, but on another level Shuvalov
and some of his compatriots were attempting, by initiating a conversation
with French writers, to bring Russia, a new power on Europe’s ‘northern’
periphery, into the mainstream of European culture. (Russians had in effect
been instructed to do this by Peter the Great, who was recognized in both
France and Russia as the initial driving force of the process of cultural
westernization.) In acting in this way, they were making a contribution to
the task of improving Russia’s image in the European world.137
Shuvalov himself celebrated salon culture in an ‘Epistle to Ninon Lenclos’
(1774), a poem in alexandrines with rhyming couplets written in French that
was so polished that it was attributed to Voltaire before the true identity of
its author became known. Published, with some lacunae, in the prestigious
Journal Encyclopédique (Encycloaedic Journal), which had been founded
in 1756 by Pierre Rousseau in Liège, Shuvalov’s epistle was addressed to a
renowned seventeenth-century salonnière:
[…] tu sçus réunir les plaisirs et la paix,
Les arts, la volupté, le goût, la politesse,
L’élégance des mœurs et la délicatesse,
Où la sainte amitié, compagne de tes pas,
D’un amour enjoué relevoit les appas.
Le héros, le sçavant, le grand seigneur frivole,
La beauté, tout couroit à ta charmante école.
(You knew how to combine pleasures and peace,
The arts, delight, taste, politeness,
Elegance of manners and delicacy,
Where holy friendship, companion of your steps,
Heightened the appeal of playful love.
136 A. Shuvalov, ‘Épître de Mr le comte Schowalow à Mr de Voltaire’, 121, and ‘Vers d’un russe
à M. de la Harpe’, 49–50. On these poems and Voltaire’s and La Harpe’s responses to them, see
Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 87–90.
137 For fuller treatment of the various ways in which Russians strove to promote their national
interest through miscellaneous writings in French, see Chapter 7 below.

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363

The hero, the man of learning, the flighty lord,
Beauty, all came running to your charming school.)

Having both characterized the spirit of salon society and referred to some
of its luminaries, such as Mme de Maintenon, La Rochefoucauld, and SaintÉvremont, Shuvalov claimed that this cultural model had been embraced
on the banks of the Neva, where, thanks to Peter the Great, morals had
been reformed and minds polished. Indifferent to court intrigue, the poet
avouches, he devotes his leisure to reflection and amusement, enjoying
the felicitous combination of philosophy and ‘douce gaîté’ (sweet gaiety) to
which Parisian culture has introduced him.138 In the spirit of the cultural
world with which he was thus identifying himself, Shuvalov also penned
occasional verse, such as a tribute that was published in La Harpe’s Journal
de politique et de littérature (Journal of Politics and Literature) to the first
wife of the Grand Duke Paul, Princess Natal’ia Alekseevna, née Wilhelmina
Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt, who had died in 1776 at the age of only 21.139
Like Shuvalov, Prince Aleksandr Belosel’skii associated himself with
the French literary world by addressing a flattering epistle to the ‘sublime’
Voltaire, who was a ‘phare à la Postérité’ (a beacon to posterity). As ‘un enfant
du Nord’ (a child of the North), Belosel’skii thanked Voltaire for so many
works which had warmed him ‘dans le pays des frimats’ (in the land of wintry
weather).140 Brought up by a French governor, whose beneficent influence
he acknowledged, Belosel’skii was another important cultural intermediary,
who was described by his grandson as a representative ‘of the flower of
eighteenth-century French culture which easily became acclimatized in
the social hothouses of the North’.141 In an ‘Epistle to the French’ (1784),
Belosel’skii enthusiastically embraced the French cultural model:
Je veux vivre avec vous en bonne intelligence,
Prendre part à vos jeux, à votre urbanité,
A cette fleur d’esprit attachante et frivole,
138 A. Shuvalov, ‘Épître à Ninon Lenclos’. On this work, see Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila
po-frantsuzski, 90–93. On Shuvalov’s writings in French that are conceived as what we might
now call cultural propaganda on behalf of Russia, see the second section of Chapter 7 below.
139 ‘Vers sur la mort de S.A.I. Mad. La Grande Duchesse de Russie’. The poem is printed in the
appendix to Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po frantsuzski, 321; see also 95–96 for Grechanaia’s
comments on it.
140 Belosel’skii, ‘Épître du Prince de Beloselsky, Russe, à M. de Voltaire’, 176–177.
141 Alexandre Volkonskii, ‘Introduction’, in Volkonskaia, Œuvres choisies de la Princesse Zénéide
Volkonsky, viii.

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The French L anguage in Russia

A cette effervescence un peu légère et folle,
A tous ces traits charmants de votre humanité142
(I want to live with you on good terms,
Join in your games, your urbanity,
That winning and light-hearted charm and wit,
That slightly frivolous and mad effervescence,
All those charming features of your humanity)

Even in the new climate of the early years of the nineteenth century, after
the French Revolution and when the rise of Napoleon began to threaten
the old European order, Belosel’skii could not cast off the spell of French
culture. ‘Je sens que je suis né pour causer avec vous’ (I feel that I was
born to talk to you), he wrote in a second ‘Epistle to the French’ (1802).143
Like other Europeanized Russians of his time, though, Belosel’skii had
cosmopolitan tastes, and he did not feast exclusively on French culture. He
was a lover of Italian music, whose pre-eminence he acknowledged and on
which he produced a knowledgeable and elegant short book, also written
in French. The French language, he asserted here, did not allow the French
to emulate the grace and delicacy of their Italian singing masters, and they
managed to emit only gargling noises! Nor is Belosel’skii ashamed of Russian
achievement; indeed, he sounds a patriotic note when he refers to the ‘molle
douceur’ (soft sweetness) and ‘simplicité majestueuse’ (majestic simplicity)
of the singing of the Greek Orthodox Church which Vladimir had brought
to Russia in the tenth century.144
For Russians like Andrei Shuvalov and Belosel’skii, whose motives for
writing were the establishment and strengthening of ties with peers in the
aristocratic society of Europe and the improvement of Russia’s image in
western eyes, French was an essential lingua franca as they felt their way
in the world of letters. Equally, a late eighteenth-century Russian writer
was bound to prefer French to any other language if he was interested
above all in winning a reputation for himself as a European man of letters, as seems to have been the case, Grechanaia has argued, with Boris
142 ‘Épître aux francais’, in Belosel’skii, Poésies françoises d’un Prince étranger […], 11. On the
French poems by Belosel’skii that we have mentioned, see Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila
po-frantsuzski, 103–106.
143 ‘Épitre aux François’ (no place of publication, 1802), 22–24; see Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia
govorila po-frantsuzski, 112.
144 Belosel’skii, De la Musique en Italie, 12 n., 16 n.

Writing French

365

Golitsyn.145 It was through the medium of French, as used by his Swiss
governor, Michel Olivier, that Golitsyn’s mind was formed when he was a
child. His knowledge of Cato, on whom he began to write some reflections
in his early adolescence, evidently comes from French works rather than
from Roman literature itself (although Golitsyn did learn a little Latin).146
More generally, French texts, together with inspirational lessons from
Olivier about republican conceptions of virtue and the defects of absolute
government and courts plagued by flatterers, shaped Golitsyn’s precocious criticism of pre-revolutionary French society and Russian society. He
expressed this criticism in a ‘Dedicatory Epistle to the Young Nobility’ (1782),
which he conceived as an introduction to his work on Cato (Illustration
8).147 French ideas, and of course the linguistic formulae with which to
express them, were reinforced during the long period, from 1782 to 1790,
that Golitsyn spent in France, where his parents sent him, together with
his brother Dmitrii, to complete his education, and where he became
quite well-known in French literary circles. His literary ambitions are
demonstrated by the fact that he tried his hand at various short genres,
writing – in French in each case – an eclogue in imitation of Virgil,148 a
prose fable, and an imitation of the German poet Christoph Wieland, all
of which were published in France during his stay there.149 Golitsyn also
attempted translation from English into French, publishing excerpts from
Oliver Goldsmith’s Essays (1765), and in an essay of his own on this Irish
author he ventured into literary criticism as well.150
Boris Golitsyn also experimented with another genre that was widely
used in eighteenth-century belles-lettres, the treatise, drafting some reflections ‘On the Influence of Events on the Formation of a Constitution’.151
145 Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 263–264.
146 ‘La Vie de Marcus Porcius Caton surnommé d’Utique’, RGB, f. 64, k. 79, d. 11. See Grechanaia,
Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 250.
147 ‘Épitre Dédicatoire à la Jeune Noblesse Russe’, RGB, f. 64, k. 79, d. 11. The work on Cato,
however, has not survived, and may never have been written.
148 Mercure de France, 20 February 1790, 85–89.
149 Boris Golitsyn, Almanach littéraire ou Etrennes d’Apollon, contenant l’Aurore, Diogène
et Glycère, par M. le Prince Baris de Galitsin […]. See Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila pofrantsuzski, 259–260.
150 Mercure de France, 8 November 1788, 78–84, followed by translations (84–88), and 15 November 1788, 132–137. Golitsyn’s expertise was not limited to French and English literature; he also
wrote on the German writer Johann Kaspar Risbeck, also known as Gaspard Risbeck (ibidem,
12 July 1788, 97–102).
151 RGB, Manuscripts Department, f. 64, k. 113, d. 2; published in Rzheutskii [Rjéoutski] and
Chudinov, ‘Russkie “uchastniki” Frantsuzskoi revoliutsii’, 192–236 (original French version and
Russian translation). For discussion of this work, see ibidem, 39–42.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Illustration 8 Cover page of Prince Boris Golitsyn’s unfinished essay (1782).

Image held in the Russian State Library, Manuscripts Department, f. 64, k. 79, d. 11, fol. 1, and
reproduced with their permission.

Writing French

367

Here he criticized the severity of the revolutionary changes that were
taking place in France, holding up Britain as a commendable example of
a country which experienced gradual social change. He also contended
that peoples had a right to determine their own future and was sharply
critical of monarchic despotism, in a way that was quite unusual for a
Russian aristocrat. We may suppose that Golitsyn felt able to express his
ideas with such freedom, and without worrying about the fact that they
were politically impermissible in Russia at that time, both because he was
abroad, probably in France, when he wrote this treatise and because he
wrote it in French.
Nor was Golitsyn alone in resorting to this genre for exposition of serious intellectual or scientific matters. Belosel’skii, for example, produced
an epistemological treatise entitled Dianyology, or Philosophical Picture
of Understanding (1790).152 Another member of the large Golitsyn clan,
the diplomat Dmitrii Alekseevich, wrote substantial, wide-ranging, and
learned treatises in French on mineralogy and political economy.153 Russians
also used French for the composition of pedagogical treatises, of which
Alexandre Golovkin produced a particularly fine example, entitled My Ideas
on the Education of the [Fair] Sex, or a Summary of a Plan for the Education
of My Daughter (1778; Illustration 9).154 Golovkin is perhaps an unusual
case, for although he was of Russian origin, he grew up abroad and lived in
Switzerland. Nevertheless, he kept in touch with Russians and Russian was
one of the languages he used. (He also knew German.) His choice of French
therefore places his work in a broad European tradition of pedagogical
literature, especially literature written to aid the upbringing of the late
eighteenth-century European nobility.
Other Russians writing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries – including Vasilii Kapnist, Ivan Khemnitser, Iurii NeledinskiiMeletskii, Vasilii Khanykov, and Vasilii Pushkin (an uncle of the great poet)
– produced what amounts in toto to a substantial corpus of verse in French,
thus continuing a tradition begun by Trediakovskii and his contemporary
152 Dianyologie, ou Tableau philosophique de l’entendement.
153 Dmitrii Golitsyn [Gallitzin], Traité ou description abrégée et méthodique des minéraux (1794)
and De l’esprit des économistes […] (1796). Both of these works are over 200 pages long. Some idea
of their range can be gathered from the chapter headings of the latter work, which covers, for
example, property, taxation, finances, commerce, monopolies, population, mendicancy, noble
privilege, the third estate, legislation, crime and punishment, religion, education, despotism, and
national character. On Dmitrii Golitsyn’s extensive links with France’s literary and intellectual
elite, especially with Diderot, see Dulac, ‘La France de 1768 vue par un diplomate russe’.
154 Alexandre Golovkine, Mes idées sur l’éducation du sexe.

368 

The French L anguage in Russia

Illustration 9 Title page of Alexandre Golovkin’s treatise Mes idées sur l’éducation
du sexe, ou précis du plan d’éducation pour ma fille (1778). (The
treatise has been wrongly attributed to Fedor Golovkin.)

The Russian National Library have kindly reproduced this image for us.

Writing French

369

Kantemir.155 Alexander Pushkin himself made a small contribution to
this corpus.156 Serious subject-matter was not altogether lacking in this
poetry. Kapnist, for example, was celebrating Russia’s success in the first of
Catherine’s two wars with Turkey when he wrote an ‘Ode on the Occasion
of the Peace Concluded between Russia and the Ottoman Porte’ (1775).157
Poetry occasioned by events in the life of the royal family, of which Khanykov
produced several examples, was also to be taken seriously, of course.158
However, the Russian corpus of verse in French, on the whole, was not
written for the public domain, and much of it was light-hearted as well
as personal. Khanykov and Vasilii Pushkin, for instance, wrote poems
intended to be inscribed in the private albums kept by noble families or set
to music.159 The fabulist Khemnitser (who was of German parentage and
wrote more verse in German than in French) penned two epigrams in an
even lighter vein, as well as a couplet which he called his ‘epitaph’: ‘II est
vrai que toujours je me suis vu sans bien; / Mais aussi je vécus ne craignant
jamais rien’ (It is true that I have always been without wealth; / But I also
lived without being afraid of anything).160 This corpus of verse written by
Russian subjects in French represents only a slight literary achievement,
but the multilingual proficiency of Francophone Russian poetasters could
itself become a source of national pride, evidence with which to rebut the
charge of Russian imitativeness. Thus, in the preface to a collection of French
verse produced by Pavel Golenishchev-Kutuzov and published in Moscow
155 Kantemir is known to have written two short poems in French; one was a quatrain on ‘censure’
(‘Vers sur la critique’) and the other an eight-line ‘Madrigal à Madame duchesse d’Aiguillon’.
(Mme d’Aiguillon was an aristocratic woman of letters and patron of the arts who comforted
Kantemir during his terminal illness in Paris. Kantemir also dedicated the French edition of
his satires to her.) These poems are reproduced in Lozinskij, ‘Le Prince Antioche Cantemir’, 241,
242. On Kantemir as a diplomat, see the third section of Chapter 5 above.
156 See his ‘Stances’ (1814), ‘Mon portrait’ (1814), ‘Couplets’ (1816–1817), ‘Tien et mien, – dit
Lafontaine’ (1819), ‘A son amant Eglé sans résistance’ (1821), ‘J’ai possédé maîtresse honnête’
(1821), and ‘Quand au front du convive, au beau sein de Délie’ (1825), in Pushkin, PSS, vol. 1, 89,
90–91, 285–286, and vol. 2, pt 1, 205, 207, 376. Most of these poems in French were juvenilia, and
they may therefore be considered experimental.
157 ‘Ode à l’occasion de la paix conclu entre la Russie et la Porte Ottomane […]’, in Kapnist, SS,
vol. 1, 683–686.
158 Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 235–236.
159 On Khanykov and Vasilii Pushkin as contributors to ‘album culture’, see Grechanaia, Kogda
Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 16, 235–244. Some examples of Khanykov’s verse of this sort
are reproduced by Grechanaia, ibidem, 349–354; see also 354–358 for a few examples of Vasilii
Pushkin’s verse.
160 ‘Epigramme sur Mr. N.A. Lwoff’, ‘Epigramme assez pour faire le portrait de N.A. Lwoff par
la rime “-age ”’, and ‘Mon épitaphe’, in Khemnitser, PSS, 257–258.

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in 1811, the publisher boasted that the nation’s geniuses could write in a
foreign language, and, what is more, in verse, a feat which writers of other
nations, he imagined, were unable to match.161
Such patriots as Golenishchev-Kutuzov’s publisher would have been encouraged by the complimentary remarks that were made about the accuracy
and naturalness of Russians’ written French by Émile Dupré de Saint-Maure,
the compiler of the first French anthology of Russian writing in French, which
appeared in Paris in 1823. Dupré specifically mentioned several Russian poets,
including Khanykov, whom he congratulated on the ‘grace and sensibility’ of
his verse, and Vasilii Pushkin, whose verse, Dupré thought, had ‘the charm
of elegance’.162 Mme de Staël, on the other hand, was much less flattering in
her work On Germany (1810–1813). In a broader critique of foreign imitation
of the French spirit, she likened the tiresome verse of those Russian (and
Polish) poets of whom she was aware to medieval Latin poetry, insisting that
a language that was foreign (which she evidently considered the French used
by the Russian nobility to be) was always in many respects a dead language.163
Perhaps, though, we should not overlook the educative function of Russian
creativity in light genres, including occasional and private poetry. After
all, some eminent men of letters among the noble elite resorted to jocular
forms of writing that were employed in the salon, including ‘domestic’
poetry and other kinds of work written for the intimate family circle which
it is customary to treat as belonging to literary genres that are considered
marginal. Such genres are exemplified by writings produced in French by
the major poet Zhukovskii and his friend and rural neighbour Aleksandr
Pleshcheev. In the mid-Alexandrine period, around the end of the Napoleonic
Wars, this pair set up a light-hearted Académie des curieux impertinents
(Academy of Inquisitive and Impertinent Fellows) on Pleshcheev’s estate in
the province of Orel. The ‘academy’ cultivated domestic forms of poetry and
conducted its proceedings in French. However, this was not done entirely in
jest, as Irina Viatkina has shown, for Zhukovskii’s and Pleshcheev’s initiative
made it possible for them to indulge in some linguistic experimentation.
Marginal writing of this sort, in which French was actively used, played a
part in the elaboration of many a Russian author’s personal style. It also
affected the formation of the Russian literary language more generally. As
161 [Golenishchev-Kutuzov], Poésies d’un Russe; quoted by Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila
po-frantsuzski, 16.
162 Saint-Maure, Anthologie russe, suivie de poésies originales, xxix, cited by Grechanaia, Kogda
Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 21.
163 Mme de Staël, De l’Allemagne, vol. 1, 147.

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Zhukovskii’s case attests, writers used spoken French as a model for literary
work, at least for work in a playful vein, and this practice helped them, when
they adapted it for use in Russian, to bring the written form of their own
language closer to its spoken form, from which literary Russian was still
relatively distant in the early nineteenth century.164
Nor did the habit of writing verse in French fall into desuetude at the end
of the age of Alexander I. Prince Aleksandr Bariatinskii, a Guards officer soon
to be implicated in the Decembrist Revolt, published a short volume of French
poems (epistles to individuals about love or friendship, occasional poetry,
verses for albums, and translations of Horace and of fragments of Ozerov’s
tragedies, including Fingal), in a collection entitled Some Hours of Leisure
at Tul’chin in 1824.165 Of the major classical poets, Lermontov wrote a few
French poems addressed to women, one in a woman’s album and another in
a personal letter, and Tiutchev a more substantial number of French poems
of various sorts.166 Among the minor poets, Xavier Labenskii, a Polish-born
Russian diplomat, published elegiac verse exclusively in French, under the
pseudonym Jean Polonius.167 Prince Elim Meshcherskii, another Russian
diplomat, also published two volumes of his own French verse168 and a collection of his translations of verse by Russian poets, including Pushkin.169 Neither
Labenskii nor Meshcherskii can be considered a typical representative of the
noble estate, not least because they spent long periods abroad and because
of their attraction to Catholicism, which, however, by no means precluded
Russian patriotism: indeed, Meshcherskii subscribed to the values of Official
Nationality and served as an aide to the man who formulated that doctrine,
164 Viatkina, Diglossiia russkikh marginal’nykh zhanrov.
165 Bariatinskii, Quelques heures de loisir à Toulchin.
166 e.g. Lermontov, ‘Non, si j’en crois mon espérance’ (1832?), ‘Quand je te vois sourire’ (date
of composition unknown; not published in Lermontov’s lifetime), and ‘L’attente’ (1841?), in
Lermontov, IP (1964), vol. 1, 269, and vol. 2, 99, 82; Tiutchev, ‘Nous avons pu tous deux, fatigués
du voyage’ (1838), ‘Que l’homme est peu réel, qu’aisément il s’efface!’ (1842), ‘“Quel don lui faire au
déclin de l’année?”’ (1847), ‘Un ciel lourd que la nuit bien avant l’heure assiège’ (1848), ‘Comme en
aimant le cœur devient pusillanime’ (early 1850s), ‘Vous, dont on voit briller, dans les nuits azurées’
(1850), and ‘Des premiers ans de votre vie’ (1851), in Tiutchev, PSSP, vol. 1, 182, 192, 195–196, 202,
217, and vol. 2, 23, 28. On Tiutchev, see also the sixth section of Chapter 7 below.
167 Labensky [i.e. Labenskii], Poésies (1827), Empédocle (1829), and Érostrate (1840).
168 Mestshcherski [i.e. Meshcherskii], Les Boréales (1839) and, posthumously, Les Roses noires
(1845). On Meshcherskii’s French verse, see Mazon, ‘Kniaz’ Elim’, 406–421. Unlike Labenskii,
Meshcherskii also wrote verse in Russian. On Meshcherskii’s formulation of a positive role for
Russia in Europe in the 1830s, see the article by Mazon cited above; see also Mazon, Deux russes
écrivains français, and Mil’china, Rossiia i Frantsiia, 352–355.
169 Meshcherskii, Les poètes russes traduits en vers français.

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Count Sergei Uvarov, in the mid-1830s.170 The list of mid-nineteenth-century
poets who produced French verse includes women as well as men. In an
anthology entitled Preludes (1839), Karolina Pavlova (née Jänisch; her father
was of German extraction) published five French poems of her own, as well
as verse translations into French from poetry in English, German, Italian,
Polish, and Russian.171 Elizaveta Ulybysheva produced collections of her verse
which contained both Russian and French poems, and these collections
were quite well known in their time.172 By the middle of the age of Nicholas
I, though, writing in French, in both poetry and prose, had ceased to have
the importance it may have had for Russians in the late eighteenth century
as a means of entering European social and cultural networks or in the early
nineteenth as a vehicle for linguistic, stylistic, and literary experimentation.

Count Rostopchin’s ‘memoirs’
In the corpus of amateur literature that was produced by Russian aristocrats
in French and often read in private gatherings such as the salon there was
one particularly accomplished work of the late Alexandrine age on which
we should dwell. We have in mind the seemingly impromptu work entitled
‘My Memoirs or Me as I Am, Written in Ten Minutes’,173 which was composed by Count Fedor Rostopchin, who had been the military governor and
commander-in-chief of forces in Moscow when Napoleon’s army entered the
city on 2 September 1812 (Illustration 10). These ‘memoirs’ were written late
in 1823 or in 1824 in response to a suggestion made by the society hostess
Countess Anna Bobrinskaia.174 As a man who had once played important
170 Mazon characterizes Meshcherskii’s poetry as a curious expression of Russian mysticism
in the mood of the French Romantic poetry of the 1830s: Mazon, ‘Kniaz’ Elim’, 409.
171 Pavlova, Les Préludes; for Pavlova’s own poems, see 87–98. Pushkin and Zhukovskii were
among the Russian poets whom Pavlova translated for this anthology. On Pavlova, see Catriona
Kelly, A History of Russian Women’s Writing, 93–107.
172 Ulybysheva, Épines et lauriers suivis du Juif errant (1845) and Journal d’une solitaire (1853).
These works are cited by Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 17.
173 Mes mémoires ou moi au naturel, écrits en dix minutes, available at http://www.miscellanees.
com/r/rostop01.htm. For details of the many printed sources in which this work has been
published, see n. 28 in Offord and Rjéoutski, ‘French in the Nineteenth-Century Russian Salon’,
on which we draw in this section.
174 Bobrinskaia was the widow of Aleksei Bobrinskii, the illegitimate son of Catherine II and
Grigorii Orlov, who was mentioned in the previous section of this chapter. The story about the way
in which the ‘memoirs’ came to be written is told by Viazemskii in his article ‘Kharakteristicheskie
zametki i vospominaniia o grafe Rostopchine’, 75.

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Illustration 10 Portait of Fedor Rostopchin by Orest Kiprenskii, 1809.

Kindly reproduced for us by the Russian National Library from Russkie portrety, vol. 1, 20.

roles in the Russian administration and a talented writer and raconteur
who had been well connected in Russian high society over a long period,
Rostopchin might have been expected to produce memoirs of historical
and anecdotal interest. The document with which he shortly returned to
Bobrinskaia’s salon may therefore have disappointed in one respect, but as
a verbal offering to this social venue and later as a minor printed work of

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art it was highly successful. On 16 April 1839, long after Rostopchin’s death,
the document appeared in print for the first time, in the Parisian daily Le
Temps (The Time).175 It was subsequently translated from French into other
languages, though often inaccurately. An English version, for example,
appeared in The Athenæum, a London literary magazine, on 24 August
1839, preceded by a brief introduction which invited readers to speculate
on whether ‘the climate of Russia […] might, could, would, or ought to
produce such a compound of Voltaire and Beaumarchais, such a mixture
of the Cynic and the Epicurean, as the author of this bluette [short playful
piece] must be’.176
The ‘memoirs’ perfectly reflect the spirit of salon society in which
Rostopchin himself was an accomplished, if overbearing, participant.
For one thing, they are too brief for it to be possible that they will bore
listeners who wish not so much to be informed as to be entertained. They
consist of f ifteen so-called ‘chapters’, on such subjects as Rostopchin’s
‘education’, ‘sufferings’, ‘privations’, ‘respectable principles’, ‘tastes’, and
‘aversions’, but many of these chapters comprise only a single sentence,
and none of them contains more than four. Rostopchin writes elegantly, in
carefully crafted, well-balanced sentences. He takes pains to demonstrate
that he has insight into character: ‘je suis devenu un vrai sage ou égoïste,
ce qui est synonyme’ (I have become a true sage or [an] egoist, which is
synonymous). As a keen student of the social world, he cannot but make
jaundiced remarks on the human condition: ‘J’ai été privé de trois grandes
jouissances de l’espèce humaine: du vol, de la gourmandise et de l’orgueil’
(I have been deprived of three great enjoyments of the human kind: theft,
gluttony and pride). And again: ‘A force d’être impudent et charlatan
je passai quelquefois pour un savant’ (By dint of being impudent and a
charlatan I sometimes passed for a savant). He is capable of self-analysis,
although he is self-deprecating only in ways likely to raise his own stock
in the monde, where the criterion for esteem is not virtue but wit: ‘Je fus
entêté comme une mule, capricieux comme une coquette, gai comme un
enfant, paresseux comme une marmotte, actif comme Bonaparte’ (I was
stubborn as a mule, capricious as a coquette, cheerful as a child, lazy as a
sloth [literally a marmot in French] and as active as Bonaparte). It is part of
Rostopchin’s appeal to this readership (or rather, to this audience, for what
175 The memoirs were reprinted in other papers (including papers in Brussels, Lyon, Orléans,
and Strasbourg) within days of their publication in Le Temps.
176 ‘Memoirs of the Count Rostoptchine, written in Ten Minutes’, in The Athenæum, no. 617
(1839), 630.

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375

he writes is intended first and foremost to be read aloud in public) that he
courts mild controversy. Thus, writing of his tastes, he declares that ‘Les
bossus des deux sexes avaient pour moi un charme que je n’ai jamais pu
définir’ (Hunchbacks of both sexes have a charm for me that I have never
been able to define). At the same time, he has lightness of touch. When
he confides that his favourite theatrical genres are comedy and farce, his
listeners can be confident that he takes nothing so seriously that he will
risk social unpleasantness by asserting his point of view insistently and
at length. Above all, he displays wit and wishes to amuse: ‘Je n’ai jamais
été impliqué dans aucun mariage ni aucun commérage’, he claims. ‘Je n’ai
jamais recommandé ni cuisinier, ni médecin, par conséquent je n’ai attenté
à la vie de personne’ (I have never been implicated in any marriage or any
tittle-tattle. I have never recommended a cook or a doctor, so have never
made an attempt on anyone’s life).
In short, Rostopchin’s memoirs are a brisk, acute, self-conscious little
literary work which borders on cynicism but is rescued from it by their
author’s light-heartedness. It can be taken for granted that the author of such
a work is familiar with the literature associated with the seventeenth-century
French salon, including, for example, the pithy maxims of the Duc de La
Rochefoucauld and the perceptive sketches of character offered by Jean de La
Bruyère. It is equally obvious that they are the product of, and were written
for, the Russian salon society of the 1820s, which Pushkin wearily observed
in the first canto of his novel in verse Eugene Onegin, whose eponymous hero
‘could express himself and write perfectly in French, danced the mazurka
with ease, and bowed without stiffness’.177
Literature designed for consumption in this social domain might best
be seen as material for accomplished performance of the sort expected of
a nobleman playing a western role. Indeed, the notion of performance, to
which Lotman drew attention, seems never to be far from Rostopchin’s
mind as he succinctly reviews his life. It is clearly central, for example,
in his valedictory ‘analysis’. His life, Rostopchin concludes, has been ‘un
mauvais mélodrame à grand spectacle, où j’ai joué les héros, les tyrans, les
amoureux, les pères nobles, mais jamais les valets’ (a bad melodrama in
full public view in which I have played heroes, tyrants, lovers, and noble
fathers but never servants). Petr Viazemskii, a poet and man of letters who
had been close to Pushkin, gave grounds for this view of Rostopchin as
performer in a thoughtful essay in which he compared him to an actor

177 Evgenii Onegin, Canto 1, Stanza 4, in Pushkin, PSS, vol. 6, 6.

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who needs ‘stalls and boxes occupied by select and brilliant spectators’.178
Rostopchin himself boasted that he was a talented pantomime who in his
youth had excelled in the art of acting.179 Thus, Rostopchin craved attention,
and in Alexandrine Russia – or Restoration France, where he flourished
from 1816 to 1823 – brilliance in the salon was one means of achieving it.
Another means was populist demagoguery of the sort in which Rostopchin
was engaged in the early years of the reign of Alexander I, when he was out
of favour and not frequenting salons, and in 1812, when Napoleon invaded
Russia.180 The two roles in which Rostopchin shone, salon luminary and
xenophobic agitator, required different languages, elegant French and racy
Russian respectively, and he had a fine command of both.

Women’s place in the literary landscape
We have seen that women were prolific contributors to the amateur literature
that was produced for private purposes or for limited circulation within
families or coteries in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
aristocratic social sphere. We have also seen that French was the basic
medium for such women’s writing, although other languages, including
Russian, often featured in it too. In most of the more public domains of
literature, on the other hand, men predominated, in spite of the attention
that was devoted to educating the daughters of the nobility. This preponderance was due partly to the fact that educated women were not expected to
have prominent roles outside the domestic and social spheres, especially
in activity that was becoming professionalized.181
178 Viazemskii, ‘Kharakteristicheskie zametki i vospominaniia’, 74.
179 Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries, 126.
180 See our discussion of his Gallophobic texts in the penultimate section of Chapter 8 below,
where we also consider the apparent paradox of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
Russian nobleman who deplored Gallomania and yet persisted in using the French language
for many purposes.
181 There is now a large literature on women’s writing in Russia, in which women’s predicament
in the literary world is of course discussed. Major contributions to this field, on which we draw
in this and the following section, include the history by Catriona Kelly (1994), the dictionary
edited by Ledkovsky, Rosenthal, and Zirin (1994), and volumes edited by Marsh (1996) and by
Rosslyn and Tosi (2007). On the period from c. 1760 to c. 1820, see also Kelly, ‘Sappho, Corinna,
and Niobe’. There is an anthology of women’s autobiographical writing, Russia through Women’s
Eyes, ed. by Clyman and Vowles, which begins with the autobiography written by Natal’ia
Sokhanskaia in 1847–1848 and which therefore does not encompass the amateur ego-writings
in French that we dealt with earlier in this chapter. (The editors do, however, discuss women’s
autobiography in the period 1700–1855 in a section of their introduction: see 12–22.) The women’s

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Even men of letters frowned upon the participation of women in public
creative writing, as we learn from the mid-eighteenth-century dramatist
Sumarokov. Speaking of his daughter, Ekaterina, who was married to the
dramatist, poet, and translator Iakov Kniazhnin, Sumarokov expressed the
opinion that it was unseemly for a young woman to publish poetry, and love
poetry at that. It is not surprising, then, that Ekaterina Kniazhnina’s verse
was written as if it came from a man and that it was published anonymously.182 Indeed, women who produced original works of literature in Russian for
publication in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries tended to
conceal their identity. Mar’ia Zubova, for example, published several Russian
poems, so Novikov tells us, but she did not put her name to any of them.183
Women’s poetry, it is true, seemed more acceptable to high society than
their prose, doubtless because it was more suitable for recital in the salon,
which, in the first half of the nineteenth century, became one of the main
social sites where noblewomen could play a role.184 Aleksandra Khvostova
and Aleksandra Murzina are unusual in that they published Russian prose
(although poetry also featured in their œuvre) under their own names. It is
of interest, incidentally, that Khvostova’s two most notable works, her prose
tales ‘The Hearth’ and ‘The Brook’,185 were circulated in manuscript before
they were published, which leads us to wonder whether it was in this form
that literary works written by Russian women in Russian most commonly
became known. It is also worth noting that these two tales were translated
into French and German around the turn of the century.186 Of course, other
Russian writers who hoped to become known outside Russia, including
Sumarokov and Karamzin, shared Khvostova’s wish to be read in major
foreign languages. However, it is also possible that by passing from Russian
into French (and German) Khvostova’s works gained greater legitimacy in
autobiographical writing of the second half of the nineteenth century that is represented in this
anthology belongs in the literary tradition in the vernacular. For reference to a late example of
women’s autobiographical writing in French, the diaries of the expatriate Mariia Bashkirtseva
(1860–1884), which were published in the 1880s, see 41–42.
182 Slovar’ russkikh pisatelei XVIII veka, vol. 2, available at 
http://lib.pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=1105.
183 Ibidem, vol. 1, at. http://lib.pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=931.
184 Take, e.g., the cases of Aleksandra Leont’evna Magnitskaia and her sister Natal’ia Leont’evna
Magnitskaia, both of whom published their verse: ibidem, vol. 2, at http://lib.pushkinskijdom.
ru/Default.aspx?tabid=965 and http://lib.pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=998.
185 Khvostova, ‘Kamin’ and ‘Rucheek’. See the article by Andrei Kostin in Slovar’ russkikh
pisatelei XVIII veka, vol. 3, at http://lib.pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=10381.
186 Ibidem, vol. 3, at http://lib.pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=10381 and http://lib.
pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=1065.

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society’s eyes – legitimacy that women’s literature in Russian was only just
beginning to acquire.187
Given the existence of a prejudice against female authorship in the public
sphere, it is understandable that educated women who had an interest in
writing turned to other types of literary activity. One such type of activity
which it seems to have been more socially acceptable for Russian women
to undertake than literary composition properly speaking was translation
of belles-lettres and of writings on popular science, education, and other
subjects. At least, this was work that women were more likely publicly
to acknowledge as their own.188 There were many women who produced
translations into Russian in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, mainly from French, and who published their translations, but
they made few, if any, of their own literary works public, at least in Russian.
Examples include Evdokiia Boltina, who translated Voltaire’s play Socrates
(1759), Elizaveta Demidova, Princess Varvara Golitsyna, Varvara Karaulova,
Elizaveta Likhareva, Pelageia Veliasheva-Volyntseva, who translated Louis
de Boissy’s comedy The Frenchman in London, Ekaterina Voeikova, and
Princess Anna Volkonskaia, who, with her sister Ekaterina, translated a
work of popular science from French and was praised on this account by
Catherine II.189
If male critics began to take a more positive view of women’s writing in
the early nineteenth century, then it was partly out of politeness of a sort.
Some men patronizingly regarded engagement in literary activity as an
educational experience from which women might benefit, for even in the
noble milieu women received less tuition than men in their youth. In fact,
the compliments that men addressed to the first women writers served
to suggest that they considered what women wrote to be of secondary
importance by comparison with men’s literary output.190 One might also
have expected the development of women’s writing to have been hampered
by the masculinization of the culture of literary and intellectual groups that
187 On Khvostova, see especially Andrei Kostin’s article in Slovar’ russkikh pisatelei XVIII veka,
vol. 3, at http://lib.pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=10381.
188 As in the case of Ekaterina Golitsyna, for instance: see Slovar’ russkikh pisatelei XVIII veka,
vol. 1, at http://lib.pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=714.
189 Slovar’ russkikh pisatelei XVIII veka, vol. 1. See the biographical entries on these women in
the electronic edition of this dictionary http://lib.pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=460.
The original title of the work cited by Boissy is Le françois à Londres. Demidova seems to have
written a novel in French, Zelmire, ou La Prisonnière turque, but the text has not been found.
190 See Rosslyn, ‘Conflicts over Gender and Status in Early Nineteenth-Century Russian
Literature’, 58–59.

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has been detected in the age of Alexander I. Whereas women were often
the principal hosts and the centre of attention at social gatherings such as
the salon and the ball, they were excluded from the meetings of Masonic
lodges, which again began to flourish in the first half of Alexander’s reign,
and of the new literary societies and secret political circles that proliferated
in the second half of it.191 There may be several reasons for the change in male
attitudes towards women that seems to have taken place in the Alexandrine
period, as Catriona Kelly explains in her history of Russian women’s writing.
Men of that period tended to be hostile, for example, to the harridans of the
age of Catherine whose power was associated with the perceived reversal
of normal sexual and power relations under a female autocrat presiding
over a venal court. At the same time, the Romantic outlook, with its cult of
male friendship and its strongly gendered concept of genius, diminished the
importance of female company.192 The prospects for women aspiring to write
poetry were particularly poor in the Romantic age, when ‘the “masculine”
phenomenon of inspiration’ came to seem crucial to poetry’s production.193
It is as if male authors felt a need to return women, who had been drawn
into the social limelight in the process of westernization that took place
in eighteenth-century Russia, to a cultural margin. What is particularly
striking, from our point of view, is the degree to which a number of male
observers seem to have regarded women as disproportionately responsible
for a supposedly undesirable linguistic situation. Wondering why the state
of the Russian that was spoken in polite society still left so much to be
desired around the turn of the century, Karamzin grumbled in his Letters
of a Russian Traveller that Russian was not inferior to other languages as
a medium for conversation but that ‘we just need our intelligent society
people, especially beautiful women [?!], to seek out [Russian] expressions
for their thoughts’.194 The writer and critic Petr Makarov, a supporter of
Karamzin, was similarly reproachful: the language of society, he thought,
had ‘not yet formed in our country because the people who could form it,
191 On Masonic lodges, see the second section of Chapter 4 above.
192 Catriona Kelly, A History of Russian Women’s Writing, 36–38. This male preponderancy would
persist in the philosophical and literary circles out of which the intelligentsia was born in the
1840s: such key sources for the study of this milieu as Herzen’s autobiographical My Past and
Thoughts, Annenkov’s Remarkable Decade, and the personal correspondence of Belinskii and
Botkin leave one with the impression of a gentleman’s club in which all the ardent expressions
of love, affection, and comradeship were addressed to male companions.
193 Catriona Kelly, A History of Russian Women’s Writing, 33.
194 Karamzin, Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennika, 531; [Karamzin], Nikolai Karamzin: ‘Letters of
a Russian Traveller, 1789–1790’, 391.

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especially women, prefer to occupy themselves with foreign languages’.195
Vigel’, with greater venom, also blamed women for favouring French (an
attitude which seemed treasonable in the Napoleonic period). ‘Who among
our ladies did not scorn the Russian language then?’ he asked rhetorically,
reflecting on the period in which the Battle of Austerlitz was fought. ‘Which
of them read anything in it?’196
High society, more than ever, was ruled by women at that time: legislation
and retribution were in their hands. Only the French language, in their
eyes, was capable of expressing noble feelings, elevated thoughts, and all
the mind’s subtleties, and it was their exclusive property. And the wives
of officials, women who lived in the suburbs of St Petersburg, the gentry
girls of Moscow and the provinces comically thought to enjoy the same
rights as them. What fools these women were!197

Again, in a speech ‘On Russian Literature’ delivered at the Athenæum in
Marseilles in 1830, Prince Elim Meshcherskii (that same Francophone poet
to whom we referred above!) still held women responsible for the fact, as
he saw it, that French had usurped the place of Russian in fashionable
drawing-rooms, with the result that conversation in Russian was stunted.
Taking pride in their ability to write French more correctly than Mme de
Sévigné, all the ladies of St Petersburg and Moscow society, according to
Meshcherskii, were so attached to that language that no suitor would have
dared to express his feelings in Russian. Only recently had Russian begun
to reassert itself, so that even ladies no longer thought it beneath them to
cultivate the literature of their own country. This happy change in the spirit
of the fair sex, Meshcherskii believed, was due to the surge of patriotic feeling
generated by the French invasion of Russia in 1812.198 There would seem to
be traces of such assumptions and feelings about women’s linguistic practice
in Pushkin’s remarks, to which we have already referred, about Tat’iana in
Eugene Onegin and about female cousins in a letter to his brother.199 Having
emerged from the obscurity in which they dwelt in Muscovy to become
195 Makarov, ‘Novye knigi. Materi sopernitsy, ili kleveta’, 122.
196 Vigel’, Zapiski, 275.
197 Ibidem, 329.
198 ‘De la littérature russe’, in Mestscherski, Les poètes russes traduits en vers français par le
prince, li–liii. This discourse was also published separately in 1830 (see bibliography entry on
Mestschersky). The Athenæum in Marseilles was a kind of academy where courses and lectures
on various subjects were open to the public.
199 See the first section of the Introduction above and the second section of this chapter.

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objects of admiration in the new polite society where command of French
was de rigueur, women thus bore a heavy responsibility, in male judgements,
for the supposed deficiencies of both the Russian spoken in society and the
Russian literary language.

Early nineteenth-century women’s prose fiction
It was not altogether inconsistent with male predominance in the world
of politics and letters, or with the belief in that world that women should
confine themselves to the polite social sphere, that women’s prose fiction
should have flourished in Russia in the early nineteenth century as much
as at any other time during the imperial period. Paradoxical as it may seem,
Kelly observes, ‘the emergence of women’s writing in Russia was linked to a
decline in women’s real political and economic powers’: that is to say, ‘social
marginalization’ went together with a move towards ‘symbolic centrality’.200
Furthermore, the prevalence of the Sentimentalist outlook at the end of the
eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth helped to create a
climate in which ‘female authorship could now be not only countenanced, but
positively welcomed’: women were perceived ‘as the vessels of emotion, and
emotion as the prerequisite of writing’.201 The legitimacy of female authorship
may also have been borne in upon high Russian society by the writings of
Mme de Staël, who visited Russia in 1812 when she was at the height of her
fame, as well as by the earlier writings of other women, such as Mme de La
Fayette and Mme de Genlis, who had long since been highly regarded there.202
200 Catriona Kelly, A History of Russian Women’s Writing, 8; Kelly’s italics. See also 21–22.
201 Ibidem, 53. For a further useful discussion of attitudes towards women’s participation in
literary activity and the status of women’s writing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, see Rosslyn, ‘Conflicts over Gender and Status in Early Nineteenth-Century Russian
Literature’, especially 55–59, which introduce a chapter on Anna Bunina.
202 That is not to say that the prejudice against female authorship disappeared, even in the
1820s and 1830s, when Russian literary activity and journalism began to become more professionalized and women writers ceased to be curiosities and more unashamedly offered their
work to publishers and literary journals. Some male writers continued to be critical of female
authorship. In a tale entitled ‘The Woman Writer’ (1837), for example, Nikolai Verevkin, who
wrote under the pseudonym Rakhmannyi, represented woman as an intellectually inferior being
and assigned her a limited social role. Only men, according to Verevkin, had sufficient talent to
contribute to belles-lettres. Moreover, literary activity supposedly changed women’s physiology
and turned them into monsters (sic). The desire to be published, finally, was unnatural for women,
since their main function was to bring up children (Rakhmannyi, ‘Zhenshchina-pisatel’nitsa’,
Biblioteka dlia chteniia, vol. 23, pt 1 (1837), 15–134). See the analysis of this story in Savkina,
Provintsialki russkoi literatury, Chapter 1. Belinskii too made airy generalizations, in 1840, about

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The French L anguage in Russia

As women began in the reign of Alexander I to express themselves freely in
prose, responding to the appetite for emotional sensitivity and psychological
insight that had been whetted by Rousseau’s Julie, or the New Heloise (1761)
and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s popular sentimental tale ‘Paul and Virginie’
(1787), three writers stand out, namely Natal’ia Golovkina (née Izmailova),
Baroness Juliane von Krüdener (née von Vietinghoff), and Zinaida Volkonskaia (née Belosel’skaia). All three used the epistolary novel, a genre which
Samuel Richardson had made popular from the mid-eighteenth century
through Pamela (1740–1741) and Clarissa Harlowe (1747–1748) and which,
as we noted above, had an effect on women’s ego-writing. Being from the
upper echelons of the aristocracy, they were all highly proficient in French,
and no doubt their choice of language for their fiction is explained in large
part by their greater competence in French than in Russian, at least in the
cases of Krüdener and Volkonskaia.203
Golovkina wrote two novels, Elizabeth, or the History of a Russian Woman
Written by one of her Compatriots, which came out in three volumes in 1802,
and Alphonse de Lodève, which was published in two volumes in 1807.204
The plurilingual eponymous heroine of Elizabeth is a young girl who falls
in love with a nobleman called Antoine, whom a certain Mlle de M.***, the
daughter of Russia’s ambassador in Vienna, tries – unsuccessfully, in the
end – to entrap. Golovkina’s hero and heroine are Russian but they move in a
cosmopolitan world where Russians, Germans, and English men and women
communicate with one another in French. Not that Elizabeth and Antoine
are typical creatures of the society drawing-room, for they value naturalness
of feeling, as Grechanaia points out, while also resisting the fashionable cult
of sensibility, which the anti-heroine cynically tries to exploit.205
Krüdener was born in Riga in 1764 into a Baltic German aristocratic family.
She is remembered for the religious mysticism with which she affected the
outlook of Alexander I, whom she met in June 1815, and for the part she
the differences between men’s and women’s natures and declared that a woman could not be
a great poet (‘Povesti Mar’i Zhukovoi’, in Belinskii, PSS, vol. 4, 115).
203 We return to this subject at the end of this section.
204 Golovkina, Elisabeth de S and Alphonse de Lodève. The second of these two novels is of little
interest from the Russian viewpoint, since it is set entirely abroad and contains no Russian
characters. Golovkina’s husband, Count Fedor Golovkin, would also publish a short epistolary
novel in French, La Princesse d’Amalfi (1821), which dealt with an eleventh-century Italian
subject; on this work, see Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 280–281.
205 Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 274-275. Grechanaia disagrees with
Kelly’s assumption that the novel betrays ‘unconscious antagonism to the cult of sensibility’ (see
Catriona Kelly, A History of Russian Women’s Writing, 54), arguing that the author’s antagonism
is in fact deliberate.

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may consequently have played in the formation of the ‘Holy Alliance’, the
collective security pact between Russia, Austria, and Prussia after the end
of the Napoleonic Wars.206 However, by that time she was already a wellknown figure in European literary circles. She had been greatly impressed
by Bernadin de Saint-Pierre, whom she had met in Paris in 1789, and with
whose encouragement she herself became a woman of letters. In 1802, she
had some thoughts and maxims published in Le Mercure de France (The
Mercury of France) and other periodicals. These met with the approval
of Chateaubriand, who commended Krüdener’s choice of the language of
Mme de Sévigné and Mme de La Fayette as the vehicle for the reflections
of someone who thought ‘with so much delicacy’.207
Krüdener’s best-known work, though, was the novel Valerie or Letters by
Gustav de Linar to Ernest de G… (1803).208 Often considered an autobiographical story about an impossible love affair, Valerie consists of 48 letters and
some extracts from Gustav’s diary. Most of these are written by a Swedish
man in his early twenties who confides to a friend, Ernest, that he has an
all-consuming love for the eponymous teenage heroine. The remainder
are written by Valerie, her husband (an anonymous count, who is in his
late thirties and who was a close friend of Gustav’s deceased father), and
Ernest. The action of the novel spans the period while Gustav is travelling
with Valerie and her husband through the German lands, Austria, and
Northern Italy, and a further year and a half after they have reached their
destination, Venice, where the count has a diplomatic post. Convinced
of the impossibility of pursuing his relationship with the wife of a man
who is a second father to him, Gustav eventually resolves to part with
Valerie forever. He seeks solitude in other parts of Italy but is unable to
forget Valerie and in his distress falls ill and dies. Each member of the love
triangle is morally irreproachable. Gustav is consumed with remorse for
his ‘passion criminelle’ (criminal passion) and selflessly gives up his ‘amour
insensé’ (senseless love).209 The count experiences no jealousy and comforts
Gustav as he is dying. Valerie – unlike her creator, perhaps, for Krüdener was
notorious for her amitiés amoureuses – is an ‘âme douce et modeste’ (sweet
and modest soul) who has not knowingly encouraged Gustav’s attraction
206 There is a large literature on Krüdener: see especially Ley (1962), Mercier (1974), and Ley,
Mercier, and Gretchanaia (2005).
207 ‘Pensées et maximes’, in Mercure de France, 2 October 1802, 80–84. Grechanaia quotes from
this source in Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 288.
208 Krüdener, Valérie ou Lettres de Gustave de Linar à Ernest de G…
209 The quotations are from letters 18 and 43, which are to be found on pp. 58 and 178 respectively
in the online edition we have used (see bibliography).

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The French L anguage in Russia

to her.210 The passionate but virtuous Gustav would subsequently merge
into the synthesized image of ideal suitors that takes shape in the mind of
Pushkin’s love-sick Tat’iana in Eugene Onegin.211
Valerie contained neither any Russian character nor any reference to
anything that pertains specifically to Russia, but it does deserve consideration here on account of its importance both as an influential example of
writing in French by a female subject of the Russian Empire and as a work
that is sensitive to cultural currents which were beginning to affect Russia
as well as other European countries. Punctuated by dramatic expressions
of feeling, the novel reflected the vogue for writing in which sentiment was
prized, heroes were prone to melancholy, and Christianity was poeticized.212
Krüdener’s Gustav is an impressionable, lachrymose dreamer, one of those
‘âmes ardentes et rares’ (rare and ardent souls) who have ‘la funeste puissance
d’aimer’ (the fatal power to love).213 There is, he thinks, a ‘fonds intarissable
de bonheur qui se trouve dans l’homme dont le cœur est resté près de la
nature’ (inexhaustible stock of bliss in the man whose heart has remained
close to Nature).214 He prefers to commune with Nature than to participate
in the empty amusements of the Viennese grand monde:
J’ai vu des bals, des dîners, des spectacles, des promenades, et j’ai dit
cent fois que j’admirais la magnificence de cette ville tant vantée par
les étrangers. Cependant je n’ai pas obtenu un seul moment de plaisir.
La solitude des fêtes est si aride: celle de la nature nous aide toujours à
tirer quelque chose de satisfaisant de notre âme; celle du monde nous
fait voir une foule d’objets qui nous empêchent d’être à nous et ne nous
donnent rien.215
(I have seen balls, dinners, plays, and walks, and I have said a hundred
times how much I admire the magnificence of this city that foreigners
speak so highly of. And yet, I have not gained a single moment of pleasure
[in it]. The solitude of festivities is so arid; that of nature always helps us
210 Ibidem, letter 47 (p. 209).
211 Evgenii Onegin, Canto 3, Stanza 9, in Pushkin, PSS, vol. 6, 55. In his notes to his novel in
verse Pushkin explained that de Linar was ‘the hero of Baroness Krüdener’s charming novella’
(ibidem, n. 18 on p. 193).
212 The most notable example of the Romantic attitude towards Christianity was Chateaubriand’s
chef d’œuvre, Le Génie du Christianisme (1802).
213 Krüdener, Valérie, letter 2 (p. 14).
214 Ibidem, Gustav’s journal (p. 194).
215 Ibidem, letter 11 (pp. 36–37).

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to draw something satisfying from our soul; that of society causes us to
see a crowd of objects which prevent us from being ourselves and give
us nothing.)

This weariness with the monde returns to Gustav in Venice, where he is
prompted to send Ernest a letter devoted almost entirely to society’s ills.
He experiences disgust whenever he is obliged to appear in this vain and
immoral milieu, where petty passions efface the ‘traits primitifs de candeur
et de bonté’ (primitive traits of candour and goodness) that one would
want to see in one’s children. Full of mistrust, egoism, and conceit, the
people who make up high society have sealed themselves off from the joys
of which those humans who retain their natural goodness are capable: it is
a ‘classe que l’ambition, les grandeurs et la richesse séparent tant du reste
de l’humanité’ (class that ambition, splendour, and wealth separate so much
from the rest of humanity).216
This representation of the beau monde would seem to foreshadow the
criticism directed at it by cultural nationalists who deplored Russians’ use of
the foreign language with which the monde was associated. And yet, for all
the heightened sensibility of Krüdener’s characters, her hero’s preference for
naturalness over artifice, and her presentation of high society as a corrupted
world apart, Krüdener was an unabashed representative of aristocratic
society and an admirer of its French model.217 In some unpublished notes,
for example, she defended the spirit of French society against Rousseauesque
attacks on it, drawing a distinction between légèreté of tone in conversation
(light-heartedness, we might say) and légèreté of character (superficiality
or frivolity):
Les mœurs en France ont gagné par la politesse même, par l’élégance et
la délicatesse; ainsi on contesterait cet ancien principe que les mœurs se
corrompent […] en se polissant. Les mœurs se détruisent par le luxe, par
la mollesse, par […] l’abandon du travail et le besoin de faux plaisirs, […]
mais ce n’est pas à la politesse, à l’élégance que cela tient […]218
(Morals in France have benefited from politeness, elegance, and delicacy;
so one would challenge the old principle that morals are corrupted […] as
216 Ibidem, letter 22 (p. 82).
217 The point is emphasized by Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 289.
218 Quoted by Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 286, from an archival source
(GARF, f. 967, op. 1, d. 4, fol. 23).

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they are polished. Morals are ruined by luxury, softness […] the abandonment of work and the need for false pleasures, […] but it is not politeness
or elegance that is to blame for this […] )

Krüdener herself, we might add, was for a time a salonnière in Paris.219
Volkonskaia, the last of the three principal women writers who
wrote French fiction in the Alexandrine age, was the daughter of Prince
Belosel’skii.220 Born in Dresden in 1790 (or according to other sources in
Turin in 1792), Volkonskaia spent her early years abroad, her father being a diplomat. Educated by French and Italian tutors, she was another
multilingual cosmopolitan who led a peripatetic life. In 1811, she married
the aide-de-camp of Alexander I, Prince Nikita Volkonskii.221 She was also
a close friend (and probably a lover) of Alexander himself. An accomplished
singer and actress, she became well known in Parisian society when the
Russian army was stationed in France in 1814, and she travelled with the
Russian court to London and subsequently to the Congress of Vienna. From
1824 to 1829 she lived in Moscow, where she hosted a notable salon which
was frequented by such outstanding men of letters as the poets Baratynskii,
Pushkin, Dmitrii Venevitinov, and Viazemskii.222 However, after 1825 she fell
out of favour with the authorities, owing to her ties with Decembrists and
her leanings towards Catholicism, to which she formally converted in 1833.
In 1829, she settled in Rome and after that returned to Russia only twice,
in 1836 and 1840, for brief visits. Living in what became known as the Villa
Wolkonsky (nowadays the official residence of the British ambassador to
Italy), she received Russian writers and painters such as Gogol’ and Karl
Briullov and devoted herself to charitable works.223
219 See Gretchanaïa, ‘Le salon de Madame de Krüdener à Paris en 1802–1803’.
220 See the fourth section of this chapter above.
221 Nikita was the elder brother of Sergei, the Decembrist exiled to Siberia; Sergei’s wife, Mariia
Volkonskaia, née Raevskaia, whom we mentioned in the third section of Chapter 4, was therefore
Zinaida’s sister-in-law.
222 See the introductory article in Murav’ev (ed.), V tsarstve muz, 5–23, and Saikina, Moskovskii
literaturnyi salon kniagini Zinaidy Volkonskoi.
223 On Volkonskaia, see her son’s introduction in Volkonskaia, Œuvres choisies de la Princesse
Zénéide Volkonsky, vii–xv. On her life and work, see also Gorodetzky (1960 and 1969) and the entry
in Ledkovsky et al. (eds), Dictionary of Russian Women’s Writing, 725–726. On her prose fiction, see
especially Catriona Kelly, A History of Russian Women’s Writing, 55–58, Tosi, Waiting for Pushkin,
131–149, and Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzksi, 131–138. On her correspondence,
see Aroutunova, Lives in Letters. See also a stimulating recent essay in which Grechanaia views
both Krüdener and Volkonskaia in the context of the debate that was already beginning in the
late eighteenth century between nobles of cosmopolitan outlook (for example, Andrei Shuvalov
and Belosel’skii), who felt that Russians could be at ease in the European world, and those who

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Volkonskaia’s theatrical, musical, and social achievements may have
surpassed her achievements as a writer, but her Four Tales (1819) and the
romanticized novel Tableau of the Slavs in the Fifth Century (1824; Illustration
11) are substantial and well-known examples of women’s prose writing in
French.224 Of the Four Tales, the most important from our point of view is
‘Laura’. The eponymous protagonist of this story, which is set in France, is
an orphan brought up by a strict aunt. After marrying at the age of fifteen,
Laura is taken to live with her mother-in-law in Montpellier while her
husband, Hippolyte, attends to business elsewhere. Having looked forward
to entering society, the beautiful Laura finds social gatherings tedious,
until she visits the lively, entertaining salon of Madame de C***, where
other women quickly become jealous of the attention she attracts. Here
the ingenuous girl falls under the influence of an unscrupulous baroness
who is adept at social intrigue. Having captivated Laura, the baroness too
becomes jealous of her protégée and vengefully humiliates her by making
her behave in such a way that she seems a foolish coquette.
‘Laura’ is a tale with weak characterization, poor emplotment, and some
jejune remarks about the effect of the North and the South on character.225 The
reader’s interest is bound to wane as Volkonskaia’s narrative loses focus in its
last third: Laura leaves salon society, begins to study under the direction of the
insipid Hippolyte, by extraordinary coincidence re-encounters former acquaintances, and eventually finds fulfilment of a sort in motherhood. All the same, the
tale is of interest here both as an example of elegant French prose written by a
Russian woman and as an expression, early in the nineteenth century, of Russian unease – which would soon become much more pronounced – about the
French social model that had been adopted by eighteenth-century aristocrats
such as Andrei Shuvalov and Zinaida’s own father, Prince Belosel’skii. This
unease manifests itself in ‘Laura’ in two main ways.
emphasized Russia’s distinctiveness and urged compatriots to distance themselves from the
West. Grechanaia concludes that Russian women writers, writing only in French (as far as we
know) and defending the Russian nation without arguing for an exclusivist view of it, tended
to take a more universalist position than their male counterparts and presented themselves
more consistently as ‘Russian Europeans’. Indeed, women writers prefigured the Westernizers
of the 1840s and 1850s, Grechanaia contends. See Grechanaia, ‘Between National Myth and
Trans-National Ideal’, especially 395.
224 See Volkonskaia, Quatre nouvelles, in Œuvres choisies de la Princesse Zénéide Volkonsky, 3–142;
idem, Tableau slave du cinquième siècle, ibidem, 155–218. An earlier experiment by Volkonskaia
in French prose, ‘Histoire de Lycoris’, which featured in an aristocratic album, is reproduced in
Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 362–365.
225 ‘Laure’, in Volkonskaia, Œuvres choisies de la Princesse Zénéide Volkonsky, 3–66. For the
remarks on the North and the South, see p. 40.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Illustration 11 Title page of Le Tableau slave. Par Mme de la P*** Zénéide Volkonsky
(2nd edn, Moscow 1826).

The book is held in the Russian National Library, who have kindly produced this image for us.

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First, the tale confronts the question of the identity of the nation, which
is perceived by other Europeans, and by some Russians themselves, as
imitative. By the expedient of suddenly introducing a Parisian, an Englishman, and a Russian into the provincial society in which Laura finds herself,
Volkonskaia is able to allude derisively to European perceptions of Russia
and Russians. She implicitly mocks the view of Russia, which she claims
is still widespread in Southern Europe, as a land covered in ice for twelve
months a year, where words themselves ‘gêlent dans la rue’ (freeze in the
street).226 As for the Russians, they are expected by southern Europeans to
have about them ‘quelque chose de singulier et d’un peu barbare’ (something
odd and a little barbarous).227 Her representative of the Russian elite in the
tale, Count Vladimir, helps to undermine this stereotype, for he behaves
in the eyes of Laura like ‘un vrai chevalier, un Bayard’ (a true knight, a
Bayard).228 He also provides an intimation of cultural independence. He
has mastered the French language and cultural idiom, to be sure, for he
is described as ‘plus Parisien que les Parisiens mêmes pour l’urbanité du
langage’ (more Parisian than the Parisians themselves in the urbanity of his
language). Nonetheless, he believes that ‘l’imitation servile est au-dessous
de la dignité de l’homme’ (servile imitation is beneath man’s dignity) and
is offended by the tendency of some of his compatriots to mimic foreigners.
Il avait été frappé du ridicule que quelques-uns de ses compatriotes
s’étaient donné en quittant la tournure guerrière et simple, qui leur est
naturelle, pour copier strictement les manières de telle ou telle autre
nation. Il souffrait de voir en eux cette affectation qui contrastait si fort
avec le caractère national russe, et leur disait hautement qu’ils étaient
devenus la charge de ceux qu’ils voulaient imiter.229
(He had been struck by the ridicule that certain of his compatriots had
brought upon themselves by abandoning the warlike and simple bearing
that was natural to them in order strictly to copy the manners of this or
that other nation. It pained him to see in them this affectation, which
contrasted so strongly with the Russian national character, and he would
tell them openly that they had become a caricature of those whom they
wished to imitate.)
226 Ibidem, 35.
227 Ibidem.
228 Ibidem, 50. Pierre Terrail de Bayard (1473–1524) was a famed French knight.
229 Ibidem, 32.

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The French L anguage in Russia

European readers, then, should not be deceived by the impression that some
Russians might make on them as culturally subservient: on the contrary,
they should be aware of the national pride and military prowess that had
recently enabled Russia to withstand Napoleon’s invasion.
Secondly, Volkonskaia consistently presents salon society – or at least,
provincial attempts to replicate the metropolitan exemplar of it – in a
negative light. Regulated by cold etiquette, the salon is a site of petty rivalries,
jealousies, and malice, a ‘tribunal capricieux qui s’empare d’une réputation,
et qui la forme et la brise avec la même facilité’ (capricious tribunal which
takes possession of a reputation and makes and breaks it with equal ease).230
Its habitués are obsessed with mode, seeming to regard changes in fashion as
no less important than the overthrow of empires.231 Its ‘dialect’ has ‘niaiseries
fines’ (subtle sillinesses) which no textbook can teach a foreigner.232 A girl
of fifteen, the narrator reflects, may easily be carried away by this world
without seeing its defects, for it is
synonyme de douceur de la vie; c’est l’idole de la jeunesse, qui en ignore
les illusions; c’est le tyran des êtres faibles, qui adorent cette figure creuse,
tout en la connaissant et qui déposent à ses pieds leurs goûts, leurs inclinations, et même leurs sentiments.233
(synonymous with sweetness of life; it is the idol of youth, which is
unaware of the illusoriness of it; it is the tyrant of weak beings, who
adore this sunken face while knowing it well, and who lay their tastes,
inclinations, and even their feelings at its feet.)

Each of the remaining stories in Volkonskaia’s Four Tales – ‘Two Tribes of Brazil,
or Nabuya and Zioié’, ‘Mandingo Husbands’, and ‘The Child of Kashmir’ – is set
on a different continent. Saturated with references to local flora, food, artefacts,
beliefs, and customs, these tales reflect the taste of early nineteenth-century
Romantic writers for exoticism.234 The first of them enables Volkonskaia
to imply a contrast between the mores of apparently primitive but pure
indigenous tribes in South America and the polished European society in
230 Ibidem, 10, 15.
231 Ibidem, 27.
232 Ibidem, 41.
233 Ibidem, 7.
234 ‘Deux tribus du Brésil, ou Nabuya et Zioié, nouvelle américaine’, ‘Les maris mandingues’,
and ‘L’enfant de Kachemyr, nouvelle asiatique’, in Volkonskaia, Œuvres choisies de la Princesse
Zénéide Volkonsky, 67–87, 89–121, and 123–142 respectively.

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which she moved. At the end of the second, which is set in Saharan Africa,
she points up lessons about male despotism and the need for young girls not
to be gullible.235 In the third, she hints that ‘la société de la nature’ (natural
society) is purer and more delightful than that of the refined classes, to which
the man who is wont to ‘déguiser son âme’ (conceal his soul) belongs.236
In the Tableau of the Slavs of the Fifth Century, finally, this exoticism and
the yearning for unaffected simplicity are applied to Russia itself. In her
preface to the Tableau, Volkonskaia presents the work as an examination
of the occupations, practices, manners, and cult of the ancient Slavs who
lived in the region of the River Dnieper.237 In the course of the Tableau she
also repeatedly invokes the authority of various scholars in order to validate
her description of the life of the early Slav tribes, making use in particular
of Karamzin’s History of the Russian State, of which eleven volumes had
appeared by the end of 1824, the year in which the Tableau was published.
Up to a point, then, this work is indeed a pastiche of the available historical data on pre-literate Slavic culture, as has been claimed.238 In the last
analysis, though, it resembles Karamzin’s own historical tales, in that it is
not so much an ethnographical sketch as a pleasing fiction which helps
to establish a new national myth. (It was mockingly reviewed as such by
Stendhal.239) The Slavs of the forest (Drevliane), among whom Volkonskaia’s
hero Ladovid finds his bride, Miliada, are naked savages who are badly in
need of civilization, it is true; but the Slavs of the plain (Poliane), to whom
Ladovid belongs, are distinguished by a natural virtue to which Miliada
eventually succumbs and have a great futurity.
In literary-historical terms, it has been claimed, the French-language
texts produced by these Russian writers of the early nineteenth-century
‘are of considerable importance in the development of women’s prose
writing in Russian’. 240 The portrayal of the heroines in Four Tales, it is
argued, foreshadows the psychological prose of Romantic writers, and in
‘Laura’ Volkonskaia ‘develops themes and styles of the society tale’ some
time before the genre established itself in Russia, broaching ‘the theme
of a woman trapped in social constraints’.241 The path that Laura follows
235 ‘Les maris mandingues’, 121.
236 ‘L’enfant de Kachemyr’, 134.
237 Tableau slave, 155.
238 Ledkovsky et al. (eds), Dictionary of Russian Women Writers, 726.
239 See Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 136–137.
240 Catriona Kelly, A History of Russian Women’s Writing, 54.
241 Tosi, ‘Women and Literature, Women in Literature’, 55. On the society tale, see the fifth
section of Chapter 8 below.

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The French L anguage in Russia

‘from the seclusion of her aunt’s castle to the retreat in the bosom of her
family via the false steps of salon life and the failure of intellectual pursuits’,
Alessandra Tosi concludes, ‘reflects the limits to women’s freedom in
early nineteenth-century and European polite society, limits tested by
Volkonskaia herself’.242 From the point of view of the social and cultural
history of language, Volkonskaia’s Four Tales and the epistolary novels
by Golovkina and Krüdener are of interest because they illustrate the
mastery of French achieved by members of the Russian aristocracy and
the opportunity that command of French gave women to blossom in the
literary world.
At the same time, these prose writings may represent a high-water mark
in the use of French as a language of fiction in imperial Russia. It would
also be dangerous to use them as a basis for generalizations about the
linguistic competencies of Russian noblewomen, or rather about their lack of
competence in Russian. It is no doubt true that Krüdener and Volkonskaia,
at least, were much better able to express themselves in French than in
Russian, but neither should be considered a typical Russian aristocrat
of the Alexandrine age, if there was such a thing. Krüdener, although a
subject of the Russian Empire, was of Baltic German parentage. It is not
known what level of competence she had in Russian, but the languages
that she had learned in earliest childhood were French and German.243
She was married for twenty years of her adult life, until she was widowed
in 1802, to a diplomat from another German family of the Russian Empire.
Almost all her life, moreover, was spent abroad, in Denmark, Italy, Germany,
France, and Switzerland. As for Volkonskaia, she was brought up abroad
and did not embark on a serious study of the Russian language until the
1820s, when she was in her thirties, after she had written her Four Tales. It
was only at that point in her adulthood that she began to write works in
Russian, notably an ambitious prose tale on Olga, the woman who ruled
the Kievan state from 945 to 960. However, she failed to complete this
work after she had settled in Italy for good, and only a few ‘cantos’ were
published in her lifetime.244
*
242 Tosi, Waiting for Pushkin, 148.
243 Gretchanaia, ‘Varvara-Juliana de Vietinghoff’ (2004); idem, Kogda Rossiia govorila pofrantsuzski, 170–171.
244 In Moskovskii nabliudatel’ in 1836. See the fragments in ‘Skazanie ob Ol’ge’, available at
http://az.lib.ru/w/wolkonskaja_z_a/text_0060.shtml, which are also reproduced in Murav’ev
(ed.), V tsarstve muz, 36 ff.

Writing French

393

The Russian corpus of writing in French (both the women’s prose fiction that
we have just examined and the ego-writing and miscellaneous examples
of nobles’ poetry and prose that we examined in preceding sections of this
chapter) can of course be considered a contribution to French literature. In
this respect, Russians’ texts in French may be compared to texts produced
by Francophone writers of many other nationalities, such as certain plays by
the Swede August Strindberg, the Italian Vittorio Alfieri, and the Romanian
Eugene Ionesco, and some of the plays, novels, and shorter prose works of
the Irishman Samuel Beckett. And yet, out of the Russian corpus of work
we have described, only Krüdener’s Valerie merits much attention as a
French literary phenomenon. It therefore seems that although French had
many functions as a written language in Russia it was never really a serious
competitor to Russian in the realm of belles-lettres. Indeed, with a few
exceptions (most notably, perhaps, Rostopchin’s ‘Memoirs’ and Chaadaev’s
‘Philosophical Letters’, which we shall examine in the following chapter,
as well as Krüdener’s Valerie) Russian writings in French do not reach the
artistic or intellectual level that distinguishes some of the works by bilingual
authors of other nationalities that we have mentioned. They appear, as Lotman observed, to be of marginal significance.245 The most likely explanation
for the relative poverty of the corpus of Russian belles-lettres in French
is that from the late eighteenth century onwards Russian writers began
to conceive of themselves not as amateurs indulging in an aristocratic
activity but as patriotic representatives of an ethnos striving to express
itself independently in its own vernacular, as Volkonskaia herself was clearly
coming to recognize in the 1820s. For this higher vocation, writers needed
to write in Russian.
The focus of this chapter has been on the private and public writings
produced by Russians in French for social and cultural purposes during
what we might call the golden age of Russian francophonie, from the mideighteenth century up until the end of the age of Alexander I in 1825. During
that age, Russia was being transformed into a European cultural power, as
well as a major military power, and the Russian nobility was aspiring to join
the European social elite and cultural community. We turn now to another
important function of French as a written language in Russia, namely its
use for communication with the outside world in the realms of cultural
diplomacy, cultural politics, and broader historiosophical or geopolitical speculation. For these purposes, French began to be used early in the
eighteenth century and flourished well beyond the first Alexandrine age.
245 Lotman, ‘Russkaia literatura na frantsuzskom iazyke’, 355.

Chapter 7
French for cultural propaganda and political polemics
Transforming Russia’s image
One important function of French in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
Russia, besides those functions we have examined in preceding chapters,
was to project a certain image of the expanding Russian Empire and the
emergent Russian nation to other European peoples who, lacking knowledge
of Russian, had access to little or no unmediated information about the
country. This essentially propagandistic function of Russian francophonie
had both a cultural and a political dimension.1 The French language was a
medium through which to publicize abroad the achievements of Russia’s new
secular cultural elite. It also served as a vehicle through which sovereigns
and patriots could defend Russia’s polity and society against their detractors.
However, French could just as well be used by opponents of the Russian
regime as by supporters of it, in order to broadcast grievances, enhance
solidarity among equally discontented compatriots, and more generally
contribute to debate about Russia’s relationship with Europe. Thus, from
the age of Nicholas I, French eventually served as a tool for Russian writers
at different points on the political spectrum, loyalists and opponents alike,
as they tried to win over to their point of view both a European public and
members of Russia’s own political, social, and intellectual elites.
Russian attempts to influence European public opinion began as early as
the first half of the eighteenth century, even before French had established
itself as the most prestigious foreign language at the Russian court and among
the aristocracy. As Russia emerged – in the conception of Enlightenment
thinkers – from the ‘darkness’ of pre-Petrine Muscovy and came to occupy
1 To describe some of the French writing produced in eighteenth-century Russia as a species
of ‘propaganda’ may seem anachronistic, even though the term propaganda, in the phrase de
propaganda fide (concerning the faith to be propagated), dates from the early seventeenth
century. In fact, though, the term was already beginning to be used outside the religious domain
by the late eighteenth century, and in any case the phenomenon it now denotes (spreading
information or undertaking activity designed to promote a certain way of thinking) was, of
course, not new. The term is now accepted by scholars working on the eighteenth century: see,
e.g., Perry, Public Opinion, Propaganda and Politics in 18th-Century England, and Dziembowski,
Ecrits sur le patriotisme, l’esprit public et la propagande au milieu du XVIIIe siècle. By the second
half of the nineteenth century it had gained wide currency among socialists in particular.

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The French L anguage in Russia

one of the foremost places among the European nations, its image became a
crucial issue for Europeans concerned about the empire’s growing power and,
above all, for Russians themselves. Russians understood that their admittance
to the concert of European nations depended not only on the actual state
of Russia’s society, economy, armed forces, sciences, belles-lettres, and arts
but also – perhaps even more – on public perceptions of them in Europe.
Public opinion in the West, in the eighteenth century, was already being
formed to a large extent by the press, especially the Francophone press.2
Periodical publications in French – newspapers, journals, gazettes – were
spreading in almost all European countries: in the German-speaking lands
and Britain, for example, and above all in the Dutch Republic, or the Republic
of the Seven United Netherlands.3 By 1765, as many as a dozen periodicals
in French had been published at one time or another in the city of Hamburg
alone.4 From the time of Peter the Great on, the Russians began to make use
of this press for propagandistic purposes. Sometimes financial inducements
might be required to buy journalists’ favours, as a French expatriate living in
mid-eighteenth century Russia acknowledged in a polemical text that he wrote
in order to ‘defend and illustrate’ the country, when he put the following words
into the mouth of a Russian: ‘you have to pay a lot for the history of your nation
if you want it to do you credit’.5 However, money was not everything. A country
seeking, as Russia was, to create a positive image of itself needed also to build
networks of sympathizers, arousing the curiosity of journalists and the interest
of the European public in this ‘new’ society, which was so unfamiliar to them.
In many respects, the programme of self-promotion through Francophone
publications that we shall describe in this and the following sections seems
remarkably familiar to a twenty-first-century observer, involving what we
should now call networking, literary agents, opinion-formers, publicity, public
relations, press coverage, and image-creation.
Even before the reign of Peter the Great, Russians had occasionally taken
note of what was written about their country in European newspapers. It
concerned them, for example, that the title of Tsar Alexis, Peter’s father, was
not properly rendered in Dutch papers, which simply referred to Alexis as
the ‘Prince of Muscovy’.6 It was with the accession of Peter himself, though,
2 We draw in this section on the findings published in Rjéoutski, ‘La presse sous influence’.
3 We have drawn some of the information on the periodicals mentioned below from the
Dictionnaire des journaux, 1600–1789 at http://dictionnaire-journaux.gazettes18e.fr/.
4 See, e.g., Böning, Deutsche Presse, vol. 1.1, Hamburg.
5 [Chevalier Desessart], ‘Voyageur moscovite ou Lettres russes’, RNB, Manuscripts Department,
Fr. Q XV 38, fol. 15.
6 See Kopanev, ‘Les Nouvelles sur la Russie dans les périodiques francophones’.

French for cultur al propaganda and political polemics

397

that the Russian authorities began to pay serious attention to what was said
about Russia and its sovereigns in the western press. The translators of the
above-mentioned Vesti-Kuranty7 played an important role in this task, but
by the 1720s they were monitoring a greater volume of western newspapers
than their seventeenth-century predecessors had done, including leading
Dutch newspapers that were published in French. Another important
difference concerned the news chosen for inclusion in the digests: under
Peter, particular attention began to be paid to news about Russia. 8 Thus, in
copies of the Francophone Gazette de Leyde (Leiden Gazette) that have been
preserved in Russian archives we see translators’ comments such as ‘has been
read and has nothing objectionable in it’ or ‘something damaging written
here’.9 If something ‘objectionable’ was found, then Russian officials would
promptly take steps. Thus repeated requests were made to the authorities in
Hamburg on Peter’s behalf to muzzle that city’s journalists.10 What made the
task of building a positive image of Russia in the West so difficult was the
persistence of clichés constructed by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
travellers who had described Russia as a realm of tyranny, superstition, and
barbaric mores and practices.11 Such prejudice helped to explain why the
French people, as Grigorii Volkov, the secretary of the Russian embassy in
Paris, complained in 1711, were ‘all hostile to Russia’. However good the news
from Russia might be, the French did not want to listen to it and would not
let the newspapers publish it. Perhaps it would be more beneficial, Volkov
wondered, ‘to win over the editors of the newspapers, so that they might
print news which is more favourable to us’.12
In order to counter such hostility, Russian literary agents (the term is
anachronistic, but that is really what they were) started in the early part of
Peter’s reign to approach western periodicals and to use foreign publishers
more generally to rebut negative European representations of Russia and
7 On the Vesti-Kuranty, see also the first section of Chapter 2 and the first section of Chapter
5 above.
8 Maier and Shamin, ‘Obzory inostrannoi pressy v Kollegii inostrannykh del’, 105–106.
9 Ibidem, 102.
10 It was demanded, for example, that ‘no libels be printed about the Russian state’ (RGADA,
f. 44, 1705, d. 1). Tracking publications in the local press that gave offence to Russia, incidentally,
became one of the basic duties of the Russian resident in Lower Saxony, Johann Friedrich
Böttiger. On Böttiger’s propagandistic activity on Russia’s behalf, see Fundaminski, ‘Resident
Johann Friedrich Böttiger und die russische Propaganda’.
11 For the opinions of French travellers, see Mervaud and Roberti, Une infinie brutalité. The
views of the French are largely in accord with what Englishmen and Germans wrote about
Russia in the same period.
12 Quoted from Recueil des instructions aux ambassadeurs et ministres de France, vol. 8, 129.

398 

The French L anguage in Russia

promote a positive image of the country. An early challenge to which they
rose was a book entitled A Strange and New Account of Muscovy, which had
been written by an agent of the King of France, Foy de la Neuville, who had
portrayed the young Russian monarch as an oriental despot, a Nero of the
North.13 Peter’s companion in arms, François Lefort, who headed the tsar’s
Grand Embassy to western countries in 1697–1698, was directly involved
in a campaign to discredit Neuville’s book.14
The German diplomat Heinrich von Huyssen, who entered Russian service
in 1702, also proved a willing and energetic agent, agreeing to translate Peter’s
decrees, to have them printed and disseminated abroad, and to ask men of
learning in Holland, Germany, and other countries to dedicate works to the
tsar, members of his family, or his ministers. In 1705, Huyssen was sent to
Germany, where he tried to persuade Justus Gotthard Rabener, the editor
of a well-known Leipzig review, Die Europäische Fama (European Fame [i.e.
gossip, rumour]), to publish items favourable to Russia.15 The review accordingly entered into polemics with other periodicals – for instance, Le Mercure
historique et politique (The Historical and Political Mercury, 1686–1782,
published in The Hague), Lettres historiques (Historical Letters, published
in Amsterdam), and L’Esprit des cours de l’Europe (The Spirit of the Courts
of Europe, published initially in The Hague, then in Amsterdam) – in order
to defend the honour of the Russian army.16 Additionally, Die Europäische
Fama published portraits of Russian statesmen, accompanied by texts that
advertised their merits,17 along with verses in honour of the tsar in French,
German, and Latin and descriptions of the ceremonial entries of the tsar
and his army into Moscow and St Petersburg. In another periodical, the
influential Acta Eruditorum (The Journal of the Learned, 1682–1782, which
came out in Leipzig in Latin), Huyssen placed contributions designed to
show how education and learning were developing in Russia.18 In 1706, he
published some articles of his own in the ‘Literary News’ section of Mémoires
13 Foy de la Neuville, Relation curieuse et nouvelle de Moscovie (1698).
14 Kopanev, ʻFrants Lefort, Vol’ter, A.P. Veselovskii’, 441.
15 The full title of the periodical was Die europäische Fama, welche den gegenwärtigen Zustand
der vornehmsten Höfe entdecket. On Huyssen’s approach to this periodical, see Pekarskii, Nauka
i literatura v Rossii, vol. 1, 94–96.
16 See, e.g., Europäische Fama, 1706, no. 43, 495–505, mentioned in Pekarskii, Nauka i literatura
v Rossii, vol. 1, 94–96.
17 Pekarskii, Nauka i literatura v Rossii, vol. 1, 95.
18 e.g. Acta Eruditorum, May 1705, 240, August 1705, 382–384. Acta Eruditorum was the first
German scientific journal. Its name was changed to Nova Acta Eruditorum in 1732. Nova Acta
Eruditorum would publish a number of scientif ic articles written by men of learning in St
Petersburg, which no doubt helped to raise the prestige of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

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399

pour l’histoire des sciences et des beaux-arts (Transactions on the History of
the Sciences and Fine Arts), better known as Le Journal de Trévoux (Trévoux
Journal), which came out in France.19 Nor did Huyssen confine himself to
placing publications in the press; he was also behind the appearance of
various pamphlets that sought to present Russian affairs in the best light.20 In
a pamphlet dated 1706, for example, alongside information on the geography
and history of Muscovy, we find a description of a plan of study that Huyssen
had written for the heir to the Russian throne.21 This plan was notable for its
humanistic outlook and began with a reminder of the importance of French
in the education of a prince. It was evidently intended to show that Russian
sovereigns were no strangers to European culture and that the tsar’s heir
was being prepared to become an enlightened monarch.22
In the same period, the Russian ambassador to Holland, Andrei Matveev,
took the opportunity provided by the Russian victory over the Swedish
army at Poltava in 1709 to publicize Russian achievement of a different sort.
An account of this military triumph, written by Peter the Great himself,
was translated into French and published in Holland as a pamphlet. A
map of the battle soon appeared too; it was printed in The Hague by the
publisher Pierre Husson, in a large format and with explanations in French.23
Matveev also arranged the publication, in French again, of a description
of the celebrations and fireworks that he had organized in The Hague, on
Peter’s orders, to celebrate this victory.24
A further intense propagandistic effort in foreign languages was directed
at European readerships in 1718, when Peter issued a manifesto depriving
his son Alexis, who had been convicted of treason, of the right to inherit
the Russian crown. The manifesto was published in Russian and German
in St Petersburg and in German in Riga and Leipzig. There were also several
German editions in which the place of publication was not indicated, two
19 Mémoires pour l’histoire des sciences et des beaux-arts ou le Journal de Trévoux, Paris, June
1706, 1066–1068, cited by Kopanev, ‘Les Nouvelles sur la Russie dans les périodiques francophones’,
35.
20 On Huyssen and his propagandistic activity, see Korzun, Heinrich von Huyssen (1666–1739).
See also Graskhoff [Grasshoff], ‘Iz istorii sviazei berlinskogo obshchestva nauk s Rossiei’.
Huyssen probably wrote some of these pamphlets himself, although it is impossible to be sure,
since many were published anonymously.
21 Stieff, Relation von dem gegenwärtigen Zustande des Moscowitischen Reichs.
22 On Huyssen’s rebuttal of a work written by a former tutor of the crown prince, Neugebauer,
which was very critical of Russia, see Pekarskii, Nauka i literatura v Rossii, vol. 1, 98–99.
23 Plan de la fameuse bataille, donnée aux environs de Poltava en Ucraine […].
24 Relation des festins que S. E. André de Matveof […]. For further details, see Kopanev, ‘Les
Nouvelles sur la Russie dans les périodiques francophones’.

400 

The French L anguage in Russia

editions in French (one published in Paris and one in The Hague), one in
Dutch, published in Amsterdam, and yet another in Polish. Some editions
carried extracts from Alexis’s correspondence.25 An ‘Announcement of
the investigation and trial’ of the tsarevich was also published in foreign
languages: there are at least two different editions of this document in
German, a French edition (published in Nancy), one in Dutch (published in
Amsterdam), one in English (published in London), and another in Latin.
The French edition, running to over 380 pages, was preceded by a publisher’s
foreword, which condemned Alexis’s ‘innately bad character’ and praised
the ‘moderation’ of Peter, who was said not to have wanted to pass a death
sentence on his son, although the laws permitted it.26 Nor did the campaign
end there: Peter’s point of view on Alexis was also set out in Le Mercure
historique et politique in Holland and in another pamphlet (Illustration
12).27 The aim of all these publications was to convince public opinion in
Europe that the tsar had the right to disinherit the guilty tsarevich and
above all that Alexis had died a natural death. The Russian ambassador at
Versailles, Baron von Schleinitz, was ordered to ‘destroy and robustly refute
unjust and ill-founded talk’ on the subject.28 The Russian government was
obviously also behind the publication, in 1718, of a German book which,
without referring to Russia directly, contended that a sovereign was fully
entitled to remove the right of his direct heir to inherit his crown.29 These
examples show that German and French were the chief languages that served
Russian propaganda in Europe in the early eighteenth century and that the
Francophone press was already beginning to be used for propagandistic
purposes in Peter’s reign.30
Another periodical published in French in Amsterdam from 1720 to 1740,
La Bibliothèque germanique (Germanic Library),31 was also exploited for
propagandistic purposes, from an early stage in its existence, by scholars
25 Pekarskii, Nauka i literatura v Rossii, vol. 2, 410–413.
26 Mémoires en forme de manifeste sur le procez criminel jugé et publié à S. Pétersbourg en
Moscovie le 25 Juin 1718 […]. The pages in this document are not numbered.
27 Relation fidelle de ce qui s’est passé au sujet du jugement rendu contre le prince Alexei […];
Pekarskii, Nauka i literatura v Rossii, vol. 2, 426–427.
28 Quoted from Pekarskii, Nauka i literatura v Rossii, vol. 2, 427.
29 Untersuchung nach dem Recht der Natur […].
30 The Russian authorities were already employing other means of self-advertisement in the
early eighteenth century, such as acts of patronage. In 1712, for instance, Peter bestowed the title
of privy councillor on Leibniz in recognition of his distinction as a scholar: Pekarskii, Nauka i
literatura v Rossii, vol. 1, 26.
31 The journal was f irst known as La Bibliothèque Germanique ou Histoire Littéraire de
l’Allemagne et des Pays du Nord.

French for cultur al propaganda and political polemics

401

Illustration 12 Title page of Relation fidelle de ce qui s’est passé au sujet du
jugement rendu contre le Prince Alexei et des circonstances de sa
mort (1718), i.e. the official account of Peter’s case against his son,
Tsarevich Alexis, and the circumstances of his death.

The book is held in the Russian National Library, who have kindly produced this image for us to
use.

402 

The French L anguage in Russia

and literary agents serving Russia. News about Russia appeared in this
periodical on a regular basis. Information about books published there
could be particularly helpful as a means of improving Russia’s image: unlike
barbarous Muscovy, readers were bound to infer, eighteenth-century Russia
was a place where intellectual life had begun to flourish. Evidently, Russians
now took an interest in European political ideas: we come across reference in
La Bibliothèque germanique, for example, to the German jurist and political
philosopher Samuel von Pufendorf.32 Accounts of books that had appeared
in Russia on the life of Peter the Great were particularly appreciated, and
Peter came to be presented as a ‘hero’ in the pages of Europe’s Francophone
periodicals. Looking on Orthodoxy as a collection of customs which would be
improved by the intervention of an enlightened monarch, foreign journalists
commended the measures Peter had taken against the Orthodox Church.
They needed no persuasion that Russia had made progress under Peter, for
the foundations of the Petrine ‘myth’, to which we shall turn shortly, had
already been laid. At the same time, they accepted the negative view of
pre-Petrine Russia held by most authoritative contemporary writers and
agreed with those writers that the Russian people had shown an ‘extreme
attachment’ to ignorance and to their ancient customs, ‘however absurd
they might be’.33
Le Journal littéraire d’Allemagne, de Suisse et du Nort (sic; The Literary
Journal of Germany, Switzerland, and the North) and La Nouvelle Bibliothèque
germanique (The New Germanic Library, 1746–1759) continued this tradition
of favourable treatment of Russia in the European Francophone press, taking
both a sympathetic tone and devoting long articles to the St Petersburg
Academy of Sciences and its works. An analysis of the sixth volume of the
Transactions of the Academy, which was published in 1738, for example,
ran to 25 pages. Le Journal littéraire reproduced the list of contents of the
32 The translation of Pufendorf to which reference is made here is [Pufendorf], Vvedenie,
v gistoriiu evropeiskuiu chrez Samuila Pufendorfiia […]. The translation, which was done by
Gavriil Buzhinksii, was presented to Peter after his return from his foreign journey in 1716–1717.
The translator extolled Peter for his love of the muses and for reading even in time of war, but,
interestingly, did not omit from his translation passages in which Russian mores were severely
criticized. The book was republished in 1723 and there were later editions too. For further details,
see Pekarskii, Nauka i literatura v Rossii, vol. 1, 325–327, and vol. 2, 437–439. We have used here
Margarita Voïtenko’s bachelor’s dissertation La République des Lettres et l’Empire Russe. We do
not indicate page numbers in this dissertation because we have used an electronic version in
which the pages are unnumbered. See also Voïtenko’s master’s dissertation, La Présentation de
la Russie dans la presse francophone.
33 La Bibliothèque germanique, vol. 8, 188, quoted from Voïtenko, La Présentation de la Russie
dans la presse francophone, 44.

French for cultur al propaganda and political polemics

403

Academy’s journal and provided a detailed account, in French, of reports that
members of the Academy wrote on their findings. There were summaries,
for instance, of reports by the historian and Orientalist Gottlieb Siegfried
Bayer, Leonhard Euler,34 and the German Professor of Medicine and Anatomy
Josias Weitbrecht.35 Bayer’s report is of particular interest as an example of
the attempts being made to establish a new image for Russia. Bayer asserted
that the Russian nation was very ancient and that it already posed a threat
to Constantinople in the ninth century.36 He therefore gives the impression
that even in the Kievan stage of its history Russia was having an influence
well beyond its frontiers. In the same volume of Le Journal littéraire, there
was an article on the ‘Astronomical Observations of Mr. De l’Isle’ for the
year 1738 and another on the ‘Description and Exact Representation of the
Ice Palace’ by yet another German academician, the physicist Krafft.37
If elements of the Francophone press during the Enlightenment put
forward a positive image of Russia, then this was due not only to curiosity
about this new country which was undergoing such dramatic change but
also to the close contacts that Russian scholars and agents had established
with these European periodicals. These multiple links were maintained
continuously from the moment when the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences was founded, or indeed from the time when it was being planned.
Scholars in St Petersburg and Russian agents kept up a correspondence,
for example, with Daniel Ernst Jablonski, a preacher at the Prussian court
who was long-time secretary and vice-president of the Brandenburg Society
of Sciences and president of the Berlin Academy of Sciences from 1733 to
1741 and who was close to the staff of La Bibliothèque germanique. They
also corresponded with Johann Heinrich Samuel Formey, the permanent
secretary of the Berlin Academy and editor of La Bibliothèque. Huyssen,
Euler, and Schumacher played particularly active roles in this academic
diplomacy. Huyssen, who was an honorary member of the Berlin Society
of Sciences, corresponded frequently with Jablonski.38 Schumacher visited
several European countries in 1721 at the request of Peter the Great, hoping
34 On Euler’s multilingual correspondence, see the last section of Chapter 5 above.
35 Journal littéraire d’Allemagne, de Suisse et du Nort, 1743, vol. 2, pt 1, 36–61.
36 Ibidem, 52–61.
37 i.e. ‘Observations Astronomiques de Mr. De l’Isle’; ‘Description et représentation exacte de la
Maison de Glace construite à St. Petersbourg […]’ (ibidem, 62–67). The reference is to a palace that
the Empress Anna had constructed to celebrate the bizarre wedding that she arranged between
Prince Mikhail Golitsyn, whom she designated her court jester, and a Kalmyk maidservant. The
ice palace is presented in this article as an unparalleled work of architecture and civil genius.
38 SPbF ARAN, f. 119, op. 1, no. 4.

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The French L anguage in Russia

to recruit scholars for the future Academy, to establish contacts, and to set
up cooperation and exchanges of letters. Jablonski and Maturin Veyssière
La Croze, a Protestant convert who became the Prussian royal librarian
and a professor at the University of Berlin, were among those with whom
Schumacher had discussions.39
Some of the St Petersburg academicians – Bayer, Delisle, Daniel Bernoulli,
Christian Goldbach, and the German philosopher and mathematician Georg
Bernhard Bilfinger – were in direct contact with the editors of La Bibliothèque
germanique. Certain members of the Société Anonyme (Anonymous Society),
a society of men of letters who had founded La Bibliothèque germanique,
even had direct links with Russia through their families. Louis L’Enfant, the
son of Jacques L’Enfant, one of the journal’s editors, had been a preacher in a
Protestant parish of Moscow between 1698 and 1701. Léopold de Beausobre,
the son of Isaac de Beausobre, another editor of the same journal, had been
a soldier in Russian service from 1720 (he rose to the rank of major-general)
and had put down roots in Russia.40 (The fact that news on Russian science
spread so widely in the French language through a German network is
explained by the preponderance of Huguenots in the scholarly milieu in
Berlin.) Russian contacts with La Bibliothèque germanique, then, were
particularly numerous and close, but scholars based in Russia had access to
other journals too, for instance, through the French Huguenot writer Jean
Rousset de Missy, the author of a history of the reign of Peter the Great. 41
Rousset was a prominent journalist in the first half of the eighteenth century,
contributing to Le Mercure historique et politique and another Amsterdam
journal, La Bibliothèque raisonnée des ouvrages des savans de l’Europe (The
Descriptive Library of the Works of Learned Men of Europe). He kept in
touch with the St Petersburg Academy, especially with Schumacher, and
looked out for authors to review works published by the Academy or indeed
provided reviews of them himself, for example in La Bibliothèque raisonnée.42

39 Voïtenko, La Présentation de la Russie dans la presse francophone, 34–35.
40 Mézin and Rjéoutski (eds), Les Français en Russie au siècle des Lumières, vol. 2, 58–59, 514.
41 See Nestesuranoi [i.e. Rousset de Missy], Memoires du règne de Pierre-le-Grand (1725–1726).
Rousset was also the author of a work on Catherine I, Mémoires du règne de Catherine […] (1728).
On Rousset de Missy, see Berckvens-Steverlynck and Vercruysse (eds), Le métier de journaliste au
dix-huitième siècle; Shatokhina, ‘Gollandskii publitsist Zhan Russe de Missi’; Mezin, ‘Gollandskii
publitsist Zhan Russe de Missi kak biograf Petra I’. In recognition of his services, Rousset de Missy
was elected an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences in 1737, and in 1748 he received
the title chancery councillor with the rank of colonel.
42 Voïtenko, La Présentation de la Russie dans la presse francophone, 34, 39.

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405

The influence that Russia was able to exert on western periodical publications through the intervention of literary agents like Huyssen and through
contacts between European learned journals and the St Petersburg Academy
of Sciences seems to have declined in the middle of the eighteenth century.
At the same time, Ivan Shuvalov, the new favourite of the Empress Elizabeth
from the late 1740s, diversified the means of cultural propaganda, commissioning literary and polemical works from various Francophone authors in
his entourage and making use of French expatriates who were resident in
Russia. The rise of a ‘French party’, in which Shuvalovs and Vorontsovs who
were fluent in French were prominent, was reflected in the establishment
of the first Russian periodical in French (and indeed Russia’s first literary
journal, properly speaking), Baron Théodore-Henri de Tschudy’s Caméléon
littéraire (The Literary Chameleon). 43 Founded in St Petersburg in 1755
under Ivan Shuvalov’s effective control, the Caméléon published articles on
a range of subjects, from history and literature to pedagogy, and also literary
anecdotes. In an ‘Abstract of the third volume of satirical writings printed
in Leipzig in German’, Tschudy addressed the subject of the education of
noble youth, discussing such matters as choosing a tutor, parents who did
not understand the extent of their duties, and the care with which children
of quality needed to be educated. His remarks were aimed at the Russian
nobility in particular. 44 In fact, education was a central preoccupation of
the Caméléon. This was no coincidence, given Shuvalov’s interest in the
subject. After all, Shuvalov was the founder of the University of Moscow and
looked on this institution as a means of guaranteeing the quality of nobles’
education, which seemed to him to be threatened by the inexperience of
private educators (especially the foreigners among them) and by the poor
judgement of ignorant nobles when they came to select teachers. Tschudy
paid tribute in the Caméléon to Shuvalov’s policies and, praising Elizabeth for
carrying on her father’s work, commended ‘the new Establishment that Her
Clemency has just created for the good of her people, this famous University
with which Moscow is going to see its respectable old age adorned’. 45 He
also underlined the utility of the fine arts and approved the attempts by
43 Le Caméléon littéraire. Ouvrage périodique (49 numbers – each in 312 copies – were published
between 5 January and 14 December 1755). On the spread of the Francophone press to Russia,
see Volmer, Presse und Frankophonie im 18. Jahrhundert.
44 ‘Extrait du troisième tome des écrits satiriques imprimés en allemand à Leipzig’ [sic] (no.
5), 105–114.
45 ‘Réflexion sur un trait d’histoire’, Le Caméléon littéraire, no. 1. See also an article in no. 19
on the opening of the nobles’ boarding school under the aegis of the University of Moscow and
the festivities that marked this occasion. For further details on Tschudy’s support for Shuvalov’s

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The French L anguage in Russia

Russian monarchs to transplant western arts to Russia. ‘The August founder
of this magnificent Empire and faithful imitator of Alexander the Great’,
he wrote effusively with Peter the Great in mind, ‘encouraged the arts with
all the power at his disposal. 46
Already in the age of Elizabeth, then, a Francophone periodical appeared
in Russia itself and began to play a part in forming a positive image of
Russian society, supplementing the material that had been appearing since
Peter’s time in the European Francophone press and other publications at
the instigation of scholars and agents serving the Russian authorities. This
propagandistic effort answered to the needs of the Winter Palace, although
it is often difficult to say whether publications favourable to Russia and its
sovereigns were written at the behest of the Russian patrons of the journalists
in question or produced on the initiative of the journalists themselves. It was
also clear – as we can see from the pages of La Bibliothèque germanique and
the remarks by Tschudy that we have just quoted – that the image of Peter
the Great, the Tsar who had decisively oriented Russia towards the West,
was central to attempts to persuade Europeans to take a positive view of
Russia. In Russia, Peter’s supporters, notably Prokopovich and Kantemir, had
begun to extol the great reformer immediately after his death. (Their praises
would be reproduced by Lomonosov and later eighteenth-century writers
and would pass through Karamzin into the broad ‘Westernist’ tradition
of Russian thought.) In the West too, various writers – including Rousset,
Bernard de Fontenelle, Aubry de la Mottraye, and Eléazar de Mauvillon 47 –
had already helped to construct a Petrine ‘myth’ in the second quarter of the
eighteenth century. Then, late in Elizabeth’s reign, the myth was reiterated
by Lacombe,48 and, most importantly, by Voltaire, who, at the bidding of the
Russian court, gave it unprecedented authority in his two-volume History
of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great (1759–1763). 49

educational ideas, see Rjéoutski, ‘Un journaliste français héraut de l’éducation publique en Russie’.
46 Le Caméléon littéraire, no. 1 (5 January 1755).
47 See the following: Nestesuranoi [Rousset de Missy], Mémoires du règne de Pierre le Grand;
Fontenelle, Éloge du Czar Pierre I (1727); Mottraye, Voyages en Anglois et en François (1732);
Mauvillon, Histoire de Pierre I, surnommé le Grand (1742).
48 Lacombe, Histoire des révolutions de l’empire de Russie (1760).
49 Voltaire, Histoire de l’Empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand. References to the work here are
to Michel Mervaud’s edition of it in vols 46 and 47 of [Voltaire], Les Œuvres complètes de Voltaire.
For a detailed study of the History, see especially Mervaud’s introduction to the text of it in vol.
46, 88–380. Mervaud discusses the genesis of the History, the sources Voltaire used, the type
of historiography in which he was engaged, and the reception of the work, as well as Voltaire’s
interpretation of Peter’s reign and its place in Russian history.

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The commissioning of Voltaire’s History illustrates the role of the Russian
government in encouraging and assisting literary undertakings, if they
seemed likely to bring benefit to the Russian Empire, for it was on the basis
of an invitation made by the court of the Empress Elizabeth in 1757 that
Voltaire embarked upon this work.50 In order to facilitate Voltaire’s task,
Ivan Shuvalov oversaw the preparation of relevant documents which had
not been available to previous historians and made sure that Voltaire was
provided with them. In his account of Peter’s reign, Voltaire duly flattered
Elizabeth, who was still on the throne when his first volume was published.
He refers, for example, to the gentleness (douceur) of Elizabeth’s rule and
in particular praises her abolition of capital punishment.51 More generally,
he compliments all four of the female sovereigns who followed Peter on the
throne: between them, he declared at the end of his second volume (published
after Elizabeth’s death), they had perfected what Peter had introduced.52
Peter, Voltaire stressed, was the founder and father of his empire.53 ‘Peter
was born’, Voltaire declared, ‘and Russia was formed’.54 The great influence
that Russia had acquired in European affairs by the time Voltaire was writing was due solely to Peter’s labours.55 He had created everything ab ovo.
And how many obstacles placed in his way by forces resistant to change
had Peter had to overcome in order to ensure that posterity would enjoy
the benefits he had wanted to bestow upon his subjects!56 (It did Peter no
harm, in Voltaire’s eyes, that he had brought the Church firmly under the
control of the state.) Russia’s laws, ‘police’ (by which Voltaire meant good
civil governance), politics, and military discipline, its marine, its commerce,
manufactures, sciences, and fine arts had all been fashioned in accordance
with Peter’s views.57 Voltaire admired Peter’s will, energy, persistence, and
curiosity, his interest in the civilizations beyond the borders of his domain,
and his consistent application of the principle of utility. He approved of
50 Before extending this invitation to Voltaire the Russian court had tended to look askance
at him, on account of critical remarks he had previously made about Russia and Peter. On the
way in which he came to be regarded as a potential ally rather than an intellectual foe, see
Rjéoutski, ‘Voltaire, Pierre le Grand, la cour de Russie et la presse francophone’. On Russian
hopes that Voltaire would produce a work that would show Peter and Russia in a favourable
light, see Mervaud’s introduction to Voltaire, Histoire de l’Empire de Russie, vol. 46, 117–119.
51 Voltaire, Histoire de l’Empire de Russie, vol. 47, 891; vol. 46, 574–575.
52 Ibidem, vol. 47, 940–941. The four empresses are Catherine I, Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine II.
53 Ibidem, 941.
54 Ibidem, vol. 46, 510.
55 Ibidem, 507.
56 Ibidem, vol. 47, 865–866.
57 Ibidem, 940.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Peter’s preference for simplicity rather than ostentation and his respect for
merit rather than lineage as a criterion for rewarding his subjects. Peter also
benefited, in Voltaire’s estimation, from comparison to his chief adversary,
Charles XII of Sweden, about whom Voltaire had already written another
history before he turned his attention to the Russian ruler.58 In sum, founders
of states which had long since been governed in a civilized way, Voltaire
proclaimed in a concluding eulogy, should say:
‘If in the icy climes of ancient Scythia a man assisted by nothing more
than his own genius has done such great things, what must we do in
kingdoms where works accumulated over centuries have made everything
so easy for us?’59

Voltaire thus countered the long-held western perception of Russia as a
country of ‘infinite brutality’, a ‘rude and barbarous kingdom’.60
What, then, was there for Russians not to like in Voltaire’s History? Voltaire
– like Prokopovich in his oration at Peter’s funeral61 – treated Peter as having
wrought a complete transformation. By arguing in his preface that ‘laws,
manners, and arts’ were novelties in Russia,62 he was implicitly disparaging
the pre-Petrine past. Before Peter, Voltaire asserts, there was more of Asia
than of Christian Europe about Russian customs, clothes, and mores.63
Furthermore, great as Peter was (as Voltaire’s title suggests), he was prone
to barbarity. Indeed, it was perhaps because he was so far removed from
the more ‘effeminate’ mores of contemporary France, Voltaire mused, that
Peter excited western curiosity.64 Thus the History, despite the intentions of
those who had commissioned it, did not entirely dispel the negative western
stereotype of Russia, even though Voltaire found mitigating circumstances
for some of Peter’s cruelties, as when he argued, for example, that exemplary
harshness may seem necessary in certain times and places if the law is to be
upheld.65 To Russian writers of the age of Catherine, who knew the History
58 Voltaire, Histoire de Charles XII.
59 Voltaire, Histoire de l’Empire de Russie, vol. 47, 942.
60 See Mervaud and Roberti, Une infinie brutalité; Berry and Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous
Kingdom.
61 ‘Slovo na pogrebenie vsepresvetleishego derzhavneishego Petra Velikogo, imperatora i
samoderzhtsa vserossiiskogo […]’, in Prokopovich, Sochinenia, 126–129.
62 Voltaire, Histoire de l’Empire de Russie, vol. 46, 414.
63 Ibidem, 489.
64 Ibidem, vol. 47, 792.
65 Ibidem, 934–935.

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and other foreign writings that were more critical of Russia, Voltaire’s book
could therefore be construed as a confirmation of Russia’s fundamental
inferiority. The mental reconfiguration of the European landscape during
the Enlightenment, as space divided into East and West rather than North
and South, tended to aggravate such impressions by enhancing the status
of the West, especially France, and confirming the definitive quality of the
‘occidental’ world.66 Russians, therefore, could not afford to slacken their
efforts to persuade the European reading public of the merits of the emergent
power on the continent’s eastern periphery. On the contrary, they needed to
intensify those efforts, and this they proved well able to do during the reign
of Catherine II, using the international language of the Republic of Letters,
in which many more of them were now becoming proficient.

Cultural propaganda in French in the age of Catherine
The decision taken at the end of the reign of Elizabeth to turn to Voltaire may
indicate that the Russian court realized that the Francophone writers who
were close to Ivan Shuvalov, being little known in the Republic of Letters,
would not be capable of broadcasting St Petersburg’s views throughout
Europe.67 Nor could the Caméléon littéraire, the only Francophone journal in
St Petersburg, reach a large potential readership outside Russia, even though
it was supported by Shuvalov. A more ambitious propagandistic strategy
would be needed. An early sign of the use of such a strategy, perhaps, was the
appearance, in 1760, of an article entitled ‘The Letter of a Young Russian Lord’
in L’Année littéraire (The Year in Literature), a Parisian literary periodical
founded by Abbé Élie Fréron. This article, which was probably written
by Andrei Shuvalov, the son of Ivan’s cousin Petr Shuvalov, dealt with the
progress of Russian literature and spoke of Lomonosov and Sumarokov, the
two most prominent Russian men of letters at that time.68 The publication
of this ‘letter’ also attested to the existence of new networks that had been
66 On the views of French writers on Russia and its history, see Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe,
and Mezin, Vzgliad iz Evropy.
67 The writers in question included the Chevalier Jean Desessart (the author of a polemical
manuscript ‘Voyageur moscovite’ cited in n. 5 above) and the Chevalier Charles-Louis-Philippe
Mainvillier (author of the Pétréade, ou Pierre le créateur (1762, 1763)), as well as Tschudy (who
was probably the author of three short polemical works eventually published in 1964, beginning
with ‘l’Apothéose de Pierre le Grand’, as well as the editor of the Caméléon littéraire).
68 ‘Lettre d’un jeune Seigneur russe’, in Année littéraire, vol. 5 (1760), 194–203 (vol. 7, 415–417
in the Slatkine reprint we have cited in our bibliography).

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The French L anguage in Russia

established as relations between St Petersburg and Paris became closer
during the Seven Years’ War, when France, having concluded an alliance
with Austria in 1756, was seeking Russia’s support as well. The Chevalier
d’Éon de Beaumont, who travelled to St Petersburg in 1757 as secretary to
the French diplomat Chevalier Douglas, was an associate of Fréron. D’Éon
approached several Russian aristocrats, members of families whom we
have identified as constituting a ‘French party’ in Russia. (In his letters, he
mentions Ivan Shuvalov, Count Mikhail Vorontsov (the vice-chancellor of
the empire), Vorontsov’s niece Ekaterina (the future Princess Dashkova),
and others.) Douglas initiated a literary correspondence with Paris to amuse
the Russian court, which was bored, so d’Éon said. No doubt it was through
d’Éon that Fréron received much of his material on Russia. Publication of
this material helped Fréron, who was loyal to the French government, to
flatter Russian vanity at the moment when France was urging Russia to
become an ally.69
The Russian attempt begun under Peter the Great and continued under
Elizabeth to develop a network of sympathetic foreign contacts and to
influence European opinion in Russia’s favour was intensified by Catherine
II. The new empress was adept at developing relationships with men who
were eminent in the western cultural and intellectual world, such as Grimm,
Voltaire, and Diderot. Like Elizabeth’s courtiers, she was also alive to ways
in which the press could be used and she often exploited it to promote her
achievements and outlook. News of the coup that she carried out when
she deposed her husband, Peter III, for example, soon reached the Journal
encyclopédique, probably through François-Pierre Pictet, who had become
close to Catherine and served as a link to Voltaire, who may in turn have
informed the Journal. The news quickly spread in the western press, appearing in the Gazette d’Utrecht (Utrecht Gazette), among other papers.70 From
the opening days of her reign, such connections helped to win Catherine
glowing tributes: ‘the Russian throne’, we read in the Journal encyclopédique
in 1762, for instance, ‘is today occupied by a Sovereign whom Kings should
take as their model’.71 In the following section of this chapter, we shall
explore the continuing use of the Francophone press as a medium for Russian
propaganda during Catherine’s reign and beyond. We shall then discuss
69 Stroev, ‘Zashchita i proslavlenie Rossii’. Material on Russia also helped Fréron to compete
with a rival publication, the Journal encyclopédique ou universel, which inclined towards the
philosophes.
70 On this story, see Hans, ‘François Pierre Pictet’.
71 Journal encyclopédique, 1762, vol. 7, pt 3, November, 130.

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the use of translation of Russian texts into French (including texts written
by Catherine or representing her views) as a further means of burnishing
Russia’s image. First, though, we should dwell on Catherine’s ability to
stage spectacular propaganda coups and to publicize and win plaudits for
her achievements. Mention should also be made of her own contribution,
in French, to the polemical literature written in defence of Russia against
the nation’s foreign critics.72
The history of what we should now call the ‘media coverage’ of Catherine’s
purchase of Diderot’s library in 1765 shows the extent of the networks that
could be used to transmit information about the actions of the new Russian empress.73 In March that year, Betskoi sent a positive response to a
suggestion that had been made by Grimm on the advice of the Russian
ambassador in France: the Russian court would buy the library from Diderot,
who at that time was in financial difficulty. On 15 April, Betskoi’s letter was
already being reproduced in Grimm’s cultural newsletter Correspondance
littéraire (Literary Correspondence). On 20 April, the news was announced
in Nouvelles à la main (News by Hand), a news-sheet produced by the art
critic and anecdotist Louis Petit de Bachaumont. By the end of the month,
the Journal des dames (Ladies’ Journal, published in Paris) and the Courrier
d’Avignon (Avignon Courier) were talking about it too. In the latter periodical,
the news was preceded by the following eulogy: ‘The Empress of Russia is
fostering and cultivating in her States the taste for literature that Peter the
Great introduced there together with all the other tastes of polite nations’.74
This publicity redounded to the credit of the empress, of course. Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert, the poet
and dramatist Claude-Joseph Dorat, and others quickly learned the news
about Catherine’s purchase of Diderot’s library and hastened also to praise
Catherine. Thus, Baron d’Holbach wrote to one of his correspondents: ‘By
this act, as delicate as it is generous, you see that there is a nobler way of
thinking in Tartary than there is in France’.75 Dorat wrote an epistle to
Catherine, probably at Grimm’s suggestion,76 and this epistle was published
in Grimm’s Correspondance littéraire, reproduced in the Année littéraire,
72 On the various ways in which Russia’s merits were presented, see Lortholary, Le mirage
russe au XVIIIe siècle (1951). See also the reconsideration of Lortholary’s views by Sergueï Karp
and Larry Wolff in their critically revised edition of Le mirage russe au XVIIIe siècle.
73 Desné, ‘Quand Catherine II achetait la bibliothèque de Diderot’.
74 Le Courrier d’Avignon, no. 35, 142; quoted from Desné, ‘Quand Catherine II achetait la
bibliothèque de Diderot’, 76.
75 Desné, ‘Quand Catherine II achetait la bibliothèque de Diderot’, 75.
76 Ibidem, 82–83.

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The French L anguage in Russia

and then partially reproduced and commented upon in L’Avant-coureur
(The Harbinger, published in Paris) at the end of July and Le Journal des
Dames in August. An epistle by Pierre Légier to Diderot, which also sang
Catherine’s praises, appeared in Grimm’s Correspondance littéraire in May,
was partially reproduced in Le Mercure historique et politique in July, came
out in a separate edition that was reviewed in Le Journal des dames in August,
was reproduced yet again in August by La Gazette littéraire de l’Europe (The
Literary Gazette of Europe, published in Amsterdam), and was reissued in
L’Avant-coureur in September. Bachaumont also lauded Catherine:
This modern Semiramis does not confine her views to the wisest administration […] she also busies herself every day with what may make her
famous and dear to people of letters; [she] holds out to foreign powers
the beneficent hand which makes her adored in our time.77

Thus an episode in a private life, as Roland Desné has observed, was transformed into a national and a European event.78 It is almost as if news of
Catherine’s purchase spread by itself through the intellectual and journalistic
networks of the Enlightenment, and up to a point it did, for the event was
an out-of-the ordinary act of patronage which caused astonishment and
admiration, but we should not forget the central role of Catherine’s confidant
Grimm and his Correspondance littéraire in this media coup. Over many
years, Diderot, Jean-François de La Harpe, Jean-François Marmontel, and
Voltaire, as well as Grimm, maintained the interest of the Francophone
European public in Russia, working with Russian diplomats to provide
Catherine with what Georges Dulac has called an effective ‘press service’.79
And yet, foreign public opinion could not always be relied upon to take a
sympathetic view of Russia. Alongside admiration of the policies conducted
by the Russian empress, prejudices persisted that had originated in the
accounts of western travellers who had observed sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Muscovy. A controversy over an entry entitled ‘Knout or Knut’ in
the Encyclopédie is illuminating in this respect, as Michel Mervaud has
shown. Relying on outdated information drawn from Adam Olearius or
John Perry, the author of the entry stated that whipping with the knout was
‘by no means considered dishonourable’ in Russia. A Russian deputy who
served on Catherine’s Legislative Commission reacted angrily to this entry
77 Quoted by Desné, ibidem, 76–77.
78 Ibidem, 93.
79 Dulac, ‘L’image de la Russie dans les gazettes’, 86.

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by publishing in the Journal encyclopédique a refutation of the Frenchman’s
remark that this punishment was not ignominious.80 Nonetheless, the
same Journal encyclopédique, despite its association with Diderot and the
philosophes and despite the fact that it was not normally hostile to Russia,
soon repeated outdated stereotypes in a review of A Journey to Siberia, a
highly unflattering depiction of Russia by the French astronomer Abbé
Chappe d’Auteroche.81 Chappe’s three-volume work was published in 1768,
six years after the completion of a journey Chappe had made to Tobol’sk, in
Siberia, on behalf of the French Academy of Sciences, in order to observe
the transit of Venus on 6 June 1761.82
Catherine herself entered the polemical fray in an Antidote to Chappe’s
Journey written in French and published anonymously in 1770. Described
on its title-page as ‘an enquiry into the merits of a book, entitled A Journey
to Siberia, made in 1761 in obedience to an order of the French King’, the
Antidote was an indigestible running commentary on Chappe’s impressions
of Russian manners and customs and the state of the Russian Empire.83
Quoting from Chappe’s book at length and appealing to the judgement of
the impartial reader, Catherine makes observations on Chappe’s remarks
on numerous subjects from Russia’s history, geography, religion, education,
80 This ‘Lettre d’un Russe’ was published in the Journal encyclopédique on 15 September 1773:
see Mervaud, ‘Le knout et l’honneur des Russes’, 115.
81 Journal encyclopédique, October 1770, vol. 7, 41–54.
82 Chappe, Voyage en Sibérie fait par ordre du roi en 1761. For the text of this work, see Mervaud’s
edition (2004), vol. 2; for a discussion of Chappe’s critical account of Russia, see Mervaud’s
introduction to vol. 1 of this edition, 49–79. Chappe’s Journey is another landmark in the tradition,
which stretches back at least as far as Herberstein and Fletcher, of negative accounts of Russia
written by foreign visitors to the country. The tradition did not cease with the reforms of Peter
the Great. Notable post-Petrine examples that precede Chappe’s Journey include Locatelli’s
Muscovite Letters (Lettres moscovites, 1736) and Gmelin’s Journey through Siberia (Reise durch
Sibirien, 1752–1753).
83 Antidote, ou examen du mauvais livre superbement imprimé intitulé: Voyage en Sibérie, fait
par ordre du Roi en 1761 […]. The work was first published in two parts, of 230 pages each, with no
indication of the place of publication. It was republished in Amsterdam by Marc-Michel Rey in
1771–1772. A free English translation done by ‘a lady’ appeared in London in 1772. For substantial
discussions of the work, see especially Levitt, ‘An Antidote to Nervous Juice’, and Mervaud’s
introductory essay in vol. 1 of his edition of Chappe d’Auteroche, Voyage en Sibèrie, 86–99. The
Antidote is anonymous but has commonly been attributed to Catherine, for example by the late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian scholar Aleksandr Pypin, who edited Catherine’s
writings, and very recently by Grechanaia (Kogda Rossiia govorila po-frantsuzski, 117), though
often with the qualification that Catherine no doubt had one or more collaborators (Dashkova
and various members of the Shuvalov clan, especially Andrei, are sometimes mentioned in this
connection). On Catherine’s probable contribution to the Antidote, see Mervaud’s introduction,
87–92.

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arts, sciences, laws, penal system, and customs to its wedding ceremonies,
dining habits, foodstuffs, vodka distilleries, bath-houses, cattle, game,
fish, and other wild life. In her often sarcastic and acrimonious rebuttal,
she attempts to portray Chappe as an observer who is both malicious and
ignorant of Russian history, religious practice, and custom, not to mention
the Russian language, and who therefore should not be believed on any score.
His account, Catherine argues, is riddled with inaccuracies, contradictions,
examples of faulty reasoning, and downright lies. It is also flawed by Chappe’s
fondness for generalization on the basis of individual cases.84 So offended is
Catherine at Chappe’s perception of her realm that she stoops to personal
vilification, declaring – even though Chappe had died by the time the
Antidote was ready for publication – that he is either a ne’er-do-well or a
liar.85 ‘Since, Mr Deceased, you treat us as outright animals’, she fulminates
at one point, ‘I think I am entitled to tell you that during your lifetime you
yourself were in truth a beast’.86
Catherine was incensed, to be sure, by the ingratitude of a visitor who
had vilified an entire nation in spite of the fact that he had been afforded
the assistance he needed in order to travel to the remote site where he was
able to make his astronomical observations.87 No doubt what particularly
provoked Catherine, though, was the threat that Chappe’s account posed to
the image of Russia as a now civilized European power and to Catherine’s
own attempt to present herself on the European stage as an exemplar of the
modern enlightened monarch. She is exercised by Chappe’s argument (which
is reminiscent of Fletcher’s almost two centuries earlier) that despotism
makes a people servile and deprives them of initiative and creativity. The
oppressive nature of the Russian government, Chappe alleges, has slowed
the introduction of European mores: the nobleman now has contact with
foreigners and access to European comforts, but his journeys to the West
have made him unhappier because they have enabled him to compare his
own condition with that of a free man.88 Catherine’s main line of defence
84 Catherine, Antidote, pt 2, 33.
85 Ibidem, 40.
86 Ibidem, 134.
87 Ibidem, 135, 149. Chappe’s criticisms of the political and social order of the Russian Empire
are concentrated in his chapters ‘Du gouvernement de Russie, depuis 861 jusqu’en 1767’ and
‘Des lois, des supplices et de l’exil’ (see Chappe d’Auteroche, Voyage en Sibérie, vol. 2, 336–353
and 443–457 respectively). For discussion of Chappe’s critique of the perceived despotism of
the regime, the harshness of the penal system, and the servility of the population and possible
explanations for it, see Mervaud’s introduction, ibidem, vol. 1, 70–77.
88 Catherine, Antidote, pt 2, 82.

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415

against this charge is to point proudly to her own attempts to improve the
nation’s laws and morals. No matter what Chappe might say, she argues in
an injured tone,
we are not, and shall not be, cruel or barbarous. Our actions every day are
and will be the best way of contradicting him. […] We are far from being
crushed by an iron sceptre; which modern nation may boast of having
been summoned as a body to compose its laws? Our mores are not steadily
growing worse, public and private education is improving day by day.89

She holds up her own Instruction as the strongest evidence that her government encourages intelligence, talent, feeling, and the development of society,
the existence of which is demonstrated, even in the provinces, by the merry
amusements to which her nobles give themselves up.90
References to warfare in the Antidote may betray a feeling that Russia’s military power, as well as the development of its social life, entitled
the Russian Empire to more respectful attention. For example, Catherine
invoked martial prowess – as it was being displayed in the first of her RussoTurkish wars, which was in progress when the Antidote was published – to
rebut Chappe’s charge that the oppressed Russian peasant was timid and
pusillanimous.91 Most importantly, she takes pains to answer Chappe’s
disparaging comments about Russians’ supposed want of originality (though
her argument is not elegantly made):
He absolutely wants to make imitators of us, and he is not the only one;
a great deal of trouble has already been taken before him to make an
imitative people out of a people who are more original than many others who claim to teach all the others whilst they haven’t ever invented
anything themselves.92

Russians must indeed study the moral virtues, Catherine continues, but once
they have absorbed them they will be free to adopt the tone that suits them
and go beyond what they have borrowed.93 A patriotic movement will unfold,
89 Ibidem, 135–136. Catherine is alluding in this passage to her convocation of a Legislative
Commission in 1767.
90 Ibidem, 206–207, 88–89; see also 120.
91 Ibidem, 123; see also 83–84.
92 Ibidem, 203. On Russian sensitivity to the charge of imitativeness, see especially the section
on comic drama in Chapter 8 below.
93 Ibidem.

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The French L anguage in Russia

she predicts, ‘a competition to equal and surpass other nations’, which, given
their diligence, love of labour, and disposition, will take the Russians far, for
few other nations can boast such a quick understanding.94 Thus Catherine,
resentful at Chappe’s air of cultural superiority, defends her empire in a way
which transforms a European discourse about Russian imitativeness into the
beginnings of a Russian discourse about catching up and overtaking powers
that have previously been perceived as more advanced. She accordingly
sounds a prophetic note: having made such great strides in seventy years
(that is to say from the beginning of the reign of Peter the Great), Russia may
expect to fulfil a great destiny by the time another seventy have passed.95
At one level, Catherine’s Antidote is a highly personal document, in which
she abuses her opponent and implicitly defends her own reputation. At the
same time, her exchange with Chappe in the language of international
diplomacy is an example of the conduct of cultural politics at the highest
level. Chappe’s Journey to Siberia, Marcus Levitt has argued, should be seen
in the context of France’s covert anti-Russian foreign policy in the 1760s, and
may even have been officially commissioned to support this policy. More
generally, the Journey exemplifies the treatment of Russia as in some way
problematic in the mental landscape of the Enlightenment. It amounted
to a repudiation of the Voltairean view of post-Petrine Russia, which was
broadly supported by Voltaire’s fellow encyclopaedists d’Alembert, Diderot,
and Grimm, and others such as the sculptor Étienne-Maurice Falconet, La
Harpe, the historian Pierre-Charles Levesque, de Ligne, and Marmontel.
It seemed instead to be an endorsement of the view of Peter as a despot
and imitator that derived from the treatment of Russia in Montesquieu’s
magnum opus On the Spirit of the Laws and Rousseau’s recently published
Social Contract (1762), a view to which other men of letters, including the
Abbés Condillac, Mably, and Raynal, also inclined.96 We should add, finally,
that Chappe’s work was anachronistic: although Catherine had been on the
throne for nearly six years when it was published, it was based on observation
of Russia in the preceding reigns of Elizabeth and Peter III.97 The Journey
to Siberia therefore required a substantial and authoritative riposte, and
that is what Catherine set out to provide, although the Antidote’s chances
of success were limited by the fact that royal decorum required anonymity.
94 Ibidem, 214.
95 Ibidem, 218–219.
96 Levitt, ‘An Antidote to Nervous Juice’, 49–52; see also 59, n. 7, for a useful summary of the
literature (up until 1998) on Enlightenment debate about Russia.
97 Ibidem, 55.

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417

Russian use of the Francophone press in the age of Catherine and
beyond
Some European states were understandably discomfited by the weight
that Russia carried in European affairs under Catherine II, which made it
a power to be reckoned with, feared even. It is therefore unsurprising that
polemical combat with Russia became particularly intense, as Georges
Dulac has shown, in the 1770s, when the first of Catherine’s Russo-Turkish
Wars, the Pugachev revolt, and the first partition of Poland all took place.
The fact that sovereigns and politicians, including Catherine herself, actually read such polemics made these texts all the more important. Indeed,
what was written about a country in the press might even have financial
consequences: it was not by chance that Dutch bankers regarded Russia as
unstable, which made it difficult for the country to borrow the capital it so
badly needed during its war with Turkey.98
Consequently, the Russian court and its supporters needed to continue to
make – or indeed, to intensify – efforts of the sort made in the first half of
the eighteenth century to influence the foreign press and mould European
opinion. While anti-Russian propaganda supported by the French government
was at its height, the Russian envoy at The Hague, Prince Dmitrii Alekseevich
Golitsyn, approached Jean Manzon’s Courrier du Bas-Rhin (The Courier of
the Lower Rhine, published in Cleves), which had been founded in 1767,
and succeeded in persuading it to take a favourable – sometimes extremely
favourable – view of Russia. The pages of this periodical came to be filled with
accounts of sumptuous occasions at the court in St Petersburg, Catherine’s
educational institutions, such as the Noble Land Cadet Corps and the Smolny
Institute, and the statue to Peter the Great that Catherine had had Falconet
erect on the bank of the River Neva in St Petersburg. The cumulative effect of
such articles, Georges Dulac has observed, was to produce ‘a seductive image
which seemed designed to correct or offset the very dark representation of
the country proffered by hostile papers, whose palette was usually very close
to that cherished by French diplomats in St Petersburg’.99
Golitsyn also approached contacts on two French-language newspapers
produced in Zweibrücken, and spoke in his diplomatic correspondence of
the pleasure it would have afforded him ‘to see their political paper give
nothing but reliable news on current events and the works of our august
empress; and [to see] the literary [paper] make known the extent to which
98 Dulac, ‘L’image de la Russie dans les gazettes’, 73.
99 Ibidem, 76.

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The French L anguage in Russia

letters have been cultivated under her protection’.100 In this respect, though,
he was unsuccessful, for the Gazette des Deux-Ponts (Zweibrücken Gazette)
was subject to French influence. Thus, a few months before the victorious
peace of Kuchuk-Kainarji that Russia concluded with Turkey in 1774, the
Gazette belittled the achievements of the Russian army, taking a position very
similar to that adopted at this time by Durand de Distroff, France’s diplomatic
representative in St Petersburg. Meanwhile, the Gazette de France (French
Gazette) was persuaded by the Duc Étienne-François de Choiseul to publish
news of the same tenor, which incurred the displeasure of the Russian chargé
d’affaires in France, Nikolai Khotinskii, who accused the French press of using
every means it could to support the Turks against Russia.101 Other subjects
covered in the Gazette des Deux-Ponts included the successes of Pugachev,
censorship in Russia, Polish affairs, the colonies of German settlers on the
Volga, and Catherine’s legislative endeavours.102 If the general tone of reporting
about Russia in the Gazette des Deux-Ponts was negative, nevertheless it
did sometimes contain perceptive analyses of Catherine’s initiatives which
went beyond the clichés of propaganda.103 In any case, as Georges Dulac has
noted, the successes of the Russian armies, the expeditions organized by the
Academy of Sciences, Catherine’s legislation – none of this subject-matter
lent itself to negative interpretation. Journalists had to satisfy the curiosity
of a public which was increasingly eager for news about Russia, and
the most striking information [the public] could be offered generally concerned facts which ‘dazzled’ the foreigner, as diplomats noted resentfully,
because those facts offered, besides the attraction of novelty, a breadth of
perspective that was not to be found in much other news in the West.104

It is worth adding that Russian academic affairs continued to attract the
attention of European journalists. The mathematician and astronomer
Johann Albrecht Euler, the son of Leonhard, corresponded regularly with
Formey, his uncle, keeping open a channel for academic information from
St Petersburg, and numerous publications about the Imperial Academy
still appeared in Francophone periodicals published in the German lands,
including the Gazette universelle de littérature at Zweibrücken.105
100
101
102
103
104
105

Quoted from Dulac, ibidem, 74.
Mitrofanov et al., ‘Russkaia ugroza vo frantsuzskoi presse’, 346.
Dulac, ‘L’image de la Russie dans les gazettes’, 75–76; see also idem, ‘Gazettes sous influence’.
Quoted from Dulac, ‘L’image de la Russie dans les gazettes’, 81.
Ibidem, 85.
Ibidem, 86.

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Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the stock of journalistic contacts sympathetic to Russia was replenished by refugees from revolutionary
France, some of whom founded periodicals of their own in the German states.
The Marquis Henri Joseph de Lambert, an agent of Catherine, considered
the possibility of setting up an émigré newspaper in Brunswick with Jacques
Mallet du Pan and Jean-Joseph Mounier as its editors. Eventually, in 1797, Le
Spectateur du Nord (The Spectator of the North) was founded in Hamburg.
The Francophone periodicals of Brunswick and Hamburg, including Le
Spectateur, published information on Russian monarchs (Peter the Great,
Peter III, Catherine II, and Paul), life at the imperial court, the success of
Russian arms under the leadership of Aleksandr Suvorov, and Russian
literature (Karamzin was emerging as a promising man of letters in the
1790s106). They also contained reviews of works devoted to Russia. The
people behind the Spectateur du Nord (the royalist Louis Dubois-Descours,
Marquis de la Maisonfort, Amable de Baudus, Pierre-François Fauche) all
had connections with Russian officials, especially the Russian minister in
Hamburg, Ivan Murav’ev-Apostol. The same Murav’ev-Apostol intervened
when the Hamburg Senate banned another émigré periodical Le Censeur,
journal politique et littéraire (The Censor, a Political and Literary Journal,
founded in Hamburg in 1800) and imprisoned its editor Bertin d’Antilly,
who was released thanks to this Russian support. It is not surprising that
several contributors to these émigré periodicals, such as de La Maisonfort
and Germain-Hyacinthe de Romance, Marquis de Mesmon, were subsequently welcomed in Russia. The latter, who was himself freed from prison
in Hamburg by his Russian protectors, duly became a state councillor and
Commander of the Order of St Anne in Russia, was employed by the Ministry
of Public Education, and served as editor of the Journal du Nord (Journal of
the North, founded in 1807 and published in St Petersburg), the periodical
of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.107
As for the Russian subjects who entered into contact with journalists on
European periodicals, not all of them could be described as officials and
not all initiatives of this kind can be explained as the result of pressure
coming from the authorities in St Petersburg. Scholars pursued the interests
of their corporation, men of letters tried to promote their works, and noble
travellers their ideas. Nonetheless, the initiatives we have described had
a certain similarity: all of them took place against the background of a
106 On Karamzin’s own contribution to this periodical, see the following section of this chapter.
107 On these and other émigré journals and their links to Russia, see Somov, ‘La Russie dans la
presse des émigrés’.

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The French L anguage in Russia

concerted attempt to win recognition across Europe for Russian merits,
and not just the merits of individual authors but of Russian society and
culture more generally.
The European Francophone press may have been the most effective
journalistic channel through which to defend Russian points of view and improve the empire’s image beyond its borders, but Russia’s own Francophone
press developed too after the end of the reign of Elizabeth. New periodicals
in French sprang up after the closure of Tschudy’s Caméléon littéraire in
December 1755: the Journal des sciences et des arts (Journal of Sciences and
Fine Arts, 1761–1762), edited by Philippe Hernandez in Moscow; the Boussole
de Terre (The Compass, 1770), set up in St Petersburg by Nicolas-Gabriel
Clerc, whom we have already encountered in his capacity as director of
studies at the Noble Land Cadet Corps; Le Mercure de Russie (The Russian
Mercury, published in St Petersburg in 1786), edited by Timoléon-Alphonse
Gallien, known as Gallien de Salmorenc, a former secretary to Voltaire and
a professor at the Cadet Corps; Le Journal littéraire de Saint-Pétersbourg
(The St Petersburg Literary Journal, 1798–1800), edited by Marie Joseph
Hyacinthe, Chevalier de Gaston; and other periodicals of less importance.
The Mercure de Russie in particular followed the example of the Caméléon
littéraire, showing how an apparently independent periodical could be
enlisted to support the cultural and ideological programme of the Russian
court. The Mercure immediately announced its intention to
enable people to see how much progress education has made in Russia
over the last thirty years and how much better it is than the education of
several peoples who, although they are very enlightened, have not been
able, or have not dared, to banish old methods, which in their lands will
always be opposed to the progress of the human Spirit.108

In the same vein, the editor praised the religious tolerance that prevailed
in Russia, he believed, describing a dinner that Catherine had arranged to
bring together representatives of all the confessions of the empire:
This meal, which does humanity so much honour, where universal Tolerance
presided, might pass as unbelievable in some of Europe’s southern countries,
had it not been witnessed by all of the North. It was Catherine’s destiny to
perform such a miracle and to force Communions that have hitherto been
108 Le Mercure de Russie, 1786, January and February, 108. On the Mercure de Russie, see especially
Kobeko, ‘Frantsuzskii zhurnal v S.-Peterburge’.

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421

so divided to join together to bless the most just, the most enlightened,
the most humane, and the most glorious Reign that there has ever been.109

Salmorenc also made every effort to promote Russian literature in his journal
– something that Tschudy had found it very difficult to do some thirty years
before, because he knew of hardly any works of Russian literature other, perhaps,
than those of Lomonosov and Sumarokov. ‘Before the reign of Peter the Great,
which unravelled everything’, we read in another number of the periodical,
there was nothing, with regard to Belles Lettres, that was worthy of
attention [in Russia]. […] The Russian Nation, endowed with the most
astonishing aptitudes, but so late to receive Enlightenment, which has
been shining only for a short while, has advanced with Giant strides to
Close so quickly the immense gap that separated it from nations that had
become civilized such a long time before it.110

To substantiate his point about the birth of modern Russian literature,
Salmorenc published in French translation several of Prokopovich’s works.
He created a rubric ‘Literary History of Russia’ in the Mercure, which in itself
amounted to a statement of a sort. He printed announcements about new
Russian plays, including Catherine’s recent comedy The Impostor.111 By also
analyzing a French translation of this play, he managed to underline the
point that literary works being produced by Russians were worthy not only
of the attention of a cultured domestic public but also of foreign lovers of
literature who did not have Russian.112 Nor did he overlook Russian academic
and scientific life. The Mercure announced competitions advertised by the St
Petersburg Academy of Sciences alongside news of the competitions of other
European academies, such as the Académie Française, The Royal Society of
Sciences in Göttingen, and the Royal Society in London.113 Salmorenc thus
created the impression of a continuous cultural space, without barriers, in
which Russia would henceforth occupy a prime place.
The propaganda published by this foreign adventurer on Russia’s behalf
had a blatantly sycophantic tone. In a contribution to the Mercure on ‘the
109 Le Mercure de Russie, 1786, January and February, 131–132.
110 Ibidem, March and April, 1786, 5–7.
111 Ibidem, 21–23. The play (Obmanshchik, also translated as The Deceiver) appeared anonymously,
but it was clear to the public that Catherine was its author. The Mercure also devoted an article
to discussion of the play’s premiere in St Petersburg (ibidem, 51–68).
112 Ibidem, 29, etc.
113 Ibidem, 43–44.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Progress of the Arts, Sciences, and Belles Lettres in Russia in the Reign of
Catherine II’, for example, we read the following panegyric to Catherine:
Tu sçais te partager entre Minerve et Mars;
et, ce qu’avec raison, toute l’Europe admire,
tout Art est citoien dans ton heureux Empire.
Le Russe excelle en tout, et son essor étonne.114
(You know how to divide yourself between Minerva and Mars; / and what
all Europe rightly admires, / [is that] all Art is a citizen in your happy Empire. / The Russian excels in everything, and his soaring flight astonishes.)

Similarly obsequious is an ode entitled ‘The Age of Catherine II’, in which
the poet lauds Catherine’s endeavours as a law-maker and her foreign policy,
especially her crusade against infidels.115 Like Tschudy, Salmorenc made
no attempt to conceal his indebtedness to highly placed persons whom he
flattered: it was clear that his periodical appeared ‘under the auspices of Their
Imperial Highnesses Alexander and Constantine, Grand Dukes of Russia’.
It is likely that the periodicals produced in eighteenth-century Russia
in French were aimed primarily at a national rather than an international
readership, including Russian subjects who had a better reading knowledge
of French than Russian or simply preferred to read French. At any rate, we
have no evidence to suggest that they were distributed outside the empire.
Even their readership inside Russia seems to have been quite small. We are
therefore inclined to think that the eighteenth-century Russian Francophone
press did not have a clearly defined propagandistic function. Nevertheless,
it was probably felt by the authorities to serve useful purposes. After all,
the idea that the publication of such periodicals was to give ‘pleasure’ to
the Russian people had already been put forward in the 1750s with respect
to Tschudy’s Caméléon littéraire by the then president of the Academy of
Sciences, albeit in quite vague terms.116 Moreover, the very existence of
periodicals in French enabled St Petersburg, where the majority of such
publications were based, to present itself as a European capital whose press
114 ‘Progrès des Arts, des Sciences, et des Belles Lettres en Russie, sous le Règne de Catherine
II’ (ibidem, 110–113 ; quotation on 110–111). The verses were written by a M. Clarmonse.
115 ‘Le Siècle de Catherine II’, Le Mercure de Russie, August 1786, 113–120. The author of this
ode was Gallien de Salmorenc himself. The title of the ode is a transparent allusion to Voltaire’s
Siècle de Louis XIV.
116 Popova, ‘Teodor-Genrikh Chudi i osnovannyi im v 1755 g. zhurnal “Le Caméléon littéraire”’,
24.

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used the language of Europe par excellence.117 Most importantly, these
periodicals, like the French theatre at court,118 may have helped to convince
the elite – who, together with foreigners living in Russia, were probably the
main readership targeted – that the Russian monarchy had a civilizing role
and that the elite did indeed have a European identity.
In the nineteenth century, direct connections between Francophone periodicals and the Russian authorities would become more typical than they were in
the eighteenth, even if it was not always acknowledged that such connections
existed. The Journal du Nord, for example, was set up in St Petersburg in 1807
by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to counter Napoleonic propaganda,
although it did not admit to being an official organ. In 1813, this periodical
became the Conservateur impartial (The Impartial Conservative) and passed
under the control of Count Sergei Uvarov, the future president of the Academy
of Sciences and minister of public education who was at that time the superintendent of the St Petersburg educational district. The Conservateur impartial
invariably supported Uvarov’s plans. Similarly, the Bulletin du Nord, journal
scientifique et littéraire (Bulletin of the North, a Scientific and Literary Journal,
which came out in Moscow in 1828–1829) was published under the protection of
a high-ranking official, the governor of Moscow, Prince Dmitrii Vladimirovich
Golitsyn. It published essays on ancient Russian history, translations of Russian
literature into French, and reports presented in Russian learned societies such
as the Imperial Society of Naturalists in Moscow, thus demonstrating the
‘progress of civilization’ in Russia.119
Not that all nineteenth-century Francophone periodicals produced in
Russia fulfilled such propagandistic functions. For example, the privately
published periodical Le Furet (The Ferret, 1829–1831), which subsequently
became Le Miroir (The Mirror, 1831–1833), served a more plainly cultural
purpose as a bridge between Russian readers and the French press and probably also as a source of information about Russia to Francophone foreigners
living there (Illustration 13). It accommodated selections of contemporary
117 It is worth noting, though, that the first regular Russian newspaper, which started to appear
under the name Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti in 1728, was never published in a French version,
although it did come out in German (which also for long remained an important language in
Russia for commercial purposes). We are grateful to Anthony Cross for drawing our attention
to these points.
118 On the court theatre, see the third section of Chapter 3 above.
119 See Rjéoutski and Speranskaia, ‘The Francophone Press in Russia’, 92–94. Dmitrii Golitsyn
was himself fluent in French and the brother of a ‘Franco-Russian’ writer, Prince Boris Golitsyn.
On the press in French published in Russia in the f irst third of the nineteenth century, see
Speranskaia, ‘Periodicheskie izdaniia na frantsuzskom iazyke v Rossii’.

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The French L anguage in Russia

French literature, including work by Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, and
Prosper Mérimée, articles from French periodicals, and critical essays by its
French editor, Charles de Saint-Julien (who would go on to take up a teaching
post at St Petersburg University). There were also translations of Russian
literary works and reviews of Russian books and theatre performances. The
periodical even included sketches on St Petersburg high society in which
members of the Russian beau monde were mocked for imitating the French
and reproved for their preference for the French language over Russian.120

The promotion and translation of Russian literature
In the Antidote to Chappe’s Journey to Siberia, Catherine explicitly referred
to the emergence of Russian belles-lettres, citing the works of Prokopovich,
Kantemir, Tatishchev, Trediakovskii, Lomonosov, and Sumarokov.121 In so
doing, as Marcus Levitt has pointed out, she linked state and literature,
‘whose fates were to be so closely intertwined in the later tradition, both
intellectually and institutionally’.122 At the same time, she was treating
the condition of the nation’s literature – its scale, aesthetic quality, and
vitality – as a measure of Russia’s cultural progress. In this respect, she was
following a practice that others had already begun and which later Russian
writers, also using French for this purpose, would continue to employ.
Andrei Shuvalov, for example, had advertised Russia’s cultural credentials
in his ‘Letter of a Young Russian Lord’, in which he praised Lomonosov for
revealing the ‘riches and beauties’ of the Russian language, and in an ‘Ode
on the Death of Mr Lomonosov of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences’
(1765).123 Kheraskov, the rector of Moscow University and a leading man
120 On this journal, see especially Rjéoutski and Speranskaia, ‘The Francophone Press in Russia’,
86–87, 89–90, 95, 97–98.
121 Catherine, Antidote, pt 2, 165.
122 Levitt, ‘An Antidote to Nervous Juice’, 50.
123 Shuvalov’s ‘Lettre d’un jeune Seigneur russe à M. De***’, published in Année Littéraire, vol.
7, 1760, is reprinted in the Slatkine Reprints published in Geneva, 1966, 94–95. For his ‘Ode sur la
mort de M. de Lomonosof de l’Académie des sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg’, see Sbornik materialov
dlia istorii Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk v XVIII veke, pt 1, 201–210, where the ode is published
(206–208) together with an introduction and some of Lomonosov’s own poetry. Only one copy of
the 1765 edition of Shuvalov’s ode on Lomonosov seems to have survived; it is kept in the Voltaire
library of the Russian National Library. Shuvalov ends his introduction with the hope that ‘on
aura de l’indulgence pour un homme qui écrit dans une langue étrangère’ (allowance will be
made for a man who is writing in a foreign language). See also Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia govorila
po-frantsuzski, 83–86. On Andrei Shuvalov, see Kobeko, ‘Graf Andrei Petrovich Shuvalov’.

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Illustration 13 The first page of a number of the literary and theatrical journal Le
Furet (The Ferret).

The periodical is held in the Russian National Library, who have kindly produced this image for us
to use.

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of letters in the age of Catherine, continued the practice in a Discourse on
Russian Poetry written in French for a foreign readership in 1772.124 (The
discourse was published together with a translation into French of a narrative
poem in five cantos that Kheraskov had written in 1771 to celebrate the
Russian naval victory at Çeşme in the first of the two Russo-Turkish Wars
fought in the reign of Catherine.125) Most notably, in 1797 Karamzin published
a ‘letter’ in Le Spectateur du Nord. In fact, Karamzin uses the greater part of
this quite long article to publicize a work of his own, The Letters of a Russian
Traveller, through paraphrase, quotation, and commentary.126 In the earlier
part of his ‘Letter to The Spectator’, though, he promotes Russian literature
more generally. His argument is twofold. First, the Russians have belonged
to European civilization since a time ‘well before’ the Petrine age, and
indeed they have long since exemplified the modern European sensibility.
Karamzin claims, for example, that the Russians have been cultivating
poetry for ‘two or three centuries’. They have ancient songs (chansons)
which provide simple but touching expressions of love and friendship and
in which there reigns a certain melancholy, ‘a sweet propensity for sadness’
which expresses ‘the character of our people’. The Russian people, according
to this characterization, are Sentimentalists avant la lettre. They also have
chivalric romances (romans), the heroes of which are mainly generals of
the Kievan Grand Prince Vladimir (Russia’s Charlemagne, Karamzin calls
him). There is a twelfth-century oral epic that can be compared, Karamzin
assures his readers, to the best pieces of Ossian.127 Secondly, the Russians
are a people no less gifted than others. Admittedly, they keenly felt their
inferiority after Peter the Great had torn down the curtain that separated
them from the West. They then proceeded to imitate foreigners in everything
from dress and mores to the arts, so that their literature became an ‘echo’
124 Kheraskov, ‘Discours sur la poésie russe’, translated into Russian as ‘Rassuzhdenie o
rossiiskom stikhotvorstve’ and published by P. Berkov in LN, vol. 9–10, 290–294.
125 Berkov’s introduction, ibidem, 287. The title of Kheraskov’s poem was ‘Chesmesskii boi’.
Berkov adds that the poem was also translated into German, in 1773.
126 Karamzin, ‘Lettre au Spectateur sur la littérature russe’. Karamzin does not reveal to readers
of The Spectator of the North that he himself was the author of these Letters, which arose out of
his extended journey to the West in 1789–1790. There is a large corpus of scholarship in English
on Karamzin’s Letters: see, e.g., the works by or chapters or parts of chapters in Cross (1971),
Hammarberg (1991), Schönle (2000), Dickinson (2006), and Kleespies (2012). See also Chapter 3
in Offord, Journeys to a Graveyard.
127 Karamzin, ‘Lettre au Spectateur sur la littérature russe’, 54–55. Karamzin is referring
here, when he mentions a Russian epic, to the ‘Lay of Igor’s Campaign’ (Slovo o polku igoreve),
which has generally been accepted as genuine, although some doubts have been raised about
its authenticity.

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and a ‘copy’ of those of the French and Germans.128 By the time Karamzin
was establishing himself as an author, at the end of the eighteenth century,
they had tried their hand at almost all the literary genres. They write only
in bursts, Karamzin ruefully acknowledges, perhaps because they receive
little encouragement and because they do not yet have a rigorous tradition of
literary criticism. Nonetheless, they show no lack of sensibility, imagination,
and talent.129 In sum, by addressing the educated European public in their
lingua franca, Karamzin makes an elegant claim, bolstered by the knowledge
and international literary connections of the anonymous author of The
Letters of a Russian Traveller, that Russia already deserves a place in the
European literary world.
However, there was a further means by which Russians could promote
their literary achievements to a European readership, besides making explicit
statements that had to be taken on trust. They could also try to raise Russia’s standing in Europe by translating examples of their writings, or by
encouraging translation of them. Catherine herself, of course, understood
the political value of broadcasting certain writings in the languages of the
West. Her Instruction to the delegates elected to her Legislative Commission
was aimed at an international readership as well as a domestic one. Written
in French, translated into Russian by Catherine’s secretary, Grigorii Kozitskii,
amended in the light of advisers’ suggestions, and then published in four
languages (French, German, Latin, and Russian), the Instruction proved that
the Russian sovereign was conversant with the political and legal thought of
the Enlightenment, particularly the ideas of Montesquieu and Beccaria.130
She also quickly secured the translation of her anti-Masonic plays into
French (and German), intending them as a message to European Masons
as a whole as well as to Russian Masons.131 Betskoi’s Plans and Statutes of
the educational institutions established by Catherine were translated into
French too, by Nicolas-Gabriel Clerc, and published with the assistance of
the sympathetic Diderot.132 Above all, it was important to have belles-lettres
translated, because the flowering of the arts, as we have already noted, was
considered a mark of civilization. After all, peoples who had not cultivated
128 Ibidem, 56.
129 Ibidem, 57.
130 Nakaz Komissii o sostavlenii proekta novogo ulozheniia. For an English version with a useful
introduction, see the edition by Dukes, Catherine the Great’s Instruction (Nakaz) to the Legislative
Commission, 1767.
131 Hamburg, Russia’s Path toward Enlightenment, 623.
132 Betzky [Betskoi], Les plans et les statuts des différents établissements ordonnés par Sa Majesté
impériale Catherine II.

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the arts, Voltaire had warned, were destined to be unknown.133 We shall
therefore dwell here on a few examples of attempts to represent Russia to
a foreign public, and to raise its standing in western eyes, through literary
translation.134 In the process, we shall point out what role the government,
or people close to it, played in initiating or executing translations, in order
to demonstrate that translating was not always undertaken entirely on the
initiative of individuals; on the contrary, in some cases translation amounted
to the implementation of a language policy in line with the official Russian
foreign policy of the time.
One of the first Russians to encourage and engage in literary translation
was Kantemir, whom we have already encountered as a diplomat of the 1730s
and 1740s. Kantemir translated various works from foreign languages into
Russian, including Fontenelle’s Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds.135
Most importantly from our present point of view, Kantemir – as a poet and
one of the first Russian subjects to produce Russian literary works couched in
secular western genres – aspired to make his own works known in European
literary circles, an ambition that could only be realized through translation.
His knowledge of French was evidently not such that he could translate his
satires into French himself, but it did prove possible – Helmut Grasshoff
has argued – eventually to produce a French prose edition via an Italian
version done by Princes Aleksandr and Vladimir Dolgorukii.136 From this
French edition, a German verse translation was also made, and published in
1752.137 The prominent German writer and literary critic Johann Christoph
Gottsched wrote sympathetic reviews of both these editions of Kantemir’s
Satires.138 Although Kantemir was Russian by adoption, his writings, his
133 Voltaire, Histoire de l’Empire de Russie, vol. 46, 468.
134 French was Russians’ principal target language, although a significant number of works were
translated into German too. French also served as the main intermediary language, for instance,
for British readers who wanted to familiarize themselves with works of Russian literature: see
Alekseev, Russko-angliiskie literaturnye sviazi, 116.
135 i.e. Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, translated by Kantemir as Razgovory o mnozhestve
mirov gospodina Fontenelia parizhskoi akademii nauk sekretaria (1730; it was not until 1740,
though, that Kantemir’s translation was published, by the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences).
136 [Cantemir], Satyres du Prince Cantemir. See Grasskhoff, ‘Pervye perevody satir A.D. Kantemira’
103–105. The translation from Italian into French was published in 1749, after Kantemir’s death.
It was done, Grasshoff contends, by the Italian priest Guasco with the help of a Russian diplomat
based in Paris, Heinrich Gross. Nikolai Kopanev, taking Grasshoff’s work into account, argues that
the French translation was done by Gross: Kopanev, ‘O pervykh izdaniiakh satir A. Kantemira’,
150.
137 Kantemir, Heinrich Eberhards Freyherrn von Spilcker […].
138 Das Neueste aus der anmuthigen Gelehrsamkeit, 1751, 259–261 (followed by the German translation of one of the satires, on 261–266), and 1752, 503–511 (followed by the German translation of

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acquaintances in foreign noble and literary circles, and the medium of
literary translation thus helped to cast post-Petrine Russia in a favourable
light. Guasco’s introductory outline of the poet’s life, moreover, contained
no trace of the image of Russia as a barbarous country beyond the civilized
world. It is therefore ironic that in the 1730s and 1740s the Russian court
viewed Kantemir as what we might now call a dissident poet rather than a
literary asset for the emerging empire. Future Russian writers and thinkers,
such as Belinskii and Plekhanov, would look back on him as a harbinger of
an indigenous literature that belonged to European culture.139 In his own
lifetime, though, he was unable to publish his satires in Russian and in Russia
and was therefore forced to disseminate them either in translation abroad
or in Russian manuscripts in the adoptive homeland he zealously served.
By the later years of Elizabeth’s reign, when Voltaire was writing his
History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great, the Russian court was
more clearly aware than it had been during the age of Anna that translation
of works of Russian literature could advance Russian interests. This change
was no doubt due in large measure to the advice of aristocrats who had
become well versed in western languages and culture. It is notable, for
example, that plays by Sumarokov, the leading Russian dramatist of this
period, appeared in translation with a speed that indicated support for the
undertaking in high places. His tragedy Sinav and Truvor, staged in 1750
and published in Russian in 1751, came out in 1751 in a French translation
done by the Russian Prince Aleksandr Dolgorukov.140 On the basis of this
French version, Gottsched wrote an approving review of the play in 1753,
commending Sumarokov as an example for German writers to emulate,
insofar as he demonstrated that writers need not confine themselves to
translating from other literatures but could produce works in their own
language.141 Another review of Sinav and Truvor appeared in an influential
Enlightenment periodical, the Journal étranger (Foreign Journal) in 1755,
confirming that Sumarokov’s reputation was spreading beyond Russia.142
Kantemir’s eighth satire, on 512–519). See Gukovskii, ‘Russkaia literatura v nemetskom zhurnale
XVIII v.’, 383–384.
139 ‘Kantemir’, in Belinskii, PSS, vol. 8, 613–634; ‘Istoriia russkoi obshchestvennoi mysli’, in
Plekhanov, SS, vol. 21, 78–102.
140 Sumarokov, Sinav i Truvor. Tragediia Aleksandra Sumarokova, and Sumarokov, Sinave et
Trouvore, tragédie russe en vers, faite par monsieur Soumarokoff et traduite par mr. le prince
Alexandre Dolgorouky. Another of Sumarokov’s tragedies, Semira, was published in German in
1762 before it was published in Russian. For further details on these translations, see Rjéoutski
and Offord, ‘Translation and Propaganda in the Mid-Eighteenth Century’.
141 Das Neueste aus der anmuthigen Gelehrsamkeit, 1753, 684–691.
142 Journal étranger, April 1755, 114–156.

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Nor was Dolgorukov’s version the only translation of Sinav and Truvor to be
done at this time: a Frenchman, Antoine-Nicolas Lespine de Morembert,
produced another, in verse. Morembert’s translation was not published,
probably because its wordy rendering of the original showed Sumarokov’s
work in a less flattering light than Dolgorukov’s prose version. All the same,
Morembert’s project is of interest, inasmuch as it again reveals the probable
involvement of Ivan Shuvalov in attempts to promote Russian literature
abroad: as an actor in a court troupe in St Petersburg, Morembert was close
to Shuvalov, in whose entourage Sumarokov moved too.143
Ivan Shuvalov certainly had a hand in the translation of a ‘Panegyric to
Peter the Great’ that Lomonosov had delivered to a meeting of the Academy
of Sciences in 1754, on the occasion of the birthday of the Empress Elizabeth.
The initial decision to have this speech translated into French was taken
by the then president of the Academy, Count Kirill Razumovskii. However,
the translation had not materialized by the time the court asked Voltaire to
write his history of Peter the Great, and so Shuvalov instructed his secretary,
Baron de Tschudy, to translate the panegyric into French so that it could be
sent to Voltaire. Tschudy’s translation was finally ready in 1759. (Not that
it met with the satisfaction of Lomonosov, who tetchily wrote on the cover
of a published copy, after the phrase ‘translated from the Russian original’:
‘but translated very badly and in the face of protests from the Author’.)
Comparison of Lomonosov’s Russian original and Tschudy’s French version
shows that although the translator did not substantially change the meaning
of the text he did write in a style more likely to appeal to a contemporary
French reader, altering Lomonosov’s heavy syntax and removing his archaic
vocabulary. He also erased all Lomonosov’s references to Providence, probably because he thought that they would tend to diminish the historical
importance of Peter and Elizabeth in western eyes.144 In a letter to Voltaire
that accompanied Tschudy’s translation, Shuvalov set out to counter the
negative impression of Russia conveyed by Frederick the Great of Prussia,
who had claimed that the Russian nation was so barbarous that Russian
had no words with which to express the notions of ‘honour’ and ‘virtue’.145
One of the leading figures at the Russian court, then, defended Russian
literature against a powerful detractor.
143 Rjéoutski and Offord, ‘Translation and Propaganda in the Mid-Eighteenth Century’.
144 Rjéoutski, ‘Baron de Chudi – perevodchik M.V. Lomonosova’.
145 See Mervaud, ‘Introduction’, in Voltaire, Histoire de l’Empire de Russie, vol. 46, 117. For
Frederick’s words, see Frederick II, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la maison de Brandebourg,
vol. 2, 77.

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By the Alexandrine age, Russia had a more substantial literary corpus to offer
to a European public and French translations of Russian works proliferated,
answering no doubt to an increased interest in Russia among western readers
as well as to the political and cultural interests of the Russian court and literary
community. In 1808, for example, a Frenchman, Honoré-Joseph Dalmas, who
published a periodical in French in St Petersburg,146 produced a Franco-Russian
edition of the tragedy Fingal (1805), written by Vladislav Ozerov, the most
popular Russian dramatist of the early nineteenth century.147 Ozerov’s play
was particularly suitable for presentation to a western readership because
it was a reworking of material already well known to that public, ‘Fingal, an
Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books’, which had been published by the Scottish
poet James Macpherson in instalments from 1760 onwards and which belonged,
Macpherson falsely claimed, to an ancient Gaelic bard, Ossian. At the beginning
of his preface (also written in French), Dalmas alluded to several factors – the
reforms of Peter the Great, imperial expansion, and the development of the
arts – that were clearly linked in contemporary Russian consciousness:
The civilization and enlargement of the Russian Empire is one of the most
interesting periods in history. Only a century has been needed to raise
this power to the high level of glory which leaves it with no rival to dread.
It was under the rule of the last tsars that their power began to become
stronger, but it was Peter the Great who was destined to regenerate this
empire, to lend it the momentum that gives life to states, and to transmit
his spirit and genius to his August Successors. It is to the voice of this
immortal hero that the arts rushed to surround his throne. The most
auspicious successes have exceeded his expectations.
It is to make the progress of dramatic and poetic art known to foreigners
that I offer them a translation of Fingal, in French verse, and the musical
score of this tragedy.148

Again literary achievement is clearly linked to national prestige and imperial
power, this time by a foreigner.
Shortly after the Napoleonic Wars, another Russian aristocratic patron of
the arts, Count Grigorii Orlov, oversaw the production of a lavish two-volume
French edition of Krylov’s fables, embellished with a portrait of the author
146 On Dalmas, see Anne Mézin and Rjéoutski (eds), Les Français en Russie au siècle des Lumières,
vol. 2, 212–213.
147 Ozerov, Fingal, tragédie en trois actes.
148 Dalmas, ‘Avant-propos’, in Ozerov, Fingal, tragédie en trois actes, v.

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and a number of engravings.149 This edition was a collective endeavour: Orlov
assembled a large team of translators, each responsible for the translation of
one fable. (The translations were therefore of varying quality.) Paratexts in
the volume revealed its patriotic intent. In a foreword written and published
in Russian, Orlov once more linked discourse about language and literature
to Russian military prowess and achievement:
Let foreigners, who have experienced the hardness and the strength of
the Russian sword, know that this people, devout and devoted to their
Fatherland and their Tsar, are not without graceful gifts either, that they
have their Poets, their Historians, their Scholars, and that for this they
deserve as much respect and esteem as for their glory and the victories
that resound in their honour throughout the universe. Let them read
these imitations of your fables and, as they do, let them feel a desire to
understand them in their national language too […] Let this example
make our compatriots want to follow us and to communicate the treasures
of our literature to foreigners through pure and faithful translation.150

The publication of an exhortatory preface in Russian, without translation, would
seem to be intended to affirm the autonomy of the native literary tradition,
perhaps diverting attention from the fact that many of Krylov’s fables were
versions of fables by La Fontaine and might therefore be regarded as unoriginal.
A French preface was also provided, by Pierre-Édouard Lémontey, and while its
tone was not as effusive as Orlov’s, it too spoke of Russia’s cultural awakening:
A literary Russia has been born and is growing now. Not only is life
manifested in it by original and varied productions; every week, every
month, every year, papers and periodicals devoted to science, literature,
and the arts have been set up to meet the new needs.151

The French editor of the volume endorsed the volume’s overall aim, which
was to demonstrate that the Russians had noteworthy authors of their own
and a language that would enable them to sustain their literary endeavours.
The attempts of Russian writers and aristocrats to advertise the merits
of their nation’s literature through translation were complemented by the
production of the above-mentioned Russian Anthology compiled by Dupré
149 Krylov, Fables russes tirées du recueil de M. Kriloff.
150 Ibidem, vol. 1, v-vi.
151 Ibidem, x.

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de Saint-Maure, who had spent several years in Russia and knew figures
close to the government. Dupré’s anthology, which contained translations of
numerous poems by Russian authors, had a sycophantic air.152 In a dedication
to Alexander I, the translator explained that his goal was ‘to make known in
France some notable productions by poets who honour Russia’ and thus ‘to pay
homage to its illustrious Sovereign and to the flourishing state of Letters and
the Arts under his glorious rule’.153 As a Frenchman addressing French readers,
Dupré would have been loath to claim that Russian literature was superior
to that of France, even if he had believed it, but he did venture to say that
the Russian language had such harmony, made such daring inversions, and
possessed so many compound words that he had often felt that French was
ill-equipped to render the ‘grace and energy of the original’.154 He concluded
his lengthy introduction on the development of Russian literature thus:
This short historical summary will suffice to give a fairly accurate picture
of a literature too little known in Europe; the reader may share my feeling
of wonder at the miraculous speed with which it took its place in the
Republic of Letters. I do not think that there is an example of such a rapid
growth at any period or in any nation.155

One is inclined to see Dupré as one of those literary mercenaries who were
charged with singing the praises of Russia, its literature, language, and
rulers, and who were particularly biddable, Michel Cadot has shown, in the
1840s and 1850s.156 Not that all those who continued to translate Russian
literature into French in the nineteenth century had propagandistic goals
or links with the Russian authorities; some were Frenchmen resident in
Russia who had acquired a good knowledge of Russian and developed a
genuine interest in Russian literature.157
152 Saint-Maure, Anthologie russe, suivie de poésies originales. We have used the digital version
of this source at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9763877d.
153 Ibidem (dedication not paginated).
154 Ibidem, iii.
155 Ibidem, xxvii–xxviii.
156 Cadot, La Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française. On interest in Russian literature in
France during this period, see 405–457, including information on translations of works of Russian
literature into French on 408–433.
157 As attested by the translations of Ferry de Pigny: see, e.g., [Bulgarin], Ivan Wyjighine ou le
Gilblas russe; idem, Pétre Ivanovitch, suite du Gilblas russe; [Bulgarin et al.], Les Conteurs russes,
ou nouvelles, contes et traditions russes. Pigny’s interests were not exclusively literary; he also
wrote about Russian history: see Pigny, Traits de la vie des Russes à l’époque de Pierre le Grand.
Another notable translator was Hippolyte Masclet, who translated Khemnitser and Krylov.

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Chaadaev’s first ‘Philosophical Letter’
While continuing to have a propagandistic function that was already in
evidence in the eighteenth century, French also became, in the nineteenth,
a language of historiosophical polemic for Russians wanting to address
both an external and an internal readership. That is to say, it served as a
vehicle for the speculative philosophy of history. This was a field of enquiry
to which nineteenth-century Russian writers and thinkers were strongly
attracted. Deeply influenced from the late 1830s by Hegel and weighing
up the evidence for providential design and human agency, they searched
for pattern in historical development and for teleological explanations of
national destiny. Of course, French was never the only vehicle for such
speculation in Russia. Nonetheless, command of French enabled Russians
to inform themselves about and to participate in an international debate
in which the place of Russia itself in the European world featured more
and more prominently. In any case, French was perceived as ‘la langue de
l’Europe’ (the language of Europe), as Pushkin observed, quoting Voltaire.158
Its use for international debate about portentous historical developments
therefore seemed natural, even if it raised questions about Russia’s cultural
dependency.159
From the age of Nicholas I, then, attempts to analyze Russia’s relations
with other European countries in a grand historical perspective supplanted
the relatively limited and diffident pleas for cultural recognition that can be
observed in various Russian writings of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. However, Russian writers of the mid-nineteenth century, whilst
they may have been more self-confident as a result of Russia’s role in the
Napoleonic Wars, were just as deeply affected as their predecessors by
resentment at foreigners’ disparagement of Russia or disdain for it. They
had ample grounds for such sensitivity. Western Europeans who visited
Russia after 1815, like earlier travellers, still indulged in negative moral
commentary, portraying Russians as peculiarly obsequious, servile, cunning,
deceitful, indolent, credulous, or venal. In particular, they continued to
feed Russians’ anxiety about being an imitative people, sometimes using
Russian nobles’ proficiency in foreign languages as evidence of a talent for
mimicry. As Robert Lyall, who lived in Russia for several years towards
158 Pushkin, PSS, vol. 14, 187.
159 For an interesting discussion of language choice in the development of a philosophical
culture in Russia, and the perception of French as ‘a more intellectually articulate language’,
see Clowes, Fiction’s Overcoat, 21–27.

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the end of the reign of Alexander I, tried to persuade his readers: ‘their
talent for imitation is universally allowed; they are fluent in languages’.160
Similarly, the French dramatist François Ancelot, writing in 1826 on the
basis of a visit to Russia, contended that the Russians had been nothing but
capable imitators from the moment when Peter decided to locate them in
the European community: they seized upon the superficial achievements of
western civilization and copied them like an intelligent, docile child.161 This
imitativeness, Ancelot maintained, was particularly strongly felt in literature,
which had been cultivated by men whose education was foreign and whose
ideas, whose language even, was borrowed from France.162 Such perceptions
still persisted among foreigners in the 1840s. ‘The Russians’, observed the
English governess named Charlotte, on whose memoirs we have already
drawn, ‘have decidedly much aptitude for taking up, and expressing, or
executing the ideas of others, if they have not many of their own,’ and they
‘are content to imitate others’.163 Not that Russians themselves invariably
dissented from this demeaning view: Vigel’, writing his memoirs in the age
of Nicholas I, accepted that the ‘amusing, pitiful passion for imitation’ was
still strong.164
By far the most damaging statement of the argument that the Russians
were an imitative people was a text known as the first ‘Philosophical Letter’, which was written in 1828–1829, in French, by another Russian, Petr
Chaadaev, who was a well-known figure in Moscow’s literary salons.165 The
letter was published (in a poor Russian translation) in 1836, in the periodical
160 Lyall, The Character of the Russians, and a Detailed History of Moscow, viii. Lyall adds a further
damning explanation in a note: ‘As they have the advantage of foreign tutors from their youth,
this is easily explained, without supposing any unusual or miraculous talent for the acquisition
of languages.’
161 Ancelot, Six mois en Russie, 231–232.
162 Ibidem, 298–299, 380–381.
163 Anon., Russian Chit Chat, 106, 240; see also 181.
164 Vigel’, Zapiski, vol. 2, 6.
165 ‘Lettre première’, in Chaadaev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i izbrannye pis’ma, vol. 1, 86–106.
The letter was the first of a series of eight, but it was the only one to be published in Chaadaev’s
lifetime. On the publication history of the letters, see Kleespsies, A Nation Astray, 198, n. 57. There
is a large literature on Chaadaev. The first major Russian biography was Gerzhenzon’s (2000),
which first appeared in 1908. The first western biography was by Quénet (1931). These works
are superseded by McNally’s monograph (1971), which is now the standard work on Chaadaev in
English. There is a rich article by Budgen on the long friendship between Pushkin and Chaadaev
(1990) and a substantial and useful chapter on Chaadaev in Kleespies, A Nation Astray, 47–80. See
also Walicki, A History of Russian Thought, 81–91, and Clowes, in whose book Fiction’s Overcoat
more attention is devoted than in most other scholarship to Chaadaev’s language choice (see
24–25, 28–29, 30, 32, 37–39, 54–56).

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Teleskop (The Telescope), having escaped the attention of a negligent censor,
and it immediately had a profound impact. So unpalatable were Chaadaev’s
views to the authorities that Teleskop was closed down by the government,
its editor was exiled to a remote town in the north-eastern part of European
Russia, and Chaadaev was declared insane. Herzen famously compared the
letter to ‘a shot that rang out in the dark night’.166 The views that Chaadaev
expressed in his ‘philosophical letter’ became a point of departure for arguments between Westernizers and Slavophiles.167
Writing from ‘Necropolis’, the city of the dead (that is to say, Moscow),
Chaadaev argued that Russians are ‘neither of the West nor of the East’.168
Untouched by the universal education of mankind, they stand outside time,
living ‘in the narrowest of presents, without a past and without a future,
in the midst of a flat calm’.169 Lacking sound moral and intellectual habits,
they are perpetually in transit:
In our homes we are like visitors, among our families we are like strangers,
in our cities we are like nomads, more nomadic than those whose animals
graze on our steppes, for they are more attached to their deserts than
we are to our cities.170

They have none of the vivid memories or fertile ideas that are cherished
by peoples who have gone through periods of violent agitation, because
they have no folk representatives of the sort – like the Celtic bards and
Scandinavian skalds whom Dalmas had mentioned in his preface to his
translation of Ozerov’s Fingal171 – who gave expression to their peoples’
experience through poetry and heroic legend.172
Chaadaev’s references to Russian nomadism were particularly chastening, for several reasons. First, Enlightenment thinkers had strongly
linked civilization to a settled urban way of life and, accordingly, perceived
pastoral peoples as primitive and ahistorical.173 Secondly, Chaadaev was
166 Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, vol. 2, 516.
167 It should not be assumed, though, that Chaadaev held the same views in the mid-1830s, when
the letter was published, or in the 1840s, when it was debated, as he had when he had written
it: see Budgen, ‘Pushkin and Chaadaev’, 27–28.
168 ‘Lettre première’, in Chaadaev, 89. Our translations of quotations from the ‘Letter’ are taken
from Leatherbarrow and Offord (eds), A Documentary History of Russian Thought, 67–78.
169 ‘Lettre première’, in Chaadaev, 91.
170 Ibidem, 90.
171 Dalmas, ‘Avant-propos’, in Ozerov, Fingal, tragédie en trois actes, vi.
172 ‘Lettre première’, in Chaadaev, 90, 95–96.
173 Kleespies, A Nation Astray, 176–177.

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plainly likening the Russians to the nomadic Tatars, from whose degrading
domination they had suffered for so long in the late Middle Ages.174 Equally
humiliating was his repeated comparison of Russians to children who have
not learned to think for themselves.175 If they did manage to stir themselves
from time to time, Chaadaev wrote, it was ‘with the puerile frivolity of a
child who raises himself and stretches out his hands towards the rattle
which his nurse offers him’.176 Russians’ lack of a moral compass and their
perennial immaturity, Chaadaev claimed, were the ‘natural consequence
of a culture based wholly on borrowing and imitation’.177
There were, no doubt, a number of reasons why Chaadaev chose French
as the medium for his philosophical letters. Known for his command of
both French and English,178 he may well have been more comfortable writing in French than in Russian, as Ingrid Kleespies has suggested, and in
any case ‘French was considered to have a more developed philosophical
vocabulary’.179 However, Chaadaev’s use of French also served to reinforce
the message of his first ‘letter’: the use of the ‘language of Europe’ implicitly
bore out his view of the derivative nature of the culture of his nation, or
rather non-nation. In literary terms, this language choice suggests, in the
words of Kleespies again,
that the Letter has been written by a thoroughly Gallicized Russian,
one who has internalized not only the language, but also the dominant
French view of Russia. He is incapable of viewing Russia in any way but
through the eyes of a Western observer. The narrator of the Letter possesses no other linguistic or cultural framework for analyzing his own
nation than that of the philosophes, a fact that suggests Russia’s failure to
create a philosophical context or language capable of articulating Russian
nationhood. The very absence of such a philosophical framework lends
credence to Chaadaev’s larger argument that Russia itself hardly seems
to exist in relation to the nations of the West.180
174 ‘Lettre première’, in Chaadaev, 91.
175 Ibidem, 92–93.
176 Ibidem, 91.
177 Ibidem, 92. It may be that Chaadaev’s letter owes something to Ancelot’s Six Months in
Russia, published the year before he wrote his letter, in which, as we have said, there are frequent
references to Russia’s supposed imitativeness.
178 Vigel’, Zapiski, vol. 2, 162.
179 Kleespies, A Nation Astray, 56.
180 Ibidem. We do not discuss here Kleespies’s suggestion that it is possible that Chaadaev’s
Letter was an ironic narrative rather than the ‘earnest cri de cœur’ it has always been taken for
(ibidem).

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Russians, then, lacked the originality that was widely thought in the late
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to distinguish peoples who had historical futurity, and Chaadaev’s use of French to broach discussion of the
problem underlined the point.181 We should not underestimate the extent
to which the shock administered by Chaadaev’s letter helped to galvanize
members of the literary community, who would soon provide irrefutable
proof of their nation’s linguistic and cultural independence through the
creation of a corpus of literature and thought, written in Russian, that would
itself profoundly influence other cultures.182
It is worth noting, finally, that Russians – including Pushkin – who had
no strong objection to Chaadaev’s letter while it circulated in its original
French version in the restricted world of the salon, as it did for several
years, were scandalized, as Kleespies also points out, when it appeared
in print in Russian. It was as if publication transformed this expression of
private opinion, which had limited power, into an authoritative subversive
text.183 Translation of the letter from French into Russian, we may add, took
Chaadaev’s thoughts beyond the realm of the noble elite, who could express
themselves quite freely, within certain limits, and placed them in a broader
social domain, where an intelligentsia with relatively low-born elements
hostile to noble culture was beginning to flourish.184
181 We should add that Chaadaev’s view of Catholicism as the force that endowed western
civilization with the unity and purpose he felt Russia lacked was a further factor which alienated
some of his Russian contemporaries. Chaadaev was much affected in the 1820s by the Christian
apologetics of Catholic writers in the French-speaking world such as de Bonald, Chateaubriand,
Lamennais, and de Maistre.
182 We shall trace the seam of linguistic Gallophobia in this corpus in our last two chapters.
183 Kleespies, A Nation Astray, 67–68. Mikhail Velizhev argues that Chaadaev’s letter took on
a resonance in 1836 that it would not have had in the 1820s, insofar as Russia had become more
isolationist: Velizhev, ‘Iazyk i kontekst v russkoi intellektual’noi istorii’. The promulgation of
the doctrine of Official Nationality in the early 1830s also militated against the expression of
views that seemed to belittle Russian historical and cultural achievements.
184 Although we have focused in this section, while dealing with the early part of the reign
of Nicholas I, on the famous case of Chaadaev’s treatment of the relationship between Russia
and ‘the West’ or ‘Europe’ as a whole, it is worth noting that Russian historiosophical debate in
French was also beginning in this period to address the question of the place of the Russians
among the Slavs. For example, Prince Petr Kozlovskii, a Russian diplomat and author of several
pamphlets published in Paris and Ghent, used French to respond to a pamphlet entitled La
vérité sur la Russie et sur la révolte des Provinces Polonaises, in which the Polish Count Adam
Gurowski had proposed that all Slavs be united within the Russian Empire and that Russia should
become the leader of the Slav world. It has been suggested, by Vera Mil’china and Aleksandr
Ospovat, that Kozlovskii wrote in French because he did not intend his work to be published in
Russia and because he expressed certain ideas which might not please the Russian authorities.
See Mil’china and Ospovat, ‘Iz polemiki 1830-kh gg. vokrug panslavianskoi idei’. Kozlovskii’s

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Geopolitical polemics around 1848
We turn next to three bilingual Russian writers – Nikolai Turgenev, Fedor
Tiutchev, and Aleksandr Herzen – who used French to further the debate
about Russia’s relationship to the West that Chaadaev had helped to generate.185 French, for these writers, was a vehicle for transmission of a view of
Russia and its destiny to both a Russian and a European readership, just as it
had been for Chaadaev. They were engaged in an internal Russian polemic,
as representatives of loyalist or oppositional political viewpoints (liberal
Westernist, conservative nationalist, and socialist respectively) which were
beginning to harden in the reign of Nicholas I. At the same time, they were
reflecting on the grand narrative about Russia’s historical destiny that had
preoccupied Chaadaev. Their views, moreover, had particular urgency at
this historical juncture, in the late 1840s, against the background of growing
political crisis in France, the development of socialist agitation in some
parts of Europe, and the outbreak of revolutionary disturbances in France,
the Austrian Empire, and various Italian and German states in 1848–1849.
In the largest perspective, a geopolitical struggle between Russia and the
major western powers was developing that can be seen in retrospect to have
led to the Crimean War of the mid-1850s.
The first of these three writers, Nikolai Turgenev, whom we have already
encountered in other connections,186 was a man of cosmopolitan outlook
and moderate political views, an opponent of autocracy and an advocate
of constitutional reform. Born in 1789, he had been shaped in his childhood more by the ideas of the French Enlightenment than by the German
counter-current to it that would steer the Russian literary community and
intelligentsia of the age of Nicholas towards Romanticism and nationalism.
He served for many years in the imperial administration, under Alexander
I. Although he had gone abroad on leave in April 1824, ostensibly because
of poor health, and was still outside Russia when the Decembrist Revolt
broke out at the end of 1825, Turgenev’s earlier involvement in the secret
societies the mutineers had frequented in the years leading up to the revolt
attracted suspicion, and he was sentenced to death in absentia. (Nicholas
pamphlet is published in Russian translation in the article by Mil’china and Ospovat, 171–174.
See also our discussion in the following section of the views expressed by Nikolai Turgenev in
his pamphlet Russia in the Face of the European Crisis.
185 We draw in this section on a chapter by Offord, ‘French as a Polemical Language for Russian
Writers in the Age of Nicholas I’, published in 2017 in an earlier book in the series to which this
monograph belongs.
186 In the fourth section of Chapter 4 and the penultimate section of Chapter 5 above.

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commuted the sentence to lifelong exile in Siberia.) Turgenev’s stay abroad
therefore turned into permanent political emigration. In 1832 he settled in
France and there, over many years, he wrote a three-volume work, Russia
and the Russians, which was eventually published in Paris in 1847. In the first
volume of this work, Turgenev described his government service up until
his departure from Russia and the development of the political disaffection
among the elite that culminated in the Decembrist Revolt. In the second
volume, he examined Russia’s social structure, especially the institution of
serfdom, and its political organization and various legal and educational
matters. In the third volume, he set out his ideas on the need for reform
and the types of reform required.187
Turgenev himself raised the question why he had written Russia and
the Russians in French, since he had used Russian in all the writings he
had previously published.188 In the course of the work he provided various
answers to this question, explicit or implicit. The use of French enabled him,
of course, to reach an international readership and to inform Europeans
about things of which they were ignorant.189 In particular, Turgenev wished
to publicize the extent of despotism in Russia. He wanted also to show that
the Russian serfs were not as degraded as westerners generally thought they
were.190 However, in choosing French, he by no means intended to ignore
Russian readers. Indeed, it was to Russians, first and foremost, that the
work was ‘truly and primarily’ addressed, Turgenev claimed, and he hoped
it would have an impact in his own country.191 French, after all, was no less
effective than Russian as a means of conveying unpalatable truths about
Russia to compatriots of his own social stratum. It also served Turgenev
just as well as Russian for protesting his personal innocence of the charge
that he was complicit in the Decembrist Revolt: some two-fifths of his
first volume is taken up with a Justificatory Memoir that he had sent to the
Russian authorities after his conviction.192 French, then, was a language for
a nobleman who wished to plead to his sovereign, albeit a language which
the sovereigns’ subjects might have used with more hope of success when
they addressed Alexander I than when they had to petition Nicholas.
Russia and the Russians was a long and somewhat unfocused work, but
the revolutionary disturbances that broke out the year after it was published
187
188
189
190
191
192

N. Tourgueneff [N.I. Turgenev], La Russie et les russes.
Ibidem, vol. 1, ix.
Ibidem, 407.
Ibidem, 20.
Ibidem, x.
Mémoire justificatif, in La Russie et les russes, vol. 1, 211–407.

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demanded a profession de foi that was more succinct and polemical. For
this purpose, Turgenev resorted – as Tiutchev and Herzen also would – to
a genre that had flourished in France itself since before the revolution of
1789, the political pamphlet. In his own essay in this genre, Russia in the Face
of the European Crisis, Turgenev used French to defend his country (even
though he had left it) against foreign invective directed at the so-called
barbarians of the North and to clarify his position on the European political
spectrum.193 He is a champion of free trade and a free press. He advocates
the emancipation of the serfs and other humanitarian measures, such as the
abolition of corporal punishment. However, he also fears ‘the revolutionary
plague’ and deplores the socialist doctrines that were attracting such a
following in Europe in the 1840s.194
Besides putting forward his essentially liberal political views, Turgenev
made a further contribution in his pamphlet to discussion of the topical
subject of the destiny of the Slavs in European civilization. He did not
believe, as did the Slavophiles, Tiutchev, and to some degree Herzen, that
Russia should define itself in opposition to the western world. In particular,
he had no concerns about the extent of the influence that France had had
upon his country and he would have no truck with Russian Gallophobia:
The Russian people, for their part, are far from being driven by hostile
feelings towards France; on the contrary, they live by its civilization
just as it is; they draw sustenance from its literature, good or bad; they
speak its language in preference to any other foreign tongue; they buy its
fashions and objets d’art; they drink its wine; and, lastly, a certain class
of Russian society regards France’s capital as an Eldorado which is the
object of its sweetest dreams, another Mecca which all believers aspire
to visit at least once in their lifetime.195

If Turgenev conceived of Europe as a bipolar world, then it was not because
he was alienated by western forms of Christianity or because he rejected the
principles that supposedly underpinned western civilization but because
he believed Russia was isolated by its own political absolutism. Russia
would be weakened, he thought, if it continued to set itself against the
development of democratic states, and people would come to regard the
continent as divided into ‘free and constitutional Europe’, on the one hand,
193 Tourgueneff, La Russie en présence de la crise européenne, 22–23.
194 Ibidem, 32.
195 Ibidem, 22.

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and ‘enslaved Russia’, on the other.196 If his nation was to be actively involved
in the further progress of European civilization, as Turgenev hoped it would
be, then it too would have to adopt a constitutional, representative form of
government which operated in the interests of all classes.197 All the same,
Turgenev did agree with conservative nationalists that Russia had particular
racial or religious affinities with populations outside its borders – affinities
which had almost always eluded European commentators, he thought,
hence the unfairness of their judgements about his country.198 Russians’
fortunes, he argued, were closely linked to the fortunes of fellow Slavs or
co-religionists, especially the Poles, with whom a rapprochement should be
sought and whose harsh treatment by Russia was a major cause of European
Russophobia.199 Despite his objections to Russian autocracy, Turgenev could
not resist making a claim to Russian leadership in the Slav world, although
he did try to convince readers that this leadership would be benevolent and
protective, not dominant or oppressive.200
In the final analysis, then, Turgenev’s pamphlet was a further meditation
on ‘Russian and Slav things’.201 Even though it was informed by the secular
and constitutional values prized among the Decembrists, rather than by the
Orthodox and Pan-Slavist dreams of conservative nationalists, Turgenev still
had great expectations of his nation. No less than conservative nationalists,
he is sure that Russia has been summoned by Providence to fulfil a lofty
destiny and that ‘the Russian people have not yet said their last word in
history’.202 And quite naturally, he too uses French as an international
language of speculation about the Russian national mission, the destiny
of the Slavs, and European wholeness or disunity.
Unlike Turgenev, the poet and diplomat Tiutchev was a staunch supporter
of autocratic government and a conservative nationalist who dreamed of
the creation of an immense Orthodox empire that included the one-time
stronghold of eastern Christendom, Constantinople. His contribution to the
debate of the 1840s about Russia’s historical destiny was written, for the most
part, inside Russia, to which he had recently returned after living abroad for
more than two decades, from 1822 to 1844, mainly in Bavaria and Piedmont.
196 Ibidem, 37. Turgenev’s italics.
197 Tourgueneff, La Russie et les russes, vol. 1, vii, and La Russie en présence de la crise européenne,
39.
198 Tourgueneff, La Russie en présence de la crise européenne, 8.
199 Ibidem, 26–30, 39 ff.
200 Ibidem, 37–38, 42.
201 Ibidem, 38; Turgenev’s italics.
202 Ibidem, 37–38, 30.

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He produced three substantial articles about Russia’s relationship to ‘Europe’,
responding in each case to developments in contemporary politics, in which
he took a passionate interest. At least two of these articles were conceived
as chapters in a larger work, Russia and the West, which was not completed
but of which some other fragments, including the draft of an introductory
chapter on ‘The Situation in 1849’, have survived.
The first article, entitled ‘A Letter to Dr Gustav Kolb, Editor of The Universal Gazette’, was written in Munich in 1844. On one level, this article
was a response to one of the most eloquent manifestations of the growing Russophobia in Western Europe, the unmitigated attack on Russian
despotism under Nicholas I that was mounted by the French Marquis de
Custine in his book Russia in 1839, which, together with Chaadaev’s first
‘Philosophical Letter’, gave fresh impetus to Russian cultural nationalism.203
Tiutchev explicitly condemned Custine’s book as an example of the moral
and intellectual degeneracy of the age. However, the target at which he
directed most of his ire was the German press, which breathed resentment
at Russia’s policy of thwarting the desire for unification of the German lands.
Germans, Tiutchev protested, ought in fact to have been grateful to Russia
for liberating them from Napoleonic rule and for the long period of peaceful
development that followed. This demand for gratitude was accompanied by
a threat: the German states would be heading towards an abyss, Tiutchev
warned, if they allowed relations with Russia to deteriorate.204
The second of Tiutchev’s political articles in French, ‘Russia and Revolution’, was written in April 1848 as a memorandum for Nicholas I. In this
instance, Tiutchev was responding to the February uprising in Paris that
had toppled the ‘July Monarchy’ of Louis-Philippe. Tiutchev detected an
epoch-making struggle in progress between Russia and the forces of revolution that he associated with the West. The roots of the brewing European
crisis, he alleged, lay in the French Revolution of 1789, which had suppressed
the Christian virtues of humility and self-renunciation and translated the
demands of the human ego into social and political rights.205
Tiutchev’s third programmatic tract, ‘The Papacy and the Roman Question’,
was prompted by events in Italy in 1849, when Louis-Napoleon had intervened
militarily to defeat the insurgency of 1848 and to reinstall Pius IX as Pope.
Here Tiutchev marshalled conventional Orthodox arguments against the
203 Custine, La Russie en 1839.
204 ‘Lettre à M. le docteur Gustave Kolb, Rédacteur de la “Gazette Universelle”’, in Tiutchev,
PSSP, vol. 3, 11–28.
205 ‘La Russie et la révolution’, ibidem, 42–54.

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western churches. Protestantism, which was moribund everywhere except
in England, Tiutchev claimed, elevated the human ego over the Church. The
Church of Rome, meanwhile, had become a political power, rather than a
community of the faithful, and the Pope led it as a temporal sovereign.206
It might be argued that Tiutchev’s choice of French as the vehicle for
his political views merely illustrates a preference for that language among
the Russian nobility of his generation. After all, Tiutchev was perfectly
Francophone from childhood. ‘French reigned almost exclusively’ in the
Tiutchev family, we are told by the poet’s son-in-law, the Slavophile and later
Pan-Slavist Ivan Aksakov, ‘so that not only all conversations but also all the
correspondence of the parents with the children and of the children among
themselves, both then and later on, throughout their lives, were conducted in
nothing but French’.207 Moreover, French remained Tiutchev’s main domestic
and social language in his adult life. Neither his first wife Nelly, a Bavarian
widow née Countess von Bothmer whom he married in 1826, nor his second
wife, Ernestine Dörnberg, née von Pfeffel, a member of an aristocratic family
from Alsace, whom he married in 1839, knew Russian. In King Ludwig’s
Munich, to which Tiutchev was posted as a diplomat at the beginning of
the 1820s, French was the language of the salons where the young Russian
cut an impressive figure as a sparkling conversationalist. Even after his
return to Russia, Tiutchev continued to use French for correspondence
with members of his family and Russians of his class. Take, for example, a
private and confidential ‘Letter on Censorship in Russia’ addressed in 1857
to Prince Mikhail Gorchakov, who had recently commanded the Russian
forces in the Crimean War and was by now viceroy in Poland.208
And yet, the dominance of French in Tiutchev’s parents’ household did
not prevent his mother, Aksakov also reports, ‘from adhering to Russian
customs’; French ‘surprisingly coexisted with her Church Slavonic reading of
psalters, books of hours, and prayer books in her bedroom and more generally
with all the features of the Russian Orthodox and noble way of life’.209 Thus
Tiutchev grew up bilingual and as an adult came to write Russian verse that
was very highly regarded by his contemporaries, including Ivan Turgenev
and Lev Tolstoi. Indeed, he is remembered as one of the outstanding Russian
poets, second only, in the eyes of some, to Pushkin. Nor was Tiutchev averse
to expressing his nationalistic ideas in Russian political verse, of which he
206 ‘La papauté et la question romaine’, ibidem, 55–74.
207 Ivan Aksakov, Biografiia Fedora Ivanovicha Tiutcheva, 10.
208 ‘Lettre sur la censure en Russie’, in Tiutchev, PSSP, vol. 3, 96–106.
209 Ivan Aksakov, Biografiia Fedora Ivanovicha Tiutcheva, 10.

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produced a prodigious quantity, amounting to almost one-sixth of his total
poetic output, from the 1840s on.210 In a poem written in 1848, for example,
Russia stands firm as an immovable barrier to revolutionary chaos, a cliff
in the face of a turbulent sea.211 In another, written as the Crimean War
raged, Russia’s enemies were ‘blasphemous minds’ and ‘impious peoples’.212
In ‘Russian Geography’, probably written in 1848–1849, contemporaneously
with two of the French polemical tracts we have described, we see the
immense extent of the empire of which Tiutchev dreamed: ‘From the Nile
to the Neva, from the Elbe to China, / From the Volga to the Euphrates,
from the Ganges to the Danube…’213 This empire, Tiutchev exulted in 1849
at the end of a poem entitled ‘Dawn’, would amount to a realization of the
universal triumph of Christianity in its Orthodox form.214
Faced with the perfect bilingual competence of this Russian nobleman,
some literary scholars, as we have already pointed out, have speculated
about the extent to which Russian biculturalism may have brought about
‘psychosocial dislocation’. This affliction, it is argued, produced a ‘compensatory nationalism’ that caused Tiutchev to reject the West, in which he was
at ease, and to idealize Russia, in whose rural heartland he was bored.215
From the sociolinguistic perspective, it is more rewarding to reflect on the
precise functions and benefits of Tiutchev’s choice of French in his political
writings than to seek Freudian explanations of his ideas. The most obvious
benefit, of course, was that Tiutchev’s use of French brought his prose tracts
to a much wider readership than his Russian poetry could reach, including
a foreign readership across Europe which Tiutchev seems – despite his
well-known reticence about publication of his Russian lyric poetry – to have
purposefully targeted. The letter to Kolb was submitted to the Augsburg
Allgemeine Zeitung (the Gazette Universelle to which Tiutchev’s title refers),
and when the periodical did not publish it, Tiutchev had it printed privately
in Munich as a political pamphlet.216 The bulk of ‘Russia and Revolution’
210 Gregg, Fedor Tiutchev, 108.
211 ‘More i utes’, in Tiutchev, PSSP, vol. 1, 197–198.
212 ‘Teper’ tebe ne do stikhov’, ibidem, vol. 2, 66.
213 ‘Russkaia geografiia’, ibidem, vol. 1, 200.
214 ‘Rassvet’, ibidem, 218.
215 Conant, The Political Poetry and Ideology of F.I. Tiutchev, 10–11; Gregg, Fedor Tiutchev, 92–93,
145–146.
216 This work was later published in Russian, under the title ‘Russia and Germany’ (Rossiia i
Germaniia), in RA, 1873, no. 10, cols 1993–2019 (French original on 2019–2042). On the history
of the composition and publication of Tiutchev’s polemical works in French, see especially the
authoritative article by Lane, ‘The Reception of F.I. Tyutchev’s Political Articles’: in this instance,
see 206–207, n. 6.

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was first published – without Tiutchev’s permission, it is true, and with a
different title and within a hostile commentary on it – in a pamphlet by the
French diplomat Baron Paul-Charles-Amable de Bourgoing;217 substantial
quotations and paraphrased passages from Tiutchev’s memorandum were
then reproduced in a ‘Diary of the Fortnight’ in the important Parisian
periodical Revue des Deux Mondes (Review of the Two Worlds) in June 1849.218
The work also circulated in the diplomatic community in Munich.219 ‘The
Papacy and The Roman Question’, finally, was published in full in the Revue
des Deux Mondes, on 1 January 1850, this time with Tiutchev’s approval
and thanks to the intercession of his then brother-in-law Karl Pfeffel.220
Whether Tiutchev had official permission to publish all these tracts abroad
and whether, in particular, they amounted almost to a statement of official
Russian foreign policy is open to question, for Tiutchev’s Pan-Slavism was
at odds with Nicholas’s legitimist support for existing monarchic regimes.
However, Tiutchev was believed in the West to have political influence
in Russia, as Ronald Lane has shown, and his French polemical writings
had impact there. His intellectual acuity, his command of the French
language, and the excellence of his French style won praise,221 to be sure,
but his antipathy to modern western civilization in general and to the
Catholic Church in particular provoked much hostile reaction. His article
on the papacy, for example, drew criticisms from the French anti-Gallican
monarchist Pierre-Sébastien Laurentie, whose objections are summarized
in a work entitled The Papacy, a Reply to Mr Tiutchev, Adviser to His Majesty
the Emperor of Russia, which was published in Paris in 1852.222
At the same time, it is important to remember that the readership of
Tiutchev’s French political writings was not exclusively foreign, for they
were also accessible to the Francophone Russian public in Moscow and St
Petersburg. This public included the Slavophiles, to whom Tiutchev was
217 de Bourgoing, Politique et Moyens d’Action de la Russie. Only a very small number of copies
of this work were printed, but they were sent to some important personages, including Louis
Bonaparte, the former French prime ministers Adolphe Thiers and Louis-Mathieu Molé, and
other influential political and journalistic figures: see Lane, ‘The Reception of F.I. Tyutchev’s
Political Articles’, 211, and Dewey, Mirror of the Soul, 305.
218 See https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Chronique_de_la_quinzaine_-_14_juin_1849, 1053–1056.
219 Lane, ‘The Reception of F.I. Tyutchev’s Political Articles’, 211; Dewey, Mirror of the Soul, 305.
220 Lane, ‘The Reception of F.I. Tyutchev’s Political Articles’, 213. The text from Revue des
Deux Mondes, 117–133, is available at https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Revue_des_Deux_
Mondes_-_1850_-_tome_5.djvu/123.
221 Lane, ‘The Reception of F.I. Tyutchev’s Political Articles’, 213–214.
222 Laurentie, La Papauté, Réponse à M. de Tutcheff, Conseiller de Sa Majesté. l’Empereur de
Russie; see Lane, ‘The Reception of F.I. Tyutchev’s Political Articles’, 219–220.

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close. It also included Nicholas I himself, who found his own views well
expressed in the letter to Kolb223 and whom Tiutchev flatteringly described
in ‘Russia and Revolution’ as a steadfast opponent of revolution.224 Shortly
after the letter to Kolb had been published, Nicholas obligingly reinstated
Tiutchev in the Russian Minstry of Foreign Affairs, from which he had
been dismissed in 1837 after he had deserted his post in Turin, and in 1848
Tiutchev was appointed senior censor in the ministry.
Thus, Tiutchev used his perfect command of French to make a loyalist case
for Russian foreign policy in a turbulent period in European politics, and he
enhanced his own standing in Nicholas’s eyes in the process. However, he
also had ideas of a more metaphysical nature which demanded expression
in the ‘language of Europe’. He was contributing to a debate which was both
national and international about Russia’s relationship with the West, the
wholeness of Europe (or the absence of wholeness in the continent), and
the emergence of new worlds.225 The three French tracts we have described
and Tiutchev’s extant notes for Russia and the West are strewn with propositions on these subjects that make up the staple diet of Russian Orthodox
conservative nationalism. For instance, the human reason so prized by
westerners, it is claimed, has serious limitations, and overreliance on it is
dangerous. The western public have become ‘the people of individualism
and negation’ and they hate authority.226 They have been infected by the
spirit of revolution, for that is what ‘modern thought in its entirety since
its rupture with the Church’ amounts to.227 Observers may therefore be
witnessing ‘the bankruptcy of an entire civilization’.228 The Russian people,
on the other hand, are apolitical and unrevolutionary. Deeply rooted in the
Russian character is a capacity for renunciation and self-sacrifice.229
Most importantly, all three tracts affirm the paradigm dear to nationalistic Russian thinkers and many later students of them, according to which
‘Russia’ and some imagined entity known as ‘the West’ or ‘Europe’ are ‘two
worlds, two humanities’ diametrically and irreconcilably opposed to one
223 Lane, ‘The Reception of F.I. Tyutchev’s Political Articles’, 210, n. 18; Dewey, Mirror of the Soul,
286.
224 Tiutchev, PSSP, vol. 3, 45.
225 It is worth noting that the title of the review in which Tiutchev published his articles ‘La
Russie et la révolution’ and ‘La papauté et la question romaine’, La Revue des Deux Mondes
(founded in 1829), itself invokes the notion of ‘two worlds’, in this instance Europe and America.
226 Tiutchev, PSSP, vol. 3, 80–81.
227 Ibidem, 76.
228 Ibidem, 77.
229 Ibidem, 42.

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The French L anguage in Russia

another.230 The European West must realize that it is only ‘half of a great
organic whole’ and that the solution to the apparently insoluble difficulties
it faces lies in the other half of the European world, that is to say the eastern
half of which western ‘learned men and philosophers’ have failed to take
account.231 The soul of this other Europe, which has its own unity and lives
its own ‘organic’ and ‘original’ life, is Russia.232 The West, Tiutchev warns
in his letter to Kolb, must come to terms with this assertive new power.
Like Gogol’, in a famous passage at the end of the first part of Dead Souls,
published in 1842, in which the novelist transforms Chichikov’s troika into an
image of Russia hurtling towards a momentous destiny while other peoples
make way, Tiutchev raises the largest questions about the nation’s mission:
What is Russia? What is its raison d’être, its historical law? Where does
it come from? Where is it going? What does it represent? The world, it is
true, has made a place in the sun for it, but the philosophy of history has
not yet deigned to assign it one.233

Thus Tiutchev, pace Chaadaev, believes that as ‘the West’ collapses the
Eastern land that has preserved Christianity in its pure form will sail up like a
holy ark, bringing to an end a millennium of usurpations, from Charlemagne
to Napoleon, and restoring a legitimate universal empire by reuniting the
two Christian churches.234
Such messianic ideas, which concern the rise and fall of civilizations,
were political, of course, but they also transcended politics. Moreover,
their significance was pan-European and consequently, according to understandings of civilization at the time, universal. It was therefore quite
appropriate that they should be expressed in French rather than Russian.
Which language, after all, could have seemed more suitable as a vehicle for
discussion of world history and for imperial pretensions than the language
that had made the strongest recent claim to universality, most famously
asserted in Rivarol’s prize-winning essay of 1783 for the Royal Berlin Academy
of Sciences and Fine Arts?235
Herzen, the last of the mid-nineteenth-century Russian writers whose
French texts about the relationship between Russia and the West we examine
230
231
232
233
234
235

Ibidem, 58.
Ibidem, 82, 89.
Ibidem, 17–18.
Ibidem, 17. Our italics.
Ibidem, 54, 91–94.
Rivarol, De l’universalité de la langue française.

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449

here, had by 1848 come to preach a form of utopian socialism.236 Those works
of Herzen’s that were published in French, like Nikolai Turgenev’s, were written
in the West, where Herzen had arrived with his family on a Grand Tour in
1847 and where he would find himself stranded in permanent exile, since his
support for the European revolutionaries of 1848 made it unthinkable that he
could safely return to Russia. Although these works appeared at different times
and in different places, they amounted to a coherent set of reflections on the
historical role of Russia, as Herzen now viewed it.237 With the exception of ‘The
Russian People and Socialism’, they were not written by Herzen in French, but
French was the language in which they became best known to a readership
outside Russia. Thus, French again serves as the vehicle for a form of Russian
nationalism. In this case, the fact has particular poignancy, for all of Herzen’s
writings from abroad are filled with nostalgia for his homeland – a yearning
that was perhaps deepened by the cosmopolitan, multilingual character of
the milieu in which Herzen found himself from 1847 onwards.
Herzen organized his thoughts around the same opposition between
Russia and the West that Tiutchev (and Chaadaev and the Slavophiles) had
used. He too attacked the principles on which western civilization was
based, although for him the roots of the evil in it lay in its economic, social,
and political soil rather than in Catholicism, Protestantism, or spiritual
bankruptcy. In his Letters from France and Italy, he condemned capitalism
as an inhuman system driven by pursuit of profit, regarded the ascendant bourgeoisie as mercenary and vulgar, and dismissed parliamentary
democracy as a system that enfranchized the ‘orangutans’.238 He agreed with
236 There is a very large literature on Herzen’s philosophical ideas and his social and political
thought. Landmarks in this literature in English include Carr (1933), Berlin’s essays (written in
the early post-war period) in his Russian Thinkers (2008), a chapter in Lampert (1957), Malia
(1961), Acton (1979), and Aileen Kelly (1998, 1999, 2016). Little has been written on Herzen’s
plurilingualism and language choice, as far as we are aware. On Herzen’s promotion of knowledge
of Russia and his support for attempts to translate works of Russian literature into other European
languages during the 1850s and 1860s, see Priima, ‘Gertsen – propagandist i interpretator russkoi
literatury na zapade’. We draw in this sub-section of our present chapter on Offord, ‘The French
Writings of Alexander Herzen’.
237 The essays in question, which outline what came to be known as Herzen’s ‘Russian socialism’,
are ‘La Russie’, ‘Lettre d’un russe à Mazzini’, Du développement des idées révolutionnaires en
Russie, ‘Le peuple russe et le socialisme’, and ‘La Russie et le vieux monde’: see Gertsen, SS, vol.
6, 150–186 and 224–230, vol. 7, 9–132 and 271–306, and vol. 12, 134–166, respectively. On Herzen’s
Russian socialism, see especially Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism;
for a short summary of the doctrine, see Offord, Journeys to a Graveyard, 174–177.
238 Pis’ma iz Frantsii i Italii, in Gertsen, SS, vol. 5, 7–224, especially 34–36, 58–64. See also SS, vol.
23, 111. For a discussion of the contents of the Letters from France and Italy, see Offord, Journeys
to a Graveyard, 178–196.

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The French L anguage in Russia

conservative nationalists that the West was moribund and that the Slavs
represented a fresh force whose historical moment had arrived. For Herzen,
though, the new civilization that would grow in place of the rotting old one
would not be nourished by the Orthodox faith or upheld and protected by
Russia’s autocratic government. It would be sustained instead by the instinctive collectivism of the Russian peasantry and the conscious socialism of
the independent intellectual elite that was emerging in the age of Nicholas.
The Russian peasant, Herzen argued in his writings published in French,
possessed ‘so much strength, agility, intelligence, and beauty’.239 His dealings
with his peers were honest and trustworthy, so that no contractual agreements
of the sort to which people had recourse in western society were necessary in
Russia.240 Most importantly, the Russian peasants had preserved a supposedly
ancient institution, the village commune, which periodically redistributed
the land allocated to the serfs by the landowner as the needs of families in
the community changed.241 The powerful but dormant force of the Russian
peasantry, which thus proved to be in harmony with ‘Europe’s revolutionary
idea’, could now be harnessed by the intelligentsia, ‘the seed and intellectual
centre’ of the impending revolution.242 In order to bolster the plausibility of his
thesis, Herzen exploited an argument about the advantages of backwardness
that Chaadaev had used in the repentant ‘Apology of a Madman’ (1837) that
he had written (also in French) after the publication of his first ‘Philosophical
Letter’.243 The embryonic intelligentsia, Herzen contended, could benefit
from its late development. Russians were ‘morally freer than Europeans’, he
supposed, and not only ‘because we are exempt from the great trials through
which the West develops, but also because we have no past that controls us’.244
There was undoubtedly an element of self-promotion in Herzen’s defence
of the Russian nation before a European public, as there was in Tiutchev’s.
After all, Herzen himself represented the ethically exemplary intellectual
elite, which was drawn above all, he asserted, from ‘the middle nobility, whose
moral centre is in Moscow’.245 He also heroized himself as a Romantic exile.
Once in the West, where he was literally a political refugee, he sacrificed
everything for a noble cause, he claimed: he had left Russia ‘with the sole
239 ‘La Russie’, in Gertsen, SS, vol. 6, 172.
240 Ibidem, 173 ; ‘Le peuple russe et le socialisme’, in Gertsen, SS, vol. 7, 286–287.
241 ‘La Russie’ in Gertsen, SS, vol. 6, 164; see also Du développement des idées révolutionnaires
en Russie, ibidem, vol. 7, 129.
242 ‘Le peuple russe et le socialisme’, ibidem, vol. 7, 281; ‘La Russie’, in Gertsen, SS, vol. 6, 178.
243 ‘L’apologie d’un fou’, in Chaadaev, SS, vol. 1, 289–304.
244 ‘La Russie’, in Gertsen, SS, vol. 6, 150–151.
245 Ibidem, 178.

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451

aim of making the free Russian word reverberate in Europe’.246 On another
level, though, Herzen also aimed to bring to the attention of European readers aspects of Russia of which he thought they were ignorant. Thus in the
‘Farewell’ from Russia with which he prefaced his Russian masterpiece, From
the Other Shore, he declared that it was time to acquaint Europeans with this
neighbouring nation whose government and façade they knew but whose
‘mighty’ people were an ‘unfathomed mystery’ to them.247 In the process of
educating westerners about ‘these Russians, these barbarians, these Cossacks’,
Herzen would counter western Russophobia.248 In ‘The Russian People and
Socialism’, he responds specifically to disparaging remarks about the Russian
people that the historian Jules Michelet had made in a work of 1851 on Poland
and Russia.249 He also delivers a riposte in this essay to the one-sided view of
Russia that Custine had put forward in Russia in 1839: in justifiably assailing
the official realm of the St Petersburg court, Custine had overlooked the
unofficial realm of the Russian peasant. Herzen may even be seen as offering
readers, in his French writings, an alternative scenario to that advanced by
Alexis de Tocqueville, who in his own speculation on the old and new worlds
had recently identified America as the site of the ascendant civilization.250
Besides his propagandistic purpose, then, Herzen too wished to inscribe
Russia in the European world and to formulate a national mission, which he
conceived in terms scarcely less soteriological than Tiutchev’s. The Slavs, he
contended, were a strong, intelligent race who possessed ‘a great elasticity’,
which enabled them to absorb and transcend the cultures of other peoples.251
They were peculiarly suited to the libertarian socialism to which Herzen
subscribed: centralization was ‘contrary to the Slav genius’.252 Like Tiutchev
again, and like Turgenev too, Herzen left readers in no doubt that it was the
Russians who were hegemonic in the Slav world, not least because they had
long lived under a strong, independent state.253
246 ‘Le peuple russe et le socialisme’, vol. 7, 272.
247 S togo berega, ibidem, vol. 6, 17.
248 ‘La Russie’ in Gertsen, SS, vol. 6, 154.
249 The version of Michelet’s work ‘Pologne et Russie: légende de Kościuszko’ to which Herzen
was responding appeared in L’Avènement du peuple, in instalments, in August–September 1851.
Michelet revised this work in the light of Herzen’s comments before the publication of it in book
form (Paris: Librairie nouvelle) in 1852. For extracts from Michelet’s work to which Herzen takes
exception, see Gertsen, SS, vol. 7, 271–272, 282, 284, 292, 293–294.
250 Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique.
251 Du développement des idées révolutionnaires en Russie, in Gertsen, SS, vol. 7, 68–69.
252 ‘Le peuple russe et le socialisme’, ibidem, 280.
253 Du développement des idées révolutionnaires en Russie, ibidem, 27–28; ‘Le peuple russe et le
socialisme’, ibidem, 279, 281.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Not that it was the Slav world alone that Russia, in Herzen’s scheme of
things, aspired to lead; it was European civilization as a whole. Reversing
Chaadaev’s linkage of Russia with death and Europe with life, Herzen suggested to his European readers that their dying civilization could be brought
to life again by a people whom they barely knew and whom they should
therefore study.254 Like Tiutchev again, Herzen is not averse to playing on
western fears of the ‘threatening, hostile empire’ from which he came and its
military might.255 Russia would pose a danger to western nations, he argued,
if its autocratic regime remained unchecked by the revolutionary forces
he represented: ‘oriental barbarians’ might overrun Europe and destroy
western civilization.256 Herzen even appeals to supra-rational intuition to
drive home his point. Just as Tiutchev, in a famous quatrain of 1866, would
express the view that Russia could not be understood by the intellect, so
Herzen claimed that there was some instinctual force ‘difficult to express in
words’ which sustained the Russian people through all their adversities.257
For the sustained critique of the West which he expounded in the late
1840s and early 1850s in his essays From the Other Shore and in his Letters from
France and Italy, and which were directed partly at erstwhile Russian allies in
the ‘Westernist’ camp with whom he was now at odds, Herzen used Russian.
(Herzen wrote Russian, incidentally, with a clarity and flair that few thinkers
in the mid-nineteenth century intelligentsia could match.) For his idealized
portrayal of the Russian peasant, his encomiums to the intelligentsia (the
new intellectual and ethical elite of the nation), and his claims about Russia’s
grand futurity, on the other hand, he chose ‘the language of Europe’, with
which he could reach both educated Russian readers and a largely sceptical or
apprehensive western readership as well. It is a piquant fact that for this secular
‘Westernizer’, as for the Pan-Slavist Tiutchev, French serves as the vehicle for
the promotion of a nationalistic and even messianic view of Russia’s destiny.

Polemical writings in French after the Crimean War
In the freer conditions that obtained after the death of Nicholas I and the
end of the Crimean War, debate about Russia’s destiny was reinvigorated
254 Ibidem, 273, and ‘La Russie’, ibidem, vol. 6, 183.
255 ‘Le peuple russe et le socialisme’, ibidem, SS, vol. 7, 275.
256 ‘Lettre d’un russe à Mazzini’, ibidem, vol. 6, 225, and Du développement des idées révolutionnaires en Russie, ibidem, vol. 7, 113, 125.
257 Tiutchev, PSSP, vol. 2, 165; ‘La Russie’, in Gertsen, SS, vol. 6, 162–163, and Du développement
des idées révolutionnaires en Russie, ibidem, vol. 7, 16.

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and continued to spill out beyond Russia’s borders. The debate had many
dimensions, religious, social, and political, as well as historiosophical.
The new freedom of discussion, the opportunity for far-reaching reform,
the interest of foreign statesmen and intellectuals in the outcome of this
ferment – all these factors account for the spate of Russian writings in French
that appeared, in Russia and abroad, in the decade after the Crimean War
and for the polemical character and acerbity of many of the texts in question.
It was not surprising, in view of the centrality of religious identity in the
mental landscape of conservative nationalists, that Russians should have
entered into theological dispute both among themselves and with foreigners,
appealing to a broad European readership as they did so. The merits of
Catholicism, for example, were propounded, in French, by the Russian Jesuit
Prince Ivan Gagarin.258 Nor, of course, was it unnatural that even thinkers
who deplored western influence on Russian culture should have resorted
to French, if they could, to defend their credo. Thus the Slavophile Aleksei
Khomiakov entered the international polemic that Tiutchev’s article on
the papacy had generated, by responding to Tiutchev’s critic Laurentie
with a French pamphlet of his own, A Few Words by an Orthodox Christian
on the Western Communions, Prompted by Mr Laurentie’s Pamphlet, which
was first published in Paris in 1853.259 Irrespective of its impact on western
258 Gagarin published a great number of works on Catholicism and Russia in French, some of
which were translated into other languages. They include the following: Réponse d’un Russe à
un Russe (1856); La Russie sera-t-elle catholique? (1856); Les starovères, l’église russe et le pape
(1857); Etudes de théologie, de philosophie et d’histoire publiées par les pères Charles Daniel et
Jean Gagarin de la Compagnie de Jésus (1857–1861); Sur la réunion de l’église orientale avec l’église
romaine (1860); Tendances catholiques dans la société russe (1860); La primauté de St. Pierre et les
livres liturgiques de l’église russe (1863); La réforme du clergé russe (1867); Les églises orientales
unies (1867); and Lettre à une dame russe sur le dogme de l’immaculée conception (no date). He
also produced an edition of the works of Chaadaev who, as we have seen, was sympathetic to
Catholicism: Tchadaïef, Oeuvres choisies (1862). On Gagarin, see Pierling, Le prince Gagarine et
ses amis.
259 Khomiakov, Quelques mots par un chrétien orthodoxe sur les communions occidentales, à
l’occasion d’une brochure de M. Laurentie. See ‘French writings’, in Khomiakov, On Spiritual
Unity, 55 ff. Quelques mots par un chrétien orthodoxe was the f irst of six works in French in
which Khomiakov set out to explain the Orthodox faith to the western communions. The
various French writings of Khomiakov, which included some of his most important statements
on the Orthodox faith, were collected in a volume entitled L’Eglise Latine et le Protestantisme
published posthumously in Switzerland in 1872. A much earlier defence of Orthodoxy through
the medium of French, incidentally, had been mounted by the conservative Russian diplomat of
Romanian origin, Alexandru Sturdza, in the first Alexandrine period: see his Considérations sur
la doctrine et l’esprit de l’église orthodoxe (1816) and his Mémoire sur l’état actuel de l’Allemagne
(1818). On Sturdza, see Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries; Ghervas, Alexandre Stourdza
(1791–1854), and idem, Réinventer la tradition.

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public opinion, Khomiakov’s tract, which was translated from French into
German and English before it appeared in Russian, had an inspirational
effect on some of his like-minded compatriots, such as Anna Tiutcheva,
who had been raised by Catholic teachers in Munich.260 Vera Aksakova,
the sister of the Slavophiles Konstantin and Ivan, listening to a reading
of Khomiakov’s tract, was prompted to express a misapprehension that
seems to have been common among Russian linguistic Gallophobes (and
that is no doubt common, mutatis mutandis, among linguistic nationalists
everywhere). She was pleasantly surprised, she noted in her diary, to discover
that ‘French was capable of expressing such profound thoughts’!261 It was as
if the purposes to which French was put and the content of the utterances
or texts in it with which a critic of its use was familiar somehow reflected
badly on the language itself and even on the ethnos with which the language
was primarily associated.
Voluminous and wide-ranging descriptions of Russia and discussions
of its destiny, perceived from different political standpoints, continued
to be produced by Russians, in French, in the post-Crimean period. These
included Nikolai Zherebtsov’s Essay on the History of Civilization in Russia
(1858), which was written in a patriotic Slavophile vein, and Prince Petr
Dolgorukov’s The Truth about Russia (1860), a survey of Russia’s society and
institutions which was sufficiently critical of the existing order to win the
approval of Herzen, who was by now editing Kolokol (The Bell) on his Free
Russian Press in London.262 The greatest attention, though, was devoted
to discussion of plans for the first and most important social reform set
in motion by Alexander II, the emancipation of the serfs. Michel Niqueux
has made a valuable study of the numerous projects composed in French
on this subject by writers, both Russian and foreign, in the period from
December 1857, when imperial rescripts instructing representatives of the
nobility to prepare proposals for emancipation were published, to February
1861, when the edict abolishing serfdom was issued. Among the Russians
who produced such texts there were both exiles, such as Nikolai Turgenev,
who authored pamphlets on the subject in 1859 and 1860, and men still
260 The German and English editions of Quelques mots par un chrétien orthodoxe sur les Communions occidentales were published in Leipzig by Brockhaus in 1855 and 1858 respectively. For a
Russian translation, see ‘Neskol’ko slov pravoslavnogo khristianina o zapadnykh veroispovedaniiakh’, in Khomiakov, IS, 230–273. For Tiutcheva’s impressions, see her recollections Pri dvore
dvukh imperatorov, 64–65.
261 Vera Aksakova, Dnevnik Very Sergeevny Aksakovoi, 54.
262 Gerebtzoff [Zherebtsov], Essai sur l’histoire de la civilisation en Russie; Dolgoroukoff, La
vérité sur la Russie. See Niqueux, ‘L’émancipation des serfs en Russie’, paras 8–11.

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resident in Russia, such as Vladimir Orlov-Davydov, a deputy on one of the
provincial committees set up to prepare the ground for the reform.263 These
texts, which also represented many different political positions, dealt with
the reasons why emancipation was considered necessary, the question of
whether land should be allocated to the peasants and if so on what terms,
whether compensation should be paid to nobles who lost land and if so by
whom and over what period, and the possible consequences of the reform.
There were various reasons, Niqueux points out, why so many texts
(Niqueux examines almost forty that he has discovered in French repositories264) should have been written on this subject in French and published
outside Russia, in France and other countries. For one thing, despite glasnost’,
censorship remained in force in Russia and restricted what could be published there. By publishing abroad, Russians were able to widen the debate
beyond the parameters permitted in Russia. In any case, they wanted to
inform European public opinion and even hoped to put pressure on the
Russian government.265 Furthermore, the belief evidently persisted for a
while that authors might be allowed a greater freedom of expression if they
wrote in French, ipso facto limiting their readership, than if they wrote in
Russian, thereby making their ideas potentially accessible to all Russians who
were literate. The cautious liberal Konstantin Kavelin, for example, who felt
that Herzen’s criticisms of the regime from afar jeopardized the prospects
for unprecedented reforms inside Russia, urged Herzen to replace Kolokol
with a periodical in French, which would be accessible only to the educated
classes and might therefore prove more acceptable to the government.266
Herzen himself seemed to share the view that the government might look
with greater leniency on publications in French when he wrote to Dolgorukov
in 1861, shortly after the abolition of serfdom: ‘You do very well to publish in
French, they fear this like fire’. However, the notion does not seem to have
been well-founded: Dolgorukov was deprived of his title and property for
his temerity and was condemned to perpetual exile.267
As debate within the Russian educated elite intensified in the first half
of the reign of Alexander II and a rift – which was poignantly recorded by
263 N. Tourgeneff [N.I. Turgenev], Encore un mot sur l’émancipation des serfs en Russie; idem,
Un dernier mot sur l’emancipation des serfs en Russie; Orlov-Davydov, Réflexions préalables sur
les bases proposées au mode d’émancipation des serfs en Russie.
264 See the 37 titles in the bibliography at the end of Niqueux’s article ‘L’émancipation des serfs
en Russie’.
265 Ibidem, para. 6.
266 See Aileen Kelly, The Discovery of Chance, 393.
267 Herzen, SS, vol. 27, pt 1, 36.

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Ivan Turgenev in Fathers and Children (1862) – opened up between moderate
and radical camps, French continued to be useful for representatives of
all shades of opinion on the political spectrum, as they strove to garner as
much external support as they could. For the radical camp, French was an
international language of socialism and revolution. Paris was the site of
recurrent revolutionary disturbances (in 1789, of course, and in 1830 and
1848, and again in 1871). The thinkers and agitators who inspired Russia’s
mid-nineteenth socialists – the Comte de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier,
Étienne Cabet, Victor-Prosper Considerant, Louis Blanc, Louis-Auguste
Blanqui, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon – were French.268 The French-speaking
world was still one of the main havens for political refugees. French was the
language of many of the periodical revolutionary publications that were
springing up, to which Russians contributed. For example, the utopian
socialist Nikolai Sazonov, who had anonymously published a critical book
on Nicholas I in 1854,269 briefly edited a weekly international, La Gazette
du Nord (The Gazette of the North) in Paris in 1859–1860.270 Within this
Francophone revolutionary tradition we may place the internationally
renowned anarchist Prince Petr Kropotkin, educated in the Page Corps, a
childhood companion of the future Emperor Alexander II and the author
of numerous French articles, leaflets, and pamphlets from the 1870s on.271
At the same time, French remained a useful tool for loyalists, including the
prolific Baron Theodor Fircks, a Baltic German nobleman from Courland who
wrote under the pseudonym Schédo-Ferroti (a near anagram of his German
forename and surname). Fircks trained as an engineer and wrote a work on
railways in Russia,272 but his reputation (or notoriety) rests chiefly on the series
of controversial Studies on the Future of Russia that he wrote in French over a
period of some ten years from the late 1850s. These ‘études’ ranged over such
subjects as the terms of the emancipation of the serfs, the nobility, the schism
in the Russian Church, and the future of Poland after the revolt of 1863. His
most incendiary text, and the text that is of the greatest interest from the
point of view of language use and attitudes, is perhaps his Nihilism in Russia.
268 The views of Marx and Engels, as spokesmen for an industrial proletariat which Russia
did not yet truly have, were not considered by many Russian socialists before the 1880s to have
direct relevance to the Russian situation.
269 [Sazonov], La vérité sur l’empereur Nicolas.
270 Niqueux, ‘L’émancipation des serfs en Russie’, paras. 12–13.
271 See, e.g. the bibliography in Cahm, Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism,
353–356, in which Kropotkin’s many contributions to the anarchist journal Le Révolté (1879–1885)
and its successors La Révolte (1887–1894) and Les Temps Nouveaux (1895–1914) are catalogued.
272 Lettres sur les chemins de fer en Russie (1858).

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Fircks considers nihilism not a political doctrine or movement but a moral
infirmity that contemporary Russian society has contracted. He defines it
variously as a deification of the self-satisfied ego, the morbid stimulation
of amour-propre, and a belief in one’s infallibility that is so firm that the
nihilist regards bases of the social contract, such as religion, family, and
government, as intolerable constraints.273 Nihilism has taken a much firmer
hold in Russia than in other nations, Fircks claims. However, it affects only
the Russian educated classes, not the merchant class or the peasantry, or even
the Germanic elite of the Baltic provinces from which Fircks himself came.274
The causes of the infirmity are manifold, and several of them are explored
in this diffuse work, but the root of the problem, according to Fircks, lies in
the adoption of alien cultural ways by the elite and the principal solution to
it lies in a change in the way in which noble women are educated. Language
use is an important part of both the cause and the solution.
Fircks presents an extreme version of the exceptionalist argument, according to which there is no country in the world where the dissimilarity
between the educated class and the people is so marked as in Russia.275 In
no other country, he contends, has ‘society’ separated itself from the rest
of the nation to such a degree or taken such a ‘highly anti-national’ course
in order to achieve this separation. Unlike the French elite, he believes, the
Russian ‘civilized classes’ have denationalized themselves. Although they
baulked at the reforms so rapidly introduced by Peter the Great, eventually
they went with the current, imitating the forms and language of western
civilization, attaching the lowest value to what smacked of Russianness,
and abandoning popular customs, national costume, and ‘the language of
the country’.276
For his polemical purposes, Fircks thus adopts the Slavophile notion of the
separation between society and people. He also echoes the recent reformulation of this notion by Native-Soil Conservatives, such as Dostoevskii, whose
vocabulary he seems to be appropriating when – several times – he uses
the expression ‘soil of the country’.277 To cap it all, he presents himself as an
advocate for the Russian common people, who are the most vigorous element of
the nation and ‘the sole bearers of true Russian nationality’.278 It will be noted
that he has also exploited the long discourse about Russian imitativeness and
273
274
275
276
277
278

Fircks, Le nihilisme en Russie, 2–4, 208.
Ibidem, 4–5, 171–172.
Ibidem, 10.
Ibidem, 72–73; see also 8. Fircks’s italics.
On Dostoevskii and Native-Soil Conservatism, see the last section of Chapter 9 below.
Le nihilisme russe, 84.

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The French L anguage in Russia

that he recycles its vocabulary. He objects, for instance, to prostration before
western models which it is thought necessary to copy.279 He deplores the morbid
tendency to ape what is foreign.280 He offers a withering characterization of a
young noblewoman he says he has met abroad: she is a ‘parrot’ which repeats
nihilist clichés without understanding what they mean.281
Several features of Russian life seem to Fircks to explain the moral malaise
he identifies, but a large share of the responsibility for it, he claims, is borne
by Russian noblewomen. They have been distracted by the temptations of
society from their duties as wives, mothers, and housekeepers and consequently have ceased to accomplish the mission civilisatrice that Fircks assigns
to the Christian wife. In order to improve public and family morals, and
thus to eradicate nihilism, it would be necessary, Fircks argues, to ‘raise the
moral level’ of women and to ‘civilize’ them, by which he means developing in
them a love of the family hearth.282 This domesticating goal – which radical
contemporaries were bound to find repugnant, given the importance they
attached to the emancipation of women, as attested by Chernyshevskii’s
highly influential novel What is to be Done? (1863) – would be best achieved
through changes in the type of education provided for young noblewomen.
All girls’ institutes, Fircks proposes, should be opened up to day-pupils. This
measure would ensure that young noblewomen who board in them would
come into contact with children from a lower social milieu where pursuit
of pleasure was not considered the only worthwhile goal of life and where
talents could be cultivated for purposes other than to enable young women
to shine in the beau monde. Foreign languages, including French, would
continue to be taught in these institutions, but the highest priority would
be to teach the girls Russian, with correct pronunciation. Colleges would
also be established in all the main towns of each province to train Russian
teachers and governesses who could be employed by families who wanted
to have their children educated at home. Girls from noble families would
no longer aspire to pass for Parisians; instead, they would be trained to find
contentment in the home, where they would play the key role in forming
each child’s character.283
Thus, a Baltic German baron who writes in French blames the plurilingualism of the cosmopolitan Russian upper class for the spiritual malaise
279 Ibidem, 100.
280 Ibidem, 96.
281 Ibidem, 219.
282 Ibidem, 193–194, 202–203, 225–226, 236–237.
283 Ibidem, 320–321, 327–329; see also 3, 168–169.

French for cultur al propaganda and political polemics

459

that has generated political opposition in the Russian Empire! In order to
explain the exquisite irony of the argument Fircks puts forward, we need
to keep in mind the polemical intent of his remarks on language in Nihilism
in Russia. Fircks is seeking to persuade readers that radical reform projects,
such as ‘Herzenism’ and the ‘nihilism’ that is now supplanting it, have come
out of the warped minds of members of the denationalized elite, who lack
common sense or understanding of the particular genius of the Russian
nation.284 His schematic picture of language use among the upper class,
which exaggerates the degree to which members of this class refused or
were unable to speak Russian, is designed to bolster his diagnosis of the
causes of the alarming social, cultural, and intellectual fragmentation
that he observes in post-reform Russia. Russian nationality, he hopes, is a
banner around which elements of a now dangerously divided empire might
be reunited.285
*
One of the important functions of the French language in Russia, we have
shown in this chapter, was to represent the empire and the nation to the
European world of which Russia became a part and with which it competed
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. French was a tool with which
to promote a positive image of Russia and to counter, in various ways,
the argument that Russians were an immature and imitative people. For
example, French (and other European languages too, of course) could be
used to promote the recent achievements of Russian writers, either through
translation of their works or through reviews of them that would be accessible to educated westerners. It served as a vehicle both for political
propaganda and for a distinctive Russian contribution to pan-European
historiosophical debate. It also had a use for Russians as a medium for
uncensored, or relatively uncensored, debate among themselves.
However, the strongest counter-argument to the charge of imitativeness
was the creation of a native literary culture couched in the vernacular. It is
the creation of a literature, Hastings has claimed, that is the crucial factor
in the development of a nation: when its vernacular possesses a literature,
it seems, a society feels confident enough to challenge the dominance of
outsiders.286 A literature serves as a repository for the beliefs, values, myths,
284 Ibidem, 84.
285 Ibidem, 106.
286 Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood, 31.

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The French L anguage in Russia

self-conceptions, and shared memory out of which a sense of nationhood is
constructed. And in the nineteenth century, literature did indeed become
Russia’s principal nation-building tool.287 Paradoxical as it may seem, the
knowledge of foreign languages that we have been examining was crucial
to the development of the capacity to create such a literature. As national
consciousness developed into nationalism, though, the value of bilingualism
as cultural capital diminished in the eyes of the literary and intellectual
community that was coming to speak for the nation. Accordingly, Russians’
use of French was persistently challenged, mocked, and discredited in various
types of literary work to which we turn in our closing chapters.

287 The point is emphasized, as we pointed out earlier, in Hosking, Russia: People and Empire,
286–311.

Chapter 8
Language attitudes
Language debate and its place in discourse about national
identity
Thus far, we have been concerned mainly with the social, political, and
cultural history of Franco-Russian bilingualism. We have considered, for
example, where and for what purposes French was spoken or written, how
it served the interests of the nobility during the age when the nobility was
aspiring to become a corporation of a European sort, and how the use of
French by eighteenth-century monarchs and nobles helped to bring Russia
into the sphere of European civilization. We have examined the use of French
as a language of cultural propaganda and historiosophical or overtly political
polemic as well as its incidence in various public and private literary genres.
We have put Franco-Russian bilingualism in perspective by noting the use in
Russia, at certain times and in certain domains, of foreign languages other
than French. We have placed this examination of language use in the changing
historical contexts of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European
and Russian worlds. We have also set our discussion within the frameworks
provided by scholarship on the social history and cultural practice of the Russian nobility and by historico-sociolinguistic scholarship on such phenomena
as plurilingualism, diglossia, language choice, and code-switching.
We turn now to the dimension of our subject that lies primarily in the fields
of intellectual and literary history. That is to say, we shall explore Russian
perceptions of the bilingualism of the elite, describing the way it is presented
in the nation’s mental landscape, whose contours were coming into view in
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russian literature and thought. The
Russian views on linguistic matters that we shall discuss are bound up with
the larger debates about national identity and destiny that Russians conducted
over the long period with which we are concerned. What effect, for example,
did the status of French as a prestige language at court and in the Russian
nobility have on conceptions of nationhood among the intellectual and literary
elite? The influence of French culture and the French language on the nation’s
elite lent urgency, we contend, to the search for national character before,
during, and after the Napoleonic Wars and helped to direct that search. The
topos of anxiety about contamination of Russian by French intensified the
desire of many Russian writers to break free of western cultural models as

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The French L anguage in Russia

Russia emerged as a major European power. Again, how were bilingualism and
consequent biculturalism presented by writers who argued that the nation
was fractured and that the educated class, by the mid-nineteenth-century, was
rootless, like the ‘superfluous man’ of classical literature? In considering such
questions, we are no longer concerned so much with the linguistic and social
practice of Francophone Russians as with what Russians thought about the
implications and consequences of their language use, both past and present.
The debate about national identity, of which language debate was a part,
began in the mid-eighteenth century, around the time that foreign-language
use was becoming a useful accomplishment among the elite, and it intensified in the age of Catherine II, when French became a prestige language
among the Russian nobility. It was sharpened by unease about the extent
of foreign cultural influence on the Russian elite. From the point of view
of the opponents of foreign influence, as Rogger observes,
the French dancing master, the English carriage, the German tutor, the
Russian Frenchmen, and some of the ideas they brought with them,
became the despicable quintessence of the foreign as it appeared in
Russia. And when in increasing measure the foreign seemed to corrupt
the national essence, there occurred the first attempts to determine
what that essence was.1

Misgivings about so-called Gallomania in particular gave rise at an early
stage in the history of the westernization of the Russian elite to a fear that
Russia was not autonomous and that Russians were by nature passive
recipients of foreign culture, as many western observers encouraged them
to believe. The anxiety is illustrated by the recurring image of Russians as
‘apes’ or ‘parrots’ in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century discourse.
Readers of Russian literature in the second half of the eighteenth century are
keenly aware of concern about Russia’s cultural dependency on France. The
concern is memorably expressed in the ‘letters from abroad’ written by the
dramatist Fonvizin during a prolonged foreign journey that he undertook in
the 1770s: from the perspective of a Parisian, Fonvizin remarked, Burgundy
was a nearby province and Russia a distant one.2 It is reinforced by numerous
1 Rogger, National Consciousness, 43.
2 ‘Pis’ma iz vtorogo zagranichnogo puteshestviia (1777–1778)’, in Fonvizin, SS, vol. 2, 472. On
this work, see especially Offord, Journeys to a Graveyard, Chapter 2. It is of some interest, as
we chart the beginnings of the rise of national consciousness in Russia, that Fonvizin uses the
word natsiia in his writings (SS, vol. 2, 433).

L anguage attitudes

463

negative portrayals of the foreign tutor, especially the poorly qualified, selfinterested, or immoral Frenchman charged with the cultural Gallicization
of the Russian youth and the teaching of French to them.3
It is worth making a few general comments on the broad debate about
national identity in Russia before we turn to the linguistic element within
that debate. First, ironic as it may seem, the distaste for French culture,
manners, and morals, and for the French language that served as the vehicle
through which they were imported, was reinforced in the age of Catherine
by other cultural currents entering Russia from the West, including the
writings of French moralists themselves. 4 One such current was Stoicism,
as represented in the ancient world by Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, to
which Fonvizin, for example, was strongly attracted.5 Conceiving of the
wise man as one who had mastered his passions and commending a simple,
unaffected way of life, the Stoics cautioned readers against the vain desire
for wealth and the flattery, the jostling for imperial favour, and the enjoyment of conspicuous consumption that seemed to characterize life at a
magnificent court. Another influential current was pre-Romanticism, which
drew inspiration from the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, stimulated
interest in the supposedly more coherent communities of pre-modern
times, and encouraged the belief that a simple rural life was more authentic
than life in the modern city – a belief reflected in the love of pastoral in
late eighteenth-century European literature and in the early prose fiction
of Karamzin in particular.6 Russian resistance to the culture of French
high society and to use of the language that was the vehicle for it may
therefore be seen as more than an expression of the rise of nationalistic
sentiment. It was also part of a wider European disquiet about modernity
and a reservation about urbanity, in its literal sense of urban life as well as
its sense of refined courtesy.7
Secondly, the language attitudes we examine in this chapter cannot easily
be disentangled from other matters, such as dress, fashion, and behaviour
in the new sites of noble sociability, which also featured in the debate about
3 See Rjéoutski, ‘Le Précepteur français comme ennemi’.
4 Proust, ‘Les Lettres de France dans l’espace littéraire français’, 25.
5 See Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia, 232–233, n. 4; Offord, ‘Denis Fonvizin and
the Concept of Nobility’, 27.
6 See, e.g., ‘Bednaia Liza’ and ‘Natal’ia, boiarskaia doch’’, in Karamzin, IS, vol. 1, 605–621 and
622–660 respectively.
7 See the conclusion by Argent, Offord, and Rjéoutski in their co-edited European Francophonie,
440. On medieval and early modern critiques of royal courts, see also the first section of Chapter
3 above.

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The French L anguage in Russia

national identity, modernity, and urbanity. Above all, they are informed by
stereotypical conceptions of national character, for language attitudes, as
John Edwards has observed, ‘are better understood as attitudes towards the
members of [the] language communities’ in question.8 Thus we repeatedly
find that criticisms of Russians’ use of the French language and essentialist criticisms of the French language itself are part of a critique of French
personality. The negative traits in the conception of French personality that we
shall encounter, incidentally, might turn out to be merely the obverse sides of
traits which admirers of French civilization esteem. To a member of the latter
category, such as Marc Fumaroli, for example, the dissimulation practised by
the eighteenth-century French elite was a positive phenomenon, ‘a political
and social necessity’, a type of behaviour ‘inseparable from propriety, which is
a penetrating attention to another person and to his singularities as much as a
sort of self-protection’.9 To opponents of French cultural influence, in Russia as
elsewhere, on the other hand, dissimulation was a vice, a species of hypocrisy
and insincerity. Likewise, the light-heartedness and gaiety in which members
of French high society took pride could be construed as lack of seriousness,
or even frivolity. Love of douceur de vivre and elegance in appearance could
seem like extravagance and foppishness respectively. Moreover, the vices of
the French, that is to say their virtues once they had been turned inside out
in this way, could be contrasted to qualities that Russians were beginning to
suppose they themselves possessed, such as straightforwardness and depth.
Thirdly, anxiety about Russian cultural dependency on the West and
Russians’ reluctance to be cast as mere imitators led, unsurprisingly, to
the development of counter-claims about Russian historical development
and national characteristics and potentialities. Some nineteenth-century
thinkers, including Chaadaev, Herzen, and Chernyshevskii, detected advantages in national backwardness. Nations need not repeat the mistakes
of others, they argued; Russia was fortuitously placed to receive the new
forms of social organization that western thinkers had recently begun to
imagine and then to proceed to higher forms of civilization without having
to endure long periods of painful transition.10 Herzen and other writers,
more ambitiously, started even to present Russian borrowing as indicative
of exceptional receptivity (vospriimchivost’) to the ideas and cultures of
8 Edwards, Multilingualism, 89.
9 Fumaroli, When the World Spoke French, 195.
10 See, e.g., Chaadaev, ‘L’apologie d’un fou’; Herzen, Pis’ma iz Frantsii i Italii, in Herzen, SS, vol.
5, 26 (see also Herzen’s preface to the second edition of this work, ibidem, 13–14); Chernyshevskii,
‘Kritika filosofskikh predubezhdenii protiv obshchinnogo zemlevladeniia’, in Chernyshevskii,
PSS, vol. 5, 357–392, especially 382–384.

L anguage attitudes

465

other peoples. Russians – so the argument ran – were capable of creating
a universal civilization, which would amount to more than the sum of its
borrowed parts, transcending previous civilizations. This sort of claim is
already apparent in the middle of the century in Herzen’s remarks on the
‘elasticity’ and ‘acceptivity’ of the Slavs who, ‘while consenting to external
influences, preserve their own character’.11 The claim recurs, as we shall see
in our final chapter, in Tolstoi’s War and Peace and finds its most prophetic
expression in Dostoevskii’s so-called ‘Pushkin speech’ of 1880.12

The development of Russian language consciousness
The language consciousness that is manifested in the resistance to French
linguistic influence and French-speaking which we begin to trace in this
chapter also found expression, in the second half of the eighteenth century,
in a new interest in the Russian language. One indication of this interest
was the growth of a native literary tradition stocked with examples of work
in the main forms and genres that were utilized in European poetry and
prose, including, of course, those forms and genres represented in the French
canon. However, there were at least three other indications of increasing
attention to the Russian language which we should briefly mention here,
before we turn to Russians’ reactions to the adoption of the French language
by the noble elite.
First, attempts began to be made to systematize Russian grammar and
lexis. That is to say, we see the beginnings of codification – a process typically
associated with the rapid development of a print culture which disseminates
standard linguistic practices.13 Lomonosov, having already written a treatise
on Russian versification (another expression of the urge to classify),14 made
an important contribution to the task of linguistic codification in the reign
11 Du développement des idées révolutionnaires en Russie, in Herzen, SS, vol. 7, 68–69.
12 Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 26, 136–149. On Tolstoi and Dostoevskii, see the last three sections of
Chapter 9 below.
13 See the third section of our Introduction on this development.
14 ‘Pis’mo o pravilakh rossiiskogo stikhotvorstva’ (1739), in Lomonosov, PSS, vol. 7, 9–18.
Other treatises on versification were produced in the first half of the eighteenth century (i.e.
even before works on linguistic codification) by Trediakovskii and Kantemir in 1735 and 1742
(published in 1744) respectively: see Trediakovskii ‘Novyi i kratkii sposob k slozheniiu rossiiskikh
stikhov s opredeleniiami do sego nadlezhashchikh zvanii’, in Trediakovskii, IP, 365–385, with
appended examples of the types of metre described (385–420), and Makentin [part of a nom de
plume which, in its full form, is a virtual anagram of ‘Antiokh Kantemir’], ‘Pis’mo Kharitona
Makentina k priiateliu o slozhenii stikhov russkikh’, in Kantemir, SS, 407–428.

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The French L anguage in Russia

of Elizabeth, when he produced the first descriptive grammar of literary
Russian, published in 1755, in which he distinguished Church Slavonic and
Russian elements and literary and dialectal material in the language.15
In another work, on the use of Church Slavonic elements in Russian, he
proposed a hierarchy of linguistic ‘styles’ or registers (‘low’, ‘middle’, and
‘high’), identifying lexical forms and literary genres which he considered
suitable for use at each level.16 Further grammars appeared in the age of
Catherine. There was Nikolai Kurganov’s Universal Russian Grammar, of
which ten editions appeared between 1769 and 1837.17 This was followed by
Anton Barsov’s Short Rules of Russian Grammar (1771), Petr Sokolov’s Basic
Principles of Russian Grammar (1788), and Vasilii Svetov’s Brief Rules for the
Study of Russian (1790).18
At the same time, attempts were made to describe and systematize the
Russian lexicon. In the 1770s, Petr Alekseev published an Ecclesiastical
Dictionary.19 In 1785, Catherine instructed Peter Simon Pallas, a German
naturalist, to compile a comparative dictionary. Nearly 300 Russian words
were selected, many by Catherine herself, and at her behest equivalents of
these words in as many European and Asian languages as possible were
collected. The first volume of the resultant Comparative Vocabulary of the
Languages of the Whole World was published in Latin in the 1780s, with an
introduction in both Latin and Russian and an attempted transcription of
the sound of each word in each language in Cyrillic.20 Most importantly, the
Imperial Russian Academy, which Catherine had founded in 1783, produced
a dictionary under the supervision of its first president, Princess Dashkova.21
This six-volume compilation, The Dictionary of the Russian Academy, defined
43,257 words. Its contributors included highly placed court officials, eminent
writers such as Fonvizin and Derzhavin, scientists, mathematicians, and
historians, as well as Dashkova herself, who collected and defined words
15 Rossiiskaia grammatika, in Lomonosov, PSS, vol. 7, 391–578.
16 ‘Predislovie o pol’ze knig tserkovnykh v russkom iazyke’, in Lomonosov, PSS, vol. 7, 587–592.
17 Kurganov, Rossiiskaia universal’naia grammatika […].
18 Barsov, Kratkie pravila rossiiskoi grammatiki; Sokolov, Nachal’nye osnovaniia rossiiskoi
grammatiki; Svetov, Kratkie pravila k izucheniiu iazyka rossiiskogo […]. All these works are cited
by Rogger, National Consciousness, 119–120.
19 Alekseev, Tserkovnyi slovar’.
20 Linguarum totius orbis vocabularia comparativa / Sravnitel’nye slovari vsekh iazykov i
narechii. The dictionary was compiled with the help of Russian officials in various regions of
Russia, Russian diplomats, and foreign scholars, following a model written by Pallas in French
in 1786 (Modèle du vocabulaire qui doit servir à la comparaison de toutes les langues).
21 On Dashkova’s own views on language use, see Lamarche Marrese, ‘Princess Dashkova and
the Politics of Language’.

L anguage attitudes

467

denoting moral qualities.22 The Dictionary was conceived as a normative
collection, and its compilers were perhaps less concerned with actual contemporary language use than was the case in other academy dictionaries of
the same era.23 It is worth emphasizing that the foundation of the Russian
Academy and the compilation of the Dictionary under its auspices coincided
with continuing official concern about the high number of foreign teachers
providing instruction in various subjects in a foreign language in Russian
educational institutions. There was a perception that Russian students in
those institutions had a poor command of Russian as a result. The concern
was reflected in the educational reforms to which we referred in an earlier
chapter.24 The reforms aimed to improve teaching in several key institutions
(first and foremost, the Smolny Institute and the Noble Cadet Corps) and
resulted in the dismissal of many foreign teachers, the recruitment of Russian
teachers in their place, and the foundation of so-called ‘popular schools’ in
which foreign languages were not supposed to be taught.25
A second manifestation of the emergent Russian language consciousness
was the appearance of the topos of language pride in the writings of the
secular literary community that was coming into being. Like the cultural
currents such as Stoicism and pre-Romanticism to which we have referred,
this topos was widely deployed in Europe. We have already encountered
it in writings by French authors such as Le Laboureur and Bouhours that
date from the period when classical French literature was beginning to
flower. We find it in other Western European language communities too.
For example, it informs an epistle published in 1614, ‘The Excellencie of the
English Tongue’, in which Richard Carew hoped to ‘proove that our English
language, for all, or the most, is matchable, if not preferrable before any other
in use at this day’.26 It runs through the substantial works on the German
language written by Justus Schottelius in the mid-seventeenth century.27
Similar pride in the vernacular is apparent in Russia from the middle of the
eighteenth century, when the new sense of nationhood we have identified
was developing and writers were beginning to express hopes and fears about
22 Slovar’ Akademii Rossiiskoi, vol. 5 (1794), 1.
23 Considine, Academy Dictionaries 1600–1800, 156.
24 See the fourth section of Chapter 2.
25 This reform was carried out with the aid of Janković de Mirijevo, who had previously helped
to implement a similar reform in Austro-Hungary. The same urge to improve competency in
Russian was manifested in a continuous debate which took place from 1760 about the introduction
of Russian as a language of tuition in the University of Moscow.
26 Carew, ‘The Excellencie of the English Tongue’, 49.
27 Teutsche Sprachkunst (1641); Ausführliche Arbeit Von der Teutschen HaubtSprache (1663).

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The French L anguage in Russia

Russia’s cultural relationship to her western neighbours. As early as 1747,
Sumarokov contended, in a pair of ‘epistles’, that Russian was ‘beautiful’,
‘sweet, pure, and luxuriant and rich’, ‘capable of anything’.28 Still in the reign
of Elizabeth, Lomonosov famously eulogized Russian in the preface to his
grammar, making the following comments apropos of words attributed to
the sixteenth-century Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who supposedly
used to say that it was proper to speak Spanish to God, French to friends,
German to enemies, and Italian to the female sex. But if he had been expert
in Russian he would of course have added that it was seemly to speak it
with all of those, for he would have found in it the magnificence of Spanish,
the vivacity of French, the strength of German, and the tenderness of
Italian and, moreover, the richness and concision of Greek and Latin.29

A few years later, Trediakovskii asserted that nature had lent the ‘Slavenorossiiskii’ language ‘all the abundance and sweetness of the Hellenic
tongue, and all the importance and gravity of Latin’.30 Catherine herself,
according to Dashkova, opportunistically expressed similarly patriotic
sentiments, asserting that Russian combined the energy of German and
the sweetness of Italian and predicting that it would one day become the
standard language of the world.31 Language pride evidently motivated
Dashkova too: without a lexicon, it was argued in the preface to the first
volume of the Dictionary of the Russian Academy, it would be impossible to
prove the beauty, importance, and strength of a language.32
The notion that languages have innate qualities, which informs some
of these expressions of pride in Russian, is quite at odds with modern
linguistic views about the equal potentiality of all human languages and
the role of political and social circumstances in combining to privilege one
language or variety over others. In the eighteenth century, though, these
Russian variations of a western topos sat comfortably in an international
28 ‘Epistola 1’ and ‘Epistola 2’, in Sumarokov, IP, 114, 125.
29 Rossiiskaia grammatika, in Lomonosov, PSS, vol. 7, 391.
30 Trediakovskii in the foreword to his translation of Fénelon’s Adventures of Telemachus (1766):
see Trediakovskii, ‘Prediz’’iasnenie ob iroicheskoi piime’, li, quoted by Zhivov, Language and
Culture, 254. By ‘Slavenorossiiskii’ Trediakovskii means, in Zhivov’s words, ‘the literary language
[that] emerged as the union of Russian and Church Slavonic’, that is to say a language that ‘no
longer opposed Church Slavonic [to Russian] but included it’ (ibidem, 228–229; Zhivov’ italics).
We have retained the term ‘Slavenorossiiskii’, which is used in Marcus Levitt’s translation of
Zhivov’s book, despite its awkwardness for the Anglophone reader.
31 Rogger, National Consciousness, 113.
32 Slovar’ Akademii Rossiiskoi, vol. 1 (1789), v.

L anguage attitudes

469

linguistic discourse about the intrinsic naturalness, multi-functionality, and
superiority of the languages used by peoples who had a growing sense of
national solidarity and who were beginning to glimpse a radiant future for
themselves.33 The great writers of the classical period of Russian literature
would subscribe to them too. As ‘material for literature’, Pushkin proclaimed
in the 1820s, the Slavo-Russian language is indisputably superior to all
[other] European languages’.34 Ivan Turgenev gave voice to similar linguistic
patriotism in one of the short ‘poems in prose’ that he wrote towards the end
of his life, in which he associated language with national essence and destiny
in a moment of near despair, as politics took a particularly reactionary turn
under Alexander III after the assassination of Alexander II:
In days of doubt, in days of painful reflection about the fate of my native
land [rodina], you [ty] are my sole support and buttress, O great, mighty,
truthful, and free Russian language! If it were not for you, how could one not
despair when faced with all that is happening at home? But it is impossible
to believe that a language such as this was not given to a great people!35

A third manifestation of the new interest in Russian was a desire to protect
the language from corrupting influences, especially from the Europeanisms
that were entering it in large numbers in the eighteenth century as the
court, the social and cultural elite, and the government adopted western
practices, objects, and fashions.36 As Zhivov has pointed out, such purism
33 Alongside the topos of linguistic pride, one does encounter in eighteenth-century writings
some expressions of linguistic diffidence or humility. Literary Russian was still felt at the end of
Catherine’s reign to be immature and to lack the suppleness needed to express the sophisticated
philosophical, political, legal, economic, and cultural concepts associated with the modern
European polity, refined society, and the Republic of Letters. As late as 1824, Pushkin continued to
express a concern of this sort in an essay on factors that he thought had slowed the development
of Russian literature, where he argued that ‘Russian cannot be all that attractive for anyone’,
because Russians still did not have a literature or books, ‘learning, politics, and philosophy still
have not been set out in Russian’, and ‘we do not have a metaphysical language at all’: Pushkin,
SS, vol. 11, 21.
34 ‘O predislovii g-na Lemonte k perevodu basen I.A. Krylova’, in Pushkin, PSS, vol 11, 31.
35 Turgenev, PSSP, vol. 13, 198.
36 On the introduction of French loanwords into Russian vocabulary in the eighteenth century,
see especially Hüttl-Worth (1963) and May Smith (2006). Issatschenko (1983) includes a detailed
list of borrowings during the reign of Peter the Great. The most diachronically comprehensive
treatment of foreign loanwords in Russian can be found in Krysin (2004). The history of loanwords
in Russian is better documented for the twentieth century; for a summary, see Comrie et al.
(1996). For a dictionary of Gallicisms in Russian, see Epishkin, Istoricheskii slovar’ gallitsizmov
russkogo iazyka.

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The French L anguage in Russia

was encouraged by the French Classical thought from which Russian writers
drew linguistic and stylistic concepts during the first stage in the normalization of Russian, up to the mid-1740s.37 As early as the age of Elizabeth, it
became commonplace in Russian writings to revile borrowings from foreign
languages.38 Purism seems to have informed Dashkova’s linguistic views
too. One of the purposes of establishing an academy and creating a good
dictionary, she claims to have told Catherine, was ‘to do away with the
absurdity of using foreign words and terms while having our own’.39 Russian
was borrowing too many foreign words, she declared in her speech at the
first meeting of the Russian Academy. 40 The same sentiment is expressed
in the preface to the first volume of the academy’s Dictionary, where it is
stated that foreign words have been avoided wherever possible, particularly
those that have been ‘introduced without need and which have Slavonic or
Russian equivalents’. 41 Later, Pushkin evidently shared such disquiet about
the effect of extensive lexical borrowing, unavoidable though such borrowing
had been in the early eighteenth century: Russian began in Peter’s reign, he
wrote in the 1820s, ‘to be noticeably distorted by the necessary introduction
of Dutch, German, and French words’. 42
We should bear in mind at this point that purism is triggered not by a
certain number of foreign elements in a language, but by a perception that
there are too many; in other words, the position of the threshold beyond
which the language seems corrupted is arbitrary. Furthermore, we must
be careful to distinguish between overt reasons for stigmatizing certain
usage, which may sound commonsensical (like Dashkova’s pronouncement
that there are enough Russian words), and the underlying motivation, such
as fear of foreign linguistic material (in the form of loanwords, lexical and
grammatical calques, syntax, and so on) or concern about cultural decline.43
The development of such purist sentiments is just as unexceptional as the
appearance of the topos of language pride, for linguistic purism is commonly
associated with the sort of urge to standardize a language that we have
37 Zhivov, Language and Culture, 139–140, 143.
38 Ibidem, 239.
39 Dashkova, The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova, trans. and ed. by Kyril Fitzlyon, 217. The
Russian version of Dashkova’s ‘autobiography’ was first published in AKV, bk 21.
40 Dashkova, ‘Rech’ pri otkrytii imperatorskoi rossiiskoi akademii’. More generally, Dashkova
accused foreign educators of preventing Russian children from learning their mother tongue
well (‘O smysle slova “vospitanie”’, 120; first published in Sobesednik, 1783, vol. 2, 12–28).
41 Slovar’ Akademii Rossiiskoi, vol. 1 (1789), ix.
42 ‘O predislovii g-na Lemonte k perevodu basen I.A. Krylova’, in Pushkin, PSS, vol 11, 32.
43 Langer and Davies, ‘An Introduction to Linguistic Purism’, 5.

L anguage attitudes

471

described. Indeed, as Nils Langer and Agnete Nesse have pointed out, purism
‘is often used as an important tool in the creation of standard languages
and for strengthening their status in the community’. At the same time,
purism ‘presupposes the existence of a norm’, or ‘the perception of one’,
since ‘the removal of undesirable elements can only really be effective if it
is clear what needs to be cleansed from the language’. 44 A purist reaction
against foreign linguistic elements may be strengthened, we should add, by
insecurity and embarrassment when foreigners notice (and, possibly, frown
upon or mock) the use of foreign words in a language. 45
The intention to normalize Russian; expressions of pride in the language; a
desire to maintain its purity – these signs of language consciousness were the
outcome of the intense transnational cultural enlightenment experienced by
Russia’s elite in the eighteenth century, first as a result of Peter’s reforms and
then, to a large degree, as a result of the nobility’s own initiatives. In particular,
these phenomena were a response to a ‘situation of language contact’ in which,
as Uriel Weinreich argued long ago, ‘people most easily become aware of the
peculiarities of their language as against others’ and in which the ‘pure or
standardized language most easily becomes the symbol of group integrity’.
A perception of cultural inequality and a threat, actual or perceived, to the
mother tongue fuel resentment at the linguistic manifestations of apparent
inferiority, such as the need to borrow in order to fill lacunae in vocabulary or
to use the foreign language for certain functions. Acceptance of the ‘superior’
force of the foreign language and accommodation with it, either by borrowing
from it or by resorting to it in certain situations, may invite the accusation
that native values have been betrayed. Perceived disloyalty in language use,
then, may give rise to larger doubts about national allegiance.46
With all these considerations about language consciousness and language
loyalty in mind, and remembering that purist debate has traditionally been
strongest in literary circles,47 we now turn to the critique of borrowing from
French and of Franco-Russian bilingualism which is such a marked feature
of Russian literary discourse from the middle of the eighteenth century. It
will be apparent from our examination of this critique that cross-linguistic
influence invites condemnation just as much as bilingualism or diglossia,
that is to say the use of a foreign language for certain purposes alongside
the vernacular. This may be due partly to the fact that language-mixing can
44
45
46
47

Langer and Nesse, ‘Linguistic Purism’, 612, 613.
Thomas, Linguistic Purism, 45.
Weinreich, Languages in Contact, 100–101.
Thomas, Linguistic Purism, 102.

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The French L anguage in Russia

so easily be ridiculed. No doubt, though, it is due also to the tendency of
those who take pride in the vernacular and believe that there is a definitive,
perfected form of it to regard any language-mixing as a dangerous deviation
from the pure, fixed code that they value.

Linguistic Gallophobia in eighteenth-century comic drama
Complaints about contamination of the Russian language by French are to be
found in the satirical journalism that began to flourish in the age of Catherine,
at least until Catherine grew afraid of the potential of such journalism as a
medium for political opposition rather than mere comment on bad morals.
Among the contemporary types mocked in Novikov’s journal Zhivopisets (The
Painter), for example, we find a dandy using French slang and a rake whose
speech is Gallicized. 48 In no element of the new Russian literary corpus,
though, were language-mixing and code-switching more frequently stigmatized or more exultantly ridiculed than in comic drama, and in no other genre
were the implications of foreign-language use in Russia so commonly and
thoughtfully considered.49 The popularity of the comic theatrical repertoire
suggests that the subject provoked mirth over a period of more than fifty
years, from the middle of the reign of Elizabeth to the Alexandrine age, when
Gallophobia was heightened by anxiety about the threats posed to the Russian
polity by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The way in which
Russian bilingualism and reception of French culture are treated does vary, of
course, from one playwright to another. And yet, a negative tone predominates
and stereotypical views of language and national character recur. Playwrights
consistently engage with such matters as the perils of adherence to fashion,
Russians’ alleged imitativeness, the supposed superficiality of French culture
and those who admire it, and the need to assert cultural independence as
the sense of Russian nationhood grew stronger.
The first important landmarks in the dramatic repertoire that mocks
Russian linguistic Gallophobia are Sumarokov’s three-act comedy Monsters
(1750) and his one-act comedy A Husband’s Quarrel with His Wife (also 1750).50
48 W. Gareth Jones, Nikolay Novikov, 68, 71. On debate in the Russian periodical press about
Russians’ use of French, see especially Chapin, ‘Francophone Culture in Russia’, 68–73.
49 We draw in this section on Offord, ‘Linguistic Gallophobia in Russian Comedy’.
50 Chudovishchi (originally entitled Treteinyi sud) and Ssora u muzha s zhenoi (subsequently
entitled Pustaia ssora). As we have used online versions of these and other texts discussed in
this section, we refer in our notes not to a page but to the act and scene in which a word, phrase,
or passage occurs.

L anguage attitudes

473

Throughout the age of Catherine II, other playwrights would offer variations
on the themes that Sumarokov had broached in the reign of Elizabeth. In a
play that was probably written in the mid-1760s but has survived only in a
one-act adaptation entitled The Russian Frenchman, Aleksandr Karin did
attempt to treat the effects of the reception of the French language and
French ideas and models of behaviour in a balanced way.51 In this play,
Karin contrasts an empty-headed nobleman, Pustorechin, who regrets
having to return from Paris to his homeland, with an exemplary one,
Blagorazumov, who wishes to put what he has learned abroad to use for
Russia.52 Undiscriminating reverence for foreign fashion, Karin tries to show,
demeans nobles and weakens respect for their native land, but judicious
use of the achievements of a more advanced culture could be of benefit
to it. The majority of the dramatists who tackled the subject of Russian
Gallomania in the age of Catherine, however, took a uniformly jaundiced
view of francophonie. Many seem to have been influenced by another work
that is no longer extant, Ivan Elagin’s Jean de Molle, or A Russian Frenchman
(1764).53 Another notable example of one-sided treatment of Russians’ use of
French was Lukin’s one-act comedy The Trinket-Vendor (1765), in which one
of Lukin’s mouthpieces, Chistoserdov (Pure of Heart), brings a nephew from
the remote province of Penza to a trinket-shop in one of the capital cities.
The shop is frequented by men and women from various walks of life who
exhibit the supposed vices of the westernized elite. After each scene, the
virtuous characters in the play (the trinket-vendor himself, Chistoserdov,
and his nephew) comment on the type (for instance, a former courtier,
a bribe-taker, a conceited writer) who has just been paraded before the
audience.54 The best known of all the comedies deploring the supposed
linguistic and cultural thraldom of the eighteenth-century Russian elite
to France is Fonvizin’s play The Brigadier, completed in 1769, in which two
noble couples (a brigadier and his wife and a councillor and his wife) meet
51 On this play, Russkii frantsuz, see Stepanov, ‘Karin Aleksandr Grigor’evich’, in Slovar’
russkogo iazyka XVIII veka, and Pigarev, Tvorchestvo Fonvizina, 93. The title of the f ive-act
original, Russians Returning from France, is given in Russian sources in various forms: Russkie
[or Rossiiane], vozvrashchaiushchiesia [or vernuvshiesia] iz Frantsii.
52 As is usually the case in Russian comedy in the period with which we are concerned, the
characters’ names underline the playwright’s didactic intent. The name Pustorechin suggests
empty speech, whereas Blagorazumov indicates sound reason.
53 Zhan de Mole ili Russkii frantsuz. Elagin’s play was staged in Russia in 1765 (Pigarev,
Tvorchestvo Fonvizina, 93).
54 Lukin’s play was a transposition to Russian conditions of an English ‘dramatic satire’, The
Toyshop (1735) by Robert Dodsley, which Lukin knew through a French version published in
1756. On this play, see Ivleva, ‘The Locus of the Fashion Shop in Russian Literature’.

474 

The French L anguage in Russia

to discuss the betrothal of their respective children, Ivanushka and Sof’ia
(her name denotes wisdom). Each man flirts with the other man’s partner.
The councillor’s wife and Ivanushka, her prospective son-in-law, also flirt
with each other. After various misunderstandings and embarrassments,
the failings of the two parental couples are revealed and good sense and
virtue, embodied in Sof’ia and her suitor Dobroliubov (Love of Good), are
duly rewarded.55
Complaints about the supposedly detrimental effects of Gallomania and
of Russians’ preference for the French language over their own even found
their way into comic opera. In Iakov Kniazhnin’s well-known example of this
genre, Misfortune from a Carriage (1779), a Francophile nobleman, Firiulin,
instructs his bailiff, Klementii, to sell some of his serfs to the army in order
to raise money for the purchase of a new French carriage for himself and
French hats for his wife. Klementii, who has designs on the serf-girl Aniuta,
chooses the peasant she is about to marry, Luk’ian, in the hope of removing
him from Firiulin’s estate. Luckily for Aniuta and Luk’ian, they have learnt a
few French words from a former master and are able to address Firiulin and
his wife as monsieur and madame respectively. This skill, combined with
their ability to express their love in a sentimental way, persuades Firiulin to
spare Luk’ian from military recruitment and to employ him as a personal
footman, provided that he will promise never to speak Russian again.56
Instances of mockery of language-mixing (which, as we have seen, was
– and indeed generally is – a commonplace phenomenon among bilinguals)
are legion in these and other plays. Already in 1750 Sumarokov is exploiting
the practice of code-switching and the influx of French loans in the first
half of the eighteenth century for comic purposes. In Monsters, for example,
Diulizh lards his speech with French exclamations, such as ‘Grand Dieu’
(Heavens!) and ‘Quelle pensée! Quelle impertinence!’ (What a thought! What
impertinence!), and uses numerous Gallicisms, such as rival’ (rival), metressa
(mistress), and amanta (lover).57 In A Husband’s Quarrel with His Wife, in
which Diulizh reappears, lexical borrowing is again ridiculed, especially
in a scene laden with loanwords, such as (in the order in which they occur)
flatiruete, meritiruiu, remarkirovat’, distre, panse, emabl’, deessa, estimuiu,
55 Fonvizin, SS, vol. 1, 45–103. For an English version, see [Fonvizin], Dramatic Works of D.I.
Fonvizin, 49–86. We can judge the extent to which The Brigadier struck a chord with contemporary
audiences by the fact that it was performed over a hundred times in St Petersburg and Moscow
during the fifty years or so following its premiere in 1772: see Wirtschafter, The Play of Ideas,
240, n. 67.
56 Neschast’e ot karety, in Kniazhnin, IP, 563–590.
57 Sumarokov, Chudovishchi, I, 4–6.

L anguage attitudes

475

kalite, adorater, pardonabel’no, rezonabel’ny (you flatter, I deserve, to notice,
absent-minded, thought, lovable, goddess, I esteem, quality, admirer, excusable, reasonable).58 A little later, a society lady, Diufiza, explains to Delamida,
the daughter of the eponymous noble parents, why she thinks monsieur and
madame should be used as terms of address in place of the Russian forms
sudar’ (sir) and sudarynia (madam):
Because people, you see, say la toilette rather than dressing-table, tapisserie
rather than wall-paper, pardonnable rather than forgivable, étui rather
than case. Not enough fine words of this sort have been introduced into
our barbaric language. If we call a case an étui why shouldn’t we call a
watch a montre in Russian? And why shouldn’t we say oui and non instead
of ‘yes’ and ‘no’? Why do you think it would be difficult to introduce
monsieur and madame?59

Thus neologisms, according to Diufiza, are needed not in order to express
new concepts but simply so that Russian words can be replaced with words
from a superior language. Ridicule of loanwords and code-switching reaches
a climax in the macaronic final scene of the play, in which Diulizh threatens
to break a servant’s nose (he coins the verb form kasiruiu from Fr. casser)
and Delamida says she has the intention (intentsiiu) to put an end ( finirovat’)
to her mother’s dispute (disput) with her father.60
Like Sumarokov’s Diulizh and his would-be salonnières, Lukin’s fop
Ver’khogliadov (Superficial) condemns himself in spectators’ eyes by using
a stream of Gallicisms, especially verbs derived from French with the aid of
the Russian suffix -ovat’: abbesirovat’, batirovat’, definirovat’, divinirovat’,
kontradirovat’, montrirovat’, ofrirovat’, posedirovat’, preshirovat’, prezentirovat’, prodiuirovat’, zhuzhirovat’ (to lower, to beat, to define, to guess, to
contradict, to show, to offer, to possess, to preach, to present, to produce, to
judge).61 Like Sumarokov, Lukin deplores the Gallomane’s disparagement
of the Russian language and his preference for French terms over Russian
ones.62 Opposing the practice of lexical borrowing and insisting on the
use of words derived from Slavonic roots, the trinket-vendor espouses a
58 Sumarokov, Ssora, Scene 18.
59 Ibidem, Scene 21.
60 Ibidem, Scene 24.
61 For the sake of simplicity, we have given all these examples in the infinitive, although that
is not the grammatical form in which all these verbs appear in Lukin’s text. None of these verbs
established themselves in the Russian language.
62 Lukin, Shchepetil’nik, Scene 15.

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The French L anguage in Russia

linguistic nationalism which anticipates that of Shishkov.63 Lukin himself
endorses this attitude in his preface to the play: just as fops, according to
Chistoserdov, ‘hate their language’, so the playwright himself loathes ‘the
foreign words that disfigure [the Russian] language’.64 Even the position
of the stress in a word may indicate language loyalty. In a stage direction,
Lukin instructs actors playing the virtuous characters always to pronounce
French words which have become established in Russian in the Russian
manner, whereas the affected visitors to the trinket-vendor’s shop are to
pronounce them in the French manner, placing stress on the first vowel of
the suffix -iia in the word kompaniia (company), for example, rather than
on the a of the stem, in the Russian manner.65
Fonvizin too saturates the speech of characters who cleave to imported
gallant culture with Gallicisms and mixes languages in their utterances in
a way that seems grotesque. Ivanushka, for example, constantly employs
French terms of address, exclamations, oaths, other French expressions,
including de tout mon cœur and avec plaisir (with all my heart, with pleasure), and Russian Gallicisms such as rezoneman, indiferan, and konnesans
(reasoning, indifferent, acquaintance) which are incomprehensible to those
among his seniors who are not Francophone.66 He despises his parents for
not understanding French and uses it as a language in which to say things
he does not intend them to understand, as when he tells the councillor’s wife
that his father is l’homme le plus bourru, que je connais (the coarsest man I
know).67 The speech of the councillor’s wife is similarly strewn with Gallicisms, such as komodnee, ekskiuzovat’, and kontradiruet (more comfortable,
to excuse, contradicts).68 Since both Ivanushka and the councillor’s wife
imagine that they will lead happier lives if they are surrounded by French
people and have a partner with whom they can speak French, Ivanushka
resolves to seek an occasion favorable (favourable opportunity) for them
to elope to Paris.69
On one level, the sustained mockery of language-mixing in Russian
comedy is an attack on the new fashionable society frequented by the galant
homme or, in a more negative representation of him, the petit-maître or
63 On Shishkov, see the following section of this chapter.
64 Lukin, Shchepetil’nik, Scene 16, and his accompanying ‘Pis’mo k gospodinu El’chaninovu’,
which can also be accessed at http://az.lib.ru/l/lukin_w_i/text_0050.shtml.
65 Ibidem, Scene 7.
66 See, e.g., Fonvizin, Brigadir, I, 1; I, 3; III, 3; IV, 3; V, 1; V, 2. Many other examples could be cited.
67 Ibidem, III, 3.
68 Ibidem, I, 4; II, 6; V, 2. Again, many more examples could be given.
69 Ibidem, II, 6.

L anguage attitudes

477

fop (R. povesa), of whom Fonvizin’s Ivanushka is an outstanding example.
Sumarokov, for instance, yokes together language and fashion, establishing
in the spectator’s mind a link between French-speaking and the cultivation
of modish but false or trivial appearances. Diulizh, in Monsters, cannot
believe that Infimena, whom he is courting, could prefer his rival Valer,
and he invokes both language use and fashion to explain his incredulity:
he’s got about twenty curled locks on his head, he carries a short little
cane, a German makes his clothes, he takes snuff […] He’s not had a muff
since he was born, he wears short sleeves, and what’s more he knows
German. I don’t know how he’s learnt French.70

Infimena’s mother, Gidima, also associates the French language with fashion,
as becomes evident when she is asked by her husband to explain what she
sees in her daughter’s suitor Diulizh and replies: ‘he knows a little French,
he dances, he dresses like a dandy, he knows a lot of French songs’.71 More
generally, French is associated with a society in which people care more
about the way they dress than anything else, discuss the merits of applying
rouge and wearing an earring on one ear only, sprinkle themselves with
perfume, carry pocket mirrors, and crave compliments.72 At a more serious
level, the new type of social life that Sumarokov is mocking seems to carry
a threat to family values, especially the institution of marriage and marital
fidelity, which is not expected in the imported gallant world. Delamida will
not marry Diulizh, she states, because she ‘esteems’ him; were he to become
her husband, she reasons, she would cease to hold him in such high regard.73
Characters’ use of French in eighteenth-century Russian comedy tends
to be presented as symptomatic of precisely that imitativeness which was
indicative, in the eyes of Russia’s detractors, of Russian inferiority, the very
flaw whose existence Catherine strove to deny in her riposte to Chappe.74
In Sumarokov’s Monsters, it is left to the servant Arlikin (who, like Molière’s
maidservants, has better sense than his social superiors) to point out the
flaw, using the familiar topos of aping: Diulizh, Arlikin tells the audience, is a
‘monkey, and not a local one’.75 Lukin echoes Sumarokov’s anxiety about the
humiliating proclivity to imitation when he has his trinket-vendor describe
70
71
72
73
74
75

Sumarokov, Chudovishchi, II, 5.
Ibidem, I, 1.
Sumarokov, Ssora, Scenes 1, 6, 13, 21.
Ibidem, Scene 18. For the assumption that spouses will be unfaithful, see Scene 3.
See the second section of Chapter 7 above.
Sumarokov, Chudovishchi, II, 5.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Ver’khogliadov as a ‘parrot’.76 Resistance to imitation is even implicit in
Lukin’s practice as a translator of a foreign original. He has rendered the
French version of Dodsley’s play ‘into our mores’,77 or has domesticated it,
as we should now say. His version is an ‘adaptation’, if by adaptation we
understand ‘a set of translative interventions which result in a text that is
not generally accepted as a translation but is nevertheless recognized as
representing a source text’.78
For Fonvizin, whose reflections on Russian cultural and linguistic borrowing from France led him to deeper conclusions than most of his contemporaries about social, personal, and national character, the tendency to mimic the
French was symptomatic of a superficiality of character which made many
nobles morally unworthy of their privileged social status. This failing, which
was attributable, in Fonvizin’s opinion, to poor upbringing, manifested itself
in a tendency to mistake external signs of worth, such as rank and wealth, for
the essential qualities of character that constituted true worth, especially such
Stoic virtues as moderation, mastery of the passions, and respect for the civic
community. Ability to use the French language was one such misleading sign.
Ivanushka and the councillor’s wife, in The Brigadier, are right in thinking
that as nobles they should display merit, but they are wrong in believing that
Gallicized Russian, French-speaking, and the mere fact that Ivanushka has
visited Paris indicate it. They unwittingly reveal the error when they prefer the
Gallicism merit to the Russian dostoinstvo to denote the concept of worth.79
The dramatists we have examined, including Fonvizin, are not members of
the high nobility, and they did not share the views of aristocrats like Mikhail
Shcherbatov, who wished the noble estate to be inaccessible to those outside
it. They tended instead to speak for the middling nobility, who had more
to gain from the application of the meritocratic principle when attempts to
win recognition, status, or promotion were being considered. On the whole,
though, they were less preoccupied in their plays with social identity than
with national identity. They made a significant contribution, for better or for
worse, to the development of a belief that linguistic choice in high society
was a touchstone by which national allegiance could be judged, and that
attraction to the French language was a sign not merely of shallowness of
character but of national disloyalty. Already in Monsters, Sumarokov presents
76 Lukin, Shchepetil’nik, Scene 15.
77 Lukin, ‘Pis’mo k gospodinu El’chaninovu’ at http://az.lib.ru/l/lukin_w_i/text_0050.shtml.
78 See the entry by Georges L. Bastin in Baker and Saldanha (eds), Routledge Encyclopedia of
Translation Studies, 3.
79 Fonvizin, Brigadir, III, 1; III, 3.

L anguage attitudes

479

the Francophone Diulizh as a man who has repudiated Russian nationality.
Not only does Diulizh have no wish to know Russian laws; he would also
prefer not to know the Russian language, for it is a ‘stingy language’ (skarednoi
iazyk), he says, in which nothing good could be written. He rues the fact
that he was born of a Russian father.80 In A Husband’s Quarrel with His Wife
too, his alien character is emphasized. He has taken to billiards, bets on
the outcome of the games he plays, and drinks wine rather than traditional
Russian products such as mead and kvass.81 He does not regard himself as
Russian and if anyone were to label him as such then he would consider it an
insult to which he ought to respond with his sword (that is to say, according
to an alien code of honour).82 To value Russian culture and use Russian in
preference to French is incomprehensible to such Francophile characters:
Diulizh, Delamida, and Diufiza disparage a lady of their acquaintance who
chooses to sing Russian songs even though she knows French well.83
Fonvizin too creates the impression that nobles’ attachment to French
culture poses a threat to Russia as a nation. Choice of the French language in
The Brigadier implies identification with what is perceived as French national
character. By enthusiastically mixing a foreign tongue with his native Russian, Ivanushka is consciously attempting to assume a foreign persona, which
happens in Fonvizin’s opinion to be morally flawed. Ivanushka admits, for
example, that étourderie (flippancy) is part of his character; indeed if he were
not flippant, he muses, then he would not be truly imitating the French. He
is also inconstant and is horrified by the prospect of having a faithful wife.84
The councillor’s wife, for her part, excuses Ivanushka’s reckless display of
passion for her because she believes that caution would be comic in a young
man, especially in one who had been to Paris. Ivanushka agrees:
O, vous avez raison! [Oh, you’re right!] Caution, constancy, patience were
praiseworthy when people didn’t know how one should live in society;
as for us who do know what it is que de vivre dans le grand monde [to live
in high society], anyone as rational as ourselves would obviously think
we were very funny if we were constant.85
80 Sumarokov, Chudovishchi, I, 5 and I, 6. Diulizh uses the word natsiia when he regrets that he
is of the same nationality as another character, Khabzei. This is an even earlier use of the term
to denote the concept of the nation in Russia than Fonvizin’s (see n. 2 of this chapter above).
81 Sumarokov, Ssora, Scene 2.
82 Ibidem, Scene 16.
83 Ibidem, Scene 19.
84 Fonvizin, Brigadir, II, 6.
85 Ibidem.

480 

The French L anguage in Russia

Fonvizin has thus translated the lightness and gaiety on which prerevolutionary French society did indeed pride itself into a negative topos
combining superficiality, frivolity, promiscuity, infidelity, and deceitfulness.
As an accomplished artist with a desire to generalize and identify
what is typical, Fonvizin seems not merely to be suggesting that shallow
devotees of French fashion are to be found in Russian society. Nor can he
be altogether ridiculing the use of French in Russian society; after all, the
private audiences by whom he was fêted even before his play was performed
in the theatre included Francophone members of the court. Rather, he is
challenging all those contemporaries who learn French not for the mere
instrumentalist purpose of useful communication with members of another
speech community and absorption of the best features of their culture but
in order to immerse themselves in that culture. These Russians run the risk
of losing their native identity. The integrative approach of these Gallomanes
to language acquisition, as we might now put it, may be perceived as a
rejection of native character or even as a form of betrayal. Or at least, that is
the perception that Fonvizin encourages. Ivanushka and the councillor’s wife
believe that Russians are inherently inferior to the French. Being Russian,
Ivanushka believes, is a défaut (defect) which nothing can entirely efface,
although his stay in Paris has lightened the burden of his first nationality
by making him more French than Russian.86 The councillor’s wife similarly
regards her nationality as a ‘terrible ruin’.87 The brigadier, obtuse though he
is, seems to speak for Fonvizin when he questions whether such renunciation
of one’s native state is right or even possible:
Brigadier: Well what sort of Frenchman are you? I thought you were born
in Rus’ [Old Russia].
Son: My body was born in Russia, it’s true, but my spirit belonged to the
French crown.
Brigadier: But you are more obliged to Russia than to France, all the same.88

Thus, Gallomania and the love of the French language which is its outward
sign seem to Fonvizin to weaken the loyalty of the Russian nobility to the
imperial state or the native land.
Other dramatists whom we have mentioned took up the theme of nobles’
separation from Russia that Sumarokov and Fonvizin had explored. Again it is
86 Ibidem; see also III, 4.
87 Ibidem, II, 6.
88 Ibidem, III, 1.

L anguage attitudes

481

a non-noble character, in this case the jester Afanasii, who articulates the truth
in Kniazhnin’s Misfortune from a Carriage: the rotten fruit of a Russian nobleman’s travel is disdain for Russianness.89 The theme is particularly pronounced
in Dmitrii Khvostov’s three-act play The Russian Parisian (1783). Khvostov
presents yet another stereotyped nobleman, Frankoliub (Francophile), who has
become infatuated with France as a result of a long stay abroad. Frankoliub’s
overriding ambition, when he comes back to Russia, is to acquire a French wife.
(This he has arranged to do through third parties without having met or seen
his prospective bride.) He reasons that if his children are at least half-French
then the dishonour of their having a Russian father will be reduced.90 Once
married, he will return to Paris, a promised land of social gatherings, shows,
and potential riches.91 ‘I shall expatriate myself’ (ekspatriruius’), he says, and
the expatriation will be both physical and spiritual. The notion of ‘expatriation’
must have seemed perverse at a time when the otechestvo (that is to say, patrie)
was being held up as the principal object to which the nobleman should devote
himself. In defiance of his uncle, the right-thinking Blagorazum, who advises
him to cast aside his ‘passion for France’, Frankoliub plans to serve the King of
France as a musketeer.92 His loyalty to France outweighs that to his Russian
family.93 In fact, Frankoliub openly despises Russians in general, regards
the term ‘Russian’ (rusak) as an insult, and would like all Russians to forget
how to speak their native language.94 In accordance with the conventions
of didactic comedy, he is duly punished, of course. He is abandoned by the
coarse and fickle fiancée (a ‘scarecrow’, a ‘monkey’) who turns up at the end
of the play, despite his undiscriminating reverence for her as a Frenchwoman.
Nonetheless, he resolves to sell his wardrobe and set off again for Paris, the
only place, he believes, where he can be happy.95
The merits and achievements of the French are not altogether overlooked
in this play, for Khvostov’s mouthpiece Blagorazum draws attention to
89 Kniazhnin, Neschast’e ot karety, II, 5. Insofar as it deals with serfdom, Kniazhnin’s comic
opera more clearly broaches the subject of the social divide of which noble francophonie is
emblematic than the other works we have examined. In this respect, it anticipates the sharp
contrast drawn between the bilingualism of the Russian nobility and the monolingualism of
the Russian peasant in the writings of mid-nineteenth-century Romantic cultural nationalists
such as the Slavophiles (see the last section of this chapter) and the novelists to whom we turn
in our final chapter.
90 Khvostov, Ruskoi parizhanets, I, 3.
91 Ibidem, I, 8; II, 6.
92 Ibidem, II, 3; I, 2.
93 Ibidem, III, 3.
94 Ibidem, III, 5; III, 12.
95 Ibidem, III, 11–14.

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The French L anguage in Russia

them.96 Nonetheless, the traits of frivolity, dissipation, and fondness for
empty chatter are again strongly associated with them.97 Most importantly,
Khvostov – like Fonvizin – challenges the assumption of Russian inferiority
that is implicit in Russian Gallomania and vigorously defends the virtues
of the ‘upright Russian’, who loves and serves his fatherland. The Russian
Parisian may thus reflect a growing self-confidence among the elite of the
burgeoning empire towards the end of Catherine’s reign, following victory in
the war of 1768–1774 against the Turks and at the time of Russia’s annexation
of the Crimea (1783). This confidence seems to undermine Frankoliub’s foolish
Gallomania. Frankoliub ruefully detects the new spirit of independence in
the homeland to which he has returned. Russians, he complains, now esteem
the French no more than other foreign peoples. They have abandoned the
French way of thinking and speaking and wish to think and write in Russian
instead. They believe they can express all their feelings in Russian and that
there is no need to mix French words into their vernacular.98
The sort of language attitudes expressed by eighteenth-century Russian
dramatists in response to cultural westernization were by no means peculiar
to Russia, nor was it only in Russia that comic drama proved a convenient
vehicle in which to express them. Mockery of affected characters who flock
to France, adopt French manners and dress, are prone to code-switching, and
lard their speech with Gallicisms is commonplace, for example, in English
Restoration comedy. John Dryden’s Marriage-à-la-mode (1673), Sir George
Etherege’s Man of Mode (1676), Thomas Shadwell’s Bury Fair (1689), Colley
Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift (1696), and Sir John Vanburgh’s Relapse, or Virtue
in Danger (1696) all attest to the vitality of this subject in late seventeenthcentury England, a century before it was in vogue in Russia.99 An influential
variation on the same theme was produced in eighteenth-century DenmarkNorway by Ludvig Holberg, whose play Hans Frandsen, or John of France (1722)
was the source of Elagin’s Jean de Molle, which was a free translation rather
than an original work.100 In mid-eighteenth-century Sweden, the theme was
taken up by Johan Stagnell and in the nineteenth-century Romanian lands
by Vasile Alecsandri and Ion Luca Caragiale.101 Russian writers’ negative
96 Ibidem, I, 2; I, 6; II, 3.
97 Ibidem, I, 2; I, 5; III, 1; III, 4; III, 13.
98 Ibidem, II, 3.
99 See Schneider, The Ethos of Restoration Comedy, on these and further examples.
100 On the reception of Holberg’s play, Jean de France eller Hans Frandsen, in Russia, see Dillard,
‘Ludvig Holberg in the Russian Literary Landscape’; see also Vikør, ‘Northern Europe’, 110.
101 On Stagnell, see Östman, ‘French in Sweden’, 301–302; on Alecsandri and Caragiale, see
Mihaila, ‘The Beginnings and the Golden Age of Francophonie’, 349.

L anguage attitudes

483

representations of francophonie, then, may be considered not so much
the products of accurate social observation as adaptations of a common
European literary topos: poking fun at people who seemed to be intoxicated
with foreign culture was itself a form of imitation, albeit unwitting.
However, to point out that playwrights’ criticism of the craze for French
fashion and the French language was transported across national boundaries
in a literary vehicle perfected by Molière in seventeenth-century France is
by no means to deny that it also had particular resonance and took on new
significance in certain places at certain times. Looking back over the Russian
comic tradition of mocking Gallomania, we may see it as something more than
a form of cultural translation. It was also a reaction to the importation of the
social world of the galant homme and, at a still broader level, an expression of
anxiety about national worth and autonomy. Dramatists clearly thought they
had grounds for concern. Especially shocking in an age of imperial expansion,
when the manly virtue of martial valour was prized above all others, was the
supposedly feminine preoccupation with clothes, vestimentary accessories,
and coiffure. Perhaps too there was an undercurrent of apprehension among
the dramatists (all men, it should be noted) about the equality that women
were beginning to enjoy, up to a point, in the new Francophone social world,
with its polite conversational formulae, its terms of address, and its practice of
paying compliments, all of which the dramatists mocked. It may be significant
in this connection that in a number of plays (Sumarokov’s Monsters and A
Husband’s Quarrel with His Wife and Fonvizin’s Brigadier, for instance) a
forceful woman seems to be beyond the control of her husband, or nearly so.
Moreover, the transformation of woman into an object of admiration appears to
bring with it a sexual licence that is strongly associated with French character
and culture and the speaking of French. Hence Lukin’s Ver’khogliadov, codeswitching profusely, commends what he calls a certain ‘seemly smuttiness’
which, if ‘uttered avec esprit [with wit], animates the company’ and which
is regarded as a ‘marque de bon sens, très estimée in ladies’ cercles’ (a mark of
good judgement, much prized in ladies’ circles).102 To advocates of traditional
ways like the trinket-vendor, then, Francophone society promotes frivolity
and promiscuity and undermines established gender roles.
It would be simplistic to conclude that disparagement of French fashion
in the popular branch of literature we have examined in this section implied a rejection of French culture tout court or that criticism of Russians’
102 Lukin, Shchepetil’nik, Scene 15. The absurdity of these remarks is accentuated in Lukin’s text
by the fact that the French words are rendered in Cyrillic script and the Russian words used for
‘animates’, ‘company’, and ‘ladies’ are all Gallicisms.

484 

The French L anguage in Russia

indiscriminate use of the French language represented a denial of the need
for Russians to learn French. Foreign languages, after all, were among the
subjects that the trinket-vendor’s worthy father conscientiously taught his
son.103 Nevertheless, users of the language of the new society, when they are
seen through the lens of Russian comic dramatists, tend to appear not as
admirably cultivated cosmopolitans but as superficial and frivolous men
and women – some, but not all, of them social climbers – who are prone to
personal infidelity and national disloyalty. In the last analysis, Russian comic
dramatists themselves reflect the dilemma of westernization. On the one hand,
they may be considered representatives of the Enlightenment: they were using
French and other European didactic comedy to promote the development of
western secular culture and the values of an urbane civic society in Russia.
On the other hand, they were sufficiently ambivalent about the borrowing in
which they were engaged for us to regard them in retrospect as forerunners
of the nationalistic intelligentsia which in the nineteenth century would take
a negative view of the language habits of the Russian nobility.

The linguistic debate between Karamzin and Shishkov
The attempts to create order out of the collection of indigenous linguistic
varieties that were used in eighteenth-century Russia, including the written chancery language, the spoken language, and Church Slavonic; the
codification of Russian in grammars and dictionaries and the classification
of literary registers; growing pride in the vernacular; the development of
a secular corpus of letters in Russian and mockery of language-mixing in
it: all these factors lay behind a dispute that broke out at the turn of the
century between Karamzin and Shishkov and their respective supporters
about the form that the evolving Russian literary language should take.
This dispute was an important event in its own time, both because of the
status of the leading participants in it (an authoritative prose writer and a
patriotic statesman respectively) and because the onset of the Napoleonic
Wars lent topicality and historical significance to discussion of Russia’s
cultural relationship to France. It has also had lasting importance as a point
of reference in Russian language commentary, for it was one of those debates
that provide, as Jan Blommaert has put it, ‘stock arguments which underlie
the construction of authoritative (folk as well as expert) rhetoric’.104 Nor was
103 Ibidem, Scene 1. On teaching and learning French, see Chapter 2 above.
104 Blommaert, ‘The Debate is Open’, in Blommaert (ed.), Language Ideological Debates, 10.

L anguage attitudes

485

its long-term significance confined to the linguistic and literary spheres,
with which it was most obviously concerned. Perhaps language attitudes
generally ‘stand proxy’, as James and Lesley Milroy have claimed, ‘for a much
more comprehensive set of social and political attitudes’.105 At any rate, this
particular Russian polemic was subsumed in the overarching debate about
Russia’s standing on the international stage and its relationship to Europe
that came to dominate Russian intellectual and cultural life in the nineteenth
century. In this respect, it foreshadowed the mid-nineteenth century debate
between Westernizers and Slavophiles, in which discussion of language
use would again have a place.106 We shall begin by describing Karamzin’s
and Shishkov’s contrasting views on where Russian writers should look
for linguistic and stylistic models. We shall then show that, despite their
differences, these two opponents explained the current state of the Russian
language in a similar way and that their linguistic views, at bottom, were
shaped by patriotic intent and a common desire to assert cultural autonomy.
In general, Karamzin’s views are difficult to define both because they
changed over time and because, as Herzen once remarked, Karamzin’s
thought lacked coherence, an overarching idea, or deep conviction. 107
Karamzin may even hold apparently contradictory views at the same
time.108 However, it seems reasonable to construe Karamzin’s linguistic
views – which were for the most part scattered in works that were not
devoted exclusively to language use – as part of a conception of Russia as a
participant in the march of European civilization towards a single goal.109
The development of French culture provided a model for this process, but
Russia had progressed so quickly since the age of Peter the Great that it was
now able to compete for pre-eminence. Karamzin proudly explained his
point to foreign readers, using French as a lingua franca, in his contribution
to Le Spectateur du Nord, to which we have already referred:110
The French nation has therefore passed through all the stages of civilization in order to reach the point where it now finds itself. Comparing its
long-drawn-out march to the rapid flight of our people towards the same
105 J. Milroy and L. Milroy, Authority in Language, 45 f.
106 See the final section of this chapter.
107 Du développement des idées révolutionnaires en Russie, in Herzen, SS, vol. 7, 60.
108 Uspenskii, Iz istorii russkogo literaturnogo iazyka, 8. On the tensions in Karamzin’s historiographical writings, see Offord, ‘Nation-Building and Nationalism in N.M. Karamzin’s “History
of the Russian State”’.
109 Uspenskii, Iz istorii russkogo literaturnogo iazyka, 25.
110 See the fourth section of Chapter 7 above.

486 

The French L anguage in Russia

goal, they say that it is a miracle; one marvels at the omnipotence of a
creative spirit [i.e. Peter the Great] which, tearing the Russian nation all
at once from the lethargic slumber in which it had been buried, launched
it on the road of enlightenment with such force that within a few years we
should find ourselves marching alongside peoples who had been making
their way along it many centuries before us.111

In his Letters of a Russian Traveller, Karamzin couched the same point in
terms that would become familiar in Russian discourse about national
achievement and destiny over the following two centuries. Russia had managed quickly to get on level terms (sravniat’sia) with the West, he claimed
here, and it was possible to imagine that in future it would overtake or
surpass (prevzoiti) the West.112
It is tempting to suggest that Karamzin regarded the French language
itself as a model to be copied and surpassed, a resource that should be
studied, mined, and discarded when Russian superseded it. For one thing,
French – and, of course, other European languages – had a lexical stock from
which it was legitimate to borrow if one subscribed to the universalistic view
of human culture that Karamzin seemed to express in his early writings.
In his Letters of a Russian Traveller, Karamzin made it clear, both implicitly
and explicitly, that the absorption of words from foreign languages was
no disgrace. Not only is there a profusion of western loanwords in this
patriotic work of Russian literature; Karamzin also observes in it that the
English literary language remains strong and expressive in spite of copious
borrowing.113 Karamzin is said to have used many Gallicisms – for example,
imazhinatsiia (imagination), sentimenty (sentiments), tourment (torment),
énergie (energy) – in his own speech, as well as in his early writings.114 His
literary style was characterized, Viktor Vinogradov observed, by ‘RussoFrench phraseology’, a set of clichés, periphrases, and metaphors modelled
on European semantics, first and foremost French, and befitting ‘the typical
111 Karamzin, ‘Lettre au Spectateur du Nord’, 62–63.
112 Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennika, in Karamzin, IS, vol. 1, 416−417; [Karamzin], Nikolai
Karamzin: ‘Letters of a Russian Traveller, 1789–1790’, 294. On the expression of national pride in
the Letters of a Russian Traveller, see Offord, Journeys to a Graveyard, 96–100.
113 Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennika, in Karamzin, IS, vol. 1, 575, quoted by Uspenskii, Iz istorii
russkogo literaturnogo iazyka, 23, n.; [Karamzin], Nikolai Karamzin: ‘Letters of a Russian Traveller,
1789–1790’, 433.
114 Kamenev, ‘Pis’ma’, in A.D. Galakhov (ed.), Istoricheskaia khristomatiia novogo perioda russkoi
slovesnosti, vol. 2, 77. It will be seen that the author of this source, a poet who was a contemporary
of Karamzin, does not distinguish between use of French loanwords and code-switching into
French.

L anguage attitudes

487

cast of mind of a sensitive and gallant man of society, a man of the gentry
who thought in a “noble” way and had a patriotic disposition’.115 As Uspenskii
and Zhivov have also emphasized, Karamzin’s linguistic thought was much
affected by French literary and linguistic theory. His classification of Church
Slavonic as a language that was ‘hard’ (he used the epithet zhestkii, a calque
of Fr. dur) and the new Russian literary language as ‘tender’ (nezhnyi, a calque
of délicat), for instance, derived from French theories which contrasted
unpolished Baroque language to neo-classical literary French.116 He adopted
Vaugelas’s notion of bon usage and identified good society as the milieu
where such usage was to be found.117 In urging prospective Russian writers
to develop a literary language based on the language spoken in society, he
was recommending what he supposed was the case in France. He believed,
moreover, that women’s speech might serve as a linguistic model: just as
French women, it was thought, tended to avoid Latinisms, so Russian women
tended to avoid Slavonicisms, Karamzin claimed.118
However, acceptance of foreign tutelage – cultural, literary, stylistic, and
linguistic – was a temporary expedient. Lexical borrowing would enrich
the Russian language and the adoption of French linguistic ideas would
help to guide Russian writers as they cultivated their language for literary
purposes, but they were only means to an end. In due course, Russian
would take its rightful place among the European languages by creating a
literature that would contribute to the collective culture of the continent,
Karamzin remarked in 1818 to the Imperial Russian Academy.119 It is notable
in this connection that in Karamzin’s twelve-volume History of the Russian
State, which also began to appear in 1818, lexical Gallicisms of the sort that
abounded in his early Sentimentalist prose are largely absent.120 The relative
dearth of foreign borrowings in this work of the post-Napoleonic period is
doubtless due not only to the fact that the History concerns pre-Petrine
Russia but also to the growing self-confidence generated by the epic story
of national resilience that Karamzin tells in it.
115 Vinogradov, Iazyk Pushkina, 206.
116 Zhivov, Language and Culture, 137–138.
117 On the influence of Vaugelas on Karamzin and his supporters, see Uspenskii, Iz istorii
russkogo literaturnogo iazyka, 61–65.
118 It is unsurprising that the association of a prestige variety of Russian with a social milieu in
which the predominant language was French should have provoked resistance to Karamzin’s
views in some quarters, particularly since that milieu was noted for the dandyism derided in
the comic drama we have just examined.
119 As noted by Roger Anderson, ‘Karamzin’s Concept of Linguistic “Cosmopolitanism”’, 169.
120 Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva Rossiiskogo.

488 

The French L anguage in Russia

Shishkov’s linguistic views, unlike Karamzin’s, are concentrated in
dedicated writings. His best known pronouncement on language use was
his Discourse on the Ancient and Modern Style of the Russian Language
(1803),121 in which he responded in detail to Karamzin’s essay ‘Why is there
so Little Writing Talent in Russia?’ and attacked writing in what he took to
be the Karamzinian style. The following year, he responded to criticisms
of his Discourse by publishing an ‘addition’ to it.122 During the period of
patriotic outpourings that preceded the French invasion, Shishkov produced
a further cluster of works on language, including a treatise on the ‘richness,
abundance, beauty, and power of Russian’ (1811),123 a programmatic speech
at the opening of the Symposium of Lovers of the Russian Word, a literary
society he had founded in 1811,124 a Discourse on Love of the Fatherland
(1812),125 and Dialogues on Literature between A and B (1812), in which he
reiterated his principal beliefs.126
Shishkov took it for granted that Church Slavonic and Russian were
essentially the same language or, at least, that Russian was a dialect of
Church Slavonic.127 Furthermore, he believed – and this is where he differed
most radically from Karamzin – that the only way to develop Russian was to
study the Slavonic language in which Russian, he supposed, was rooted. It
was the sacred writings in Church Slavonic that Russian authors should draw
upon, not the writings of any Bonnets, Voltaires, Youngs, or Thomsons (that
is to say, authors commended by Karamzin), if they wished to develop ‘the
art of speaking well’.128 Shishkov attempted to demonstrate the excellence
of Slavonic and its suitability as a source for the development of Russian
by adducing numerous examples of it from translations of the Bible. He
claimed merely to have used the first examples he came across, arguing
121 Shishkov, Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge Rossiiskogo iazyka; NB the reference to this
work in our bibliography is to a new edition published ten years after the work first appeared.
122 ‘Pribavlenie k sochineniiu nazyvaemomu Rassuzhdeniiu [sic] o starom i novom sloge
rossiiskogo iazyka’, in SSPAS, vol. 2, 353–466. On contemporary criticisms of Shishkov’s views,
see Argent, ‘The Linguistic Debate between Karamzin and Shishkov’, 112–113.
123 Rassuzhdenie o krasnorechii sviashchennogo pisaniia i o tom, v chem sostoit bogatstvo, obilie,
krasota i sila rossiiskogo iazyka i kakimi sredstvami onyi eshche bolee raspostranit’, obogatit’ i
usovershenstvovat’ mozhno, in SSPAS, vol. 4, 22–107.
124 ‘Rech’ pri otkrytii Besedy liubitelei russkogo slova’, ibidem, 108–146. Members of the group
had met informally for some years prior to 1811.
125 ‘Rassuzhdenie o liubvi k otechestvu’, ibidem, 147–185.
126 Razgovory o slovesnosti mezhdu dvumia litsami Az i Buki, in SSPAS, vol. 3, 1–168.
127 Shishkov, Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge, 66, 90; idem, Rassuzhdenie o krasnorechii
sviashchennogo pisaniia, 24; Cooper, Creating the Nation, 54.
128 Shishkov, Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge, 40. The English poet Young and the Scottish
poet Thomson helped to inspire Karamzin’s early fiction in the Sentimental manner.

L anguage attitudes

489

that rich, expressive language was ubiquitous in the sacred texts.129 He also
quoted passages from French and German translations of the Bible which,
with no convincing argumentation, he deemed weaker than the Slavonic
translation. Thus, the Slavonic sacred texts amounted to a linguistic canon,
as Shishkov intimated at the beginning of his Dialogues on Literature: ‘A:
Does our language have sufficient rules for writing correctly? B: Yes, entirely
sufficient and firm rules. A: Where are they? B: In church books.’130 Nor
could the linguistic excellence of Church Slavonic be separated from the
merits of the Orthodox religion for which Church Slavonic was the vehicle.
These merits were exemplified by the good morals of virtuous forefathers
who ‘loved their fatherland, were firm in faith, revered the tsar and the
laws’, and were worth emulating as both spiritual and linguistic mentors.131
There was even a parallel to be drawn between religious development and
the historical condition of language: the state of Russian was quite unclear,
Shishkov asserted, up until the introduction of the Orthodox faith into Rus’
in the tenth century, whereupon language ‘suddenly’ appeared alongside
faith.132 In the last analysis, then, the Church Slavonic linguistic legacy, as
Zhivov has pointed out, was bound up in Shishkov’s mind with national
identity, and the Karamzinian reform seemed to him a break with national
tradition, ‘a step on the path leading to the ruin of Russian culture’.133
It will be seen from this summary of the polemic that Karamzin – or at
least, the Karamzin who in the 1790s and early 1800s came to prominence
as the author of Sentimentalist prose fiction and the Letters of a Russian
Traveller – can easily be presented as a ‘Westernizer’ avant la lettre, a man
who is receptive to European civilization. This receptivity was manifested
in tolerance of loanwords from Western European languages and recommendation of French stylistic and conversational models. Shishkov, on the
other hand, can be portrayed as a forerunner of the Slavophiles and other
conservative nationalists, for he associated the loss of traditional piety
with moral degeneration and he comes across as a hide-bound opponent of
European linguistic influence. The contrast seems to be confirmed by the
association of the two writers’ respective followers with particular journals
and literary societies that flourished in the Alexandrine age. Karamzin’s
ideas, for instance, were well received in the Friendly Literary Society and the
129
130
131
132
133

Shishkov, Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge, 86, 121.
Shishkov, Razgovory o slovesnosti, in SSPAS, vol. 3, 1–2.
Shishkov, ‘Pribavlenie’, ibidem, vol. 2, 458.
Shishkov, Rassuzhdenie o krasnorechii sviashchennogo pisaniia, in SSPAS, vol. 4, 22.
Zhivov, Language and Culture, 369–370.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Free Society of Lovers of Literature, the Sciences, and the Arts, both founded
in 1801, while some of Shishkov’s supporters frequented his Symposium
of L­ overs of the Russian Word.134 The impression that the two sides in the
polemic took diametrically opposite positions was strengthened by the
fact that they traded insults, parodied their opponents, and were willing to
misrepresent each other’s views.135 Although it suited Shishkov’s purpose,
for instance, to allow readers to think that he had quoted examples of ‘bad’
Russian usage from Karamzin and various representatives of a Karamzinian
school, almost all of his examples, it has been shown, were culled from one
book by a minor writer, Aleksandr Obrezkov, whose style bore no resemblance
to Karamzin’s and who was ridiculed by the Karamzinists, as Karamzin’s
followers were known.136 The Karamzinists, for their part, invented many of
the words, including the infamous mokrostupy for galoshi (galoshes), which
Shishkov was supposed to have made up to replace borrowed French words
in his futile attempt to stem the tide of linguistic innovation.137 The contrast
was subsequently reinforced by terminology introduced in the 1920s by Iurii
Tynianov, who described the Karamzinists as ‘innovators’ and Shishkov and
his supporters as ‘archaists’.138 Nonetheless, the adversaries did have much
in common, besides their conservative political views.
Both Karamzin and Shishkov complained, for example, that Russian was
not widely enough used or sufficiently respected. Thus, Karamzin regretfully
stated in his essay ‘On Love of the Fatherland’ that it was Russians’ misfortune
‘that we want to say everything in French and do not think to work on the
elaboration of our own language’. How different were the English, who ‘prefer
to whistle and hiss in English even with those they love most tenderly rather
than speak a foreign language which almost all of them know’.139 Shishkov,
in his Discourse on the Ancient and Modern Style of the Russian Language,
134 See Argent, ‘The Linguistic Debate between Karamzin and Shishkov’, 105–106. The members
of the Symposium, it should be noted, were not exclusively Shishkovian.
135 Ibidem, 105.
136 Proskurin, Literaturnye skandaly pushkinskoi epokhi, 22–26, 35–37, 44–46.
137 Al’tshuller, Beseda liubitelei russkogo slova, 58.
138 Tynianov, Arkhaisty i novatory. The label ‘archaists’ is misleading, inasmuch as Shishkov’s
view of language as a cultural organism specific to a nation was in tune with Herder’s ideas
about language, which were gaining ground at the turn of the century, and with the Romantic
notion that enlightened peoples have a history that they need to respect: see Zhivov, Language
and Culture, 374.
139 ‘O liubvi k otechestvu i narodnoi gordosti’, in Karamzin, IS, vol. 2, 286, 287; Karamzin’s
italics. For similar remarks in his Letters of a Russian Traveller, where Karamzin’s holds women
responsible, to a large extent, for this state of affairs, see the penultimate section of Chapter 6
above.

L anguage attitudes

491

also bemoaned Russians’ ignorance of their language.140 Both Karamzin
and Shishkov, moreover, attributed this problem to Russians’ reluctance
to read in their mother tongue. Karamzin admonished his compatriots for
preferring French literature and neglecting their own.141 Shishkov echoed
the point in his Discourse, insisting that it was only by reading books in
one’s native language that one could enter the ‘temple of literature’.142 When
Russians did read books in their own language, he predicted, they would
‘throw away the French language just as a child throws away its favourite
wooden toy when it is shown the same one in gold’.143
Karamzin and Shishkov also agreed that it was dangerous, from both the
moral point of view and the linguistic point of view, to entrust the education
of Russian children to foreigners. Karamzin objected to an advertisement
which aimed to attract Russian students to a boarding school in France,
fearing that if they studied abroad then a foreign country would become
their homeland.144 Likewise, Shishkov insisted that Russian children should
be tutored by Russians, for foreigners could not instil in Russians a love for
the fatherland that they themselves did not feel.145 Nor, he believed, could
children acquire a good knowledge of their native language if they were
entrusted to French educators from an early age; indeed, they would end
up despising it.146
Most importantly from our point of view, evidence of Russian cultural
and linguistic dependency on France offended the national pride of both
writers, as if the worth of the empire that eighteenth-century rulers had built
was being called into question by Russians’ readiness to imitate foreigners.
Both expressed their indignation, moreover, by applying the perennial topos
of aping or parroting to compatriots whom they perceived as responsible
for this self-abasement. People with a smattering of French needlessly
mangled that language in conversation with their fellow-Russians, Karamzin
complained, because one was deaf and mute without French in so-called
good society, and this habit was demeaning. ‘How can you not have national

140 Shishkov, Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge, 301.
141 ‘O liubvi k otechestvu i narodnoi gordosti’, in Karamzin, IS, vol. 2, 286.
142 Shishkov, Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge, 7.
143 ‘Primechaniia na pis’mo derevenskogo zhitelia v “Severnom Vestnike”’, in Shishkov, Sobranie
sochinenii i perevodov, vol. 2, 402. These ‘Primechaniia’ make up one section of the abovementioned ‘Pribavlenie’.
144 Karamzin, ‘Strannost’’, Vestnik Evropy, 1:2 (1802), 57.
145 Shishkov, ‘Rassuzhdenie o liubvi k otechestvu’, in SSPAS, vol. 4.
146 Shishkov, Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge, 164–165.

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The French L anguage in Russia

self-respect?’ he wondered. ‘Why be parrots and apes at once?’147 Shishkov,
in a similar vein, lamented that the French had taught Russians everything
(‘how to dress, how to walk, how to stand, how to sing, how to talk, how to
bow, and even how to blow one’s nose and cough’), placing language on a par
with other cultural borrowing, and he too invoked apes and parrots to drive
home the point.148 Imitation was bad enough in itself, but it was especially
irritating to Shishkov that the people his compatriots mimicked were, in
his opinion, so morally unsound. For one thing, many of the French people
Russians encountered in Russia, Shishkov believed (echoing the thought of
La Messelière half a century earlier), were there only because they had fled
from the Parisian police. As for the French books through which Russians
became acquainted with French culture, nowhere were there ‘so many false,
seductive, unwise, harmful, and infectious thoughts’.149
Both writers also resorted, as a means of defence against the cultural
and linguistic threat from outside Russia, to deployment of the topos of
linguistic pride, explicitly or implicitly underlining the richness (bogatstvo)
or eloquence (krasnorechie) of Russian in the titles of works they wrote150
(although in truth it was Church Slavonic, as we have pointed out, that
Shishkov was praising). It is worth emphasizing just how insistent and
persistent the topos was in the writings of Karamzin, since he can be
perceived as the more ‘Westernist’ of the combatants, as well as the more
eloquent. Take the following passage from The Letters of a Russian Traveller,
in which Karamzin stealthily borrows an image from Bouhours:
Honour and glory to our language, which in its native wealth, with virtually no foreign admixture, flows like a proud, majestic river: it roars and
thunders, and all of a sudden, if need be, it becomes muted and babbles
like a gentle brook and sweetly seeps into the soul, forming every metre
that is contained within the rise and fall of the human voice!151
147 Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennika, in Karamzin, IS, vol. 1, 531; [Karamzin], Nikolai Karamzin:
‘Letters of a Russian Traveller, 1789–1790’, 391.
148 Shishkov, Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge, 8, 310, 337, 339.
149 Shishkov, ‘Pribavlenie’, in SSPAS, vol. 2, 369.
150 i.e. [‘O bogatstve iazyka’], in Karamzin, IS, vol. 2, 142, and Shishkov, Rassuzhdenie o krasnorechii sviashchennogo pisaniia.
151 Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennika, in Karamzin, IS, vol. 1, 575; [Karamzin], Nikolai Karamzin:
‘Letters of a Russian Traveller, 1789–1790’, 433; cf. Bouhours, Les entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène, 69,
where we find the following passage: ‘Italian is like those streams that babble pleasantly over
the stones, meandering through meadows full of flowers, yet sometimes swelling so much that
they flood the whole countryside. But French is like those beautiful rivers that enrich every

L anguage attitudes

493

In fact, Russian is superior to French, Karamzin argues in his essay ‘On Love
of the Fatherland and National Pride’, invoking various vague proofs for
which he produces no evidence: ‘it is richer in harmony than French, more
capable of outpourings of the soul in various tones; it offers more analogous
words, that is words corresponding to the action being expressed’.152 The
sentiment is repeated in the first volume of The History of the Russian State,
where Karamzin confidently asserts that the language of the Russian people,
‘when governed by the talent and taste of an intelligent writer, can today
bear comparison in strength, beauty, and agreeability with the best ancient
and modern languages’.153
Fear of contamination of this superior language is more overt in Shishkov’s
writings than in Karamzin’s; in fact, it is at the root of the differences that
set the two apart in the historical record of language attitudes. Shishkov
likens the product of mixing French and Russian to a ‘grey kaftan with lapels
and collar’, that is to say an ugly garment which seems ‘even worse than real
foreign dress’.154 Or again, he describes love of French as an ‘infection’ and
stirs antipathy to foreignisms by using biblical imagery, comparing Russian
words in a Francophone environment to seeds that have been trampled
upon or that have fallen on stony ground.155 While he grudgingly concedes
in the second edition of his Discourse on the Ancient and Modern Style of
the Russian Language that it is useful for Russians to know French, he still
regards language-mixing as a sign of disrespect for one’s mother tongue, even
if speakers believe that the use of French words enriches Russian.156 And yet,
Karamzin too is a purist up to a point. He agreed with Shishkov, as Zhivov
has pointed out, that bureaucratic and dialectal lexis should not be used
in the literary language.157 It is also notable that even in the early period of
his career, when he was most closely associated with linguistic borrowing,
Karamzin appealed, in the passage we have quoted from his Letters of a
place they pass through; without being either fast or slow, their waters roll majestically and
take a course that is always even’.
152 ‘O liubvi k otechestvu i narodnoi gordosti’, in Karamzin, IS, vol. 2, 286.
153 Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva Rossiiskogo, vol. 1, 70.
154 Shishkov, ‘Pribavlenie’, in SSPAS, vol. 2, 386.
155 Shishkov, Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge, 48. Compare Luke, 8:5–6. It has been pointed
out that metaphors tend to recur with striking similarity at different times and in different
language cultures when languages come into contact and purist attitudes develop, for example
metaphors of religious purity, nature, gardening, farming, health, and medicine. See Thomas,
Linguistic Purism, 12, for a discussion of the imagery of linguistic purism, and also Langer and
Nesse, ‘Linguistic Purism’, 607.
156 Shishkov, Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge, in SSPAS, vol. 2, 143.
157 Zhivov, Language and Culture, 368.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Russian Traveller, to the purity of Russian, claiming that the language had
‘virtually no foreign admixture’. Their respective positions, then, as Zhivov
has summed them up, were ‘modifications of one and the same basic doctrine
of Classicist purism’. What they could not agree upon was what it was in the
Russian language that was impure. For Shishkov, it was mainly the conspicuous foreignisms encouraged by Karamzin, even if they were only tools in
the greater struggle for Russia’s cultural self-realization. For Karamzin, on
the other hand, it was in part Shishkov’s beloved Slavonicisms.158
For all their disagreement as to which linguistic resources, foreign or
Slavonic, would enable Russian writers to bring Russian to perfection,
neither Karamzin nor Shishkov doubted that failure to cultivate and protect
their language posed a risk to the nation’s moral fibre. Writing in the highly
charged atmosphere of the Napoleonic period, they both treated language
attitudes as indicative of the strength or weakness of patriotic feeling or
‘love of the fatherland’, as such feeling was at that time defined.159 Both
intertwined language commentary with commentary on the character
of peoples in a manner that is commonplace in metadiscourse, in which
language use may be perceived as somehow bound up with maintenance
or breakdown of moral order.160 Shishkov may have linked language and
nation even more strongly than Karamzin, after the manner of Herder,161
but both inclined towards an essentialist view of language as an expression
of the character of the people to whom it belonged.162

Rostopchin’s Gallophobia
The Gallophobia which Shishkov’s linguistic views helped to fan was quite
widespread in the Alexandrine age, when – according to Vigel’ – Russia, or
at least St Petersburg, was culturally subjugated to Europe to such an extent
that the sense of nationality (chuvstvo narodnosti) was felt only by the lower
social classes.163 We encounter Gallophobia, for instance, in Krylov’s Fashion
158 Ibidem, 367.
159 On the notion of ‘fatherland’, and other ‘translations’ of ‘patrie’ in the Napoleonic period,
see Dickinson ‘Otechestvo, Otchizna, Rodina’.
160 Cameron, ‘Out of the Bottle’, 313.
161 It is unclear whether Shishkov was directly or indirectly influenced by Herder in this
respect: see Zhivov, Language and Culture, 370; Hamburg, ‘Language and Conservative Politics
in Alexandrine Russia’, 123.
162 Gasparov, ‘Identity in Language?’, 132–134.
163 Vigel’, Zapiski, vol. 1, 176.

L anguage attitudes

495

Shop, a three-act comedy written in 1806, following Napoleon’s defeat of
Austrian and Russian forces at the Battle of Austerlitz (1805). The shop
is a metaphor for Russians’ indiscriminate acceptance of what is foreign,
especially French (though English influence is also implicated). The play
reflects a growing xenophobia, inasmuch as it presents foreigners as fleecing
Russians and corrupting their mores. It is the language use of foreigners
themselves, rather than Russians that is the chief object of the dramatist’s
scorn, and much fun is had at the expense of deceitful French adventurers,
who mix French and execrable Russian in their speech. However, Russians’
own use of French does not pass unnoticed: Krylov’s old-style provincial
landowner, Sumburov, who has brought up his daughter to be a good wife,
housekeeper, and mother, sees no need for her to be able ‘to prattle’ in that
language.164
Pride of place among the linguistic Gallophobes, though, belongs to Count
Rostopchin, that same Rostopchin whose witty French ‘Memoirs’ are a gem
of salon literature.165 Rostopchin challenged the alleged obsession of some
of his compatriots with all that was French and their habit of using only
French language, practices, servants, and governors in a novella Oh, the
French!, which was written in 1806 or 1807 but not published at that time.
The folly of those who are prone to Gallomania is pointed up in the novella
by Rostopchin’s portrayal of an idealized Russian family with traditional
native values.166 However, the most successful example of Rostopchin’s
virulent Gallophobia was a pamphlet of 1807 entitled The Russian Nobleman
Sila Andreevich Bogatyrev Thinks out Loud on the Staircase of Honour.167
Seven thousand copies of The Russian Nobleman were sold – a very large
number for a printed publication at that time – and the pamphlet reached
a relatively broad social audience.168 Rostopchin’s eponymous hero is a
provincial nobleman who comes to Moscow after the Battle of Eylau in
order to seek news of members of his family who had been fighting in the
164 Modnaia lavka, in Krylov, Sochineniia, vol. 2, 304 (II, 9). See Ivleva, ‘The Locus of the Fashion
Shop’, 375–377, on this play.
165 On Rostopchin’s ‘Memoirs’, see the fifth section of Chapter 6 above.
166 ‘Okh, Frantsuzy! Nabornaia povest’ iz bylei, po-russki pisannaia’, in Rostopchin, Okh,
Frantsuzy!, 84–147. The work was first published posthumously, in 1842.
167 Rostopchin, ‘Mysli vslukh na krasnom kryl’tse rossiiskogo dvorianina Sily Andreevicha
Bogatyreva’, in Okh, frantsuzy!, 148–152. Rostopchin’s title evokes pride in native vitality and
tradition. The forename of his nobleman, Sila, literally means ‘strength’ and his surname,
Bogatyrev, brings to mind the bogatyr’, the Herculean hero of Russian folklore. The ‘staircase of
honour’ (krasnoe kryl’tso), to use Alexander Martin’s translation of this term, is the ceremonial
entrance to old Russian buildings, in this case the Cathedral of the Assumption in the Kremlin.
168 Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries, 69–70.

496 

The French L anguage in Russia

Russian army against Napoleon. Having prayed for his sovereign, Bogatyrev
falls to musing about Russia’s enthralment by foreigners:
My Lord, will this ever end? How long are we to be apes? Is it not time
we woke up and came to our senses, offered a prayer, spat, and told the
Frenchman: ‘Get lost, you diabolical apparition! Go to hell or back to where
you came from, we don’t care, so long as you’re not in Rus’.’169

Russia, Bogatyrev thinks, has become a place to which foreign riff-raff come
in order to make money and fatten themselves up. Barely literate French
refugees who in their native land had been mere shop-keepers, government
clerks, lackeys, or banned priests had only to call themselves princes or
gentlemen to be accepted as arbiters of fashion or tutors to Russian children.
Frenchified Russian nobles, of course, are also to blame for this state of affairs
and are castigated for their gullibility. Had they studied history instead of
reading worthless French romantic fiction, then they would have known
that ‘in every French head there is a windmill, a hospital, and a madhouse’.170
As in so much Russian Gallophobic literature, such Russians are taken to
task not only for employing the ignorant, lazy, or deceitful immigrants as
tutors but also for their deluded view of what constitutes a sound education.
‘What do we teach our children nowadays?’ Sila asks himself.
To pronounce French well, to turn their feet outwards and to tousle
their hair. Only those [children] whom a Frenchman would take for his
compatriots are [considered] intelligent and good. How can they love their
country when they don’t even know the Russian language properly?171

And again, with particular emphasis on the alleged ascendancy of the
French language over Russian:
So who are these people who come to us and who do we entrust our
children to! So long as they pronounce French nicely, they can do as
they please: it’s just a disgrace. People learn French in all countries, but
169 Rostopchin, ‘Mysli vslukh na krasnom kryl’tse’, 148. Rostopchin’s use of the word ‘Rus’’ (Old
Russia) at the end of the passage quoted is an additional means of stirring patriotic fervour. Ségur,
in his biography of his grandfather, thought it prudent not to quote this passage in full for his
French readership and broke off after ‘came to our senses’: see Ségur, Vie du comte Rostopchine,
150.
170 Rostopchin, ‘Mysli vslukh na krasnom kryl’tse’, 150.
171 Ibidem, 149.

L anguage attitudes

497

so that they can write, read, and speak comprehensibly. Now wouldn’t
it seem strange to our nobleman if Russian became as fashionable in
other countries as French [is with us]; if the kennel-boy Klimka, the cook
Abrashka, the lackey Vavilka, the laundress Grushka, and the slut Lushka
started educating noble children and teaching them what is right? But
that’s been the custom here over the last thirty years, if you please, and
sadly there is no end of it in sight.172

The sweeping statement that Rostopchin makes in this passage about the
purely utilitarian purpose of teaching French in other European countries
and his implicit assumption that Russia is an exceptional case are of course
questionable, as we have argued throughout this book. What is of most
interest here, though, is the fact that Rostopchin views Russian francophonie
not as a means of facilitating the reception of useful concepts from a more advanced civilization but as demeaning and threatening to his own nation. As
an antidote to Russian Gallomania, which has allegedly made Russian youth
lose respect for their parents and their elders, Rostopchin has Bogatyrev
commend Russia’s ‘merciful sovereign, magnanimous nobility, wealthy
merchants, industrious people’ and her many great soldiers, ecclesiastics,
ministers, and writers. All the illustrious Russians that Bogatyrev names
as examples of native achievement ‘knew and know French’, Rostopchin
claims. (As a matter of fact, the claim cannot be true, as Rostopchin has
named individuals who flourished long before French language or culture
impinged on Russian life.) None of these luminaries, though, ‘attempted to
know it [French] better than Russian’.173
It is at first sight surprising that this scourge of the Russian Francophiles
who were allegedly corrupting the nation’s youth by teaching them to
abandon their mother tongue should himself have chosen French as his
preferred medium for much of what he wrote, besides his ‘Memoirs’. The
documents written by Rostopchin in French include a hostile account of
172 Ibidem, 149–150. The absurdity of the sort of cultural exchange that Bogatyrev imagines is
heightened by Rostopchin’s use of diminutive forms of forenames (Klimka and so forth) which
noble readers would immediately have associated with their serfs.
173 Ibidem, 150. Around the time that he produced The Russian Nobleman Sila Andreevich
Bogatyrev, Rostopchin also wrote a comedy, News, or the Dead Man Lives, in which the now
familiar character of Bogatyrev again berated the feckless nobility for their slavish adherence
to French fashion and their lack of patriotism: see Vesti, ili Ubityi zhivoi, in Rostopchin, Okh,
frantsuzy!, 157–205. The play was performed in a Moscow theatre in 1808 but its reception was
mixed: not surprisingly, it offended francophone society: see RBS, vol. 17, 260, at http://dlib.rsl.
ru/viewer/01002921717#?page=262.

498 

The French L anguage in Russia

Russian Freemasonry and a long letter (in which he was highly critical of
the French people) addressed to Alexander I in 1823.174 French was also
the language of the voluminous correspondence Rostopchin conducted
over many years with Count Semen Vorontsov, the Russian ambassador in
London, whom he had befriended during a tour in the West as a young man in
1786–1788.175 Nor does he shy away, in this private correspondence, from those
same concerns about the supposedly detrimental effects of bilingualism or
multilingualism that he had expressed in his popular Gallophobic tracts.
He complained in 1803, for example, that young Russians
are worse than the French youth; they obey and fear nobody. One has
to admit that while being dressed in the European manner we are still
far from being civilized. The worst thing is that we have ceased to be
Russian and that we have bought our knowledge of foreign languages at
the expense of the mores of our ancestors.176

To the modern reader, armed with knowledge of the role that nationalism
played in European history from the early nineteenth century, the continuing
use of the French language by Rostopchin and other members of the Russian
elite for certain social and cultural purposes even while they seemed to
deplore such linguistic practice is puzzling, indeed hypocritical and bizarre.
One plausible explanation of the apparent paradox is to suggest – as Gary
Hamburg does – that their deep knowledge of French fostered in these
aristocrats ‘a kind of “second identity”, to use the historian Richard Cobb’s
term’: ‘the inner tension between their first (Russian) and their second
(French) identities accounted for the final vehemence of their rejection of
things French and their fervent embrace of Russianness’.177 However, there
are other factors that we should also consider as we reflect on the apparent
contradiction between Rostopchin’s language use and his rhetoric.
First, we may wonder whether educated Russians of Rostopchin’s age were
actually aware of the paradox that we now perceive, or at least, if they were
174 Published in Russian as ‘Zapiska o martinistakh, predstavlennaia v 1811 godu grafom
Rostopchinym velikoi kniagine Ekaterine Pavlovne’, RA, bk 3, no. 9 (1875), 75–81. On this document, see Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries, 100–103. Substantial passages from the
letter to Alexander I are reproduced by Ségur, Vie du comte Rostopchine, 296–306.
175 See AKV, bk 8. A further letter, probably also to Vorontsov, was published in RA, 1878, bk 1,
no. 3, 292–298; the letter is also available at http://memoirs.ru/texts/RostPisRA78K1V3.htm.
176 AKV, bk 8, 307–308.
177 Hamburg, ‘Language and Conservative Politics in Alexandrine Russia’, 119–120. Hamburg
is drawing on Cobb, A Second Identity.

L anguage attitudes

499

aware of it, whether the apparent paradox troubled them. Petr Viazemskii,
in an essay he wrote on Rostopchin towards the end of his life, in the 1870s,
contended that contradictions coexisted comfortably in Rostopchin and that
Rostopchin was not exceptional in this respect in the Alexandrine age. Russians are by nature eclectics, Viazemskii argued, or at least they were eclectics
at that youthful stage of the nation’s cultural and intellectual formation:
there were several Rostopchins in Count Rostopchin. This sort of heterogeneity is quite characteristic of the Russian nature. We have few
integral personalities; […] we are creations, or publications, which are
encyclopaedic and eclectic rather than specialist. We are reference works
rather than treatises. […] This sort of phenomenon is usually a property
of civil societies which are young and which have not yet been rigorously
divided by upbringing and education into clear-cut domains […]178

The disparate elements in this heterogeneous personality, the Russian and
the French personae, were inseparable from one another in Rostopchin as
Viazemskii portrayed him:
Besides this receptivity and pliability which is characteristic of Russians,
a peculiar multi-ethnicity [raznoplemennost’] was strongly in evidence in
Rostopchin. He was a native Russian, a true Muscovite, but a thoroughbred
Parisian too. In spirit, valour, and prejudices he was cast in a mould
from which Pozharskiis and Minins might emerge at a certain moment;
in mentality and wit he was the absolute image of a real Frenchman.179

We have here two co-existent topoi – the topos of the receptivity of the
Russian people to other cultures and the topos of ‘multi-ethnicity’ – which
seemed adequately to explain apparent contradictions in the behaviour
of Francophone Russian nobles of the ages of Catherine and Alexander I
without requiring them to view themselves as dangerously divided beings,
as later writers and thinkers, conscious of belonging to a more mature
culture, often assumed they were.
Secondly, we should perhaps beware of taking all expressions of Gallophobia among Russians of the Alexandrine age at face value. In literary
178 Viazemskii, ‘Kharakteristicheskie zametki i vospominaniia o grafe Rostopchine’, 70;
Viazemskii’s italics.
179 Ibidem, 69–70. Minin and Pozharskii were Russian national heroes of the so-called Time
of Troubles (Smutnoe vremia) in the early seventeenth century.

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The French L anguage in Russia

texts, critical reference to Gallomania, together with complaints about
the contamination of the Russian language by Gallicisms, may often seem
more like an irresistible reiteration of a successful stock theme than an
expression of real concern about a contemporary problem. By the same token,
critique of cultural fashions that prevailed in the highly codified world of the
salon, including language use, may have been permitted and even admired,
provided that it remained within certain clearly understood limits and did
not infringe propriety, le bon ton. The society assembled in the salon still
had sufficient social, political, and cultural power and self-confidence to
withstand unpalatable truths about its members, provided that speakers
of those truths did not overstep the mark.
Thirdly, attitudes towards language use were in any case not the same
among Rostopchin’s generation of the cosmopolitan cultural elite, in whom
the values of the age of the Enlightenment had been inculcated, as they
would be among slightly later generations which had directly or indirectly
absorbed German Romantic ideas. For the former, brought up in the era
before the development of nationalism, the use of French for social and
cultural purposes among themselves did not really represent betrayal of one’s
fatherland (patrie or otechestvo), which was understood as an empire ruled
by an autocrat, whatever literary fashion might prompt them to say. For the
latter, who had been persuaded that language and culture were, or should
be, inextricably linked to notions of ethnicity, French might be acceptable
as a vehicle for the reception of foreign culture and as a lingua franca for
communication with foreigners but it would become unacceptable – in
theory at least – as a means of communication with fellow Russians of any
social stratum. This later, post-Napoleonic generation, or at least the literary
contingent of it, was loyal to a cultural nation, whose authentic representatives were the predominantly monolingual, Russophone common people.
Finally, the root causes of Rostopchin’s animosity towards France, and
towards Russians who were intoxicated with French education and culture,
were horror at the French Revolution and apprehension about its possible
political, social, and military consequences for Russia. Over two or three
decades, Rostopchin’s Sila Bogatyrev complained, the French had destroyed
their government, desecrated temples, murdered their king, cut off heads
like cabbages in the name of equality and liberty, and made war on other
peoples.180 Nor was it certain that the destruction would be confined to
France; it might befall Russia too, where memory of the great peasant revolt
that had taken place in 1773–1774 under the leadership of Pugachev remained
180 Rostopchin, ‘Mysli vslukh na krasnom kryl’tse’, 151.

L anguage attitudes

501

fresh in the consciousness of Russian nobles of Rostopchin’s generation. From
the perspective of a landowning nobleman who regarded the peasantry as
an idle, brutish mob and who thought, his grandson observed, that ‘there
was no middle ground between despotism and anarchy’,181 contemporary
France posed an existential threat to his own, pre-eminent social class. (It is
significant in this connection that Rostopchin refused to open up Moscow’s
arsenal to the populace, even as Napoleon’s army was taking the city.182)
However, Rostopchin never ceased to admire the culture of the aristocracy
of France under the ancien régime that the revolution had swept away. It
is within this complex framework of shifting conceptions of imperial and
national identity, fear of political and social turmoil, class allegiance, and
ambivalent feelings about both the Russian and the French nations that
the apparent tension between Rostopchin’s expressions of Gallophobia and
his lifelong use of French for many purposes should in the last analysis be
understood.

Literary reflection on francophonie in the 1820s and 1830s
The sort of indignation that Shishkov, Krylov, Rostopchin, and others had
expressed in the early 1800s against those who seemed to be apologists
for the French language and culture was understandably inflamed by the
Napoleonic invasion. ‘Now I would like to shove their noses in the ashes’,
Shishkov fulminated after the great fire of Moscow in 1812, with Karam­
zinists and Gallomanes in mind, and to ‘say to them loudly – “Is this really
what you wanted?ˮ’183 It irked even the memoirist Vigel’, who moved in the
more progressive literary circles, that in ‘the city which the French invasion
had recently reduced to ashes, everybody was speaking their language’.
It was particularly shameful, in Vigel’’s opinion, that Viazemskii, ‘who
wrote Russian so wonderfully and expressed himself in it so marvellously
in conversation, did not try to put it to use in Moscow society, where he
carried such weight’, but persisted in speaking French instead.184 Many
others, and not just conservatives, continued to underline the dangers of
Russian francophonie or simply to denigrate the French language itself.
181 Ségur, Vie du comte Rostopchine, 91.
182 Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries, 129.
183 See Zhivov, Language and Culture, 370–371, quoting a work by Lotman and Uspenskii.
184 Vigel’, Zapiski, vol. 2, 34. Not that Vigel’ could impugn Viazemskii’s patriotism, for Viazemskii
had ‘bravely fought against the French who were dear to him and was prepared to shed his blood
for the fatherland at the glorious Battle of Borodino’ (ibidem).

502 

The French L anguage in Russia

Ivan Murav’ev-Apostol, in 1813, conceded that there might be some honest
Frenchmen but went on to deplore those Russians (fortunately their number
was small) who esteemed France’s barbaric contemporary literature above
all others and who preferred the corrupt morals of the French to the pure
morals of their Russian forebears and the French language to their own.185
Sergei Glinka, for his part, claimed that there was ample proof that the
foppish French language was barbarous.186
In a series of articles on Russian literature that were published in 1823–1825
and in which much attention was devoted to linguistic matters, the Romantic
writer Aleksandr Bestuzhev also rued Russians’ continuing exposure to French
after the Napoleonic Wars. The patriotic attraction to things Russian that had
developed at the beginning of the war, he complained, had weakened as the
Russian troops ‘returned with laurels on their brow but with French phrases
on their lips’ and a ‘hidden passion for Gallicisms suddenly seized all estates
more strongly than ever’. What particularly concerned Bestuzhev was the
sense that this ‘cooling of the better part of society to their native language’
and to the emergent poets paralyzed literature in 1823.187 Indeed, Bestuzhev
attributed the poverty of Russian prose partly to the fact that although their
language contained treasures of its own Russians continued to use French
and follow French models. He likened his compatriots to American Indians
who bartered their gold for the gaudy knick-knacks they were offered by
foreigners who came to colonize them.188 The immaturity of Russian literature,
he reiterated in his third article in this series, was due partly to the fact
that Russian writers had been brought up on French literature, which was
not compatible with ‘the disposition of the Russian people or the spirit of
the Russian language’.189 Unease at language-mixing in the 1820s was also
captured, with his characteristic wit, by the playwright Aleksandr Griboedov,
who has Chatskii, the hero of his masterpiece Woe from Wit, refer memorably
to his contemporaries’ mixture of French with Nizhnii Novgorodian.190
185 Murav’ev-Apostol, Pis’ma iz Moskvy v Nizhnii Novgorod, 17.
186 Lupareva, ‘S.N. Glinka v spore o “starom” i “novom” sloge’, 141.
187 ‘Vzgliad na russkuiu slovesnost’ v techenie 1823 goda’, in Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, Sochineniia,
vol. 2, 541; see also Frazier, Romantic Encounters, 190–191.
188 ‘Vzgliad na staruiu i novuiu slovesnost’ v Rossii’, in Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, Sochineniia, vol.
2, 536.
189 ‘Vzglaid na russkuiu slovesnost’ v techenie 1824 i nachale 1825 godov’, ibidem, 548. On
Bestuzhev’s thoughts on the Russian language and French Neo-Classicism, see also Leighton,
Russian Romanticism, 60–61.
190 Griboedov, Gore ot uma, Act I, Scene 7. Nizhnii Novgorod is a provincial city on the Volga,
some 250 miles east of Moscow, and was famed for its annual commercial fair (that is to say, it
was associated as much with merchants as with nobles).

L anguage attitudes

503

For Pushkin too, as for Bestuzhev, criticism of Russians’ dependency on
French language and culture did not signify undiscriminating hostility to
the French language or French culture; rather, it was bound up with concern
about the need to develop an autochthonous literature unaffected by French
literary models and imbued with the elusive quality of narodnost’ (‘nationality’ or ‘national distinctiveness’). Pushkin expressed this balanced view of
the relationship between language use and patriotism in an unfinished
historical novel, Roslavlev, which was published in part in 1836 but which
had been written in 1831 as a riposte to and a rewriting of a historical novel
by the staunch conservative nationalist Mikhail Zagoskin.191 The narrator
of Pushkin’s Roslavlev is a woman who looks back to the winter of 1811, that
is to say the year before Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, when, at the age of
sixteen, she had entered society. Her elder brother, Roslavlev, was at that
time serving at the College of Foreign Affairs in Moscow and was enjoying
social success there, ‘dancing and playing the fop’. He persuaded his sister
to introduce him to a contemporary of hers, Princess Polina, with whom
he had fallen in love. Polina had been deeply affected by French culture,
having read voraciously in her father’s library, and in 1812 she refused to
succumb to wartime Gallophobia, deliberately continuing to speak French
in public places.
Pushkin’s portrayal of Polina raises a question which had fresh topicality
when Roslavlev was written, immediately after a further French uprising
against absolute monarchy, namely the July Revolution of 1830. How were
Russians, Pushkin is asking, to regard Polina’s sympathetic engagement
with French culture? More generally, what attitude should members of the
Russian literary elite, who were coming to see themselves as representing
a young nation on the periphery of European civilization, take towards the
literature that they were accustomed to consider central in their cultural
world and for which French was the vehicle?192 Pushkin addresses this
question explicitly:
The fact of the matter is that we should be glad to read in Russian; but
our literature would appear to be no older than Lomonosov and it is still
extremely limited. It offers us some excellent poets, of course, but one
cannot demand of all readers that they be lovers of poetry alone. In prose
191 Zagoskin, Roslavlev, ili russkie v 1812 godu.
192 For a discussion of the applicability of Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystemic theory about
centre-periphery hierarchies to the Russian case (albeit in the mid-eighteenth century rather
than the nineteenth), see Skomorokhova, ‘Plating “Russian Gold” with “French Copper”’, 51–55.

504 

The French L anguage in Russia

all we have is Karamzin’s History; the first two or three novels appeared
two or three years ago, whereas in France, England, and Germany books
which are each more wonderful than the preceding one come out one after
another. We do not even see any translations; or if we do see them, say
what you like, I prefer the originals. […] We are forced to draw everything,
news and concepts, from foreign books; thus we even think in a foreign
language (at least, all those do who think and follow the thoughts of the
human race). […] The eternal complaints of our writers about our neglect
of Russian books are like the complaints of Russian market-women who
are cross because we buy hats at Sichler’s [a St Petersburg milliner] and
aren’t satisfied with what is produced by the milliners of Kostroma.193

So long as Russian literature was immature and Russians had difficulty
expressing themselves in their own language, then, it was by no means
unpatriotic to partake of the fruits of a more advanced culture (of which
language and headdress were perennially emblematic).
Respect for French culture, however, did not necessarily indicate servility.
Pushkin is repelled just as much by shallow cosmopolitanism as by jingoistic
patriotism. His heroine is therefore ashamed to think, at a social gathering
attended by Mme de Staël during her visit to Russia in 1812, that the great
French writer must have regarded the Francophile members of Muscovite
society whom she encountered as ‘monkeys of enlightenment’.194 In any
case, superficial Francophilia could quite easily turn into equally superficial
patriotism. When Napoleon’s army invaded Russia and those patriots who
deplored French cultural influence and French-speaking gained the upper
hand in Moscow society, for example, drawing-rooms suddenly became
filled with patriots: this person would empty the French snuff out of his
snuff-box and start sniffing Russian snuff; that one would burn a dozen
French pamphlets and another would give up Château Lafite and take to
sauerkraut soup. Everyone swore they would stop speaking French […]195

In contrast to patriots of this frivolous kind, and in contrast also to Zagoskin’s
treasonous character of the same name, who abandoned her Roslavlev for a
Frenchman, Pushkin’s Polina is held up as an embodiment of true patriotism.
193 Roslavlev, in Pushkin, PSS, vol. 8, pt 1, 150. Kostroma is a small and ancient provincial city
to the north-east of Moscow.
194 Ibidem, 151.
195 Ibidem, 153.

L anguage attitudes

505

This patriotism is inclusive. It accommodates the Russian common people,
for example, whom Mme de Staël had defended in response to a disparaging
remark made about them by a noble member of high society. It also has a
place for women, of whose feelings male patriots seem to take no account. ‘Do
women not have a fatherland too?’ Polina asks indignantly, or is it supposed
that they were born ‘just [to be] whirled around at balls in the écossaise or to
be made to embroider little dogs on canvas at home?’196 Most importantly,
Polina’s patriotism is based on the notion of self-sacrifice. Confined to her
parents’ country estate while Napoleon advances on and occupies Moscow,
Polina is persuaded by a French prisoner of war whom her father has agreed
to billet that it is the Russians themselves who have set fire to the capital on
Napoleon’s entry into it and that this ‘terrible, barbaric greatness of soul’ will
spell disaster for the French army and deliver Russia from danger. She takes
pride in this heroic act.197 Thus it is perfectly possible, to Pushkin’s mind, for
members of the Russian elite to respect the achievements of French culture and
to speak French but also to feel a loyalty towards Russia which is deeper than
the chauvinism displayed by nobles who profess to spurn foreign-language
use and make other empty gestures in accordance with current fashion.
The use of French in high society continued in the 1820s and 1830s to be
a feature of life in that milieu of which writers were bound to take account
if they aspired to write in the realistic and critical vein that choice of prose
was starting to require. Indeed, characters’ language choice began to be
presented in the society tale, with which many writers experimented in the
formative decades of classical Russian prose, in ways that implied a critical
attitude towards that milieu on the writer’s part. In ‘The Queen of Spades’,
for example, references to French culture and French-speaking not only
lend authenticity to Pushkin’s depiction of metropolitan society; they also
hint at its members’ cynicism. The Russian aristocracy, as Pushkin portrays
it, rigorously observes the etiquette of Parisian society, where the aged
countess, who holds the gambler’s secret that Pushkin’s German protagonist
Hermann hopes to discover, had flourished in the age of Catherine II some
sixty years before. Characters use French terms of address, such as ‘grand’maman’ (grandma) and ‘Bonjour, mademoiselle Lise’ (Good day, Miss Lise).
They may affectedly refer to each other by French versions of their Russian
forenames, such as Lise, in the previous example, and Paul. Pushkin conveys
the flirtatiousness and insouciance that members of this society strive to
display by prefacing the sections into which his text is divided with French
196 Ibidem.
197 Ibidem, 157.

506 

The French L anguage in Russia

witticisms. ‘Il paraît que monsieur est décidément pour les suivantes’ (It
appears that monsieur definitely prefers waiting-maids), jokes some noble
lady. ‘Que voulez-vous, madame? Elles sont plus fraîches’ (How can I help
it madame? They are fresher.).198 Or again: ‘Vous m’écrivez, mon ange, des
lettres de quatre pages plus vite que je ne puis les lire’ (You write me four-page
letters, my darling, more quickly than I can read them), and ‘Homme sans
mœurs et sans religion!’ (A man without manners or morals and without
religion!).199 This literary practice stands in sharp contrast to Pushkin’s
use of Russian headings in his historical works The Blackamoor of Peter the
Great and The Captain’s Daughter and in The Tales of Belkin, which deal
with Russian provincial life.200 The practice befits the genre of the society
tale, of course. It tends to suggest that ‘The Queen of Spades’, like Pushkin’s
‘Egyptian Nights’ (in which French headings also occur), is addressed to an
exclusive readership consisting of those who are established in society’s
networks, initiated into its rituals, complicit in its pretences, and well versed
in its pursuits, such as card-playing and gambling.
Other writers who produced examples of the society tale were more
critical of the high social world than Pushkin, even if they too belonged to
it. According to the prose-writer, memoirist, and journalist Ivan Panaev,
the sites of noble society – the drawing-room, the ball-room, the cardtable – were distinguished by ‘scandal, pomposity, prejudice, caprice, [and]
fabrication’.201 The habitués of such venues were also notable, we may add, for
their preference for French over Russian and for the consequent association
of that language with predilection for malicious gossip and preoccupation
with social status. Salon society is tainted by its language use, for example,
in Vladimir Odoevskii’s ‘Princess Mimi’ (1834), a tale whose eponymous
central character orchestrates a whispering campaign that leads to the
deaths of blameless people.202 Russian ladies, the narrator complains in a
‘preface’ mischievously inserted in the middle of the tale, eschew Russian
198 ‘Pikovaia dama’, in Pushkin, PSS, vol. 8, pt 1, 231. We have taken this translation from
[Pushkin], Alexander Pushkin, ed. by Debreczeny, 517, n. 16.
199 ‘Pikovaia dama’, in Pushkin, PSS, vol. 8, pt 1, 237, 243.
200 The Russian titles of these three works are Arap Petra velikogo, Kapitanskaia dochka, and
Povesti Belkina respectively. The epigraphs used in The Captain’s Daughter in particular give the
work a strongly indigenous character. They include extracts from Russian songs (see Kapitanskaia
dochka, in Pushkin, PSS, vol. 8, pt 1, 286, 294, 307, 313, 321, 354), Russian proverbs (277, 327, 366),
and quotations from the eighteenth-century Russian dramatists Fonvizin, Kniazhnin, and
Sumarokov (279, 294, 299, 344, 360), and – at suitably martial junctures – from the epic poet
Kheraskov (334, 338).
201 Quoted by Cornwell: ‘Introduction’, 3.
202 See Cornwell, ‘Vladimir Odoevskii and the Society Tale’, 16–17.

L anguage attitudes

507

and instead speak more or less impeccable French of the purest Parisian
variety. One cannot catch a word of Russian in the Russian drawing-room:
A novelist who possesses so much conscience that he cannot allow
himself to pass off the Eskimo language as the language of society must
have absolute command of this social alphabet, he must catch all those
conventional words, because I repeat, it is impossible to invent them:
they are born in the heat of polite conversation, and the meaning given
to them at that moment remains with them forever. But where will you
catch such a word in a Russian drawing room? Here all Russian passions,
thoughts, mockery, vexation, the slightest motion of the soul are expressed
in ready-made words which are taken from the ample French storehouse,
and which French novelists use so skilfully and to which they are obliged
(leaving aside the question of talent) for most of their success.203

French and Russian are again opposed, as are town and country, in another
well-known society tale, Vladimir Sollogub’s slightly later ‘High Society’
(1840).204 As far as the emergent prose writers of the 1820s and 1830s were
concerned, then, the French language reinforced the conventions that
regulated the culture of the Russian drawing-room.

A Slavophile view of Russian francophonie: Konstantin Aksakov
The contrast between two Russias – one represented by the French-speaking
monde that was laid bare in the society tale and the other by all those
elements that had been more or less untouched by Russia’s cultural westernization – was developed with relish in the mid-nineteenth century by the
Slavophiles. According to the memoirist Anna Tiutcheva (the daughter of the
poet Fedor Tiutchev), who married into the Aksakov family, these thinkers
were the first to realize that Russia was ‘not just a formless and inert mass
fit only to be cast in any form of European civilization and covered, as one
wished, with an English, German, or French gloss’. They were also the first to
dare to acclaim Russia’s cultural originality (samobytnost’).205 Unpalatable
203 Odoevskii, ‘Princess Mimi’, in Rydel (ed.), The Ardis Anthology of Russian Romanticism, 301.
204 ‘Bol’shoi svet: Povest’ v dvukh tantsakh’, in Otechestvennye zapiski, 1840, vol. 9, no. 3 (March),
sect. 3, 5–79. On this and other society tales by Sollogub, see Pursglove, ‘V.A. Sollogub and High
Society’, in Cornwell (ed.), The Society Tale in Russian Literature.
205 Tiutcheva, Pri dvore dvukh imperatorov, vol. 1, 64–65. Tiutcheva’s memoirs were written in
French. Her partisan claims are to be taken with a grain of salt.

508 

The French L anguage in Russia

as they might have found the fact, the Slavophiles were participants in a
pan-European movement, the nationalistic awakening that took place in the
first half of the nineteenth century. They also gave full voice to the yearning
already manifested in the debate between Karamzin and Shishkov at the
turn of the century, when, as Zhivov has explained, thinkers were seeking
‘more organic bases for human society’ and ‘deeper sources of human culture’
than Enlightenment thought had seemed to provide.206 In the nationalist,
organicist revival that the Slavophiles joined, patriotism took an ethnocentric
turn and language was conceived, as Herder had thought it should be, as an
expression of the character of the ethnos which spoke it.207
From an account of their childhood left by Tiutcheva’s husband Ivan,
we gain an insight into the rabidly patriotic atmosphere encouraged in the
Aksakov household by the children’s mother. When they found letters from
their mother’s friends that were written in French, the Aksakov children,
led by the eldest sibling Konstantin, would purloin them, stab them with
knives taken from the pantry, and burn them, execrating them with a ditty
composed by Konstantin about the swirling ‘smoke of damnation’. Unusually,
for the well-to-do Muscovite nobility of the 1820s, French was not used at
all in this household (except, it seems, in the mother’s correspondence!).208
Nor, evidently, did Konstantin – who, together with Ivan Kireevskii and
Khomiakov, would play the leading role in the formulation of classical
Slavophilism – relax this prohibition in later years, as we learn from the
conservative historian Pogodin. ‘Dinner at the Aksakovs’, Pogodin noted
drily in his diary in 1845; ‘they don’t speak French any more’ in Konstantin’s
presence.209
Of all the Slavophiles, it was Konstantin Aksakov who took the greatest
interest in linguistic matters. He wrote reviews of a Russian grammar by
Belinskii and of Gogol’’s Dead Souls (the reviews were published in 1838
and 1842 respectively), and a long dissertation on Lomonosov. In these
works, in the spirit of the Romantic age, he identified language as the truest
expression of national spirit.210 He also produced one of the most schematic
expressions of the thesis that eighteenth-century westernization had created
two distinct Russias, not forgetting to include language use in his paradigm.
206 Zhivov, Language and Culture, 371.
207 Herder, ‘Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit’, 810.
208 ‘Ocherk semeinogo byta Aksakovykh’, in Ivan Akaskov, Ivan Sergeevich Aksakov v ego
pis’makh, vol. 1, 19.
209 Barsukov, Zhizn’ i trudy M.P. Pogodina, vol. 8, 61.
210 Christoff, An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Russian Slavophilism, vol. 3: K.S. Aksakov
(hereafter Christoff, K.S. Aksakov), 205–208.

L anguage attitudes

509

In an editorial entitled ‘An Essay on Synonyms. Public and People’, which
was published in 1857 in a short-lived Slavophile paper, Molva (The Rumour),
he argued – to the consternation of officialdom 211 – that the aristocracy,
which moved in a westernized social world, was idle, irreligious, addicted to
Parisian fashion, and Francophone. On the other hand, the common people
(the narod, by which Aksakov meant primarily the peasantry), who were
confined to the village commune, or mir,212 were hard-working and pious,
observed Russian custom, and spoke only Russian.213
In the same period, just as literary and intellectual life was being reanimated after the death of Nicholas I, Aksakov also published a two-act comedy
Prince Lupovitskii, or Arrival in the Countryside (1856), which he had written
some five years earlier.214 The play provides Aksakov’s fullest exposition of
the contrast between society and people and one of the clearest implicit
denunciations of noble language use by a Russian cultural nationalist. Its
action begins in Paris, where Aksakov sets a prologue designed to call into
question the outlook of Gallicized nobles estranged from their native land.
It then moves to the Russian estate of the Francophile Lupovitskii, where
Aksakov exposes the delusions of the eponymous prince and brings to light
the moral qualities of the Russian peasants and the merits of their way of
life, as they are perceived through the Slavophile lens.
The play opens with a scene in the private dining-room of a Parisian café
in which Lupovitskii is discussing his forthcoming visit to his estate with
two friends, Count Dolonskii and Baron Saliutin. Two aristocratic views of
the Russian people are presented in this prologue. Dolonskii and Saliutin, on
the one hand, think of Russia as a nation of which nothing can be expected
because it is ‘tout un peuple de mougikes’ (a whole people of muzhiks).215
In the opinion of noblemen of this stamp, the Russian peasant will change
only if coerced by an iron hand, like that of Peter the Great. ‘Force brutale’,
Saliutin opines, ‘est très nécessaire et très utile envers les brutes’ (brutal
211 Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy, 272.
212 The word also denotes ‘world’ in Russian, a concept with which the commune was in practice
often coterminous for the enserfed peasant.
213 Konstantin Aksakov, ‘Opyt sinonimov. Publika–narod’, in Brodskii (ed.), Rannie slavianofily,
121–122. Aksakov takes no account of the swathes of the non-noble population of the Russian
Empire who were not ethnically Russian and whose mother tongue was not Russian (see the
last section of Chapter 1 above).
214 Konstantin Aksakov, Kniaz’ Lupovitskii, ili Priezd v derevniu. The play is briefly discussed in
Christoff, K.S. Aksakov, 272–273. It is also discussed by Walicki as an illustration of Aksakov’s
‘folk-mania’, but without comment on language use or language choice in it (see Walicki, The
Slavophile Controversy, 269–271).
215 Konstantin Aksakov, Kniaz’ Lupovitskii, 8.

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The French L anguage in Russia

force is very necessary and very useful when dealing with brutes).216 The
peasants, according to this view, are sub-human beings whose raison d’être
is to provide the labour that sustains the noble way of life. Their role, in the
final analysis, is to enable nobles like Dolonskii and Saliutin to live in Paris
and dine at the Café de Paris, visit the opera, go to balls to which only a
select few are admitted, and occasionally attend a lecture by some professor
who is in vogue, in short to live ‘en homme civilisé’ (as a civilized man).217
Lupovitskii, on the other hand, considers the Russian people capable of
understanding and accepting European inventions, discoveries, and ideas,
‘le progrès enfin’ (progress, in fact).218 Backward and uneducated they may
be, but European enlightenment can be grafted on to them.219 It falls to the
nobility to make them more fully human, in short, more like the nobles
themselves.220 It is for this humanitarian purpose that Lupovitskii intends
to visit his estate, after the manner of the ‘repentant nobleman’ whose
literary ancestry can be traced to Radishchev in the late eighteenth century.
From Aksakov’s Slavophile standpoint, Lupovitskii’s view of the peasants
as potentially receptive to the aristocrat’s attempt to civilize them is hardly
less flawed than his companions’ crudely dismissive view of them. The
‘civilization’ Lupovitskii wishes to bring to the peasants may consist simply
in forcing them do differently something that they already do in their own
time-honoured way. Lupovitskii accepts, for example, that the peasants
are charitable, but he regards the alms-giving through which their charity
manifests itself as a coarse habit. He would prefer them to raise money
for the poor through philanthropic activity of a sort that a noble might
be prepared to undertake. Admittedly, it would be impossible – Aksakov
has Lupovitskii say, absurdly – to introduce the practice of arranging balls
in the peasant milieu. All the same, Lupovitskii is confident that he will
think of some equally decorous means of raising funds, and indeed he
eventually proposes the setting-up of a ‘charitable choir’.221 Lupovitskii, then,
represents the standpoint of the patronizing Westernizer who is under the
misapprehension that the Russian people stand in need of other peoples’
values, practices, and cultural veneer.
The scenes of the play that are set in Russia are designed to demonstrate
just how misguided Lupovitskii’s project is. On arrival at his estate, where
216
217
218
219
220
221

Ibidem, 16–17.
Ibidem, 9–10, 11.
Ibidem, 7.
Ibidem, 13–14.
Ibidem, 12, 14.
Ibidem, 15. Lupovitskii’s proposal is rejected out of hand by the village headman (59–60).

L anguage attitudes

511

he owns some 800 souls,222 Lupovitskii tells his bemused peasants that he
aims to transmit to them the ‘fruits of enlightenment, the luxuriant fruits
of the sciences and the arts’, the ‘moral treasures’ and ‘intellectual seeds’ he
has procured in Western Europe.223 He is disabused of his illusions about
the usefulness of his plan as soon as he puts his suggestions for improving
the ‘intellectual education’ and raising the ‘moral […] worth’ of the peasants
to the village headman (starosta), who is Aksakov’s exemplar of simple
peasant wisdom in the play. The peasants, the headman explains, are already
religious and charitable, as Lupovitskii thinks they should be. They already
know very well that they should not do the things (for example, carouse or tell
lies) that they are enjoined not to do in the books Lupovitskii would like them
to be able to read.224 Aksakov tries to demonstrate how unnecessary noble
intervention in peasant life is in a further scene which contains a highly
sympathetic representation of a meeting of the village assembly at which
the peasants discuss selection of conscripts whom their village is required
to send for military service, a task they perform with care and tact.225 The
play concludes with Lupovitskii marvelling, when the deliberations of the
village assembly are reported to him, at the wisdom and integrity of these
simple people with whom he had hitherto been unfamiliar.
The moral that Aksakov wishes spectators (or more probably, readers) of
his play to draw is that the Russian nation has been fractured as a result of
the estrangement of its Europeanized social elite and that it will be further
damaged if Europeanization extends beyond the numerically small realm of
‘Russian Europe’. Lupovitskii is shown up as a foreigner in his own land. It
becomes apparent, for example, that he does not understand the structure
of Orthodox church services or know when Orthodox believers should
be fasting.226 He is aware of the Russian peasant custom of khleb-sol’ (the
offering of bread and salt as a sign of hospitality), but only because he has
been told about it by foreign tourists who have visited Russia.227 His serfs
immediately recognize him as a barin (landowning lord) when he appears
222 Ibidem, 32. Lupovitskii is therefore a landowner of the sort we have classified as extremely
well-to-do.
223 Ibidem, 45.
224 Ibidem, 53–68.
225 Ibidem, 74–83. In his subsequent journalism, Aksakov would admiringly describe the mir,
where the peasants discussed their collective affairs, as a ‘choir’ in which humans renounce their
individual interest for the sake of the whole: Aksakov, ‘Kratkii istoricheskii ocherk zemskikh
soborov’, in Brodskii (ed.), Rannie slavianofily, 108.
226 Konstantin Aksakov, Kniaz’ Lupovitskii, 55–56.
227 Ibidem, 44.

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before them, wearing a dandyish travelling coat and with a lorgnette on
a cord, because ‘he is not dressed like a Russian and doesn’t speak like a
Russian’, as one peasant observes, although they do not realize that he is their
master, for they have never seen him before.228 It is possible, incidentally, that
Aksakov wishes to imply through his choice of surname for this character
who hopes to serve as a conduit through which western habits will pass to
the Russian peasantry that Lupovitskii is himself of non-Russian lineage:
the suffix -itskii suggests Polish (and therefore Catholic) ancestry.229
Above all, it is through language use that Aksakov underlines his point
about the foreignness of the Russian nobility and calls into question the
views his nobles express. French is the language in which they seem most
comfortable in the prologue to the play. When at Lupovitskii’s request they
switch to Russian, it is only for practical reasons of which Aksakov would
not expect spectators or readers to approve. Lupovitskii, Dolonskii, and
Saliutin do not want the French people in the Café de Paris (who are, after
all, foreigners, Lupovitskii feels it necessary to point out) to understand
their candid remarks about Russia. In any case, it would be useful for
Lupovitskii to have some practice in Russian before he returns home. That
is not to say that he thinks it is likely that he will have to say anything in
Russian in Francophone St Petersburg, but he will need the vernacular for
communication with his benighted serfs. His companions therefore agree
to do him the favour of speaking Russian on this occasion.230 None of the
three, however, can sustain their conversation without repeated recourse
to French, and the prologue continues to its end to be a linguistic mélange,
as Lupovitskii ruefully admits.231
Moreover, all three aristocrats in the play are cast as heavily Gallicized,
and damned as such, by their habit of code-switching, which, as we have
seen, had been used by Russian dramatists since the mid-eighteenth century
as a stock means of ridiculing the practice of French-speaking among the
Russian nobility. ‘Well, bon voyage’, Dolonskii wishes Lupovitskii in the
prologue. ‘But do you know what? You’re just wasting your time; temps perdu,
mon cher’ (a waste of time, my dear fellow).232 When Lupovitskii’s arrival
at his country estate stirs patriotic feelings in him, he expresses them in
French by singing: ‘La voici, la voilà, cette France chérie!’ (It’s here, it’s there,
228 Ibidem, 27–28.
229 The alteration of ‘b’ in the Polish surname Lubowicki to ‘p’ also introduces an association
of the character with glupost’ (foolishness).
230 Konstantin Aksakov, Kniaz’ Lupovitskii, 8.
231 Ibidem, 15.
232 Ibidem, 7.

L anguage attitudes

513

this beloved France).233 When he comes to voice his love of Russia and the
‘good, intelligent Russian people’, he also affirms it in French. It is just a pity
that he has to converse with his peasants in Russian: he would be able to
explain things so much better to them in French.234 He turns to French once
more to express his new-found admiration of the common people: ‘mais c’est
sublime, c’est beau, ça!’ (but that’s sublime, it’s beautiful), he exclaims when
he is told of the support afforded by the village assembly to an orphaned
peasant.235 And again, at the end of the play: ‘Je vous estime, monsieur le
peuple!’ (I esteem you, monsieur the people).236 It is apt, incidentally, that
the Russian valet who serves Lupovitskii on his Russian estate, and to whom
Lupovitskii has given the French name Jerome, can himself parrot a few
words of French and other foreign languages.237
On one level, Aksakov’s practice of peppering characters’ utterances
with French words and phrases is a comic device used, after the manner
of the eighteenth-century dramatists we have examined, to mock foolish
noblemen who worship what is foreign and are oblivious of native merits.
At a more serious level, the prominence of French in Lupovitskii’s speech
underlines the threat of cultural conquest by an alien force if the misguided
mission civilisatrice that Lupovitskii has decided to undertake on Russian
soil should prove successful. Aksakov drives home his point that the French
language is the vehicle for Lupovitskii’s civilizing project by frequent use
of the Gallicized forms sivilizovat’ and sivilizatsiia (with an initial ‘s’ rather
than the affricate ‘ts’ with which the standard Russian forms of these words
begin). Thus ‘civilization’ is being introduced to the Russian peasantry by
seemingly alien beings whose judgements about Russia and Russians are
expressed in French, as if that language were the only suitable vehicle for
a definitive opinion on this or any other serious subject. The judgements
themselves, moreover, are derived from foreign sources. Lupovitskii vows,
in Aksakov’s prologue, to prepare himself for his trip by reading everything
that has been written about Russia in French, because ‘foreign descriptions’
of his country are not only accurate but also provide a picture of ‘La Russie,
vue du haut de la civilisation’ (Russia seen from the top of civilization).
(Lupovitskii’s reading would include such hostile accounts, one assumes,
as those by Masson, Ancelot, and Custine.) Finally, when he has fulfilled
233 Ibidem, 27.
234 Ibidem, 29. Lupovitskii repeats the point after he has first addressed the bemused peasants
on his estate (46).
235 Ibidem, 84.
236 Ibidem, 88.
237 Ibidem, 42, 69.

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The French L anguage in Russia

his humanitarian mission in Russia by turning his ignorant peasants into
European human beings, Lupovitskii will go back to France, the country, as
Saliutin reminds him, that Victor Hugo had called ‘the giant of the world’.
Paris, the metropolis of the cultural empire to which such Russian nobles
belong, is Lupovitskii’s natural habitat.238 Thus cosmopolitan Russian aristocrats, who have become convinced of their superiority over the Russian
peasant mass, are engaged in an attempt at internal colonization, not of
outlying swathes of territory in the Russian Empire but of the indigenous
population of the empire’s rural heartland. The Russian peasantry, according
to this Slavophile view, is a non-European other, the antipodes of the ‘Russian
Europe’ represented by Lupovitskii and all other westernized Francophone
Russian nobles who want to ‘civilize’ their nation.239
The writings by Konstantin Aksakov to which we have referred demonstrate how repugnant noble francophonie and the values associated
with French social life (its secular refinement, its aestheticism, and its
cult of douceur de vivre) would seem to those religious conservatives who
encouraged the revival of Orthodox piety. However, distaste for the Gallicized social world of the nobility was not confined to the Slavophiles and
like-minded cultural nationalists. On the contrary, it was widely shared in
the post-Crimean literary and intellectual community, and indeed became
a topic of major interest for all three of the great novelists who came to the
fore in the age of Alexander II and to whom we shall shortly turn in our
final chapter.
*
It is relevant at this point to return to the link between language and identity,
which we broached in our discussion of the social identity of the nobility in
an earlier chapter.240 However, we are now concerned not so much with the
question of whether the use of French by the nobility was socially divisive
as with the question of whether the practice was unpatriotic, for it was the
238 Ibidem, 18–20.
239 Aksakov’s thesis will seem to modern readers to anticipate the interpretation of the history
of Russia offered by Alexander Etkind, according to which an elite that was culturally alien
undertook internal colonization of the country (see Etkind, Internal Colonization). For a brief
critique of Etkind’s application of Edward Said’s Orientalist paradigm to Russian history, see
Schönle and Zorin, ‘Introduction’, 13. We have made clear our own reservations about the
highly schematic ‘two Russias’ paradigm that is entrenched in the thought of Russian cultural
nationalists.
240 See the fourth section of Chapter 4 above.

L anguage attitudes

515

subject of national identity that was at the forefront in the various phases of
the language debate we have been examining in this chapter. Were Russian
French-speakers disloyal to their native land, or even morally flawed, as so
many critics of Russian francophonie implied?
It is important, first of all, to emphasize that there is no necessary correlation between speakers’ proficiency in a language or the pleasure they
take in using it, on the one hand, and their attitude towards the people who
speak that language as their mother tongue or towards the culture of that
people, on the other. Nor can we assume that language use is indicative of
sympathy with the contemporary social order or political system under
which the majority of the native speakers of a language happen to live. In
fact, Russian nobles commonly resorted to French to articulate opposition
to contemporary French society, politics, or culture, rather than to express
approval of them. Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov, for example, used French
in a six-page note he wrote in 1831 expressing his worries about the current
‘revolutionary contagion’ which had rapidly spread from France.241 The use
of French could indicate identification with the type of society that was
associated with France under the old regime, as it did for Fedor Rostopchin,
without implying particular liking for the nation in which the chief model
for that society had originated. The point is well illustrated in a descriptive
catalogue that Fedor’s son, Andrei Rostopchin, wrote – in French – for his
private library in the 1860s.242 Andrei is highly critical of France and the
French (and of other European nations and peoples) in this text, but his target
is not the France of the ages of Louis XIV and Louis XV, which had profoundly
affected Russian noble culture. Rather, it was the France that had come
into being after 1789, particularly the France that had developed since the
revolution of 1830, which overthrew the restored Bourbon monarch Charles
X. This modern country, with its ascendant bourgeoisie and naturalistic
writers, was just as abhorrent to the unrepentant aristocrat Rostopchin as
to the libertarian socialist Herzen.243
We should therefore beware of construing a tradition of plurilingualism
in a family or clan as indicative of disloyalty towards Russia. We cannot
help but notice that some of the most conspicuously plurilingual families
provided the Russian Empire with devoted and effective servants over
several generations. For example, the Stroganov family, many members of
which were broadly Francophile and in which there was a strong tradition
241 Quoted from an archival source in Tipton, ‘Multilingualism in the Russian Nobility’, 199.
242 RGB, Manuscripts Department, f. 183, op. 1, d. 1089.
243 See Offord and Rjéoutski, ‘Xenophobia in French’.

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of French-speaking, could not possibly be accused of lack of patriotism.
Aleksandr Sergeevich Stroganov wrote a travel diary in French but still
expressed ardent love of his country.244 His grand-son Aleksandr Pavlovich
preferred on the whole to write in French rather than Russian but his emotional attachment to Russia was similarly intense.245 There are no good
grounds, we maintain, for believing that Russian nobles’ use of French as a
sign of social status and affinity with modern European culture indicated
any lack of pride in national achievement, as if patriotism were an attribute
to which only conservative nationalists who abjured multilingualism were
entitled to lay claim. It might just as well be argued that bilingualism, or
indeed plurilingualism, was an accomplishment that Russian nobles, as
servants of an empire oriented towards Europe and keen to advertise its
merits to peers across the continent, were obliged to display.246 After all, to
master the languages of other peoples and acquire a deep and respectful
knowledge of their literatures and thought was itself an attainment that
reflected well on one’s own nation. Catherine II herself understood this and
measured up to Voltaire’s view of the ideal modern European sovereign, who
was multilingual (at least in European languages).247 Russians, then, were
better prepared as a result of their linguistic achievement to make their
own distinctive contribution to European civilization as a whole, bringing
to bear the experience of their own nationality.
Russian views on noble francophonie were affected, finally, by changing
views about what it was, in the last analysis, that subjects (or would they
imagine themselves as citizens?) owed allegiance to. So long as a speaker’s
primary loyalty was to an imperial polity, the ‘fatherland’ (otechestvo),
the use of French for internal purposes, as well as for communication
with the external world, must have been regarded by many members of
the elite as an entirely legitimate practice. Indeed, it lent cohesion to the
empire’s multi-ethnic aristocracy, on whose performance and morale the
244 On the Stroganovs’ language use, see Rjéoutski and Somov, ‘Language Use among the
Russian Aristocracy’. On Aleksandr Sergeevich Stroganov in particular, see 64–71; reference to
his travel diary (‘Lettre à un Ami sur les Voyages’) is made on 68.
245 Ibidem, 76–77.
246 A comparison may be made with the situation among the Dutch elite, who in the late eighteenth century saw Franco-Dutch bilingualism as an ideal and among whom, in the nineteenth,
multilingualism came to be considered a feature of national identity: see Van Strien-Chardonneau,
‘The Use of French among the Dutch Elites’, 171–173.
247 For a discussion of the integration of knowledge of Western European languages into a new
notion of Russianness in the reign of Catherine II, see Bruce, ‘The Pan-European Justification
of a Multilingual Russian Society in the Late Eighteenth Century’. For his reference to Voltaire,
see 22.

L anguage attitudes

517

well-being of the empire to a considerable extent depended. It should be
remembered, moreover, that the transnational interaction between courts
and social elites in eighteenth-century Europe, which Russia was joining,
took place in a climate of universalistic humanism which encouraged
multilingualism. This universalism and a concomitant rejection of narrow
patriotism are well expressed in a passage quoted approvingly by Nikolai
Turgenev and attributed by him to Fénelon, who was much admired in
eighteenth-century Russia. ‘I love my family more than myself’, Fénelon
is supposed by Turgenev to have said, and ‘I love my country more than
my family, [but] I love the human race still more than my country’. 248
Karamzin, in his more cosmopolitan moments, shared that attitude.
‘Anything national is insignificant before what is human’, his narratorial
persona observes in the Letters of a Russian Traveller. ‘The most important
thing is to be people, not Slavs. What is good for people cannot be bad for
Russians’.249
The use of a foreign language for communication with compatriots seemed
more suspect, though, when there emerged a literary community and intelligentsia which began to question the legitimacy of the autocratic state. This
development took place in nineteenth-century Russia. A cultural concept,
the native land (rodina), began to vie with the larger, more inclusive and
more political notion of the fatherland. An ethnos, the Russian people, began
to function in writers’ imaginations as the object to be served and the final
court of appeal, and a more exclusive nationalism began to compete with
the ideology of a unitary state comprising many parts.250 Thus the attitude
towards nobles’ language use that had been adopted by the eighteenthcentury comic dramatists gained currency, at least in the nineteenth-century
literary community, which claimed with increasing confidence to speak for
the nation. In retrospect, those dramatists therefore look like harbingers of
the mood that helped to inspire the great literary creativity of the golden
age of Russian literature and thought.
248 See Nikolai Turgenev, La Russie et les Russes, vol. 2, 4, quoted by Grechanaia, Kogda Rossiia
govorila po-frantsuzski, 18. Starodum, Fonvizin’s exemplar of right-thinking in his play The
Minor, speaks reverentially of Fénelon in Act 4, Scene 2 of his play.
249 Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennika, in Karamzin, IS, vol. 1, 418 (Karamzin’s italics); [Karamzin],
Nikolai Karamzin: ‘Letters of a Russian Traveller, 1789–1790’, 294 (we have in this instance used
Kahn’s translation in the English version of a quotation from the Letters).
250 For brief discussion of a topical example of this sort of phenomenon, see the article by Michael
Kenny in The Observer on 19 March 2017, 9, where the author alludes to the twenty-first-century
rise of English nationalism in place of an outlook in which English identity had tended to be
subsumed, at one time or another over a long period, within the British Empire, Great Britain,
the Commonwealth, or the Anglosphere.

Chapter 9
Perceptions of bilingualism in the classical Russian novel
The rise of the novel and the expression of nationhood in it
By the age of Alexander II, Russian prose writers – inspired by the example
that Pushkin and others had set in the 1830s – had fully developed their
own idiom. They, no less than Pushkin and other early nineteenth-century
poets of the so-called Pushkin Pleiad, were responsible for the creation
of a literature written in the vernacular which became the outstanding
manifestation of Russia’s cultural maturity and the clearest expression
of the new Russian nationhood. It was important to prose writers, as they
strove for cultural autonomy, to free themselves from subservience to foreign
literary models. It also helped them, as they tried to define their own nation
and its mission, to look critically at another sign of Russians’ apparent
subservience to foreign cultural mentors, namely the persistence of the
phenomenon of French-speaking in nineteenth-century noble society.
It is the continuation of debate about the semiotic significance and the
effects of noble francophonie in the writings of Ivan Turgenev, Tolstoi, and
Dostoevskii that we examine in this final chapter.1
To point out the shortcomings of prose fiction as a source of information
on actual linguistic practice, as we did in our introduction to this volume,
is not to deny that fiction may corroborate the evidence provided by nonliterary types of written source. The classical Russian novel is firmly rooted
in byt (daily life), of which language practice was of course one element. This
practice included bilingualism, code-switching, and choice of French rather
than Russian to tackle certain subjects, to negotiate certain relationships
and situations, or to indicate social identity. At the same time, the social
or civic colouring of a work of fiction, which – as the literary historian D.S.
Mirsky remarked – was ‘a general characteristic of the European novel of
the mid nineteenth century, but [was] nowhere more apparent than in
Russia’,2 made for a high degree of subjectivity in treatment of Franco-Russian
bilingualism, as in other matters. For example, authors might have their
1 This subject, as far as we are aware, has usually been mentioned in major scholarship on
the Russian novel only en passant, if at all. See, though, Vinogradov, ‘O iazyke Tolstogo’, and
Lubenow, Französische Kultur in Russland (on Turgenev’s Nest of Gentry).
2 Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature, 172.

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The French L anguage in Russia

literary characters make linguistic choices or use language in particular ways
in order to highlight personal traits or moral qualities which they wished
their readers to find appealing or rebarbative and thus to underline some
broader social or cultural point. Above all, it is by virtue of the metalinguistic
discourse they contain, rather than their more or less accurate record of
actual linguistic usage, that the novels of the age of Alexander II are useful
to us here. The language attitudes that authors explicitly discuss or implicitly
convey through the words of their characters (who, of course, should not
be taken as necessarily and directly voicing their creator’s own opinions)
can be placed squarely in the overarching paradigms or grand narratives
created by Russian writers and thinkers for elucidation of Russian culture and
destiny. These attitudes bear on the idea of Russian nationality, discussion of
which is structured around the opposition between Russia and the West and
between the ‘European Russian’ and the Russian common people. They may
betray anxiety about dependency on and imitation of foreign culture or they
may belong to a countervailing discourse that asserts Russia’s originality,
positing a peculiar receptivity that enables Russians to absorb, reconfigure,
and transcend the cultures from which they have borrowed. They may even
reflect a yearning for some lost integrity (tsel’nost’), that ‘rather shadowy’
ideal of wholeness at which, Robin Milner-Gulland has argued, ‘Russian
cultural consciousness’ ultimately aims.3
Before closely examining the prose f iction of Turgenev, Tolstoi, and
Dostoevskii, we should also comment briefly on the historical context in
which these writers produced their major fiction. Russia’s defeat in the
Crimean War in the mid-1850s, at the hands of British and French forces (as
well as Turkish forces) operating at great distance from their homelands,
had a profound psychological effect on the Russian political, social, and
cultural elites. Admittedly, the defeat did not entail loss of territory, or
imperil the tsarist regime, or threaten Russia’s status as a major European
power, although the concern of western powers to curb an overmighty Russia
was no doubt one of the factors that had led to the outbreak of the war.
Nevertheless, the Crimean experience did puncture the sense of military
invincibility that had developed in Russia in the age of imperial expansion
under Peter the Great and Catherine II and that had been affirmed by the
heroic defence of the fatherland in the war against Napoleon. It generated
self-doubt and self-criticism. It gave fresh topicality to the century-old
concern that Russia might be an uninventive, imitative nation and to the
belief, which went back at least to Catherine II and Karamzin, that Russia
3

Milner-Gulland, The Russians, xiv.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

521

needed to catch up with and overtake the West. 4 It also gave even greater
urgency to the questions that ‘Westernizers’ and ‘Slavophiles’ had begun
to ask in the 1840s about the nature of Russian civilization and Russia’s
relationship to the outside world. Moreover, with the death of Nicholas in
1855 and the accession to the throne of his more open-minded son, Alexander,
it suddenly became possible to debate such matters with a freedom denied
during the reign of Nicholas, especially during its closing years after the
outbreak of revolutions in Europe in 1848. Alexander II himself acknowledged
the need for major reform, especially the abolition of serfdom. Journalism
was reinvigorated, and there began a cultural and intellectual renaissance
that is reflected not only in the luxuriant flowering of the novel but also in
thought, music, and painting.
We stress, finally, that the searching national self-examination that was
stimulated by these developments was not merely synchronic. That is to
say, writers did not confine themselves to an appraisal of the social and
cultural condition of Russia in the second Alexandrine age, when the novel
was coming into full bloom. The self-examination was also diachronic:
writers were conducting an enquiry into how Russia had reached the critical juncture they were observing. This concern with a large perspective,
indeed a search for a grand historical narrative, explains why so much time
is devoted in the novels we examine, in one way or another, to the past.
Novelists might achieve this historical dimension by setting their work,
entirely or largely, in a slightly earlier or even much earlier period, as is the
case with Turgenev’s second novel A Nest of Gentry and Tolstoi’s War and
Peace respectively. Alternatively, they might provide substantial flashbacks,
as does Dostoevskii in The Brothers Karamazov (which is in any case set more
than a decade before it was first published). Again, they might enlarge their
historical perspective by dwelling on the fact that certain characters, such
as Stepan Verkhovenskii in Dostoevskii’s Devils, were formed in a period
(in this case, the 1840s) long before the time at which the novel is offered
to the public (in the early 1870s). It is the presence of a luminous element
of historical evaluation that makes the novel of the age of Alexander II so
rewarding for us as we stray in this closing chapter beyond the time span
in which our study of language use in imperial Russia is mainly set. The
novelists’ treatment of Franco-Russian bilingualism thus forms a coda to
our study of language use over the preceding hundred years. Thanks to the
beguiling power of the literary narratives in question, it has also provided
4 Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennika, in Karamzin, IS, vol. 1, 416–418; Nikolai Karamzin: ‘Letters
of a Russian Traveller, 1789–1790’, 293–294.

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a durable (though not necessarily a balanced and altogether accurate) view
of bilingualism through the prism of cultural nationalism.

Ivan Turgenev
Turgenev was a multilingual nobleman who spent much of his life abroad.
He left Russia in 1856 to reside in Western Europe, first in Baden-Baden
and then, from 1871 until his death in 1883, in Paris, where he lived with
the opera singer Pauline Viardot, with whom he had formed an intimate
attachment in the mid-1840s, and her husband. He was on good terms with
many French men of letters, including Alphonse Daudet, Gustave Flaubert,
the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, and Émile Zola. On the political
spectrum of his time, he was a moderate Westernizer. He believed that the
chances of social and moral improvement in Russia depended on the ability
of members of the small Europeanized elite incrementally to inculcate in
his compatriots the values of a more advanced civilization. He pinned no
hopes on the Russian peasants and disapproved of the tendency of some
contemporaries to idealize them as uncorrupted beings who lived in a truly
Christian spirit (as the Slavophiles believed) or practised a primitive form
of socialism (as Herzen contended) by sharing land and other resources.
Because he refused to utter these shibboleths of cultural nationalists,
Turgenev came to be perceived as unpatriotic and out of touch with Russia.
Dostoevskii, for instance, famously advised him to purchase a telescope
so that he could better observe Russia from afar,5 and then he mercilessly
lampooned him in the figure of Karmazinov in his novel The Devils.6 And
yet, Turgenev’s treatment of characters’ linguistic behaviour, especially
their French-speaking, in many respects resembles that of more overtly
nationalistic writers, leading us to wonder whether the famous rifts and
quarrels within the mid-nineteenth-century Russian literary and intellectual
communities may have been too easily allowed to obscure what writers in
different camps actually had in common.7
Turgenev makes much reference in his prose fiction to the subject of
Russian francophonie, treating it in some way in his first novel Rudin (1856),
5 Dostoevskii, letter of 16 (28) August 1867, PSS, vol. 28, bk 2, 211.
6 Besy, in Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 10; see e.g. 70 ff., 170. On Karmazinov and Dostoevskii’s quarrel
with Turgenev, see Peace, Dostoevskii, 157–160.
7 On Turgenev’s major fiction, the definitive work in English remains the study by Freeborn
(1960). For a broader literary and intellectual biography, see Schapiro, Turgenev (1978).

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

523

his second novel A Nest of Gentry (1859), his novella First Love (1860), his
fifth novel Smoke (1867), and his late novella Spring Torrents (1877). It is
unsurprising that Turgenev should have had his fictional characters so
often use French, either as the medium for whole conversations or for the
expression of some of their thoughts within conversations conducted mainly
in Russian. For one thing, he wrote primarily about his own social milieu,
the nobility, and in that milieu, as we have shown, French (and other foreign
languages, especially German and English) were widely used. For another,
Turgenev was a writer in the Realist tradition who could plausibly claim,
towards the end of his life, to have attempted ‘impartially and in good
faith’ to draw the physiognomy of the educated class of his age.8 His astute
observation of noble life and conduct corroborates things we know about
language use from non-fictional sources. Furthermore, a considerable part
of his fiction is retrospective. Many of his major works, or parts of them,
were set not in the age of Alexander II, when they were published, but in the
age of Nicholas I, when French-speaking was perhaps more widely valued
among the nobility than it was in the post-Crimean period.
Of the works we have listed, A Nest of Gentry and Smoke are particularly germane to our discussion of novelists’ reflections on language use in
educated society, because it is in them that Turgenev’s references to FrancoRussian bilingualism are most closely interwoven with his examination
of the problem of Russia’s relationship to Western European civilization.
However, before we examine these two novels in detail it is worth making
a few remarks about the references to French-speaking in the other works
we have mentioned, for they illustrate some of the functions that we know
French had in Russia in the age of Nicholas I. In Rudin, for example, French
words and verbal etiquette are woven into the texture of the speech of Dar’ia
Lasunskaia, the widowed owner of the estate on which the novel is set.
Dressing simply but elegantly ‘à la madame Récamier’ (that is to say, in the
manner of a renowned early nineteenth-century Parisian salon hostess),9
Lasunskaia is prone to use French terms of address and expressions of
gratitude and Gallicized forms of forenames.10 As social practice in good
society dictates, she also uses French as the language in which to make
elegant compliments: ‘Il est si distingué’ (He is so refined), ‘Le baron est
aussi aimable que savant’ (The baron is as pleasant as he is wise), ‘C’est un
homme comme il faut’ (He’s a gentleman), ‘Vous êtes un poète’ (You’re a poet),
8 ‘Predislovie k romanam’, in Turgenev, PSSP, Sochineniia, vol. 12, 303.
9 Rudin, in Turgenev, PSSP, Sochineniia, vol. 6, 271.
10 Ibidem, 252, 255, 256, 279.

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‘un parfait honnête homme’ (a perfect gentleman).11 French may equally be
used, in this supposedly polite society, as the vehicle for waspish personal
criticism. ‘Entre nous… cela a assez peu de fond’ (between ourselves, it is
quite shallow), Lasunskaia remarks of an article she has been reading, and
again: ‘Voilà m-r Pigassoff enterré’ (That’s Mr Pigasov buried), when Rudin
has disparaged another member of her circle.12 There is also a trace of the
practice of using French as a language of confidence between noble peers:
‘N’est-ce pas, comme il ressemble à Canning’ (Doesn’t he look like Canning),
Lasunskaia whispers patronizingly to Rudin when her ageing butler appears.13
French again serves as a secret language in which to say things one
does not want one’s servants to understand in First Love, which is set in
1833. Here the mother of the narrator, Vladimir, complains in French to
her husband about the affair he is conducting with Zinaida, the beautiful
young daughter of their Moscow neighbours, although on this occasion the
stratagem fails, because one of the family’s maids, who has lived in Paris
for five years, understands very well what she is overhearing.14 Here too,
French is a language of disparagement. Zinaida’s mother, Princess Zasekina,
is ‘une femme très vulgaire’ (a very vulgar woman) who is involved in ‘des
vilaines affaires d’argent’ (shady financial affairs), ‘une femme capable de
tout’ (a woman capable of anything), says Vladimir’s mother, venting her
anger at the neighbouring family in the process.15 French may also be used to
conduct adulterous liaisons, like that between Vladimir’s father and Zinaida
and that between Sanin and Mar’ia Polozova in Spring Torrents, which
Turgenev also set in the mid-Nicholaevan period, in 1840. This function of
French is quite in keeping with its association with such perceived vices of
high society as knowingness, deceitfulness, and personal irresponsibility.
Thus, it is with a French platitude – ‘Cela ne tire pas à conséquence’ (it’s of
no importance) – that Polozova casually persuades Sanin to take a step that
will in fact have a catastrophic consequence in his personal life.16
Rudin was notable for the fact that although the novel was set in the period
around 1840, as we may glean from the cultural and intellectual content
11 Ibidem, 253, 255, 263, 270, 274.
12 Ibidem, 273.
13 Ibidem, 275. The reference is to George Canning, who served as British foreign secretary
from 1822 to 1827.
14 ‘Pervaia liubov’’, in Turgenev, PSSP, Sochineniia, vol. 9, 64.
15 Ibidem, 20, 44.
16 Veshnie vody, in Turgenev, PSSP, Sochineniia, vol. 11, 135. On this occasion, the French-speaking
character is not of noble origin (Polozova is the wealthy daughter of a tax-farmer), but she has
acquired French in the course of her social ascent.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

525

of the discussions that take place in it, Turgenev wrote it in the mid-1850s,
‘when the Crimean campaign was in full swing’,17 and completed it in the
climate of expectancy that characterized the early months of the reign
of Alexander II. The novel therefore assumes historical significance as a
review of an age that is coming to an end. The primary conclusion towards
which Turgenev tried to lead readers in the protracted closing chapter and
epilogue (the first of two that he wrote)18 is that Rudin’s idealism, while
inspirational in the grim years when Nicholas was on the throne, was out
of place now that there was a real prospect of significant humanitarian
reform. However, we may also draw a secondary conclusion: the attempt
made by the ageing Lasunskaia to replicate in her provincial drawing-room
the Gallicized culture of noble social circles in the capitals in which she had
once moved (presumably as far back as the 1820s) was also passé. Noble life in
the idyllic manor house approached by its drive lined with lime trees would
not remain forever untouched by changes in the clamorous world beyond.
Or at least, that is how it would seem in the mid-1850s to an intelligentsia
impatient for social and political change.
Turgenev continued to reflect on the direction that noble life should
take in A Nest of Gentry, which is set in 1842, but here his treatment of noble
language use, besides enhancing the authenticity of his depiction of social
reality, was more conspicuously woven into his consideration of personal and
national identity than it had been in Rudin. The central character of this novel,
Lavretskii, returns to rural Russia after discovering that his wife, Varvara, has
been unfaithful to him while they have been living together in Paris. Believing
on the basis of a newspaper report that Varvara has died,19 he begins to visit,
and falls in love with, a young noblewoman, Liza Kalitina, only to have the
prospect of happiness that he has glimpsed snatched from him by Varvara’s
unexpected reappearance. As in Rudin, Turgenev uses a simple plot as a basis
for exploration of the fate of the Russian nobleman of his own generation. Now,
though, he views his protagonist’s personal destiny in the light of the debate
between the Westernizers and Slavophiles, which had been reanimated in
the post-Crimean period when the novel was written. The careerist Panshin, a
rising star in the St Petersburg bureaucracy, represents Westernism, although
only a shallow version of it. Russia, Panshin believes, lags behind Europe,
because the Russians are only half-European, as ‘les meilleures têtes’ (the best
heads) have long since realized. Taking the demeaning view of Russians as
17 ‘Predislovie k romanam’, in Turgenev, PSSP, Sochineniia, vol. 12, 304.
18 Rudin, in Turgenev, PSSP, Sochineniia, vol. 6, 342–368.
19 Dvorianskoe gnezdo, in Turgenev, PSSP, Sochineniia, vol. 7, 213–214.

526 

The French L anguage in Russia

an uninventive people, Panshin contends that Russia has no alternative but
to borrow from other nations if it is to progress and catch up with the West.
Lavretskii, on the other hand, sees Russia as a youthful, independent force and
resists the arrogant view that bureaucrats could solve the nation’s problems
by imposing on it solutions they had dreamed up without taking account of
local realities. And indeed, as Panshin paces up and down the drawing-room
in the Kalitins’ manor house, discoursing eloquently, a natural, poetic reality
in the Russian countryside seems implicitly to undermine his superficial
cosmopolitanism or at least to render it irrelevant. The first stars begin to
twinkle in the pink sky over the motionless tips of the lime trees and in the
dewy coolness of the night a nightingale starts to produce its ringing song.20
Against the background of the debate about Russia’s relationship to the
European world, to which Panshin alludes when he mentions the Slavophile
Khomiakov,21 Turgenev’s references to the linguistic habits and cultural
attachments of his characters in A Nest of Gentry serve both as a means of
characterization and a touchstone of nobles’ attitudes towards their native
land. Characters whom Turgenev views positively on account of their sense
of duty and altruism – the good-natured but unsettled Lavretskii and the
pious and idealistic Liza Kalitina – eschew the use of French for dealings
with their compatriots. Lavretskii does have a command of French, having
been exposed to various foreign upbringings by his eccentric father who
spoke French with Parisian pronunciation and wrote exhortatory letters
in which he addressed his son as ‘vous’ (that is to say, using the formal,
second-person plural pronoun) and ‘mon fils’ (my son).22 However, he never
resorts to the use of French in the Russian heartland, where he aspires
to learn to plough the land, to which he feels a strong attachment.23 This
attachment is perhaps inbred, for although his father was a nobleman who
imbibed the thought of the French Enlightenment, his mother had been a
domestic serf. Similarly Liza, who is dismayed by Panshin’s contempt for
Russia, has been unaffected by the French spinster whom her father had
employed as her governess during the first ten years of her life. She has
been profoundly influenced, instead, by an old peasant nanny, Agaf’ia, to
whom Turgenev devotes several pages towards the end of the novel, as if to
rectify an important omission about the cultural formation of his heroine.24
20
21
22
23
24

Ibidem, 231–233.
Ibidem, 231.
Ibidem, 162–163.
Ibidem, 233.
Ibidem, 239–244.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

527

The characters whom Turgenev views in the most negative light, on the
other hand, self-consciously display or even delight in their command of
French. For Liza’s mother, Mar’ia Dmitrievna, French-speaking is a means
of maintaining her modest standing in local society. For Panshin, a creature
of the westernized metropolis, it is indicative of his disdain for Russia and
his lack of respect for native cultural achievement. Mar’ia Dmitrievna, for
whom Panshin is ‘un jeune homme accompli’ (an accomplished young man),25
understands this, although she is not disconcerted by the realization or by the
likelihood that Panshin’s outlook detaches him from native soil: ‘Une nature
poétique’ (a poetic nature), she says admiringly, ‘of course, cannot plough…’26
As for Varvara, French is inextricably linked to the way of life around which
all her thoughts revolve – her sexual conquests and adulterous affairs, the
ruches and ribbons on her dresses, her mantilla from the Parisian Madame
Baudran, her varnished fingernails, her soap à la guimauve (marsh-mallow),
and the patchouli perfume she always wears. She effusively declares an
attachment to Russia, but laughs at the people and buildings she observes
from her carriage along the rural road to Lavretskii’s estate, quickly breaks her
promise to remain on the estate by decamping to St Petersburg for the winter,
and returns at the end of the novel to Paris, where she is in her element.
The excellence of Panshin’s and Varvara’s French, and their choice of
French as the language in which to conduct their flirtation and their shamelessly boisterous affair at the end of the novel, indicate a strong affinity
between them.27 This affinity distinguishes them not only from Lavretskii
and Liza but also from other members of their own class who do persist in
speaking French but who have neither such mastery of the French language
nor the power of dissimulation that Panshin and Varvara possess. Varvara
strengthens her bond with Panshin by means of a disparaging witticism at
the expense of Mar’ia Dmitrievna, who has interceded with Lavretskii on
her behalf: ‘Elle n’a pas inventé la poudre, la bonne dame’ (The good lady
didn’t invent gunpowder), she whispers to Panshin on their first encounter in
Mar’ia’s drawing-room.28 For Panshin and Varvara, then, French is not merely
a source of social formulae or a vehicle for light, animated conversation and
seduction. Its use is also a sign of mutual understanding between individuals
who are culturally and psychologically detached from their homeland and
who are intent on fulfilling egoistic ambitions.
25
26
27
28

Ibidem, 259.
Ibidem, 233.
Ibidem, 262–267, 283.
Ibidem, 265.

528 

The French L anguage in Russia

The other novel by Turgenev that addresses the subject of Franco-Russian
bilingualism, Smoke, is set in 1862, in the period immediately after the
emancipation of the serfs, and is therefore more overtly concerned with the
contemporary state of Russia than Rudin or A Nest of Gentry had been.29 The
main action in the novel takes place in the German spa Baden-Baden, where
Turgenev’s central character, Litvinov, finds himself during a European
tour. In a tone that is not found in his earlier novels, Turgenev caricatures
two sets of Russians who gather there and who crudely represent positions
on the post-Crimean political spectrum to which he is hostile. One set, on
which we need not dwell here, consists of members of the radical wing of the
intelligentsia. The other set, which includes Irina, with whom Litvinov had
been in love some ten years earlier, and the man to whom she is now married,
Ratmirov, is made up of conservative, indeed reactionary, aristocrats. This
set remains stubbornly Francophone and Gallicized: French language and
tone envelop ‘ces princes russes’ (these Russian princes), all the ‘fine fleur’
(fine flower) of Russian society.30 Among its members there is a certain
count who sings romances after the manner of ‘either a poor gypsy or a
Parisian coiffeur’ and a social lion of the 1840s who still follows ‘“le culte
de la pose” [the cult of the pose] (one cannot even say this in Russian)’.31
Members of the set know each other by Frenchified names (Princess Babette,
Princess Annette, Princess Pachette) and assemble around what is known
in Baden-Baden as ‘l’Arbre russe’ (the Russian tree).32 The fact that Turgenev
has placed his characters – for the first time in one of his novels – in a
foreign setting helps to strengthen the impression he wants to create that
some members of the high nobility have indeed detached themselves from
their native land.
As when he was presenting Panshin and Varvara to readers in A Nest of
Gentry, so in Smoke Turgenev uses their habit of speaking French among
themselves as a means of damning the members of the conservative
aristocratic set. Mocking the code-switching against which linguistic
patriots had inveighed at least since the time of Sumarokov and Fonvizin,
29 On one level, Turgenev’s novel Smoke is a riposte to the so-called Native-Soil Conservatism
formulated in Dostoevskii’s Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (see the final section of this
chapter). On the hostility to Winter Notes expressed in Smoke by Turgenev’s character Potugin,
see Generalova, I.S. Turgenev, 322–326.
30 Dym, in Turgenev, PSSP, Sochineniia, vol. 9, 144.
31 Ibidem, 145–146. The words in English in this quotation are of course in Russian in Turgenev’s
text. We continue the practice of translating the Russian elements of quotations into English
in subsequent examples of language-mixing in this chapter.
32 Ibidem, 147, 144.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

529

he peppers every conversation conducted in this milieu with French terms
of address and remarks, such as ‘J’adore les questions politiques’ (I adore
political questions) and ‘C’est pour faire rire ces dames’ (It’s to make these
ladies laugh).33 Their use of French reinforces the negative impression
created by members of this set when they express attitudes that Turgenev
expects readers to find repugnant. They are self-important people who
are convinced of their own merit and their indispensability to the Russian
state. They sneer at their social inferiors: ‘I’m not an enemy of so-called
progress’, one of them unconvincingly insists, ‘but all these universities
and seminaries, and schools for the common people, these students, sons of
priests, raznochintsy, all this small fry, tout ce fond du sac, la petite propriété,
pire que le prolétariat […] voilà ce qui m’effraie…’ (all these dregs, small
property owners, worse than the proletariat […] that’s what scares me).34
They cannot come to terms with the recent loss of their right to own serfs: ‘le
principe de la propriété est profondément ébranlé en Russie’ (the principle
of property has been profoundly shaken in Russia), one member of the set
has famously complained in a French salon.35 This is a world which lacks
wit, intelligence, music, art, or poetry and which possesses only cunning
and knack, Irina observes (although her involvement in it seems to weaken
her right to criticize it).36 The practice of speaking French continues, then,
to have a social cachet, but the grace and elegance with which francophonie
had formerly been associated have been lost, so that only arrogance and
social condescension remain, in this post-Crimean representation of the
cultural – or one might say anthropological – significance of language use.
It is a literary weakness of Smoke that the socio-political content of the
novel is not only presented in a partisan way but is poorly linked to Turgenev’s main psychological and dramatic subject-matter, the reawakened love
of Litvinov for Irina. And yet, in his handling of this romantic relationship
too Turgenev makes use of the noble habit of French-speaking in order to
convey meanings of the sort we have found in A Nest of Gentry. Irina belongs
to an ancient but now impoverished princely family living in Moscow, the
Osinins, who still occasionally use French as their domestic language in
the early 1850s, when the reader meets Irina, then seventeen years old, for
the first time. Because of Irina’s prowess in French, she had been due to
recite some verses in that language at an important public function and the
33
34
35
36

Ibidem, 203, 205.
Ibidem, 205.
Ibidem, 144.
Ibidem, 227.

530 

The French L anguage in Russia

sudden withdrawal of that privilege by the principal of the institute at which
she was studying is remembered as a traumatic event in her adolescence.37
Irina’s francophonie places her in a social and moral world that is different
from Litvinov’s, and at three moments in the novel it intrudes into their
relationship in ways that suggest that French, in this instance, is a language
of rejection of a social inferior.
First, Irina reproaches the young Litvinov, who has adoringly visited
her house day after day, when on one occasion he arrives straight from the
university, where he is studying, with ink-stained hands. He is not wearing
gloves, Irina complains, and moreover, she says, ‘“You’re… a proper student
[…], vous n’êtes pas distingué”’ (you’re not a gentleman).38 Irina’s use of French
sharpens her observation that Litvinov is not of the right social calibre for
this scion of an aristocratic line.
Next, use of French punctuates her father’s account of an episode that
results in Irina’s removal from Moscow, and from Litvinov’s reach, and her
introduction to the glittering social world of St Petersburg, where French
is more habitually and knowingly employed than it is among the fading
aristocracy of Moscow. Irina is invited to a ball organized by the Muscovite
nobility as part of the festivities surrounding a visit to the old capital by the
royal family. Despite her apparent resistance, she is persuaded to attend,
but she will not allow Litvinov to accompany her. The following day, when
Litvinov visits her house, Irina will not see him. Her father explains that she
is indisposed but that she had enjoyed great success at the ball, adding in
French that ‘C’est très naturel, vous savez, dans les jeunes filles’ (that’s quite
a natural thing in young girls, you know), a remark which strikes Litvinov as
rather odd.39 As Osinin describes the ‘happenings’ of the previous evening
at which his daughter has made such an impact, the bilingualism of the
metropolitan society she is about to enter becomes apparent.
‘Happenings?’ Litvinov muttered.
‘Yes, yes, happenings, happenings, de vrais événements [real events]. You
can’t imagine, Grigorii Mikhailovich, quel succès elle a eu [what success
she had]! The whole court noticed her! […] And old Count Blasenkrampf
announced for all to hear that Irina was la reine du bal [the queen of the
ball], and wanted to be introduced to her […] He’s very amusing, that count,
and such an adorateur du beau sexe [admirer of the fair sex]! […] Irina
37 Ibidem, 180.
38 Ibidem, 185.
39 Ibidem, 190.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

531

danced avec tous les meilleurs cavaliers [with all the best partners] […]
One foreign diplomat, when he found out she was a Muscovite, said to the
sovereign: “Sire”, he said, “décidément c’est Moscou qui est le centre de votre
empire!” [make no mistake, it is Moscow that is the centre of your empire]
and another diplomat added “C’est une vraie révolution, sire” [This is a true
revolution, sir], révélation [revelation] or révolution… something like that.’40

Prince Osinin is only dimly aware of the indications in the story he tells that
he is a naïf in the eyes of the St Petersburg elite and that their attentiveness
towards him is fuelled by lascivious interest in his daughter, but he does
realize that his daughter’s impending social rise requires language shift.
Finally, when Litvinov again meets Irina in Baden-Baden, references to
Franco-Russian bilingualism punctuate their encounters and eventually
help to expose both their incompatibility and – as Turgenev sees it – the
hypocrisy of Russian Francophone society. Irina and her husband Ratmirov
speak French to one another as much as Russian. 41 Irina’s disavowal of
French-speaking and the society with which it has come to be associated is
therefore a ploy to distance herself from her husband’s world and to revive
her relationship with Litvinov. Explaining to Litvinov how she has come to
know Potugin (the mouthpiece for Turgenev’s own views in the novel), she
remarks that ‘you can speak Russian with him, bad Russian but Russian
all the same, not that eternal sickly sweet, repellent Petersburg French!’42
It does not augur well, though, when Irina herself resorts to French as she
wonders whether to abandon her husband and social circle for Litvinov: ‘I
must warn you’, she tells Litvinov, ‘that all my money is in his [Ratmirov’s]
hands; mais j’ai mes bijoux’ (but I have my jewels). 43 And indeed, when
Irina decides, after much prevarication, that she cannot in fact abandon
her husband and social milieu the letter she sends Litvinov to tell him this
turns out to be written in French. Irina does honestly admit that she has
made Litvinov ‘solemn promises’ which she cannot keep. At the same time,
she invites Litvinov to continue to participate in a falsehood, by saying
that she is Litvinov’s forever and that he may do with her as he wishes. 44
Litvinov, while recognizing his own guilt before his jilted fiancée, Tania,
feels Irina’s letter is ‘again deceit, or no, worse than deceit, it is a lie’ which
40
41
42
43
44

Ibidem, 190–191.
Ibidem, e.g. 220, 248.
Ibidem, 217.
Ibidem, 292.
Ibidem, 306–307.

532 

The French L anguage in Russia

reflects a ‘world of intrigues and secret relationships’. He will not go to live
close to her in St Petersburg, as she invites him to do, to ‘share with her the
corrupted melancholy of a fashionable lady who is oppressed and bored by
high society but cannot exist outside its circle’. 45 Irina’s letter in French,
then, is a vehicle for hypocrisy, a supposedly honest confession which is
not entirely honest, an expression of seemingly absolute devotion which is
not absolute. The reply with which Litvinov now ends their relationship,
Turgenev pointedly tells us, is written in Russian. 46
The final rupture with Litvinov is not painless for Irina. While Ratmirov,
as we learn in the novel’s closing paragraph, ‘moves forward quickly on the
path which the French call the path of honours’, Irina becomes ‘une âme
égarée’ (a lost soul), 47 torn between the Russian and the western worlds, as
her ambivalence towards use of the French language has indicated. Litvinov,
on the other hand, rediscovers his Russianness and sets about applying
Turgenev’s ideas on how nobles should behave. Driven by the sense of duty
that Turgenev values,48 he seeks forgiveness from Tania, whom he will marry,
we are given to understand, and diligently occupies himself with the small
deeds (malye dela) recommended by liberals in the intelligentsia, gradually
improving the country estate he has inherited, settling debts, restoring its
factory, and setting up a small farm with hired workers. 49
Turgenev’s careful description of the linguistic behaviour of the main
characters in Smoke enriches his treatment of the central questions he addresses in the novel, namely the relationship of Russia to western civilization
and the tension between cosmopolitanism and national exclusivity. Through
Potugin – an unprepossessing chatterbox, but a man who is presented as
wise and authentically Russian – Turgenev rejects romantic conservative
nationalism. Potugin is scathingly critical of the Slavophiles’ denigration of
the educated elite and of their idealization of the common people, symbolized by the armiak, or peasant’s coat of heavy cloth.50 In fact, the interest
of cultural nationalists in ‘triple extrait de mougik russe’ (triple extract of
Russian muzhik) reflects not authentic Russianness, Potugin believes, but
the concern of high society, for whom this literature ‘en cuir de Russie’ (in
a Russian skin) is produced, that it may have become entirely Frenchified.51
45
46
47
48
49
50
51

Ibidem, 307–308.
Ibidem, 310.
Ibidem, 328, 327.
Ibidem, 251, 252, 297.
Ibidem, 319.
Ibidem, 170.
Ibidem, 236.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

533

Russians, then, cannot build only on indigenous foundations. They will
have to borrow. However, they should not borrow indiscriminately; rather,
they should select what they need, taking account of local realities, such as
climate, soil, and national characteristics. Potugin illustrates his thoughts
on borrowing with a linguistic example:
Just take our language […] Peter the Great flooded it with thousands
of foreign words, Dutch, French, and German: these words expressed
concepts which needed to be introduced to the Russian people; without
too much rationalizing or unnecessary fuss, Peter poured these words
into our bellies by the bucket-full and the barrel-full. At first, it’s true,
something monstrous came of it, but then the digestive process I was
talking about began. The concepts caught on and were assimilated; the
foreign forms gradually vanished and the language found something
in its own depths with which to replace them, and now your humble
servant, a very mediocre stylist, may presume to translate any page of
Hegel… yes sir, yes sir, of Hegel… without using a single non-Slavonic
word. What happened with language will happen, one must hope, in
other spheres as well.52

Paradoxical as it may seem, the best way to create a strong, independent
Russian nation, in Potugin’s (and Turgenev’s) view, may be to subject Russians
to an education of a western sort.
Thus, it turns out, on close analysis of Turgenev’s treatment of his
characters’ frequent use of French, that even this most cosmopolitan and
‘Westernist’ of the great classical Russian novelists deplored the use of French
as a prestige language for domestic social purposes. Turgenev attributes
the greatest facility in French, and the greatest inclination to display it,
to characters who are losing contact with their native land. Despite his
reputation for objectivity and for an ability to take a nuanced view, he is even
prepared crudely to associate Russian French-speaking with personal traits
such as superficiality, deceitfulness, promiscuity, and infidelity. The noble
men and women of whom he most approves, on the other hand, have the
deepest attachment to the Russian land and the least desire to use French as a
means of communicating with their compatriots or of separating themselves
symbolically from lower social classes. In these respects, Turgenev proves to
have a greater affinity than is generally thought to be the case with Tolstoi
and Dostoevskii, to whom we turn in the following sections.
52 Ibidem, 171–172.

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The French L anguage in Russia

Lev Tolstoi: War and Peace
Whereas the predominant social milieu explored in Turgenev’s novels is
the middling landowning nobility, Tolstoi’s characters – notwithstanding the huge range of social strata they represent – move primarily in the
high aristocracy, to which Tolstoi himself belonged. The names of many
of his major creations (Bolkonskiis, Kuragins, and Drubetskoi, in War and
Peace, Oblonskiis and Shcherbatskiis in Anna Karenina) are only slightly
altered versions of the names of well-known families whom we have already
encountered in this book (Volkonskiis, Kurakins, Trubetskois, Obolenskiis,
and Shcherbatovs respectively), and they would have immediately evoked
the aristocratic milieu in the minds of Tolstoi’s Russian contemporaries.
However, from an early stage in his career Tolstoi questioned the values and
conduct of people in this milieu. After all, the Tolstoi of the 1860s, unlike
the youth of the 1840s, spent almost all his time on his country estate at
Iasnaia Poliana, in the province of Tula, shunning the urban, westernized
social world favoured by his class and taking an interest in peasant life. He
also came to view the state and all its institutions with distaste, eventually
formulating a pacifistic form of anarchism which finds expression in his
last novel, Resurrection (1899).53
As we have seen, Tolstoi’s antipathy to the aristocratic social world is
already evident in Youth, where he castigates himself for the pride he had
taken as a young man in his prowess in French.54 Shortly afterwards, in
his novella The Cossacks, first published in 1863, he began to develop his
treatment of the relationship between language use, on the one hand, and
social behaviour and moral values, on the other. Francophonie, in this tale of
a young man’s search for identity and meaning, is symptomatic of a shallow
social world which the Russian aristocrat finds it hard to shake off. The
officer Prince Beletskii, when he meets Tolstoi’s hero Olenin in the Caucasus,
began in the mixture of Russian and French fashionable in Moscow, and
he went on, interlarding his remarks with French words […] And faster
and faster French and Russian words were bandied about, cascading
from the world Olenin thought he had left for ever […]: it was as though
53 As a clear introduction to Tolstoi’s fiction, Christian’s Tolstoy (1969) is still valuable. For
a brief outline of his fiction and thought, see also Gifford’s Tolstoy (1981). Morson’s Hidden in
Plain View (1987), a study of War and Peace, has useful insights into language use, among other
things. There are other major literary biographies by Troyat (1968) and Bartlett (2010).
54 See the fifth section of Chapter 4 above.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

535

the forgotten world from which he had escaped still had some irresistible
claim on him. He was angry with Beletsky and with himself, and yet
there he was against his will introducing French expressions into his
conversation […]55

Aristocratic language practice goes together with a certain set of habits and
attitudes. One such type of behaviour is profligacy: Olenin has squandered
half his fortune before the age of twenty-four.56 He also has a patronizing
attitude towards his social inferiors. When Olenin was fifteen, for example,
he had taught his servant Vaniusha to read French (a useless skill for a serf).
Vaniusha was very proud of this accomplishment, ‘and still, when he felt in
particularly good spirits, he would come out with a French word or two’.57
Aristocrats might burnish their reputations, Olenin foolishly assumes, by
transferring their own culture to those whom Tolstoi was coming to regard
as bearers of a simpler, more authentic way of life, such as Caucasian peoples
with whom the Russian frontiersmen were in conflict. Thus, Olenin dreams
of possessing a Circassian slave girl whom he would educate during the
long winter evenings:
She could easily learn foreign languages, read the masterpieces of French
literature and appreciate them. Notre Dame de Paris, for example, was
sure to impress her. She can even speak French. In a drawing-room she
would display more natural dignity than a lady of the highest society.58

The rudimentary metalinguistic comment that occurs in ‘The Cossacks’
swells into a powerful discourse in War and Peace (1865–1869), an historical
novel of epic scale whose action takes place – like the action in Walter Scott’s
historical novel Waverley – in a time some sixty years before the novel
appeared. So conspicuous and widespread is the use of French in all the
versions of War and Peace published in the decade in which the work was
written that Vinogradov went so far as to call it a bilingual novel.59 Tolstoi
55 ‘Kazaki’, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 6, 89–90. We have used the translation by Rosemary Edmonds
in Tolstoy, The Cossacks, 263–264.
56 ‘Kazaki’, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 6, 7.
57 Ibidem, 41; translation from Leo Tolstoy, The Cossacks, 208.
58 Ibidem, 11–12; translation from Tolstoy, The Cossacks, 174.
59 Vinogradov, ‘O iazyke Tolstogo (50–60-e gody)’, LN, 35–36 (1939), 123. War and Peace went
through many editions and these reflect vacillations on Tolstoi’s part over choice of language,
French or Russian, as the vehicle for certain passages in the novel. The first published version of
the early parts of the novel, conceived as a work entitled The Year 1805 (Tysiacha vosem’sot piatyi

536 

The French L anguage in Russia

himself defended and pointed up the significance of his use of French in the
work in an article, ‘A Few Words about the Book “War and Peace”’, which he
published in 1868, in response to readers’ observations.60 By dwelling and
sometimes commenting on the bilingualism of the Russian elite in the first
Alexandrine age Tolstoi reinforced layers of social, ethical, and historical
meaning in the novel.
The most basic function of the passages of dialogue in French and the
French remarks and phrases which are strewn about War and Peace is to
lend the novel that air of historical verisimilitude for which the historical
novelist is bound to strive. After all, French was both the mother tongue of
Napoleon and many officers and soldiers in his Grande Armée and a lingua
franca used by Russians to communicate with the aggressor. It was also a
lingua franca for foreigners at the Russian court, such as the Polish aristocrat
Czartoryski, who belonged to what Alexander I called his ‘comité du salut
publique’ (Committee of Public Safety),61 and for some of the highest-ranking
officers in the Russian army who – as Tolstoi emphasizes, not without a touch
of xenophobia – were of non-Russian ethnic origin. Russians themselves,
both historical and fictitious, have recourse to French in War and Peace for
many purposes, even when no French men or women are present. French
may serve, for instance, as a language of official communication, as when
Alexander sends instructions to Count Rostopchin, the governor of Moscow
god), which appeared in 1865–1866, and then the first two complete editions of War and Peace,
both published in 1868–1869, contained large amounts of French, including conversations and
letters as well as numerous isolated words and phrases. In the third edition, published in 1873, and
the fourth edition, published in 1880, on the other hand, these passages were replaced by Tolstoi’s
Russian translations of them. (Tolstoi had by now become concerned with the dissemination
of his writings among the lower social classes, few members of whom knew French.) In the
fifth edition (1886), preparation of which was overseen by Tolstoi’s wife, the French passages
of the second edition were restored (and a translation provided at the foot of the page). In the
sixth edition (also 1886), which was aimed at a wider public, foreign text was again replaced by
Russian (this time from the translations provided in the fifth edition), as was also the case in
further editions that were published in 1887, 1889, and 1897. (This information is drawn from
the editors’ preface to Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 9, vii–xiv.) The f ifth edition, which incorporates the
French conversations of the first two editions, was considered definitive by the editors of the
ninety-volume so-called Jubilee Edition of Tolstoi’s complete works, and this is the edition we
use here. It is not crucial to our argument to establish that Tolstoi’s defence of his use of French
in the early editions of the novel is more authoritative than the decision to replace French
with Russian in later editions. The most important point for our purpose is that by indicating
by one means or another that many conversations in War and Peace took place in French and
by commenting on language use Tolstoi conducted a metalinguistic discourse in the novel.
60 ‘Neskol’ko slov po povodu knigi “Voina i mir”’, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 16, 8–9.
61 Voina i mir, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 10, 159. This is a jocular reference to the Jacobin institution
of 1793.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

537

in 1812.62 It is even the language, ironic as the situation may seem, in which
a Russian officer conveys to the Russian governor of the city of Smolensk
on the route to Moscow the news that the city is coming under attack from
Napoleon’s invading army.63 French is also the preferred medium for intellectual speculation or political or philosophical discussion, irrespective of
whether foreigners are present. When Andrei Bolkonskii converses with his
close friend Pierre about the purpose of his life, he switches into French as he
becomes more reflective.64 Andrei again resorts to French as he outlines his
political ideas to Speranskii, who served as Alexander’s adviser on internal
affairs from 1808 to 1812. Andrei agrees with Montesquieu that ‘le principe
des monarchies est l’honneur’ (the principle of monarchies is honour) and
argues that ‘[c]ertains droits et privilèges de la noblesse […] paraissent être
des moyens de soutenir ce sentiment’ (certain rights and privileges of the
nobility seem […] to be means of maintaining this sentiment). Speranskii,
for his part, responds to Andrei in French even though he is not at ease in
it and speaks it slowly, since he is not a nobleman by birth but the son of
a clergyman.65
There are many other reasons why Tolstoi’s nobles may choose French
for communication with their peers, and the choice they make may clarify
a mood or attitude or carry some social nuance. French is often used, for
example, between army off icers, who, as noblemen, prize a witticism,
an elegant compliment, or a piquant remark in a military setting just as
much as in a social context.66 Outside the military context, Princess Mar’ia
Bolkonskaia uses French to express her gratitude to the man who will
eventually become her husband, Nikolai Rostov, when he rescues her from
her mutinous serfs, thus ensuring a degree of formality that enables her
to preserve her dignity.67 Nikolai’s mother, Countess Rostova, maintains
a similar respectful distance by greeting her future daughter-in-law in
French when she meets Princess Mar’ia for the first time. ‘“Mon enfant!”
she said, “je vous aime et vous connais depuis longtemps”’ (I love you my
child, and I have known you for a long time).68 On the other hand, when
Mar’ia Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, a plain-speaking character with whom
62 Ibidem, vol. 11, 182.
63 Ibidem, 114.
64 Ibidem, vol. 10, 110.
65 Ibidem, 166. On Tolstoi’s judgement of the quality of Speranskii’s French, see also the
penultimate section of Chapter 4 above.
66 Voina i mir, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 11, 250. Tolstoi’s italics.
67 Ibidem, 161.
68 Ibidem, vol. 12, 53.

538 

The French L anguage in Russia

the Rostovs stay in Moscow, uses French to greet the Rostovs’ ward Sonia,
Tolstoi tells us explicitly that she is by this means ‘pointing up her slightly
contemptuous and condescending attitude towards Sonia’.69
Most important of all, French is the language of those imported cultural
venues, the salon and the soirée, where the members of high society display themselves. It is in this milieu that the novel famously begins, with a
substantial utterance in French by Anna Pavlovna Scherer (known to her
acquaintances by a French form of her name, Annette), a maid of honour
to the Russian Dowager Empress and a renowned hostess:
‘Eh bien, mon prince. Gênes et Lucques ne sont plus que des apanages,
des pomest’ia, de la famille Buonaparte. Non, je vous préviens, que si vous
ne me dites pas, que nous avons la guerre, si vous vous permettez encore
de pallier toutes les infamies, toutes les atrocités de cet Antichrist (ma
parole, j’y crois) – je ne vous connais plus, vous n’êtes plus mon ami […]’70
(Well, my prince. Genoa and Lucca are now just appanages, estates of the
Bonaparte family. No, I warn you, if you don’t tell me that we are at war,
if you permit yourself to go on playing down every infamy, every atrocity
committed by this Antichrist (I believe it, on my word), I no longer know
you, you are no longer a friend of mine […]) (Illustrations 14 and 15)

Anna’s soirées are attended, she boasts, by ‘la crème de la véritable bonne
société, la fine fleur de l’essence intellectuelle de la société de Pétersbourg’
(the cream of truly good society, the finest flower of the intellectual essence
of St Petersburg society).71 She introduces her guests to one another in
French, and French is the language in which the guests praise or criticize
each other as ‘un homme de beaucoup de mérite’ (a man of much merit) or,
in the case of Tolstoi’s gauche hero, Pierre Bezukhov, ‘Un cerveau fêlé’ (an
addled brain).72 Anna’s first interlocutor, Prince Vasilii Kuragin – Tolstoi
takes the trouble to tell us in the opening scene of the novel – ‘spoke in that
refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but also thought’.73
In the rival social circle in St Petersburg that is led by Kuragin’s daughter
and Pierre’s first wife, Hélène, Francophilia has a political dimension. This
69
70
71
72
73

Ibidem, vol. 10, 315.
Ibidem, vol. 9, 3.
Ibidem, vol. 10, 86.
Ibidem, 87, 85.
Ibidem, vol. 9, 4.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

Illustration 14 Title page of a copy of the first volume of the 1868 edition of
Tolstoi’s War and Peace.

Kindly reproduced for us by the Russian National Library.

539

540 

The French L anguage in Russia

Illustration 15 The first page of the text of the first volume of the 1868 edition of
Tolstoi’s War and Peace.

Kindly reproduced for us by the Russian National Library. It is noteworthy that even in this early
edition of the novel a Russian translation of French passages is provided. That is to say, by no
means all members of the reading public who were interested in imaginative literature were
Francophone.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

541

circle, the so-called ‘French circle’, desires alliance with Napoleon after
his diplomatic accommodation with Russia at Tilsit in 1807 and entertains
members of the French diplomatic mission in St Petersburg.74
The novel does, admittedly, reveal misgivings about the use of French in
Muscovite society in the months following Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.75
Old Count Il’ia Rostov tells his wife to speak French less.76 The flighty heiress
Julie Karagina starts to write to Mar’ia Bolkonskaia in Russian (but Tolstoi
stresses that it is Frenchified Russian) because, Julie claims unconvincingly,
she hates the French and their language and cannot bear to hear French
spoken.77 One of the Golitsyns hires a tutor to give him Russian lessons
because ‘il commence à devenir dangereux de parler français dans les rues’
(it’s beginning to become dangerous to speak French in the street).78 The old
princess who lives in Pierre’s house claims that an acquaintance has nearly
been killed by the populace for speaking French.79 And yet, the change of
usage does not seem wholehearted or entirely sincere. It may not even be
linguistically practicable. When Julie says of Nikolai Rostov that she is ‘un
petit peu amoureuse du jeune homme’ (a little bit in love with the young
man) and is threatened with a fine for her use of French, she asks how
she might have expressed the thought in Russian instead.80 Nor does the
change of heart extend from Moscow to St Petersburg, which is not at risk
of attack by French forces and where social life seems unaffected by the
invasion. In Hélène’s salon people continue to speak ecstatically about the
great nation and the great man, disbelieve rumours about French atrocities,
discuss Napoleon’s attempts at reconciliation and regret the rift with France,
thinking the crisis should be resolved peacefully.81 French remains in use
in Anna Scherer’s salon as well, despite its more patriotic orientation.82
74 Ibidem, vol. 10, 177–179.
75 It is conventional to characterize St Petersburg as a westernized city and Moscow as the
heart of Russian tradition, and both War and Peace and Anna Karenina would appear to bear
out this contrast. However, it may be that this difference in the cities’ character had little effect
on linguistic practice in high society in them. As Anthony Cross has pointed out to us, the
congregation of French émigrés in Moscow, especially in the revolutionary and Napoleonic period
1789–1815, ensured that French was a social lingua franca there, even if Muscovite Russians might
otherwise have been more inclined to speak Russian than their compatriots in St Petersburg.
76 Ibidem, vol. 11, 83.
77 Ibidem, 105.
78 Ibidem, 84; see also 177.
79 Ibidem, 181.
80 Ibidem, 179.
81 Ibidem, 127–128.
82 Ibidem, 128–131.

542 

The French L anguage in Russia

On one level, then, Tolstoi’s decision to render his characters’ speech
in French helps him to provide an historically plausible account of Russia
during the Napoleonic Wars. Indeed, in many instances where Tolstoi has real
historical figures speak, in French as in Russian, he is merely using material,
so he claims, from historical sources, of which he had accumulated a whole
library.83 At a deeper level, though, Tolstoi’s allocation of French utterances to
characters in War and Peace and his association of francophonie with certain
types of behaviour and mindset imply some moral evaluation on his part.
It is true that French is used in War and Peace even by characters whom
Tolstoi views as quintessentially Russian and of whom he clearly approves.
These characters include Kutuzov, Tolstoi’s favourite historical personage in
the novel, as well as his two main fictitious male characters, Andrei Bolkonskii
and Pierre Bezukhov. All the same, characters’ attitudes towards the French
language, the ease and accuracy with which they speak French, their willingness to resort to it and, more broadly, their attitudes towards the French people
and French culture – all these things may be touchstones by which Tolstoi
would wish us to judge them. It is no coincidence, for example, that Hélène,
‘une femme charmante, aussi spirituelle, que belle’ (a charming woman, as
witty as she is beautiful), ‘la femme la plus distinguée de Pétersbourg’ (the most
refined woman in St Petersburg),84 is both effortlessly Francophone and one of
the novel’s most morally repugnant characters. Nor is it to the credit of Anna
Scherer that her command of French enables her to speak it with affectation
when she wishes: ‘for some reason’, Tolstoi tells us, ‘she would say l’Urope
[Europe] as a particular refinement of the French language which she was
able to permit herself when speaking with a Frenchman’.85 Something similar
may be said of Vasilii Kuragin, who speaks French ‘with the soft, patronizing
intonations characteristic of a man of importance who has grown old in society
and at court’.86 The careerist Boris Drubetskoi too has pure and accurate French,
which he deploys at every opportunity and uses to conduct his courtship.87
Characters whom Tolstoi wishes to present in a more favourable light,
on the other hand, may have reservations about the use of French, at least
in certain circumstances, or they may even prize relative lack of facility
in it, and they may reject French habits. The likeable Nikolai Rostov, for
example, is shocked by the ease with which Russian officers of the high
83 ‘Neskol’ko slov’, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 16, 13. For a few examples in the novel, see ibidem, vol.
11, 9, 25, 27, 32.
84 Ibidem, vol. 10, 178, 179.
85 Ibidem, 88.
86 Ibidem, vol. 9, 4.
87 Ibidem, vol. 10, 89, 138–139, 304.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

543

command, such as Drubetskoi, converse with French officers immediately
after Alexander’s humiliating accommodation with Napoleon at Tilsit.88
Again, Andrei Bolkonskii, like all people who have grown up in society,
Tolstoi suggests, took pleasure in things which did not have the stamp of
society on them and was therefore attracted to Tolstoi’s favourite creation,
Natasha Rostova, admiring her joy and shyness ‘and even her mistakes
in French’.89 Natasha herself, a vital force whose intuitive Russianness is
conveyed by her spontaneous dance to the sound of a Russian folk tune
played on a guitar,90 refuses at the end of the novel to follow the golden
rule of ‘intelligent people, especially the French’, who believe that married
women should continue to pursue activities in which they excel (which in
Natasha’s case include singing and dancing). On the contrary, she abandons
society and conforms to Tolstoi’s Russian patriarchal ideal by devoting herself
entirely to the bearing and rearing of children and to supporting the man
she eventually marries, Pierre.91 This natural immunity or resistance to
French culture among the Rostovs is indicative of Tolstoi’s relatively positive
view of the Muscovite nobility who, by comparison with the St Petersburg
nobility, are uncorrupted by the court and government service.92
However, the purposes that Tolstoi’s use of French in War and Peace fulfils
extend beyond characterization, for at a deeper level French-speaking helps
to point up general intellectual and moral hazards that plague Russia’s
westernized elite. It is not just that for Russians of a certain class command
of French amounted to cultural capital in the social market-place. Those
Russians also had a French mode of thought ( frantsuszkii sklad mysli), as
Tolstoi put it in the article about War and Peace that he published in 1868.93
French could, for instance, be a vehicle for spurious knowledge or dogmatic
theory. Thus, we are bound to be mistrustful of the diagnosis of a French
doctor who believes that the cause of Prince Nikolai Bolkonskii’s illness is
‘la bile et le transport au cerveau’ (bile and a rush of blood to the brain).94
Again, when what is said to be a standard rule of war – ‘Les gros bataillons
ont toujours raison’ (The big battalions are always right)95 – is expressed in
French we know that Tolstoi thinks the rule is mistaken.
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95

Ibidem, 140.
Ibidem, 204.
It is this episode which inspires the title of Figes’s book Natasha’s Dance.
Voina i mir, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 12, 266–267.
Vinogradov, ‘O iazyke Tolstogo’, 150, 157.
‘Neskol’ko slov’, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 16, 8.
Voina i mir, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 10, 302.
Ibidem, vol. 12, 121.

544 

The French L anguage in Russia

Above all, French is inextricably associated in Tolstoi’s eyes with the
hypocrisies, ambitions, and stratagems of the social milieu in which it is
spoken. It is a language in which speakers dissemble, play roles, and behave
histrionically. Everyone in St Petersburg society, for example, knows that
Hélène’s illness in the summer of 1812 is in fact a pregnancy and that an
attempt is being made to terminate it. The word ‘angina’ is repeated with
great pleasure, maliciously, in conversations where all those present know
it is not angina that is ailing the countess, and the potential loss of her is
described as ‘terrible’ only because of Hélène’s beauty:
– On dit que la pauvre comtesse est très mal. Le médecin dit que c’est
l’angine pectorale.
– L’angine? Oh, c’est une maladie terrible!
– On dit que les rivaux se sont réconciliés grâce à l’angine…
The word angine was repeated with great pleasure.
– Le vieux comte est touchant à ce qu’on dit. Il a pleuré comme un enfant
quand le médecin lui a dit que le cas était dangereux.
– Oh, ce serait une perte terrible. C’est une femme ravissante.96
(‘They say that the poor countess is very ill. The doctor says it’s angina
pectoris.’
‘Angina? Oh, that’s a terrible illness!’
‘They say that the rivals have become reconciled because of the angina …’
[…]
‘The old count is a touching sight, by all accounts. He wept like a child
when the doctor told him it was a dangerous case.’
‘Oh, it would be a terrible loss. She’s a ravishing woman.’)

French is also the language of seduction. It is in French that Anatole Kuragin (who, like his sister Hélène, usually goes under the French form of his
forename) bewitches Natasha. He addresses her as ‘Natali’ and earnestly
appeals in French for her attention: ‘Un mot, un seul, au nom de Dieu’ (A
word, just one, in the name of God).97 He flatters her in French: what makes
a city pleasant, he jokes, ‘ce sont les jolies femmes’ (it’s pretty women).98
Hélène, mischievously abetting the seduction and exploiting her ability to
sound sincere and harmless, tells Natasha in French that her brother ‘est
96 Ibidem, 4.
97 Ibidem, vol. 10, 340.
98 Ibidem, 330.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

545

fou, mais fou amoureux de vous, ma chère’ (is mad, but madly in love with
you, my dear). She tries in French to overcome the circumspection that
Natasha’s engagement to Andrei Bolkonskii ought to dictate:
‘Si vouz aimez quelqu’un, ma délicieuse, ce n’est pas une raison pour se
cloîtrer. Si même vous êtes promise, je suis sûre que votre promis aurait
désiré que vous alliez dans le monde en son absence plutôt que de dépérir
d’ennui.’99
(If you love someone, my delight, that’s no reason to enter a convent.
Even if you are betrothed, I’m sure that your fiancé would have wanted
you to go out into society in his absence rather than to waste away out
of boredom.)

It is fitting that the purpose of the soirée at which Anatole almost completes
his seduction of Natasha is to hear Mlle George (a real historical personage)
recite some banal French verses and that society receives these verses with
adulation, believing that what they have heard is ‘adorable, divin, délicieux’
(adorable, divine, delightful).100 Finally, the dénouement of this society
episode, which takes place when Pierre confronts Hélène and Anatole about
the failed elopement, is conducted in French as well, as Tolstoi twice makes
clear. And it is because Pierre was speaking in French, Tolstoi confides in
the reader, that he expressed himself ‘so artificially’ when he called his
brother-in-law a scoundrel and wondered why he did not smash his head with
a paper-weight.101 (The paper-weight itself is a French cultural importation
denoted by a foreign loanword, presspap’e, from French presse-papiers!)
Thus, like a passage from the work of the French historian Adolphe Thiers
which Tolstoi quotes in his article on War and Peace, the French language
may be associated with a ‘high-flown pompous style, devoid of any direct
meaning’.102
Besides serving as a key to character and a means of exposing what seem to
Tolstoi flaws in elite society and culture, Tolstoi’s treatment of francophonie
in the early nineteenth-century Russian world invites reflection on broader
questions concerning the nation’s integrity and identity that had resonance
99 Ibidem, 336–337.
100 Ibidem, 338.
101 Ibidem, 364.
102 ‘Neskol’ko slov’ in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 16, 13. We have used here the translation of this article
by Louise and Aylmer Maude in Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1312.

546 

The French L anguage in Russia

in the 1860s. The xenophobic flavour of the novel and in particular Tolstoi’s
treatment of foreign commanders in the Russian army 103 perhaps answered
an emotional need following Russia’s humiliating defeat at the hands of
Britain and France in the recent war in the Crimea, in which Tolstoi himself
had fought. Tolstoi’s affectionate description of the family life of the Rostovs,
especially their life on their rural estate, offered a nostalgic glimpse of a
patriarchal community far removed from the western social, economic,
and political models, with their bourgeois mores, capitalist enterprise, and
parliamentary democracy, to which many Russians feared their country
might succumb after the abolition of serfdom in 1861. His questing heroes,
Andrei Bolkonskii and Pierre Bezukhov, who are dissatisfied with comprehensive rational explanations of their world, have much in common
with the mid-century novelists, who challenge the confident certainties
of the young radical, materialist, utilitarian wing of the intelligentsia that
emerged in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Tolstoi’s portrayal of the peasant
Platon Karataev (to whom we shall return shortly) exemplifies the attempt
to discover the identity of the common people that was being conducted in
Russian literature, historiography, ethnography, music, and painting when
War and Peace was being written. Unlike the youthful Tolstoi, who used the
French word ‘manants’ (‘peasants’ or ‘churls’) to indicate his contempt for
people who were not comme il faut,104 the mature writer found himself in
accord with a substantial part of the literary and intellectual community
when he expressed admiration for the Russian common people.
In his article ‘A Few Words about the Book “War and Peace”’, Tolstoi
identified both the ‘habit of using the French language’ and the ‘predominant alienation of the upper class from other classes’ as key features of the
character of the period in which his novel was set.105 In the novel, he brings
the related problems of social division and fractured national identity to
the fore through the historical figure of Count Fedor Rostopchin. As war
with Napoleon in 1812 draws near, old Nikolai Bolkonskii advocates a firm
foreign policy that might deter Napoleon from crossing the Russian frontier,
and Tolstoi’s Rostopchin responds thus:
And how, my Prince, are we to fight the French! […] Surely we cannot
take up arms against our teachers and gods? Look at our youth, look
103 Voina i mir, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 11, 99–104, 202–203, 207.
104 Iunost’, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 2, 194; see also 191.
105 ‘Neskol’ko slov’, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 16, 8. We have again used the translation in Tolstoy, War
and Peace, 1308.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

547

at our ladies. Our gods are Frenchmen, our kingdom of heaven is Paris
[…] French costumes, French ideas, French feelings! You’ve chucked out
Métivier [Bolkonskii’s doctor] because he’s a Frenchman and a scoundrel,
but our ladies go crawling to him on all fours.106

And yet, Rostopchin himself, although he is a jingoistic patriot who had
demonized Speranskii as a Freemason (and therefore as an alien), seems
also to inhabit a French world in his native land. He is indignant at the
poor French style of a diplomatic note sent by the Russians, complaining
to Pierre: ‘Mon cher, avec nos 500 mille hommes de troupes, il serait facile
d’avoir un beau style’ (My dear fellow, with our 500 thousand men at arms
it would be easy to have a good style).107 As a representative of conservative,
Francophone officialdom, Rostopchin has nothing in common with the
exclusively Russophone Muscovite populace, which he despises even as he
cynically deflects its rage on to a hapless Russian prisoner who has been
sentenced to death. ‘La voilà la populace, la lie du peuple’ (There’s the mob
for you, the dregs of the people), he reflects, as he leaves the scene after
abandoning the prisoner to the mob, ‘la plèbe qu’ils ont soulevée par leur
sottise’ (the plebs they’ve raised up by their stupidity).108 It is in French that
Rostopchin justifies his deed and then congratulates himself on it: he has
acted for the ‘bien publique’ (public good), he thinks, and ‘je faisais d’une
pierre deux coups’ (I have killed two birds with one stone), he concludes.109
The confused identity of the nation at its official level is brought out
even more starkly by Alexander’s envoy to his own army, Colonel Michaud,
a Frenchman – so Tolstoi would have us believe110 – who does not know
Russian. Although he is a foreigner, Tolstoi ironically observes, Michaud
is ‘Russe de coeur et d’âme [Russian in heart and soul], as he himself said
about himself’. He reports back to the tsar in French, but in his capacity as
‘representative of the Russian people’. Tolstoi underlines the oddity of this
situation by repeating Michaud’s words in a facetious tone a little further
106 Voina i mir, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 10, 306.
107 Ibidem, 304–305.
108 Ibidem, vol. 11, 345. See also 350. Tolstoi is alluding here to the fate of Vereshchagin, a Russian
brought up by a foreigner, whom Rostopchin accused, on flimsy grounds, of being a traitor.
Vereshchagin seems merely to have translated two French texts about Napoleon for his own
use. On this case, see Zemtsov, 1812 god. Pozhar Moskvy, Chapter 2.1.
109 Ibidem, vol. 11, 350, 351.
110 In fact, the historical Michaud was not French but from a family originating in Savoy. He was
born in Nice and served the King of Sardinia before entering Russian service. We are indebted
to Marie-Pierre Rey for pointing out this fact, which illustrates Tolstoi’s willingness to take
liberties with his historical material if it suited his purpose: see Rey, Alexandre Ier, 469–470.

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on.111 He thus confronts us with an inside-out reality. Not only are Russian
nobles seemingly French, since they frequently use the language of the people
who are becoming their mortal enemies, but with whom they continue to
consort; the nation is also represented in dealings with its own sovereign by
a Frenchman who has no Russian but considers himself Russian all the same.
It is left to Pierre Bezukhov to overcome the dilemma of elite biculturalism
and the problem of blurred identity which Tolstoi forces readers of War and
Peace to confront through his depiction of bilingualism and cosmopolitanism at court, in high society, among conservative officialdom, and in the
army. More than any other character in the novel, Pierre appears at first to
straddle the French and the Russian worlds. He is an amalgam of identities,
or rather his identity is at first indeterminate. His forename; his interest
in Freemasonry; his sympathy for Napoleon before the invasion of Russia;
his frequent recourse to French phrases and the bookish quality of his
Russian: all these factors point towards an international or, more specifically,
French identity. On the other hand, Pierre is out of place in Russian high
society, despite his francophonie and the title and wealth that he inherits.
He is illegitimate and socially ill-at-ease. He shows a meekness or humility
(smirenie) that is not prized by the self-regarding nobility and is more closely
associated with the Russian common people. As he proceeds on his odyssey
of self-discovery, and in particular as the campaign of 1812 unfolds, a truly
Russian identity comes to light. Such is his command of French, it is true,
that Pierre finds it hard, when his house is taken over by a French officer
during Napoleon’s occupation of Moscow, to disabuse the officer of the
notion that he is French. In the eyes of this officer, whose life Pierre saves
by overpowering a Russian servant who tries to shoot him, he becomes an
honorary Frenchman. And yet, Pierre speaks French to the invader against
his will. To the astonishment of the French officer he repudiates the title
of Frenchman, which the officer sees as the ‘highest appellation in the
world’. He prefers to remain Russian, even though he has lived in Paris for
some years and is prepared to agree that Paris is ‘la capitale du monde’ (the
capital of the world).112
As Pierre cools towards the French world he develops a heightened awareness of the Russian world. His progress is marked partly by his separation
from the mannered Francophile Hélène (whom Tolstoi contrives to kill off
in the year of Napoleon’s invasion and retreat) and by his marriage, after the
war, to that quintessence of Russianness, Natasha Rostova. Crucially, this
111 Voina i mir, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 12, 10, 12, 13.
112 Ibidem, vol. 11, 365, 369.

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progress is also marked by Pierre’s attraction to the humble Russian peasant
of sound mind and good sense, Platon Karataev. Pierre encounters Platon –
that is to say, Plato, whose name, of course, suggests great wisdom – when
they are incarcerated together by the French forces in Moscow and he then
accompanies him with the retreating French army until Platon is shot by his
captors. Platon is an idealized, Rousseauesque embodiment of the common
people, whom Tolstoi imagines as unspoilt by modern civilization and as
bearers of authentic Russian nationality. His language and linguistic habits,
to which Tolstoi pays close attention, stand in sharp contrast to the French
language and French linguistic practice in Russian high society. The French
employed for official and social purposes by the aristocracy is fashioned,
as we have seen, as a means of facilitating ostentatious self-display and
dissimulation. It expresses a politesse that is indicative of only superficial
respect. Platon’s Russian, on the other hand, is unpremeditated, artless,
and unassuming. Replete with proverbs and popular sayings, it draws on a
repository of collective folk wisdom, expressing all-embracing selfless love
and a willingness to submit to an unfathomable cosmic purpose.
Pierre has the ability to assimilate foreign languages and cultures. (It
is telling that at one point he acts as an interpreter for two members of
Napoleon’s multi-national army who cannot understand one another,
because one is French-speaking and the other German-speaking.113) At
the same time, he is able to experience an epiphany that gives him insight
into the character of the Russian people, embodied in Karataev, who lives
on in his consciousness. He thus seems personally to resolve the problem of
national fragmentation and cultural dependency by developing a capacity
to understand (intuitively and poetically, as well as rationally) the greatest
intellectual, cultural, and ultimately spiritual achievements of other peoples
and then to absorb and reconcile them in a transcendent synthesis. In
this respect, War and Peace might be construed as a contribution to the
prolonged discourse of Russian universalism and exceptionalism, according
to which Russians are distinguished by a peculiar cultural receptivity,
especially receptivity to the achievements of peoples to whom they had
recently felt inferior.
War and Peace, then, is on one level an historical novel whose veracity
Tolstoi tries to enhance by assigning French utterances to his characters,
as if those utterances were props that could evoke Russian life in the early
nineteenth-century world. At another level, it is an expression of the mature
Tolstoi’s disapproval of aristocratic society, whose artificiality, contrivance,
113 Ibidem, 371.

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The French L anguage in Russia

and falsity are illustrated by the habit of French-speaking. At a deeper level
still, it is a meditation on the fractured nature of the Russian nation as many
members of the intellectual and cultural elite had come to conceive of it by
the mid-nineteenth century. French-speaking, within this meditation, is a
key element of the behavioural code of a gilded European aristocracy that
has become separated from the native peasant mass. Nonetheless, the novel
does offer hope that the problem of national fragmentation can be resolved
through the integration of what is indigenous and what is alien. In a sense,
War and Peace inherently achieves this goal by using and refashioning
a foreign literary genre, the novel. Or rather, the work, Tolstoi defiantly
declared, ‘is not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less an historical
chronicle’; it is instead ‘what the author wished and was able to express
in the form in which it is expressed’. Not that Tolstoi claims to have been
the first Russian to refuse to be constrained by the conventional artistic
forms that had recently been imported. On the contrary, hybrid forms have
already become the norm, he says: not a single significant artistic prose work
published in Russia in recent decades ‘quite fits into the form of a novel, epic,
or story’.114 This assertion of literary independence, finally, is of a piece with
the novel’s implicit celebration of Russian linguistic triumph in this most
capacious of all the nineteenth-century explorations of Russia’s historical
destiny. It is as if Tolstoi’s critical treatment of francophonie in Russia in
the first Alexandrine age enabled him not only exorcize the spirit that had
entered him personally in his youth, but also to complete the nation’s battle
for liberation by carrying his ancestors’ military victory against the Grande
Armée into the literary and linguistic spheres as well.

Tolstoi: Anna Karenina
Unlike War and Peace, Anna Karenina, first published in 1875–1877, is an overtly
topical novel. It contains references to numerous post-Crimean problems,
developments, events, and subjects of debate, such as poor agricultural productivity after the emancipation of serfs, the responsibilities of the provincial
nobility after the reform of local government and the judicial system, the
development of a railway network, the colonization of Central Asia, the RussoTurkish War of 1877–1878, different models of education, and the emancipation
of women. Despite the fact that Anna Karenina relates to a period some fifty
to sixty years after the Napoleonic Wars in which War and Peace is set, noble
114 ‘Neskol’ko slov’, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 16, 7; Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1307.

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bilingualism is no less conspicuous in it, and Tolstoi’s treatment of the subject
again serves both to broaden his observation of social behaviour and to deepen
his discussion of the possible futures that the nation faces.
Thus, on one level, Anna Karenina attests in fictional form to the persistence of French in various domains and functions with which we are
familiar. Members of high society still use French terms of address, such
as ‘ma chère’, and have French nicknames, such as the ‘enfant terrible’.115
There is a select St Petersburg social circle named ‘les sept merveilles du
monde’.116 French expressions punctuate conversation at exclusive social
venues, such as the Moscow ball at which the ground is prepared for Anna’s
adulterous affair with Count Vronskii, to the dismay of Kitty Shcherbatskaia,
who had been hoping for a proposal of marriage from Vronskii. ‘Pardon,
Mesdames. Pardon, pardon, mesdames’, says the dirigeur and master of
ceremonies as he steers Kitty to the group where he will leave her at the end
of a dance.117 Kitty’s mother, Princess Shcherbatskaia, chooses French when
she decides to give her daughter a lesson in social decorum at a German
spa: ‘Il ne faut jamais rien outrer’ (one must never overdo anything), she
tells her, as Kitty undergoes a spiritual transformation under the influence
of an ‘engouement’ (infatuation) with people she has met there.118 French
survives in the military domain, judging by the phrases – ‘Tout ça est une
blague’ (it’s all bosh), ‘terre-à-terre’ (down-to-earth), and the description of a
mistress as a ‘fardeau’ (burden) – which punctuate the speech of the highly
successful and pragmatic young General Serpukhovskoi.119 It is still a vehicle
for pithy personal criticisms in social circles: ‘il est un petit peu toqué’ (he’s
a little bit of a crackpot), a landowner remarks of Levin, or ‘Au fond c’est
la femme la plus dépravée qui existe’ (At bottom, she’s the most depraved
woman there is), Anna says of Betsy Tverskaia.120 It continues to be used by
members of the elite minority to conceal their thoughts from the servants
or as a language in which to speak about the servants.121 It is unsurprising,
given all this evidence of the persistence of French among the elite, that
acquisition of the language should remain a priority in the upbringing of
noble children. The Oblonskiis have employed a French governess – in fact, it
115 Anna Karenina, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 18, 141, 142.
116 Ibidem, 311. This is a witty pun which could mean either ‘the seven wonders of the world’
or ‘the seven wonders of society’.
117 Ibidem, 84.
118 Ibidem, 237.
119 Ibidem, 327−330.
120 Ibidem, vol. 19, 208, 213.
121 Ibidem, 27, 127, 242.

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is Dolly Oblonskaia’s discovery of her husband’s affair with Mlle Roland that
leads to the family crisis with which the novel opens. When Anna arrives
from St Petersburg in order to try to reconcile her brother and sister-in-law,
moreover, she finds Dolly giving one of her young sons his French lesson.122
At a deeper level, Tolstoi’s interest in the continuing bilingualism of the
Russian aristocracy helps to illuminate the overarching themes of Anna
Karenina. The novel is constructed around various oppositions. First and
foremost, Tolstoi juxtaposes metropolitan and rural Russia. On the one
hand, there is the cosmopolitan and multilingual nation that is found in the
aristocratic drawing-room, at the society ball, in the officers’ mess, at the
horse races attended by the emperor, and in the government committee.123
On the other hand, there is the country estate, principally Pokrovskoe, the
estate of Levin, who comes closest in the novel to echoing the moral views
that Tolstoi espoused. There life proceeds in a timeless way in harmony
with nature’s seasons: noble men and women – if they take an interest in
rural affairs, as Levin does – instruct their bailiffs, inspect their cattle, tend
their beehives, shoot, pick mushrooms, and make jam, while peasants mow
grass, plough the fields, and gather in the harvest. A second opposition
in the novel pits the high aristocracy, who occupy all important official
positions, against the sturdy, self-sufficient gentry, who reside mainly on
estates that have been handed down to them through the generations of
their family. Levin, the gentleman-farmer, explains this social distinction
to Oblonskii, who belonged to the ‘milieu of people who were, or who have
become, the powerful ones of this earth’.124 A third familiar opposition is
also in evidence, namely the contrast between St Petersburg and Moscow.
It is in St Petersburg, where Karenin flourishes in the bureaucracy and
where Oblonskii’s cares always vanish, that the most fashionable society
is to be found. Moscow, which can be reached in a day from Pokrovskoe,
is the city Levin generally visits, if he is compelled to spend any time at all
in an urban environment. Moscow is also the home of the Shcherbatskii
122 Ibidem, vol. 18, 71. Anna Karenina, like Turgenev’s Smoke, also affirms the rise of English
as a language that was fashionable in high society. The three Shcherbatskii daughters, in their
childhood, all had to speak French one day and English the next (ibidem, 25). The Oblonskiis
have an English governess for their children. Both Anna and Vronskii appear to speak English
well. Anna, as she returns to St Petersburg from her fateful visit to Moscow, is reading an English
novel (ibidem, 106, 117). Levin reads an English scientific treatise (ibidem, 102) and speaks broken
English (ibidem, 282). Clearly too, English forenames (Betsy, Dolly) have come to be used as well
as French ones.
123 This Russia may be replicated in the luxurious manor houses on the estates of the wealthiest
nobility, like that on which we observe Vronskii and Anna (ibidem, vol. 19, 183–221).
124 Ibidem, vol. 18, 181–182, 17.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

553

family, whose members have a sounder sense than the Oblonskiis of what
is right according to the rules of Tolstoi’s moral universe.
The aristocratic, metropolitan Russia we have described is governed by
a social code which Tolstoi finds superficial, hypocritical, and unauthentic.
The whole aim of ‘civilization’, according to Oblonskii, is to make everything a
source of enjoyment.125 Karenin, as Anna sees it, is motivated by nothing but
ambition and the desire to advance in the official hierarchy.126 Self-centred and
craving wealth and status, members of the overlapping circles of St Petersburg
high society nourish themselves with gossip and scandal.127 At some level,
they encourage marital infidelity; Princess Betsy Tverskaia, for instance,
abets Vronskii’s affair with Anna.128 At the same time, society is obsessed
with propriety and mercilessly condemns women’s departures from its formal
code. Now, the mores of this refined but corrupted social world, which is so
far removed from the simple rural milieu cherished by Levin, are alien and
unsuitable for Russia, Tolstoi would have us believe, and the repeated, jarring
use of a foreign language bolsters Tolstoi’s argument. Society’s defects seem
to be encapsulated in a conversation between Dolly and one of her daughters
about language use, a conversation Levin witnesses and on which he reflects:
‘Why are you here, Tania?’ Dar’ia Aleksandrovna said in French to the
little girl who had just come in.
‘Where’s my spade, mama?’
‘I’m speaking French, and you should as well.’
The girl tried, but she had forgotten the word for ‘spade’ in French, so
her mother prompted her and then told her in French where to find the
spade. And Levin found this unpleasant.
Everything about Dar’ia Aleksandrovna’s household and her children
now seemed much less likeable than it had before.
‘Why does she speak French with the children?’ he thought. ‘How unnatural and false that is! The children sense it too. Learn French and unlearn
sincerity’, he thought to himself, not knowing that Dar’ia Aleksandrovna
had already thought all this through twenty times, and nonetheless found
it necessary to teach her children in this way, even if sincerity suffered
as a result.129
125
126
127
128
129

Ibidem, 40.
Ibidem, 218.
Ibidem, 141.
Ibidem, 135.
Ibidem, 286.

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At many points in Anna Karenina, Tolstoi’s use of French underlines the
insincerity and unnaturalness that Levin observes in the imported practices
and values of aristocratic social life. Society’s hypocrisy and pretence are
implicit even in the notion of the mariage de convenance (brak po rassudku),
which sanctions the replacement of love by expediency and which characters
knowingly discuss in a St Petersburg drawing-room.130
Again and again in this classic European novel about adultery, characters
turn to French when their subject is relations between the sexes. People are
saying, Vronskii’s mother tells her son, when he meets her off the train that
has brought her to Moscow (at which point she thinks he is in love with Kitty
Shcherbatskaia), ‘vous filez le parfait amour. Tant mieux, mon cher, tant
mieux’ (You are made for one another. So much the better, my dear, so much
the better).131 Much later, when her son comes to her box at the St Petersburg
opera house on the evening Anna reappears in society, she resorts to French
once more to reprove him for the scandal his affair is causing: ‘“Why don’t
you go and faire la cour à Madame Karenin?”’ (court Madam Karenin). ‘“Elle
fait sensation. On oublie Patti pour elle”’ (She is creating a sensation. People
are abandoning Patti [the singer who has just bewitched the audience] for
her).132 In general, the use of French between men and women is strongly
associated with flirtation. Oblonskii, responding to Levin’s censure, sees
nothing wrong if a man pursues his masculine interests: ‘Ça ne tire pas à
conséquence’ (It’s of no importance), he pleads, in defence of his numerous
liaisons.133 Preference for French helps to characterize Vasen’ka Veslovskii, a
tiresome, boisterous, tactless nobleman introduced by Tolstoi at a late stage
of the novel as if to bring high society into further disrepute.134 Veslovskii is
overfamiliar with other men’s wives: ‘Il fait la cour à une jeune et jolie femme’,
as Dolly explains to Levin, who is offended by his flirtation with Kitty and
ejects him from his estate, to which Oblonskii had brought him as a guest.135
Use of French also enables characters to discuss marital or sexual relations
with the formality that propriety requires when a relationship deteriorates.
Karenin, finally convinced of Anna’s infidelity when he observes her horrified reaction to Vronskii’s fall from his horse in the steeplechase they attend
at the St Petersburg race-course, tries to take her away from the social throng
130 Ibidem, 145.
131 Ibidem, 67.
132 Ibidem, vol. 19, 120.
133 Ibidem, 164. The same excuse was used, it will be recalled, by Mar’ia Polozova in Turgenev’s
Spring Torrents.
134 Ibidem, 155, 158, 160, 190. Veslovskii also has excellent English (151).
135 Ibidem, 176.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

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in order to limit the social embarrassment that her behaviour is sure to cause.
Karenin, Tolstoi writes, ‘went up to Anna and politely offered her his arm.
“We can go if you would like to”, he said in French.’136 Having eventually
succeeded, at the third attempt, in leading Anna to his carriage, he begins
the conversation he had been dreading. ‘“I am obliged to tell you that you
behaved in an unseemly way today”, he said to her in French.’137 He turns
to French again in the letter he writes to Anna when he has resolved how
to react to Anna’s confirmation that she has been unfaithful to him. The
difference in French and Russian pronominal usage, Tolstoi tells us, helps
Karenin to avoid a complete rupture at this stage. Karenin wrote without
addressing Anna by name ‘and in French, using the pronoun vous, which does
not have the cold character that vy has in Russian’.138 All the same, Karenin’s
letter, written in the bureaucratic register he has mastered, is icily formal:
I hope to discuss all this in more detail at a personal meeting. As the
summer-home season is ending, I would ask you to return to Petersburg
as soon as possible, no later than Tuesday. All necessary arrangements
for your move will be made. I ask you to take note that I attach particular
importance to fulfilment of this request of mine. A. Karenin.
PS I enclose money which may be needed for your expenses.139

The different nuances of pronominal usage in the two languages lead Vronskii too to prefer French to Russian. Once they have begun their affair, he
always speaks French to Anna, Tolstoi explains, because the polite Russian
second-person plural form vy would have been far too cold between them,
while ty, the second-person singular form, would have been dangerously
familiar.140 Thus French, while it is suitable for flirtation, may also serve
to diminish commitment, introducing a certain emotional equivocation,
irritation, or froideur in lieu of affection. Vronskii resorts to it, for example,
when he tries to dissuade Anna from going to the St Petersburg opera,
knowing that society will ostracize her.
‘Why can’t I go? I love you, and it’s all the same to me’, [Anna] said in
Russian […]
136
137
138
139
140

Ibidem, vol. 18, 222.
Ibidem, 225.
Ibidem, 299.
Ibidem, 299–300.
Ibidem, 196–197.

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‘My feelings cannot change, you know that, but I ask you not to go, I
implore you’, [Vronskii] said again in French, with tender supplication
in his voice but coldness in his look.141

It is perhaps indicative of the change in Anna’s feelings towards the end of
the novel that when Vronskii comes to her room for what turns out to be
the last time she uses French to ask him what he wants.142
Tolstoi drives home his point about the unnaturalness of Russians’ use
of French and of the mores he associates with this foreign language by
describing an unsettling dream which both Vronskii and Anna have and
in which, bizarrely, French is spoken by an unkempt peasant.143 ‘What was
that awful thing I dreamt about?’ Vronskii asks himself on awakening.
‘Yes, yes. A peasant who was a beater in the hunt, I think, he was small
and dirty, with a tousled little beard, and he was bending over and doing
something, and suddenly he started saying strange words in French. No,
there wasn’t anything else in the dream’, he said to himself. ‘But why
was it so terrible then?’ He vividly recalled the peasant again and the
incomprehensible French words the peasant had been uttering, and a
chill of horror ran down his spine.144

Anna is troubled by a similar nightmare, in which a small peasant, also
with a tousled beard, ‘is pottering about and all the while saying in French,
very quickly, and you know, rolling his r’s: Il faut le battre le fer; le broyer, le
pétrir…’ (We must hammer it, the iron; pound it, shape it).145
Tolstoi’s presentation of the flaws of high society is counterbalanced by
a conception both of what is right in the conduct of human relationships
and what is natural in Russia. This conception is realized in Anna Karenina
chiefly through the character and actions of Levin, the author’s main seeker
after truth and moral self-improvement. Levin shuns noble society, whose
conventions and pretences he struggles to understand, let alone tolerate. He
is revolted by sexual relations (including his own youthful experiences) for a
purely erotic purpose and devotes himself to family life. As far as the problems
of the nation are concerned, he is loath to accept universal solutions to them.
141
142
143
144
145

Ibidem, vol. 19, 115.
Ibidem, 329.
Browning, ‘Peasant Dreams in Anna Karenina’.
Anna Karenina, in Tolstoi, PSS, vol. 18, 375.
Ibidem, 381. The nightmare recurs the night before Anna kills herself (ibidem, vol. 19, 332).

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

557

His careful observation of attitudes among the Russian peasants, whom he by
no means idealizes, therefore leads him to introduce agricultural practices
which he thinks will be compatible with native customs. He also takes an
unconventional view of the causes of poverty in post-reform Russia: it is due,
he believes, not only to the distribution of landed property and to ill-conceived
policies but also to the abnormal way in which an external civilization had
been grafted on to Russia. In particular, he is critical of the railway construction of the 1860s and 1870s, which had entailed ‘centralization in the towns’,
the growth of ‘luxury’, and the consequent development of factories, a credit
system, and a stock exchange, all of which, he thinks, had had a detrimental
effect on agriculture.146 Russia, then, is sui generis, and should confidently go
its own way, eschewing what does not suit it – for example, urbanization and
the growth of capitalism, as well as the repugnant practices of high society.
Levin’s attitudes towards the Gallicized culture of Russian high society,
including his language attitudes, are a measure of his personal values, just
as such attitudes are for characters who move comfortably in the grand
monde. Levin is ill-at-ease in a fashionable Moscow restaurant to which
Oblonskii takes him, where a Tatar waiter insists on repeating the names of
the dishes Oblonskii orders in the French forms in which they are listed on
the menu: soupe printanière, turbot sauce Beaumarchais, poulard à l’estragon,
macédoine de fruits (spring soup, turbot in Beaumarchais sauce, tarragon
capon, fruit salad).147 Like other noble characters in the novel, Levin does
resort to French from time to time. He uses it, for example, to assert his
social superiority over a merchant who has persuaded Oblonskii to accept
an excessively low price for a forest he wants to sell and, on another occasion,
to show temporary coldness to his wife.148 On the whole, though, he avoids
using French. To the chagrin of Princess Shcherbatskaia, he will not even
address his mother-in-law as maman, as most noble sons-in-law do.149 When
two of Dolly’s children start fighting, he resolves never to put on airs and
talk French with his own children, should he become a father. Not that
they will be like Dolly’s, he thinks (smugly, we might say, although Tolstoi
probably does not mean Levin’s thoughts to be perceived in this way), for
all one has to do to ensure that children turn out delightful, he believes,
is take care not to spoil them or distort their natures.150 At around the
146
147
148
149
150

Ibidem, vol. 19, 52.
Ibidem, vol. 18, 38.
Ibidem, 177, and vol. 19, 174.
Ibidem, vol. 19, 129.
Ibidem, vol. 18, 286.

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same point in the novel, he feels self-disgust because he finds that he is
increasingly using foreign words in his speech as a result of his reading on
agricultural matters.151
No less than War and Peace, then, Anna Karenina contains a discourse
about Russian elite bilingualism, and again this discourse is interwoven with
Tolstoi’s major subject-matter. The contrasts between town and country,
St Petersburg and Moscow, the high aristocracy and the middling gentry,
imported and indigenous culture, and the ways of life and morals associated
with each element in these pairs – all of these subjects are illuminated
in part through Tolstoi’s reflection on the continuing bilingualism of the
Russian elite to which he himself belonged.

Fedor Dostoevskii
Of the three novelists we examine in this chapter, Dostoevskii was the most
conservative and overtly nationalistic. In his youth he had attended the
Petrashevskii circles in St Petersburg, at which the ideas of utopian socialists,
especially Fourier, had been discussed, and it was for his participation and
role in these circles that he had been arrested and sentenced to death in
1849. (The sentence was commuted at the last moment to four years in
prison, to be followed by exile in Central Asia.) By the time he returned to St
Petersburg in 1859, though, Dostoevskii had undergone a profound religious
conversion. He now began to propagate an outlook diametrically opposed
to the materialistic, utilitarian, socialistic Weltanschauung then being
propounded by the radical wing of the intelligentsia led by Chernyshevskii.
Dostoevskii’s Native-Soil Conservatism (pochvennichestvo), as the doctrine
that he elaborated in the early 1860s with the help of Apollon Grigor’ev and
Nikolai Strakhov was known, stressed the rift that had supposedly developed
in Russia between the small westernized elite (‘Russian Europe’) and the
multi-million peasant mass. The solution to this problem, Dostoevskii
believed, was to be found not in the drawing-up of social contracts or constitutions or in the development of political systems such as parliamentary
democracy but in the establishment of a supposedly apolitical utopia in
which the altruistic, self-abnegating Orthodox personality could find expression. The doctrine rested on the contrastive view of Russian identity that we
have already described and included a vehement critique of the economic,
social, and political bases of western nations, or more particularly France
151 Ibidem, 369.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

559

and England. It was most fully expounded in Winter Notes on Summer
Impressions, an account published in 1863 of Dostoevskii’s first visit to the
West, which he had made in the previous year.152
Dostoevskii, who came from a poor provincial gentry background, does
not focus his attention to quite such an extent as Turgenev on the noble
stratum or on the aristocratic social sphere that Tolstoi’s novels illuminate.
Consequently, there is perhaps somewhat less reference to noble francophonie in his writings, but the subject is by no means absent. We have a
foretaste of his use of French as a means of mockery or disapproval of what
is foreign in his Winter Notes. Here he facetiously coins Gallicisms such as
epuz (i.e. épouse [wife]), gantirovat’sia (se ganter [to put on gloves]), and
mabish’ (ma biche [my darling]).153 He also quotes French expressions,
slogans, or dicta that convey concepts which he believes somehow reflect
badly on French life and character.154 However, it is in The Devils, his third
and most overtly political novel, first published in 1871–1872, that Dostoevskii
most insistently presents readers with linguistic evidence that a certain
section of the educated class has been afflicted by a loss of nationality
which renders them effete and may lead ultimately to nihilism.155 One
conspicuous symptom of such loss is the language-mixing which Russian
writers had been ridiculing for more than a hundred years. It is tempting
to see Dostoevskii, in this respect, as an heir of Fonvizin, who had mocked
code-switching to such good effect in his Brigadier and whose ambivalent
and often malicious treatment of the West prefigured Dostoevskii’s.156
The character most prone to language-mixing in The Devils is Stepan
Verkhovenskii, the chief representative of the older generation of the intelligentsia, who had been formed in the 1840s. Stepan – who, it has been argued,
152 On Native-Soil Conservatism, see Dowler, Dostoevsky, Grigor’ev, and Native Soil Conservatism.
On Dostoevskii’s thought in general, see especially Scanlan, Dostoevsky the Thinker. The definitive
work on Dostoevskii’s life and literary career in English is Frank’s five-volume Dostoevsky. For
penetrating English-language examinations of Dostoevskii’s major fiction see the monographs
cited in our bibliography by Peace (1971) and Leatherbarrow (1981), The Cambridge Companion
to Dostoevskii, edited by Leatherbarrow, and the collection New Essays on Dostoevsky, edited by
Jones and Terry. The recent volume Dostoevsky in Context, edited by Martinsen and Maiorova,
contains 35 essays on numerous aspects of the historical background to Dostoevskii’s writings.
153 Zimnie zametki o letnikh vpechatleniiakh, in Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 5, 75, 90–91.
154 e.g. ‘faire fortune’ (to make a fortune; ibidem, 77), ‘suffrage universel’ (universal suffrage;
86), ‘le tiers état c’est tout’ (the third estate is everything; 74), ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty,
equality, fraternity; 78), ‘l’Etat c’est moi’ (the state, it is I; 86).
155 The Russian title of the novel (Besy) is also often translated as The Possessed.
156 See Offord, ‘Beware the Garden of Earthly Delights’, and idem, Journeys to a Graveyard,
Chapters 2 and 7. Dostoevskii made references to Fonvizin in his Winter Notes.

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The French L anguage in Russia

bears a certain resemblance to Chaadaev 157 – cannot conduct a conversation
without resorting to some French locution. Indeed, Dostoevskii assigns over
250 French utterances to him in the course of the novel. As nobles of his
generation were wont to do, Stepan uses French versions of other characters’
forenames (Lise, Nicolas, Pierre) and French terms of address, such as ‘ma
chère’ (my dear), ‘ma bonne amie’ (my good friend), and ‘charmante enfant’
(charming child).158 His speech is filled with French phrases and comments.
We find, for example, ‘mais distinguons’ (but let’s make a distinction), ‘c’est
très curieux’ (that’s very curious), ‘tout de même’ (all the same), ‘tout est dit’
(that’s an end to the matter), ‘vous avez raison’ (you’re right), ‘tant mieux’
(so much the better), ‘J’ai oublié’ (I forgot), ‘quant à moi’ (as for me), and the
ubiquitous ‘enfin’ (finally).159 Stepan uses French for stock conversational
responses, exclamations, and interjections.160 Again, French provides him
with a rich seam of conversational confidences, fillers, prompts, appeals,
and affirmations: ‘entre nous soit dit’ (between ourselves), ‘vous savez’ (you
know), ‘voyez-vous’ (do you see), ‘vous comprenez?’ (do you understand),
‘O, croyez-moi’ (Oh, believe me), and ‘vous me pardonnerez, n’est-ce pas?’
(you’ll forgive me, won’t you?).161 Equally, it offers phrases pointing in the
direction Stepan wants a conversation to take: ‘parlons d’autre chose’ (let’s
talk about something else), ‘passons’ (let’s leave this), ‘et brisons-là’ (and
let’s end there).162 As we would expect from our study of elite language
practice, Stepan shifts to French for the expression of judgements about
other people. ‘Irascible, mais bon’ (Irritable, but good), ‘C’est un monstre’
(He’s a monster), or ‘C’est un homme malhonnête et je crois même que c’est
un forçat évadé ou quelque chose dans ce genre’ (He’s a dishonourable man
and I even believe he’s an escaped convict or something of the sort), he says
of other characters in the novel.163 He also tends to switch into French, or
mixes French and Russian, when he makes some self-critical or self-pitying
remark. ‘On m’a traité comme un vieux bonnet de coton!’ (I was treated like
an old nightcap [i.e. idiot]), he complains.164
Stepan’s shifts into French seem particularly inappropriate when he is
pontificating, as he loves to do, about the Russian spirit, the Russian God,
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164

See Budgen, ‘Pushkin and Chaadaev’, 36, n. 14.
See, e.g., Besy, in Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 10, 31, 49, 50, 51, 60, 61, 91, 99, 127, 151, etc.
Ibidem, 33, 47, 48, 75, 97, 98, 99, 100, 151, 171, 264, 377, 483.
e.g., ibidem, 49, 76, 98.
Ibidem, 33, 47, 49, 53, 101, 327, 332, 334, 388.
Ibidem, 99, 171, 263, 351.
Ibidem, 52, 98, 135.
Ibidem, 23; see also 53, 65, and especially 327–334.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

561

or the Russian peasant. If the allusion in French is complimentary, then
it sounds patronizing, as when Stepan speaks of ‘notre sainte Russie’ (our
holy Russia) or ‘cette Russie que j’aimais toujours’ (this Russia that I always
loved).165 He also has the irritating habit of making poor French translations
of Russian proverbs and sayings, which he considers witty and chic. He will
always belong to Varvara Stavrogina, he says for example, ‘en tout pays’ (in
any land), even ‘dans le pays de Makar et ses veaux’ (in the land of Makar
and his calves). The Russian expression from which Stepan’s enigmatic
remark derives, the narrator explains, is kuda Makar teliat ne gonial (whither
Makar did not drive his calves)166 – that is to say, Siberia, a place of exile.
What jars most of all is Stepan’s use of French as the vehicle for derogatory
remarks about his native land, as in pronouncements of the following sort:
Tous les hommes de génie et de progrès en Russie étaient, sont et seront
toujours des card-players et des drunkards, qui boivent en binge [All
these men of genius and progress in Russia were, are, and always will be
card-players and drunkards who go in for binge-drinking].167
Oh my friend, would you believe I felt like a patriot the other day! But then
I’ve always been conscious of being Russian… and a real Russian can’t be
any different from you and me. Il y a là-dedans quelque chose d’aveugle
et de louche [There’s something in there that’s blind and shifty].168

Dostoevskii’s overriding aim in his characterization of Stepan Verkhovenskii
is to present the Westernist intelligentsia of his own generation in a negative
light. Although Stepan, as a protagonist in The Devils, is a participant in
provincial noble society in the post-reform period, Dostoevskii is careful
from the early stages of the novel to establish that in his youth Stepan had
been a leading Muscovite intellectual figure. Indeed, Stepan had a model in
real life, namely the moderate Westernizer Timofei Granovskii, a professor
at Moscow University who specialized in the history of Western Europe in
the Middle Ages and a man of chivalrous demeanour with exquisite manners
and a weakness for gambling.169 Now, Granovskii was indeed plurilingual:
165 Ibidem, 32, 499.
166 Ibidem, 25.
167 Ibidem, 53.
168 Ibidem, 171–172.
169 Ibidem, 8–9, 12. On the relationship of Stepan Verkhovenskii to Granovskii, see Peace,
Dostoevskii, 143–144, 320–321 (nn. 5–9), Offord, Portraits of Early Russian Liberals, 76–78, and
idem, ‘The Devils’, 75–76.

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The French L anguage in Russia

he developed an early fluency in French, had a good knowledge of English,
and acquired German during a three-year spell as a student in Germany.
However, we have no reason to think that either Granovskii – who wrote
his scholarly works and lectured in Russian – or other leading figures in
the intellectual circles in which Granovskii moved in the 1840s used such a
mélange of Russian and French as Stepan during their animated discussions.
In his portrayal of Stepan, then, Dostoevskii not only turns a distinguished
scholar admired by contemporaries for a certain noble idealism into a vain
and egotistical phrasemonger; he also mischievously identifies the habit
of French-speaking that characterized high society with the Westernist
literary and intellectual community as well. Following the well-established
satirical tradition of mocking language-mixing, he thus creates the false
impression that the linguistic practice of a section of the intelligentsia which
he wished to depict as estranged from native soil coincided with that of the
aristocratic social milieu, from which those writers and thinkers were in
fact distancing themselves.
During a ‘f inal wandering’ beyond the comfortable conf ines of his
familiar social milieu, Stepan does eventually arrive at a new spiritual
understanding and he finds salvation of a sort, confessing – in almost his
last utterance in the novel – ‘J’ai menti toute ma vie’ (I have lied all my
life).170 However, his redemption can only be partial, in Dostoevskii’s eyes,
for his leaning towards a foreign culture, besides harming him personally,
has created a moral vacuum which has been filled by nihilistic members of
the younger generation that has come to maturity in the 1860s. The leader
of this generation, in The Devils, happens to be the son, Petr, whom Stepan
had fathered but forgotten, and who now turns up in the town in which
the novel is set as a political conspirator and organizer of revolutionary
cells and acts. Members of the younger generation, like their elders, may
exhibit some linguistic symptom of the detachment from native soil.
For example, Kirillov, another member of the underground, is devoid of
sensitivity to his mother tongue and struggles to speak it.171 In this case,
the absence of a firm identity rooted in native culture has an ontological
consequence: Kirillov has come to the perverted conclusion that suicide,
as a proof of self-will, is the ultimate expression of human freedom. It is
relevant for our purpose that he prepares for his final act by polishing a
170 Besy, in Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 10, 489, 506.
171 Ibidem, 75, 94. The nihilist Lebeziatnikov in Crime and Punishent shows the same inability
to express himself coherently in his native language: see Prestuplenie i nakazanie, in Dostoevskii,
PSS, vol. 6, 307.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

563

suicide note that Petr Verkhovenskii, for his own revolutionary ends, has
dictated to him:
‘“Vive la république démocratique, sociale et universelle ou la mort!..”
[Long live the democratic, social, and universal republic or death]. No, no,
that’s wrong. “Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort!” [Liberty, equality,
brotherhood, or death]. That’s better, that’s better […]’
‘Wait, a bit more… I’ll sign again in French, you know: “de Kiriloff, gentilhomme russe et citoyen du monde” [de Kirillov, Russian gentleman and
citizen of the world]. Ha, ha, ha!’ He started roaring with laughter. ‘No, no,
no. Wait! I’ve found the best thing of all, eureka! “gentilhomme-séminariste
russe et citoyen du monde civilisé!” [Russian gentleman-seminarist and
citizen of the civilized world]’172

Resonant slogans and self-description couched in French have become
associated here not merely with detachment from native soil and with
revolutionary attempts to break down the existing social and moral order
but with human self-destruction.
In a pair of short articles published in his Diary of a Writer in 1876,
Dostoevskii mounted an even more explicit and characteristically acerbic
attack on Russian French-speakers, who, he opined, fell into two categories:
those who indisputably spoke French badly, and those (‘the whole of our
high society’) who thought they spoke it like Parisians but actually spoke
it no better than those in the first category. Although the topic had already
been exhaustively discussed in Russian literature, it deserved further
attention, for by kowtowing to the French language ‘Russian Parisians’
inevitably enslaved themselves to French ideas as well. They would never
think independently if they spoke a ‘stolen’ language, an ‘alien jargon’.173 It
was reasonable for Russians to learn French, Dostoevskii conceded in his
second article, in order to be able to read French or to converse with French
people when they came across them, but not for the purpose of conversing
among themselves. To live a higher life and think deeply, Russians needed
to speak their native language, but in fact, Dostoevskii argued, members of
the upper class only learnt it artificially, after their infancy, by re-educating
themselves. In fact, the expression ‘to learn a language’ (obuchit’sia iazyku)
was very apt, he mused, invoking the doctrine of Native-Soil Conservatism,
because the upper class had been ‘torn away from the people [narod], that is
172 Besy in Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 10, 473.
173 ‘Russkii ili frantsuzskii iazyk?’, in Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 23, 77–80.

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The French L anguage in Russia

the living tongue [iazyk] (the tongue is the people, in our language “tongue”
and “people” are synonyms)’.174 The damage done by the fact that noble
Russians did not grow up with their native language, Dostoevskii supposes,
would be undone only when they coalesced with the common people.175
Indeed, he goes further, linking language and thought and asserting Russian
superiority over other Europeans in a classic statement of the belief that
Russian culture transcends others in its universal understanding. Foreign
translations of Russian works of literature, such as works by Gogol’ or the
seventeenth-century Old Believer, Archpriest Avvakum, Dostoevskii argues,
would make no sense, because
the European spirit may not be so multivarious [mnogorazlichen] as ours
and is more introspectively peculiar [zamknutosvoeobrazen], even in spite
of the fact that it has undoubtedly expressed itself in a more finished and
distinct way than ours. […] at least one cannot but admit […] that the
spirit of our language is indisputably multivarious, rich, multifaceted,
and all-embracing, for in its as yet unstructured forms it has already
been able to transmit the jewels and treasures of European thought, and
we feel that they have been transmitted accurately and faithfully. And
this is the ‘material’ that we deprive our children of, and for what? To
make them miserable, for sure. We despise this material, we regard it as
a coarse, downtrodden [podkopytnym] language in which it is not decent
to express high-society feeling and high-society thought.176

Employing a bonne (French maid-servant) to look after a Russian infant,
then, is to corrupt and weaken it morally, just as masturbation, Dostoevskii
supposes, renders a child physically impotent. By speaking a dead, unnatural
language, the Russian will think thoughts that are ‘stunted, light-weight,
and cynical’ and his heart will be ‘depraved’. He might become a good ‘son
of the fatherland’. (Dostoevskii invokes a concept from the cosmopolitan
world of the Enlightenment.) He may be pleased with himself, especially
when making speeches which contain foreign ideas and phrases and which
are informed by ‘plus de noblesse que de sincérité’ (more nobility than
sincerity). And yet, in the last analysis this ‘salon charmer and purveyor of
174 ‘Na kakom iazyke govorit’ ottsu otechestva?’, ibidem, 80–81. The lexical identification of
language with tribe is not so exceptional as Dostoevskii seems to imply: see Burke, Languages
and Communities in Early Modern Europe, 161.
175 ‘Russkii ili frantsuzskii iazyk?’, in Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 23, 82.
176 Ibidem.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

565

bons mots [fine words]’ is likely to be ‘something without ground beneath
him, without soil or fundamental principle [nachalo], an international intellectual mediocrity [mezheumok] swept about by all the winds of Europe’.177
Francophonie is linked once more to dangerous cultural and political
currents in the opening chapters of The Brothers Karamazov, a novel written
in the period 1878–1880 but set – Dostoevskii tells readers in his prologue178
– thirteen years earlier, that is to say in the late 1860s. Petr Miusov, a cousin
of the first wife of Fedor, the depraved patriarch of the Karamazov family,
belongs to ‘quite a rich and aristocratic clan’ who owned land adjacent to
a renowned monastery in the provincial region in which the action of the
novel takes place.179 Miusov has lived in St Petersburg for a while and has
spent many years abroad, mainly in Paris, where he had long since settled.180
All his life he had been ‘a European’ and latterly he had been ‘a liberal of the
forties and fifties’.181 It is not to his credit, in Dostoevskii’s code, that Miusov
is litigious or that his motive for attending a gathering of the Karamazov
clan in the monastic retreat of Father Zosima, the saintly elder (starets) of
the monastery, may be to relieve his boredom.182 Most damningly, he is a
‘freethinker and atheist’, who may not have been to church for about thirty
years183 and who has flirted with liberal and even revolutionary politics. He
had come into contact ‘with many of the most liberal men of his time, both
in Russia and abroad’, had known Proudhon and Bakunin personally, and
was particularly fond of reminiscing about the Paris revolution of February
1848, hinting that he had almost taken part in the fighting on the barricades
himself.184 His affection for Paris and his enthusiasm for European politics
soon distract him from the responsibility as a guardian to a neglected child,
Dmitrii Karamazov, which he had taken on during a brief return to Russia
in the 1840s.185 Miusov, then, resembles Stepan Verkhovenskii in several
respects, the most important of which, from our point of view, is that he is a
further embodiment of the supposedly typical Francophone nobleman who
has lost touch with native soil.186 It is also notable that by the middle of the
177 Ibidem, 83–84.
178 Brat’ia Karamazovy, in Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 14, 6.
179 Ibidem, 7.
180 Ibidem, 16.
181 Ibidem, 10.
182 Ibidem, 31.
183 Ibidem, 31, 32.
184 Ibidem, 10.
185 Ibidem, 11.
186 Miusov too has been regarded as a thinly disguised Chaadaev: see Budgen, ‘Pushkin and
Chaadaev’, 36, n. 14.

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The French L anguage in Russia

nineteenth century, Dostoevskii again seems to be suggesting, the allure
of Paris was not so much social and cultural as intellectual and political.
Fedor Karamazov, having climbed socially as a result of his marriage
to Adelaida Miusova, also enjoys delivering himself of witty remarks in
French in the course of the clownish and offensive speeches that he cannot
resist making, to the embarrassment of his sons. His neighbour Miusov, he
gibes, ‘likes there to be plus de noblesse que de sincérité’ (more nobility
than sincerity) in his speech, whereas he himself likes there to be ‘plus de
sincérité que de noblesse’ (more sincerity than nobility).187 In Fedor’s case
too, recourse to French is associated with irreligion, but of a scandalous and
shocking kind. Musing blasphemously on whether there are hooks suspended
from the ceilings of hell, he quips that if there were to be justice in this world
then ‘Il faudrait les inventer’ (It would be necessary to invent them), thus
parodying the remark of Voltaire that Ivan Karamazov eventually quotes
accurately: ‘s’il n’existait pas Dieu il faudrait l’inventer’ (If God did not exist
it would be necessary to invent him).188
Going beyond Fedor Karamazov and even further towards the demonic
end of the moral axis that Dostoevskii creates in The Brothers Karamazov,
we find that the uneducated Smerdiakov, who turns out to be the parricide, is also tainted by the attraction to the French language that seems
to go with godlessness. As we learn towards the end of the novel from the
doctor who treats him in hospital after his epileptic fit, Smerdiakov now
spends all his time learning French words, using an exercise-book which he
keeps under his pillow and in which someone has written out the words for
him in Russian letters.189 Asked later by Ivan why he has been doing this,
Smerdiakov says he is preparing himself in case one day he should visit
‘happy parts of Europe’.190 Finally, the devilish apparition who converses
with Ivan after his last meeting with Smerdiakov, in the course of which
Ivan’s moral responsibility for the murder that Smerdiakov has committed
is conclusively borne in upon him, is a Francophone Russian gentleman
who has fallen on hard times now that serfdom has been abolished but who
still possesses sufficient social capital to be an effective sponger. From the
187 Brat’ia Karamazovy, in Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 14, 82; see also 122, 124. The recurrence of and
play with the phrase ‘plus de noblesse que de sincérité’ points to a link between Dostoevskii’s
polemical thoughts in his above-mentioned articles in The Diary of a Writer and his fictional
treatment of the subject of francophonie in The Brothers Karamazov.
188 Ibidem, 23, 214.
189 Brat’ia Karamazovy, vol. 15, 48. We are grateful to Elena Grechanaia for drawing our attention
to this point.
190 Brat’ia Karamazovy, in Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 14, 53–54.

Perceptions of bilingualism in the cl assical Russian novel

567

beginning to the end of Ivan’s nightmare, this seedy Satan, ‘“qui frisait la
cinquantaine” [who was bordering on fifty], as the French say’, punctuates
his flippant dissection of Ivan’s soul with French banalities and pleasantries:
‘c’est noble, c’est charmant’ (that’s noble, charming), ‘c’est chevaleresque’
(that’s chivalrous), ‘C’est du nouveau, n’est-ce pas?’ (That’s new, isn’t it?),
‘Quelle idée!’ (What an idea!), ‘Ah, mais c’est bête enfin!’ (Oh, that’s stupid !),
and ‘Monsieur, sait-il le temps qu’il fait ? C’est à ne pas mettre un chien
dehors…’ (Do you know what the weather’s like? One wouldn’t put a dog out
in it).191 For good measure, the devil delivers himself of frivolous remarks
that echo other characters’ interest in Cartesian or Voltairean speculation
(‘Je pense donc je suis’ (I think therefore I am) and ‘Le diable n’existe point’
(The devil doesn’t exist), he quips).192 He even admits to delight in Catholic
condonation of carnal sin, relating the story of a pretty Norman girl whom
he has heard as she confesses her latest lapse with the penitent words ‘“Ça lui
fait tant de plaisir et à moi si peu de peine!”’ (It gives him so much pleasure
and causes me so little trouble) – and with whom her aged Jesuit confessor
has promptly made his own assignation!193
Nor has the elder Zosima, who came from a landowning family and
was educated in the Cadet Corps in St Petersburg, been unaffected by the
imported French way of life. We are told that Zosima is about sixty-five
at the time when The Brothers Karamazov is set, so we may deduce that
the misspent youth that he recalls in his later years was lived in the 1820s,
when he was a drunken, debauched army officer.194 More precisely, it was
in 1826 that Zosima behaved in a way that he came to consider particularly
shameful. He severely struck his batman and ridiculed an opinion someone
had expressed about ‘an important event of that time’, which is obviously
the Decembrist Revolt, thus provoking a duel.195 French-speaking is an
aspect of this deluded worldly phase of Zosima’s life, as it is described in his
recollections, which his novice, Alesha Karamazov, jots down after his death:
I spent a long time, almost eight years, in St Petersburg, in the Cadet
Corps, and with my new education stifled a great many of my childhood
impressions, although I didn’t forget anything. In return, I picked up so
many new habits and even opinions that I was transformed into an almost
191
192
193
194
195

Ibidem, 70, 73, 75, 84.
Ibidem, 77, 76.
Ibidem, 81.
Ibidem, 28, 268.
Ibidem, 269–270.

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savage creature, cruel, and absurd. I acquired a veneer of politeness and
society manners along with the French language, but all of us, myself
included, regarded the common soldiers who served us in the Cadet
Corps as just animals.196

However, in Zosima’s case, the encounter with foreign culture is life-enhancing, in that it takes him to the moral depths which many of those characters
in Dostoevskii’s novels who are most capable of salvation have to plumb
before redemption can begin. The decision to cast off a false persona, with
all the values and behaviour that signified it, including French-speaking,
is a crucial moment in Zosima’s journey towards spiritual wisdom.
Understanding of the social world in which Zosima passed his early
adult years, with its French values and manners and the practice of Frenchspeaking, gives us deeper insight into Dostoevskii’s utopian prescription
for a native solution to the profound crisis in which Russia found itself in
the 1870s, as the revolutionary movement gathered pace. In Book 5 of The
Brothers Karamazov, entitled ‘Pro and contra’, Ivan Karamazov had railed
against injustice in God’s world and made a powerful case, in his ‘Legend
of the Grand Inquisitor’, for an authoritarian state that would rule over a
compliant populace by reliably providing for their material needs.197 In
Book 6, ‘The Russian Monk’, Dostoevskii counters Ivan’s arguments, not
through continuation of rational disputation but through presentation
of a seemingly random collection of Zosima’s teachings about the power
of Christian love. Zosima envisages a true brotherhood in which each
individual accepts personal responsibility for collective happiness, thereby
laying the foundation for an age of universal harmony.198 Brotherhood thus
conceived (bratstvo), as Dostoevskii had argued in his Winter Notes, was
far removed from the brotherhood ( fraternité) advocated by the (mainly
French) utopian socialists of his time, who were essentially concerned,
Dostoevskii insisted, with egoistic rights.199 Equally, it was diametrically
opposed to the imported ‘society’ of the privileged elite in which Zosima
had revelled in his youth, for high society too – as Ivan Turgenev, Tolstoi,
and other Russian writers agreed – was insincere, egoistic, superficial, cold,
hypocritical, and vain.

196
197
198
199

Ibidem, 268.
For Ivan’s ‘Rebellion’ and ‘Grand Inquisitor’, see ibidem, 215–241.
Ibidem, 257–294.
Zimnie zametki o letnikh vpechatleniiakh, in Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 5, 78–81.

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569

Even the ambiguity of the Russian epithet svetskii, finally, indicated the
incompatibility of high society with Dostoevskii’s Christian – and essentially
Slavophile – vision of an ideal community. The Russian word svet (world)
came in the eighteenth century to acquire the same secondary meaning as
the French word monde, that is to say ‘society’ in the sense of the high social
stratum or the refined and fashionable milieu (le grand monde and le beau
monde respectively, terms we have used in this book). The way of life of this
society may be described in Russian as svetskii. At the same time, svetskii
may mean ‘worldly’ in the sense of ‘temporal’, ‘lay’, or ‘secular’; that is to
say, it is an antonym of tserkovnyi (ecclesiastical) or dukhovnyi (spiritual).
The consequent fusion of the conception of the high social sphere with the
secular realm and the apparent exclusion of Russian spirituality from refined
society help to explain the objections that Russian cultural nationalists
of Orthodox persuasion, such as Dostoevskii, raise about the westernized
mentality and the type of social life embraced by the Russian nobility
from the eighteenth century. Only when the typical ways of Europeanized
society, including its infatuation with a foreign language, were renounced,
so they believed, could Russians begin to live the apolitical life of the spirit
to which they were best suited.
*
In sum, treatment of Franco-Russian bilingualism in the classical Russian novel fulfils several purposes. Although the works of fiction we have
examined cannot be regarded as entirely reliable sociolinguistic accounts
of Russian life during the ages of Nicholas I and Alexander II, the very
numerous instances of French words, expressions, and passages in the
speech and letters of Turgenev’s, Tolstoi’s, and Dostoevskii’s characters
enhance the social realism of their prose fiction. All these writers also use
language practice as a means of characterization and moral evaluation. At
the broadest level, their perceptions of the functions and effects of the use
of French by the Russian nobility enrich the discussion of national destiny
to which their works made such an important contribution. Writing in the
post-Crimean age, when national pride had been wounded by military
defeat and when the government was belatedly considering and implementing social, economic, judicial, and other reforms, these novelists draw on
hackneyed views of French character (alleged superficiality, showiness,
insincerity, hypocrisy, pretence, deceitfulness) in order to express reservations about the enduring influence of French language and culture in their
nation. They continue the century-old debate about Russia’s relationship to

570 

The French L anguage in Russia

Europe, expressing anxiety about the fragmentation of a supposedly organic
national community at a time of modernization. In the last analysis, they
also decisively overcome their nation’s cultural dependency by bringing
Russian literature into full bloom. In the process, they render obsolete any
concern about the imitativeness of Russian culture. Indeed, two of them,
Tolstoi and Dostoevskii, attribute to Russians an exceptional receptivity to
other cultures, which is itself a sign of originality, they suppose, and which
might enable Russia – so Dostoevskii famously argued in 1880 – to bring
into being a new universal civilization.200

200 The locus classicus of this argument is Dostoevskii’s speech of 1880 during the festivities
celebrating the unveiling of a statue to Pushkin in Moscow: see ‘Pushkin’, in Dostoevskii, PSS,
vol. 26, 136–149.

Conclusion
The functions of French in imperial Russia
We have sought in this book to illustrate the multiple functions of the French
language in Russia more thoroughly than we think has previously been
done in a single work. Broadly speaking, French – that is, the standardized
variety of the French elite – was an instrument which helped to bring Russia
much closer to Europe.1 It was a lingua franca through which Russians could
engage in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the world beyond
the borders of their empire. Mastery of it helped them to absorb Europe’s
knowledge, enjoy its artistic culture, follow its fashions, partake of its material comforts, and become acquainted with its intellectual achievements.
A collection of French books was a staple element in a well-stocked noble
library. It may have been particularly convenient for Russians sometimes
to use French when discussing certain subjects, such as medicine, political
affairs, and some cultural matters, and not only when foreigners who had no
Russian were present. This was because texts that underpinned knowledge
in many fields, from architecture to fashion, were written in French, or had
been translated into French, which thus served as a vehicular language,
and because French provided the lexicon with which to pursue the subject,
at least until expertise in it had been acquired in Russia. French was also
becoming the predominant diplomatic language in eighteenth-century
Europe. Knowledge of it thus furthered the grand strategic aim of Russia’s
eighteenth-century sovereigns to enter the European geopolitical arena and,
indeed, to assert their new power on the international stage. French was
a court language too: courtiers’ command of it added lustre to the image
of Russia abroad, for the prestige of a great power was bound up with the
impression made on foreign visitors by life at its court. It was a royal language,
inasmuch as it was associated with the royal family. It was an imperial
language as well, insofar as it served as a lingua franca among ethnically
diverse elements of Russia’s social, military, and civilian administrative elite.
For the nobility in particular, French had numerous functions. On a relatively trivial level, it could be used as a secret language, in which speakers might
1 Or perhaps we should say ‘to bring it much closer to Europe again’, for the Eastern Slavs
may have had more fruitful contact with the rest of Europe in the Middle Ages, when Kiev was
their capital, than in the early modern period that followed the centuries of Tatar domination
in the Russian lands and the Renaissance in the West.

572 

The French L anguage in Russia

discuss plans, opinions, and disputes without fear of being understood by
their domestic servants or other social inferiors. Far more importantly, it was a
vehicle for the polite conversation that distinguished members of the emerging
beau monde from those whom the elite did not consider worthy to belong to
that world. It thus functioned in high society – as it did elsewhere in Europe
at that time – as a prestige language which supported nobles’ conception of
themselves as self-respecting members of a refined international corporation.
Command of it was a sign of social and cultural status, like a coat of arms, a
library, a collection of paintings or objets d’art, the ability to dance, ride, and
mingle with foreign peers, to be at ease in ‘good’ society – in short, an integral
part of the social identity of members of the upper strata of the Russian nobility.
To know French was therefore to possess weighty cultural capital. Hence the
great attention devoted to the acquisition of it in the education of the children
of the highest and most ambitious noble families. After all, if a language is
seen as a commodity, then competence in it, Einar Haugen has observed, is
‘a skill with a market value that determines who will acquire it. The price of
a language is the effort required to learn it’ (or to have one’s children learn it,
we should add), ‘and its value is the benefits its use will bring to the learner.’2
Delving more deeply into the function of French in Russian high society,
we can easily see that it was a language of politeness, richly stocked with
compliments and other respectful formulae for every social occasion
and contingency. Use of it was indicative of the change in social and personal relations, at least among the upper social strata, which occurred in
eighteenth-century Russia as connections with western courts, aristocracies,
and cultural and intellectual milieus multiplied. French-speaking was
instrumental in the development of a new type of relationship between
men and women, as Russians assimilated norms of gallant behavior, and
learned, as Zhivov put it, how to speak about love. However, French was also
a language of wit, the vehicle for conversation in which members of the social
elite expected to be entertained, for it was one of the imperatives of noble
sociability that one should never be dull. This function, we contend, produced
an undertow that ran in the opposite direction to the surface current of
politesse with which French was associated. That is to say, besides being
a language of civility, French could also serve as a language of disparagement or even malice. The witticisms and sententious remarks in French
with which such documents as the ‘memoirs’ of Fedor Rostopchin and the
diaries of Valuev are strewn are redolent of a knowing and cynical world in
2 Haugen, ‘Language Fragmentation in Scandinavia’, 114; paraphrased by Romaine, Bilingualism, 322.

Conclusion

573

which solidarity seems to derive not so much from human empathy as from
common adherence to codes of dress, manners, conduct, and language use.
It therefore seems quite natural that the subject of Russian francophonie
would feature conspicuously in the case that was eventually mounted
against the supposedly cold, soulless, frivolous, indeed licentious world of
high society by cultural nationalists such as the Slavophiles and novelists
such as Tolstoi and Dostoevskii when, in the mid-nineteenth century, a
new cultural climate – to which we shall return shortly – began to prevail.
French also served many purposes as a written language in Russia. Some
of these purposes too were associated specifically with noble culture. French
was a language of noble correspondence, which might be regarded as an
extension of the social life that was conducted verbally in the drawing-room,
the ball-room, the salon, and even the Masonic lodge. Carefully observing
epistolary etiquette acquired through close study of this literary form, nobles
used letters written in French to maintain family relationships and friendship with their peers, which was highly prized. Correspondence in French
between parents and children, moreover, could reinforce the expected
norms of social behaviour and help to cultivate a certain aesthetic taste, a
sense of bon ton. The choice of an elite linguistic code, in correspondence as
in conversation, fostered the noble’s sense of exclusiveness and refinement.
French was also a vehicle for various types of amateur writing (the keeping
of diaries, the recording of journeys undertaken, the compilation of albums,
and so forth) which were valued as evidence of noble accomplishment and
which provided material for discussion in noble social circles. In this function, French was widely used by women as a form of self-expression that was
considered socially acceptable. It was often chosen for occasional poetry too
and for treatises introducing subjects, ranging from music to mineralogy, that
were relatively unknown to a Russian readership. It is significant, though,
that French did not really prosper in Russia as a medium for literature
of a more serious and professional kind, especially for the engaged prose
fiction in which classical writers reflected with unsurpassed profundity
and humanity on moral, psychological, social, and historical questions.
The community that produced that kind of literature, for publication, was
interested not so much in advertising its social status, enlivening social
life, or even spreading knowledge as in building a corpus that would help to
identify Russia as a nation and implicitly assert Russia’s cultural autonomy.
As a written language in Russia, French also served important purposes
besides those that are plainly associated with the cultivation and preservation
of noble sociability and exclusivity. It had propagandistic and polemical functions, serving as a medium through which Russians could seek to improve the

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The French L anguage in Russia

image of the empire in other European countries, or even transform the way
in which Russia was perceived abroad. For example, Francophone Russians or
their foreign associates might defend the government’s policies or advertise
Russians’ cultural creativity, by such means as translation of the emerging
literature in the vernacular. They might also challenge negative representations
of Russia and its people. Sometimes sovereigns themselves encouraged such
initiatives, as did Elizabeth, or even contributed to them personally, as did
Catherine II. In other instances, they persuaded willing foreigners (Voltaire
was the most notable) to undertake such tasks. The ability to reach a foreign
readership depended partly on the establishment of extended networks with
the European Francophone press and European publishers, a process which
began as early as the age of Peter the Great and in which Francophone subjects
of the Russian Empire played an important role. From the mid-eighteenth
century, a Francophone press existed in Russia too, if not continuously. This
press served various purposes at one time or another, promoting government
policy, catering for a Francophone Russian readership hungry for information
about the western world, or symbolically indicating the status of St Petersburg
as a European capital. For the nineteenth-century literary elite and intelligentsia, ‘the language of Europe’ had yet another function: it was sometimes
used – by Chaadaev and Tiutchev, for instance – as a means with which to
engage in pan-European speculation on broad historical or geopolitical trends.
When the Russian literary and intellectual community ceased to support the
imperial state, moreover, French could just as well be used – as it was by Nikolai
Turgenev and Herzen – to express oppositional opinions and to publicize
them in Europe, thus carrying internal debate into the international arena.
Having dwelt on the multiple functions of French in eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Russia, we should also strongly emphasize the limits
of its use. While French-speaking undoubtedly did percolate down through
layers of the noble estate below the aristocracy with which it was primarily
associated, it was nowhere near universal in the Russian nobility broadly
defined, pace some scholars who have commented on the subject. A large
number of men and women who could be classified as belonging to the
nobility lacked the means to acquire French, or at least to attain a level of
proficiency in it that would hold them in good stead in society. Nor did French
fulfil all functions even in the highest strata, in which users had the best
command of it and in which it was most widely used. For example, etiquette
did not permit the use of French to sovereigns in all circumstances or its
invariable use with superiors or inferiors in the bureaucratic hierarchy. It
was not always the language used in correspondence between Francophone
nobles. Noble men and women who did conduct their correspondence in

Conclusion

575

French did not all write to one another in French all of the time, or even keep
to French throughout a particular letter. Furthermore, as extant correspondence amply demonstrates, the practice of code-switching was widespread,
despite purists’ objections to it and the ridicule with which it was treated
in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century drama. Again, French was of
no use when a nobleman was giving orders to peasant labourers or peasant
soldiers, in other words when he was performing roles – as gentleman farmer
and army officer – that were fundamental to his conception of himself. Nor
could it be used by noblewomen (who, it is often supposed, were peculiarly
prone to express themselves in French) when they gave instructions to their
domestic servants. Nor, finally, was it a language of worship in the Orthodox
Church, which had a presence on most estates where there was a community
of Russian peasants and to which many nobles remained deeply attached.
In general, then, we resist the temptation to produce a schematic summary
of language use among the Russian nobility as a whole or among those
elements of that class who undoubtedly did have French, pleasing as such
schemas might be.3 We are reluctant to conclude, for example, that there
were clear-cut, long-lasting, and more or less inflexible rules that governed
subjects’ choice of language when they addressed the sovereign or men’s
and women’s preference for French or Russian when they spoke or wrote
to one another. After all, choice so often depended on numerous variables,
such as relative linguistic competence, individuals’ cultural disposition, or
the current state of relations between speaker or writer and addressee, not
to mention other well-known drivers of language choice, such as situation,
subject-matter, or the purpose of communication. Nor should it be forgotten,
as we consider the broad generalizations which are sometimes made about
language practice in imperial Russia, that languages are used in social,
political, and cultural contexts and that societies, polities, and cultures
are dynamic. Patterns of usage, far from being static, are in constant flux.

The changing climate in which French was used
Recalling the broad historical and cultural context in which we have located
our study of Russian francophonie, we should pick out three factors, above all
3 For an example of such a schematic account, see Figes, who – basing himself on Lotman
– writes that in the eighteenth century ‘the use of French and Russian had demarcated two
entirely separate spheres: French the sphere of thought and sentiment, Russian the sphere of
daily life’ (Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 103).

576 

The French L anguage in Russia

others, which prevented French, in spite of its importance in the functions
we have just described, from gaining quite the dominance in the linguistic
market-place and the hold on Russian cultural life that is sometimes attributed to it. These factors help also to explain the gradual fall in the stock
of French vis-à-vis Russian in the long term.
The first of these factors was the rise of national consciousness that
accompanied empire-building, especially in the reign of Catherine II.
National pride and self-confidence were fuelled by military success and,
more generally, by the emergence of Russia as a major European power,
which Karamzin celebrates in his Letters of a Russian Traveller and which
subsequently inspired his History of the Russian State. They were particularly
pronounced in the 1780s, after Russia’s victory in the first of Catherine’s
Russo-Turkish Wars and the annexation of the Crimea. They found cultural
expression in various ways, especially – to take those things that relate to
linguistic matters – in quickening interest in the codification of Russian
and in a purism which prompted opposition to lexical borrowing from
French and to the mixing of French and Russian. It is no coincidence
that it was in this decade that the Russian Academy was founded, new
policies were introduced in the Academy of Sciences, and reforms were
undertaken in educational institutions attended by the nobility, all of
which had the effect of promoting the Russian language just as French
was advancing in aristocratic society. These developments reflected the
spread of European ideas to which Betskoi had already been attracted in
the 1760s – ideas in the fields of pedagogy and psychology which postulated
a need to educate children in their native language rather than a foreign
one. They also facilitated assertion of the autonomy of Russian statehood
and cultural tradition and recognition of Russian as a language of imperial
administration. This perception of cultural and linguistic independence was
important at a time when the Russian state was repositioning itself among
the European empires. In this respect, the thrust of policy in the reign of
Catherine anticipated the ideas on which thinking about language would
be based in the early nineteenth century. We cannot rule out the possibility,
finally, that the example of the Habsburg monarchy, where reforms aimed at
strengthening the position of German in the administration and education
were being implemented, 4 played a part in shaping the way in which the
rising Russian national consciousness found expression in the linguistic
and cultural domains.
4 On the position of German in the Habsburg lands, see Khavanova, ‘Multilingualism versus
Proficiency in the German Language’, and Horbec and Matasović, ‘Voices in a Country Divided’.

Conclusion

577

The second of the contextual factors we have borne in mind was the
ascendancy, across Europe and over the period in question, of a nationalistic
outlook which prized the culture of a specific ethnic group over a more
cosmopolitan view of the world which sought rational and universally
applicable truths and solutions to problems. Although the rise of modern
Russian national consciousness began in the mid-eighteenth century, as
Rogger showed long ago and as we have just reiterated, it is perhaps safe to
agree with Zhivov that the ‘ideology of enlightened absolutism’, which was
regnant in the second half of the eighteenth century, ‘was fundamentally
universalist and was concerned with states, not nations’.5 By the turn of the
century, though, the writings of Herder and Hamann and Fichte’s Addresses
to the German Nation (and, in Russia, the writings of Shishkov and other
conservative thinkers of the age of Alexander I) had advanced a conception
of languages as manifestations of the unique character of peoples who
had futurity. Fumaroli, lamenting the decline of French as the ‘universal’
language exalted by Rivarol, commented on this development: the French
Revolution ‘had awakened the “genius” of nations, rousing in each the jealous
love of its own language’.6 Much of the debate about language use that we
have traced in this book takes place against the background of this rise of
a cultural form of nationalism. Proponents of this type of nationalism, as
Anthony Smith, for example, has defined it, leaned towards the view that a
language expressed the distinctive essence of the ethnos with which it was
most closely associated. As cultural nationalism gained momentum, spurred
on by Romantic topoi about the superiority of feeling, naturalness, and
sincerity as against reason, artifice, and pretence, so a negative view of the
westernized social world as cold, cynical, duplicitous, and hypocritical came
into sharp focus, affecting attitudes towards the use of the French language
and the denizens of the monde where it was spoken. The Russian writers
and intellectuals who expressed such views, moreover, often discarded the
belief that the nobility was the fine fleur of a nation, preferring to think that
it was the common people who represented a nation’s true spirit.
The third factor that affected attitudes towards language use was the
social and political development at which we have just hinted, namely the
appearance in nineteenth-century Russia of a public sphere populated
by educated individuals – writers, critics, scholars, journalists, editors,
publishers, and so on – with an independent cast of mind. This literary
community and intelligentsia could no longer be relied upon to support the
5
6

Zhivov, Language and Culture, 371.
Fumaroli, When the World spoke French, xxv–xxvi.

578 

The French L anguage in Russia

sovereign and the imperial project as enthusiastically as many eighteenthcentury nobles had done. In any case, numerous members of it (Belinskii and
Chernyshevskii, for example) were not nobles, or at any rate not high-ranking
or wealthy nobles (Dostoevskii comes to mind), or if they were of noble origin
then they distanced themselves from the values of the class in which they
originated (as did Panaev and Lev Tolstoi). Whereas the eighteenth-century
nobility had played the leading role in building and administering the
empire and in return enjoyed social precedence, the nineteenth-century
literary community and intelligentsia assumed an air of moral authority
and staked a claim to leadership in the nation-building enterprise. At the
risk of oversimplification, we might say that this community revalued the
assets typically prized by the nobility, such as wealth, rank in the state
hierarchy, reputation in society, and royal approval, often setting greater
store by simplicity, showing indifference to prosperity, and sometimes
even relishing official disfavour. The diminishing prestige of knowledge
of French in Russian cultural life from the mid-nineteenth century can
be associated with this social change. Mastery of French had served the
interests of the loyal high nobility, who enjoyed their golden age in the
reigns of Catherine II and Alexander I. In literary and intellectual circles,
in which men and women from the middling or lower strata of the nobility
and from non-noble backgrounds were prominent by the mid-nineteenth
century, the attitude towards French-speaking was different. Command of
French (which in any case many members of the literary and intellectual
community did not have, at least to the level required for conversation in
high society) was no longer the valued attribute it had once been; indeed,
public display of this attainment could be stigmatized.
The contextual factors we have just reiterated affected the perceptions
of language use in imperial Russia that have come down to us through
the beguiling writings of authors of the nineteenth-century golden age of
Russian literature. It is as well to bear these factors in mind as we attempt,
finally, to account for the discrepancy between our findings about actual
language use, on the one hand, and some of the assertions that have often
been made about it, on the other.

Cultural borrowing and language use in grand narratives about
Russian culture
The subject of cultural borrowing and its implications and effects had a
central place in the enormous corpus of pre-revolutionary Russian literature

Conclusion

579

and thought. Since the adoption of a foreign language is one of the most
demonstrative manifestations of cultural borrowing, the use of French by
the Russian nobility naturally crops up repeatedly in attempts to interpret
Russia’s past and in speculation about its future. As Lamarche Marrese has
observed, it was
the use of language – both native and foreign – that inspired educated
Russians and foreign observers most profoundly to ponder the dilemma
of Russian “exceptionalism” in regard to cultural borrowing and which
gradually emerged as the focus of the debate over Russian national
identity.7

How exactly, though, have the main assumptions about language use, the
significance of language choice, and linguistic competence that we have
encountered been woven into the influential grand narratives about Russian
history and culture to which we have also referred? And to what extent
do the findings we have presented about actual language use bear out the
perceptions that emerge from the memoirs, polemics, and literary writings
we have examined, perceptions which have been endorsed by some of the
twentieth- and twenty-first-century scholarship on Russian cultural history?
One narrative, which dates back to the period in the mid-eighteenth
century when French was just beginning to take hold among the Russian
aristocracy, concerns the degree to which eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury Russian culture was imitative. The acquisition of foreign languages
by Russians and examples of their verbal and written facility in them are
repeatedly invoked, by foreigners and Russians alike, as evidence of the rapid
assimilation of Russia into ‘Europe’ and thus of the epically transformative
effect of the reign of Peter the Great. At the same time, this achievement
could be construed in a negative way, as a sign that Russians merely had
a talent for mimicry. This inference was underlined by persistent use of
the topos of apes and parrots. The topos helped foreigners to continue the
critical western discourse about the Russian ‘other’, which had begun in
Muscovite times, by disparaging Russians as superficial and unoriginal.
For Russians themselves, the topos must have been particularly offensive
in an age of empire-building, when martial prowess seemed to deserve
recognition. It caused resentment at cultural subservience (which is already
felt in Fonvizin’s writings) or self-doubt (which was eventually expressed
most famously, in French, by Chaadaev).
7

Lamarche Marrese, ‘“The Poetics of Everyday Behavior” Revisited’, 716.

580 

The French L anguage in Russia

Another important narrative in which discussion of cultural borrowing
by the Russian social elite features prominently is constructed around the
belief that Russia is in fact exceptional, indeed unique. By the mid-nineteenth
century, towards the end of the period on which we have concentrated,
this ‘exceptionalist’ thesis had been made to yield a highly positive message. Russian civilization, it was argued, had bases – the Orthodox faith,
the brotherly instincts or the communitarian impulses of its people, for
example – which would enable Russians to build a utopia free of the flaws
of the capitalistic, contractual societies inhabited by the egocentric and materialistic peoples of Western Europe. When marshalled by Dostoevskii, the
exceptionalist argument had a millenarian dimension. Far from being apes
or parrots, Russians were the one true Christian people; they would reunite
the Christian world, absorbing the best of other cultures and transcending
them in a new phase of human civilization. When applied to the heyday of
noble francophonie in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
though, the exceptionalist argument has frequently been put forward in
a regretful tone. The unusual degree and intensity of cultural borrowing,
exemplified by foreign-language use, to which the Russian noble class
had been exposed is presumed to have had peculiarly detrimental effects,
both on the nobility as a caste and on nobles (especially noblemen, rather
than noblewomen) as individuals. Exposure to Western European culture
supposedly created the so-called ‘superfluous men’ portrayed in Russian
literature from the 1820s to the 1860s, that is to say enervated, alienated
men living without a moral compass. No doubt, such individuals were to be
found in reality. Chaadaev himself was thought to be a model for this literary
type. However, as a generalization about the Russian nobility throughout
the period with which we are dealing, the ‘alienation’ thesis does not seem
tenable. We cannot safely say that a significant proportion of people in the
higher echelons of the nobility that were most affected by foreign culture
were paralyzed by anomie. As far as the undoubted disillusionment of many
public-spirited, civic-minded, conscious-stricken nobles (and non-nobles)
of the age of Nicholas I was concerned, we might just as well ascribe it to
political oppression as to cultural borrowing.
According to another strand in the ‘exceptionalist’ narrative, cultural
borrowing split the Russian nation into two parts, namely a Europeanized
elite, a ‘privileged and patented handful’ of a hundred thousand, on the one
hand, and a mass of fifty million ‘simple Russians’, on the other.8 Proponents
8 The words quoted are from Zimnie zametki o letnikh vpechatleniiakh, in Dostoevskii, PSS,
vol. 5, 51.

Conclusion

581

of this ‘two-nation’ thesis have viewed the rapid assimilation of western
culture in eighteenth-century Russia as a kind of cultural colonization and
have blamed it for the fracture that they observe, as well as for the supposed
malaise of the nineteenth-century elite. However, one may wonder – if it
is accepted that the nation was indeed divided – to what extent cultural
borrowing and foreign-language use by the nobility were the causes of the
gulf that separated Russian nobles from peasants. We have suggested that
other social, economic, or cultural factors, such as the existence of the
Table of Ranks and, above all, the survival of serfdom in Russia up until
1861, might just as plausibly be adduced to explain both the mentality of
the social elite and its distance from the peasantry in the imperial period.9
We have also tried to read statements made by Russian writers who have
considered noble French-speaking symptomatic of the supposed fracture
in the nation in the light of our understanding of the particular viewpoint
to which the writer in question wished to lead his readers in a given work.
Sometimes the writer’s point of view could be vindicated by some form
of the ‘two-nation’ argument. The little-known Fircks provides the most
opportunistic example.
In any case, we believe that claims about the exceptional nature and
consequences of westernization and cultural borrowing in imperial Russia
can only be pushed so far, although we do acknowledge that every national
case is of course different. With regard to language use, it should be emphasized that the adoption of a code other than the vernacular used by the
majority of a population has been a very widespread means of cultural and
social differentiation. Norbert Elias refers to this phenomenon in his classic
study of the refinement of manners in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Western Europe, in which he contrasts a nobility that was predominantly
French-speaking and civilized on the French model with an intelligentsia of
largely non-noble origin that used a vernacular.10 Stephen Barbour makes a
similar point in the more recent volume he has co-edited on language and
nationalism: in much of Europe, ‘traditional elites who, if highly educated,
would have been schooled in Latin and Greek, or in French, contrasted with
a new intelligentsia who were versed in the local language’.11 As for Russia,
the country was not exceptional, as Lieven notes in his comparative study
9 The argument that the nation was destructively divided by eighteenth-century cultural
borrowing presupposes the existence in pre-Petrine Muscovy of an organic community of the
sort postulated by the Slavophiles, that is to say a community with a stronger sense of social
cohesion than the post-Petrine imperial state. This presupposition seems utopian.
10 Elias, The Civilizing Process, 8–9.
11 Barbour, ‘Language, Nationalism, Europe’, 15.

582 

The French L anguage in Russia

of several European aristocracies, in having aristocrats who spoke French as
their first language and some of whom even regarded their native culture and
tongue as ‘provincial and plebeian’.12 Indeed, French, as a leading student of
the history of that language has observed, ‘became the badge of identity of
the aristocracies of Europe’.13 Nor is there anything unusual about the sort
of debate to which the use of French in Russia gave rise. Anxiety about the
effect of French cultural and linguistic influence and satirical treatment
of the use of the French language in preference to a vernacular were commonplace in seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century European
literature, as we pointed out in our examination of Russian comic drama.14
It suited proponents of the ‘two-nation’ thesis not only to create the
impression that the use of French by those who were proficient in it was
pervasive but also that Francophone nobles would not or could not deploy
Russian. The incongruence between assertions about nobles’ ignorance of
Russian and the actual language use to which primary documentary sources
attest, like several other aspects of the Russian language situation to which
we have drawn attention, has been well explained by Lamarche Marrese:
observations on the inability of kinfolk and acquaintances to speak fluent Russian and lamentations about the quality of instruction in their
native language became a common trope. Indeed such remarks were so
common – particularly when read against the backdrop of the vast body
of correspondence that nobles of both sexes composed in Russian – it is
tempting to conclude that discussions of language in memoir literature
were less a description of the real state of affairs than a means of calling
attention to the 18th century as an aberration in Russian history and the
problematic status of cultural borrowing.15

Our own evidence, from private noble correspondence to the entire corpus
of literature published in Russian in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
by Francophone nobles from Sumarokov and Fonvizin, through Karamzin,
to Pushkin, Tiutchev, Ivan Turgenev, and Lev Tolstoi, also indicates that suggestions that nobles widely spurned the Russian language or had somehow
12 Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, 2.
13 Lodge, French, 184.
14 It is worth repeating here that the exceptionalist argument, whatever its other merits or
defects, is in practice impossible to substantiate, because it rests on an assumption of omniscience
about societies in other places and times, in all of which the sort of phenomena observed in
Russia must – if Russia truly was exceptional – have been absent.
15 Lamarche Marrese, ‘“The Poetics of Everyday Behavior” Revisited’, 719.

Conclusion

583

forgotten it should be taken with a large grain of salt. Even the tales we
read in some memoirs about the petty punishments inflicted on noble
girls for lapsing into Russian16 are telling in this regard. While they suggest
a continuing determination on the part of mid-nineteenth-century noble
families and the tutors to whom they entrusted their offspring to instil a
good knowledge of French in young noblewomen, they by no means prove
that noble girls were losing the capacity to use Russian. On the contrary,
the tales would seem to suggest that noble maidens were all too liable to
slip back into the language they had learned in infancy. What memoirists’
statements about ignorance of Russian may reflect, though, is a belief that
a noble could only be said to be accomplished in a language when he or she
was able to employ it in high society. The functional competence required
to tell a serf to plough a field or a maid-servant to put on the samovar may
have seemed to be of little worth. Or, to put it another way, the value of the
less polished language in the repertoire of speakers whose bilingualism
was asymmetrical may have been low.
There is one further thread in the critical narrative about Russian francophonie to which objections may be made. Proponents of the arguments
we have identified about the exceptional nature of Russian culture, the
alienation of the Europeanized Russian nobility, and the rift brought about
in the Russian nation by cultural borrowing from the West seem implicitly
to accept an essentialist view of a language as a means of giving expression
to the consciousness and spirit of a particular ethnos. They therefore make
no allowance for the possibility that individuals may have multiple or
hybrid identities, let alone that they may reconcile an outward-looking
cosmopolitanism and plurilingualism with a strong sense of their own
nationality, as Tolstoi’s Pierre Bezukhov is able to do.
Once again, Dostoevskii’s writings can be used to exemplify an extreme
form of one of the arguments put forward by cultural nationalists. In his early
work, Dostoevskii likened people of cosmopolitan outlook to worn coins on
which it was no longer possible to detect any image or inscription that would
enable one to identify them.17 Or again, such people resembled homunculi,
artificial creatures produced by some physician in a laboratory.18 In later
work, Dostoevskii raised his argument about the threat posed to national
16 See, e.g., Lelong, ‘Vospominaniia A.K. Lelong’, 393, cited by Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 56; Figner,
Zapechatlennyi trud, vol. 1, 77–78.
17 See ‘Knizhnost’ i gramotnost’’ in Dostoevskii, PSS, vol. 19, 29, and ‘Dva lageria teoretikov’,
ibidem, vol. 20, 6; see also vol. 19, 149.
18 Zimnie zametki o letnikh vpechatleniiakh, ibidem, vol. 5, 59.

584 

The French L anguage in Russia

identity by cultural borrowing to an existential level. Characters such as
Kirillov and Stavrogin in The Devils, from whom a sense of nationality has
drained away and who express themselves mechanically and with difficulty
in Russian, of which they have no instinctual understanding, end their days
by committing suicide.
Like other strands in the narrative about division in the Russian nation,
the perception of bilingualism and biculturalism as liable to weaken attachment to Russia had a long history. In the eighteenth century, the topos
of the disloyal Russian estranged from his native land by his Gallomania
found expression predominantly in satirical representations of the fop who
slavishly followed French fashion, larded his speech with French expressions
and Russian Gallicisms, and denigrated his own language and culture.
(The association of French-speaking with foppery and a society in which
women were socially prominent, we have suggested, may have had particular
resonance in an age of aggressive military expansion.) Then, in the midnineteenth century, the topos gained fresh potency. At first sight, this fact
might seem surprising, for by that time Russian had established itself as
the primary medium for education at all levels and as a literary language in
which writers could express themselves in all genres as capaciously as they
could in French. However, Russian francophonie had renewed topicality in
an age when cultural nationalism was on the rise and non-noble individuals
were participating in increasing numbers in the professionalized literary
community and intelligentsia. French-speaking could now be perceived
not so much as the folly of individual nobles deficient in patriotism but as a
defining feature of an elite who had been separated by Russia’s eighteenthcentury westernization from the mass of their compatriots.
And yet, cultural borrowing and use of a foreign language, we have argued,
do not necessarily indicate identification with a foreign people or support
for a foreign power. Russian nobles who spoke French among themselves
in the first half of the nineteenth century were not betraying through their
language choice some affinity with the French nation or allegiance to the
France of the First Empire or the July Monarchy. We cannot even be sure
that they were identifying themselves with France under the ancien régime.
Rather, they were signalling that they belonged to a pan-European elite,
whose Russian branch they represented (generally with national pride). We
do not believe, then, that our examination of the use of French in imperial
Russia indicates a widespread and destructive loss of attachment to Russia,
whether Russia be conceived as an imperial fatherland (otechestvo) or native
soil (rodina). Rather, we think it bears out the point made by Schönle and
Zorin as they consider the similarities between Russia’s eighteenth-century

Conclusion

585

modernization and the later westernization undertaken in Meiji Japan
and Ottoman and Kemalist Turkey. In all three cases, ‘the imitation of the
“advanced” West was marked by a specific constellation of admiration, love,
envy, and animosity that did not in the least preclude a strong growth of
patriotic feelings, but actually implied them’.19
Indeed, we may go further. The biculturalism and bilingualism of the
Europeanized post-Petrine Russian nobility, far from being a source of
disorientation and moral decay among the ruling class, might alternatively be
seen as means by which the nation became enlightened, developed a highly
educated public sphere, and created a distinctive literary and intellectual
(and musical) culture of the first rank. Moreover, plurilingualism and the
openness to other cultures to which it might lead could themselves become
features of the identity of the patriotic, dutiful, and self-respecting Russian
noble.20 We saw an idealized embodiment of a positive multilingual identity
in Volkonskaia’s Russian Count Vladimir in her French tale ‘Laura’. Thus, it is
just as reasonable, we believe, to say that Russian nobles were distinguished
by multiculturalism, plurilingualism, and an attendant breadth of outlook
and depth of humanity as that they were exceptional by virtue of the apathy
and inertia of which the non-noble literary critic Nikolai Dobroliubov spoke
in his famous review of Goncharov’s novel Oblomov, a late portrait of the
noble ‘superfluous man’.21 Because they stood ‘a little outside Europe’, Lieven
has also argued, ‘educated Russians became immersed in all its national
cultures’, many of which they could appreciate in their original languages.
‘The pull between national traditions and alien cultures created an elite more
uncomfortable but also more creative than its English and German peers.’22
The cosmopolitanism with which their European education endowed the
Russian nobility, Figes too has observed, accounts for ‘one of Russia’s most
enduring cultural strengths. It gave the educated classes a sense that they
belonged to a broader European civilization, and this was the key to the
supreme achievements of their national culture in the nineteenth century’,
many of whose outstanding figures ‘combined their Russianness with a
European cultural identity’.23 It is possible, then, to view Russian multilin-

19 Schönle and Zorin, ‘Introduction’, 2.
20 In this respect, as in others that we have mentioned, the Russian noble was not exceptional
in the European context, as noted by Lamarche Marrese, ‘“The Poetics of Everyday Behavior”
Revisited’, 720.
21 ‘Chto takoe “oblomovshchina”?’, in Dobroliubov, SS, vol. 4, 307–343, especially 314.
22 Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, 19, 179.
23 Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 54.

586 

The French L anguage in Russia

gualism in quite a different – and much more positive – light than that in
which it tends to be cast in discourse about Russia’s cultural borrowing.
We also doubt, finally, whether the presence of French in eighteenth-century
Russia had a retarding effect on the development of the vernacular there. ‘In
some parts of Europe, from the Dutch Republic through the German states to
Russia’, Peter Burke has argued, ‘the use of French by the upper classes probably
delayed the rise of a standardized vernacular, since it was less necessary for
distinguishing between people of high and low status.’24 We wonder, though,
whether this claim is valid in the Russian case. It seems more probable to us
that it was the late development of print culture, rather than the use of a foreign
language by the elite, that delayed the standardization of Russian, which in
fact began to take place (as attested by the production of grammars and the
compilation of the Dictionary of the Russian Academy, as we have said) at the
time, in the second half of the eighteenth century, when francophonie began
to flourish among the elite. We are more inclined to think that the presence of
French actually stimulated native language consciousness, the production of
a literature in Russian, and the development of the Russian literary language.
This it did partly by generating anxiety among writers (who did not all belong
to the aristocratic elite) about cultural autonomy. Such anxiety was keenly
felt, for instance, by Fonvizin.25 Equally important, French provided models,
fulfilling an exemplary function of a sort that has been well described by
Leonard Forster in remarks on the literary culture of the Dutch Golden Age in
the seventeenth century. The polyglot fashion that reigned among writers who
could compose works in Latin, French, Italian, and other languages, Forster
argued, by no means prevented them from paying the closest attention to
questions of style and diction in Dutch, in which they produced works that
are now among the classics of Dutch literature. Indeed, it was precisely their
knowledge of other literatures that enabled these golden-age men of letters
‘to apply high critical and intellectual standards, and it was their practical
acquaintance with problems of literary craftsmanship in other languages that
sharpened their sense of what could be achieved in Dutch’.26
*
24 Burke, Languages and Communities, 108.
25 Marrese also comes to the conclusion that it was ‘the thorough assimilation of European
cultural norms that prompted educated Russians at the end of the 18th century to embark on a
prolonged search for “Russian tradition” and to indict their predecessors as “foreigners” in their
own country’ (Lamarche Marrese, ‘“The Poetics of Everyday Behavior” Revisited’, 739).
26 Forster, The Poet’s Tongues, 41.

Conclusion

587

The broad subject of foreign-language use, and in particular the use of French
at court and among the upper strata of the noble elite in imperial Russia, is
bound up, then, with major questions which preoccupied eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Russian writers and thinkers. Was Russia qualitatively
similar to the West, albeit backward, or was it sui generis? Was it part of
Europe from a cultural point of view as well as geopolitically? Should Russia follow its own separate path? Should it borrow in order to catch up
with and possibly even overtake the West? If so, should the borrowing
be indiscriminate or selective? Did the nobility represent the flower of
the nation? Or did the essence of the nation lie in the common people?
What authority did the intelligentsia have to speak for Russia? Linguistic
matters had a bearing on all these questions. Language debate, moreover,
was punctuated by topoi – for example, about the character of peoples
and the nature of high society – that were common in the broader debate
about national destiny. It was said or implied, for instance, that facility in
foreign languages proved that the Russian people were imitative or, on the
contrary, that they had a peculiar ability to assimilate other cultures in a
productive way. Again, the French were shallow, frivolous, and concerned
only with appearances; Russians, who in their native settings were plain
and straightforward people, risked corruption by developing their own
Francophone social sphere on the foreign model.
However, the findings of our investigation of language use cannot be
conveniently mapped on to the frameworks within which Russian writers
and thinkers debated the questions we have just outlined and which have
also furnished ready-made paradigms for some scholarly interpretations of
the history of Russian culture. According to some grand narratives about
Russian cultural development, Russia was exceptional, indeed unique. It
was a nation, many said, that was divided into two parts: the social elite
who performed a foreign role in a highly theatrical way and the uneducated
mass who were mere spectators at this masquerade. Eighteenth-century
cultural borrowing from the West was largely responsible for this rift in the
nation. After 1762, when Peter III issued his manifesto exempting the nobility
from compulsory service, the Europeanized nobility became alienated from
Russian life and in many cases from the state as well. Consequently, they
suffered varying degrees of anomie. Foreign-language speaking exacerbated
the rift, disorienting nobles who ceased to serve and dissolving their sense
of Russianness. Undeniably, hypotheses of these sorts lead to stimulating insights. Often, though, they appear on close inspection to be false,
misleading, or at least dubious. They are excessively schematic, tending to
reduce a reality that was in fact complex, untidy, inconveniently variegated,

588 

The French L anguage in Russia

dynamic, and inconstant to a static construct that can be imagined in
simple binary terms.
After all, it is not so unusual or unnatural for humans to be functionally
bilingual as we might infer if we attach credence to the language attitudes
expressed in some quarters at times of rising cultural nationalism, when
plurality, diversity, or hybridity seem suspect and language comes to
be regarded as a key attribute of nationality. It is also possible, pace the
Slavophiles, Dostoevskii, and their ilk, for individuals to adopt foreign
habits and practices without compromising their national identity, let
alone experiencing ontological crisis. Indeed, the achievement of some new
synthesis of cultural leanings and linguistic competencies may even produce
a strong sense of self. This, we would argue, was a productive outcome of
the tensions generated by Russia’s eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
engagement with the world beyond its western border. Anxiety about the
derivative nature of Russian culture, exemplified by the practice of noble
francophonie, stimulated the production of a literature, in Russian, which
represents the outstanding achievement of the cultural and intellectual
elite of imperial Russia. The awakening which drove this project of national,
social, and personal self-definition was in no small measure due to the
diligent acquisition and widespread use of the French language in Russia
for many purposes and to the absorption of the linguistic, stylistic, cultural,
literary, and intellectual riches and the numerous and diverse concepts and
values which the French language bore.

Bibliography
Archival sources
Any material in square brackets in some entries of this section of the bibliography is an interpolation of our own into the archivists’ descriptions of
the contents of the file in question. In some other entries, our description of
an archival document does not coincide in all respects with the description
provided by the archive itself, because inspection of the document in question
reveals some error in the archivist’s description. In round brackets at the end
of each entry we give the date(s) of the file and the language(s) in which the
material is couched. All file titles that are in Russian in the archives have been
translated here into English, but titles that are in French in the archives have
been left in that language and are in quotation marks (these are original titles
of the documents). In the first entry of each collection (see e.g. F. 2 in AVPRI)
we indicate in a shortened form the title of each collection. For the key to
abbreviations used in this and other sections of the bibliography (as well as
in the footnotes to our text), see pp. 29–31.
AVPRI (Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi imperii, Moscow)
F. 2 (Internal college matters), op. 1, d. 936 – Correspondence of the College of Foreign Affairs
with Austrian ministers and consuls in Russia on matters concerning subjects (1763–1771).
F. 2, op. 1, d. 1457 – Memoranda of chancellors’ conferences with foreign representatives in
Russia (1744–1745, Russ., Fr., Ger.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 238 – Rescript from Catherine II to Obreskov, the resident in Constantinople, with
a printed manifesto appended (in Russian and German) about her accession to the throne
and a copy of a note on same to foreign diplomatic representatives in St Petersburg (1762,
Russ., Ger., Fr.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 348 – Circular letters to Russian diplomatic representatives abroad informing
them of the visit of Catherine II to Kazan’, the dispatch of [Catherine’s] Instruction to the
commission set up to draft a new legal code to Russian diplomatic representatives abroad,
and other matters (1767, Russ., Fr.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 361 – Circular edicts and rescripts (1769, Russ., Ger., Fr.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 363 – A circular letter from Count N.I. Panin to Russian diplomatic representatives
abroad about the disagreement between the Russian and French ministers in London and
about Russian diplomatic representatives keeping their places at ceremonial occasions and
not ceding them to French ministers (1769, Fr.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 364 – Letter-book of circulars from the College of Foreign Affairs to Russian
diplomatic representatives abroad (1769–1793, Russ., Fr.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 367 – Circular letter to Russian diplomatic and consular representatives in Spain
and Portugal notifying them that Moroccan and Algerian vessels were sailing in the same
waters during the voyage of a Russian squadron (1770, Fr.).

590 

The French L anguage in Russia

F. 2, op. 6, d. 376 – Circular letter to Russian diplomatic representatives abroad about the conclusion of a peace with the Ottoman Porte and an appended list of ministers awarded medals
in this connection (1775, Russ., Fr.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 412 – Circular letter to Russian diplomatic representatives in London, Stockholm,
and Copenhagen about the departure of Count Rumiantsev on a foreign trip (1779, Fr.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 413 – Official circular to Russian diplomatic representatives abroad notifying them
of the setting-up of a general consulship in Moldavia and Wallachia and the appointment of
Sergei Loshkarev as the consul general there (1780, Russ., trans. into Fr.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 418 – Official circular to Russian diplomatic representatives abroad about a visit by
Catherine II to Mogilev to meet the Austrian emperor Joseph II (1780, Fr., Ger.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 477 – Official circular to all Russian diplomatic representatives abroad notifying
them of the setting-up of consulates in provinces of the Ottoman Porte (1772, It.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 568 – Letter (copy) from Ivan VI notifying the British king of Russia’s declaration
of war against Sweden (1741, Fr.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 570 – Letter of credence (copy) from Elizabeth Petrovna to the Prussian king
Frederick II about the appointment of Count Karl Hermann von Keyserling as minister
plenipotentiary to Berlin (1746, Ger.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 571 – Letter (copy and two translations) recalling the minister plenipotentiary in
Regensburg and Berlin, Count Karl Hermann von Keyserling (1746, 1748, Ger., trans. into Lat.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 579 – Letter (copy and translation) from Catherine II in reply to a letter from the Saxon
prince Charles about the death of his father Frederick Christian (1764, Fr., trans. into Russ.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 580 – Letter (copy and trans.) recalling the consul to the Crimea, Lieutenant-Colonel
Nikiforov (1765, Russ., Tat.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 597 – Letter of recall (copy and trans.) from the Genoese Republic about the minister
Stefano Rivarola (1784, It., trans. into Russ.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 601 – Letter (copy) from the Swedish king Gustav Adolph [Gustav IV Adolph] in reply
to a letter from Catherine II notifying him about the wedding of Grand Duke Constantine
Pavlovich to Anna Fedorovna (1796, Ger.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 602 – Reply from the Swedish king Gustav Adolph [Gustav IV Adolph] to a document
from Catherine II notifying him that Grand Duchess Maria Fedorovna had safely given birth
(1796, Ger., Swed.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 603 – Letter of credence from Catherine II on the appointment of Major-General
Budberg as ambassador extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary in Stockholm (1795,
trans. into Ger.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 604 – Letter of credence (copy and translation) from the Tuscan duke Ferdinand
on the appointment of Baron Emmanuel Seddeler as minister plenipotentiary to Russia
(1796, It., trans. into Russ.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 605 – Letter of credence (copy) from the Duke of Württemberg on the appointment of
Count Friedrich Philipp Karl Pickler-Limpurg [?] as minister plenipotentiary to Russia (1797, Ger.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 611 – Document (copy) about Austria joining a treaty of alliance concluded by Russia
and Sweden in 1724 (1726, Lat., Russ.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 616 – Treaty (copy) between Russia, Austria, and Denmark about friendship and
the mutual guarantee of lands belonging to them in Europe and defence of the Austrian
succession by force of arms (Copenhagen, 1732, Russ., Ger.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 647 – Convention (copy) between Russia and Austria about continuation of the
war with Prussia and a declaration about future steps regarding Prussia (St Petersburg,
1760, Russ., Fr.).
F. 2, оp. 6, d. 652 – Treaty of alliance (copy) concluded between Russia and Austria and materials
on this matter (1760, Russ., Ger., Fr.).

Bibliogr aphy

591

F. 2, op. 6, d. 686 – Convention (copy) about renewal of the treaty of alliance of 22 May (2 June)
1746 between Russia and Austria and about Russia’s entry into the war against Prussia. St
Petersburg (1757, Fr., Russ.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 687 – Deed (draft copy) from Empress Anna Ivanovna granting an amnesty to the
city of Gdansk, a diploma guaranteeing rights and freedoms, and a receipt from Russia for
a contribution of a million thalers, (1736, Russ., with trans. into Ger.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 688 – Deed (draft copy) from Empress Catherine II about the renewal of the rights
and freedoms granted to the city of Gdansk by Empress Anna Ivanovna (1764, Russ., Ger.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 696 – Treaties (copies) about the marriage of Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna to
Charles-Frederick, Duke of Holstein (1724, 1727, Russ., Ger.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 701 – Treaty (copy) between Russia and Denmark about establishment of rules for
exchange of ships’ salutes (text from the Danish side) (1730, Ger.).
F. 2, оp. 6, d. 702 – Ratification (copy) by the Danish king Christian of a treaty on 30 October 1730
between Russia and Denmark on ships’ salutes (Copenhagen, 1730, Dan., trans. into Ger.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 718 – Convention (printed) between Russia and Denmark about maritime neutrality
(St Petersburg, 1800, 1801, Russ., Fr.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 733 – Declaration (copy) of renewal of the treaty of alliance of 6 (17) July 1733 between
Russia and Poland (1733, Russ., Ger.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 745 – Treaty of alliance (copy) between Russia and Prussia, and papers relating to
this matter. St Petersburg (1740, 1741, Russ., Ger.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 757 – Convention (copy) between Russia and Turkey on the establishment of borders
between these powers in accordance with the Treaty of Belgrade of 7 (18) September 1739 and
the ratification of this convention by Russia and Turkey (1739, Turk., trans. into It. and Russ.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 783 – Ratification (in print) by Elizabeth Petrovna and King [Adolf] Frederick of
Sweden of the treaty of perpetual peace concluded in Åbo (1743, Russ., Ger.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 797 – Convention (copy) concluded in St Petersburg between Russia, Britain,
and Holland on the conditions relating to the provision of 30,000 Russian troops to afford
assistance to Britain and Holland (1747, Russ., Fr.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 800 – Declaration (copy) to the effect that the use of French in the act associating
Russia with the convention of 12 (21) March 1757 may not serve as a precedent for parties
writing other international documents (St Petersburg, 1757).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 806 – Treaties (copies) between Russia and Austria and Russia and Prussia about
the first partition of Poland (1772, Fr.).
F. 2, op. 6, d. 807 – Convention (copy) on matters relating to the third partition of Poland between
Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Ratification (copy) of this convention by Paul I and the Polish
king Stanisław Augustus (1797, Fr.).
F. 32 (Russian relations with Austria), op. 1, d. 702 – Letter-book of rescripts to the ambassador
in Vienna, D.M. Golitsyn (1787).
F. 133 (Chancery of the Russian minister of foreign affairs), op. 459, d. 1197 – ‘Campagne de
France, Tolstoy E.’ (1805).
F. 133, op. 468, d. 1943 – ‘Campagne de Turquie, Prince Prosorofsky, correspondance avec le
prince Kourakine’ (1808, Russ., Fr.).
F. 133, op. 468, d. 2014 – Correspondence of Admiral Chichagov, commander-in-chief of the
Danube Army (Russ., Fr., 1812).
F. 133, op. 469, d. 7699 – ‘Europe. Coup d’œil jetté sur l’Europe de l’observateur de St. Pétersbourg,
octobre 1803’.
F. 133, op. 469, d. 7701 – ‘Europe. De l’équilibre politique de l’Europe. Par le c-te Soltycoff en 1808’.
F. 133, op. 469, d. 7714 – ‘Europe. Histoire politique de l’Europe (1740–1748) par le c-te de Besborodko’ [no date].

592 

The French L anguage in Russia

F. 161 (St Petersburg Main Archive), op. 28 (England), d. 72 – Treaty on friendship and trade
(1766, Russ., Fr.).
F. 161, op. 28 (England), d. 98 – Agreement about reciprocal call-up of men liable for military
service (1917, Russ., Fr.).
F. 161, op. 28, d. 150 – Supplementary agreement to a Russo-Prussian postal treaty (1872, Russ., Ger.).
F. 161, op. 28, d. 312 – Manifesto from the Russian tsar about an amnesty for participants in the
Polish Revolt of 1830 and punishment of the leaders of the revolt (1831, Russ., Pol.).
F. 161, op. 28, d. 347 – Agreement between Russia and Prussia about postal matters (1852, Russ., Ger.).
F. 161, op. 28, d. 635 – Minutes of an international conference about seal-hunting (1911, Eng.).
F. 167 (Russian embassy in Berlin), op. 509 (1), d. 8 – ‘Correspondance avec le prince de Repnin’
(1798, Russ., Fr.).
F. 174 (Russian mission in Hamburg), op. 545, d. 15 – ‘Correspondance avec les consulats de
Russie’ (1827–1837, Fr., Russ., Ger.).
F. 180 (Russian embassy in Constantinople, 1798–1853), op. 1 (517), d. 4 – Rescripts from Paul I to
the Russian envoy in Constantinople, V.S. Tomara (1801, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 8 – Rescripts from Alexander I to the Russian envoy in Constantinople, A.Ia.
Italinskii (1803, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 18 – Instructions from Alexander I and the head of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Nesselrode, to the Russian envoy in Constantinople concerning Moldavia and
Wallachia (1816, Fr.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 125 – Letters from the vice-chancellor of Russia, Nesselrode, to the Russian
envoy in Constantinople, Butenev (1830, Fr.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 127 – Reports to Vice-Chancellor Nesselrode from the Russian ambassador in
Constantinople, Butenev, from Bucharest and the Russian chargé d’affaires in Constantinople,
P.I. Rickman [?] (1831, Fr.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), dd. 557 (1800)–593 (1842) – [Correspondence with Russian consulates].
F. 180, op. 1 (517), dd. 2302–2341 – [Correspondence with foreign missions in Constantinople].
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2697 – Correspondence of Russia’s chargé d’affaires in Constantinople, Ozerov,
with Colonel Kovalevskii about the situation in Montenegro (1853, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2704 – Letter of an official in the Russian Ministry of Finance, Doballich, to
the chargé d’affaires of the Russian mission in Constantinople, Minchaki [?] (Odessa) about a
change in the way money is to be paid to the Russian mission in Constantinople (1821, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2710 – Correspondence of the Russian ambassador in Constantinople, Tomara,
with the military governor in Astrakhan’, Knorring, about matters relating to trade and
Russian protection of the Armenians (1801–1802, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2862 – Correspondence of the Russian ambassador in Constantinople,
Italinskii, with the military governor of Moscow, Tormasov (1815, Fr., Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2865 – Correspondence of the Russian ambassador in Constantinople, Butenev,
with the military governor of Moscow, Golitsyn (1838, Fr., Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2886 – Correspondence of the Russian envoy in Constantinople, Butenev, and
the Russian chargé d’affaires in Constantinople, Titov, with the governor of Novorossiisk,
Vorontsov (1839–1841; Russ., Fr.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2887 – Correspondence of the Russian ambassador in Constantinople, Butenev,
and the Russian chargé d’affaires in Constantinople, Titov, with the governor of Novorossiia
and Bessarabia, Vorontsov (1840, Russ., Fr.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2891 – Correspondence of the Russian mission in Constantinople with Fabre,
the head of chancery of the governor-general of Novorossiia (1842–1845, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2900 – Correspondence of the Russian envoy in Constantinople, Italinskii,
with the governor of the city of Odessa, Richelieu (1811, Fr.).

Bibliogr aphy

593

F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2925 – Correspondence of the Russian mission in Constantinople with the
governor of the city of Odessa, Mogilevskii (1827, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2928 – Correspondence of the Russian chargé d’affaires in Constantinople,
Rickman [?], with the governor of the city of Odessa, Bogdanovskii (1831, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2940 – Correspondence of the Russian ambassador in Constantinople, Butenev,
with the governor of the city of Odessa, Levshin (1836–1837, Fr., Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2943 – Correspondence of the Russian ambassador in Constantinople, Butenev,
with the military governor of Odessa, Gagarin (1840, Russ., Fr.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2992 – Correspondence of the Russian ambassador in Constantinople,
Strogonov, with the military governor-general of St Petersburg, Miloradovich (1821, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 2995 – Correspondence of the Russian ambassador in Constantinople, Titov,
with the civilian governor of Poltava, Oznobishin (1848, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 3005 – Correspondence of the Russian ambassador in Constantinople,
Strogonov, with the governor of the Crimea, Lavinskii (1816, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 3123 – Correspondence of the Russian chargé d’affaires in Constantinople,
Tomara, with the minister of finance, Vasil’ev (1800–1802, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 3124 – Correspondence of the Russian chargé d’affaires in Constantinople,
Tomara, with the president of the College of Commerce, Gagarin, about matters relating to
trade (1800–1801, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 3128 – Correspondence of the Russian chargé d’affaires in Constantinople,
Tomara, with the Russian procurator general, Bekleshev (1801, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 3144 – Correspondence of the Russian mission in Constantinople with the
ministers of finance Gur’ev and Kankrin (1822–1835, Russ., Fr.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 3147 – Correspondence of the Russian mission in Constantinople with the
Russian ministers of education Golitsyn and Uvarov (1824–1843, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 3154 – Dispatches from the Russian mission in Constantinople to the minister
of war, Chernyshev (1833–1834, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 3155 – Correspondence of the Russian mission in Constantinople with the
Ministry of the Imperial Court (ministers Volkonskii and Shuvalov) (1833–1850, Russ., Fr.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 3182 – Correspondence of the Russian ambassador in Constantinople, Tomara,
with the commanders of military vessels (1799–1802, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 3187 – Correspondence of the Russian ambassador in Constantinople, Tomara,
with Vice-Admiral Kartsev (1800, Russ.).
F. 180, op. 1 (517), d. 3340 – Correspondence of the chargé d’affaires at the Constantinople mission
in Odessa, Ozerov, with the commander-in-chief of Russian troops in Moldavia, General
Gorchakov, and the Russian consul general in Bucharest, Kotsebue (1853, Fr.).
F. 340 (Collection of documents belonging to officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), op. 811
(R.A. Saburov, ambassador in Berlin), dd. 1–3 – Saburov’s diary, written during his time in
Berlin (1879–1884, Fr.).

GARF (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Moscow)
F. 109 (Third Department of the Chancery of His Imperial Highness), op. 1a, d. 3 – Letter
signed by Annette, to Elisaveta Alekseevna Suvorshchikova and other persons (1825–1826,
Russ., Fr.).
F. 109, op. 1a, d. 8 – Agents’ reports and notes on the investigation into the Decembrist affair
(1826–1827, Russ., Fr.).
F. 109, op. 1a, d. 35 – Remarks from the head of the Third Department to M.Ia. von Fock (1830–1831).

594 

The French L anguage in Russia

F. 109, op. 1a, d. 37 – Note about the three Turgenev brothers: Aleksandr, Nikolai, and Sergei
(1832, Fr.).
F. 109, op. 1a, d. 39 – Unsigned letter to the Third Department about the arrival in Moscow of a
box from Irkutsk with letters from Decembrists (1820s–1830s, Fr.).
F. 109, op. 1a, d. 49 – Letter with information on the connection between Princess Volkonskaia
and N. Veksel’ about the material circumstances of the Volkonskii family (1865, Fr.).
F. 109, op. 1a, d. 54 – Agents’ reports on observation of students at the Institute of the Corps of
Communications Engineers (1827, Fr.).
F. 109, op. 1a, d. 122 – Letters from the chief of gendarmes, Prince V.A. Dolgorukov, to M.D. Gorchakov
and memoranda of the Third Department about the activity of Polish émigrés and the assistance
given to them by A.I. Herzen with regard to the revolutionary movement in Europe (1860, Fr.).
F. 109, op. 1a, d. 134 – Agent’s memorandum about what the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs
knows about Russian internal policy and the national liberation movement in Poland and
what the London police know about the activity and intentions of A.I. Herzen (1862, Fr.).
F. 109, op. 1a, d. 175 – Agents’ reports and a memorandum about the engineer V. Bossovskii
who was living in St Petersburg and maintained relations with A.I. Herzen (1867–1868, Fr.).
F. 279 (Iakushkins), op. 1, d. 69 – [Letters to I.D. Iakushkin from] Valerii Levashev (1844–1847, Fr.).
F. 279, op. 1, d. 119 – Diary of Anastasiia Vasil’evna Iakushkina (no date, Fr.).
F. 573 (Meyendorff), op. 1, d. 467 – Diary of Petr Kazimirovich Meyendorff (1816, Fr.).
F. 601 (Nicholas II), op. 1, d. 1123 – Nicholas II to the King of Romania (no date, Eng.).
F. 601, op. 1, d. 1145 – Letters from Grand Duchess Alexandra Georgievna (the wife of Grand Duke
Paul Aleksandrovich) to Nicholas II (1883–1891, Eng.).
F. 601, op. 1, dd. 1147a (no date), 1148 (1899–1914), 1149 (1915), 1150 (1915–1916) – Letters from Empress
Alexandra Fedorovna to Nicholas II (Eng.).
F. 601, op. 1, d. 1161 – Letters from the Prince of Baden, Maximilian, to Nicholas II (1886–1914, Eng.).
F. 601, op. 1, d. 1196 – Letter from Victoria, Queen of Sweden, to Nicholas II (1908, Eng.).
F. 601, op. 1, d. 1256 – Letters from Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna (wife of the Prince of
Greece) to Nicholas II (1906–1913, Eng., Russ.).
F. 601, op. 1, d. 1294 – Letters from Empress Maria Fedorovna to her son, Grand Duke Nicholas
Aleksandrovich (1879–1892, Russ., Fr.).
F. 601, op. 1, d. 1295 – Letters from Empress Maria Fedorovna to Nicholas II. There are letters
from Empress Alexandra Fedorovna in this file (1894–1902, Russ., Fr.).
F. 601, op. 1, dd. 1296 (1903–1909), 1297 (1910–1917) – Letters of Empress Maria Fedorovna to
Nicholas II (Russ., Fr.).
F. 632 (Bartenevs), op. 1, d. 54 – [Letters to P.A. Barteneva] from Nadezhda Arsen’evna Barteneva,
her sister (1840–1864, Fr., Russ.).
F. 632, op. 1, d. 55 – [Letters to P.A. Barteneva] From Nikolai Arsen’evich Bartenev, her brother
(1850, Fr.).
F. 643 (Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna, daughter of Emperor Alexander III, wife of Duke
P.A. Oldenburg, then [wife] of N. Kulikovskii), op. 1, dd. 2 (1894–1895), 3 (1895), 4 (1896), 5
(1896–1897), 6 (1897), 7 (1897), 8 (1898), 9 (1898–1899), 10 (1899), 11 (1899–1900), 12 (1900), 13
(1900–1901), 14 (1901), 15 (1901–1902), 16 (1902), 17 (1902–1903), 18 (1903–1904), 19 (1903–1904)
– Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna (Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, dd. 34 (1886–1905), 35 (1906–1914), 36 (1915) – Letters and telegrams to Grand Duchess
Olga Aleksandrovna from her mother, Empress Maria Fedorovna (Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, dd. 38 (1886–1889), 39 (1900–1903), 40 (1909–1914) – Letters to Grand Duchess Olga
Aleksandrovna from her sister, Grand Duchess Xenia Aleksandrovna (Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 45 – Letters to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna from her brother Nicholas
Aleksandrovich (the Emperor Nicholas II) (1891–1915, Eng. with fragments in Russ.).

Bibliogr aphy

595

F. 643, op. 1, d. 61 – Telegram to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna signed ‘Grand Oncle Guillaume’ (1892, Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 63 – Letters to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna signed ‘cousin Alix’ (1899, Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 64 – Letters to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna signed ‘Aunt Alix’ (Аlexandra,
Queen of Great Britain) (1890, Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 65 – Letter to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna signed ‘Alfred’ (1886, Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 66 – Letter to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna signed ‘Andrew’ (1895, Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 67 – Letter to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna signed ‘Henry Bate’ (1896, Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 68 – Letter to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna signed ‘Ronnie Bоdley’ (1903,
Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 69 – Letters to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna signed ‘Boris’ (1890, Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 72 – Letters to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna from Victoria (Toria), daughter
of Queen Alexandra of Great Britain (1888–1915, Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 73 – Letters to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna from the King of Greece,
George I (1891, Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 74 – Letters to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna signed ‘George’ (1894–1900, Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 79 – Letters to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna signed ‘Ellen’ (1894–1900, Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 83 – Letter of congratulation to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna signed
‘Charles’ (no date, Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 91 – Letter to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna signed ‘Aunt Louise’ (no date,
Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 93 – Letters to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna from Marie Louise of [Hanover
and] Cumberland (1898–1901, Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 99 – Letters [to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna] signed ‘Nanna’ (no date, Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 101 – Letters to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna from Iurii Olsuf’ev (1893–1900,
Eng.).
F. 643, op. 1, d. 119 – Letters to Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna from Irina and Sergei
Sheremetev (1901–1903, Russ.?).
F. 647 (Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, née Princess Charlotte of Württemberg, wife of Grand
Duke Michael Pavlovich), op. 1, d. 20 – Notes of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna ‘Events in
November and December 1825’ (1825, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 21 – Notes of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna about women’s education (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 22 – Notes of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna ‘Discourse about the French Revolution
of 1789’ (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, dd. 23 (1838), 24 (1839), 25 (1849) – Diary of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna (Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 26 – Album of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna and Pushkin’s poem ‘The Commander’
copied out (1849–1850, Russ., Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 27 – Reminiscences of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna about her early years (1839
or later, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 28 – Notebook of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna for 1865 (1865, Fr. with fragments
in Russ.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 42 – N.M. Karamzin’s memoir ‘On Ancient and Modern Russia’ (1810) (no date, Russ.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 44 – M.M. Shcherbatov’s work ‘On Statistics in Discussion of Russia’ with a preface
by Mikhail Zablotskii[-Desiatovskii] (1855, Russ.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 46 – Unsigned memoranda ‘On the Internal State of Russia’ and ‘On Civil and
Social Improvements in Russia’ (1855, Russ.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 47 – Memorandum by Valuev ‘Thoughts by a Russian in the Second Half of 1855’
(discussion of the reasons for Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War and a critique of the system
of internal governance) (1855, Russ.).

596 

The French L anguage in Russia

F. 647, op. 1, d. 49 – ‘Register of Matters Examined in the General Meeting of the State Council
for February 1857’ and a preliminary letter from the secretary of state V. Butkov to Grand
Duchess Elena Pavlovna (1857, Russ.)
F. 647, op. 1, d. 50 – Memorandum by Petr Dolgorukov ‘On the Internal State of Russia’ (1857, Russ.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 51 – Memorandum by an unidentified author ‘Thoughts on the Newly Proposed
Administrative Structure for Policing’ (1858, Russ.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 53 – Outline of N.N. Nezvanov’s ‘Thoughts of a Russian Citizen’ (on the need to
carry out reforms in the way the state is governed and in education) with an accompanying
letter from S. Taneev (1859, Russ.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 55 – Unsigned memorandum with plans for reform of the machinery of government
(1850s–1861, Russ.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 56 – Memorandum by D. Obolenskii ‘Remarks on the Plan for a New System of
Legal Proceedings in Russia’ (1862, Russ.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 58 – Memorandum by Zabolotskii about the need to Russify the western provinces
(1862, Russ.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 59 – Letters to Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna from ‘the chief leader and representative of the Karaites’, Firkovich, with a request for help to obtain permission for the
Karaites to resettle from Lithuania to Çufut-Kale in the Crimea and a memoir about same
from Firkovich to the governor of the Crimea (1863, Russ.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 64 – Memorandum by Waechter ‘Draft Law about Censorship in the Russian
State’ (1864, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 71 – Memorandum by an unidentified individual on the history of the organization
of governance in Russia (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 74 – Memorandum by an unidentif ied individual on the shortcomings of the
structure of government in Russia (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 75 – Unsigned memorandum ‘Civil Legal Proceedings in Russia’ (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 76 – Unsigned memorandum with a description of reforms of government
machinery in 1802 (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 77 – Memoranda by an unidentified individual about systems of urban government
and the rights of town-dwellers in Prussia, France, and Russia (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 82 – Unsigned memorandum about peasant reform in Austria (1849, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 122 – Memorandum by Plater about the work of the editorial commissions [discussing the terms of the emancipation of the serfs] (1859, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 126 – Letters from Sergei Lanskoi to Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna about the
peasant reform (1860–1861, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 128 – Memoranda of Hofmeister Venevitinov with remarks about the draft of the
editorial commission on peasant reform (1860, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 137 – Unsigned memorandum about the position of the peasants in the Ukraine
after the peasant reform (1864, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 149 – Excerpts from a memorandum by the Duke of Mecklenburg with his proposals
on the peasant reform (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 150 – Excerpts from a memorandum by Petz ‘On the Abolition of Serfdom in
Russia’ with an outline of his plan for reform (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 155 – Unsigned memorandum ‘Official Information about Implementation of the
Peasant Reform in the Provinces of Kaluga and Tver’’ (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 156 – Unsigned memorandum about a plan for peasant reform in the Ukraine with
remarks by Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna (no date, Fr. with fragments in Russ.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 170 – Unsigned memorandum about the position of the enserfed peasantry in
Germany (no date, Ger.).

Bibliogr aphy

597

F. 647, op. 1, d. 185 – Unsigned memorandum about the state of the Russian army (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 205 – Plan by de Roberti to set up a credit bank in Russia and a list of candidates
for the bank’s administrative council (1863, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 211 – Memorandum by the German banker S. Simundt with a proposal for a loan
to the Russian government, in lieu of the internal loan planned by the minister of finance
von Reutern (1867, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 213 – Memorandum by Lobschtein about the financial state of Russia and the
plan to set up a national bank (1857, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 219 – Unsigned memorandum about the number of German colonies in Russia
(no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 220 – Unsigned memorandum with an outline of the bases of the system of taxation
and its shortcomings in Russia (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 221 – Memorandum by Leich [?] about the financial state of Russia and means
of ameliorating it (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 224 – Unsigned memorandum about the general importance and role of credit
papers, Britain’s national debt, and financial management in France (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 228 – Letter from F.V. Jeppe [?] to Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna with a description
of the state of animal husbandry in Rostock (1850, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, dd. 238, 239 – Memoranda by Balabin about the organization of two types of industry
in Russia: production of albumen and cosmetics (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 240 – Memorandum by Johnson about the factors impeding the development of
agriculture in Russia and the steps needed for it to develop (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 243 – Unsigned memorandum about the state of wine-making in Russia (no date, Russ.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 246 – Unsigned memorandum ‘On the Russian Peasant Commune’ (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 247 – Memorandum by an unidentified author ‘On Agronomy’ (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 249 – Unsigned memorandum about the length of Prussian railways (1850, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 251 – Memorandum by Mal’tsev with a decription of a plan to build a southern
railway line in Russia from St Petersburg to the Crimea (1853, Fr.).
F. 647, оp. 1, d. 261 – A memorandum by A. von Nurisell [?] ‘The Russian Railway Network and
Use of it in Practice’ (1864, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 272 – Memoranda by Gils about methods of teaching geography (1832, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 274 – Inspector’s report on St Peter’s School and the Princess Oldenburg Institute
about the work of these educational institutions (1843, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 276 – Memorandum by an unidentified individual ‘On Philosophy Teaching at
University’ (1849, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 280 – Unsigned memorandum with a reference for Professor Zabelin and a list of
professors at Moscow University (1855, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 283 – Unsigned memorandum ‘Some Considerations on the Importance of Primary
Education in the Russian Empire’ (1860, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 284 – Note about non-payment of a royalty to Mendel’shtam by the Ministry of
Education (1860, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 285 – Report of the Russian Music Society for 1859–1860 (printed version) and
memorandum [by Baroness Edith Fedorovna von Rahden] with a list of the society’s forthcoming activities (1865, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 293 – Statutes of the Northern Archaeological Society (1864, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 294 – Booklet – Five edicts from Alexander II relating to the organization of
education in the Kingdom of Poland (1864, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 295 – Reports from M. Ol’khina to Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna about the work
of the Mariinskii Women’s Institute (1864–1865, Russ.).

598 

The French L anguage in Russia

F. 647, op. 1, d. 297 – Unsigned report about an international congress that took place in Bern
on the advancement of social sciences (1865, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 305 – Memorandum by Dr. Kurtman [?] ‘Letters on the Education of Women from
the Upper Class’ (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 308 – Memoranda by Marianna Pekka [?] on the organization and methodology
of teaching vocal arts (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 310 – Memorandum (by Colonel Rostovtsev) on the teacher’s responsibility for
choice of assessment of pupils (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 311 – Unsigned memorandum about a plan to organize a rural commune consisting
of detainees in Petropavlovsk harbour (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 312 – Unsigned memorandum about a plan to reorganize the Smolny Institute as
a pedagogical institute (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 314 – Draft regulations for a Russian polytechnic institute (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 315 – Unsigned memorandum setting out a plan to organize a department of
music in the St Petersburg Academy of Arts (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 316 – Unsigned memorandum about the University of Dorpat and its regulations
(no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 317 – Unsigned memorandum ‘On the Formation of a Faculty of Theology in the
University of Danzig’ (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 320 – Unsigned memorandum on the question of how to improve education in
schools (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 324 – Unsigned memorandum with a description of a concert in Moscow in which
A.G. Rubinstein took part (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 341 – Memorandum by Major-General Tergengan with a description of the arrangement of carts for the transportation of the wounded (1855, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 352 – Memorandum by Professor Lefort on the arrangement of a medical service
for the populace of Paris and an accompanying letter from Lefort to Grand Duchess Elena
Pavlovna (1864, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 353 – Memorandum by Friedrich August von Esmarch ‘On the Fight of Humanism
against the Horrors of War’ (1864, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 359 – Unsigned memorandum with an outline of a plan for organizing a hospital
for soldiers’ children living in barracks (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 365 – Reports from Augusta Schulze [?] about the work of the charitable ‘Society
for Providing the Poor with Clothing’ (1860–1873, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 367 – Memorandum by S. Shipov about the work of the Moscow Committee for
Care of the Poor with an accompanying letter from S. Shipov [to Baroness Edith Fedorovna
von Rahden] (1862, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 372 – Regulations, statutes, and reports of German charitable societies (1866–1872,
Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 374 – Draft regulations of the Society for Cheap Refectories, reports by the president
of the society for Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, and financial accounts (1872, Fr., Russ.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 380 – Unsigned memorandum about the schism in the Catholic Church (1846, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 394 – Memorandum by August Franz Ludwig Maria, Baron von HaxthausenAbbenburg, with an outline of a complaint by the pope about interference by the Russian
government in the affairs of the Catholic eparchy of Chełm (1858, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 397 – Draft regulations of the ‘Ecumenical Society for the Promotion of Christian
Unity’ with an accompanying letter from Abbé Guettée (1869, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 407 – Unsigned memoranda with a protest against the closure of the chair of
theology at the University of Dorpat [now Tartu] (Ger., no date).

Bibliogr aphy

599

F. 647, op. 1, d. 418 – Unsigned memoranda ‘Hypotheses about the Fall of Lucifer’ (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 419 – Memorandum by Count Pozzi di Borgo presented to Alexander I regarding
the internal organization of Poland (1814, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 421 – Unsigned memoranda about the need to alleviate Russian government policy
in Poland and about the hostile mood of the Polish populace (1846 or later, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 423 – Memorandum by August Franz Ludwig Maria, Baron von HaxthausenAbbenburg ‘On the Establishment of Order in the Polish Regions’ (on the organization of
education in Poland) (1856, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 424 – Unsigned memorandum on the need to introduce radical changes in the
governance of Russia’s south-western provinces in view of the growing discontent of the
populace (1860s, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 425 – Memorandum by an unidentif ied author ‘Thoughts of a Russian on the
Latest Events in Warsaw’ (1861, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 426 – Unsigned memorandum ‘Information about the Actions of Revolutionaries
in Poland in 1860–1861’ and about the programmes of nationalist parties (1861, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 429 – Excerpt from a letter by Tengoborski to A.M. Gorchakov about the spread
of the idea of creating a Polish kingdom among the Poles and about the Austrian Archduke
Maximilian Ferdinand and Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich as possible candidates
for the throne (1863, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 430 – Letter from Baron Georgii Meyendorff to his brother Baron Aleksandr
Meyendorff about events in Poland (1863, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 431 – Letters from Carring to Hilferding and Baron von Rosen about the sympathetic
attitude of the Czech populace to the Polish insurgents [and] about the attempt on the life
of Count Berg in Warsaw (1863, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 437 – Unsigned memorandum ‘A Few Words on the Polish Question’ (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 455 – Memoranda by an unidentified person about the difficult position of the
peasant in Liefland (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, оp. 1, d. 456 – Rules on the organization of schools in Liefland (no date, Ger., Russ.).
F. 647, оp. 1, d. 457 – Unsigned memorandum on the procedure for conversion to the Orthodox
faith in Liefland (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 458 – Unsigned memoranda on the need to grant Liefland freedom of religious
belief (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 459 – Memorandum by an unidentified person with a description of a plan to link
Lake Peipus with the port of Reval [now Tallinn] by a canal (no date, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 460 – Unsigned memorandum on the ethnography of the Baltic region (1860, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 462 – Memorandum by de Richemont [?] ‘The Political Situation in Europe and
the Interests of France’ (1829, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 463 – Unsigned memorandum ‘An Individual’s Opinion of Talleyrand’ (1838, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 466 – Memorandum by Professor Mardi ‘A Historical Sketch of the Duchy of
Schleswig and its links with Denmark’ (1846, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 644 – Letters of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna to A.A. Abaza (1859, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 645 – [Letters of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna] to Empress Alexandra Fedorovna
(1828–1858, Ger. with fragments in Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 647 – [Letters of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna] to Prince Augustus of Württemberg (1871, Ger.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 648 – [Letters of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna] to her mother, the Queen of
Württemberg (1828, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 649 – [Letters of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna] to her grandmother, the Queen
of Württemberg (1816–1828, Fr.).

600 

The French L anguage in Russia

F. 647, op. 1, d. 650 – Correspondence [of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna] with Prince A.M.
Gorchakov (1855–1863, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 652 – [Letters of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna] to Grand Prince Constantine
Nikolaevich (no date, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 655 – [Letters of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna] to S.S. Lanskoi (1857–1861, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 656 – [Letters of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna] to Prince Łowicz (1823–1830,
Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 659 – Elena Pavlovna to Maria Pavlovna, Grand Duchess of Saxe and Weimar
(1822–1858, Fr.).
F. 647, op. 1, d. 661 – Elena Pavlovna to Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna (1841, Fr.).
F. 655 (Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, née Princess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin), op. 1, d.
70 – Letters of Senator Dmitrii Borisovich Neidgart to Maria Pavlovna on business of the
Supreme Council regarding protection of the families of people called up for military service
and also the families of men wounded or killed in action (1916–1917, Fr.).
F. 655, op. 1, d. 197 – Letters from V.K. Erapkina to Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna about leave
for her wounded nephew Koshkarev to visit his sick mother (1904–1905, Fr.).
F. 672 (Nicholas I), op. 1, dd. 42 (1822), 43 (1822–1823), 44 (1823), 45 (1823–1824), 46 (1824), 47
(1824–1825), 48 (1825), 49 (1825) – Diary of Grand Duke Nicholas Pavlovich (Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 69 – Memoranda of Nicholas I about the procedure for calling up reservists, back-up
troops, and men on indefinite leave, forming battalions for a home guard, writing rules for
dragoons regiments, and drawing up commands for use with guns, sabres, broadswords,
and standards (1831–1834, Russ.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 82 – Memoranda by Nicholas I about the procedure for bringing guards and army
units up to full strength in the event of war (1841–1844, Russ.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 87 – Address by Nicholas I to officers of the life guards of the Preobrazhenskii
Regiment at a bivouac in the village of Gur’evo (1845, Russ.).
F. 672, op. 1, dd. 191 (1837–1838), 192 (1838), 193 (1838), 194 (1839) – Surveys of political life in France,
Germany, and other countries compiled from foreign newspapers (Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 195 – Excerpts from foreign newspapers and journals about political life in France,
Germany, and other countries (1839, Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 202 – Letters from Karl Robert von Nesselrode to Nicholas I about the agreement
of Britain (George Hamilton Seymour) to the proposal from Nicholas I about the need to
discuss the Danish question (1850–1853, Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 290 – Memorandum of a religious nature [by Prince A.N. Golitsyn] in the name
of Nicholas I on the use of examinations to strengthen faith among the people and in the
country (1831, Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 339 – Nicholas I to his mother Empress Maria Fedorovna (1818, Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 341 – Letters from Nicholas I to the historian N.M. Karamzin (1826, Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 345 – Nicholas I to his brother Michael (1847, Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 352 – Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich to Nicholas I (1825–1828, Russ., Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 353 – Grand Duchess Alexandra Iosifovna (the wife of Grand Duke Constantine
Nikolaevich) to Nicholas I (1847–1852, Russ., Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 354 – [Letters] from Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, the wife of Nicholas I, to
Nicholas I and to her son, Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich (1833, Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, dd. 409 (1822–1831), 410 (1823–1825), 411 (1825–1827), 412 (1828–1831), 413 (1831–1835), 414
(1835–1836), 415 (1836–1839), 416 (1839–1840), 417 (1840–1843), 418 (1843–1846), 419 (1846–1848),
420 (1849–1851), 421 (1851–1854), 422 (1854–1858), 423 (1858–1860), 426 (1817–1826) – Diaries of
Empress Alexandra Fedorovna (née Princess Charlotte of Prussia) (Ger., with some fragments
in Fr. and Eng.).

Bibliogr aphy

601

F. 672, op. 1, dd. 428 (1829–1830, Fr., Ger.), 431 (1838, Fr., Ger.), 432 (1839, Fr., Ger., Russ.) – Notebook
of Empress Alexandra Fedorovna (Fr., Ger., Russ., Eng.).
F. 672, op. 1, dd. 434–441 – Letters from Empress Alexandra Feodorovna to her brother, Crown Prince
Friedrich Wilhelm, subsequently the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV (1807–1859, Ger).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 460 – Letter from Grand Duke Nicholas Aleksandrovich to Empress Alexandra
Fedorovna (1859, Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, dd. 461 (1854), 462 (1855–1860) – Letters from Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich to
Empress Alexandra Fedorovna (Fr., Ger., Russ.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 486 – Verses dedicated to Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna on the occasion of
her birthday (1832, Ger., Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 489 – Exercise-book of Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna with verses, songs, and
dicta of a religious nature (1860, Ger.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 502 – Grand Prince Alexander Nikolaevich to his sister Olga Nikolaevna (1846, Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 503 – Grand Duchess Alexandra Nikolaevna to her sister Grand Duchess Olga
Nikolaevna (1830, Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 509 – Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna to Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna
(1837–1846, Fr.).
F. 672, op. 1, dd. 572 (1823–1825), 573 (1832) – Album of Empress Alexandra Fedorovna with
poems copied into it (Ger.).
F. 672, op. 1, d. 574 – Album of Empress Alexandra Fedorovna with excerpts from various works
(1834–1838, Ger., Fr.).
F. 677 (Alexander III), op. 1, dd. 198 (1855), 199 (1856–1861), 200 (1858–1859) – Exercise-books of
Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich on the Russian language (Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 201 – Exercise-books of Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich on the Slavonic
language [Church Slavonic] and Russian literature (1859, 1861, and later, no date, Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, dd. 202 (1850–1860), 203 (1850), 204 (1861), 205 (1861), 206 (1862) – Exercise-books of
Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich on Russian language and literature (Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 207 – Exercise-books of Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich with entries on
logic and the history of Russian literature (1863–1864, Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, dd. 208 (1855), 209 (1857), 210 (1857), 211 (1860–1864) – Exercise-books of Grand Duke
Alexander Aleksandrovich on the English language (Eng.).
F. 677, op. 1, dd. 212 (1855), 213 (1855), 214 (1856–1860), 215 (1861), 216 (1862), 217 (1863–1864) –
Exercise-books of Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich on the French language (Fr.).
F. 677, op. 1, dd. 218 (1850), 219 (1855–1864), 220 (1860) – Exercise-book of Grand Duke Alexander
Aleksandrovich on the German language (Ger.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 221 – Exercise-books of Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich on ancient
history (1858, Ger.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 222 – Exercise-books of Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich on general
history (1860, Ger.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 223 – Exercise-books of Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich on medieval
history (1861, Ger.).
F. 677, op. 1, dd. 224 (1861), 225 (1862) – Exercise-books of Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich
on general history (Ger.).
F. 677, op. 1, dd. 226 (1860), 227 (1860) – Synopsis of ancient history written for Grand Duke
Alexander Aleksandrovich (Ger.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 253 – Notebook of Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich with poems by Russian
poets copied out (1879, Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 254 – Notebook of Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich with a record of letters
received and sent (1879, Russ.).

602 

The French L anguage in Russia

F. 677, op. 1, d. 256 – Notebook of Alexander III with his notes about hunting, f ishing, etc.
(1882–1894, Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, dd. 257 (1861), 258 (1862), 259 (1863), 260 (1864), 261 (1865), 262 (1872), 264 (1876),
266 (1878), 267 (1878), 268 (1879) – Diary of Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich (Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 269 – Notebook of Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich with his records of
dates to remember (1880, Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 270 – Notebook of Alexander III with his records (1881, Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 271 – Notebook of Alexander III with his records of dates to remember (1882, Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 272 – Notebook of Alexander III with his records (1882, Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 273 – Notebook of Alexander III with his records of dates to remember (1883, Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, dd. 274 (1883), 275 (1884), 276 (1884) – Notebook of Alexander III with his records (Russ.).
F. 677, оp. 1, dd. 278 (1885), 279 (1886), 280 (1886), 281 (1887), 282 (1887), 283 (1888), 284 (1888),
286 (1889), 287 (1890), 288 (1890), 289 (1891), 290 (1891), 291 (1892), 292 (1892), 293 (1893), 294
(1893) – Notebook of Alexander III with his records (Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, dd. 295 (1861–1862), 296 (1862) – Diary of Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich (Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 297 – ‘Camp Diary’ of Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich (1864, Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, dd. 298 (1865–1866), 299 (1866), 300 (1866–1867), 301 (1867–1868), 302 (1868–1869), 303
(1869–1870), 304 (1870–1871), 305 (1871–1873), 306 (1873–1875), 307 (1875–1880), 308 (1880–1881)
– Diary of Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich (Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 370 – Report of the chief of the 12th Army Corps to Grand Duke Alexander
Aleksandrovich (commander of the Rushchuk Detachment) about the actions of the corps
against the Turks (1877, Fr.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 463 – Memorandum of General R. Fadeev ‘Secret Memoirs about the Eastern
Crisis’ (1870s, Fr.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 900 (1884–1892) – Letters to Alexander III from his son, Grand Duke Michael
Aleksandrovich (Russ., Eng., Fr.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 901 (1890–1891) – Letters to Alexander III from his cousin, Grand Duke Michael
Mikhailovich (Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 902 (1865–1888) – Letters to Alexander III from his uncle, Grand Duke Michael
Nikolaevich (Russ., Fr.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 918 – Letters to Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich from his brother Nicholas
Aleksandrovich (1859–1865, Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 919 – Letters to Alexander III from Grand Duke Nicholas Aleksandrovich (his
son) (1876–1894, Russ., with occasional letters in Fr.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 920 – Telegrams to Alexander III from Grand Duke Nicholas Aleksandrovich
(his son) (1894, Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 921 – Letters to Alexander III from Grand Duke Nicholas Konstantinovich (1879
and no date, Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 935 – Letters to Alexander III from Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna (1891,
1894, no date, Eng.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 936 – Letters to Alexander III from Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinovna (the
Queen of Greece) (1866–1894, Russ.).
F. 677, op. 1, d. 938 – Letters to Alexander III from Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna (the Queen
of Württemberg) (1866–1892, Russ., Fr.).
F. 678 (Alexander II), op. 1, d. 2 – Marriage contract between Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich
and Princess Marie of Hesse (1840, Fr.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 5 – Wedding ceremony of Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich and Princess Marie
of Hesse-Darmstadt (1841, Russ., Fr.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 11 – Description of the coronation of Alexander II (1856, Russ.).

Bibliogr aphy

603

F. 678, op. 1, d. 12 – Description of the coronation of Alexander II (1856, Fr.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 246 – Notes on the history of Britain made during his studies by Grand Duke
Alexander Nikolaevich (1834, Eng.).
F. 678, op. 1, dd. 268 (1826), 269 (1827), 270 (1828), 271 (1829), 272 (1830), 273 (1830), 274 (1830), 275
(1831), 276 (1831), 277 (1832), 278 (1833) – Diary of Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich (Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 279 – Excerpts from the diary of Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich (1833–1834, Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 280 – Diary of Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich (1834, Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 281 – Exercise-book of Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich with entries like diary
entries (1834–1838, Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, dd. 282 (1835), 283 (1835), 284 (1835), 285 (1835), 286 (1836–1838) – Diary of Grand
Duke Alexander Nikolaevich (Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 287 – Diary of Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich during a journey in Russia.
With an instruction from Nicholas I appended (1837, Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 289 – Diary of Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich during a journey in Europe
(1839, Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 290 – Diary of Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich (1840, Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 499 – Diplomatic dispatches from [Pavel Petrovich] Oubril, [Andreas Ludwig Carl
Theodor von] Budberg, and Gorchakov in Berlin (1863, Fr., Ger.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 502 – Reports to Alexander II from Count Kutuzov in Berlin with appended
information about the Prussian army (1867–1872, Fr.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 571 – Speech by Alexander II to the diplomatic corps in St Petersburg on the day
of his accession to the throne (1855, Fr.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 700 – Alexander II to Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich (1878, Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 701 – Alexander II to his mother, Empress Alexandra Fedorovna (1830–1857, Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 702 – Letters from Alexander II to Prince Bariatinskii (1857–1864, Fr., copies).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 710 – Alexander II to Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich (1862, Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 711 – Alexander II to Empress Maria Aleksandrovna (1867–1877, Fr.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 729 – Letters from Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich to Alexander II
(1852–1873, Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 731 – Letters from Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich to Alexander II, and
telegrams to him from Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich, Grand Duchess Maria
Fedorovna, and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna (1871–1878, Russ., Fr.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 732 – Letters from Grand Duke Alexander Aleksandrovich to Alexander II
(1874–1881, Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 742 – Anna Pavlovna, Queen of the Netherlands, to Alexander II (1838–1865, Fr.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 751 – Letters from Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, to Alexander II (1839–1854, Fr.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 752 – Letters from William [III], King of the Netherlands, to Alexander II (1839–1854,
Fr.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 754 – Letters from Prince M.S. Vorontsov to Alexander II (1847–1856, Fr., Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 761 – Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna to Alexander II (1834–1880, Fr.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 770 – Letters from Count P.D. Kiselev to Alexander II (1865–1867, Fr., Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, dd. 771 (1835–1861), 772 (1858–1860), 773 (1862–1863), 774 (1862–1863) – Grand Duke
Constantine Nikolaevich to Alexander II (Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, dd. 781 (1851–1856), 782 (1855–1871), 783 (1857–1862), 784 (1863–1864), 785 (1865–1866),
786 (1867–1868), 787 (1869–1870), 788 (1871–1872), 789 (1873), 790 (1874–1875), 791 (1874–1875),
792 (1875), 793 (1876–1877), 794 (1876–1877), 795 (1878–1879) – Empress Maria Aleksandrovna
to Alexander II (Fr.).
F. 678, op. 1, dd. 805 (1863–1864), 806 (1865–1868), 807 (1869–1876), 808 (1877–1880), 816 (1855–1879)
– Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich to Alexander II (Russ.).

604 

The French L anguage in Russia

F. 678, op. 1, dd. 819 (1838), 820 (1839), 821 (1840–1845), 822 (1846–1853) – Emperor Nicholas I to
Crown Prince Alexander Nikolaevich (Russ.).
F. 678, op. 1, d. 823а – Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna to Crown Prince Alexander Nikolaevich
(1841–1846, Fr.).
F. 679 (Alexander I), op. 1, d. 18 – Two memoranda/instructions from Alexander I to the minister
of appanages (no date, Fr.).
F. 679, op. 1, d. 42 – Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich to Alexander I (1820, Fr.).
F. 679, op. 1, d. 43 – Copy of a letter from M. Speranskii to Alexander I from Perm’ (1813, Russ.).
F. 679, op. 1, d. 44 – Letter to Alexander I from the president and director of the Royal Philanthropic
Society (Eng., no date).
F. 679, op. 1, d. 45 – Copy of a memoir by Karamzin to Alexander I about the restoration of
Poland (no date, Russ.).
F. 679, op. 1, d. 46 – Copy of a letter signed by Alexander I to the vice-governor of Tomsk, Vedishchev, about the birth of his daughter Elizabeth (1806, Russ.).
F. 679, op. 1, d. 47 – Copy of a letter from Pozzo di Borgo to Alexander I (1814, Fr.).
F. 679, op. 1, d. 48 – Copy of a letter from M.M. Speranskii to Alexander I from Perm’ (1815, Russ.).
F. 679, op. 1, d. 49 – Brief biographical sketch of Alexander I from an encyclopaedic dictionary (1807, Fr.).
F. 679, op. 1, dd. 51 (1802–1814), 52 (no date) – Letters from Alexander I to William III [of Prussia] (Fr.).
F. 679, op. 1, d. 76 – Empress Maria Fedorovna to Alexander I (1808–1810, Fr.).
F. 679, op. 1, d. 77 – Letter from the Danish king Frederick VI to Alexander I (1813, Fr.).
F. 679, op. 1, d. 115 – Alexander I to Empress Maria Fedorovna, his mother (1810, Fr.).
F. 967, op. 1, d. 4 – Diary of Krüdener V. (1801–1802 Fr.).
F. 990 (Boris Pavlovich Mansurov), op. 1, dd. 31–36 – Letters from Boris Pavlovich Mansurov to
his father, Pavel Borisovich Mansurov (1855–1862, Fr.).
F. 990, op. 1, dd. 66 (1861–1884, Fr.), 67 (1864–1865, Fr.) – Letters from Nikolai Pavlovich Mansurov
to his father Pavel Borisovich Mansurov.
F. 990, op. 1, d. 68 – Letters from Nikolai Pavlovich Mansurov to B.P. and M.N. Mansurov (1873–1875, Fr.).
F. 990, op. 1, dd. 70 (1880–1894, Fr., Russ.), 71 (1895, Fr., Russ.), 72 (1896–1898, Fr., Russ.) – Letters
from Nikolai Pavlovich Mansurov to his brother B.P. Mansurov.
F. 990, op. 2, d. 368 – Letters from M.N. Mansurova to her daughter E.B. Mansurova (1884–1886, Fr.).
F. 990, op. 2, d. 409 – Letters from B.P. Mansurov to his grandmother M.N. Mansurova (1907, Russ.).

GATO (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Tverskoi oblasti, Tver’)
F. 103 (Collection of documents from nobles’ archives), op. 1, d. 1115 – Album belonging to Kutuzova
(no date, Fr., It., Russ., Eng., Greek, CS).
F. 103, op. 1, d. 1395 – [Correspondence of the Bakunin family] (1740–1861, Fr., Russ.).
F. 103, op. 1, d. 3135a – Diary of one of the members of the Bünting family (1855–1859, Fr., Ger.).

IRLI (Institut russkoi literatury (Pushkinskii Dom) Rossiiskoi akademii
nauk, St Petersburg), Manuscripts Department
R. 1, op. 42, d. 76 – Album of a member of the Naryshkin family (f irst quarter of nineteenth
century, Fr.).
F. 196 (Miatlev family), op. 1, d. 18 – Petr Vasil’evich Miatlev, ‘Le Barbet scrutateur’, a comic
newspaper of the Miatlev family (1820?, Fr.).

Bibliogr aphy

605

F. 196, op. 1, d. 19 – Petr Vasil’evich Miatlev, the diary of a journey from Znamenskoe to Lindolovo,
beginning of a description (1819, Fr.).
F. 196, op. 1, d. 20 – Petr Vasil’evich Miatlev, rough sketches of plays, letters, etc. (1820–1823?, Fr.).
F. 265 (The journal Russkaia starina), op. 2, d. 1578 – Correspondence between F.N. Klichka, the
governor of Orel, and I.I. Melissino, a tutor at Moscow University, about a search for a French
teacher for a gymnasium in Kursk (1784).

RGA VMF (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Voenno-Morskogo Flota,
St Petersburg)
F. 432 (Naval Cadet Corps), op. 1, d. 5 – Examination lists of pupils (1762–1783).
F. 432, op. 1, d. 23 – On examination and promotion of naval cadets (1770–1771).
F. 432, op. 1, d. 70 – File about appointment of an aide-de-camp, teaching German, promotion
and dismissal of officers from service (1773).
F. 432, op. 1, d. 103 – Correspondence about setting up a theatre in the corps and allocation of
the materials and things needed to equip it (1774–1776).

RGADA (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov, Moscow)
F. 1, op. 1 (Secret packages), dd. 3 (1798), 13 (1797), 14 (1786–1789), 16 (1790) – Grand Duchess, then
Empress Maria Fedorovna, to her son Alexander, the future Alexander I (Fr.).
F. 1, op. 1, dd. 10 (1812–1813), 11 (1807–1813) – Letters of Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna to her
brother Alexander I (Fr.).
F. 1, op. 1, dd. 15 (1788), 16 (1790) – Grand Duke Paul, then Emperor Paul I, to his son Alexander,
the future Alexander I (Fr.).
F. 1, op. 1, dd. 20–23 – Autobiographical notes by Catherine II (various years, Fr.).
F. 1, op. 1, d. 24 – Notes by Catherine II, entitled ‘Extraits de lectures’, ‘La cour d’équité’, ‘La culture
et la finance’, ‘Maximes d’administration’, ‘Réflexions sur Pétersbourg et sur Moscow’, etc.
(undated, Fr.).
F. 2 (Files relating to the imperial family), op. 1, d. 25 – Exercise-books used in education (probably
belonging to Tsarevich Petr Alekseevich) (no date [1720s], Lat., Fr., Russ.).
F. 4 (Correspondence between members of the imperial family and other highly placed persons),
op. 1, dd. 114 (1787), 115 (1763, 1765, 1784) – Correspondence between Catherine II, Paul Petrovich,
and Grand Duchess Maria Fedorovna (Fr., Russ.).
F. 5 (Correspondence of highly placed persons with private individuals), op. 1, d. 145 – Draft
letters from Catherine II to Prince de Ligne (1781–1796).
F. 5, op. 1, d. 152 – Correspondence of Catherine II in her own hand with Grimm (1764–1796).
F. 5, op. 1, d. 153 – Correspondence of Catherine II with Mme Geoffrin (1763–1768, Fr.).
F. 5, op. 1, d. 154 – Correspondence of Empress Catherine II with Voltaire (1765–1778).
F. 5, op. 1, d. 156 – Correspondence of Empress Catherine II with d’Alembert (1765–1767, 1772).
F. 5, op. 1, d. 157 – Correspondence of Empress Catherine II with Marmontel (1767).
F. 5, op. 1, d., 158 – Correspondence of Empress Catherine II with Mme Geoffrin (1763–1768).
F. 10 (Chancery of Catherine II and later sovereigns), op. 2, dd. 226, 227, 229–239, 245, 246 – Various
notes entitled ‘Le pouvoir et les devoirs des juges de paix’, ‘Le seigneur représentant’, ‘L’échange
des bleds contre l’industrie’ (Fr., undated).
F. 35 (Russia’s relations with Britain).

606 

The French L anguage in Russia

F. 44 (Russia’s relations with Hamburg), op. 1, 1705. d. 1 – Draft of document from the sovereign
Peter I to the burgomasters of the city of Hamburg forbidding all places under their power
to print anything libellous about the Russian state (1705, Russ., Ger.).
F. 53 (Russia’s relations with Denmark), op. 4, d. 2 – Letter from the Danish king Frederick IV to
Peter I recalling the ambassador Friedrich Hartwig von Nostitz; document from Frederick IV
to Peter I about the recall of the ambassador Andrei Petrovich Izmailov and the appointment
of Prince Vasilii Dolgorukov in his place (1707, Dan.).
F. 53, op. 4, d. 3 – Letter from the Danish king Frederick IV to Peter I congratulating him on the
occasion of the conclusion of peace with the Turks after the battles on the [River] Pruth;
letter of credence for Ambassador Adjutant-General von Levenorn; letter about a proposed
meeting between Frederick IV and Peter I for the purpose of coming to an agreement about
continuation of the war with Sweden (1711, Dan., trans. into Russ.).
F. 53, оp. 5, d. 1 – Correspondence of the Chancery of Foreign Affairs with the Danish ambassador
in Russia, Paul Heins, about Russo-Danish relations, the reception of the Danish ambassador
by Peter I, and his submission to the tsar of a letter of 29 August 1699 from the Danish king
Frederick IV about the death of the Danish king Christian V, about his accession to the throne,
and about the maintenance of friendly relations between Russia and Denmark; about the
dispatch of the Russian ambassador, A.P. Izmailov, to Denmark to win over the Danish king
for war against the Swedes, about international relations, and the beginning of the War of
the Spanish Succession; about the arrival of the Danish courier Fabricius in Moscow with
a letter to Paul Heins from the Danish king; authorization of a salary for Captain Simon
Peterson working on ‘ship-building’ in Voronezh (1700, Ger., trans. into Russ.).
F. 53, оp. 5, d. 35 – Memoranda of the Danish ambassador in Russia, Paul Heins, to the Chancery
of Foreign Affairs about the issue of money for provisions, the reply of the Danish government
to the proposal by Peter I that Denmark enter the war with Sweden and mediate in the peace
talks between Russia and Sweden, Russo-Danish trade through Narva and St Petersburg, and
the hiring of sailors in Denmark for Russian service (1704, Ger., trans. into Russ.).
F. 53, оp. 5, d. 65 – Reply from the Danish minister Christian Sehested to the Russian ambassador
in Denmark, A.P. Izmailov, about Denmark’s recognition of Stanisław Leszczyński as King
of Poland and Denmark’s mediation between Russia and Sweden (1707, Fr.).
F. 53, оp. 5, d. 84 – Memoranda and letters from the Danish councillor Muller about the organization of trade between Denmark and Russia through Kola and Archangel (1708, Ger.).
F. 53, оp. 5, d. 85 – Correspondence of the Russian ambassador in Denmark, V.L. Dolgorukov,
with the Danish minister Christian Christophersen Sehested about conclusion of a treaty
of alliance between Russia and Denmark (1708, Fr., trans. into Russ.).
F. 53, оp. 5, d. 99 – Papers from the chancery of the Russian ambassador to Denmark, V.L.
Dolgorukov, about negotiations with the King of Denmark and his ministers on concluding
an alliance between Russia and Denmark against Sweden (copies of a treaty concluded in
Copenhagen on 11 (22) October 1709; ratif ications of the treaty by Peter I and the Danish
king Frederick IV (1709, Fr., Russ.).
F. 53, оp. 5, d. 121 – Letters from Danish ministers and generals, the Swedish general Magnus
Stenbock, the Swedish secretary Neuhausen, and other individuals to the Russian ambassador
to Denmark, V.L. Dolgorukov, about military matters, the visit of the Swedish king Charles
XII to the city of Bender, and the exchange of Swedish prisoners (1710, Fr., Ger.).
F. 53, оp. 5, d. 122 – Letters from Major-General Friedrich Hartwig von Nostitz to the Russian
ambassador in Denmark, V.L. Dolgorukov, about the garrison in the town of Elbing (1710, Fr.).
F. 53, оp. 5, d. 133 – Excerpt from the correspondence of the King of Denmark, Frederick IV,
with the Danish resident in Hamburg, Hans Hagedorn, about the possibility of Denmark
concluding a separate peace with Sweden (1710, Fr.).

Bibliogr aphy

607

F. 53, оp. 5, d. 146 – Records of negotiations (‘conferences’) between the Russian ambassador
in Denmark, V.L. Dolgorukov, and Danish ministers about a plan for military operations by
allied troops against the Swedes in Pomerania in the campaign of 1711; about the campaign
of the Danish army in Pomerania for joint operations with Polish-Saxon troops against the
Swedish corps; and about financial and military assistance for Denmark from the Russian
government (1711, Fr., Russ.).
F. 53, оp. 5, d. 147 – Letters from the Russian ambassador in Denmark, V.L. Dolgorukov, to the
King of Poland, Augustus II, and Polish-Saxon ministers thanking them for awarding him
the Order of the White Eagle (1711, Fr.).
F. 53, op. 5, d. 153 – Letters from the Danish ambassador in Russia, Adjutant-General von Levenorn,
in Riga and Iavorov to the Russian ambassador in Denmark, V.L. Dolgorukov, and the secretary
of the embassy, I. Veselovskii, about his meeting with A.D. Menshikov in the town of Kopor’e,
about the preparations of Peter I for a journey from Moscow to Poland, and about a future
meeting between Peter I and the King of Denmark, Frederick IV, in Iaroslavl’ (1711, Ger.).
F. 53, оp. 5, d. 157 – Letter from the Danish ambassador in Russia, Just Juel, to the Russian
ambassador in Denmark, V.L. Dolgorukov, about the transfer of money to the latter in bills
of exchange (1711, Fr.).
F. 53, оp. 5, d. 164 – Agreement (‘concert’) between Russia and Denmark about joint military
operations against Sweden in the campaign of 1711 and a memorandum about talks in
Copenhagen on 6 June 1711 on the conclusion of this agreement (1711, Fr., Ger.).
F. 53, op. 5, d. 174 – Letters of the King of Denmark, Frederick IV, to Peter I about the military
operations of allied troops (Danish, Russian, and Saxon) against the Swedes in Pomerania
and Mecklenburg, the operations of the Danish fleet, the capture of the fortress of Stade in
the region of Bremen from the Swedes by Danish troops, and the defeat of the Danish-Saxon
force at Gadebusch, and congratulations on the conclusion of peace between Russia and
Turkey (1712, Ger., Russ.).
F. 79 (Russia’s relations with Poland).
F. 93 (Relations between Russia and France), op. 1, 1654, d. 1 – Files relating to the business of
the courier Konstantin Machekhin, dispatched to France with notification of the beginning
of war against the King of Poland and Sweden for the many vexations he has caused Russia
(1653–1654).
F. 93, оp. 1, 1667, d. 5 – Files relating to the business of the ambassadors Petr Potemkin and Semen
Rumiantsov during their stays in Spain and France with notification of the truce concluded
between the states of Russia and Poland for thirteen and a half years (1667–1669).
F. 93, op. 1, 1704, d. 5 – Report on the condition of the Kingdom of France, with an appendix about
the ceremonial with which foreign ministers are received there.
F. 93, op. 1, 1713, d. 3 – Account of a book written by Wicquefort about ambassadors and their
business and translated by the nobleman Postnikov who was in Paris.
F. 150 (Files on foreigners’ journeys to Russia), op. 1 (1703), d. 1 – Arrival in Russia of the Swedish
pastor Ernst Glück and his children who had been taken captive in Marienburg, documents
about him in the Chancery of Foreign Affairs, and his setting-up of a public school in Moscow
(1703–1705).
F. 177, op. 1, 1739, d. 70 – Draft copies from the Chancery of Edicts to the Cadet Corps and reports
from the director of the Corps, Tettau.
F. 1261 (Vorontsovs), op. 1, d. 45 – M.S. Vorontsov (?), ‘Extrait de mon journal’ (in 15 booklets,
1854 and no date, Fr., Russ.).
F. 1261, op. 1, d. 68 – File about the ceremonies that took place at the meeting, receptions, and
departure from Russia of the Spanish minister, James Francis (Diego Francisco) Fitz-James
Stuart, Duke of Liria (1727–1730, Russ., Sp., Fr.).

608 

The French L anguage in Russia

F. 1261, оp. 1, d. 69 – Diary of the Russian ambassador in London, Kantemir, about events and
facts of diplomatic life (1732).
F. 1261, op. 1, d. 78 – Aide-memoire from the сhancellor Bestuzhev-Riumin and the vice-сhancellor
M.I. Vorontsov to the British ambassador in St Petersburg, the Earl of Hyndford, and the
envoy of the United Provinces, Schwarz, about the return of the Russian auxiliary corps
from Germany, copy (Fr., 1740 [?]).
F. 1277 (Samarins), op. 1, d. 144 – Travel diaries of Samarin from a journey in Germany, Switzerland,
and Italy (no date, Fr.).
F. 1278 (Stroganovs), op. 1, d. 5 – Rough drafts of letters from Aleksandr Sergeevich Stroganov
to various people (1754 and later, Fr., Russ.).
F. 1278, op. 4 (pt 1), d. 77 – Notes of Baron Aleksandr Stroganov about a journey (1752–1754, Fr.).
F. 1289 (Shcherbatovs), op. 1, d. 517 – Exercise-book with letters from Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich
Shcherbatov to his son Dmitrii Mikhailovich Shcherbatov and his wife with an appended
list of M.M. Shcherbatov’s writings (1725–1789, Russ., Fr.).

RGB (Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka, Moscow), Manuscripts
Department
F. 19 (Princes Bariatinskii), op. 1, d. 284 (pt 2) – Princess Nina Bariatinskaia, childhood exercise-books
on arithmetic, German, French, and Italian dictionaries, exercises, translations (1782–1785).
F. 19, op. 1, d. 284 (3–4) – Princess Nina Bariatinskaia, childhood exercise-books on European
geography (1785, Fr.).
F. 19, op. 1, d. 284 (5) – Princess Nina Bariatinskaia, childhood exercise-books on the history of
the ancient world, the Middle Ages, Russia (1782–1785, Fr.).
F. 19, op. 1, d. 284 (6) – Prince Ivan Ivanovich Bariatinskii, childhood exercise-books on French,
German, the history of the Middle Ages (1784, Fr., Ger.).
F. 19, op. 1, d. 284 (7) – Stepanida Ivanovna Baranova, childhood exercise-books on arithmetic,
German, French, the history of the ancient world and the Middle Ages (1781–1785, Fr., Ger., Russ.).
F. 19, op. 1, d. 284 (8) – Praskov’ia (Parasha) Zelenova (Zelenina), childhood exercise-books on
arithmetic, German, French, Italian, the history of the ancient world (no date, Ger., Fr., It.).
F. 19, op. 5, d. 27 – Catalogue of Princess E.A. Bariatinskaia. Russian books read (late nineteenth
century).
F. 19, op. 5, d. 30 – Catalogue/inventory of Princess E.A. Bariatinskaia. Russian books read (late
nineteenth century).
F. 19, op. 5, dd. 31–32 – ‘Catalogue des livres de la bibliothèque du prince W. Bariatinsky’ (no
date, Fr.).
F. 19, op. 5, d. 37 – ‘Catalogue des livres de français du prince Wladimir Bariatinsky’ (no date, Fr.).
F. 19, op. 5, d. 38 – ‘Catalogue de la Bibliothèque du prince Wladimir Bariatinsky’ (1863, Fr.).
F. 19, op. 5, d. 62 – ‘Catalogue de la Bibliothèque du Comte Czernicheff’ (no date, Fr.).
F. 19, op. 5, d. 63 – ‘Catalogue de la Bibliothèque du Comte Alexandre Czernicheff St. Petersbourg’
(1840, Fr.).
F. 19, op. 5, d. 65 – ‘Catalogue alphabétique de la Bibliothèque du Prince Czernicheff, St. Pétersbourg’ (1855, Fr.).
F. 19, op. 5, d. 70, 71a – ‘Mes idées sur l’éducation de mon f ils.’ Pedagogical article by Iv. Iv.
Bariatinskii (1815, Fr.).
F. 19, op. 5, d. 72 – ‘Conseils à mon fils aîné, 1821, février à Marina, près d’Ivanovsky.’ Advice from
Ivan Ivanovich Bariatinskii to his elder son (no date, Fr.).

Bibliogr aphy

609

F. 19, op. 5, dd. 93–98, 110 – [Notes about reading on various subjects] (various years, Fr.).
F. 19, op. 5, dd. 131, 132 – [Notes on reading] (various years).
F. 19, op. 5, d. 132а – Discourse on the character of Bonaparte, original manuscript of Iv. Iv.
Bariatinskii (no date, Fr.).
F. 19, op. 5, d. 133 – ‘Les aventures tragiques et comiques. Conte de fée. Autographe de Ivan
Ivanovitch Bariatinsky’ (no date, Fr.).
F. 19, op. 5, dd. 259–261 – ‘Catalogue général de la bibliothèque du Feld-maréchal Prince Bariatinsky’ (1873–1876, Fr.).
F. 64 (Viazemy), k. 79, d. 11 – Prince Boris Vladimirovich Golitsyn, ‘La Vie de Marcus Porcius
Caton surnommé d’Utique’, a childhood essay (St Petersburg, 1782, Fr.).
F. 64, k. 79, d. 13 – Duvignau, governor, a play for the Golitsyns’ domestic theatre (1811, Fr.).
F. 64, k. 83, d. 2 – Golitsyna, Princess Natal’ia Petrovna, letters to the Golitsyn children (Fr.).
F. 64, k. 93, d. 43 – Prince Boris Vladimirovich Golitsyn, letters to Princess Natal’ia Petrovna
Golitsyna (France, Vienna, Riga, 1789, Fr.).
F. 64, k. 106, dd. 2, 3 – Cecile Olivier, letters to Princess Natal’ia Petrovna Golitsyna (1780, Fr.).
F. 64, k. 113, d. 1 – Princess N.P. Golitsyna, ‘Remarques sur mes voyages’, diary of her journeys
in Europe (1783–1790, Fr.).
F. 64, k. 113, d. 2 – Prince Boris Vladimirovich Golitsyn, ‘De l’influence des événements sur la
formation d’une Constitution’ (1790, Fr.).
F. 64, k. 113, d. 3 – Prince Boris Vladimirovich Golitsyn, notes and documents connected with
a journey in Italy (Fr., It., 1791–1792).
F. 95 (N.D. Durnovo, P.P. Durnovo), no. 1457 – [Jean-Baptiste de Résimont], ‘Tableau des événements les plus remarquables de l’histoire de Russie suivi d’une description topographique
de ce vaste Empire, S. Pétersbourg, année 1800’, written for Nikolai Dmitrievich Durnovo.
F. 183 (Collection of manuscripts in Western European languages), op. 1, d. 286 – ‘Mémoire
présenté à la Diète de Courlande en 1817 par Frédéric de Firck, marechal de la noblesse du
Cercle de Goldingen’.
F. 183, op. 1, d. 808 – ‘Grade d’Apprenti. Premier Grade Symbolique du Rite rectifié’ (1818, Fr.).
F. 183, op. 1, d. 1083 – ‘Combat spirituel’ [belonged to Ol’ga Lanskaia, 1812].
F. 183, op. 1, d. 1089 – ‘Catalogue anecdotique, bibliographique, biographique plus chronologique
qu’alphabétique et facétieux accompagné d’une vinaigrette de notes, la plupart mal-sonnantes,
pour les morts comme pour les vivants, des livres de la bibliothèque du Comte André Rostoptchine’ (1861).
F. 183, op. 1, d. 1486 (a, b) – Countess Théophilie Lubomirska, notebooks (1789–1819, Fr.).
F. 183, op. 1, d. 1549 – ‘Recueil d’aires à la Princesse Natalie Kourakine’ (no date, Fr.).
F. 183, op. 1, d. 1644 – Dmitrii Golokhvastov, ‘La Belle Olga’ [The Beautiful Olga, a Heroic Opera
in Two Acts, Dating from Pagan Times. Words by S. Glinka, music by M. Kashin. Trans. from
the Russian by Dm. Golokhvastov, 1809].
F. 183, op. 1, d. 1679 – [Various authors], ‘Souvenir’ (1838, 1840, 1842, Fr., Eng.).
F. 219 (Orlov-Davydov), k. 60, d. 81 – Count Andrei Fedotovich Rostopchin, Letters to Count
Anatolii Vladimirovich Orlov-Davydov (1888, Fr.).
F. 347 (Shcherbatov), k. 3, d. 1 – Vladimir Alekseevich Shcherbatov [album] (1851–1856, Fr., Russ.).

RGIA (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv, St Petersburg)
F. 796 (Chancery of the Holy Synod), op. 54, d. 349 – Senate authorization of 12 September 1773
with printed copies on teaching of German to young Russians and teaching of Russian to
civilians in the Ostsee provinces (1773).

610 

The French L anguage in Russia

F. 899 (Counts Bobrinskii), op. 1, d. 37 – Short stories and plays (mainly comedies) written
by Count A.A. Bobrinskii and unidentif ied authors, presumably for performance in the
Smelianskii theatre on the Bobrinskiis’ estate in the district of Cherkasskii in the province
of Kiev (1870s–1890s).

RNB (Rossiiskaia natsional’naia biblioteka, St Petersburg), Manuscripts
Department
Fr., Q IV, no. 165 – [Jean-Baptiste de Résimont], ‘Tableau Chronologique – historique et
géographique avec deux cartes de l’Empire de Russie. A Mr Alexandre Sabloukoff […],
22 octobre 1800’ [by J.-B. de Résimont].
Fr., Q XV, no. 38 – [Chevalier Desessart], ‘Voyageur moscovite ou Lettres russes’.
F. 999 (Hermitage Collection), op. 1, no. 76 – Diplomatic correspondence of Prince Ivan Andreevich
Shcherbatov (1720s–1740s, Russ., Fr., Sp., Eng.).
F. 999, op. 1, no. 123 (1–2) – Copies of the correspondence of Prince Ivan Andreevich Shcherbatov
(1725–1726, Russ., Fr., Sp.).
F. 999, op. 1, no. 500 (1–2) – M.V. Priklonskii, director of Moscow University, ‘Most Loyal Report
from the University of Moscow about the Progress, Outlook, Diligence, and Deeds of the
Students studying in the University and the Pupils in Gymnasia on the Basis of the Examination in this Year 1776 from 2nd to 22nd’ (of June? Russ.).
F. 999, op. 2, Fr. 32 – Bertin de Antilly, ‘Ode à Pierre le Grand, en commémoration de la fondation
de St. Petersbourg et à l’occasion de la fete ordonnée en l’honneur de cette époque par S.M.I.
Alexandre Ier’.
F. 999, op. 2, Fr. 46 – ‘Fête donnée à Leurs Altesses Impériales Messeigneurs Alexandre Paulovitche
et Constantin Paulovitche, Grands-Ducs de Russie’ (no date, Fr.).
F. 999, op. 2, Fr. 105 – [Prince Ivan Shcherbatov], ‘Recueil de lettres françoises’ (1717 and later,
Fr., Russ., Eng.).
F. 999, op. 2, Fr. 115 – Loëillot, ‘Annales de l’empire de Russie, dédiées à S.M. l’Impératrice
Elisabeth’ (St Petersburg, 1801, Fr.).
F. 999, op. 2, Fr. 116 – Comte de Lubersac, abbé, ‘Discours sur l’utilité et les avantages des monuments publics et tous les genres etc., suivi d’une description de monument public dédié et
consacré à la gloire de Catherine Alexiewna II. Avec épître dédicatoire et une lettre par le
même auteur’ (no date, Fr.).
F. 1059 (Cadet Corps, no classification of this archive as yet) – ‘Compliments du nouvel an. 1790’
(1790, Fr., Ger., Russ.).

SPbF ARAN (S.-Peterburgskii filial Arkhiva Rossiiskoi akademii nauk,
St Petersburg)
F. 3 (Committee of the Academy of Sciences), op. 9, d. 78 – File on examination of foreign teachers
sent to gain certification at the Academy of Sciences (March to 20 August 1757).
F. 3, op. 9, d. 80 – Authorizations from Councillor I.I. Gaubert [?] of the Chancery of the Academy [of
Sciences] to conference secretary and Professor G.F. Miller with a proposal that foreign teachers
presenting themselves at the Academy for certification undergo examination (1757–1758).
F. 119 (Heinrich Huyssen), op. 1, d. 4 – Letters to Huyssen from Leibniz, Jablonski, Ludolf, etc.
(1707–1731).
F. 764, op. 4, d. 5 – Memoirs of Count Alexander Benckendorff (1825–1837).

Bibliogr aphy

611

SPb II RAN (Sankt-Peterburgskii institut istorii Rossiiskoi akademii
nauk, St Petersburg)
F. 36 (Vorontsovs), оp. 1, d. 792 – On the new situation or regulations and establishment of the
Academy of Sciences.

Published primary sources
Aksakov, Ivan S., Biografiia Fedora Ivanovicha Tiutcheva (Moscow: Tipografiia M.G. Volchaninova,
1886; reprinted by University Microfilms Int., Ann Arbor, MI, 1980).
——— Ivan Sergeevich Aksakov v ego pis’makh, 3 vols (Moscow: Russkaia kniga, 2003).
Aksakov, Konstantin S., Kniaz’ Lupovitskii, ili Priezd v derevniu (Moscow: v tipografii L. Stepanovoi,
1856); available at http://нэб.рф/catalog/000199_000009_003563372/.
Aksakov, Sergei T. (1955 [1856]), ‘Vospominanie ob Aleksandre Semenoviche Shishkove’, in
Sobranie sochinenii, 4 vols (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi
literatury, 1955–1956), vol. 2, 266–313.
Aksakova, Vera S., Dnevnik Very Sergeevny Aksakovoi, 1854–1855, ed. by N.V. Golitsyn and P.E.
Shchegolev (Moscow: Gosudarstvennaia publichnaia istoricheskaia biblioteka Rossii, 2009;
originally published by Ogni, St Petersburg, 1913).
Alekseev, Petr A., Tserkovnyi slovar’ ili istolkovanie rechei slavenskikh drevnikh […] (Moscow,
pechatan pri Imperatorskom Moskovskom Universitete, 1773).
Alexander I, Alexandre I-er et le prince Czartoryski. Correspondance particulière et conversations.
1801–1823, published by Prince Ladislav Czartoryski with an introduction by Charles de
Mazade (Paris: Michel Lévy frères, libraires éditeurs, 1865).
Ancelot, Jacques Arsene François Polycarpe, Ode sur le couronnement de l’Empereur Nicolas I
(Moscow: no publisher, 1826).
——— Six mois en Russie: Lettres écrites à M. X.-B. Saintines en 1826 à l’époque du couronnement
de S.M. l’Empereur (Paris: Dondey-Dupré père et fils, 1827); available at https://books.google.
co.uk/books?id=pP0EAAAAYAAJ.
Anon., Russian Chit Chat; or, Sketches of a Residence in Russia. By a Lady, edited by her sister
(London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1856); available at https://ia801409.
us.archive.org/13/items/russianchitchat00chatgoog/russianchitchat00chatgoog.pdf.
Apostol, Petr D., ‘Dnevnik. (Mai 1725 g.–mai 1727 g.)’, trans. from French and with a foreword by
A.L., Kievskaia starina, 50:7–8 (1895), 100–155.
Ariane et Bacchus: Cantate qui doit être exécutée à St. Pétersbourg l’année MDCCCII, Mise en
scène par Mr. Antonolini, et traduite en français par Mr. Dalmas, Acteur au Service de S.M.I.
(St Petersburg: de l’Imprimerie impériale, 1802).
Arkhiv grafov Mordvinovykh, 10 vols (St Petersburg: tip. Skorokhodova, 1901–1903).
Arkhiv kn[iazia] F.A. Kurakina, bk 4, ed. by V.N. Smol’ianinov (Saratov: tip. Balasheva, 1893).
Arkhiv kniazia Vorontsova, ed. by Petr Bartenev, 40 vols (Moscow: Tipografiia A.I. Mamontova,
1870–1895).
Arkhiv Raevskikh, 5 vols (St Petersburg: Tip. M.A. Aleksandrova, 1908–1915).
Bakunin, Aleksandr M., ‘Osuga’, published by D.I. Oleinikov in Nashe nasledie (1994), nos 29–30,
available at http://www.booksite.ru/usadba_new/world/fulltext/stihi/97.htm.

612 

The French L anguage in Russia

Bariatinskoy [Bariatinskii], Prince A., Quelques heures de loisir à Toulchin (Moscow: de
l’Imprimerie d’Auguste Semen, 1824).
Barsov, Anton A., Kratkie pravila rossiiskoi grammatiki (Moscow: no publisher, 1773; further edn 1784).
Belinskii, Vissarion G., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 13 vols (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk
SSSR, 1953–1959).
Bellegarde, Jean Baptiste Morvan de, L’éducation parfaite. Contenant les manières bienséantes
aux jeunes gens de qualité, & des maximes, & des réfléxions propres à avancer leur fortune
(Amsterdam: aux dépens d’Étienne Roger, 1710).
Beloselsky, Prince [Belosel’skii, Aleksandr M.], ‘Épître du Prince de Beloselsky, Russe, à M. de
Voltaire’, Mercure de France, May 1775, 176–178; available at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/
pt?id=mdp.39015065738182;view=1up;seq=616;size=150.
——— De la Musique en Italie. Par le Prince de Beloselsky, de l’Institut de Bologne (The Hague: no
publisher, 1778; reprint by Forni Editore, Bologna, 1969); available at https://books.google.
co.uk/books?id=ncQwAQAAMAAJ.
——— Poésies françoises d’un Prince étranger (Paris: Didot l’ainé: 1789).
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[Betskoi, Ivan I.], Ustav imperatorskogo shliakhetnogo sukhoputnogo kadetskogo korpusa
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——— Pétre Ivanovitch, suite du Gilblas russe; traduit du russe par Ferry de Pigny (Paris: C.
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——— Russia, trans. and abridged from the French (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and
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Dal’, Vladimir I., Poslovitsy russkogo naroda. Sbornik poslovits, pogovorok, rechenii, prislovii,
chistogovorok, pribautok, zagadok, poverii i proch. (Moscow: v Universitetskoi tipograf ii,
1862); republished with an introduction by V. Chicherov (Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo
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Dashkova, Ekaterina R., ‘Rech’ pri otkrytii imperatorskoi rossiiskoi akademii’ (1783), available
at http://az.lib.ru/d/dashkowa_e_r/text_0060.shtml.
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of the Empress, and other correspondence. Edited from the originals, by Mrs. W. Bradford
(London: Henry Colburn, 1840).
——— Mon Histoire, in Arkhiv kniazia Vorontsova, ed. by Petr Bartenev, 40 bks (i.e. vols) (Moscow:
Tipografiia A.I. Mamontova, 1870–1895), bk 21, 3–365.
——— The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova: Russia in the Time of Catherine the Great, trans. and
ed. by Kyril Fitzlyon (London: John Calder, 1958).
——— Zapiski (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1987).
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les Russies (Paris: Mercure de France, 1989).
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——— ‘Puteshestvie odnoi rossiiskoi znatnoi gospozhi po nekotorym aglinskim provintsiiam’,
in E. Dashkova, O smysle slova ‘vospitanie’. Sochineniia, pis’ma, dokumenty, ed. by Galina I.
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Féodorovna (St Petersburg: no publisher, 1887).
Description des représentations allégoriques du feu d’artifice tiré devant le Palais d’Hiver en
l’honneur de Sa Majesté Impériale Elisabeth Petrowna souveraine de toutes les Russies etc. et
pour témoignage de la sincérité et de la vivacité des vœux de toutes l’Empire à l’occasion du
Nouvel An 1759 (St Petersburg: Imperatorskaia Akademiia nauk, 1759).
Die Berliner und die Petersburger Akademie der Wissenschaften im Briefwechsel Leonhard Eulers,
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Dobroliubov, Nikolai A., Sobranie sochineii, 9 vols (Moscow and Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe
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en Russie (1863); 8. Que fera-t-on de la Pologne?, 2nd edn (1865); 9. Le Nihilisme en Russie
(1867); 10. Le Patrimoine du peuple (1868).

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——— De la littérature allemande; des défauts qu’on peut lui reprocher; quelles en sont les causes;
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——— Tendances catholiques dans la société russe (Paris: C. Douniol, 1860).
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Gertsen: see also Herzen
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Gogol’, Nikolai V., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 14 vols (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk
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[Golenishchev-Kutuzov, Paul], Poésies d’un Russe (Moscow: à la typographie S. Seliwanowsky, 1811).
Golitsyn, Boris V., ‘Aurore, Diogène et Glycère’, Almanach littéraire ou Étrennes d’Apollon (Paris:
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——— Le Prince D. de G., De l’esprit des économistes ou les économistes justifiés d’avoir posé
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Golovkina, comtesse [Ekaterina Ivanovna], Elisabeth de S, ou l’histoire d’une russe écrite par une
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Kantemir, Antiokh D. Heinrich Eberhards Freyherrn von Spilcker, Königl. Preuß. Flügeladjutantens
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versuchte freye Uebersetzung der Satyren des Prinzen Kantemir: nebst noch einigen andern
poetischen Uebersetzungen und eigenen Gedichten, auch einer Abhandlung von dem Ursprunge,
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——— Sochineniia, pis’ma i izbrannye perevody kniazia Antiokha Dmitrievicha Kantemira, ed.
by Petr A. Efremov, 2 vols (St Petersburg: Izd. Ivana Il’icha Glazunova, 1867–1868).
——— Sobranie stikhotvorenii, with an introduction by F.Ia. Priima and text and notes prepared
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Index
We do not refer in this index to material in the preliminaries of the book but we
do refer to substantive material (as opposed to mere citations) in the footnotes.
Hyphenated names are treated as whole words for the purpose of locating
them in the alphabetical list of entries (e.g. ‘Golenishcheva-Kutuzova’ precedes
‘Golenishchev-Kutuzov’). Similarly, names beginning with the French articles
‘La’ and ‘Le’ (e.g. La Fontaine, Le Laboureur) are treated as if the article were
joined to the following part of the name. Entries on St Petersburg are listed
as if they were spelt with the full form ‘Saint’. There is no entry in the index
on ‘francophonie’ as the term is ubiquitous in the book. For references to
scholarly literature on the subject of francophonie, see footnotes 6 ff. in our
preface. On use of the term itself, see also n. 25 in our introduction. In cases
where we list a woman under her maiden name, we do not always indicate
her married name as well.
Abalduev family 256
abolition of serfdom, see emancipation of serfs
absolutism, see enlightened absolutism
Académie Française 413, 421
Academy of Arts (founded in Russia in 1757) 97
Academy of Sciences (founded in Russia in
1724, opened 1725) 68, 92, 134, 211, 280–281,
402, 403, 405, 418, 421, 430, 576
‘Conference’ of 314, 315
language use in 312–323, 324–325
lectures at 316–318
public meetings at 314–315
regulations of (1747) 319, 325
‘Russian Assembly’ in, organized by
Trediakovskii 316, 325
school attached to 125, 139, 146
university attached to 146
See also Académie Française; Royal Berlin
Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts
Acta Academiae scientiarum imperialis
Petropolitanae (Transactions of the Imperial
St Petersburg Academy of Sciences) 318, 402
Acta Eruditorum (Journal of the Learned) 398
adaptation (in translation) 478
See also domestication
address, terms of, see French, for terms of
address. See also pronominal usage
addressivity (Bakhtinian concept) 71
Adlerbergs 224, 310
Adodurov, Vasilii Evdokimovich (1709–1780)
316
advantages of backwardness, see national
backwardness

aesthetic sensibility (valued by nobility)
165–166, 573
Ainesquin, Joseph (French teacher in Russia in
late eighteenth century) 256
Aksakov, Ivan Sergeevich (1823–1886) 444,
454, 508
Aksakov, Konstantin Sergeevich (1817–1860)
antipathy to French-speaking 508
dissertation on Lomonosov 508
‘Essay on Synonyms’ 509
on nobles’ language use 512–514
on peasant commune 511, 511 n. 225
Prince Lupovitskii 509–514
Aksakova, Vera Sergeevna (1819–1864) 454
Aksakova-Tiutcheva, see Tiutcheva
albums 328, 348, 357–358, 369, 371, 573
language use in 357–358
types of 357
Alecsandri, Vasile (1821–1890) 482
Alekseev, Petr Alekseevich (1731–1801),
Ecclesiastical Dictionary 466
Alembert, Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’ (1717–1783)
82, 188, 322, 355, 411, 416
Aleppo 296
Alexander I (Aleksandr Pavlovich, 1777–1825;
Emperor of Russia 1801–1825)
command or use of French by 195, 195 n.
107, 340 n. 41
concept of honnête homme and citizen in
education of 166–167
joins Napoleon’s Continental System 111
language use in correspondence of 202–203

662 
language use at court of 195–196, 199,
202–203
policies of after 1815 113
taught geography and mathematics in
French 143
not taught Latin 148
toleration of Masonic activity until 1822 227
use of Russian for conduct of government
business 301–302
and Zinaida Volkonskaia 386
Alexander II (Aleksandr Nikolaevich, 1818–1881,
Emperor of Russia 1855–1881)
knowledge of Polish 206
language use in correspondence and diary
of 206–207
marriage of 196
speech in French to diplomatic corps 301
use of French in diaries and personal
correspondence 206–207
using French in society 200
See also Valuev, conversations with
Alexander II; Valuev, correspondence
with Alexander II in Russian
Alexander III (Aleksandr Aleksandrovich,
1845–1894, Emperor of Russia, 1881–1894)
knowledge and use of Russian 207–208
language use in correspondence and
notebooks of 207–208
nationalistic mood in reign of 207–208, 212
n. 202
Russian at court of 199, 207
Alexander the Great (Alexander III of Macedon,
356–323 BC) 406
Alexandra Fedorovna, née Princess Alix of
Hesse and by Rhine, wife of Nicholas II
(1872–1918) 208
Alexandra Fedorovna, née Princess Charlotte
of Prussia, wife of Nicholas I (1798–1860)
196, 197, 198, 200
language use in correspondence, diaries,
and notebooks of 205
Alexandra Georgievna, née Princess of Greece
and Denmark, wife of Grand Duke Paul
Aleksandrovich (1870–1891) 208
Alexandra Iosifovna, née Princess Alexandra
Friederike Henriette of Saxe-Altenburg,
wife of Grand Duke Constantine, son of
Nicholas I (1830–1911) 200
Alexis I (Aleksei Mikhailovich, 1629–1676, Tsar
of Russia 1645–1676) 90, 396
Alexis Petrovich (son of Peter the Great,
1690–1718) 399
manifesto on disinheritance of 399–400
Alfieri, Vittorio (1749–1803) 393
alienation, see estrangement
allegiance (to class or nation) 118, 175, 220, 501,
516
language and 41, 60, 242, 252, 471, 478, 584
Allgemeine Zeitung (Universal Gazette) 443, 445

The French L anguage in Russia

Alliance Française 133
almanacs 329
Alsace 281
altruism 119, 526
Amable de Baudus (Marie Jean Louis Amable
Baudus de Villenove, 1761–1822) 419
amateur literature 328–329, 330–331 n. 9, 359,
372, 376, 573
amour-propre 104, 104 n. 81, 457
Amsterdam, as place of publication 80, 398,
400, 404, 412, 413 n. 83
Amur region 275
Ancelot, Jacques-Arsène-Polycarpe-François
(1794–1854) 435, 437 n. 177, 513
Anderson, Benedict 55, 123, 243
Andrássy, Count Gyula (1829–1890) 249
Andreevskii Monastery, language teaching at
267
Andrusovo, Treaty of (1667) 90
Anglomania (of Russian nobility) 97, 159
Anisimov, Evgenii 100
Anna, Empress (Anna Ioannovna, 1693–1740,
Empress of Russia 1730–1740)
German favourites of 98
manifesto of 1736 reducing term of noble
service 102
preoccupation with splendour of her court
185
Anna Pavlovna (daughter of Paul I, 1795–1865)
206
Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchess of
Montpensier (1627–1693) 355
Année littéraire (Year in Literature) 409, 411
Annenkov, Pavel Vasil’evich (1812 or 1813–1887)
119
anomie 70, 252, 580, 587
aphorisms, see French, for aphoristic remarks
aping (as topos in cultural discourse) 462,
491–492, 579, 580
Apostol, Petr Danilovich (d. 1758) 273
Apraksins 206, 223
Arakcheev, Count Aleksei Andreevich
(1769–1834) 113
archaists (in Russian linguistic debate) 490
Arina Rodionovna (Pushkin’s nanny) 39
aristocracy, see nobility
Arkhangel-Gorod 268
Artillery Cadet Corps (in St Petersburg) 200
assamblei (social gatherings in time of Peter
the Great) 177
Athenæum 374
Athens 296
Augustus, i.e. Prince Friedrich August
Eberhard of Württemberg (1813–1885) 206
Austerlitz, Battle of (1805) 110, 380, 495
Austria, or Austrian Empire
as member of Holy Alliance 113, 383
as one of powers benefiting from partitions
of Poland 91

Index

revolutionary disturbances in, during
1848–1849 115–116, 439
See also German, as language of administration in Habsburg lands; Habsburgs;
treaties, multilateral agreements;
treaties, between Russia and Austria;
War of the Austrian Succession
autocracy, as foundation of Russian statehood
58
Avant-coureur (Harbinger) 412
Avignon Courier, see Courrier d’Avignon
Avramov, Pavel Vasil’evich (1790–1836) 230
Avvakum, Archpriest (1620–1682) 564
Babel, Tower of 64, 217
Bachaumont, Louis Petit de (1690–1771) 411, 412
backwardness, see national backwardness
Bad Kissingen 224
Baden-Baden 522, 528, 531
Bakhmetevs 156
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1895–1975)
70–71
Bakunin, Aleksandr Mikhailovich (1768–1854)
254
Bakunin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich (1814–1876)
119, 121, 254, 565
Bakunins 259, 345
ballads 360
balls (as sites of sociability) 94, 222, 230, 261,
506, 552
Baltic nobility 96–97, 115, 136, 155, 257, 265, 305,
310, 382, 392, 456
Baltic region, language practice in 257–258
scholars from 320–321
Balzac, Honoré de (1799–1850) 258, 424
Baratynskii, Evgenii Abramovich (1800–1844)
258, 386
‘Barbet Scrutateur’ (family newspaper) 225
Barbour, Stephen 55, 581
Bariatinskaia, Nina (dates unknown) 163
Bariatinskii, Prince Aleksandr Petrovich
(1798–1844), Some Hours of Leisure at
Tul’chin 371
Bariatinskiis, Princes 140, 143, 145 n. 73,
153–154, 206
Barsov, Anton Alekseevich (1730–1791), Short
Rules of Russian Grammar 466
Barta, Peter 327
Bartenev, Nikolai Arsen’evich (1830–?) 340
Barteneva, Nadezhda Arsen’evna (dates
unknown) 224–225
Barteneva, Praskov’ia (Polina) Arsen’evna
(1811–1872) 224, 340, 357 n. 118
Basargin, Nikolai Vasil’evich (1800 or 1801–1861)
230, 231 n. 65
Basargina, Ekaterina 321
Baten’kov, Gavriil Stepanovich (1793–1863) 149
Batiushkov, Fedor (Russian teacher of French)
128

663
Baudin, Rodolphe 337–338, 341
Bavaria 442
Baxter, James (Anglophone tutor in early
nineteenth-century Russia) 159
Bayard, Pierre Terrail, Seigneur de (c.
1473–1524) 389
Bayer, Gottlieb Siegfried (1694–1738) 403, 404
Bazaine, Pierre-Dominique (1786–1838) 145
beau monde, see grand monde
Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin Caron de
(1732–1799) 374
Beausobre, Isaac de (1659–1738) 404
Beausobre, Léopold de (dates unknown) 404
Beccaria, Cesare, Marchese di Bonesana
(1738–1794) 427
On Crimes and Punishments 427
Beckett, Samuel Barclay (1906–1989) 393
Beirut 296
Belavin, Ivan Savinovich (governor of Nizhnii
Novgorod Province from 1780 to 1796) 255
Belgorod 259
Belgrade 296
Belinskii, Vissarion Grigor’evich (1811–1848)
on Kantemir 429
limited knowledge of French 119, 331
‘Literary Reveries’ 330
as member of intelligentsia 117 n. 119
social background of 118, 578
use of term ‘literatura’ 330 n. 8
as so-called Westernizer 45 n. 41
Bell, see Kolokol
Bellegarde, Jean Baptiste Morvan de
(1648–1734) 161
Perfect Education 181
Belleville, Chevalier Romain de (Francophone
tutor in late eighteenth-/early nineteenthcentury Russia) 221
Belliard, Jean Baptiste (French teacher in
Russia in late eighteenth century) 255
Belosel’skii-Belozerskii, Prince Aleksandr
Mikhailovich (1752–1809) 363–364, 387
book on Italian music 364
Dianyology 367
epistle to Voltaire 363
epistles to the French 363–364
father of Zinaida Volkonskaia 386
Belosel’skiis, Princes 219
Benckendorff, Count Alexander von
(1783–1844) 115, 303–305
use of French by 304–305
Berelowitch, Wladimir 335, 361
Beresnikov, Colonel (eighteenth-century
nobleman in Vologda Province) 256
Berg, Fedor Fedorovich (1790–1874) 310
Berger, Jean (French teacher in Russia in late
eighteenth century) 256
Berlin
as hub of Francophone society and culture
81

664 
Masonic lodges in 227, 229
University of 404
See also Royal Berlin Academy of Sciences
and Fine Arts
Berlin Academy of Sciences, see Royal Berlin
Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts
Berlin, Isaiah 117 n. 119, 173
Bernoulli, Daniel (1700–1782) 322, 404
Bernoulli, Johann I (1667–1748) 322
Bernoulli, Johann II (1710–1790) 322–323
Berquin, Arnaud (1747–1791) 223
Bertin d’Antilly (1763–1804) 419
Besançon 227
Beseda (i.e. Beseda liubitelei russkogo slova), see
Symposium of Lovers of the Russian Word
Bestuzhev, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich (nom de
plume Aleksandr Marlinskii, 1797–1837) 115,
502, 503
Bestuzhev-Riumin, Count Aleksei Petrovich
(1693–1766) 286
Bestuzhev-Riumin, Mikhail Alekseevich (c.
1800–1832) 231
Betancourt y Molina, Agustín de (1758–1824)
145
Betskoi, Ivan Ivanovich (1704–1795) 150, 152, 153,
269, 410, 576
Plans and Statutes 427
Bezborodko, Prince Aleksandr Andreevich
(1747–1799) 294
Bibikov, Aleksandr Il’ich (1729–1774) 226
Bibikova, Agrafena Aleksandrovna (1755–1812)
180
Bibikovs 206
Bible translations 488–489
Bibliothèque germanique (Germanic Library)
400, 402, 403, 404, 406
Bibliothèque raisonnée des ouvrages des savans
de l’Europe (Descriptive Library of the Works
of Learned Men of Europe) 404
Bielfeld, Baron Jakob Friedrich, Freiherr von
(1717–1770) 186
Bilfinger, Georg Bernhard (1693–1750) 404
bilingualism 61–65, 70
additive 63
asymmetrical 583
as attribute of patriotic nobleman 516
benefits of 69–70, 251–252
Franco-Dutch 516 n. 246
Franco-Russian 35, 41, 47, 51, 63, 65, 121
individual or societal 62
maximalist and minimalist definitions
of 62
primary or secondary 63
subtractive 63
supposedly detrimental effects of 63–64,
69–70, 85, 251–252, 498
symmetrical 62–63, 216
tutored and untutored 63
See also diglossia; plurilingualism

The French L anguage in Russia

Blainville, Henri-Marie Ducrotay de
(1777–1850) 146
Blanc, Jean-Joseph-Charles-Louis (1811–1882)
456
Blanqui, Louis-Auguste (1805–1881) 456
Blommaert, Jan 484
Bludovs 206
boarding schools 100, 114, 125, 126, 127, 129, 140,
151, 166, 305, 491
attached to Moscow University 405 n. 45
Boborykin, Petr Dmitrievich (1836–1921) 117
n. 119
Bobrinskaia, Countess Anna Vladimirovna, née
Ungern-Shternberg (1769–1846) 372, 373
Bobrinskaia, Countess Sof’ia Aleksandrovna,
née Samoilova (1797 or 1799–1866) 179
Bobrinskii, Aleksandr (either Aleksandr
Aleksandrovich, 1855–1890, or his father,
Aleksandr Alekseevich, 1823–1903; it is
unclear which) 225
Bobrinskii, Count Aleksei Grigor’evich
(1762–1813) 354
Bobrishchev-Pushkin, Nikolai Sergeevich
(1800–1871) 230
Bobrishchev-Pushkin, Pavel Sergeevich
(1802–1865) 230
Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313–1375) 178
Bogoroditsk 259
Bohemia, noble language use in 136
Boileau (Nicolas Boileau-Déspréaux, 1636–1711)
82
Poetic Art 82
Boissy, Louis de (1694–1758), Frenchman in
London 378
Bolotov, Andrei Timofeevich (1738–1833) 260
Bolshevik Revolution (i.e. October Revolution
of 1917) 134, 135, 170, 325, 332
Boltina, Evdokiia Fedorovna (b. 1734) 378
bon goût (good taste) 80
bon ton (right tone) 219, 500, 573
bon usage (good linguistic usage) 487
bons mots (witty remarks) 234, 333 n. 19, 565
See also French, for aphoristic remarks; wit,
or witticisms
Bonald, Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de
(1754–1840) 438 n. 181
Bonaparte, see Napoleon Bonaparte
Bonnegarde, Jeanne Marie de (French teacher
in Russia) 256
Bonnet, Charles (1720–1793) 322, 488
Book of Royal Degrees 54
Borodino, Battle of (1812) 111, 501 n. 184
borrowing
cultural 249, 250, 283, 437, 464, 478, 484,
492, 578–588
lexical or other linguistic 55, 68 n. 123, 91,
96, 287, 288, 288 n. 105, 289, 344, 469 n.
36, 474, 475, 478, 486, 487, 493, 533, 576
See also calques; French loanwords;
loanwords

Index

Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne (1627–1704) 82, 137
Botkin, Vasilii Petrovich (1811–1869) 118
Boudry, David (French teacher in Russia) 127,
128
Bouhours, Dominique (1628–1702) 84, 467, 492
Conversations between Ariste and Eugene 84
Bourdieu, Pierre 65, 99, 247
See also cultural capital; linguistic
market-place
bourgeoisie, or bourgeois society 119, 169, 515
Herzen’s view of 449
Lev Tolstoi’s view of 546
in Low Countries in eighteenth century 136
Russian bourgeoisie 133, 169, 170, 199 n. 119
in early Soviet Union 135
in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
West 60, 119, 242, 515
See also tiers état
Bourgoing, Baron Paul-Charles-Amable de
(1791–1864) 446
Boussole de Terre (Compass) 420
bratstvo, see brotherhood
Brevern, Carl Hermann von (1704–1744) 280
Briancheninov, Lieutenant (eighteenth-century
nobleman in Vologda Province) 256
Britain 274, 278
Briullov, Karl Pavlovich (1799–1852) 386
brotherhood, conceptions of (bratstvo or
fraternité) 568
Brunot, Ferdinand, History of the French
Language 79, 273
Brunswick 275
Brussels 184
Bucharest 296
Buck, Christopher 314, 315
Buckingham, Earl of (John Hobart, 2nd Earl of
Buckinghamshire, 1723–1793) 186
Budberg, Andrei Fedorovich (1817–1881) 310
Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de
(1707–1788) 188
Bühren (Biron), Count Ernst Johann
(1690–1782) 98
Bulletin du Nord (Northern Bulletin) 423
Bünting family 352
Burgundy 462
Burke, Peter 181, 586
Busquet, Anne (French teacher in Russia in late
eighteenth century) 256
Bussy-Rabutin (Roger de Rabutin, Comte de
Bussy, 1618–1693) 181, 332
Butenev, Apollinarii Petrovich (1787–1866)
299–301
Buturlin, Count Aleksandr Borisovich
(1694–1767) 298
Buturlina, Elizaveta Mikhailovna (1805–1859)
197
Buturlins, Counts 206

665
Cabet, Étienne (1788–1856) 456
Cadet Corps, see Noble Land Cadet Corps
Cádiz 281, 282, 283
Cadot, Michel 433
Cairo 296
calques 68 n. 123, 289–290, 470
See also French loanwords; loanwords
Caméléon littéraire (Literary Chameleon) 405,
409, 420, 422
Campredon, Jacques de (1672–1749) 284
Candolle, Augustin Pyramus de (1778–1841) 146
Capo d’Istria, Count (Ioannis Kapodistrias,
1776–1831) 297
Caraccioli, Louis-Antoine (1719–1803) 80–81
Caragiale, Ion Luca (1852–1912) 482
Cardel, Elisabeth (Huguenot governess of
future Catherine II, 1712–?) 187
card-playing 176, 236, 506
Carew, Richard (1555–1620), ‘Excellencie of the
English Tongue’ 467
Carmontelle, Louis Carrogis (1717–1806) 223
Castiglione, Baldassare (1478–1529) 181
Book of the Courtier 174, 175
catching up with the West (as Russian preoccupation or topos) 416, 486, 520–521, 587
Catherine I, née Marta Skowronska, second
wife of Peter the Great (1684–1727, Empress
of Russia 1725–1727) 284
Catherine II, the Great (Sophie-FriederikeAuguste von Anhalt-Zerbst, 1729–1796,
Empress of Russia 1762–1796)
acquisition of French in childhood from
French governess 187
Antidote (response to book by Chappe
d’Auteroche) 413–416, 424, 477
construction of image of Russia as
European power 409–416
conversations with Diderot 82
correspondence in French with Grimm
187, 188
correspondence in French with other
sovereigns 188
correspondence in French with Voltaire
82, 188
disapproval of Freemasonry 226, 427
encouragement of or pride in Russian
literary development 94, 424, 574
encouragement of use of Russian in internal
discussion of foreign affairs 294–295
foreign origin of 99
imagined as ideal sovereign 420–422, 516
Impostor 421
Instruction (Nakaz) 82, 96, 193, 415, 427
mastery of French 187–188
memoirs of 355–356, 355 n. 105
orchestrating cultural propaganda 409–424
praise of the Russian language 468
praise for translation of a work of popular
science from French into Russian 378

666 
pride in command of French 193
promotion of Russian as language of
administration 335
purchase of Diderot’s library 411–412
rescript (1787) on language of diplomatic
reports 294–295, 324, 326
in role of enlightened monarch 82
in role of honnête homme 355
Russian Academy founded by 466
as salonnière 188
statue to Peter the Great (the so-called
bronze horseman) commissioned by
97, 417
use of archaisms 187
use of French by, as attested by Khrapovits­
kii’s diary 188–193
use of French for cultural propaganda
during reign of 409–416
use of proverbial and idiomatic expressions
187
well-read in French literature 187
wordplay in French 187
as writer 329
written French of 187 n. 61
See also Charter to the Nobility; French, at
court; Legislative Commission
Catherine Institute (College of the Order of St
Catherine, founded by Maria Fedorovna,
widow of Emperor Paul, in St Petersburg in
1798) 132
Catholic Church 446
Catholic emigrants from France (who spread
French in Russia) 86–87
Catholicism 48, 149, 371, 386, 449, 453
Cato, Marcus Porcius Uticensis (Cato the
Younger, 95–46 BC) 365
Cauchy, Augustin Louis (1789–1857) 146
Cavender, Mary 42
Censeur, journal politique et littéraire (Censor, a
Political and Literary Journal) 419
censorship 74 n. 136, 115, 357, 418, 455
Cerman, Ivo 329
Çeşme, Battle of (1770) 426
Chaadaev, Petr Iakovlevich (1794–1856) 227,
435–438, 439, 449, 464, 560, 574
‘Apology of a Madman’ 450
command of French and English 437
first ‘Philosophical Letter’ 393, 435–438,
443, 450
Pushkin’s correspondence with 339
scholarly literature on 435 n. 165
as a ‘superfluous man’ 580
view of Catholicism held by 438 n. 181
See also national backwardness, supposed
advantages of
chancery language (prikaznoi iazyk) 484
Chancery of Foreign Affairs (Posol’skii prikaz)
124, 287, 323
language use in 265–273

The French L anguage in Russia

translators in 124, 266–268
See also College of Foreign Affairs; Ministry
of Foreign Affairs
chansons 360, 426
Chappe d’Auteroche, Jean-Baptiste (1728–1769)
413–416, 477
Journey to Siberia 413, 416
See also Catherine II, Antidote
Charlemagne (742–814, King of the Franks from
768, Emperor 800–814) 426, 448
Charles II (1661–1700, King of Spain 1665–1700)
265
Charles Louis, Hereditary Prince of Baden
(1755–1801) 196
Charles V (1500–1558, Holy Roman Emperor
1519–1556) 468
Charles X (1757–1836, King of France 1824–1830)
515
Charles XII (1682–1718, King of Sweden
1697–1718) 408
Charles-Joseph, Prince de Ligne (1735–1814) 99,
187, 188, 416
Charlotte (English governess in midnineteenth-century Russia) 217, 435
Charlotte, Princess of Prussia, see Alexandra
Fedorovna
Charlotte, Princess of Württemberg, see Elena
Pavlovna
Charmoy, François-Bernard (1793–1869) 145
Charter to the Nobility (issued by Catherine II,
1785) 103–106
Chateaubriand, François-Auguste-René
(1768–1848) 383, 438 n. 181
Châtelet, Louis-Marie-Florent de Lomont
d’Haraucourt, Marquis, subsequently Duc
du (1727–1793) 292
chauvinism, see patriotism, jingoistic
Cherkasskii, Prince Aleksei Mikhailovich (d.
1742) 286
Cherkasskii, Nikolai (eighteenth-century
nobleman of Nizhnii Novgorod Province)
255
Cherkasskiis 268
Chernavins 225 n. 44
Chernyshev, Count Zakhar Grigor’evich (field
marshal, 1722–1784) 298
Chernyshev, Count Zakhar Grigor’evich
(Decembrist, 1797–1862) 114
Chernyshevs 219, 223, 259
Chernyshevskii, Nikolai Gavrilovich
(1828–1889) 464, 558, 578
What is to be Done? 458
Chichagov, Admiral Pavel Vasil’evich
(1767–1849) 298–299, 356
Chicherin, Boris Nikolaevich (1828–1904) 234,
258
Chicherins 258
Chikhachev, Andrei Ivanovich (1798–1875) 260
Chikhachevs 225 n. 44

Index

China 275
Chinese 249
Choiseul, Étienne-François, Duc de (1719–1785)
418
Chotek, Countess Marie Sidonie, née ClaryAldringen (1748–1824) 329
Christina (1626–1689, Queen of Sweden
1644–1654), memoirs of 355
Chudov Monastery, language teaching at 267
Church Slavonic 466, 484, 492
in album of a noblewoman 358
study of advocated by Betskoi 152
study of by noblewomen 154, 444
taught at Noble Land Cadet Corps 141
See also Karamzin, on Church Slavonic;
Lomonosov, grammar of Russian; Lomonosov, ‘On the Use of Church Books
in the Russian Language’; Shishkov, on
Church Slavonic
Cibber, Colley (1671–1757), Love’s Last Shift 482
Civil War (in Russia, 1917–1923) 134
Clairaut, Jean-Baptiste (d. after 1765) 323
clarté, see French, clarity
Clerc, Nicolas-Gabriel, also known as Le Clerc
(1726–1798) 140, 145, 420, 427
clothing, see dress
coats of arms 120, 243, 572
Cobb, Richard 498
code-switching 70, 74, 221, 252, 328, 342, 461,
519, 575
in correspondence 328, 342–345
in Dashova’s correspondence 343–344
in diaries and travel diaries 351–354
possible reasons for 73, 190, 309, 343–345
in Pushkin’s correspondence 341–342
in Radishchev’s correspondence 341–342
for reporting speech in the original
language 307–311, 351
ridicule or stigmatization of 66, 512–513,
528–529, 559, 575
in speech of Catherine II 190
treatment of in comic drama in 472–484
in women’s ego-writing 351
codification (of language) 55
See also Russian, codification of
coffee-houses 176
College of Foreign Affairs 286, 290, 324, 503
See also Chancery of Foreign Affairs;
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
colleges (government departments introduced
by Peter the Great) 92
colonization, internal, see internal colonization
comedy 94
comic drama, treatment of language use in
472–484
Commission for the Establishment of Popular
Schools (1782) 127
common people, see peasantry

667
Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania 87,
89, 90, 91
Compass, see Boussole de Terre
competence, see linguistic competence
Condillac, Étienne Bonnot, Abbé de (1714–1780)
416
Condorcet, Marie Jean Nicolas de Caritat,
Marquis de (1743–1794) 323
conduct manuals 177–178, 177 n. 20
Conservateur impartial (Impartial Conservative) 423
conservative nationalism, see nationalism
Considerant, Victor-Prosper (1808–1893) 456
Constantine Nikolaevich, Grand Duke
(1827–1892) 200, 205
Constantine Pavlovich, Grand Duke (1779–1831)
114, 143, 148, 200
Constantinople 282, 283, 285, 403, 442
Constantinople Embassy of the Russian
Empire, language use in correspondence of
296–301
Corberon, Marie Daniel Bourrée, Baron de
(1748–1810) 99
Corneille, Pierre (1606–1684) 82
coronations, language use in accounts of
210–211
Corps of Communications Engineers 128, 145
Correspondance littéraire (Literary Correspondence) 411–412
correspondence, see French, in nobles’
correspondence; French, in royal correspondence; French, scholarly literature on
nobles’ correspondence in; letter-writing.
See also sub-entries under Alexander I;
Alexander II; Alexander III; Alexandra
Fedorovna; Catherine II; Chaadaev;
code-switching; Constantinople Embassy
of the Russian Empire; Elena Pavlovna;
English; Euler; Kantemir; language choice;
Maria Pavlovna; Nicholas I; Nicholas II;
Radishchev, Aleksandr; Rostopchin, Count
Fedor; Russian; Valuev
cosmopolitanism 75, 344, 354, 382, 386, 439,
449, 458, 504, 526, 548, 552, 583, 585
Cossacks 56, 451
costume, see dress
coteries 329, 359, 376
Counter-Enlightenment 54, 88, 118
Courier of the Lower Rhine, see Courrier du
Bas-Rhin
Courland 257, 280, 456
Diet of 257
Courrier d’Avignon (Avignon Courier) 411
Courrier du Bas-Rhin (Courier of the Lower
Rhine) 417
court, see French, at court; French theatre, at
Russian court; German, terms for court
roles derived from; Russian, rising status at

668 
nineteenth-century Russian court; Spanish,
at courts
courtesy 80, 463
See also politeness
Cracow 87
Crimea, Russia’s annexation of (1783) 91, 482,
576
Crimean War (1853–1856) 116, 439, 453–454, 546
effect of Russian defeat in 520
cuisine 95, 212, 354
cultural borrowing, see borrowing
cultural capital 99, 104, 123, 165, 247, 259, 543,
572
See also Bourdieu
cultural diplomacy 185
cultural nationalism, see nationalism
cultural propaganda, see French, for cultural or
political propaganda
Custine, Astolphe, Marquis de (1790–1857) 443,
451, 513
Russia in 1839 443, 451
Cyrillic alphabet or script 225, 466
for Russian names and culture-specific
words 343–344, 352
Czartoryski, Prince Adam (1770–1861) 195, 297,
298, 536
Czech 136
Dahmen, Kristine 139
Dal’, Vladimir Ivanovich (1801–1872) 121
Dallas, George Mifflin (1792–1864) 198
Dalmas, Honoré-Joseph (d. 1829) 431
Damascus 296
dancing, as aristocratic accomplishment 104,
170, 178, 236, 247, 261
dandies 168, 472, 477
See also dandyism; fops; petits-maîtres
dandyism 487 n. 118
Danish 278–279
Danzig 275
Dardanelles 296
Dashkova, Princess Ekaterina Romanovna, née
Vorontsova (1743–1810)
and the Academy of Sciences 317–318, 325
code-switching by 343–344, 345
on her fluency in French 37
linguistic pride of 468
linguistic purism of 470
memoirs of 356
multilingualism of 217, 336
in praise of the Russian language 468
on her supposedly poor knowledge of
Russian 37, 39
travel diaries of 353–354
work on Dictionary of the Russian Academy
153, 325–326, 466–467
See also Dictionary of the Russian Academy;
Vorontsovs
Daudet, Alphonse (1840–1897) 522

The French L anguage in Russia

Davydov, Count Anatolii Vladimirovich
(1837–1905) 238–239
Davydovs 155
Decembrist Revolt (1825) 110, 114, 115, 150, 205,
242, 306, 439, 440, 567
scholarly literature on 114 n. 115
Decembrists 114–115, 220, 306–307, 344, 386
knowledge of Latin among 149
linguistic competencies of 114–115, 230–232
Deffand, Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond,
Marquise du (1697–1780) 175
Delisle, Joseph-Nicolas (1688–1768) 323, 403,
404
Del’vig, Baron Anton Antonovich (1798–1831)
180
Demange, Jean-François (1789–?) 145
Demidov Lycée 128
Demidova, Elizaveta Petrovna (b. 1767) 378
Demidovs 107, 206
Demoiselle, François (French teacher in Russia
in late eighteenth century) 256
Denmark 279
Deran, Pierre (French teacher in Russia in late
eighteenth century) 255
Derzhavin, Gavrila Romanovich (1743–1816)
109, 191, 329, 466
‘Felitsa’ 191
odes 91
Descartes, René (1596–1650), Discourse on
Method 82
Descriptive Library of the Works of Learned Men
of Europe, see Bibliothèque raisonnée des
ouvrages des savans de l’Europe
Desessart, Chevalier Jean (Francophone tutor
in mid-eighteenth-century Russia) 167
Desné, Roland 412
Destrem, Jean Antoine Maurice (1788–1855) 145
detachment from native land, see estrangement
Devot, Antoine (French teacher in Russia in
late eighteenth century) 255
diaries 71, 73, 74, 123, 145 n. 73, 154, 155, 202, 210,
216, 328, 347–352, 573
men’s diaries 351–352
types of 347
women’s 348–351
See also French, in diaries; Khrapovitskii,
diary of; and sub-entries under
Alexander II; Alexander III; Alexandra
Fedorovna; Elena Pavlovna; Maria
Pavlovna; Nicholas I; Olga Aleksandrovna; Valuev
Dictionary of the Russian Academy 39, 68 n. 123,
153, 295, 318, 325, 466–467, 586
Diderot, Denis (1713–1784) 82, 97, 188, 410, 412,
413, 416, 427
diglossia 61, 65–66, 70, 345, 471
scholarly literature on 65 n. 112
See also bilingualism; plurilingualism

Index

diminutives, see Russian, in diminutive forms
of names
diplomatic terminology 287–290
disloyalty (in language use), see language
loyalty or disloyalty
Dmitriev, Aleksandr Ivanovich (1759–1798) 155
Dmitriev, Ivan Ivanovich (1760–1837) 155
Dmitrieva, Nina 339
Dmitriev-Mamonov, Count Matvei Aleksandrovich (1790–1863) 149
Dobroliubov, Nikolai Aleksandrovich
(1836–1861) 118 n. 122, 585
Dodsley, Robert (1704–1764), Toyshop 473 n.
54, 478
Dolgorukaia, Princess Aleksandra Sergeevna
(1834–1913) 216
Dolgorukii, Prince Nikolai Alekseevich
(1713–1790) 167
Dolgorukiis 206, 268
Dolgorukov, Prince Aleksandr Sergeevich
(translator of Sumarokov, dates unknown)
428, 429
Dolgorukov, Prince Iakov Fedorovich
(1639–1720) 268
Dolgorukov, Prince Il’ia Andreevich (1797–1848)
227
Dolgorukov, Prince Ivan Mikhailovich
(1764–1823) 167–168, 259
Dolgorukov, Prince Petr Vladimirovich
(1816–1868) 454, 455
Truth about Russia 454
Dolgorukov, Prince Vasilii Andreevich
(1804–1868) 309, 310, 311
Dolgorukov, Prince Vasilii Lukich (1670?–1739)
268, 269, 278, 279
Dolgorukovs 323
domestication (translation strategy) 478
See also adaptation
Dorat, Claude-Joseph (1734–1780) 411
Dorpat (now Tartu), University of 320–321
‘Germanism’ in 321
Dostoevskii, Fedor Mikhailovich (1821–1881)
Brothers Karamazov 521, 565–569
Crime and Punishment 562 n. 171
as cultural nationalist 121, 573, 583
Devils 521, 522, 559–563
Diary of a Writer 563–565
fictional treatment of Russian francophonie
558–569
hostility to Ivan Turgenev 522
and Native-Soil Conservatism 457
novels of 74, 519, 520
ontological implications of poor command
of mother tongue 562
and Petrashevskii circles 116
Pushkin speech 38, 465, 570
on Russians as the one true Christian
people 580
scholarly literature on 559 n. 152

669
social background of 118, 578
Winter Notes on Summer Impressions 559,
568
See also Native-Soil Conservatism;
Petrashevskii circles
douceur de vivre (comfort) 80, 81, 174, 464, 514
Douglas, Chevalier (Mackenzie-Douglas, Baron
de Kildin, 1713–1765) 410
drama 74, 75, 212, 327, 331
See also comic drama
drawing (as noble accomplishment) 104
drawing-room
as social site 121, 182, 261, 329, 382, 552
presence of women in 183
See also French, in the drawing-room
dress
changes in from time of Peter the Great 94
of common people 120
language and 463–464
and social solidarity 573
See also fashion, language and
Dreux du Radier, Jean-François (1714–1780),
Dictionary of Love 179, 236
Dryden, John (1631–1700), Marriage à la Mode
482
Du Bellay, Joachim (1525–1560) 84
Du Puget, Baron David-Louis d’Yverdon
(1765–1838) 143
dualism of Russian culture (according to
Lotman) 48, 49
Dubert, Jean-Pierre (French teacher in Russia
in late eighteenth century) 256
Dubois-Descours, Louis, Marquis de la
Maisonfort (1763–1827) 419
Dubuisson, Jean (eighteenth-century Huguenot
merchant) 100
duelling 104, 237–238, 339
Dugourt, Antoine (French teacher in Russia in
nineteenth century) 127
Dulac, Georges 187, 412, 417, 418
Dupaty, Charles Marguerite Jean Baptiste
(Mercier-Dupaty, 1746–88), Letters on Italy
353
Durand, François-Michel, Chevalier, Seigneur
de Distroff (1714–1778) 418
Durnovos 143
Dutch 94, 96, 267, 284
Russian loanwords from 96 n. 52
Dutch Golden Age 586
Duvignau (Francophone governor in Golitsyn
family in early nineteenth century) 223
eclogues 360
Edel’man, Ol’ga 203
education 123–171
See also French, teaching or learning of;
French-speaking tutors; governesses
Edward VII, King of the United Kingdom
(1841–1910) 209

670 
Edwards, John 63, 64, 464
ego-writing 73, 74, 328, 332, 346–359
See also albums; diaries; French, in
ego-documents; French, in travel diaries
or journals; travel diaries
Eikhenbaum, Boris 76
Ekaterinburg 126
Elagin, Ivan Perfil’evich (1725–1796) 226, 228
Jean de Molle, or a Russian Frenchman 473,
482
Elagina, Avdot’ia Petrovna, née Iushkova
(Kireevskaia during her first marriage,
1789–1877) 179
elegies 94, 360, 371
Elena Pavlovna, née Charlotte, Princess of
Württemberg, wife of Grand Duke Michael
Pavlovich (1807–1873)
language use in correspondence and other
documents of 205–206, 302–303
position of in Russian royal family 196
plurilingualism of 206 n. 160, 302
Elena Vladimirovna, Grand Duchess, granddaughter of Alexander II (1882–1957) 208
Elias, Norbert 581
Elizabeth, Empress (Elizaveta Petrovna,
1709–1761 (–1762 NS), Empress of Russia
1741–1761 (–1762 NS))
command of French, and French at court
of 97–98
description of coronation of 210
encouragement of cultural propaganda on
Russia’s behalf 574
French theatre and culture at court of 184,
212
invitation to Voltaire to write history of
reign of Peter the Great 407
Elizabeth Alekseevna, see Louise-MarieAuguste of Baden
emancipation of nobility (1762) 102–106, 105 n.
86, 598
emancipation of serfs (1861) 441, 454, 521, 546,
550
emancipation of women 458, 550
emperor (title imperator) 91
empire-building 53, 91–92, 122, 576, 579
Encyclopaedia, see Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné
Encyclopaedic Journal, see Journal
Encyclopédique
Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné 82, 166,
412
Engels, Friedrich (1820–1895) 456 n. 268
England 268, 276, 335
English 94, 97, 123
in high society, as affirmed in Tolstoi’s
fiction 552 n. 122
increased use in correspondence of royal
family from late nineteenth century
208–209, 214

The French L anguage in Russia

learned by early nineteenth-century noble
families 159 n. 123
teaching or learning of 132, 158–160, 169
in women’s albums 357–358
in women’s travel diaries 354
See also Tolstoi, Count Lev, Anna Karenina;
Valuev, knowledge of English
English Literary Journal of Moscow 159
enlightened absolutism 577
Ental’tsev, Andrei Vasil’evich (1788–1845) 230
Éon de Beaumont, Chevalier d’ (1728–1810) 410
epic poetry 91, 94, 329
epigrams 360, 369
epigraphs, use of French or Russian in 506, 506
n. 200
Épinay, Mme Louise d’ (1726–1783) 175
epistolary novels 350, 382, 392
epistolary technique, see letter-writing,
as educational exercise; letter-writing,
linguistic formulae in
Esprit des cours de l’Europe (Spirit of the Courts
of Europe) 398
essentialist view of language 77, 85, 246, 464,
494, 577, 583
Estland 257
Estonians 121
estrangement (supposed alienation or detachment, of Russian elite from native tradition)
511, 527, 528, 562, 584
Etherege, Sir George (1636–1692), Man of Mode
482
ethno-nationalism 242
etiquette
at court 80
epistolary 73, 339, 573
linguistic or verbal 66, 240, 333 n. 19, 341,
523, 574
in society 182, 390, 505
See also Bussy-Rabutin; French, epistolary
etiquette in
Etkind, Alexander 75, 514 n. 239
use of literature by as source for study of
language use 75 n. 140, 244, 519
Eugene, Prince of Savoy (1663–1736) 274
Euler, Johann Albrecht (1734–1800) 418
Euler, Leonhard (1707–1783) 322–323, 403
Letters to a German Princess 322
plurilingual correspondence of 322–323
Europäische Fama (European Fame) 398
Europeanization, see westernization
Even-Zohar, Itamar 503 n. 192
Evstratov, Alexeï 184, 212
exceptionalist narrative about Russian culture
49–51, 50 n. 53, 51–52 n. 60, 457, 549, 579,
580, 582 n. 14, 587
Eylau, Battle of (1807) 110, 495
Ezhemesiachnye sochineniia, k pol’ze i
uveseleniiu sluzhashchie (Monthly Works
that are of Use and Entertain) 318

Index

fables 94, 360
See also Krylov
Fabre, Jacques Alexandre (1782–1844) 145
fairy tales 121
Faizova, Irina 105
Falconet, Étienne-Maurice (1716–1791) 416, 417
fashion, language and 463–464, 477
See also dress
fatherland (otechestvo), notion of, love or
betrayal of, devotion to 105, 118, 129, 432,
482, 489, 491, 494, 500, 516, 564, 584
Fauche, Pierre-François (1763–1814) 419
Fedyukin, Igor 101
fencing (as noble accomplishment) 104, 178
Fénelon, François (1651–1715) 517
Adventures of Telemachus 82
Feofanov, Aleksandr 130
Ferdinand VII (1784–1833, King of Spain 1808
and 1813–1833) 115
Ferguson, Charles 65
Ferret, see Furet
Fijałkovski, Antoni Melchior, Archbishop of
Warsaw (1778–1861) 308–309
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762–1814) 54–55
Addresses to the German Nation 54–55, 577
Figes, Orlando 76, 585
Natasha’s Dance 47
treatment of linguistic issues by 37, 68 n.
123, 575 n. 3
Fircks, Fedor Ivanovich (i.e. Baron Theodor
von, 1812–1872) 456–459
on language use in different social strata or
ethnic groups 248 n. 124
Nihilism in Russia 250, 456–459
as proponent of ‘two-nation’ argument 581
Studies on the Future of Russia 456
on supposed duties of noblewomen 457–458
on use of French as social sign 248
on women’s language use as supposed cause
of nihilism 457, 458
Fircks, Georg Friedrich von (1780–1843) 257
fire of Moscow (1812) 111, 505
firework displays 211–212, 399
Fishman, Joshua 61, 66, 70, 327
flattery 181, 362, 463
Flaubert, Gustave (1821–1880) 522
Fletcher, Giles, the Elder (c. 1548–1611) 89, 95,
413 n. 82
Fleury, Jean (French teacher in Russia) 128
flippancy, see frivolity
Florence 125, 268
Fock, Maksim Iakovlevich von (1782–1831)
303–305
folklorists 58
folk-song(s) 121
Fontainebleau, Edict of, see Revocation of Edict
of Nantes
Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier de (1657–1757)
406

671
Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds 428
Fonvizin, Denis Ivanovich (1744 or 1745–1792)
attraction to Stoicism 463
Brigadier 75, 473–474, 478, 479–480, 483,
559
comic drama of 68 n. 123, 74, 75, 107,
473–484
contribution to Dictionary of the Russian
Academy 466
didactic purpose of 329
on French as sign of social worth 244
Letters from abroad 353, 462
Minor 181, 517 n. 248
on pronominal usage 240
quotations from in epigraphs 506 n. 200
social background of 109
fops, foppery, or foppishness 353, 464, 475,
476–477, 502, 503, 584
See also dandies; dandyism; petits-maîtres
Forceville, Claire-Aldegonde, née Delesalle
(1756–?) 166
Foreign Journal, see Journal étranger
Formalists (school of Russian literary theorists)
76
Formey, Johann Heinrich Samuel (1711–1797)
313, 418
Forster, Leonard 586
Fourcy, Louis Lefébure de (1787–1869) 146
Fourier, François-Marie-Charles (1772–1837)
456, 558
fracture in or fragmentation of the Russian
nation, as perceived by nationalists 42, 43,
457, 459, 462, 511, 549, 550, 558, 563–564,
570, 580–581
Francœur, Louis-Benjamin (1773–1849) 146
Franco-femininity 341
Francomania, see Gallomania
Francophilia (or Gallophilia) 504, 538
See also Gallomania
Francophobia, see Gallophobia
Francophone literature, see French, as language
of literature
Francophone press, see French, for cultural or
political propaganda; periodical publications, in French
Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) 133
Franco-Russian bilingualism, see bilingualism,
Franco-Russian
Franklin, Benjamin (1706–1790) 228
fraternité, see brotherhood
Frederick II, the Great (1712–1786, King of
Prussia 1740–1786)
approval of the French language 85
French spoken at court of 81
on the German language as suitable only for
speaking to horses 152
his negative impression of Russia 430
reform of the Royal Berlin Academy by 313

672 
on supposedly detrimental cognitive effects
of bilingualism 85
use of French in correspondence with Euler
323
Frederick William III (1770–1840, King of
Prussia 1797–1840) 205
Free Russian Press (managed by Herzen in
London) 454
Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Sciences,
and the Arts 489–490
Freemasons 226–230
scholarly literature on 227 n. 51
See also French, in Masonic lodges; German,
in Masonic lodges; Masonic lodges
French
at Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg
312–323
in albums 226, 357–358
for amateur literature 71, 328–329
for aphoristic remarks 226, 233, 310, 333 n. 19
for architectural terminology 571
ascendancy of in eighteenth-century Russia
97–100
as badge or marker of social identity 214,
215, 243, 582
in the ball-room 551, 573
as booster for development of Russian
literature and sense of nationhood
56–57, 587, 588
for ceremonial events 210–212, 214
clarity (clarté) of 84, 85
for compliments 232, 274, 477, 483, 523, 572
at court 61, 98, 183–214, 303, 315, 571, 587
for cultural or political propaganda 61,
395–460, 573
detrimental influence of (according to
some) 41–43, 47
in diaries 73, 348–352, 573
in diplomatic ceremonies 274, 283, 284
as diplomatic language 61, 195, 263–326,
324, 326, 571
for disparagement 524, 527, 572
as domestic language 529
in Dostoevskii’s fiction 558–569
in the drawing-room 69, 225–226, 230, 311,
380, 504, 506–507, 525, 527, 535, 554, 573
in ego-documents 346–359
epistolary etiquette in 73, 233, 332–333
in the family circle 61, 143, 153, 155–156
in family or social games 222–223, 225
formulaic expressions in 163, 203, 232–233,
237, 246, 332–334, 332 n. 13, 344, 365,
483, 527, 572
génie (genius, spirit) of 85, 152
in high society 61, 214, 215–261, 326
as ‘intellectual’ language 338, 537
for intelligence gathering on Russian
subjects 305–307

The French L anguage in Russia

as intermediary or vehicular language 159,
170 n. 149, 170, 428 n. 134, 571
for internal discussion of Russian foreign
affairs 61, 290–295, 307, 309
as internal language for Danish diplomats
279 n. 68
as internal language for Russian diplomats
283–286, 295–296 n. 133
knowledge of among men close to Peter the
Great 271 n. 20
as language of courtship 235, 542
as language of culture 131
as the ‘language of Europe’ 243, 339, 423,
434, 437, 447, 452, 574
as language of fashion 571
as language of flirtation, seduction, adulterous liaison 235, 236, 240, 338, 505–506,
524, 527, 544, 554, 555
as language of friendship, intimacy, or
proximity 61, 123, 166, 170, 195, 214, 225,
573
as language of honour 339
as language of literature, broadly
understood 61, 327–393
as language of nobility 35–36
as language of sociability 166, 173–183
as language of socialism and revolutionary
propaganda 456
as language of tuition 61, 143, 146, 153–154
as lingua franca 61, 88, 124, 150, 157, 195, 214,
279, 297, 303, 310, 311, 364, 427, 495, 500,
536, 571
in Masonic lodges 228–230, 573
for medical subject-matter 191 n. 85, 344, 571
for memoir-writing 355–356
among middling or lesser nobility 253–261
in nobles’ correspondence 71, 73, 165–166,
233, 255 n. 147, 573
in official domains 263–326, 536
for oral discussion of government business
307–312
for polemical writing for an international
readership 439–459, 573
for political or philosophical speculation
537
as prestige language or language of distinction 61, 88, 273, 311, 461, 462, 572
in provincial Russia 253–261
reaction against during Napoleonic period
111–112
for rejection of social inferior 530
in Republic of Letters 243
in royal correspondence 202–210
as a royal language 200–212, 214, 303, 571
for Russian forenames or nicknames 505,
523, 528, 544, 551, 560
in salons 131, 132, 444, 538, 573
scholarly literature on nobles’ correspondence in 338 n. 33

Index

as a secret language 178, 524, 551, 571
for self-fashioning 247
as sign of corporate exclusivity 243
for social differentiation 41–42, 71, 244, 250
for social solidarity 238, 573
in the society tale 505–507
spread of in seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury Europe 79–88
supposed qualities of 84, 85
teaching or learning of 123–171, 551–552
for terms of address 505, 551, 560
textbooks on 128, 130, 131
in theatre 131, 223
for theological dispute 453–454
in Third Department 304–307
in Tolstoi’s fiction 534–558
in travel diaries 352–354, 573
in treaties 273–278, 324
in treatises 365, 367, 573
in Turgenev’s fiction 522–533
universality (universalité) of 80, 84, 85–86,
88, 577
in Valuev’s diary 216, 221, 222–223, 223–224,
234–235, 248–249, 307–312, 572
as vehicle for spurious knowledge or
dogmatic theory 543
women’s use of 303, 573
women’s writing in 376–393
See also allegiance; Catherine II, use of
French by; correspondence; cultural
capital; French loanwords; Frenchspeaking tutors; identity; libraries;
periodical publications; Rivarol; Third
Department; wit, or witticisms
French Academy of Sciences, see Académie
Française
French character or personality, perceptions
of 464
French education, or opposition to it 128–129,
265–266
French Gazette, see Gazette de France
French loanwords
resistance to 470, 576
ridicule of use of 472–484
scholarly literature on 469 n. 36
See also sub-entries on loanwords under
Karamzin and Lukin
French Mercury, see Mercure de France
French Revolution (from 1789) 60, 79, 80, 180,
205, 364, 443, 456, 500, 577
French revolution of 1830, see July Revolution
French-speaking tutors 39, 100, 109, 183,
255–256, 256–257 n. 154 , 333
See also Russian literature, representation
of foreign tutors in
French theatre 112
at Russian court 184–187, 212
and stature of monarch 185

673
Fréron, Abbé Élie-Catherine (1719–1776) 409,
410
Friedland, Battle of (1807) 111
Friendly Literary Society 489
friendship, see nobility, friendship valued by
frivolity (as supposed trait of French character
or character of Gallicized Russian nobles)
385, 464, 479–480, 482, 587
Froment, Abbé (French tutor in Russia in
nineteenth century) 155
Fumaroli, Marc 79, 80, 464, 577
Funck-Brentano, Frantz (1862–1947) 133
Furet (Ferret) 423–424
Gagarin, Prince Ivan Sergeevich (1814–1872)
453, 453 n. 258
Gagarin, Prince Pavel Pavlovich (1789–1872) 310
Gagarins 206, 225, 259
galanterie (gallantry, i.e. attention or devotion
to ladies), see gallantry
Galiani, Abbé Ferdinando (1728–1787) 234
gallantry 173, 175, 178, 235, 476–477, 483, 572
See also dandies; dandyism; fops
Gallicisms 475, 476, 478, 482, 486, 487, 500, 502,
559, 584
See also French loanwords
Gallien de Salmorenc, Timoléon (c. 1740–after
1786) 420–422
‘Age of Catherine II’ 422
Gallomania 75, 76, 111, 182, 462, 473, 474, 480,
482, 483, 495, 497, 500, 584
See also Francophilia, Gallophobia
Gallophobia 111, 441, 494–501
during Napoleonic Wars 472, 503
See also French character; linguistic Gallophobia; stereotypes, or stereotyping
gambling 236, 506
Garting, Ivan Markovich (1768–1831) 297
Gastaldi, Giambattista (dates unknown) 281
Gaston, Chevalier Marie Joseph Hyacinthe de
(1767–1808) 420
Gatchina Orphans’ Institute 128
Gavriil, Metropolitan (Petr Petrovich PetrovShaposhnikov, 1730–1801) 126
Gazette d’Utrecht (Utrecht Gazette) 410
Gazette de France (French Gazette) 418
Gazette de Leyde (Leiden Gazette) 397
Gazette des Deux-Ponts (Zweibrücken Gazette)
418
Gazette du Nord (Gazette of the North) 456
Gazette littéraire de l’Europe (Literary Gazette
of Europe) 412
Gazette of the North, see Gazette du Nord
Gazette universelle de littérature (Universal
Literary Gazette) 418
Geneva 148
génie (of language), see French, génie
genius, as gendered literary concept 379

674 
Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité, Comtesse de
(1746–1830) 381
gentry, see nobility
Geoffrin, Marie Thérèse Rodet (1699–1777)
175, 188
geography, taught through French 143, 154,
155, 169
George, Mlle, i.e. Marguerite Georges, née
Marguerite-Josephine Weimer (1787–1867)
545
George I (1660–1727, King of Great Britain
1714–1727) 276
George I (1845–1913, King of Greece 1863–1913)
208, 209
George II (1683–1760, King of Great Britain
1727–1760) 280
Georgians 121
Germain-Hyacinthe de Romance, Marquis de
Mesmon (1745–1831) 419
German
as academic language or language of
scholarship in Russia 320–321, 325
at Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg 96,
314, 315, 320–321
character of, according to Charles V 468
in competition with French, or relative
value of, in imperial Russia 123
dialectal differences in Holy Roman Empire
265
in diplomacy 265, 272, 284, 285–286, 324
Fichte’s view of 54–55
as language of administration in Habsburg
lands 295 n. 130 , 576
as language for use with soldiers and horses
81, 152
in linguistic repertoire of Catherine II
192–193
in Masonic lodges 228–229
as medium for Russian lexical borrowing
288
as medium for Russian propaganda 400
mother tongue of families from Baltic
region 96
needed by Russians for education abroad 95
at Noble Land Cadet Corps 135–146
practical functions of in fields of mining,
metallurgy, or medicine 96, 126
scorned by Voltaire 81
teaching or learning of 125–126, 131–171
terms for court roles derived from 183 n. 49
as vehicle for early Russian westernization
94–95
in women’s travel diaries 354
See also Valuev, command of German
Germanic Library, see Bibliothèque germanique
Gerngross, Nikolai Aleksandrovich (b. 1825) 310
Gertsen, Aleksandr Ivanovich, see Herzen,
Alexander
Girs, Nikolai Karlovich (1820–1895) 295

The French L anguage in Russia

Glagoleva, Ol’ga 259
glasnost’, first age of (1850s) 116, 455
Glinka, Fedor Nikolaevich (1786–1880) 358
Glinka, Sergei Nikolaevich (1776–1847) 502
Glinkas 254
Glück, Pastor Johann Ernst (1652–1705) 125, 271
Gmelin, Johann Georg (1709–1755), Journey
through Siberia 413 n. 82
Gogol’, Nikolai Vasil’evich (1809–1852) 116, 118,
180, 198, 386, 564
Dead Souls 258, 448, 508
Goldbach, Christian (1690–1764) 322, 404
Goldingen (now Kuldiga) 257
Goldsmith, Oliver (1730?–1774), Essays 365
Golenishcheva-Kutuzova, Avdot’ia (Evdokiia)
Pavlovna (1795–1863) 358
Golenishchev-Kutuzov, Admiral Ivan
Loginovich (1729–1802) 142
Golenishchev-Kutuzov, Mikhail Illarionovich,
see Kutuzov (i.e. Golenishchev-Kutuzov)
Golenishchev-Kutuzov, Pavel Ivanovich
(1767–1829) 369–370
Golitsyn, Prince Aleksandr Mikhailovich
(1723–1807) 335–336, 341
Golitsyn, Prince Aleksei Andreevich
(1767–1800) 353
Golitsyn, Prince Boris Alekseevich (1651 or
1654–1714) 273
Golitsyn, Prince Boris Vladimirovich
(1769–1813) 148, 154, 162, 353, 364–367
‘Dedicatory Epistle to the Young Nobility’
365
‘On the Influence of Events on the Formation of a Constitution’ 365
Golitsyn, Prince Dmitrii Alekseevich
(1734–1803) 367, 367 n. 153, 417–418
Golitsyn, Prince Dmitrii Mikhailovich
(1721–1793) 335
Golitsyn, Prince Dmitrii Vladimirovich
(1771–1844) 38, 148, 162, 365, 423
Golitsyn, Prince Fedor Sergeevich (1781–1826)
218–219
Golitsyn, Prince Iurii Nikolaevich (1823–1872)
221 n. 27, 234
Golitsyn, Prince Mikhail Andreevich
(1765–1812) 335–336
Golitsyn, Prince Petr Alekseevich (1660–1722)
269
Golitsyn, Prince Sergei Fedorovich (1749–1810)
126
Golitsyna, Princess Praskov’ia Ivanovna, née
Shuvalova (1734–1802) 341
Golitsyna, Princess Natal’ia Petrovna, née
Chernysheva (1741–1837) 148, 153, 158,
160–161, 165–166, 219, 223, 233, 254, 353
Golitsyna, Princess Sof’ia, see Stroganova,
Sof’ia Vladimirovna
Golitsyna, Princess Varvara Vasil’evna, née
Engel’gardt (1752–1815) 378

Index

Golitsyns, Princes 107, 143, 155, 158, 206, 220,
254, 259, 268
Golovin, Aleksandr Fedorovich (1694–1731)
272–273
Golovin, Fedor Alekseevich (1650–1706) 272
Golovins 268, 272
Golovkin, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich
(1731–1781), My Ideas on the Education of the
[Fair] Sex 367
Golovkina, Countess Natal’ia Petrovna, née
Izmailova (1768–1849) 382, 392
Alphonse de Lodève 382
Elizabeth, or the History of a Russian Woman
382
Golovkins 206
Golynskaia, Matil’da (Mariia) Mikhailovna
(1824–1848) 155
Golynskaia, Praskov’ia Mikhailovna
(1822–1892) 155
Gombaud, Antoine, Chevalier de Méré
(1607–1684) 174
Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich (1812–1891)
116, 118
Oblomov 585
Goncharova, Natal’ia Ivanovna, née Zagriazhskaia (1785–1848, Pushkin’s mother-in-law)
339
Goncharova, Natal’ia Nikolaevna (1812–1863,
married to Pushkin 1831–1837) 339
Goncharovs 107
Goncourt brothers, i.e. Edmond Louis Antoine
Huot de (1822–1896) and Jules Alfred Huot
de (1830–1870) 522
Goodman, Dena 175 n. 12
Gorchakov, His Serene Highness Prince
Aleksandr Mikhailovich (1798–1883) 233,
308, 309, 310
Gorchakov, Prince Mikhail Dmitrievich
(1793–1861) 308, 444
Gorchakovs 206
gossip 241, 506, 553
Gottsched, Johann Christoph (1700–1766) 428,
429, 430
governesses 100, 109, 255–256, 333
See also French, teaching or learning of;
French-speaking tutors
grammars, see Russian, grammars of
Grand Embassy, see Peter the Great, Grand
Embassy of
grand monde (high society), or beau monde
(fashionable society) 94, 119, 176, 182, 218,
221, 232–242, 245, 333, 384, 385, 424, 458,
479, 507, 557, 569, 572, 577
See also French, in high society
grand narratives about Russian culture
578–586
Grand Tour (culmination of noble upbringing)
87, 104, 130, 131, 158, 227, 330, 353, 361, 449
Grande Armée (of Napoleon) 87, 111, 170, 536, 550

675
Granovskii, Timofei Nikolaevich (1813–1855) 118,
119, 561–562
Grasshoff, Helmut 428
Great Northern War (with Sweden, 1700–1721)
91, 136
Grech, Nikolai Ivanovich (1787–1867) 150–151
Grechanaia (also Gretchanaia), Elena 348, 349,
354, 355, 357, 364, 382
Greek 132, 143, 147, 267, 270, 581
Greek War of Independence (from 1821) 115
Greenleaf, Monika 355–356
Greig, Admiral Sir Samuel (1736–1788) 192
Gretchanaia, see Grechanaia
Griboedov, Aleksandr Sergeevich (1795–1829)
227, 502
Woe from Wit 502
Griboedovs 254
Grigor’ev, Apollon Aleksandrovich (1822–1864)
558
Grimm, Baron Friedrich Melchior (1723–1807)
99, 187, 410, 411, 412, 416
Literary Correspondence 411, 412
Grundt, Georg (Danish envoy to Russia from
1705) 284
Guasco, Ottaviano (1712–1781) 428 n. 136, 429
Guazzo, Stefano (1530–1593) 174
Civile Conversation 174
Gur’ev, Count Dmitrii Aleksandrovich
(1751–1825) 297
Gur’evs 155
Gurowski, Count Adam (1805–1866) 438 n. 184
Gustav III of Sweden (1746–1792) 81, 187, 188, 329
gymnasia (gimnazii, i.e. high schools) 131–132
Habsburgs 116, 183
See also German, as language of administration in Habsburg lands
Hague, The
court at 184
firework display organized by Russian
envoy in 399
as place of publication 398, 400
Haller, Albrecht von (1708–1777) 323
Hamann, Johann Georg (1730–1788) 54, 577
Hamburg
as place of publication 396, 419
Russian diplomatic mission in 296 n. 133
Russian pressure to muzzle journalists in
397
Hamburg, Gary 53, 54, 117 n. 119 , 498
Hammarberg, Gitta 358
Hanover 184
Hanseatic League, or Hanseatic cities 123, 273
Harbinger, see Avant-coureur
Hastings, Adrian 55, 459
hats (as item of fashion) 504
Haugen, Einar 572
Haxthausen, August Franz Ludwig Maria,
Baron von (1792–1866) 47

676 
on language use 47 n. 45
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831) 118,
173, 434, 533
heraldry, see coats of arms
Herberstein, Sigismund von (1486–1566) 89, 94,
95, 413 n. 82
Herder, Johann Gottfried von (1744–1803) 54,
494, 508, 577
Letters for the Advancement of Humanity 54
Hermitage (in St Petersburg) 53
Hernandez Philippe (editor of Francophone
periodical in eighteenth-century Russia)
420
Herold, Kelly 356
Herzen, Alexander (Aleksandr Ivanovich
Gertsen, 1812–1870)
on advantages of national backwardness
464
as both creative writer and polemicist 117
on Chaadaev 436
code of values of 118–119
contribution to geopolitical polemics
around 1848 439, 441, 448–452
as editor of Kolokol 454, 455
From the Other Shore 451, 452
on Karamzin 485
Letters from France and Italy 449, 452
as libertarian socialist 515
My Past and Thoughts 118, 357, 379 n. 192
noble values apparent in conduct of 119
preference for Muscovite nobility over St
Petersburg aristocracy 108
on the Russian peasant and peasant
commune 121, 450, 522
‘Russian People and Socialism’ 449, 451
scholarly literature on 449 n. 236
self-representation as Romantic exile
450–451
social background of 118, 259
on supposed receptivity of the Russians to
other cultures 464–465
use of French for international debate
448–452, 574
as Westernizer 45 n. 41
Herzenism 459
high society, see French, in high society; grand
monde
Historical and Political Mercury, see Mercure
historique et politique
Historical Letters, see Lettres historiques
historiosophical polemic 434–452
history, taught through French 143, 153, 154, 155,
156, 169
Holbach, Paul Henri, Baron d’ (1723–1789) 411
Holberg, Ludvig (1684–1754), Hans Frandsen, or
John of France 482
Holland
as place of publication 399, 400
teaching of French in 124

The French L anguage in Russia

young Russians sent to study in 268
See also Low Countries; Netherlands
Holstein 275
Holy Alliance 113, 383
Holy Roman Empire 91, 265, 273, 274, 275
homeland (otchizna or rodina) 517, 584
Honest Mirror of Youth (guide to conduct)
177–178
honnête homme, notion of 87, 161, 166–167,
166–167 n. 140, 178, 319 359
honour 104, 119, 238, 430
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus; 65–8 BC) 371
horse races 552
Hosking, Geoffrey 52, 53
Huc-Mazelet, Jeanne (1765–1852) 203
Hugo, Victor (1802–1885) 424, 514
Huguenots 86, 404
Hungarian Revolt (1848–1849) 116
Hunt, Miss (English acquaintance of Mikhail
Semenovich Vorontsov) 300
Husson, Pierre (1678–1733) 399
Huyssen, Heinrich von (1666–1739) 398–399,
403, 405
hypocrisy (of high society or, allegedly, the
French as a people, or association with
French-speaking) 119, 182, 464, 532, 544,
553, 554, 568, 569, 577
Iakushkin, Ivan Dmitrievich (1793–1857) 149,
349, 350
Iakushkina, Anastasiia Vasil’evna, née
Sheremeteva (1807–1846) 349–351
Iaroslavl’ 108
Iasnaia Poliana 254, 534
identity
contrastive 558
ethnic 77, 243
fluid 59
hybrid 59, 252, 583, 588
multiple 59
national 36, 41, 52, 77, 152, 232, 461–517, 525,
545–546
optional 59
primordialist 59
scholarly literature on language and
242–243 n. 107
second 498
situational 59
social 36, 41–42, 71, 123, 242–253, 572
See also allegiance; national character,
language or language use as expression
of
image of Russia in Western Europe 396–409,
414, 417, 420, 429, 434, 459, 573–574
imagined communities 123
imitation (by Russians of West), or Russians as
an imitative people 389, 415, 416, 434–435,
437, 457–458, 459, 464, 472, 477, 491–492,
520, 579, 585, 587

Index

See also Ancelot; aping; Chaadaev; Lyall;
parrot; Russia and the West
Impartial Conservative, see Conservateur
impartial
imperator, see emperor
Imperial Russian Academy, see Russian
Academy
industrialization 46
infidelity (associated with high society or
French-speaking) 553
innovators (faction in Russian linguistic
debate) 490
Inokhodtsev, Petr Borisovich (1742–1806) 317
insincerity (of high society or, allegedly, the
French as a people) 464, 554, 568, 569
Institut français 133
Institute for Noble Maidens, see Smolny
Institute
Instruction (Nakaz), see Catherine II
instrumentalist approach (to language use)
60, 480
integrative approach (to language use) 59, 480
intelligentsia 58, 59, 77, 82, 221, 242, 311, 329,
330–331 n. 9, 452, 517, 525, 528, 574
claim to moral leadership of nation 577–578
definition of 116–117 nn. 119–120
emergence in reign of Nicholas I 182
estranged from native soil, according to
Dostoevskii 562
knowledge of Latin among 150
liberal or moderate wing of 532, 561
nationalism in 439, 484
origin of the English word ‘intelligentsia’
68 n. 123
populist wing of 248 n. 124
presence of raznochintsy (qv) in 110, 438
radical or utilitarian wing of 528, 546, 558
as revolutionary force, according to Herzen
450
role and definition of 116–122
in Romanian lands 60 n. 92, 87
scholarly literature on 117 n. 119
social background of members of 183
internal colonization 514 n. 239, 581
Ionesco, Eugène (1909–1994) 393
Irkutsk 242
Italian
character of, according to Charles V 468
in correspondence of Formey (qv) 313
as diplomatic language 97, 265, 272, 275,
276, 285, 290, 296, 324
in domain of music 97
inferiority to French and Latin, according
to Bouhours 84
Kantemir’s knowledge of 281
in linguistic repertoire of some nobles 97,
216, 217
qualities of, according to Bouhours 492–493
n. 151

677
teaching or learning of 154, 169, 267,
269–270, 271 n. 20, 273
in travel diaries of noblewomen 252, 354
in Valuev’s diary 216
as vehicle for early Russian westernization
94–95
in womens’ albums 357–358
See also Valuev, knowledge of Italian
Italinskii, Andrei Iakovlevich (1743–1827) 298
Ivan III, the Great (1440–1505, Grand Prince of
Muscovy 1462–1505) 92
Ivan IV, the Terrible (1530–1584, crowned Tsar
of Russia 1547) 53
Ivashev, Vasilii Petrovich (1797–1840) 230
Iziaslav Province 256
Jablonski, Daniel Ernst (1660–1741) 403
Jacobins 113
Janković de Mirijevo, Theodor (1741–1814) 191,
467 n. 25
Jesuit colleges or schools 125, 139, 149–150, 305
Jesuits 87, 275, 453
jeux d’esprit (games of wit) 222–223
Jews 121
Jobard, Alphonse (French teacher in Russia) 128
Joseph II of Austria (1741–1790, Holy Roman
Emperor 1765–1790) 81, 290
Journal de politique et de littérature (Journal of
Politics and Literature) 363
Journal de Trévoux (Trévoux Journal) 399
Journal des dames (Ladies’ Journal) 411, 412
Journal des sciences et des arts (Journal of
Sciences and Arts) 420
Journal du Nord (Northern Journal) 419, 423
Journal Encyclopédique (Encyclopaedic Journal)
362, 410, 413
Journal étranger (Foreign Journal) 429
Journal littéraire d’Allemagne, de Suisse et
du Nort (Literary Journal of Germany,
Switzerland, and the North) 402, 402–403
Journal littéraire de St.-Pétersbourg (St
Petersburg Literary Journal) 420
Journal of Politics and Literature, see Journal de
politique et de littérature
Journal of Sciences and Arts, see Journal des
sciences et des arts
Journal of the Learned, see Acta Eruditorum
journals, see periodical publications; satirical
journalism
July Monarchy (in France 1830–1848) 60, 443,
584
July Revolution (in France 1830) 456, 503, 515
See also French Revolution (from 1789)
Kalmyks 121
Kaluga 108
Kankrins 224
Kantemir, Antiokh Dmitrievich (1708–1744)
admiration of Peter the Great 406

678 
command of Italian 281
language use in correspondence 280–281,
323
language use as diplomat and early
cultural intermediary in London and
Paris 279–281
satires by 107
as supporter of reforms of Peter the Great
406
his translation of Fontenelle 428
translations of his satires 428–429
treatise on versification 465 n. 14
verses in French by 369 n. 155
works of cited by Catherine II 424
Kapnist, Vasilii Vasil’evich (1758–1823) 367, 369
‘Ode on the Occasion of the Peace
Concluded between Russia and the
Ottoman Porte’ 369
Karamzin, Nikolai Mikhailovich (1766–1826)
admiration of Peter the Great 406
affected by French linguistic and literary
theory 487
article in Spectateur du Nord 426–427,
485–486
on Church Slavonic 487
complains of use of French in Russian
society 40–41, 379
contribution to creation of Russian literary
language and canon 251
disapproval of his professional literary
activity 330
early prose fiction 463
as editor and translator 329
eulogizes Russian 493
on French or other western loanwords in
Russian 477, 487, 489
historical tales 391
History of the Russian State 92, 167–168, 391,
487, 493, 504, 576
journalistic activity 329
language of correspondence with Nicholas
I 204
Letters of a Russian Traveller 379, 426, 427,
486, 489, 492, 493–494, 517, 576
‘On Love of the Fatherland and National
Pride’ 490, 493
polemic with Shishkov 484–494, 508
remarks on monastic clergy 137
on the richness of the Russian language 492
social background of 259
sometime cosmopolitanism of 517
‘Why is there so Little Writing Talent in
Russia?’ 488
on women’s language use 379
See also Karamzinian school; Karamzinian
style
Karamzina, Ekaterina Andreevna, née
Kolyvanova (second wife of Karamzin (qv),
1780–1851) 180

The French L anguage in Russia

Karamzinian school 490
Karamzinian style (‘new’ style’) 488
Karaulova, Varvara Aleksandrovna (1774–1842)
378
Karin, Aleksandr Grigor’evich (d. 1769), Russian
Frenchman 473
Kassel theatre troupe 184
Kavelin, Konstantin Dmitrievich (1818–1885)
455
Kazan’ 108
Kelly, Catriona 379, 381
Kemalist Turkey (after dissolution of Ottoman
Empire in early twentieth century) 51 n.
60, 585
Kenny, Michael 517 n. 250
Kern, Anna Petrovna (1800–1879) 39, 346, 349
Kerns 155
Khanykov, Vasilii Vasil’evich (1759–1829) 367,
369, 370
Khar’kov Province 254
Khemnitser, Ivan Ivanovich (1745–1784) 367,
369
Kheraskov, Mikhail Matveevich (1733–1807) 91,
180, 329, 424, 426
‘Discourse on Russian Poetry’ 424, 426
quotations from in epigraphs 506 n. 200
Rossiad 154
Khomiakov, Aleksei Stepanovich (1804–1860)
453–454, 453 n. 259, 508, 526
A Few Words by an Orthodox Christian
453–454
Khotinskii, Nikolai Konstantinovich (1727–1811)
418
Khrapovitskii, Aleksandr Vasil’evich (1749–1800
(OS)) 226
diary of 188–193
translation of Dreux du Radier’s Dictionary
of Love 179, 179 n. 29, 236
use of French in conversations with
Catherine II 188–193
Khvoshchinskaia, Elena Iur’evna (1850–1907)
156, 200, 221, 222, 234
memoirs of 221 n. 27
views on pronominal usage 241 n. 105
Khvostov, Dmitrii Ivanovich (1757–1835),
Russian Parisian 481–482
Khvostova, Aleksandra Petrovna, née
Kheraskova (1768–1853) 179, 377–378
‘Brook’ 377
‘Hearth’ 377
Kiev 56, 90, 134
as centre of early East Slav state 571 n. 1
Kievan Rus’ 53
Kim, D. Brian 182
Kireevskii, Ivan Vasil’evich (1806–1856) 305, 508
Kireevskii family 159
Kiseleva, Sof’ia Stanislavovna, née Potocka
(1801–1875) 198
Kiselevs 206

Index

Kleespies, Ingrid 56, 119, 437, 438
Kleinmichel, General Count Petr Andreevich
(1793–1869) 310
Klement’ev (eighteenth-century nobleman in
Vologda Province) 256
Kniazhnin, Iakov Borisovich (1742–1791) 377
Misfortune from a Carriage 474, 481
quotations from in epigraphs 506 n. 200
Kniazhnina, Ekaterina Aleksandrovna, née
Sumarokova (1746–1797) 377
Knight, Delphine, née von Schauroth
(1813–1887) 224
knout, debate about 412–413
Knutzen, Martin (1713–1751) 322
Koch, see Dahmen
Kochubei, Count Viktor Pavlovich (1768–1834)
195
Kochubeis 155
Kolb, Gustav Eduard (1798–1865), see Tiutchev,
‘Letter to Dr Gustav Kolb’
Kolokol (Bell) 454, 455
König (Frankfurt book-dealer) 323
Königsberg 322
Koran, translation into Russian 270
Korff, Johann Albrecht von (1697–1766) 280,
314, 317
Korfs 310
Kornilovich, Aleksandr Osipovich (1800–1834)
149, 230
Kostroma 108, 504
Kozitskaia, Aleksandra Grigor’evna, wife of
Laval de La Loubrerie (1772–1850) 180
Kozitskii, Grigorii Vasil’evich (1725–1775 (OS))
427
Kozlovskii, Major (eighteenth-century nobleman in Nizhnii Novgorod Province) 256
Kozlovskii, Prince Petr Borisovich (1783–1840)
438 n. 184
Kozlovskiis 206
Krabbe, Admiral Nikolai Karlovich (1814–1876)
310
Kraevich, Nikolai Aleksandrovich (1758–1790)
229
Krafft, Wolfgang Ludwig (1743–1814) 317, 322,
403
Krasnokutskii, Semen Grigor’evich (1787 or
1788–1840) 230
Kriukov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich
(1793–1866) 230
Kriukovskii, Matvei Vasil’evich (1781–1811),
Pozharskii 154
Krivtsova, Ekaterina Fedorovna, née
Vadkovskaia (1798 or 1801–1861) 258
Krivtsovs 258
Kropotkin, Prince Petr Alekseevich (1842–1921)
childhood companion of Alexander II 456
French articles, leaflets, and pamphlets
of 456

679
Krüdener, Baroness Juliane von, née von
Vietinghoff (1764–1824) 197, 382–386, 392
Valerie 383–385, 393
Krusenstiern, Aleksandr Ivanovich (Alexander
Gotthard Julius von, 1807–1888) 310
Krylov, Ivan Andreevich (1769–1844) 110, 182,
501
fables 431–432
Fashion Shop 494–495
Lesson for Daughters 182
Kuchuk-Kainarji, Treaty of (1774) 418
Kurakin, Prince Aleksandr Borisovich (sometimes confused with Aleksei Borisovich;
1752–1818) 228, 297–298
Recollections of a Journey to Holland and
England 353
Kurakin, Prince Aleksei Borisovich (1809–1872)
156
Kurakin, Prince Boris Alekseevich (1837–1860)
156
Kurakin, Prince Boris Ivanovich (1676–1727)
269, 273
Kurakina, Princess Elizaveta Alekseevna, née
Naryshkina (1838–1928) 156, 196, 199, 223
Kurakina, Princess Natal’ia Ivanovna, née
Golovina (1766–1831) 222, 353
Kurakins 156, 206, 259, 273, 323
Kurganov, Nikolai Gavrilovich (1725 or
1726–1790 or 1796), Universal Russian
Grammar 466
Kursk 108, 126, 259
Kutuzov (i.e. Golenishchev-Kutuzov), Field
Marshal Prince Mikhail Illarionovich
(1745–1813) 111, 542
Labenskii, Xavier (nom de plume Jean Polonius,
1800–1855) 371
La Bruyère, Jean de (1645–1696), Characters 82,
181, 375
Labzina, Anna Evdokimovna, née Iakovleva
(1758–1828) 260
Lacombe, Jacques (1724–1801) 406
Lacroix Sylvestre, François (1765–1843) 146
Ladies’ Journal, see Journal des dames
La Fayette, Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La
Vergne, Comtesse de (1634–1693) 175, 381,
383
La Fontaine, Jean de (1621–1695) 82, 432
Lagrange, Joseph-Louis (1736–1813) 323
Laharpe, Frédéric-César de (1754–1838) 143,
148, 167
La Harpe, Jean-François de (1739–1803) 361,
412, 416
Lalande, Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de
(1732–1807) 323
La Loubrerie, Count Jean-François-Charles de
Laval de (1761–1846) 180
Lamanskii, Vladimir Ivanovich (1833–1914) 321

680 
Lamarche Marrese, Michelle 37–38, 104, 252,
334–335, 579, 582, 586 n. 25
Lambert, Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de
Courcelles, Marquise de (1647–1733) 175
Lambert, General Count Karl Karlovich
(1815–1865) 310
Lambert, Henri Joseph, Marquis de St-Bris et
Comte de (1738–1808) 419
Lamennais, Hugue Felicité Robert de
(1782–1854) 438 n. 181
La Messelière, Louis-Alexandre Frotier, Comte
de (1710–1777) 98, 100, 492
La Mottraye, Aubry de (1674–1747) 406
Lane, Ronald 446
Langer, Nils 471
language choice 61, 67, 70, 73, 77, 579
in ego-writing 348
in personal correspondence of nobility
332–346
reasons for 575
by Russian diplomats in mission in
Constantinople 297–301
See also French, in nobles’ correspondence;
French, in royal correspondence
language consciousness, 55–57, 70, 465–472,
586
language contact 471
language debate, see comic drama; Karamzin,
polemic with Shishkov; satirical journalism; Shishkov, polemic with Karamzin
language loyalty or disloyalty 61, 66, 70, 471
language-mixing 76, 252, 472–482, 484, 512,
559, 562
See also code-switching
language pride, see linguistic pride
Lanskoi, Count Sergei Stepanovich (1787–1862)
308
Lanskois 206
Larin Gymnasium 130
La Rochefoucauld, François de Marsillac, Duc
de (1613–1680) 82, 235, 363, 375
Latin
at Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg 97,
312–323
in Bohemia 136
as diplomatic language 264, 265, 266, 272,
275, 285
disuse in treaties in eighteenth century
273–275
European elites schooled in 581
increased interest in during Alexandrine
age 148–149
for inscriptions 97
insignificant role in noble education in age
of Catherine II 152–153
as language of tuition at University of
Moscow 152
as language useful for study abroad 95

The French L anguage in Russia

learned by children of raznochintsy
147–148, 150–151, 169
medieval poetry in 370
at Noble Land Cadet Corps 147
not regarded as sign of culture by Russian
nobility 137
as source of dangerous political ideas 170
as subject only males could learn 149
taught at Leichoudes’ school 267, 270
teaching or learning of 123–126, 132, 146–151,
365
at Tsarskoe Selo Lycée 151 n. 95
See also Valuev, use of Latin expressions
Latinate borrowings in German 55
Latvian 257
Laurentie, Pierre-Sébastien (1793–1856) 446,
453
Papacy, a Reply to Mr Tiutchev 446
Lavinskii, Aleksandr Stepanovich (1776–1844)
297
Law, John (1671–1729) 269
Lay of Igor’s Campaign (medieval Russian epic
poem) 426 n. 127
Le Clerc, see Clerc
L’Enfant, Jacques (1661–1728) 404
Lefort, François (1655–1699) 398
Legislative Commission (set up by Catherine II,
1767–1768) 82, 107, 140, 291, 412
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646–1716) 92, 400
n. 30
Leichoudes brothers’ school 267, 270
Leiden Gazette, see Gazette de Leyde
Leipzig, as place of publication 398, 399
Le Laboureur, Louis (1615?–1679) 84, 467
Lémontey, Pierre-Édouard (1762–1826) 432
Leningrad 135
See also St Petersburg
Lermontov, Mikhail Iur’evich (1814–1841) 116,
117, 118, 180
Hero of Our Time 43, 258
poems in French by 371, 371 n. 166
‘Princess Mary’ 224
Leroux, Pierre Henri (1797–1871) 119
Leroy-Beaulieu, Pierre Paul (1843–1916) 133
Lespinasse, Jeanne Julie Éléonore de
(1732–1776) 175
letter-writing
as an aspect of noble culture 165
as educational exercise 160–166, 332 n. 13
language choice in 332–346
linguistic formulae in 332–334
manuals on 333, 333 n. 17
as a written form of the language of society
233
See also French, epistolary etiquette in;
French, in nobles’ correspondence
Lettres historiques (Historical Letters) 398
Levashev, Valerii Nikolaevich (1822–1877)
254–255

Index

Levashevs 259
Levesque, Pierre-Charles (1736–1812) 99, 416
Levitt, Marcus 416, 424
Levshin, Aleksandr Iraklievich (1798–1879) 301
Lexell, Anders Johan (1740–1784) 317, 321–322
lexical borrowing, see borrowing; calques;
French loanwords; loanwords
lexicographers 58
libraries 90, 144, 145, 571, 572
French books in 145 n. 73
Lieven, Countess Charlotte von, née Gaugreben
(1742 or 1743–1828) 257
Lieven, Dominic 53, 104, 183, 581, 585
Lievens, Barons von 206, 257, 310
life-writing, see ego-writing
Ligne, see Charles-Joseph, Prince de
light-heartedness, see frivolity
Likharev, Vladimir Nikolaevich (1803–1840) 230
Likhareva, Elizaveta Aleksandrovna
(1778–1845) 378
Lilti, Antoine 175–176, 182, 233
lineage (as criterion for noble status) 107–108,
408
lingua franca, see French, as lingua franca
linguistic borrowing, see borrowing; calques;
French loanwords; loanwords
linguistic competence 40–41, 62, 70, 216, 572,
579
of Russian nobility in French 35–36
of Russian nobility in Russian 36–41, 42
linguistic consciousness, see language
consciousness
linguistic contamination 461–462, 493, 500
linguistic diffidence 469 n. 33
linguistic essentialism, see essentialist view of
language
linguistic Gallophobia 454
as subject in comic drama 472–484
linguistic ideologies 61, 65, 67
linguistic market-place 65, 96, 576
linguistic nationalism 454, 476
linguistic patriotism 84, 132–133, 316, 326, 469
linguistic pride 467–469, 492–493
See also linguistic diffidence and subentries on praise of Russian in entries
on Catherine II; Dashkova; Lomonosov;
Pushkin; Sumarokov; Trediakovskii;
and Ivan Turgenev
linguistic proficiency, see linguistic
competence
linguistic purism, or purist discourse 66, 70,
469–470, 493–494, 576
metaphors in metadiscourse on 493 n. 155
Liria, Duke of (Diego Francisco Stuart
Fitzjames, de Liria y Jérica, 1696–1738) 284
Literary Chameleon, see Caméléon littéraire
literary community 55, 58, 59, 77, 82, 115–122,
310, 329, 330, 439, 517, 573, 577–578
male preponderance in 379 n. 192

681
social origins of 109–110
See also intelligentsia; Republic of Letters
Literary Correspondence, see Correspondance
littéraire
Literary Gazette of Europe, see Gazette littéraire
de l’Europe
Literary Journal of Germany, Switzerland, and
the North, see Journal littéraire d’Allemagne,
de Suisse et du Nort
literary societies 182, 379, 488, 489
literary sources, treatment of 43, 72–77
literary texts, types of 72–76, 327–332
literature, see amateur literature; polemical
writing; professional literature; prose
fiction; Russian literature
Lithuania, see Commonwealth of Poland and
Lithuania
Liubomirskaia, Princess Ekaterina Nikolaevna,
née Countess Tolstaia (1789–1870) 353
Livonia 257
Lizogubova, Evdokiia Vasil’evna (1793–1815)
357–358
loanwords 66, 68 n. 123, 74, 287–290, 486–487,
533
See also borrowing, lexical or other
linguistic; calques; French loanwords
Locatelli, Muscovite Letters 413 n. 82
Lomonosov, Mikhail Vasil’evich (1711–1765)
admiration of Peter the Great 406
advocating use of Russia for publication
of research findings at the Academy of
Sciences 318
contribution to Academy of Sciences 315,
317, 318
contribution to the development of Russian
literature 94
contribution to the Russian literary
language 68 n. 123
correspondence with Euler 322
delivering or proposing lectures in Russian
at the Academy of Sciences 317, 417
eulogy to the Russian language 468
grammar of Russian 68 n. 123, 466
odes of 91, 94, 329
‘On the Use of Church Books in the Russian
Language’ 466
‘Panegyric to Peter the Great’ 430
recommendation of French as model for
those developing the Russian language
316
social background of 110
theory of ‘styles’ or registers 466
treatise on versification 465, 465 n. 14
works of cited by Catherine II 424
Lorer, Nikolai Ivanovich (1797 or 1798–1873) 230
Lotman, Iurii Mikhailovich (1922–1993)
on dualism of Russian culture 48
on French as language of noble rituals 339

682 
on function of French as sign of corporate
exclusivity 243
influence of on scholarship on Russian
francophonie 44
on knowledge of Latin in Russia 149, 150
on marginal significance of Russians’
literary work in French 393
on noble performance or theatricality
48–49, 247, 375
on Pushkin’s remarks on language-mixing
and his actual practice in correspondence 342
on relationship between literature and
reality 75
on Russian exceptionality 49–51
on Tolstoi’s view of Speranskii 243
Louis XIV (1638–1715, King of France 1643–1715
(subject to regency 1643–1661)) 79, 80, 85,
174, 185, 265, 270, 515
Louis XV (1710–1774, King of France 1715–1774
(subject to regency 1715–1723)) 515
Louis XVI (1754–1793, King of France and
Navarre) 255
Louise-Marie-Auguste of Baden, known as
Elizabeth Alekseevna after conversion to
Orthodoxy, wife of Alexander I (1779–1826)
196, 197, 211
Louis-Napoleon (Charles-Louis Napoléon
Bonaparte, 1808–1873, Emperor of the
French 1852–1870) 443, 446 n. 217
Louis-Philippe (1773–1850, King of the French
1830–1848) 60, 443
Lovich family 206
Low Countries
knowledge of French in 124
plurilingualism in 136
See also Holland, Netherlands
Löwenwolde, Reinhold Gustaw von (1693–1758)
184
loyalty, see allegiance
Lublin 87
Lubomirska, Countess Théophilie, née
Teofila Rzewuska/Teofiliia Rzhevuskaia
(1762–1831) 235–236
Lubomirskis 256
Ludwig (1786–1868, King of Bavaria 1825–1848)
444
Lukin, Vladimir Ignat’evich (1737–1794) 109–110,
473, 477–478
on French loanwords in Russian 475–476
Trinket-Vendor 473, 477–478, 483
Lunin, Mikhail Sergeevich (1787–1845) 149
luxury or luxury products 86, 386, 557
Lyall, Robert (1789–1831) 108, 434–435
Mably, Gabriel Bonnot de (1709–1785) 416
Macpherson, James (1736–1796) 431
Madrid 87, 281
madrigals 360

The French L anguage in Russia

Magocsi, Robert 59
Maier, Ingrid 267
Maintenon, Françoise d’Aubigné, Mme de
(1635–1719) 363
Mairan, Jean Jacques d’Ourtous de (1678–1771)
323
Maisonfort, see Dubois-Descours
Maistre, Joseph-Marie, Comte de (1753–1821)
180, 438 n. 181
Makarov, Petr Ivanovich (1765–1804) 379–380
Makogonenko, Georgii 75
Mallet du Pan, Jacques (1749–1800) 419
manners 173, 463, 573
Mannheim 184
Mansurov, Boris Pavlovich (1828–1910) 336, 337
Mansurov, Nikolai Pavlovich (1830–1911) 336, 337
Mansurov, Pavel Borisovich (1794–1881) 336
Mansurov, Pavel Borisovich (1860–1932) 336
Mansurov, Sergei Pavlovich (1890–1929) 336
Mansurova, Ekaterina Petrovna, née
Khovanskaia (1803–1837) 336
Mansurova, Mariia Nikolaevna, née Dolgorukova (1833–1914) 336, 337
Manzon, Jean (1740–1798) 417
Marasinova, Elena 105
Marat, Jean-Paul (1743–1793) 127
Marcus Aurelius Antonius (121–180) 463
Maria Aleksandrovna, see Maximiliane
Wilhelmine Auguste Sophie Marie of
Hesse-Darmstadt
Maria Fedorovna, née Princess Dagmar of
Denmark, wife of Alexander III (1847–1928)
208, 209
Maria Fedorovna (widow of Emperor Paul), see
Sophie Dorothea
Maria Nikolaevna, Grand Duchess, daughter of
Nicholas I (1819–1876) 197–198, 205
Maria Pavlovna, sister of Alexander I
(1786–1859) 205
language use in correspondence and diaries
of 203–204
Maria Theresa, Holy Roman Empress, Consort
and Queen of Bohemia (1717–1780) 188, 285
Marienbad 198
Maris 121
Marmontel, Jean-François (1723–1799) 188, 412,
416
Marque, Annette (French teacher in Russia in
late eighteenth century) 256
Marrese, see Lamarche Marrese
martial valour, see military prowess
Marx, Karl (1818–1883) 456 n. 268
Mary Institute (in St Petersburg) 128
Masclet, Hippolyte (1768–1839) 433 n. 157
masculinization of literary culture in
Alexandrine period 378–379
Masonic lodges 226–230, 261
See also Freemasons; French, in Masonic
lodges; German, in Masonic lodges

Index

Massillon, Jean-Baptiste (1663–1742) 137
Masson, Charles François Philibert (1762–1807)
143, 513
materialism (love of worldly goods, as vice of
corrupted nobility) 119
mathematics, taught through French 143, 154,
156, 170
Maturin Veyssière La Croze (1661–1739) 404
Matveev, Andrei Artamonovich (1666–1728)
176, 270, 399
Maupertuis, Pierre Louis Moreau de
(1698–1759) 313, 323
Mauvillon, Eléazar de (1712–1779) 406
Maximilian, Prince of Baden (1867–1929) 209
Maximiliane Wilhelmine Auguste Sophie
Marie of Hesse-Darmstadt, wife of Alexander II, Empress Maria Aleksandrovna
(1824–1880) 196, 206
Mazelet, see Huc-Mazelet
Mazon, André 134, 135
medicine, see French, for medical
subject-matter
meditation (as literary genre) 94
Meiji Japan (1868–1912) 51 n. 60
Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences
de Saint-Pétersbourg (Transactions of the
Imperial St Petersburg Academy of Sciences;
also Zapiski Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk)
319, 321
Mémoires pour l’histoire des sciences et des
beaux-arts (Transactions on the History of
the Sciences and Fine Arts) 399
memoirs 348, 355–357
See also sub-entries on Catherine II;
Christina; Dashkova; Khvoshchinskaia;
Rostopchin, Count Fedor; Vigel’
Menshekov, Colonel (eighteenth-century
nobleman in Vologda Province) 256
Menshikov, Admiral Aleksandr Sergeevich
(1787–1869) 297
Menshikov, Prince Aleksandr Danilovich
(1673–1729) 273
Menshikovs 107
menus for ceremonial banquets 212
merchants, language use among 36
Mercure de France (French Mercury) 383
Mercure de Russie (Russian Mercury) 420–422
Mercure historique et politique (Historical and
Political Mercury) 398, 400, 404, 412
Mérimée, Prosper (1803–1870) 424
Merridale, Catherine 37
Mervaud, Michel 412
Meshcherskii, Prince Elim Petrovich
(1808–1844) 371, 380
Mesiachnye istoricheskie, genealogicheskie i
geograficheskie primechaniia v Vedomostiakh (Monthly Historical, Genealogical,
and Geographical Notes in Gazettes) 318

683
metadiscourse, or metalinguistic discourse
494, 520
virtual absence of in ego-writing 348
See also linguistic purism, metaphors in
metadiscourse on
metaphysical poetry 94
Meyendorff, Baron Petr Kazimirovich
(1796–1863) 351–352
Meyendorffs, Barons von 155, 257, 310
Miatlevs 225
Michael Aleksandrovich, Grand Duke
(1878–1918) 207
Michael Mikhailovich, Grand Duke (1861–1929)
207
Michael Nikolaevich, Grand Duke (1832–1909)
200, 207
Michael Pavlovich, Grand Duke (1798–1849)
143, 196, 203, 205
Michael Romanov (1596–1645, ruled 1613–1645)
266–267
Michaud (General Alexandre Michaud de
Beauretour, 1772–1841) 547 n. 110
treatment of in Tolstoi’s War and Peace
547–548, 547 n. 110
Michelet, Jules (1798–1874) 451, 451 n. 249
middle class, see bourgeoisie
Mil’china, Vera 438 n. 184
military prowess 91, 390, 415, 579
Miliutins 206
Milner-Gulland, Robin 520
Milroy, James 485
Milroy, Lesley 485
mimicry 579
See also aping; imitation; parrot
Minin, Kuz’ma (d. 1616) 499
Ministry of Foreign Affairs 295, 297, 300–301,
324, 326, 423, 447
See also Chancery of Foreign Affairs;
College of Foreign Affairs
mir, see peasant commune
Mirabeau, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de
(1749–1791) 228
Miroir (Mirror) 423
Mirsky, D.S. 519
mission civilisatrice 458, 513
modernity 463–464
modernization 45, 51 n. 60, 91, 92, 96, 101 n. 74,
122, 124, 246, 570, 585
Moldavia, Russian officers in 87
Molé, Louis-Mathieu, Comte (1781–1855) 446
n. 217
Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622–1673) 82,
181–182, 360, 483
Affected Young Ladies 182
Molva (Rumour) 509
mondanité 183
monde, see grand monde
Monge, Gaspard Comte de Péluse (1746–1818)
146

684 
monkeys, see aping
Montard, Elisabeth (French teacher in Russia
in late eighteenth century) 256
Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de Secondat,
Baron de La Brède et de, 1689–1755) 427, 537
On the Spirit of the Laws 82, 416
Persian Letters 82
Monthly Historical, Genealogical, and Geographical Notes in Gazettes, see Mesiachnye
istoricheskie, genealogicheskie i geograficheskie primechaniia v Vedomostiakh
Monthly Works that are of Use and Entertain,
see Ezhemesiachnye sochineniia, k pol’ze i
uveseleniiu sluzhashchie
Mordvinov, Admiral Nikolai Semenovich
(1754–1845) 128–129
Morembert, Antoine-Nicolas Lespine de
(1708–?) 430
Morkov, Count Arkadii Ivanovich (1747–1827)
343
Moscow
as capital city or metropolis 56, 108, 126, 253
as city of the dead, or Necropolis, according
to Chaadaev 436
contrasted with St Petersburg 108, 552–553,
558
‘Moscow French’ 337
salons in 435
University of 126, 138, 147–148, 151, 159 n. 123,
168, 318 n. 219, 325, 405, 467 n. 25
See also fire of Moscow; Rostopchin, as
governor of Moscow in 1812
Moscow Orphanage 130
Mounier, Jean-Joseph (1758–1806) 419
mrachnoe semiletie, see ‘seven dismal years’
Mukhanova, Elizaveta Aleksandrovna
(1803–1836) 154, 155
Mukhanova, Mariia Sergeevna (1802–1882) 252
Müller, Gerhard Friedrich (1705–1783) 322
Muller, Marie (French teacher in Russia in late
eighteenth century) 256
multi-ethnicity of Russian aristocracy 53, 499,
516
multilingualism, see bilingualism; diglossia;
plurilingualism
Muminzhanov, Azimzhan (early nineteenthcentury Bokharan envoy to Russia) 297
Munich 184, 443, 444
Münnich, Count Burkhard Christoph von
(1683–1767) 98
Murav’ev, Count Mikhail Nikolaevich
(1796–1866) 310, 311
Murav’ev, Nikita Mikhailovich (1795–1843) 37,
113, 149, 231
Murav’ev-Amurskii, Count Nikolai Nikolaevich
(1809–1881) 234
Murav’ev-Apostol, Ivan Matveevich (1762–1851)
419, 502

The French L anguage in Russia

Murav’ev-Apostol, Matvei Ivanovich
(1793–1886) 114, 231
Murav’ev-Apostol, Sergei Ivanovich (1795–1826)
114
Murav’eva, Aleksandra (Alexandrine)
Grigor’evna, née Countess Chernysheva
(1804–1832) 230 n. 64
Murav’eva, Sof’ia Aleksandrovna (1825–1851)
155, 353
Murphy, Emilie 252, 354
Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Russia,
Poland and Finland 222
Murzina, Aleksandra Petrovna (poetess of
1790s) 377
Muscovy (pre-Petrine Russia)
barbarism or darkness of 395, 402, 412
development of sense of nationhood in
53–54
imagined as organic community 46, 581 n. 9
languages in which westerners could
communicate with 275
limited need for knowledge of foreign
languages in 266
scant knowledge of outside world in 268
status of women in 94, 380
western visitors to 79, 89–90, 412
Myshetskii, Prince Iakov Efimovich (d. 1700)
268
Nakaz (Instruction), see Catherine II
nannies, role in upbringing of noble infants 39,
251, 351, 526
Napier, Francis, 10th Lord Napier and 1st Baron
Ettrick (1819–1898) 310
Naples 270
Masonic lodges in 227
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) 53, 110–112,
113, 448
invasion of Russia by, in 1812 36, 111, 380,
501, 503
Napoleon III, see Louis-Napoleon
Napoleonic Wars 110–112, 113, 114, 115
confidence engendered by Russia’s role in
434
Gallophobia heightened by 472
patriotic upsurge during 170
reactionary climate in Russia after 227
relevance to debate about Russia’s relationship with France 484
Russians’ continuing exposure to French
after 502
Tolstoi’s treatment of 534–550
narod (common people), see peasantry
narodnost’ (nationality, Russianness) 58, 330,
503
Nartov, Andrei Konstantinovich (1693–1756)
281
Naryshkin, Lev Aleksandrovich (1733–1799) 189

Index

Naryshkina, Elizaveta, née Kurakina, see
Kurakina, Elizaveta
Naryshkins 107, 259, 268
Natal’ia Alekseevna, née Wilhelmina
Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt, Grand Duchess
(1755–1776) 363
national backwardness (of Russia) 91
supposed advantages of 450, 464
national character 45, 367 n. 153, 389, 461, 464,
472, 478, 533
language or language use as expression of
54–55, 577
national consciousness 54–58, 77, 169, 242, 460,
462 n. 2, 576, 577
as distinct from nationalism 57–58
national distinctiveness, see samobytnost’
national identity, see identity, national
nationalism
compensatory 445
cultural, or cultural nationalists 51, 58, 59,
77, 443, 509, 514 n. 239, 522, 532, 573, 577,
584, 588
development of in nineteenth-century
Europe 54
English in twenty-first century 517 n. 250
exclusive 517
language and 54–60, 67 n. 121, 70
Orthodox conservative 447, 569
political 58
relationship to language loyalty 66
scholarly literature on language and 67 n.
121
See also ethno-nationalism; linguistic
nationalism; national consciousness;
Native-Soil Conservatism; Official
Nationality; Slavophiles
nation-building 55, 56, 578
See also Russian literature, as nationbuilding tool
Native-Soil Conservatism (pochvennichestvo)
250, 457, 528 n. 29, 558, 563–564
See also Dostoevskii; nationalism
natsiia (nation), use of the term 462 n. 2, 479
n. 80
Naval Academy (in St Petersburg) 124
Naval Cadet Corps 127, 141–142
navy, created by Peter the Great 92
Necker, Mme (Suzanne Curchod, 1737–1794)
175, 188
Neledinskii-Meletskii, Iurii Aleksandrovich
(1751–1828) 367
neologisms, see borrowing, lexical or other
linguistic; calques; French loanwords;
loanwords
Nepliuev, Ivan Ivanovich (1693–1773) 283
Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus
Germanicus, 37–68) 398
Nesse, Agnete 471

685
Nesselrode, Count Karl Vasil’evich (1780–1862)
297, 301, 310
Netherlands
as centre for book trade 87
exposure to French through presence of
Napoleon’s army in 87
French periodical publications in 396
as refuge for Huguenots 86
See also Holland; Low Countries
Neuville, Foy de la (late seventeenth century),
Strange and New Account of Muscovy 398
New Germanic Library, see Nouvelle Bibliothèque germanique
New Transactions of the Imperial Academy of
Sciences (Novi Commentarii Academiae
scientiarum imperiali)
News by Hand, see Nouvelles à la main
News Gazette, see Vesti-Kuranty
newspapers, see periodical publications
Nicholas I (Nikolai Pavlovich, 1796–1855,
Emperor of Russia 1825–1855)
attempt to raise status of Russian 199 n. 119
censorship under, and its effects 74 n. 136
exposed to French as language of tuition 143
language use at court of 196–200
language use in diary and correspondence
of 204–205
multilingualism of 198
quality of Russian spoken by 199
sends Russian troops to crush Hungarian
revolt 116
and Tiutchev 447
use of Russian in official correspondence
of 302
Nicholas II (Nikolai Aleksandrovich, 1868–1918,
Emperor of Russia 1894–1917) 202, 207
language use in correspondence and diary
of 208–209
Nicholas Aleksandrovich, Tsarevich
(1843–1865) 207
Nicholas Institute for Orphans 128
Nicholas Konstantinovich, Grand Duke
(1850–1918) 207
Nicholas Nikolaevich, Grand Duke (1831–1891)
200
nihilism 250, 457–459, 559
Nikitenko, Aleksandr Vasil’evich (1804–1877),
on French as sign of social worth 244–245
Nikon (i.e. Nikita Minov, 1605–1681, Patriarch of
Russian Church 1652–1667) 90
Niqueux, Michel 454–455
Nizhnii Novgorod 255
seminary in 137
Nizhnii Novgorodian (i.e. provincial Russian)
502
nobility
aristocracy contrasted with gentry by Lev
Tolstoi 552, 558
confessional diversity of 109

686 
cosmopolitan identity of 53
differentiation of strata in, from court
aristocracy to odnodvortsy 36, 105–110,
159
education of 101 n. 74, 123–171
ethnic heterogeneity of 108–109
European cultural identity of 215
friendship valued by 123, 160, 161, 168, 573
lower-ranking or middling sections of 215,
259–261, 450, 478, 558
perceived difference between Muscovite
and St Petersburg nobility 543
plurilingualism of 135, 146, 216–217, 218, 226,
228, 250, 261, 334, 352, 358, 458, 515–516,
583, 585
in provinces 253–261
role of in westernization of Russia, as
defined by Schönle and Zorin 101 n. 73
scholarly literature on 102 n. 75
sites of noble sociability 222–232
size of, as proportion of population 35 n. 2
sociability, as activity and attribute of 123
as social corporation 79, 99 173, 239, 247, 572
social range covered by the term 106
supposed ignorance of Russian among 37,
39, 459, 583
supra-ethnic identity of 53
See also Baltic nobility; emancipation of
nobility; French, as language of nobility
noble estate (i.e. social class) 36, 62, 103, 105,
106, 109, 118, 259, 371, 478, 574
noble estates (i.e. rural landholdings) 37, 42,
108, 253, 254 n. 142, 258, 546
Noble Land Cadet Corps 68, 100, 130, 167, 317,
417, 420, 467, 567
language teaching at 125, 137–139, 140–141,
147, 153, 160, 257
sons of petty gentry studying at 259
noble manor house (usad’ba) 46, 253, 258, 525,
552 n. 123
nomadism (as topos in Russian culture) 56
Norov, Vasilii Sergeevich (1793–1853) 230
Northern Bulletin, see Bulletin du Nord
Northern Journal, see Journal du Nord
Northern Society (of Decembrists) 113, 114
nouveaux riches 107
Nouvelle Bibliothèque germanique (New
Germanic Library) 402
Nouvelles à la main (News by Hand) 411
Novi Commentarii Academiae scientiarum
imperiali (New Transactions of the Imperial
Academy of Sciences) 318
Novikov, Nikolai Ivanovich (1744–1818) 226,
329, 377, 472
Novosil’tsev, Nikolai Nikolaevich (1761–1838)
195, 196

The French L anguage in Russia

Obolenskii, Prince Evgenii Petrovich
(1796–1865) 114
Obolenskiis, Princes 534
Obrezkov, Aleksandr Vasil’evich (1772–after
1802) 490
obshchina, see peasant commune
occasional verse 328, 360, 371, 573
October Revolution, see Bolshevik Revolution
odes 91, 360
Odessa 115, 134, 135, 230, 298, 301
Odoevskii, Prince Vladimir Fedorovich
(1804–1869) 180, 304, 506–507
‘Princess Mimi’ 506–507
Odoevskiis, Princes 206
Official Nationality 58, 196, 371, 438 n. 183
See also nationalism
Ogarev, Ivan Il’ich (eighteenth-century
nobleman in Saratov Province) 256
Okenfuss, Max 146
Old Russia, see Kievan Rus’
Oldenburgs 310
Olearius, Adam (1599–1671) 89, 95, 412
Olga (d. 969, regent of the Grand Principality of
Kiev 945–964) 392
Olga Aleksandrovna, Grand Duchess
(1882–1960) 209
Olga Nikolaevna, daughter of Nicholas I
(1822–1892) 198, 205–206
Olga, Queen of Greece, née Olga Konstantin­
ovna Romanova (1851–1926) 208, 209
Olivier, Michel (Francophone tutor in late
eighteenth-century Russia) 365
Olsuf’ev, Count Iurii Aleksandrovich
(1878–1938) 209
opera (as social venue) 230, 261
oral poetry 121
Ordin-Nashchokin, Afanasii Lavrent’evich
(1605?–1680 or 1681) 90
Orel 108, 217, 259
organicism (in conception of supposed nature
of pre-Petrine Russian society) 42, 46, 508
Orientalism (of Edward Said) 514 n. 239
originality, see samobytnost’
Orlov, Count Grigorii Vladimirovich
(1777–1826) 354, 431–432
editor of Krylov’s fables in translation
431–432
Orlov, Mikhail Fedorovich (1788–1842) 149
Orlov, Count Vladimir Grigor’evich (1743–1831)
314, 323
Orlov-Davydov, Count Vladimir Petrovich
(1809–1882) 455
Orlovs 107, 206
Ormanson, M. de (French teacher in Russia)
273
Orthodox Church 364, 402, 575
services in 511
Orthodox religion, see Orthodoxy

Index

Orthodoxy 45, 48, 56, 58, 344, 402, 443–444,
489, 580
among social elite 42 n. 30
Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality, see
Official Nationality
Osorio-Alarcón, Cavaliere Giuseppe
(1697–1763) 281
Ospovat, Aleksandr 438 n. 184
Ossian (Oisín) 426, 431
Fingal 431
Oster, Judith 252
Ostermann, Heinrich Johann Friedrich
(1686–1747) 98, 284, 323
Östman, Margareta 329
otechestvo, see fatherland
Ottoman Empire 91, 115, 194, 276, 585
Oxford, Masonic lodges in 227
Ozeretskovskii, Nikolai Iakovlevich (1750–1827)
318, 319
Ozerov, Vladislav Aleksandrovich (1769–1816)
371, 431
Fingal 371, 431, 436
Padua, University of 170
Page Corps 127, 130, 132, 456
Pahlens 206, 310
Painter, see Zhivopisets
palace of ice (built by Empress Anna in St
Petersburg) 403 n. 37
Pallas, Peter Simon (1741–1811) 322, 466
Comparative Vocabulary of the Languages of
the Whole World 466
pamphlets in French 399, 454–455, 456
Panaev, Ivan Ivanovich (1812–1862) 120 n. 129,
506, 578
Panin, Count Nikita Ivanovich (1718–1783)
193–194, 294, 353
Panin, Count Petr Ivanovich (1721–1789) 353
Panin, Count Viktor Nikitich (1801–1874) 311
Panins 107
Pan-Slavism 442, 446
Paperno, Irina, contribution to scholarship on
Russian francophonie 333 n. 19
Parain (French observer in Soviet Ukraine)
134, 135
Paris
cultural pre-eminence in eighteenthcentury Europe 80
as diplomatic hub 265
as Mecca or promised land for Russians
441, 481
salons in 175–176, 233
as supposed centre of civilization or
universal capital 510, 514, 548
Parma, Duchy of 87, 125
grand dukes of 81
parrot (as topos in cultural discourse) 458, 462,
478, 491–492, 579, 580

687
partitions (of Poland in eighteenth century)
91, 417
Pascal, Blaise (1623–1662), Thoughts 82
Pascault, Adolphe (1800–1863?) 149, 155
Paskevich, His Serene Highness Prince Fedor
Ivanovich (1823–1903) 235
Paskevich, His Serene Highness Prince Ivan
Fedorovich (1782–1856) 199, 325
pastoral 463
patrie (fatherland) 481, 500
patriotism
after assassination of Alexander II in 1881
208
of cosmopolitan Stroganovs 515–516
ethnocentric turn in conservative
nationalism 508
on eve of or during war with Napoleon in
1812 111, 112
exhibited by Petr Viazemskii 501 n. 184
not incompatible with Catholicism 371
jingoistic (or chauvinism) 504, 505, 547
lack of it criticized in writings of Fedor
Rostopchin 497 n. 173
in Pushkin’s Roslavlev 504–505
rejection of narrow form of it 517
of Russian women 504–505
See also fatherland; homeland; linguistic
patriotism
patronymics, see Russian, in patronymic names
Paul I (Pavel Petrovich, 1754–1801, Emperor of
Russia 1796–1801) 110, 126, 193–194, 220, 257
attitude towards French language and
habits 194
Paul Aleksandrovich, Grand Duke (1860–1919)
208
Pavlishcheva, Ol’ga Sergeevna, née Pushkina
(1797–1868) 346
Pavlova, Karolina Karlovna, née Jänisch
(1807–1893) 372
peasant commune 46, 121, 511 n. 225, 509, 511
See also Aksakov, Konstantin; Herzen
peasant custom or belief 42
peasant rebellions 121
peasantry
as brutish mob 501
monolingualism among 37
as non-European other 514, 520
supposed nature of 44, 509–514
as true bearers of Russian nationality 457,
500, 509, 577, 587
See also Aksakov, Konstantin, on peasant
commune; Herzen, on the Russian
peasant and peasant commune; Tolstoi,
Lev, admiration of the common people
Penza 108, 112, 336
performance, in noble behaviour 48, 181, 247,
307 n. 188, 375
periodical publications 55, 94
in French 267, 396–406, 417–424

688 
in Latin 267, 398
used to promote favourable view of Russia
396–406, 410–412
Perrault, Jules (French teacher in Russia in
nineteenth century) 128
Perry, John (1670–1732) 412
Persia 296
Pestel’, Pavel Ivanovich (1793–1826) 114, 115, 231
membership of Masonic lodges 232 n. 72
Russian Law 113
Peter the Great (i.e. Peter I, Petr Alekseevich,
1672–1725, Tsar of Russia from 1682, sole
ruler from 1696, Emperor 1721–1725)
account of Russian victory at Poltava in
1709 399
admired by Voltaire 185
demands made by him on nobility 102
as driving force of westernization in his
lifetime 100
edict on social gatherings (assamblei) 177
Grand Embassy of (to West, 1697–1698) 268,
270, 398
image of in western writings 406–409
killing of Tsarevich Alexis 399–400
reforms of 54, 90–94, 110, 431, 457
use of foreign press to improve Russia’s
image 396–402
as viewed by Westernizers and Slavophiles
45–46
See also assamblei; modernization; Table of
Ranks; westernization
Peter II (Petr Alekseevich, 1715–1730), reigned
as Emperor of Russia 1727–1730) 148, 284
Peter III (Karl Peter Ulrich, Duke of HolsteinGottorp, 1728–1762), Emperor of Russia 1761
(OS; 1762 NS)–1762) 99, 104, 277, 410, 587
See also emancipation of nobility
petits-maîtres 476–477
See also dandies; dandyism; fops
Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304–1374) 178
Petrashevskii circles 116, 558
Petrine ‘myth’ 402, 406
Pfeffel, Karl Maximilian Friedrich Hubert
(1811–1890) 446
philologists 58
philosophes 176, 413, 437
Piatigorsk 224
Pictet, François-Pierre (1728–1798) 410
Piedmont 87, 125, 442
Pigarev, Kirill 75
Pigny, Ferry de (dates unknown) 433 n. 157
Pirard (French teacher in Russia) 273
Pius IX (1792–1878, Pope 1846–1878) 443
Plato (c. 427–348 BC) 361
Plekhanov, Georgii Valentinovich (1856–1918)
429
Pleshcheev, Aleksandr Alekseevich (1778–1862)
370
plurilingualism 69, 70, 71, 119, 136, 461

The French L anguage in Russia

definition of 69 n. 125, 216
See also bilingualism; Elena Pavlovna,
plurilingualism of; nobility, plurilingualism of
Pobedonostsev, Konstantin Petrovich
(1827–1907) 207
pochvennichestvo, see Native-Soil Conservatism
Poggio, Aleksandr Viktorovich (1798–1873) 115,
230
Poggio, Iosif Viktorovich (1792–1848) 115, 230
Pogodin, Mikhail Petrovich (1800–1876) 118,
305, 508
Poland 87, 124, 125, 268, 273, 302, 308, 309
partitions of, see partitions
See also Commonwealth of Poland and
Lithuania
polemical writing 331, 439–459
Polevoi, Nikolai Alekseevich (1796–1846) 118
Polish 206, 266, 267, 305
as medium for Russian lexical borrowing
288
politeness 80, 123, 162, 163, 168, 170, 174, 176, 180,
232–233, 240, 241, 261, 356, 549, 572
politesse, see politeness
political nationalism, see nationalism
Polotskii, Simeon (1628 or 1629–1680) 90
Poltava, Battle of (1709) 91, 399
polysystemic theory (of translation) 503 n. 192
population of Russian Empire 35 n. 2
Poroshin, Semen Andreevich (1741–1769)
193–194
Porte (Ottoman government) 285, 296, 299
Posol’skii prikaz, see Chancery of Foreign
Affairs
Pososhkov, Ivan Tikhonovich (1652–1726) 110
Postnikov, Petr Vasil’evich (1666–1703) 269–271,
323
Potemkin, Prince Grigorii Aleksandrovich
(1739–1791) 180
Potemkina, Tat’iana Borisovna, née Princess
Golitsyna (1795–1869) 200, 221, 254
Potemkins 107, 259
Potier, Charles (1786–1855) 145
Powrie, Phil 327
Pozharskii, Prince Dmitrii Mikhailovich
(1578–1642) 499
préciosité (pretentiousness) 181, 360
pre-Romanticism 173, 463, 467
press, see periodical publications; satirical
journalism
prestige language, see French, as prestige
language
prikaznoi iazyk, see chancery language
print culture 55, 586
Printing School, language teaching at 267
professional literature 329–331, 330–331 n. 9
proficiency, see linguistic competence
Prokopovich, Feofan (1681–1736) 110, 421, 424
admiration of Peter the Great 406

Index

funeral oration on Peter the Great 408
promiscuity, as topos associated with adoption
of French language and culture 480, 483,
533
pronominal usage (in second-person forms)
240–241, 241 n. 105, 345–346, 526, 555
See also Khvoshchinskaia, views on
pronominal usage; Pushkin, (on) use of
second-person personal pronouns
propaganda (as a term) 395 n. 1
propagandistic writing, see French, for cultural
or political propaganda; polemical writing
prose fiction 74, 94, 501–507, 519–570
Proskudin (nobleman in Nizhnii Novgorod
Province) 256
Protestantism 444, 449
Proto-Potockis 256
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (1809–1865) 456, 565
proverbs, see Russian, in proverbs
provincialdom 259
Prozorovskii, Field Marshal General Prince
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich (1732–1809) 298
public houses 176
public opinion 94, 396
publishing houses 55
Pucci, Vincenzo (dates unknown) 281
Pückler-Muskau, Prince Hermann von
(1785–1871) 329
Pufendorf, Samuel von (1632–1694) 402, 402
n. 32
Pugachev revolt (1773–1774) 226, 417, 500
Pugachev, Emel’ian Ivanovich (1726–1775) 418
punishment, of Russian children for speaking
Russian 583
purism, see linguistic purism
Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich (1799–1837)
access in childhood to domestic library
with French books 145
Blackamoor of Peter the Great 506
Captain’s Daughter 506
contribution to creation of Russian literary
language and canon 251
correspondence with Count Benckendorff,
Nicholas I, family members, fiancée and
future wife, future mother-in-law, and
friends 339–340
disquiet about lexical borrowing 470
‘Egyptian Nights’ 506
Eugene Onegin 38, 43, 75, 258, 334, 375, 380,
384
on Karamzin as honnête homme 167–168
learns Russian from his nanny, Arina
Rodionovna 39–40
letters as literary experiments 341 n. 44
on mechanical nature of French linguistic
formulae 333–334
noble conduct and values of 118–119
on perceived immaturity of Russian
language 469 n. 33

689
poems in French by 369, 369 n. 156
in praise of the ‘Slavo-Russian’ language
469
on quality of Russian spoken by Nicholas
I 199
‘Queen of Spades’ 219, 505–506
reaction to publication of Chaadaev’s
‘philosophical letter’ in Russian 438
Roslavlev 112, 503–505
seminal role in Russian literature 116
social background of 118, 259
Tales of Belkin 506
(on) use of second-person personal
pronouns 240–241, 346
as visitor to salons 180, 386
Pushkin Pleiad 258, 519
Pushkin, Lev Sergeevich, i.e. Pushkin’s brother
(1805–1852) 339
Pushkin, Vasilii L’vovich, i.e. Pushkin’s uncle
(1766–1830) 367, 369, 370
Pushkina, Ol’ga Sergeevna, i.e. Pushkin’s sister,
see Pavlishcheva
Quadruple Alliance (of 1745 between Austria,
Britain, Netherlands, and Saxony) 285
Rabener, Justus Gotthard (1688–1731) 398
Rabow-Edling, Susanna 58
Racine, Jean (1639–1699) 82
Radiace, Julie (French teacher in Russia in late
eighteenth century) 256
Radishchev, Aleksandr Nikolaevich (1749–1802)
510
Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow 113,
341
language choice in correspondence with
Aleksandr Romanovich Vorontsov
341–342
Raevskii, Nikolai Nikolaevich (1801–1843) 339
Raevskiis, use of letter-writing in French by
338, n. 35
Rambouillet, Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise
de (1588–1665) 175
Ramsays 224
Raoult, Guillaume (French teacher at Moscow
University) 151–152
Raynal, Guillaume Thomas François
(1713–1796) 416
raznochintsy (people of non-noble origin, but
not serfs) 110, 118 n. 122, 137, 147, 148, 159,
331, 529
Razumovskii, Count Kirill Grigor’evich
(1728–1803) 314, 315, 317, 323, 430
Razumovskiis, Counts 97, 107
real schools (real’nye uchilishcha, i.e. schools
for modern studies, not classical studies)
131–132

690 
receptivity to other cultures (as quality
attributed to Russians) 464–465, 499, 520,
549, 570
récits de voyage, see French, in travel diaries;
travel diaries
Reclus, Onésime (1837–1916) 133
refugees (from revolutionary France) 86, 124,
219, 419
repentant nobleman (as literary or intellectual
type) 510
Repnin, Prince Nikita Ivanovich (1668–1726)
273
Repnin, Nikolai Vasil’evich (1734–1801) 294
Republic of Letters 82, 96, 182, 312, 360, 361,
409, 433
See also French, in Republic of Letters
Résimont, Jean-Baptiste de (French teacher in
Russia in late eighteenth century) 143 n. 70,
256, 256 n. 152
Restoration comedy (in seventeenth-century
England) 482
Reutern, Mikhail Khristoforovich (1820–1890)
308, 310
Review of the Two Worlds, see Revue des Deux
Mondes
Revocation of Edict of Nantes (1685) 86
See also Huguenots
revolution(s), see Bolshevik Revolution; French
Revolution (from 1789); July Revolution
(1830); revolutions of 1848
revolutions of 1848 60, 116, 439, 443, 456, 565
Revue des Deux Mondes (Review of the Two
Worlds) 446, 447 n. 225
Rey, Marc-Michel (1720–1780) 413 n. 83
Riappo, Ian [Jan] Petrovich (1880–1958) 135
Riazan’ 108
seminary in 137
Ribeaupierre, Jean-François (Ivan Stepanovich)
de (1754–1790) 180
Richardson, Samuel (1689–1761)
Clarissa Harlowe 382
Pamela 382
Richelieu, Armand Emmanuel de Vignerot du
Plessis, 5th Duke of (1766–1822) 298
Richepin, Jean (1849–1926) 133
Riga 248, 280
as place of publication 399
Riumins 107
Rivarol, Antoine de (1753–1801) 152, 448, 577
On the Universality of the French Language
85–86
Rjéoutski, Vladislav 68
rodina, see homeland
Rogger, Hans 57, 462, 577
Romaine, Suzanne 62, 64
Romania (or Romanian Lands) 87
Romanian intelligentsia 60 n. 92
Romanovs 183
Romanticism 182, 330, 379, 439, 500

The French L anguage in Russia

See also pre-Romanticism; Sentimentalism
Rome 125, 386; Church of 444
See also Catholic Church
Romme, Gilbert (1750–1795) 162, 228
Rondau, Claudius (1695–1739) 280
Roosevelt, Priscilla 39, 42, 92, 253
Rosen, Baron Andrei Evgen’evich (i.e. Andreas
von Rosen, 1799–1884) 115
Rosenberg (Philipp Joseph Count von OrsiniRosenberg, 1691–1765; Austro-Hungarian
ambassador in Russia 1744–1745) 285
Rosicrucians 228–229
Rosset, i.e. Aleksandra Osipovna SmirnovaRosset (1809–1882) 180, 196, 197, 198, 199,
325, 349
Rostopchin, Count Andrei Fedorovich
(1813–1892) 238–239, 515
Rostopchin, Count Fedor Vasil’evich
(1763–1826)
as accomplished performer in society 234
command of French 40
correspondence with Semen Romanovich
Vorontsov 498
criticism of Russian francophonie 111,
498–501
on Freemasonry 227, 498
as governor of Moscow in 1812 112, 501
identification with French society under
the old regime 515
leaflets in Russian 40
letter to Alexander I in 1823 498
‘My Memoirs’ 356, 372–376, 393, 495–501,
572
News, or the Dead Man Lives 497 n. 173
Oh! The French 495
opposition to French education 128
Russian Nobleman Sila Andreevich
Bogatyrev 495–497, 500
treatment of in Tolstoi’s War and Peace
536–537, 546–547
Rostopchina, Countess Evdokiia Petrovna, née
Sushkova (1811 OS/1812 NS–1858) 180
Rostopchins 206
Rotterdam 268
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–1778)
Confessions 82
discourse on corruption of morals 182
Émile 82
inspires pre-Romantic literary current 463
Julie, or the New Heloise 82, 203, 333, 382
Of the Social Contract 82, 416
praises Catherine II for purchase of
Diderot’s library 411
Rousseau, Pierre (1716–1785) 362
Rousset de Missy, Jean (1686–1762) 404, 404 n.
41, 406
Royal Berlin Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts
81, 85, 152, 313, 403, 448
Royal Society (in London) 421

Index

Royal Society of Sciences (in Göttingen) 421
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 313–314
Rubinstein, Anton Grigor’evich (1829–1894) 337
Rubinstein, Vera Aleksandrovna, née
Chekuanova (c. 1844–1909) 337
Rumiantsev, Count Nikolai Petrovich
(1754–1826) 298
Rumour, see Molva
Rumovskii, Stepan Iakovlevich (1734–1812) 323
Rus’ (Old Russia), see Kievan Rus’
Russia and the West, debate on relationship
between 44–52, 77, 447–448, 449, 485, 520,
521, 532, 569–570
Russian
at the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg
314, 315
character of, according to Lomonosov 468
in civil service 302
codification of 465–467, 484, 576, 586
contrasted implicitly with French in
Tolstoi’s War and Peace 549
for culture-specific material in correspondence and diaries 254, 343, 351, 354
dictionaries of 466–467, 484
in diminutive forms of names 343, 345
in education 123–171
grammars of 466, 484
ignorance of as sign of loss of identity 562
internal discussion of foreign affairs in
293–294
lexical borrowing in diplomatic parlance
287–290
among military men 302
nobles’ alleged ignorance of 153
in nobles’ personal correspondence
332–346
in official correspondence or as official
language 214, 301–302, 576
in patronymic names 343, 345
perceived weaknesses of 195–196, 316, 469
n. 33
for polemical writing 331
for professional writing 329–331
in proverbs 345, 354, 506 n. 200
rising status at nineteenth-century Russian
court 210
in royal correspondence and diaries
202–210
as secret language 204, 354
supposed qualities of 316, 433
teaching or learning of 151–160, 321, 458
in Third Department 303–304
for toponyms 343, 345, 351
as vehicle for literature 186
in women’s albums 357–358
women’s use of 334–335
as written language for conduct of government business 301–302

691
See also Academy of Sciences, language
use in; Alexander I, use of Russian
for conduct of government business;
Alexander III, knowledge and use of
Russian; Catherine II, praise of the Russian language; Catherine II, promotion
of Russian as language of administration; code-switching; Dictionary of the
Russian Academy; Karamzin, polemic
with Shishkov; language consciousness;
linguistic competence, of Russian nobility in Russian; Rostopchin, Count Fedor,
leaflets in; Russian literary language;
Shishkov, polemic with Karamzin
Russian Academy (also Imperial Russian
Academy, founded 1783) 153, 295, 318, 576
See also Dictionary of the Russian Academy
Russian Chit-Chat (letters of anonymous
English governess) 217 n. 12
‘Russian Europe’ 46, 511
Russian literary language
creation or development of 116, 370, 487, 586
Russian literature
creation and development of 55–56, 94, 330,
459–460, 465
as indicator of national independence,
maturity, or progress 424, 438, 519
as nation-building tool or mark of national
identity 36, 120, 460, 570, 573
representation of foreign tutors in 463, 492,
496
Russian Mercury, see Mercure de Russie
‘Russian Parisians’ 563
Russophobia in Europe 443, 451
See also image of Russia in Western Europe
Russo-Swedish War (1788–1790) 192
Russo-Turkish Wars
(1768–1774) 87, 91, 415, 417, 426, 482, 576
(1787–1791) 87, 91
(1877–1878) 550
Ryleev, Kondratii Fedorovich (1795–1826)
230–231
Rzhevskii, Aleksei Andreevich (1737–1804) 314
Sablukovs 143
Said, Edward 514 n. 239
St Alexander Nevskii Seminary 137
Saint-Évremont, Charles de Marguetel de
Saint-Denis, Seigneur de (1613–1703) 363
Saint-Julien, Charles de (1803 or 1804–1869) 127,
128, 424
Saint-Maure, Émile Dupré de (1772–1854) 370,
432–433
St Petersburg
as capital city or metropolis 108, 126, 253
as centre of Russian francophonie 255
as centre for the social elite 108
contrasted with Moscow 108, 552–553, 558
as cosmopolitan or international city 108

692 
as European cultural centre 187, 422, 574
founding of 92
French theatre in 112
as hub of Francophone society and culture
81
salons in 180
as seat of court 180, 253
supposed cultural subjugation to Europe
494
University of 127, 128, 145, 146, 321, 424
See also Academy of Sciences; court
St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, see
Academy of Sciences
St Petersburg Literary Journal, see Journal
littéraire de St.-Pétersbourg
St Petersburg News, see Sankt-Petersburgskie
Vedomosti
Saint-Pierre, Jacques Henri Bernadin de
(1737–1814) 99, 383
Paul and Virginia 382
Saint-Simon, Claude-Henri de, Comte de
Rouvroy (1760–1825) 456
salonnières 175, 179–180, 360, 362, 386, 475
salons
aristocratic and literary types of 180
literary activity in 329, 359–360, 370, 372
in Russia 179–183, 500
as sites of sociability 81, 94, 173, 175–176, 222
Saltykov, Count Petr Semenovich (1700–1772
(OS)/1773 (NS)) 216, 298
Saltykovs 220, 223
Samara 108
Samarin, Fedor Vasil’evich (1784–1853) 155
Samarin, Iurii Fedorovich (1819–1876) 149, 155
samobytnost’ (individuality, distinctiveness,
originality) 118, 330, 507, 520
Sanches, António Nunes Ribeiro (1699–1783)
323
Sand, George (nom de plume of Armandine
Aurore Lucile Dupin, Baronne Dudevant,
1804–1876) 119
Sanguszkos, Princes 256
Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti (St Petersburg
News) 317
Santi, Francesco (also known in Russia as
Frants Matveevich Santi; 1683–1753) 286
Saratov 108, 256
Sarti, Giuseppe (1729–1802) 211
satire 74, 94
satirical journalism 226, 472
Sazonov, Nikolai Ivanovich (1815–1862) 456
Schédo-Ferroti, see Fircks, Fedor Ivanovich
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von
(1775–1854) 330
Schleinitz, Hans Christoph, Baron von
(1661–1744) 400
Schönle, Andreas 49, 101, 330, 584–585
schools
arithmetic schools 124

The French L anguage in Russia

cipher schools 124
Orthodox schools 123
See also boarding schools; gymnasia; real
schools; seminaries
Schottelius, Justus Georg (1612–1676) 467
Schumacher, Johann Daniel (1690–1761) 280,
281, 315, 322, 403–404
Schwab, Johann Christoph (1743–1821) 85
Schwimmer, Nicolaus (translator in Chancery
of Foreign Affairs and teacher at the
Academy of Sciences and Noble Land Cadet
Corps, dates unknown) 271
Scott, Sir Walter (1771–1832), Waverley 535
Scribe, Augustin Eugène (1791–1861) 223
Scudéry, Madeleine de (1607–1701) 175
Second Coalition (against Napoleon) 110
secret police, see Third Department
Ségur, Louis Philippe, Comte de (1753–1830) 99,
180, 496 n. 169
Sehested, Christian Christophersen (1666–1740)
279
Semenovskii Life Guards Regiment, mutiny
in 203
seminaries, language teaching in 137
Seneca (Lucius Annaeus, d. 65) 463
Sentimentalism 182, 381, 426
serfdom 250, 581
See also emancipation of serfs
Servante, Anne (French teacher in Russia in
late eighteenth century) 256
Seton-Watson, Hugh 37, 67
‘seven dismal years’ (mrachnoe semiletie) 115
Seven Years War (1756–1763) 98, 211, 277, 410
Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise
de (1626–1696) 82, 203, 332, 380, 383
Shadwell, Thomas (1642–1692), Bury Fair 482
Shafirov, Petr Pavlovich (1669–1739) 272, 284,
323
Shafirova, Natal’ia Petrovna (1698–1728) 272
Shakhovskaia, Princess Natal’ia Valentinovna
(1825–1847) 155
Shakhovskoi, Prince Valentin Mikhailovich
(1801–1850) 154
Shcherbatov, Prince Dmitrii Mikhailovich
(1760–1839) 157
Shcherbatov, Ivan Andreevich (1696–1761) 268,
281–282, 323
residence in London 86, 176
Shcherbatov, Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich
(1733–1790) 140, 157, 206, 478
On the Corruption of Morals in Russia 157
Shcherbatov, Prince Vladimir Alekseevich
(1822–1902) 225
Shcherbatovs 534
Sheremeteva, Sof’ia Vladimirovna (?)
(1883–1955?) 209
Sheremetevs 107, 245, 254, 259
Shevyrev, Stepan Petrovich (1806–1864) 305

Index

Shishkov, Admiral Aleksandr Semenovich
(1754–1841)
‘Addition to the Work called Discourse on
the Ancient and Modern Style of the
Russian Language’ 488
on Church Slavonic 488–489
Dialogues on Literature between A and B
488, 489
Discourse on the Ancient and Modern Style of
the Russian Language 488, 490–491, 493
Discourse on Love of the Fatherland 488
on the language of the Bible 488–489
linguistic nationalism of 476
opposition to French education 128
polemic with Karamzin 484–494, 508
speech at the opening of the Symposium of
Lovers of the Russian Word 488
treatise on the richness of Russian 488
See also Karamzin, polemic with Shishkov
Shklovskii, Viktor 76
Shuvalov, Count Andrei Petrovich (1742–1789)
361–363, 364, 387
‘Epistle to Ninon Lenclos’ 362–363
‘Letter of a Young Russian Lord’ 409, 424
‘Ode on the Death of Mr Lomonosov of the
St Petersburg Academy of Sciences’ 424
verses to Voltaire 361
Shuvalov, Count Petr Ivanovich (1711–1762) 211,
409
Shuvalov, Ivan Ivanovich (1727–1797) 168, 229,
405, 407, 409, 410, 430
Shuvalovs 97, 107, 219, 405
Siena 87
Simbirsk 108
Siniavskii, Andrei Donatovich (1925–1997) 117
Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy (in Moscow) 124,
267
Slavonic, see Church Slavonic
Slavonicisms 487, 494
Slavophiles
attitude towards Peter the Great 45
belief that cultural borrowing compromises
national identity 588
belief that the essence of the nation is found
in the common people 121
controversy with Westernizers 118, 436,
485, 525
criticism of in Turgenev’s novel Smoke 532
as cultural nationalists 58, 573
discussion of use of French 507–514
fundamental views of 45–46
links with Tiutchev 446–447
scholarly literature on 46 n. 43
Shishkov as forerunner of 489
tendency to define Russia in opposition to
western world 441, 449
view of pre-Petrine Muscovy as organic
community 581 n. 9

693
view of Russian peasants as uncorrupted
Christians 522
See also Aksakov, Konstantin; nationalism;
Native-Soil Conservatism; Russia and
the West; samobytnost’
Slavophilism, see Slavophiles
Slavs 121, 391, 438 n. 184, 441, 442, 450, 451, 465,
517, 571 n. 1
Smirnova, Evgeniia Sergeevna (Princess
Dolgorukova after marriage; 1770–1804) 259
Smirnova-Rosset, see Rosset
Smith, Anthony 58, 577
Smolensk 108, 254
Smolny Institute (Institute for Noble Maidens)
127, 128, 259, 417, 467
absence of Latin from curriculum at 149
staging of plays at 187 n. 62
teaching of French at 126, 132, 142–143
sociability, see nobility, sociability, as activity
and attribute of
society, see high society; French, in high society
society tale 505–507
Sofronov, Mikhail (1729–1760) 322
soft power 133
soirées (as sites of sociability) 94, 182, 222, 230,
537, 545
Sokolov, Petr Ivanovich (1764–1835), Basic
Principles of Russian Grammar 466
Sollogub, Vladimir Aleksandrovich (1813–1882),
‘High Society’ 507
Sollogubs 155
Solov’ev, Baron Veniamin Nikolaevich
(1798–1871) 114
Somov, Vladimir 337
Sophie Dorothea, Princess of Württemberg,
known as Maria Fedorovna after conversion
to Orthodoxy, wife of Paul I (1759–1828) 130
Sophie, Grand Duchess of Baden, née Princess
Sophie Wilhelmine of Sweden (1801–1865)
206
Southern Society (of Decembrists) 113, 114
Spain 296
Spanish
character of, according to Charles V 468
at courts 174
as diplomatic language 265, 272, 284
inferiority to French, according to
Bouhours 84
spas 224–225, 230, 261, 551
Spasskii Monastery, language teaching at 267
Spectateur du Nord (Spectator of the North) 419
Spectator of the North, see Spectateur du Nord
Speranskii, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1772–1839)
196, 250, 537, 547
Spirit of the Courts of Europe, see Esprit des cours
de l’Europe
Stackelberg, Count Gustav Ernst von
(1766–1850) 224, 297, 298

694 
Staël, Germaine de (1766–1817) 370, 381,
504–505
On Germany 370
Stagnell, Johan (1711–1795) 482
Stählin, Jakob (1709–1785) 322
standardization (of language) 55, 66
See also Russian, codification of
Stanhope, William, 1st Earl of Harrington
(1690–1756) 280
Stendhal (Henri Beyle, 1783–1842) 391
stereotypes, or stereotyping 46, 81, 95, 244, 389,
464, 481, 569
Sternberg, Marie Augusta Franziska von
(1793–1821) 329
Stockholm
as hub of Francophone society and culture
81
Masonic lodges in 227
Stoicism 463, 467, 478
Storch, Heinrich Friedrich von (1766–1835) 143
strel’tsy revolt (1698) 270
Strakhov, Nikolai Nikolaevich (1828–1896) 558
Strindberg, August (1849–1912) 393
Stroganov, Baron Sergei Grigor’evich
(1707–1756) 158
Stroganov, Count Aleksandr Pavlovich
(1794–1814) 148, 154, 516
Stroganov, Count (subsequently Baron)
Aleksandr Sergeevich (1736–1811) 148, 158,
161–162, 179, 227–228, 353, 516
Stroganov, Count Pavel Aleksandrovich
(1772–1817) 148, 158, 195
Stroganov, Count Sergei Grigor’evich 311
Stroganova, Baroness Natal’ia Mikhailovna
Stroganova, née Princess Belosel’skaia
(1743–1819), wife of Baron Sergei
Nikolaevich Stroganov 349
Stroganova, Countess Sof’ia Vladimirovna,
née Princess Golitsyna (1775–1845), wife of
Count Pavel Aleksandrovich Stroganov (qv)
148–149, 154
Stroganovs 107, 143, 155, 158, 223, 259
patriotism of 515–516
Sturdza, Alexandru (i.e. Aleksandr Skarlat­
ovich; 1791–1854) 453 n. 259
Stuttgart 225
Sumarokov, Aleksandr Petrovich (1717–1777)
attitude towards women’s participation in
literary activity 377
comic drama of 472–482
as early Russian man of letters 409, 421
epistles on the Russian language 468
Husband’s Quarrel with His Wife 472,
474–475, 479, 483
Monsters 472, 474, 477, 478–479, 483
Pushkin’s use of quotations from his works
in epigraphs 506 n. 200
Sinav and Truvor 429–430

The French L anguage in Russia

translation of his works into other
European languages 429–430
works of cited by Catherine II 424
Sumarokovs 206
superficiality (as supposed trait in French
character, French-speakers, or high society)
472, 478, 480, 533, 553, 568, 569
superfluous man (Russian literary type) 43,
462, 580, 585
Suvorov, Field Marshal Aleksandr Vasil’evich
(1730–1800) 419
Suvorov, General Aleksandr Arkad’evich
(1804–1882) 311
Suvorov, Vasilii Ivanovich (1705–1775) 271 n. 20
svet (high society, secular society) 94, 569
Svetov, Vasilii Prokof’evich (1744–1783), Brief
Rules for the Study of Russian 466
Sweden 91, 92, 124, 125, 136, 169, 273, 279
French writing in 169, 329
need for knowledge of French in 124–125
Swedish 267
Switzerland 367
Symposium of Lovers of the Russian Word 111,
111 n. 101, 488, 490
Table of Ranks (introduced by Peter the Great
in 1722) 92, 106, 130, 219, 240, 250, 581
Tallement, Paul (also known as Tallemant,
1642–1712), Journey to the Island of Love
178–179, 360–361
Tambov 108, 258
Tatar khanates 89
Tatar language 290
Tatars 54, 437
Tatishchev, Dmitrii Pavlovich (1767–1845) 297
Tatishchev, Vasilii Nikitich (1686–1750) 126,
316, 424
teachers, see French, teaching or learning of;
French-speaking tutors; governesses
Teleskop (Telescope) 436
Temps (Time) 374
Tencin, Claudine Alexandrine Guérin de,
Baroness of Saint-Martin-de-Ré (1682–1749)
175
Teplov, Grigorii Nikolaevich (1717–1779) 323
Tessin, Carl Gustaf (1695–1770) 329
theatre
at court 184–187, 423
in noble households 176, 223
as site of aristocratic sociability 81, 112,
230, 261
Theroux, Paul 64
Thibaut, L. (teacher of French in Russia) 130
Thiers, Louis-Adolphe (1797–1877) 446 n. 217,
545
Third Department (of personal chancery of
Nicholas I, i.e. secret police) 115, 303–307
scholarly literature on 303 n. 170
uses of French in 304–307

Index

Thirty Years War (1618–1648) 273
Thomson, James (1700–1748) 488
tiers état 348
See also bourgeoisie
Tillot, Jean (French teacher in nineteenthcentury Russia) 127
Tilsit, Treaty of (1807) 111, 541, 543
Time, see Temps
Tipton, Jessica 252, 336, 340, 345
Titov, Vladimir Pavlovich (1807–1891) 299–300
Tiutchev, Fedor Ivanovich (1803–1873)
command of French 446
contribution to creation of Russian literary
language and canon 251
contribution to geopolitical polemics
around 1848 439, 441, 442–448, 449, 450,
451, 452
‘Dawn’ 445
‘Letter on Censorship in Russia’ 444
‘Letter to Dr Gustav Kolb’ 443, 445, 447, 448
‘Papacy and the Roman Question’ 443–444,
446
poems in French by 371, 371 n. 166
political verse in Russian 444–445
‘Russia and Revolution’ 443, 445–446, 447
Russia and the West 443, 447
‘Russian Geography’ 445
supposed ‘psychosocial dislocation’ as
result of bilingualism 43
use of French as domestic language 444
Tiutcheva, Anna Fedorovna (1829–1889) 200,
454, 507
Tiutcheva, i.e. Eleonore (Nelly) Peterson, née
Countess von Bothmer (d. 1838) 444
Tiutcheva, i.e. Ernestine Dörnberg, née von
Pfeffel (b. 1810) 444
Tobol’sk 413
Tocqueville, Alexis Charles-Henri Clérel de
(1805–1859) 451
Tolstaia, Countess Sof’ia Andreevna, née
Bakhmeteva, Miller by first marriage
(1827–1892) 222
Tolstoi, Count Aleksei Konstantinovich
(1817–1875) 222
Tolstoi, Count Ivan Matveevich (1806–1867) 308
Tolstoi, Count Lev Nikolaevich (1828–1910)
‘A Few Words about the Book “War and
Peace”’ 536, 543, 546
access in childhood to domestic library
with French books 145
admiration of the common people 546, 549
Anna Karenina 221, 224, 534, 550–558
attempts to distance himself from his own
class 578
belief that the essence of the nation is found
in the common people 121
as both creative writer and polemicist 117
on Caucasian peoples, who have a simpler
way of life 535

695
characters’ names bring to mind major
aristocratic families 534
contribution to creation of Russian literary
language and canon 116, 251
Cossacks 534–535
as cultural nationalist 573
fictional treatment of Russian francophonie
519, 520, 533, 534–558, 569–570
on his foreign tutors in Boyhood 168
historical verisimilitude in the historical
novel 536
language use in different editions of War
and Peace 535–536 n. 59
linguistic education of his children 156
noble values apparent in conduct of 118–119
opinion of Tiutchev 444
Resurrection 534
social background of 118
on use of French as a social sign 247
War and Peace 75, 112, 113–114, 224, 250, 465,
521, 534–550
Youth 247, 250, 534
See also Michaud, treatment of in Tolstoi’s
War and Peace; Rostopchin, Count
Fedor, treatment of in Tolstoi’s War and
Peace
Tolstoi, Count Petr Andreevich (1645–1729) 269
Tolstoi, General Count Petr Aleksandrovich
(before 1770–1844) 298
Tolstois 107, 206, 254, 259
Tolz, Vera 56
toponyms (i.e. place-names), as indicators of
Russian exceptionality, in Lotman’s view 50
See also Russian, for toponyms
tragedies 82, 94
Transactions of the Imperial St Petersburg
Academy of Sciences, see Acta Academiae
scientiarum imperialis Petropolitanae
and Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale des
Sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg
Transactions on the History of the Sciences and
Fine Arts, see Mémoires pour l’histoire des
sciences et des beaux-arts
translation of works of Russian literature into
other languages 427–433, 459
See also adaptation; domestication
translators 95, 124, 316
See also Chancery of Foreign Affairs,
translators in
travel diaries (or récits de voyage) 71, 73, 155,
252, 328, 347–348, 352–354, 357, 359, 516
See also French, in travel diaries
treaties, language use in
Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) 274
Greifswald (1715) 276
multilateral agreements 276, 277
Nerchinsk (1689) 275
Nijmegen (1678–1679) 273
Rastatt (1714) 274, 275

696 
between Russia and Austria (1757) 277
between Russia and Britain (1766) 277
between Russia and Prussia (1715) 276
between Russia and Prussia (1762) 277
Ryswick (1697) 274
between Sweden and Britain (1737) 274
between Sweden and the Ottoman Empire
(1756) 274
Versailles, between France and Poland
(1735) 274
Versailles (1919) 265
Vienna (1735, 1736) 274
Westphalia (1648) 272, 273, 294
Trediakovskii, Vasilii Kirillovich (1703–1769)
Journey to the Island of Love 178–179,
360–361
occasional poems in French 360–361, 367
organizer of Russian Assembly in Academy
of Sciences 316
in praise of the ‘Slavenorossiiskii’ language
468
social background of 110
studies in France 98
treatise on versification by 465 n. 14
works of cited by Catherine II 424
Trévoux Journal, see Journal de Trévoux
Trinity Monastery of St Sergei 137
troubadours 178
Trubetskoi, Prince Ivan Iur’evich (1667–1750)
269
Trubetskoi, Prince Sergei Petrovich (1790–1860)
114, 227, 230
Trubetskois 534
Tsarskoe Selo Lycée 40, 127, 132, 160
Tschudy, Baron Théodore-Henri de (1724–1769)
229, 406, 409 n. 67, 421, 422
editor of Caméléon littéraire 405
translation of Lomonosov’s panegyric to
Peter the Great 430
See also Caméléon littéraire
tu and vous forms, see pronominal usage
Tula 108, 254, 259, 534
Turgenev, Aleksandr Ivanovich (1784–1846) 306
Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich (1818–1883)
contribution to creation of Russian literary
language and canon 116, 251
Fathers and Children 456
fictional treatment of Russian francophonie
519, 522–533, 569
First Love 523, 524
Nest of Gentry 521, 523, 525–527, 528, 529
opinion of Tiutchev 444
poems in prose, in praise of the Russian
language 469
Rudin 43, 258, 522, 523–525, 528
Smoke 523, 528–533, 552 n. 122
social background of 118
Spring Torrents 523, 524
Turgenev, Nikolai Ivanovich (1789–1871)

The French L anguage in Russia

contribution to geopolitical polemics
around 1848 439–442, 449
Justificatory Memoir 440
knowledge of Latin 149
pamphlets on the emancipation of the serfs
454
rejection of narrow patriotism 517
Russia in the Face of the European Crisis
441–442
Russia and the Russians 245–247, 440
surveillance of by Third Department
306–307
use of French to express opposition to
Russian regime 574
on use of French by the Russian nobility
245–247, 249–250
Turin, as hub of Francophone society and
culture 81
Turkestanova, Varvara Il’inichna (1775–1819)
353
tutors, see French-speaking tutors; governesses
Tver’ 108, 254
two-nation thesis about imperial Russia 248,
250, 581, 582
Tynianov, Iurii 490
Ukhtomskii family 256
Ukraine 90, 91, 134, 140, 149–150
Ukrainian 243 n. 111
Ukrainian elites 273
Ukrainians 121
Ulybysheva, Elizaveta Dmitrievna (dates
unknown) 372
Union of Salvation 113
Union of Welfare 113
United States of America 178
Universal Literary Gazette, see Gazette
universelle de littérature
Universal Gazette, see Allgemeine Zeitung
universality of French language, see French
language, universality (universalité) of;
Rivarol
universality as supposed characteristic of
Russian literature and culture 57, 549, 570
universities, see Berlin, University of; Dorpat,
University of; Moscow, University of; St
Petersburg, University of
Unofficial Committee (of Alexander I) 195
Urals region 126, 260
urbanity 249, 389, 463–464
urbanization 46, 557
Urusovs 268
usad’ba, see noble manor house
Uspenskii, Boris 487
utopian socialism 116, 449, 456, 558, 568
Utrecht Gazette, see Gazette d’Utrecht
Uvarov, Count Sergei Semenovich (1786–1855)
372, 423
Uvarovs 206

Index

Vacheva, Angelina 355
Vakul’skaia, Countess Anna Ivanovna (d. 1883)
248
Valuev, Count Petr Aleksandrovich (1815–1890)
code-switching in diary of 74, 307, 309
command of German 216
conversations with Alexander II 307–308
correspondence with Alexander II in
Russian 308
diary of, as a source on language use
220–221, 307 n. 188, 351
knowledge of English 216
knowledge of Italian 216
reflections on language use 248–249
as source on use of French in high official
circles under Alexander II 307–312
symmetrical bilingualism of 309
use of French for aphoristic or caustic
remarks, le mot juste, or witticisms
233–235
use of Latin expressions 216 n. 7
Vanburgh, Sir John (1664–1726), Relapse, or
Virtue in Danger 482
Vasil’chikovs 206
Vasil’eva, Elizaveta (author of nineteenthcentury travel diary) 353
Vatican 265
Vatsuro, Vadim 357
Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre de (1633–1707)
271 n. 20
vaudevilles 220
Vaugelas, Claude Favre de (1585–1650) 487
Vel’iaminov, General Ivan Aleksandrovich
(1771–1837) 297
Veliasheva-Volyntseva, Pelageia Ivanovna
(1773–1810) 378
Venevitinov, Dmitrii Vladimirovich (1805–1827)
386
Venice 268, 269, 283
Vereshchagin, Mikhail Nikolaevich (1789–1812)
547 n. 108
Verhaeren, Émile (1855–1916) 133
Versailles, French court at 80, 185
versification, treatises on 465 n. 14
Veshniakov, Aleksei Andreevich (1700–1745)
282–283, 285
Vesti-Kuranty (News Gazette) 124, 267, 397
Viardot, Pauline (1821–1910) 522
Viatkina, Irina 370
Viazemskii, Prince Andrei Ivanovich
(1754–1807) 251
Viazemskii, Prince Petr Andreevich (1792–1878)
180, 251, 251, 304, 346, 375, 386, 499, 501
Viazemskiis 224
Victoria of Baden, Queen of Sweden (1862–1930)
209
Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland (1819–1901) 208
Vienna 270

697
as hub of Francophone society and culture
81
Vigel’, Filipp Filippovich (1786–1856)
on close association of French with Russian
noble sociability 166
conceives of Russian nobility as a mongrel
class 108–109
criticism of women’s supposed preference
for French during the Napoleonic Wars
380
induction of as Freemason 229
irritated by continued Russian francophonie after Napoleonic Wars 501
on linguistic patriotism in 1812 111
as an outsider in the aristocratic world
220–221, 245
on Russians’ supposed imitativeness 435
on scarcity of Russian French-speakers
before 1760s 127
his sense of nationality 220
supposed subjugation of St Petersburg
society to Europe 494
value of his memoirs as a source on
language use 74, 218–221
Villars, Claude Louis Hector, Duc de (1653–1734)
274
Vilnius 87
Vinogradov, Viktor 486, 535
Viollet, Catherine 348, 349
Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70–19 BC) 361,
365
Vladimir (c. 956–1015, Grand Prince of Kiev c.
980–1015) 364, 426
Vladimir (city or province) 56, 108
Vladimir Aleksandrovich, Grand Duke
(1847–1909) 208–209
Vlasov, Colonel (eighteenth-century nobleman
in Iziaslav Povince) 256
Voeikova, Ekaterina Ivanovna (1756–1824) 378
Vol’f, Ferdinand Bogdanovich (1796 or
1797–1854) 230
Volkonskaia, Princess Anna Mikhailovna
(1776?–1827) 378
Volkonskaia, Princess Ekaterina Mikhailovna
(1777–1834) 378
Volkonskaia, Princess Mariia Nikolaevna, née
Raevskaia (1805–1863) 242
Volkonskaia, Princess Zinaida Aleksandrovna,
née Belosel’skaia (1792–1862) 382, 386–392
‘Child of Kashmir’ 390–391
Four Tales 387, 390, 391, 392
‘Laura’ 387, 389–390, 585
‘Mandingo Husbands’ 390–391
prose tale on Princess Olga of Kiev 392
as salonnière 180
scholarly literature on 386–387 n. 223
Tableau of the Slavs 387, 391
‘Two Tribes of Brazil’ 390–391

698 
Volkonskii, Prince Grigorii Semenovich
(1742–1824) 297
Volkonskii, Prince Nikita Grigor’evich
(1781–1844) 386
Volkonskii, Prince Petr Mikhailovich
(1776–1852) 297
Volkonskii, Prince Sergei Grigor’evich
(1788–1865) 114, 115, 149, 227, 242
Volkonskiis 107, 259
Volkov brothers (Grigorii, Petr, and Boris,
translators of time of Peter the Great; dates
unknown) 271 n. 20
Grigorii also mentioned 397
Vologda Province 256
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694–1778)
on the arts as mark of civilization 427–428
Candide 82
as European supporter of post-Petrine
Russia and Catherine II 412, 574
Henriad 82
History of Charles XII 82
History of the Russian Empire under Peter
the Great 275, 406–409, 429, 430
Letters on the English 82
linguistic patriotism of 84–85
as member of Masonic lodge in Paris 228
Orphan of China 185
praise of Catherine II for purchase of
Diderot’s library 411
recipient of flattering verses by Andrei
Shuvalov 361–362
his remark on existence of God parodied by
Dostoevskii 566
Russian view of him before he wrote his
History of the Russian Empire under
Peter the Great 407 n. 50
Socrates 378
on use of French at the Prussian court 81
Zaire 185
See also Catherine II, correspondence in
French with Voltaire
Voronezh 108
seminary in 137
Vorontsov, Count Aleksandr Romanovich
(1741–1805) 196, 336, 341–342, 343, 356
Vorontsov, Count Mikhail Illarionovich
(1714–1767) 286, 298, 336, 345, 410
Vorontsov, Count (subsequently Prince, then
His Serene Highness) Mikhail Semenovich
(1782–1856) 237, 251, 299–300, 351, 356, 515
Vorontsov, Count Roman Larionovich (or
Illarionovich) (1717–1783) 336
Vorontsov, His Serene Highness Semen
Mikhailovich (1823–1882) 237
Vorontsov, Count Semen Romanovich
(1744–1832) 336, 343–345, 351
Vorontsovs, Counts 37, 97, 107, 206, 252, 259,
336, 405
vous forms, see pronominal usage

The French L anguage in Russia

Voznitsyn, Prokofii Bogdanovich (official
active in foreign affairs from 1660s to end of
seventeenth century) 270
Wallachia 87
Walpole, Sir Robert (1676–1745) 280
War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748)
274, 286
War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) 274
Warsaw 87
Masonic lodges in 227
Weinreich, Uriel 66, 471
Weitbrecht, Josias (1702–1747) 403
Wells, Herbert George (1866–1946) 116, n. 119
Welsh, David 75
Westernism 45 n. 41, 406, 452, 525
westernization 88–94, 581
dilemma of 484
psychological effect on elite 42–43
Russian social strata untouched by 507
supposed fracture in nation caused by 508,
584, 587
See also Peter the Great, reforms of
Westernizers 45–46, 45 n. 41, 118, 436, 485, 489,
510, 521, 522, 525
attitude towards Peter the Great 45–46
White Russia 91, 149–150
Whitworth, Charles, 1st Baron Whitworth
(1675–1725) 283–284
Wieland, Christoph Martin (1733–1813) 365
Wilmot, Martha (married name Bradford,
1774–1873) 217
Windischgraetz, Marie Josephine (1729–1777)
329
Winning, Alexa von 336
Wirtschafter, Elise Kimerling 106
wit, or witticisms 174, 189, 191, 222, 225, 233–235,
261, 361, 374–375, 495, 505–506, 527, 537,
542, 551 n. 116, 561, 566, 572
women
ability to write Russian 334–335
education of 133, 458
ego-writing by 346–359, 382
as embodiments of Russian national spirit
38
discouragement of their participation
in professional literary activity 328,
376–379
emergence in post-Petrine society 94
exclusion from professional spheres 263,
376
literary activity of 376–393
men’s prejudice against female authorship
378–379, 381–382 n. 202
peripheral role in literary circles 183, 379
prominence of in aristocratic social world
175, 176, 379
prose fiction of 381–392

Index

scholarly literature on writing by 376–377
n. 181
supposed difficulty of Latin for 149
supposed incompetence in Russian 38, 75,
334–335, 349
supposed responsibility for retarded state
of Russian 379–381
as translators 378
verse written by 372
See also English, in women’s albums;
English, in women’s travel diaries;
French, women’s use of; French,
women’s writing in; German, use of in
women’s travel diaries; Italian, use of
in women’s travel diaries; Italian, in
women’s albums; Russian, in women’s
albums; Russian, women’s use of
Wortman, Richard 186, 214
Xenia Aleksandrovna, Grand Duchess
(1875–1960) 209
xenophobia 246, 495, 536
See also French character; Gallophobia;
linguistic Gallophobia; stereotypes
Year in Literature, see Année littéraire
Young, Edward (1683–1765) 488

699
Zaandam 268
Zagoskin, Mikhail Nikolaevich (1789–1852)
503, 504
Roslavlev, or the Russians in 1812 503
Zamboni, Giovanni (1683?–1753) 281
Zapiski Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, see
Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale des
Sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg
Zeidler, Johann Gottfried (1780–1853) 242
Zherebtsov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich
(1781–1832) 229
Zherebtsov, Nikolai Arsen’evich (1807–1868),
Essay on the History of Civilization in Russia
454
Zhivopisets (Painter) 472
Zhivov, Viktor 70, 178, 179, 316, 469, 487, 489,
493, 508, 572, 577
Zhukovskii, Vasilii Andreevich (1783–1852) 180,
251, 370
influence of French on letter-writing by
334 n. 20
Zola, Émile-Édouard-Charles-Antoine
(1840–1902) 522
Zorin, Andrei 49, 101, 584–585
Zotov, Konon Nikitich (1690–1742) 271 n. 20
Zubova, Mar’ia Voinovna (1749?–1799) 377
Zubovs 107
Zweibrücken 417
Zweibrücken Gazette, see Gazette des
Deux-Ponts

Languages and Culture in History
Series Editors: Willem Frijhoff and Karène Sanchez-Summerer
Willem Frijhoff, Marie-Christine Kok Escalle, and Karène Sanchez-Summerer:
Multilingualism, Nationhood, and Cultural Identity. Northern Europe
16th-19th Centuries, 2017
isbn 978 94 6298 061 7
Madeleine van Strien-Chardonneau and Marie-Christine Kok Escalle: French
as Language of Intimacy in the Modern Age / Le français, langue de l’intime
à l’époque moderne et contemporaine, 2017
isbn 978 94 6298 059 4
Karène Sanchez-Summerer and Willem Frijhoff: Linguistic and Cultural
Foreign Policies of European States. 18th-20th Centuries, 2017
isbn 978 94 6298 060 0
Mathilde Kang: Francophonie en Orient. Aux croisements France-Asie (1840-1940),
2018
isbn 978 94 6298 514 8
Rick Honings, Gijsbert Rutten and Ton van Kalmthout: Language, Literature
and the Construction of a Dutch National Identity (1780-1830), 2018
isbn 978 90 8964 827 3
Vladislav Rjéoutski and Willem Frijhoff: Language Choice in Enlightenment
Europe. Education, Sociability, and Governance, 2018
isbn 978 94 6298 471 4
Mathilde Kang: Francophonie and the Orient. French-Asian Transcultural
Crossings (1840-1940), 2018
isbn 978 94 6298 825 5
Derek Offord, Vladislav Rjéoutski, and Gesine Argent: The French Language
in Russia. A Social, Political, Cultural, and Literary History, 2018
isbn 978 94 6298 272 7