Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on Dates, Transliteration and Other Editorial Practices
- Abbreviations Used in the Text, Notes and References
- Dates of Reigns in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Russia
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 French and Russian in Catherine's Russia
- 2 The Use of French by Catherine II in her Letters to Friedrich Melchior Grimm (1774–96)
- 3 Language Use Among the Russian Aristocracy: The Case of the Counts Stroganov
- 4 The Francophone Press in Russia: A Cultural Bridge and an Instrument of Propaganda
- 5 Russian Noblewomen's Francophone Travel Narratives (1777–1848): The Limits of the Use of French
- 6 Russian or French? Bilingualism in Aleksandr Radishchev's Letters from Exile (1790–1800)
- 7 Code-Switching in the Correspondence of the Vorontsov Family
- 8 French and Russian in Ego-Documents by Nikolai Karamzin
- 9 Pushkin's Letters in French
- 10 Instruction in Eighteenth-Century Coquetry: Learning about Fashion and Speaking its Language
- 11 The Role of French in the Formation of Professional Architectural Terminology in Eighteenth-Century Russia
- 12 The Coexistence of Russian and French in Russia in the First Third of the Nineteenth Century: Bilingualism with or without Diglossia?
- Conclusion
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
1 - French and Russian in Catherine's Russia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on Dates, Transliteration and Other Editorial Practices
- Abbreviations Used in the Text, Notes and References
- Dates of Reigns in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Russia
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 French and Russian in Catherine's Russia
- 2 The Use of French by Catherine II in her Letters to Friedrich Melchior Grimm (1774–96)
- 3 Language Use Among the Russian Aristocracy: The Case of the Counts Stroganov
- 4 The Francophone Press in Russia: A Cultural Bridge and an Instrument of Propaganda
- 5 Russian Noblewomen's Francophone Travel Narratives (1777–1848): The Limits of the Use of French
- 6 Russian or French? Bilingualism in Aleksandr Radishchev's Letters from Exile (1790–1800)
- 7 Code-Switching in the Correspondence of the Vorontsov Family
- 8 French and Russian in Ego-Documents by Nikolai Karamzin
- 9 Pushkin's Letters in French
- 10 Instruction in Eighteenth-Century Coquetry: Learning about Fashion and Speaking its Language
- 11 The Role of French in the Formation of Professional Architectural Terminology in Eighteenth-Century Russia
- 12 The Coexistence of Russian and French in Russia in the First Third of the Nineteenth Century: Bilingualism with or without Diglossia?
- Conclusion
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
In the second half of the eighteenth century foreigners visited Russia in increasing numbers, for cultural, educational, commercial and professional as well as diplomatic purposes. Many of them remarked on the development of Russian bilingualism or multilingualism, which of course facilitated their contact with Russians and made it easier for them to conduct the business that had brought them to Russia. Thus the English envoy to St Petersburg, Sir George Macartney, while by no means complimentary about the general level of knowledge of the Russian nobility, did note their multilingualism and the importance of modern languages in their education. The ‘chief point of their instruction’, he observed in an Account of Russia as he found it in 1767, ‘is a knowledge of foreign languages, particularly the French and German; both of which they usually speak with very great facility’ (Cross 1971: 203). The Scot William Richardson, who took up residence in St Petersburg with the family of Lord Cathcart when Cathcart was appointed ambassador to Russia in 1768, noted the importance of French in particular, though in a strikingly patronising tone: ‘If their children learn to dance’, Richardson wrote, ‘and if they can read, speak, and write French, and have a little geography, [the Russians] desire no more’ (Putnam 1952: 167). The Englishman William Coxe, who travelled more widely in Russia in the 1770s, accompanying his pupil the young Lord Herbert on the gentleman's Grand Tour in Northern Europe, also noted Russian fondness for and proficiency in French, though with more open-mindedness and generosity: he was delighted to find that his charge and he could converse in French with a family who invited them to dinner in the western city of Smolensk (Putnam 1952: 254). The Frenchman Charles Masson, who lived in Russia during the 1790s, also informed readers of his memoirs that ‘the Russians, almost all brought up by Frenchmen, develop a pronounced predilection for [France] from their childhood’ and ‘soon know its language and history better than those of their own country’ (Masson 1800: vol. 2, p. 176).
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- Information
- French and Russian in Imperial RussiaLanguage Use among the Russian Elite, pp. 25 - 44Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015