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. 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 discuss plans, opinions, and disputes without fear of being understood by their domestic servants or other social inferiors.

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 affinities with western peers. 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. 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. 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 significantly 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.

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 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 regime. It was associated above all with Paris, the city par excellence in the post- Renaissance, 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).

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. 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. This outcome is apparent in the history of the reception of ideas and literary movements and genres in eighteenth- and nineteenth century 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 eighteenth century 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 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.

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. 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 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.