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.