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.