Abstract
This is in every sense a monumental work. Two volumes conceals two folio tomes of lxvi + 528 and 840 pages, handsomely printed and presented, the culmination of years of dedicated toil by the editors, whose progress from inception to realization has been charted in a number of earlier articles and communications, beginning with their ‘Projet d’un dictionnaire des français en Russie au XVIIIe siècle’ (Cahiers du monde russe 43(3), 2002: 343–54). Some 30 more researchers, French and Russian, contributed sometimes one, and in one case as many as 52, entries, but the laurels are truly the editors’.
Volume I is dedicated to what might ungenerously be called a plethora of prefatory materials, much of which one might have expected to follow the dictionary. Truly introductory are the ‘Avant-propos’ (pp. xix–xxviii), addressing such questions as the parameters of the project and the principles for inclusion and exclusion, and the long historical 150-page ‘Introduction’ (pp. 3–150). There are then no less than 12 ‘Annexes’, covering a diversity of subjects from the French colonies established in Russia in 1764 to a listing of all the French in Russia who were obliged to take the oath of allegiance to the French crown in 1793. Exhaustive ‘Sources’, primary, secondary and consulted, follow (pp. 259–334) as well as the undeniably useful ‘Répertoire socio-professionel’ and ‘Lieux de naissance et de provenance’ (a reminder that the scope of the dictionary covers francophone regions as well as France) (pp. 337–412). Still to come are informative indexes of various kinds (pp. 413–528).
The purpose of the Introduction is to:
donner au lecteur une idée générale du développement de la communauté française en Russie, fournir quelques points de repères, rappeler les domaines qui furent particulièrement influencés par l’apport des Français résidant en Russie, enfin de proposer des pistes de réflexion et de recherche sur la culture des Français expatriés au XVIIIe siècle. (p. 4)
It is essentially divided into three sections or historical periods – Peter I, his successors from Catherine I to Peter III, and Catherine II – and the space allocated to each (16, 30 and 100 pages) speaks eloquently of its relative importance in terms of French presence and influence.
Peter’s reign is viewed under the two heads of the Huguenots and the Catholics, the former very few compared with the numbers who settled in England, for instance, and the latter seemingly composed of a motley collection of volatile, mendacious and argumentative individuals. No mention is made of Peter’s general hostility to the French, or at least to France, until his second European journey in 1716–17 brought a change of attitude and led to the recruitment of a few outstanding people, notably the architect Jean-Baptiste Le Blond.
Perhaps not unexpectedly, the reigns of the tsaritsas Catherine I, Anna and Elizabeth (especially of the last) brought a marked upsurge in French influence and French presence. It was a time when ‘le goût des articles français se répandit d’année en année’ (p. 22), luxuries became necessities and the French were there to cater for them as shopkeepers and merchants and began to appear in the homes of the Russian aristocracy in the guise of pastry cooks, hairdressers and tutors. Although the German language was more widely used and taught during Anna’s reign, French under Elizabeth became the language of the court.
The growth of the French communities in Russia during the reign of Catherine II is the principal subject of the third section of the Introduction. In the early 1760s as a result of Catherine’s efforts, thriving French colonies were established on the Volga. Later, however, many of the colonists migrated to Moscow to swell an already existing community, boosted by a Russo-French commercial treaty that was finally signed in 1787 after decades of French efforts, and presenting an unwelcome challenge to the British. A development of particular note was the appointment in 1769 of a vice-consul in Moscow – an indication of the growing French presence in the old capital, where the British had but a token community in the eighteenth century, preferring to concentrate on the trading, maritime and other attractions of St Petersburg. The French Revolution disrupted improving relations with France and the execution of the French king in 1793 led to the exacting of an oath of loyalty to the French crown from all French residents in Russia, providing a useful sort of census for works such as this. The dominance of French culture was unbroken – indeed, increased – with the influx of French royalists after the Revolution, permeating many aspects of life in the Russian capitals and to a marked extent in the provinces. It is the French tutor, numerically significant and the butt of satirical journals and comedies, who was the symbol of France in Russia, but the French were omnipresent, providing for the ever-growing consumer demands and cultural interests of the upper classes, and increasingly to be noticed in the ranks of the army and navy. For Catherine, the German princess, embarking in 1762 on a reign of 34 years after ousting her husband, French was the language of correspondence, conversation and court life, despite her frequent protestations of Russianness and her occasional professions of attachment to things English. The prime position of French literature, in French editions and in translations, was accompanied by the dominance of French performers and actors in the theatres. It was of course in French that Catherine and her favoured foreign diplomats wrote the playlets ‘pour le théâtre de l’Hermitage’.
The dictionary as such occupies volume II, with the honour of being the first Frenchman to be registered falling to one Elie-Marie Abgral, a master tailor during Catherine II’s reign, and ending with Nicholas de Zeemilière, teacher-owner of a Moscow pension in 1766. Both are brief entries and like so many others depend on a mention in archival documents or in the advertisements or departures columns of the Moscow or St Petersburg newspapers. Hundreds of similar figures emerge for the first time since their initial and often unique mention between two and three hundred years ago. Of course, the ‘big boys’ occupy space in accordance with reputations that are frequently much greater than those accruing from the Russian episode in their lives, although it is indeed the Russian element that is rightly charted in detail. Denis Diderot, whose Petersburg excursions and meetings with the great Catherine constitute probably the most famous Franco-Russian encounter on Russian soil (as distinct from, say, the epistolary exchange between Voltaire and the empress) is given 11 columns over six pages that cover contacts and relations with Russia, including the purchase of his library, before his famous 1773 visit (the subject, incidentally, of the late Malcolm Bradbury’s To the Hermitage (2000)), and embrace not only his writings on Russia but also early translations into Russian. It is, not unexpectedly, French authors on Russia who also visited or worked in the country for whom most material exists and who consequently receive most attention. Such are Bernardin de Saint-Pierre with his utopian project of founding a ‘République d’Européens’ by the Aral Sea in 1762–4; Nicholas-Gabriel Le Clerc and Pierre-Charles Levesque, both noted for their weighty histories of Russia but also very involved in many aspects of the intellectual life of the Russian capital; the abbé Jean Chappe d’Auteroche, whose Voyage en Sibérie (1768) provoked Catherine to the penning of her Antidote; the artist Jean-Baptiste Le Prince who illustrated Chappe’s work and whose stylized images introduced the vogue of ‘la russerie’ to France; and the elegant diplomat, the comte Louis-Philippe de Ségur, ambassador from 1784 to 1789 and confidant of the empress, whose memoirs appeared only in 1824. In a predictably male-dominated world it is good to see a balanced estimate of the noted artist Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who arrived only a few months before the death of Catherine but enjoyed great success under Paul. Incidentally, the entry for the infamous transvestite, the chevalier d’Eon de Beaumont, eschews the sensational for a sober and well-documented assessment of ‘the facts’. Finally, one might note the inclusion of an author notable for his non-presence in Russia: Pierre-Nicholas Chantreau was an armchair traveller who enjoyed considerable popularity for his often unrecognized plagiarizing of the works of other authentic visitors.
Of course, this immersion in French presence in eighteenth-century Russia inevitably invites the question – if the French, why not the British, whose presence in Russia throughout the whole century was numerically far greater, who had a sense of community exceeding that of the French, and whose influence in so many areas of life and enterprise (language excepted) was infinitely more important? Perhaps the very scale is daunting, but the sources, if not the resources, are available. One can only hope that one day at least an on-line database might be established and the funds made available to support scholars with the industry and dedication to match those of Mézin and Rjéoutski.