Chapter 8: Conclusion

Literary Criticism 
Page 5 
educational methods among the aristocracy. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the 
Russian nobility still preferred French to Russian for everyday use, and were familiar with 
French authors such as Jean de la Fontaine, George Sand, Eugene Sue, Victor Hugo, and 
Honoré de Balzac. 
The influence of France was equally strong in the area of social and political ideas. 
Catherine II's interest in the writings of the philosophers of the Enlightenment—Baron 
Montesquieu, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, Voltaire, and Denis Diderot—contributed to the spread 
of their ideas in Russia during the eighteenth century (Gorbatov, 2006: 94). The empress 
conducted regular correspondence with Voltaire, and received Diderot at her court. 
Convinced that it was her duty to civilize Russia, she encouraged the growth of a critical 
outlook and, as an extension of this, of thought regarding Russian society and a repudiation of 
serfdom, which had consequences following her own reign. 
The support of Catherine II for the spirit of the Enlightenment was nonetheless shaken 
by the French Revolution of 1789 (Gorbatov, 2006: 227). It ceased entirely with the execution 
of King Louis XVI (January 1793). The empress was unable to accept such a radical challenge 
to the very foundations of autocratic rule. From the close of her reign onward, restrictions on 
foreign travel increased, and contacts were severely curtailed. Despite this change, however, 
liberal ideas that had spread during the eighteenth century continued to circulate throughout 
Russia during the nineteenth, and the French Revolution continued to have a persistent 
influence on the political ideas of Russians. When travel resumed under Alexander I (ruled 
1801–1825), Russians once again began to travel abroad for pleasure or study. This stimulated 
liberal ideas that pervaded progressive and radical political thought in Russia during the 
nineteenth century. The welcome that France extended to political exiles strengthened its 
image as a land of liberty and of revolution. 
During the nineteenth century, travel in France was considered a form of cultural and 
intellectual apprenticeship (Jost, 1974:75). Study travel abroad by Russians, as well as trips to 
Russia by the French, shared a common cultural space, encouraging exchanges most notably 
in the areas of fine arts, sciences, and teaching. Because they shared geopolitical interests vis à 
vis Germany and Austria-Hungary, France and Russia were drawn together diplomatically 
and economically after 1887. This resulted, in December 1893, in the ratification of a 
defensive alliance, the French-Russian military pact. At the same time, French investment 
capital helped finance the modernization of the Russian economy. Between 1890 and 1914, 
numerous French industrial and banking houses established themselves in Russia. French and 
Belgian capital supplied the larger part of the flow of investment funds, the largest share of 
which went into mining, metallurgy, chemicals, and especially railroads. The largest French 

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Literary Criticism 
Page 6 
banks, notably the Crédit Lyonnais, made loans to or invested in Russian companies. Public 
borrowing by the Russian state, totaling between eleven and twelve billion gold francs, was six 
times greater than direct investment on the part of the French. 
On the eve of 1914, there were twelve thousand French nationals in Russia. Forty 
consuls were in the country looking out for French interests. French newspapers had 
permanent correspondents in St. Petersburg. In 1911, l'Institut Français (a French institute) 
was created there to help spread French culture in Russia. In fact, from the 1890s onward, 
France's cultural presence in Russia was consistently viewed as an adjunct to its policy of 
industrial and commercial implantation. 
Following the close of the nineteenth century, the role of France as a land that 
welcomed political exiles and refugees had a reciprocal influence on the countries from which 
they came. When they returned to Russia, some of these individuals brought back ideas as well 
as social, pedagogical, and political experiences. For example, the experience acquired by 
Maxim Kovalevsky (1851–1916), professor of law and sociology, as the head of the Ecole 
supérieure russe des sciences sociales de Paris (the Russian Advanced School for Social 
Sciences in Paris), founded in 1901, served to organize the Université populaire Shanyavsky in 
Moscow (the Shanyavsky People's University), founded in 1908. 
After the October Revolution of 1917, Paris, along with Berlin and Prague, was one of 
the three principal cities of Russian emigration in Europe. A hub of intellectual activity from 
the 1920s onward, the French capital was among the leading centers abroad for publishing 
Russian newspapers and books, of which a portion subsequently made its way into Russia, 
thereby helping to bind the emigrant population with Soviet Russians back home. The 
suspension of scientific and cultural relations between the USSR and the rest of the world, 
starting in the mid-1930s, put an end to this exchange. 
The cultural influence of France did not disappear, however. Beginning in 1954, new 
attempts were made to bring France and the USSR closer together, beginning with cultural 
exchanges. During that year the Comédie française made a triumphant tour of the Soviet 
Union (Zaretsky, 2010: 113). Later, the trip by General Charles de Gaulle, in June of 1966, 
marked the beginning of a time of privileged relations between the two countries. A joint 
commission was created to foster exchange, and numerous cultural agreements were signed, 
some of which remained in effect during the early twenty-first century. French teaching 
assistants were appointed in Soviet universities, the teaching of French was expanded at the 
secondary school level, and agreements were signed for the distribution of French films in the 
USSR. 

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