Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/100

74 among the Polish and European aristocracies. At the same epoch Frederick the Great had his French Academy in Berlin, and wrote in the tongue of Voltaire. At the court of Vienna, German poets had to be translated into French.

French exercised its influence mainly in the social and political spheres, and above all in the field of diplomacy. German was the language of culture. It was not spoken, but German authors were thoroughly studied in the original.

We cannot do justice to the effect of these two European tongues without taking into account the personal influence of Frenchmen and Germans in Russia. The annexation of the Baltic provinces was followed by the entry of German barons into the administration, and subsequently by the entry of Swedes, Finns, and Poles. From France came the persons needed by the court and the aristocracy—physicians, actors, teachers of language, of dancing, etc. During the revolution, some of the émigrés came to Russia. From German sources were mainly derived professors, tutors, craftsmen, and merchants. Thus in one way and another, during the eighteenth century, Russia, official and socially decisive Russia, became Europeanised in speech. Europe and the Frenchified court and nobility of Russia grew aloof from and became contrasted with the Russian peasant and the Russian clergy. It was in the academics and the schools that German influence was predominant.

Owing to this Gallicising movement, prerevolutionary and revolutionary French literature made its way into Russian drawing-rooms and studies (of these latter, there were few). Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Diderot, Holbach, Morelly. Mably, etc., were as much read in St. Petersburg as in France, and the political sentiment of St. Petersburg was almost identical with that of Paris. It must not be forgotten that in France the revolution was initiated by the aristocracy and the middle classes, and it was only when the movement was well advanced that the rural population, the peasantry, came to participate in it. The course of development in Russia was analogous. The aristocracy became imbued with the French and German philosophy of enlightenment. Popular revolt was the outcome of poverty and distress (Pugačev), but the life and general outlook of the common people made them hostile to the apostles of the enlightenment. Similar were conditions in France, and they are similar everywhere even to-day, above all in Russia.