Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/99

Rh of Moscow came into being in 1775. The first students and professors at the universities and gimnazijas were Germans.

But the higher schools in the capitals were not the only nurseries of culture. Society, atoo, promoted its diffusion, and this not in the capital alone, for during the second half of the eighteenth century there rapidly developed a cultured society in the provinces, which was of the first importance to Russian civilisation of that date.

In conformity with the aristocratic character of eighteenth-century Russia, the work of education was likewise aristocratic. Higher and middle schools only were founded. Even now, public elementary schools can hardly be said to exist, although Peter had thoughts of reform in this direction also.

The Russians, like their sovereign, energetically furthered the sprad of westem culture, and after Peter's death a number of notable men carried forward the work. Lomonosov and Kantemir, the former of whom may be termed the Peter of Russian literature, sprang from the Moscow academy. Natural science, technology, and history, were the leading subjects of original study; legal and political enlightenment was sought ready made in Germany.

The influences encouraged by Peter were mainly Dutch and German, and Lomonosov drew inspiration from the same sources. But already during the reign of Elizabeth, the court and the aristocracy became French in spirit through the cultural and political primacy of France; the common people were excluded from all share in higher civilisation. The spread of the French tongue was so general that as late as the first half of the nineteenth century many Russians spoke better French than Russian, and there were some who never learned Russian at all. Puškin, for example, was an accomplished French scholar, and wrote at first in French. This is true also of Lermontov. We find Gallicisms in the earlier works of Tolstoi. Quite a number of writers made use of French as well as Russian—Herzen, for instance.

This predominance of French influences among the Russian aristocracy runs parallel with the spread of the same influences