french was a lingua franca in Russia among the nobility and that kinda people. they thought it was prestigious. it's like when english people jack off to latin.

Hatred of their own, inferior barbarian culture.

>>8188297
Noblesse oblige.
La Noblesse russe était éduquée en Français et, tu peux le lire dans "La Guerre et la Paix", certains nobles avaient même un peu de mal avec le russe.
Nabokov, lui-même issu d'une famille d'aristocrates, avait d'ailleurs apprit le français quand il n’était qu'un enfant.

>>8188297
>but I imagine others get irritated by it

who cares

OP here, one more question
In the original manuscripts (and current prints in russian) are the passages in french written using the Latin or Cyrillic script?

Sounds like you are retard who doesn't know shit about history

>>8188297

It was a common language for the Russian nobility of the time (of D and T) to speak, so it's totally realistic.

Peter the Great was practically raised in the European enclaves and when he took the throne he enacted a conscious plan of Europeanization in Russia. His successors followed suit, especially since many of them were either Europeans themselves (e.g., Catherine) or raised in very European fashion because they were the children of those ones.

The court was extremely European, and the Russian aristocracy was extremely attached to the court even before Peter but especially after Peter, who turned it into a service aristocracy. Basically their entire ethos and lifestyle became European, built on the back of an extremely rural society with which they had, and felt, nothing in common. The Europe of the 18th century was dominated by French culture, French diplomacy, and especially French intellectual culture and ideals. Anyone worth anything in Europe spoke French and Gallicized to an extent.

Russia was just the most open to this process. Many Russians nobles would have spoken French even as their first language, and at least on par with their Russian. Regular travel and vacationing in Europe was compulsory for people of good breeding. The spirit of Russia for over a century was modernization, Europeanization, liberalization - Enlightenment - and this was conceived in French terms, against a backdrop of French thought.