Russian

Overview

Russian (русский язык) is Marie's native family language and a core marker of her identity. While she writes her diary entirely in French --- the prestige language of the Russian aristocracy and the language she was most comfortable composing in --- Russian permeates the text as code-switches, quoted speech, translated proverbs, cultural vocabulary, and metalinguistic commentary. Marie identifies as Russian throughout her life: "je puis dire que je parle le russe, le français, l'anglais et l'italien" (September 15, 1873). At the 1883 Salon, the painter Bouguereau identifies her simply as "une Russe" (March 31, 1883). Her Russian identity shapes her social world, her religious practice, her family dynamics, and her emotional vocabulary.

%% 2026-05-24T12:00:00 RSR: Comprehensive expansion of RUSSIAN glossary entry. Sources: Mathilde Blind, "Introduction" to The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff (London: Cassell, 1890); Katherine Kernberger, "I Am the Most Interesting Book of All" (Fonthill Press, 2013); Derek Offord et al., "French and Russian in Imperial Russia: Language Use among the Russian Elite" (Edinburgh University Press, 2015); Encyclopedia of Ukraine (encyclopediaofukraine.com); diary entries passim. %%

Russia in Marie's Era (1858--1884)

Marie's lifetime spans one of the most turbulent periods in Russian history. She was born three years before the Emancipation reform of 1861, when Alexander II freed roughly 23 million serfs --- a reform that profoundly affected noble families like the Bashkirtsevs and Babanines, whose wealth depended on landed estates in Poltava Governorate. The "Great Reforms" that followed --- judicial, military, educational, and administrative --- transformed Russian society, though the nobility's economic decline accelerated as many struggled to adapt to a post-serfdom economy.

The assassination of Alexander II by Narodnaya Volya (People's Will) on March 13, 1881, deeply affected Marie's world. She writes about the political turmoil and its impact on Russians abroad. His successor, Alexander III, reversed many liberal reforms and imposed a reactionary program built on "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality." This period coincided with Marie's most productive artistic years in Paris (1877--1884), when the political climate in Russia made the émigré existence seem increasingly permanent for families like hers.

The Russo-Turkish War (1877--1878) stirred Marie's patriotism intensely. In August 1877, she follows the news anxiously: "Les Russes vont de mal en pis... Aussitôt je fais vœu de ne pas dire un mot jusqu'à demain pour que les nôtres gagnent" (August 29, 1877). The phrase "les nôtres" --- our side --- reveals her deep identification with Russia despite years of living abroad.

Russian Literature and Culture in the 1870s--1880s

Marie's lifetime coincides with the golden age of Russian literature. Leo Tolstoy published Anna Karenina (1877) and War and Peace (1869), and Mathilde Blind explicitly compares Marie's father to Oblonsky from Anna Karenina in her 1890 introduction. Fyodor Dostoevsky published The Brothers Karamazov (1880) and died in 1881. Ivan Turgenev, who had moved to Paris permanently in the early 1870s and lived on the top floor of the Viardot family house, became the ambassador of Russian culture in French literary circles. Turgenev befriended Flaubert, Zola, and the Goncourt brothers, and actively supported young Russian artists and painters who came to Paris --- the same milieu Marie inhabited at the Académie Julian. Turgenev died in Bougival near Paris on September 3, 1883, just months before Marie's own death.

Russian music also flourished: Tchaikovsky composed Eugene Onegin (1879) and the 1812 Overture (1880). The arts of this era reflect the tension between Westernizers and Slavophiles that also played out in the lives of Russian families abroad --- those like the Bashkirtsevs who had fully embraced European life, while maintaining emotional and financial ties to their Russian estates.

Russians on the Riviera

The Russian community on the French Riviera forms the immediate social backdrop of Marie's early diary years (1873--1876). By the 1860s, Nice had become a major destination for Russian aristocrats seeking its mild Mediterranean climate, particularly for treating respiratory ailments --- an irony given that Marie herself would die of tuberculosis. Alexander II visited Nice by train in 1864, shortly after the railway reached the city, lending imperial cachet to the Riviera as a Russian winter destination.

The community centered on the Russian Orthodox church on Rue Longchamp, built in 1859 under a special permit from the Kingdom of Sardinia (which then governed Nice). Marie attends services there regularly: "Ce soir est le premier office des vêpres à l'église russe" (October 4, 1873). She notes the congregation is small and intensely social: "Il n'y avait que Zibine, Arnoldi, Keldal, une ou deux femmes, Mme Anitchkoff et nous." The church is as much a social venue as a spiritual one: "On ne peut pas prier en public" (October 4, 1873).

Marie's social circle in Nice is overwhelmingly Russian --- the Galitzines, Anitchkoffs, Basilevitchs, Tolstoys, Tamancheffs, Daniloffs. She sometimes looks down on this circle: "pas tous ces gens sales et antédiluviens russes, vieux, qui viennent chez nous" (April 2, 1873), and at other times takes comfort in shared nationality: "sans compter qu'elle est russe, à cause de cela elle mérite encore plus d'indulgence" (September 4, 1873). Russian gatherings punctuate her early life in Nice: "presque tout ce qu'il y a de russe à Nice pour le moment" (July 3, 1873).

Russians in Paris

After the family's move to Paris (1877), Marie's relationship with the Russian community shifts. She moves in artistic rather than aristocratic circles, yet her Russian identity remains salient. At the Académie Julian, she is known as "une Russe" --- Bouguereau refers to her this way when praising her work (March 31, 1883). Her aunt organizes a dinner where "Dina [dressed] as Russian girl" alongside Marie as Récamier (April 21, 1883), suggesting Russian identity as a distinct social performance.

Paris had a substantial Russian émigré community with its own Russian Orthodox cathedral (consecrated 1861), restaurants, and social networks. Marie dines frequently at "le restaurant russe" during trips through Paris (August 1873): "Ca n'est pas ni un restaurant, ni russe, c'est une espèce de bierhalle allemande de village, très laide, très sale" (August 4, 1873) --- her critical eye sparing no one, not even compatriots.

Family Language Background

The Bashkirtseff and Babanine families belonged to the lesser nobility of Poltava Governorate in Left-Bank Ukraine, a region historically known as "Little Russia" (Малороссия). Marie's father, Konstantin Pavlovich Bashkirtsev, served as marshal of nobility (maréchal de noblesse) in Poltava. Her mother, Maria Stepanovna Babanina, came from a family of "older nobility than his own, being of supposed Tartar origin, 'of the first invasion'" (Blind, 1890). Marie herself notes the Tatar etymology: "Baba-Nina sont des mots tartares, moi je m'en moque" (diary).

The family's home language was Russian, as was typical of the Ukrainian gentry class that identified with the imperial Russian cultural sphere. French served as the prestige language for correspondence, education, and diary-writing --- a pattern universal among Russian nobility. Mathilde Blind describes them leaving Russia in 1870 with "governesses, nurses, and dogs of various descriptions" and becoming "part of that floating Russian population which drinks the waters at Baden-Baden, stakes its thousands at Monte Carlo, and looks upon Paris as its earthly paradise" (Blind, 1890).

The family's spoken language at home was Russian. Marie's mother speaks Russian to her in private moments: "Madame ma mère me dit en russe, de ne pas le faire" (February 22, 1878). Her aunt Sophie writes letters in Russian: "Elle écrit en russe mais je parlerai français et ne dirai que ce qui m'intéresse particulièrement" (August 16, 1875). On his deathbed, the family doctor "n'eut que le temps de se signer trois fois et de crier en russe: adieu" (January 12, 1878) --- Russian as the language of last utterance.

Russian vs. Ukrainian: The Language Question

The Poltava region where Marie was born was the heartland of Ukrainian language and culture. The 1897 census recorded 92% of Poltava Governorate's population as Ukrainian ("Little Russian") by mother tongue. Poltava was also the birthplace of Ivan Kotliarevsky, whose Eneyida (1798) in the local vernacular helped launch Ukrainian as a literary language. The southeastern dialect spoken in the Poltava, Kharkiv, and southern Kyiv regions served as the basis for the literary Ukrainian language developed by Taras Shevchenko and Panteleimon Kulish in the mid-19th century.

However, the Ukrainian nobility, including families like the Bashkirtsevs and Babanines, had largely adopted Russian as their language of culture and administration by the 19th century. They identified as Russian subjects and used Russian for all formal purposes, while Ukrainian (called "Little Russian" / petit-russien / малороссийский) was associated with peasant and folk culture.

Marie provides a remarkable piece of evidence for this linguistic landscape. In a December 1876 entry from Rome, she records a conversation with her father as "le dialogue petit-russien" (December 17--18, 1876). This is the only documented instance in the diary where Marie uses the term petit-russien, and the LAN annotation notes that "family uses Ukrainian for private matters." This suggests the family had some competence in Ukrainian alongside Russian, or at minimum that certain conversations --- perhaps about local estate affairs --- took place in a Ukrainian register.

An even earlier entry (March 3, 1873) provides another link: "Sonia joue au piano des airs petits-russiens et cela m'a rappelé Tcherniakovka" --- Ukrainian folk songs trigger nostalgia for the maternal family estate. Ukrainian culture persists in Marie's emotional memory even as she identifies exclusively as Russian.

Marie's Russian Proficiency

Marie's relationship with Russian is complex and revealing. She claims fluency --- "je puis dire que je parle le russe, le français, l'anglais et l'italien" (September 15, 1873, emphasis in original) --- but Mathilde Blind states bluntly that "the Journal is written in French, as Marie possessed but an imperfect knowledge of Russian" (Blind, 1890, p. xiv).

The truth lies between these positions. Marie could speak Russian conversationally --- she uses it for private family communication, to converse with Russian acquaintances at masked balls ("Je n'ai dit que quelques rares mots en russe avec des Russes," January 27, 1878), and for strategic purposes. But her written Russian appears to have been limited: her aunt's Russian letters must be read aloud to her ("on me lit la lettre de ma tante," August 16, 1875), and she explicitly translates the content into French for the diary rather than quoting the Russian original.

Several factors account for this asymmetry:

1. Early departure from Russia: The family left Russia when Marie was about 10 (1870), meaning she had limited formal Russian schooling. 2. French-dominant education: Like most Russian noble children raised abroad, Marie's education was conducted primarily in French (see Offord et al., French and Russian in Imperial Russia, 2015). As the scholars note, some Russian noble children "learned Russian later in life" because French was so dominant in their upbringing. 3. Atrophy through disuse: Living in France from age 10, Marie's Russian would have naturally deteriorated, especially her literacy. Spoken Russian was maintained through family contact. 4. French as the diary language: Writing in French was the natural choice for a Russian noblewoman's diary. Even in Russia, aristocratic women commonly kept diaries in French. Marie's choice reflects class convention, not linguistic deficiency per se.

Marie is aware that Russian offers expressions French cannot match. She notes that "mon cœur se serre comme on dit en russe, je ne puis trouver un mot qui exprime si bien la chose, en français" (April 19, 1873), and later: "(fière, c'est ce qui exprime assez bien son expression en russe)" (October 4, 1873). These metalinguistic observations show a bilingual mind that thinks between languages, even if one dominates.

Code-Switching Patterns

Marie switches to Russian in specific, recurring contexts. Analyzing these patterns reveals the social and emotional functions of Russian in her life:

Privacy and Secrecy

Russian serves as a "secret language" among family members when French-speaking strangers might overhear:
- "Savez-vous une nouvelle, princesse, (nous parlons russe)" --- delivering the devastating news of Hamilton's marriage (October 13, 1873)
- "m'adressant en russe à Marie, je dis..." --- commenting on people who were criticizing her in French (January 28, 1875)
- "je dis en russe de ne pas laisser arriver l'Anglaise" --- tactical instruction at a social event (May 24, 1875)
- "Maman, tenez-vous tranquille, on nous observe, dis-je en russe, en pâlissant" --- restraining her mother in public (raw carnet 10)

Emotional Intensity

Russian surfaces at moments of deep feeling:
- Deathbed cry: "de crier en russe: adieu, d'une voix si terrible et si forte" (January 12, 1878)
- "tuée comme on dit en russe" --- devastated, using the Russian expression for emphasis (January 30, 1876)
- Ukrainian folk songs triggering tears of nostalgia for childhood (March 3, 1873)

Quoting Family Members

When Marie quotes her aunt or mother, she sometimes preserves the Russian context:
- "Maman me dit en russe, de ne pas le faire" (February 22, 1878)
- Aunt Sophie's outburst: "cette chelme [coquin en russe]" --- the raw carnet glosses the Russian word (carnet 7)
- "On le renvoie, me dit maman en russe" (carnet 7)

Metalinguistic Commentary

Marie frequently draws attention to Russian expressions that capture meaning better than French:
- "comme on dit en russe" appears repeatedly when she finds French inadequate
- Russian proverbs translated into French, cited as "proverbe russe" (at least 6 instances across the diary)
- "il ne faut pas faire d'histoire comme on dit en russe" (April 17, 1876)
- "c'est de la graisse comme on dit en russe, une expression très juste" --- she even explains the metaphor (February 2, 1876)
- "Les yeux s'enfuient dans toutes les directions comme on dit en russe" (October 30, 1881)

Social Performance

Russian marks in-group identity among compatriots:
- Speaking Russian at masked balls to maintain anonymity while connecting with other Russians (January 27, 1878)
- "je dis à tout le monde" in Russian at Russian gatherings (carnet 2)
- Using Russian to reveal or conceal identity: "Trois Russes ont cru me reconnaître... mais au lieu de cela je fis faire cercle autour de moi et parlai italien, et ils s'en allèrent" (February 18, 1876)

Russian Proverbs in the Diary

Marie quotes Russian proverbs in French translation, always attributing them as "proverbe russe." These reveal the proverbial wisdom absorbed from family conversation:

- "Tout ce qui se fait, se fait pour le mieux" --- All that happens, happens for the best (June 29, 1873)
- "Un petit chien restera toujours un chiot" --- A small dog will always remain a puppy (October 21, 1873)
- "On ne cache pas une lame dans un sac" --- You can't hide an awl in a sack; truth will out. Russian: шила в мешке не утаишь (September 24, 1875)
- "Il ne faut naître ni beau, ni spirituel, ni riche... mais il faut naître heureux" --- One should be born not beautiful, nor clever, nor rich, but lucky. Adapted from Russian: не родись красивым, а родись счастливым (December 3, 1875)
- "Vis un siècle et étudie un siècle" --- Live a century and study a century; one never stops learning. Russian: век живи, век учись (May 9, 1876)
- "Où il n'y a pas de poissons, une écrevisse passe pour un poisson" --- Where there are no fish, a crayfish passes for a fish (March 28, 1875)

Common Russian Words in Marie's Diary

Family and Diminutives

- Moussia (Мусья/Муся) --- Marie's family nickname, diminutive of Maria. Used by family members: "Eh bien Moussia, dit Walitsky" (July 25, 1874)
- Baba (Баба) --- grandmother/old woman; Marie's term of endearment for her paternal grandmother. "pauvre Baba... comme tu m'aimais" (March 3, 1873). Also the etymological root of the family name Babanine
- Diadia (Дядя) --- uncle; used as a nickname. The raw carnet index glosses: "Diadia (oncle en russe): Toulouse-Lautrec"
- Vassya (Вася) --- diminutive of Vassili/Basil
- Michka (Мишка) --- diminutive of Mikhail (Michael), also means "little bear"
- Dina (Дина) --- diminutive; Marie's cousin and near-constant companion

Social and Class Vocabulary

- Moujik (мужик) --- peasant; Marie uses this with strong class contempt: "je déteste les moujiks" (July 13, 1873). Also used as social descriptor: "le moujik est son docteur" (October 23, 1874)
- Chelme (шельма) --- scoundrel, rogue; the raw carnet glosses it as "coquin en russe." Marie's aunt uses it as an epithet (carnet 7)
- Kopeck (копейка) --- small Russian coin: "J'ai gagné quinze kopecks" (July 25, 1874)
- Rouble (рубль) --- Russian currency unit, used frequently for financial matters: "vingt-cinq mille roubles à Dina" (July 29, 1873); "soixante mille roubles" (June 27, 1883)
- Armiak (армяк) --- peasant's long coat: "une jackette... comme un armiak russe" (September 24, 1873)
- Stariovoi --- old man / watchman

Religious Vocabulary

- Plachtchanitsa (плащаница) --- the embroidered cloth depicting Christ's burial, venerated on Good Friday; Marie's most emotionally charged Russian religious term, recurring at multiple Easter celebrations
- Iconostase (иконостас) --- the icon screen in Orthodox churches
- Lavra (лавра) --- a senior Orthodox monastery, e.g., the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra or Alexander Nevsky Lavra
- Style russe --- the Julian calendar used by the Russian Orthodox Church, 12 days behind the Gregorian: "le 20 juillet, style russe. C'est horrible ! Le 2 août d'ici !" (July 8, 1873)

Cultural Items

- Samovar (самовар) --- traditional Russian tea urn; marker of a Russian household: "plus de douze personnes autour du samovar" (April 7, 1883)
- Troïka (тройка) --- three-horse carriage

Marie's Russian Identity

Marie identifies as Russian without reservation or qualification, despite spending most of her life in France. This identity manifests in several ways:

Patriotic Emotion

Her most intense expression comes at the 1873 Vienna Exposition: "On a beau dire, la patrie est toujours la patrie. Tout ce qui est russe est beau. Dans le pavillon russe, j'examinais les choses avec ardeur, j'étais très émue en voyant des noms, des inscriptions, des marchands, des marchandises russes. J'avais les larmes aux yeux" (August 4, 1873). She is moved to tears by seeing Russian writing.

Outrage at Disrespect

At a circus performance, when Alexander II is caricatured: "je suis indignée, ça n'est pas pour M. Romanoff, mais pour la Russie" (August 14, 1873). She distinguishes between the person of the Tsar and the dignity of Russia itself.

Social Identity

Strangers try to place her nationality: "l'un dit que je suis Russe, non, dit l'autre, une Anglaise, mais non c'est une Allemande. Qui est-elle ?" (September 7, 1873). Marie's cosmopolitan appearance makes her national origin ambiguous to outsiders. She herself jokes about the fluidity: "Alors je suis Anglaise de Poltava" --- "Then I'm English from Poltava" (July 28, 1874).

Noble Ancestry

Marie invokes Russian nobility as a source of pride and social standing: "une noble et ancienne famille russe, qui n'est pas princière seulement pour avoir négligé une formalité et qui a toujours le droit de réclamer son titre qui lui vient encore du prince tartare Baba" (October 11, 1873).

Ambivalence

Yet Marie also distances herself from her compatriots when they fall short of her standards: "des vilains Russes" (August 13, 1873); "ces gens sales et antédiluviens russes, vieux" (April 2, 1873); and of a restaurant: "Ca n'est pas ni un restaurant, ni russe" (August 4, 1873). She applies her merciless critical eye to Russians as readily as to anyone else.

The Franco-Russian Bilingual Tradition

Marie's linguistic situation --- a Russian noblewoman writing her diary in French --- belongs to a long tradition. As documented in Offord et al., French and Russian in Imperial Russia (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), French had been the prestige language of the Russian elite since the mid-18th century. By the early 19th century, many aristocratic children were raised primarily in French, sometimes learning Russian only later. Tolstoy's War and Peace (1869) famously opens with extended passages in French, reflecting the reality of noble social life.

Marie's maternal grandfather exemplifies this bilingual culture. In her 1884 preface, Marie describes him pronouncing "les mots blouse et panama en russe avec une affectation de gallicisme" --- inserting French loanwords into Russian speech with an affected French accent (carnet 000). This double linguistic performance --- speaking Russian but showcasing French sophistication --- captures the complex identity politics of provincial Russian nobility.

For Russian families abroad, French ceased to be a secondary prestige language and became the primary medium of daily life. Marie's case represents the extreme end of this spectrum: a girl who left Russia at 10, was educated entirely in French, and whose Russian literacy remained limited enough that family letters in Russian had to be read aloud to her. Yet Russian remained her emotional mother tongue --- the language she thinks in when French falls short, the language of last words and deepest feeling.

Usage Notes

Paragraph Tagging

- When Marie writes in Russian within a paragraph (or quotes Russian speech, uses Russian words, or discusses Russian topics), tag it with `#Russian`
- If the paragraph also contains French (the usual case), also tag with `#French`
- If a paragraph is entirely in Russian (rare), only tag with `#Russian`
- Russian proverbs translated into French should still be tagged `#Russian` if Marie attributes them as "proverbe russe"
- References to "église russe," "restaurant russe," or "pavillon russe" may warrant `#Russian` tagging depending on cultural significance

Common Patterns to Tag

- Family terms and diminutives (Moussia, Baba, Diadia)
- Quotations from family members in Russian
- Metalinguistic commentary ("comme on dit en russe")
- Russian proverbs
- Orthodox religious terminology (plachtchanitsa, iconostase, lavra)
- Code-switching for privacy ("nous parlons russe")
- Russian cultural vocabulary (moujik, rouble, samovar, armiak)
- "Style russe" calendar references

Translator Notes

Russian code-switching often signals:
- Intimacy and family context --- private communication among family members
- Connection to Russian identity --- patriotic feeling, cultural pride, or self-identification
- Childhood/domestic sphere --- memories of Tcherniakovka, family traditions
- Religious/cultural traditions --- Orthodox practices, Russian customs
- Strategic privacy --- using Russian to exclude French-speaking bystanders
- Linguistic frustration --- when French cannot express what Russian can

Translators should preserve Russian words where Marie herself preserves them (moujik, plachtchanitsa, samovar, etc.) and consider footnotes for readers unfamiliar with Russian terminology. When Marie quotes a Russian proverb in French translation, the translator should render it in the target language while noting its Russian origin.

For the "dialogue petit-russien" passage (December 17--18, 1876), translators should note that this specifically refers to Ukrainian, not Russian --- a significant distinction that the translation should preserve.

Related Languages

- [[FRENCH]] --- primary language of the diary; the prestige language of Russian aristocracy
- [[ENGLISH]] --- another language Marie speaks and frequently code-switches into
- [[ITALIAN]] --- learned during travels in Italy; Marie claims to speak it from September 1873
- [[GERMAN]] --- studied but less fluent; German was also common among Baltic Russian nobility
- [[LATIN]] --- studied as part of her rigorous self-education program