e Princess
Elizabeth, Peter's unmarried daughter, who had lived in retirement and
neglect during the German regime. She was expected to rid the country of
foreigners, and she did what she could to fulfil the expectations that
were entertained of her. With loud protestations of patriotic feelings,
she removed the Germans from all important posts, demanded that in
future the members of the Academy should be chosen from among born
Russians, and gave orders that the Russian youth should be carefully
prepared for all kinds of official activity.

This attempt to throw off the German bondage did not lead to
intellectual independence. During Peter's violent reforms Russia had
ruthlessly thrown away her own historic past with whatever germs it
contained, and now she possessed none of the elements of a genuine
national culture. She was in the position of a fugitive who has escaped
from slavery, and, finding himself in danger of starvation, looks
about for a new master. The upper classes, who had acquired a taste for
foreign civilisation, no sooner threw off everything German than they
sought some other civilisation to put in its place. And they could not
long hesitate in making a choice, for at that time all who thought of
culture and refinement turned their eyes to Paris and Versailles. All
that was most brilliant and refined was to be found at the Court of
the French kings, under whose patronage the art and literature of the
Renaissance had attained their highest development. Even Germany, which
had resisted the ambitious designs of Louis XIV., imitated the manners
of his Court. Every petty German potentate strove to ape the pomp and
dignity of the Grand Monarque; and the courtiers, affecting to look on
everything German as rude and barbarous, adopted French fashions, and
spoke a hybrid jargon which they considered much more elegant than the
plain mother tongue. In a word, Gallomania had become the prevailing
social epidemic of the time, and it could not fail to attack and
metamorphose such a class as the Russian Noblesse, which possessed few
stubborn deep-rooted national convictions.

At first the French influence was manifested chiefly in external
forms--that is to say, in dress, manners, language, and upholstery--but
gradually, and very rapidly after the accession of Catherine II., the
friend of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, it sank deeper. Every
noble who had pretensions to being "civilised" learned to speak
French fl