The linguistic situation in Russian intellectual society at the beginning of the nineteenth century is markedly heterogeneous, with a number of foreign languages (French, German, Latin, Italian, English) being used, as well as Russian. In this multilingual environment, French, which had begun to be used in Russian noble society in the eighteenth century, played a prominent role. During the process of intensive engagement with Western Europe started by Peter the Great, French had become not only a language of communication with Europe and the medium of cultural transfer which was used to introduce European culture and literature to Russia, but also a language used by Russians to communicate with one another. French attained its position thanks to a number of factors: there were practical considerations (French was Europe's main diplomatic language, for instance); French culture was predominant all over Europe; and, last but not least, French was considered a precise, balanced and clear language and thus deemed the ideal instrument for communication. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the use of the French language in Russia was well established, as the rich holdings of extant archival sources in French testify. Even significant political developments such as the French invasion of Russia by Napoleon in 1812 did not stop the use of French. In certain settings French was prescribed by etiquette, as we shall show.

But does the fact that French was prescribed by etiquette and that it was used in particular situations mean that Franco-Russian bilingualism amounted to a diglossic situation, in which the two languages had strictly separate functions? Iurii Lotman (1994: 354) invokes the notion of diglossia when he speaks of the phenomenon of cultural bilingualism in Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He lists certain domains of cultural life in Russia which required the use of the French language and French literary models. However, it has been shown that the separation of languages for particular genres and situations was not as rigid as suggested by Lotman (Marrese 2010: 719–21) and needs further evaluation.