The grocer and the diplomat are a force: what did Russians do in Paris during the Enlightenment

The collection, compiled by Denis Kondakov and Alexander Stroyev, is based on a ten-year study of the archives of the French Foreign Ministry and contains many police reports about Russian citizens who lived in Paris in 1771-1791. Critic Lidia Maslova presents the book of the week specifically for Izvestia.

Compiled by Denis Kondakov and Alexander Stroev

"Russian Parisians through the eyes of the French police of the XVIII century"

Moscow: New Literary Review, 2025. Translated from French by D. Kondakov, 624 p.

The book has two main goals. The first is to sketch a portrait of a certain part of the Russian nobility of that time.: "The Russian colony in 18th—century Paris is by no means a mirror of the Russian Empire. However, it allows us to better understand the aspirations and aspirations of the Russian nobility of the Enlightenment era, their psychological complexes, and difficult relations with those in power in foreign lands and at home."

In parallel, the authors analyze how the methods of the French police have changed over the course of a century. They see the evolution of police work primarily in the fact that the punitive machine combines humanistic attempts to educate and correct morals with total surveillance: "If in 1730-1740 informants were forced to find plausible pretexts to enter the homes of visitors, risking being hit by a hail of caning blows from servants, then Police Chief General Antoine de Sartine and Jean-Charles-Pierre Lenoir pays visits to distinguished foreigners, sometimes rescues those who find themselves in difficult situations, and does not immediately send them to prison for debts, as before."

In addition, in the introductory article, Kondakov and Stroev note the stylistic evolution of the reports themselves, which sometimes have a rather refined or playful literary style, which, however, depended not only on the talent of the operatives, but also on the personality of the main addressee: "... police inspectors, knowing how much King Louis XV was eager for juicy stories, they wrote elegantly and ironically." Knowing the inclinations of Louis XV's Lover, some inspectors sometimes openly address their reports personally to the monarch, for example, in a report dated December 6, 1765, which talks about Count Kirill Razumovsky's new mistress, the actor Clarimond: "As they say, everything in our world is a whim, because in truth the young lady does not possess any wonderful qualities like you you can see for yourself tomorrow, my dear sir, when she comes to you for an audience." However, the authors of the book sigh, "the source of inspiration dried up" under Louis XVII, who, unlike his grandfather, was not interested in love affairs.

Don't hoof it: the horse as a strategic resource and a cosmic symbol

The history of the relationship between man and horse

A quote from Vasily Trediakovsky's laudatory poems to Paris looks very touching and at the same time very ironic as the epigraph of the book: "The Red Place! Dredge the shore of the Sens! / Where he dares not be in rustic manners: / For you keep everything in yourself nobly, / You belong naturally to Gods and goddesses." Russian Russians are known for their long stay of about 14 years. Indeed, among the vices to which the heroes of some particularly vivid reports tend, the mention of "rustic manners" tends to zero, and even the ugliest Russian brawls on the banks of the Seine look expensive, rich, and, one way or another, aristocratic: "Russian Count Mr. Shuvalov, known in our capital for a long stay of about 14 about two years ago, and something that has been going on for two years, having known our beauties, I finally connected myself with the girl Asselin, a dancer of the opera troupe. He rented apartments for Laisa on Rue Chabanet, luxuriously furnished them and very often comes there. The lovers, however, quarreled the other day, and the Asselin girl, having driven the count away, threw the diamonds out the window, broke the porcelain presented to them and forbade them to appear in the future, resolutely punishing them not to accept it anymore. But the count, by his humility, melted the mistress's heart and, as a sign of affection, offered 6,000 livres of rent, and now handed over the diamonds to Mr. Lamperer for repair."

Louis XV would certainly have been pleased with such a report if he had not died four years earlier. But the playwright Denis Fonvizin, who arrived in Paris to treat his wife shortly before Shuvalov's romantic adventures, in a letter to his sister rather bitterly assesses the lifestyle of his compatriots: "... to give you an idea of how all foreigners live here in general, I will tell you all the hours of the day, how they spend it. In the morning, getting up very late, a man puts on a tailcoat with a doublet, or, more correctly, with a very indecent jacket. All disheveled, he will run to the Palais Royal, where, having found a whole abyss of girls, he will take one or more with him home to dinner. This obscene crowd will take their money with them to the play; but they will take their girl with them from the play and lose their money irrevocably with their health."

Photo: Global Look Press/Michael Weber

In addition to the comical piquant reports from the "world of charmers", where an endless rotation of mercantile girls, sometimes extremely flighty, takes place around the "northern bums", Kondakov and Stroyev identify "four types of information about the "Russian Parisians": factual (on such and such a day, the name was in such and such a salon, theater, visitingbiographical (usually quite accurate, although police officers often confuse members of large families), moral and political (although Russians are not known to be conspirators, unlike the Irish)."

Unfortunately, the refined style of the Parisian "azhans" sometimes goes to waste, because they have nothing much to describe: the life of the subject of surveillance is often not too rich in original events, even if he revolves among key figures in European politics, such as Alexei Gross, the envoy plenipotentiary to France from 1745 to 1748, whose materials occupy the book has the largest number of pages. Despite the frequent headline "Report on various places visited by the Russian envoy, Mr. Gross," there is no wide variety of places in the reports about him, and his social circle repeats day after day, and the envoy has only three options at his disposal for walks: Tuileries – Luxembourg Gardens – The Palais Royal and, only occasionally, the Bois de Boulogne. As a result, reports about Gross sometimes take on a monotonous character, describing actions that repeat from day to day.:

"[21.] Mr. Gross came to dine with Mr. Fesch with a young foreigner who lives in the Anjou hotel on the Rue Dauphine.
22. Mr. Gross attended a dinner with the aforementioned Mr. Fesh and told him that he would not leave until the Russian ambassador arrived in Paris.
23. Mr. Gross was at a dinner at the said Mr. Fesch's with a certain Blois girl who lives opposite Chevalier Lambert.
25. Mr. Gross dined there again with the Engleber girl, who was Prince Cantemir's mistress."

Photo: Global Look Press/Daniel Karmann

A similar "long line of dinners alone", from which only a very experienced eye can extract operational information (knowing, say, that Johann Rudolf Fesch is a representative of Wuerttemberg, which is allied with Russia), appears in many dossiers. Dinners, walks, card games, and other board games don't bring much variety. And it happens that objects that are particularly difficult for operational observation come across, like Gross's predecessor as envoy, Antioch Cantemir, is generally a cautious man, like Stirlitz, so reports about him are full of confessions like this: "He travels so soon that I lost him on St. Honorius Street on leaving the suburb," "He again I left the house at half past five, I had to lag behind him on the Tuileries embankment, because I was driving soon, and the footman turned around to look."

Robins are a voice from beyond the grave: what to do when meeting a banshee on cairn

Irish folk beliefs about the otherworldly

One of the most frequently mentioned names in the book belongs to the grocer Prevost from St. Margaret's Street. "On St. Margaret's Street, opposite the abbey prison, there is a grocer named Prevost. This grocer and his wife organize a game every day, they host all kinds of meetings, especially foreigners. Mr. Fesh goes there quite often, his secretary is there every day, the secretary of the late Mr. Prince Cantemir also goes there, and many others, and even on Easter there was a game all day and part of the night." In the description of "azhanov," this establishment resembles some kind of "tavern on Pyatnitskaya," a criminal and diplomatic hangout where influential French and foreign figures often drop in not only to drink and have a snack, but also to discuss the international situation.

The Russian envoy, Gross, generally goes to the grocers almost every day, as if to work, and stays for a long time, as evidenced by many reports, including a note from Dame Prevost herself.: "Yesterday, Messrs Gross and Messe came to me, asking for dinner, and I overheard the following news. Mr. Gross is very surprised that Duke Montelimar will join the Spanish council. Mr. Gross read the letter to Mr. Messe in a language I do not understand. He wanted to say something in French, but Mr. Gross said to him in German, "Beware of gossip," meaning me. And they went into the garden." As a result, this sexy grocer wrapped in a romantic spy fog remains one of the most intriguing figures in the book - however, it is not at all surprising that in such a gastronomic country as France, the special services worked hand in hand with catering at the very dawn of their inception.