The history of eighteenth-century cultural transfers and institutional borrowings between Russia and France, and between Russia and Western Europe more broadly, is usually presented as a one-way street where all traffic moved in the direction of Russia. Indeed, various actors in Petrine and post-Petrine Russia employed French ideas, French models, and French experts on a large scale, and probably nowhere more so than in the realm of education. The story of this traffic has been studied extensively and needs not to be retold here.
Against this backdrop, this article explores what is probably the earliest known episode where French eighteenth-century actors held up an educational model borrowed from Russia as an example. In particular, we focus on an overlooked link between the French and Russian educational systems that may provide a unique perspective on the circulation of some of the Military Enlightenment’s pedagogical concepts, disciplinary practices, and more. What makes this epi...
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