The writer is director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin
During much of the 19th century, the offspring of Russia’s rich and powerful spoke French before they ever learnt their native tongue — thanks to their French nannies. Subtly mocked by Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace, this phenomenon attests to the captivation of Russia’s imperial elite by French culture. Fast forward to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and there is a similar pattern — albeit with a different foreign source of admiration.
“My daughter started to speak Mandarin before she spoke Russian. Her nanny was from a village near Beijing,” Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary of many years, confessed during his boss’s trip to Beijing this week. “She loves Chinese and China.”
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