Grattez le russe, et vous verrez le tartare: Perversion of French Saying in Oeuvre of F.M. Dostoevsky

Abstract

The article considers the famous saying Grattez le russe, et vous verrez le tartare (Scratch a Russian and you’ll find a Tatar) taken from A Writer's Diary and The Raw Youth by F.M. Dostoevsky. The interpretation of the cultural and historical meaning of this French saying is given, associated with the tradition of identifying Russians with barbarians, “Asians”, which is confirmed by the punning and ironic roll call of homophones barbare and tartare. The major contribution into transformation of this stereotypical belief about the nation was made by Dostoevsky in the relevant journalistic and artistic texts of 1870s. He had experienced staying in the Siberian Asia and would speak to kazakh scientist Chokan Valikhanov and other Russian orientalists. The writer used to have a Europe-centric perspective of Russia. However, he gradually transformed and started from sharp criticism of the Eurocentric view of Russia to adopt a positive interpretation of the “Asian” origins (existing along with the European ones) in the Russians’ nature. Eventually Dostoevsky shaped a trinitary Eurasian formula that he used to define the national and cultural essence of Russia. The essence includes not only Russian and European origins, but also the third origin which is Asian and no less substantial. This idea was fully explained by A Writer's Diary’s author in his late days in 1881: “Europe <…> is the mother of Russia just like Asia is”.