Wolter i francuska moda na Rosję
Voltaire and the French fashion for Russia

Summary/Abstract: This article concerns the image of 18th-century Russia in France, with particular emphasis on the perception of the reforms of Peter the Great. Since the famous laudatory text by Bernard Fontenelle from 1725, he was considered by French philosophers as the epitome of Enlightenment modernization. Furthermore, Russia, which was hastily modernizing in the 18th century, was viewed in France as a kind of laboratory for the ideas of the Enlightenment, and as such, it became a kind of intellectual fashion. Voltaire, who fully engaged in this fashion, admired both Peter the Great and Catherine II in his numerous writings, seeing them as the only force capable of sending Russia onto the path of modernity.

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