Zakharova responded to Likhacheva's statement about the French language in War and Peace

Maria Zakharova, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, denied the statement of Elizaveta Likhacheva, an art critic and former director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, that Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" is half written in French. She wrote about this on July 6 in her Telegram channel.

Likhacheva claimed in an interview that the novel was supposedly half written in French and therefore had an indirect relation to Russian culture.

"In the first chapters, the use of French reaches 20%, then it is practically non-existent. Those who are not indifferent estimated that there are 478,458 words in the text, and 15,040 in French. I can't guarantee, but I think the order of the numbers is correct. Total: the share of the French language in the novel "War and Peace" is <...> ~ 3.31%," Zakharova wrote in a message.

According to Zakharova, even from the point of view of primitive calculation and arithmetic, "War and Peace" cannot be called a work unrelated to Russian culture. She stressed that the use of French in the novel was supposed to immerse the reader in the atmosphere of the pre-war period, that is, the total Francophony of the Russian nobility to the detriment of their culture, fascination with Bonaparte, and loss of connection with the people. This is the root cause of what Tolstoy called the shame that we historically experience at the beginning of great trials, which we then overcome with great victories and achievements, Zakharova pointed out.

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Zakharova said on June 2 that the theft of the monument to the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin in Germany was another manifestation of the "culture of abolition", which leads to lack of culture and the spread of misogynistic ideology. In addition, she criticized the support of European countries for Kiev's policy towards Russian culture. Russian Russian literature, music, and cinema are banned by the Ukrainian authorities, with the support of a number of Western states, and the use of the Russian language is restricted.