In his widely read Foreign Affairs article “The Five Futures of Russia”, Stephen Kotkin – a historian and leading biographer of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin – makes a deeply poignant assertion: amid the 26th year of Vladimir Putin’s rule and the brutality of the War in Ukraine, modern Russia feels like an anti-Europe, a neighboring great power that never could achieve what European nation-states did in democratizing, creating true market economies, and forsaking aggressive wars of conquest, but this is not the case in empirical reality. When looking at the long course of history, Russia not only has a great role to play in the cultural evolution of Europe but also can be greatly compared to a key power in the current Euro-Atlantic alliance: France, which has a tendency toward statism, bureaucracy, and centralization, and also a deep legacy of warmongering, empire, revolution, authoritarianism, and national – even civilizational – pride. There are of course divergences in geography, demographics, ideology, religion, and other nuances, but the foundational historical trends bear a haunting resemblance, just with very different 21st century results.
As someone of Ukrainian-Russian origin, an aspiring political scientist, and long-time fan of Kotkin’s writings, I had begun to understand this comparability between the two cases during my first exchange term in Grenoble. Through my classes there, especially in my francophone lectures in “France, Etat, Institutions, et Société”, I started to realize that French society – for all its unique socio-cultural practices – had a certain ‘Russian-ness’ to it that I had learned during my pre-immigration childhood. There was an implicit collective spirit I could not put my finger on, a fidelity in its state-building accomplishments, a pride in Paris’ historic and contemporary weight on the world stage, and (since 2024 or so) an escalating anxiety of whether France would be able to avoid turning to the far-right and indulging its basest instincts, and also whether France would be able to meet the current geopolitical moment. Perhaps, such phenomena are common across all cultures that have been the dominant entity in a state that has held great power status at one point or another. However, there is something ingrained in the French nation that even far in the Alps, where Italy and Switzerland were a mere train ride away, I felt at times such déjà vu that it was as if the vertical red-white-blue tricolor next to the Isere Prefecture building could in the blink of an eye turn into a horizontal white-blue-red flag. Given my complex national identity, I did not know whether to feel grateful that such national pride could create nation-states that stand up for democracy and international law, or to feel horrified that this national spirit, which I had spent years critiquing as a part of Russia’s imperialism against my father’s homeland, was not erased from Western Europe following the Second World War.
Now studying in Paris, the Franco-Russian convergences feel all the more powerful. My host institution – Sciences Po Paris – was created after humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War to create a new French elite that could lead the nation back into glory. Even now, the school is famous as the institution you go to in order to make a career that will eventually drive you into high functionary or ministerial positions, where you will help shape France’s domestic order and its significant position in Europe and the world. The illustrious monuments in and around Paris – Fontainebleau, Versailles, the Louvre, the Chateau de Vincennes, the Palais Royal, and the Institut de France – all serve as prideful markers of strong rulers like Napoleon and Louis XIV, who immortalized their reign, their centralization of the historic French realm, and their conquests through architectural and artistic opulence. And it goes beyond the monuments, the museums, the statues, and other lieux de mémoire: half the time I send a mere photo of Paris’ large boulevards or its side streets and passages (especially in the Rive Droite), my mother – a Russian of Ukrainian descent – notes the uncanny resemblance to the older parts of Moscow, and I cannot help but agree. It is as if the very stones of Paris reflect France’s assertive and tempestuous history just as much as the society thinks of itself and its future with this legacy in mind.
Although I feel less and less disturbed by the ‘great power’-ness that is laden in France’s culture, history, and institutions, my feelings as I finish my term remain conflicted. As many diaspora scholars note, migration, especially because of war between one’s countries of origin, is a deeply painful experience, and to now live and study in a country that has gone through the pain of empire and strongmen and come out fiercely loyal to universalism, republicanism, civil society, and rule of law only adds to the pain, because for all the understandable challenges the contemporary French state has had with terrorism, unlike their Eastern European compatriots, French youth have been able to grow up in a society, where peace at home is taken largely for granted. Living and learning in such a society is thus a somewhat angering experience, because it has intensified my personal anguish and scholarly dilemmas about why the Russia of my early childhood could not make a similar transformation.
And of course, in such unstable times, it is a humbling experience to be able to expose oneself long-term to a society that has suppressed its more aggressive instincts and embraced the spirit of the Enlightenment at home. And yet, my francophone coursework – especially that for the history professor Emmanuelle Loyer – has shown me that just as in the United States, there is a deep anxiety that Paris may have never truly embraced the democratic tenets of the Enlightenment and in perpetuating inequalities and oppression, it continues to open itself up to chaos and regression.
As I begin my return to Washington to graduate, in carrying my lived experience of French society, I am more than ever angry with my Russian homeland for its aggression against my Ukrainian homeland and its inability to become a peaceful, constructive actor; in turn, I am more than ever determined to use my subsequent studies and future scholarship to see how France and other countries can serve as a model for revolutionary, democratic change. Of course, I am simultaneously grateful to French society for widening my intellectual horizons and faith in democracy and liberty.
And yet, I am anxious for my host country, and I hate to leave it at such a pivotal moment. After all, how long will Paris’ Hotel de Ville keep Ukrainian flags flying on its facade? Will a new president in 2027 usher in a different era of politics that will fundamentally change how Sciences Po teaches its students? How long can Europe and France hold out in such an uncertain moment? What will be our role in all of this as students with academic ties to both the US and France? I cannot answer any of these questions just yet, but I suspect that at the end of the day, no study abroad term is there to answer questions, only to make them so your post-exchange lived experience can gradually lead you to an answer.
As someone of Ukrainian-Russian origin, an aspiring political scientist, and long-time fan of Kotkin’s writings, I had begun to understand this comparability between the two cases during my first exchange term in Grenoble. Through my classes there, especially in my francophone lectures in “France, Etat, Institutions, et Société”, I started to realize that French society – for all its unique socio-cultural practices – had a certain ‘Russian-ness’ to it that I had learned during my pre-immigration childhood. There was an implicit collective spirit I could not put my finger on, a fidelity in its state-building accomplishments, a pride in Paris’ historic and contemporary weight on the world stage, and (since 2024 or so) an escalating anxiety of whether France would be able to avoid turning to the far-right and indulging its basest instincts, and also whether France would be able to meet the current geopolitical moment. Perhaps, such phenomena are common across all cultures that have been the dominant entity in a state that has held great power status at one point or another. However, there is something ingrained in the French nation that even far in the Alps, where Italy and Switzerland were a mere train ride away, I felt at times such déjà vu that it was as if the vertical red-white-blue tricolor next to the Isere Prefecture building could in the blink of an eye turn into a horizontal white-blue-red flag. Given my complex national identity, I did not know whether to feel grateful that such national pride could create nation-states that stand up for democracy and international law, or to feel horrified that this national spirit, which I had spent years critiquing as a part of Russia’s imperialism against my father’s homeland, was not erased from Western Europe following the Second World War.
Now studying in Paris, the Franco-Russian convergences feel all the more powerful. My host institution – Sciences Po Paris – was created after humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War to create a new French elite that could lead the nation back into glory. Even now, the school is famous as the institution you go to in order to make a career that will eventually drive you into high functionary or ministerial positions, where you will help shape France’s domestic order and its significant position in Europe and the world. The illustrious monuments in and around Paris – Fontainebleau, Versailles, the Louvre, the Chateau de Vincennes, the Palais Royal, and the Institut de France – all serve as prideful markers of strong rulers like Napoleon and Louis XIV, who immortalized their reign, their centralization of the historic French realm, and their conquests through architectural and artistic opulence. And it goes beyond the monuments, the museums, the statues, and other lieux de mémoire: half the time I send a mere photo of Paris’ large boulevards or its side streets and passages (especially in the Rive Droite), my mother – a Russian of Ukrainian descent – notes the uncanny resemblance to the older parts of Moscow, and I cannot help but agree. It is as if the very stones of Paris reflect France’s assertive and tempestuous history just as much as the society thinks of itself and its future with this legacy in mind.
Although I feel less and less disturbed by the ‘great power’-ness that is laden in France’s culture, history, and institutions, my feelings as I finish my term remain conflicted. As many diaspora scholars note, migration, especially because of war between one’s countries of origin, is a deeply painful experience, and to now live and study in a country that has gone through the pain of empire and strongmen and come out fiercely loyal to universalism, republicanism, civil society, and rule of law only adds to the pain, because for all the understandable challenges the contemporary French state has had with terrorism, unlike their Eastern European compatriots, French youth have been able to grow up in a society, where peace at home is taken largely for granted. Living and learning in such a society is thus a somewhat angering experience, because it has intensified my personal anguish and scholarly dilemmas about why the Russia of my early childhood could not make a similar transformation.
And of course, in such unstable times, it is a humbling experience to be able to expose oneself long-term to a society that has suppressed its more aggressive instincts and embraced the spirit of the Enlightenment at home. And yet, my francophone coursework – especially that for the history professor Emmanuelle Loyer – has shown me that just as in the United States, there is a deep anxiety that Paris may have never truly embraced the democratic tenets of the Enlightenment and in perpetuating inequalities and oppression, it continues to open itself up to chaos and regression.
As I begin my return to Washington to graduate, in carrying my lived experience of French society, I am more than ever angry with my Russian homeland for its aggression against my Ukrainian homeland and its inability to become a peaceful, constructive actor; in turn, I am more than ever determined to use my subsequent studies and future scholarship to see how France and other countries can serve as a model for revolutionary, democratic change. Of course, I am simultaneously grateful to French society for widening my intellectual horizons and faith in democracy and liberty.
And yet, I am anxious for my host country, and I hate to leave it at such a pivotal moment. After all, how long will Paris’ Hotel de Ville keep Ukrainian flags flying on its facade? Will a new president in 2027 usher in a different era of politics that will fundamentally change how Sciences Po teaches its students? How long can Europe and France hold out in such an uncertain moment? What will be our role in all of this as students with academic ties to both the US and France? I cannot answer any of these questions just yet, but I suspect that at the end of the day, no study abroad term is there to answer questions, only to make them so your post-exchange lived experience can gradually lead you to an answer.
Sophia Pavlenko
Spring 2026
GW Paris - Sciences Po (GW Study Program)
Elliott School of International Affairs
International Affairs Major