Why do they say: «Scratch a Russian and you'll find a Tatar…»?

Researchers link the origin of this phrase to the presence of Russian troops in Paris in 1813-1814. At that time, a caustic expression appeared in the press, hinting at the barbaric nature hidden beneath the Russian veneer: "Scratch a Russian and you'll find a Cossack; scratch a Cossack and you'll find a bear!" Marquis Astolphe de Custine, who visited Russia in 1839 and wrote a book about it, understood it in a similar way. "Russian customs are cruel… Not even a century has passed since they were real Tatars; " And many of these upstarts of civilization have preserved their bearskin beneath their current elegance: They've merely turned it inside out, but scratch them and the fur appears again, standing on end," the Marquis once spat venomously.

In Russia, the phrase was initially used in French. For example, Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his ‘A Writer's Diary’, wryly noted the following: "The Europeans refused to consider us their own, no matter what, no matter what sacrifices and under no circumstances: ‘Grattez’, they say, ‘le Russe et vous verrez le Tartare’ and so it is to this day. We have become a proverb among them!"

But, over time, the expression took on a life of its own. Some used it in its broadest sense, extending it to other peoples: "Scratch a Russian and you'll find a Parisian. Scratch a Parisian and you'll find a Russian; scratch again and you'll find a Tatar," Pyotr Vyazemsky chuckled. But, more often, this expression came to imply the mixing of the bloodlines of different peoples. Moreover, many noble Russian families did, indeed, have Tatar roots. For example, the princes Yusupov, Urusov and Naryshkin and Count Apraksin.