Astolphe-Louis-Léonor de Custine, Marquis de Custine

Astolphe de Custine (1790–1857) was a French aristocrat and writer, remembered above all for his travel writing. He lived through the Revolution and the Second Empire and wrote in French. His book on Russia made him a reference point for comparing Europe with tsarist rule, and he is considered one of the first Western observers of Russian autocracy.

Born in Lorraine into a noble family that sympathized with the Revolution, he saw its violence up close: his grandfather and his father were both guillotined. He grew up under the influence of a brilliant mother who moved in the circles of Madame de Staël and Chateaubriand. He received a careful education and seemed destined for diplomacy. His life changed in 1824, when he was found beaten and half-naked outside Paris. The episode, and the gossip about his homosexuality that followed, cost him his diplomatic career and much of his social standing. After the deaths of his son and his mother, he tried to make a name as a writer of Romantic plays and poems, without success.

He found his true field in travel writing. His account of Spain, published in 1838, was well received, and Balzac encouraged him to write about less familiar parts of Europe. Inspired by Tocqueville, he travelled to Russia in 1839, spending most of his time in St Petersburg and visiting Moscow and Yaroslavl. He had hoped to find arguments against democracy, but he ended up describing the autocracy of Nicholas I and the submissiveness of his subjects. He blamed Russia's backwardness on the Orthodox Church, the Mongol invasion, and Peter the Great's reforms, which copied Western manners without changing society itself.

La Russie en 1839 appeared in full in 1843 and circulated widely in France, Britain and Germany, but it was banned in Russia. Its legacy is mixed. Admirers praise its insight, while critics call it inaccurate and prejudiced, and he is often counted among the originators of a Western view of Russia as a land of despotism.