In my family everyone speaks Russian
You will have a good head start then and plenty of people you can turn to for help!
To me, Russian makes more sense.
Sounds like you may have answered your own question..........
.
. Because I can already read and write Russian, why not using this knowledge to actually learn the language?
So you aren't a complete beginner then, seems like a better idea to expand on the knowledge you already have of Russian than to try to learn French which you admit you struggled with.
rather than visiting African countries where French is spoken a lot (
A lot of African countries do have French as an official language, but it is also an official language in Canada, Belgium, Switzerland and Monaco for example, so you aren't just limited to trips to France!
I found quite some Poles who claim to speak some Russian.
A lot of them do, especially older Poles. A few Polish friends of mine speak some Russian as they learned it at school.
I think German was also taught too at one time.
The chance I might even live in a Russian speaking country or even a country that uses Russian as a second language is quite high.
There you go then!
So now I decided to continue my Russian studies
Problem solved :-)