"At the turn of the 20th century, against the background of the pomp and circumstance of the Imperial court and the rumblings of social unrest and political upheaval, Moscow and St. Petersburg experienced a sudden, brilliant flowering of the visual, literary, and performing arts. Known in Russia as the Silver Age, this cultural renaissance is captured in all of its dazzling originality in this sumptuously illustrated volume." "Much of this new efflorescence...

A cultural history of Russia that ranges from the reign of Tsar Nicholas II to perestroika examines the complex interconnection between Russian rulers and artists as exemplified by the stories behind the great masterpieces of luminaries in the fields of art, music, literature, theater, cinema and dance.

"Can great art be produced in a police state? Josif Stalin ran one of the most oppressive regimes in world history. Nevertheless, Stalinist Russia produced an outpouring of artistic works of immense power--from the poems of Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam to the opera Peter and the Wolf, the film Alexander Nevsky, and the novels The Master and Margarita and Doctor Zhivago. More than a dozen great artists were visible enough for Stalin to take an...