Moscow and St.Petersburg in Russia's Silver Age: 1900 - 1920

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Description

The history of Russia has seesawed through the centuries between Europe and Asia. In this dichotomy, St Petersburg looked west and Moscow looked east. Power moved between the two cities; the Tsars were crowned in Moscow yet ruled from St Petersburg. But at the turn of the 20th century, just before Tsarist Russia came tumbling down, both cities 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 its dazzling originality from the unprecedented synthesis of the arts in the productions of Diaghilevs Ballets Russes to Stanislavskys groundbreaking stagings of Chekov, to Malevichs revolutionary Black Square in this impeccably written, sumptuously illustrated volume.

Reviews

'A superbly chosen and reproduced selection of poignant, evocative archive photographs of long-disappeared people, places, events, streetscapes and interiors, and a dazzling array of drawings, designs and paintings' - Irish Times
'Cogent and well-paced the array of eye-catching illustrations intertwined with the text articulate Bowlts vast, brilliantly illuminated canvas and give the reader a thread to follow' - Slavonic and East European Review
'Sumptuous, unforgettable and revelatory' - Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times

Author Bio

John E. Bowlt is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Southern California, and Director of its Institute of Modern Russian Culture.