The Leningrad School was a prominent school of painting during the majority of the Soviet period, 1930-1990. Emanating from the Ilia Repin Institute for Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (named for the famous nineteenth century realist painter and renamed the St. Petersburg Institute for Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture after the collapse of the USSR), it produced […]
The twentieth century was a dynamic period for Soviet composers who often had to work around censorship to create their great contributions to world music. Under the USSR, artists were expected to produce works that glorified the Communist Revolution and the new lives of the new Soviet masses, often while criticizing the capitalistic West. Soviet […]
Russian icons are religious paintings that have been created and used in the Orthodox Christian tradition for centuries. They are an important part of Russian art and culture, and are recognized for their distinctive style and spiritual significance. Icons typically depict religious figures, such as Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and saints, and are intended […]
The Mariinsky Theater, located in St. Petersburg, Russia, is one of the most iconic and prestigious cultural institutions in the world. Since 1783, it has showcased some of the most famous ballets, operas, and orchestral performances of all time on both its stage and traveling to perform in theaters across the globe upon invitation. In […]
Mikhail Bulgakov wrote Master and Margarita between 1928 and 1940, during some of the most severe years of Soviet censorship. During this period authors and poets—the individuals most well equipped to transcend propaganda and recognize societal flaws—were prohibited from doing so at threat of death or imprisonment. However, while direct criticism was impossible, indirect was […]
Marina Frolova-Walker and Jonathan Walker’s Music and Soviet Power, 1917-1932, “trace[s] the transformation of pre-Revolutionary Russian music culture into Soviet music culture over the space of fifteen years”[1] focusing on how the music changed and adapted to the communist ideology of the new Soviet Union. It takes us through the tumultuous experimental period from the […]
The Primorsky Oceanarium is an educational center located on the Russky Island in Primorsky Krai, Russia. The main building of the Oceanarium has a modern look and unique shape, meant to symbolize a shell poking out of the blue sea. The oceanarium focuses on educating visitors about Russia’s aquatic zones, meaning ocean, sea, and river […]
Joan Neuberger, This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2019. 404 pp., $48.95 hb. ISBN-13 978-1501732768. A reader familiar with the political discourse surrounding Sergei Eisenstein’s 1944 film Ivan the Terrible would not be blamed for approaching a book aiming to analyze the film in its […]
Aleksei Balabanov is one of Russia’s best known directors of the 1990s and his movies are known for capturing the essence of those turbulent years. Balabanov’s Education and Early Work By Matthew Jensen Aleksei Oktyabrinovich Balabanov was born in the town of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) on 25 February 1959. He studied at the Gorky Pedagogical […]
