No other Russian poet of the 90s stands out like Boris Ryzhii. He received some of Russia’s highest literary honors, including honorable mention for the Anti-Booker Prize, and, after his early death, the Northern Palmyra. Composed amidst the chaos and crime of perestroika, his poems stand like opponents in a boxing ring, where ugliness and […]

Glasnost’ (Гласность), a political and social policy spearheaded by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (Михаил Горбачёв) in the USSR in the late 1980s, described an increased ability of Soviet citizens to openly discuss problems in their country. Glasnost’ affected nearly all aspects of society, including filmmaking. Filmmakers of the late Soviet period used their newfound freedom […]

The Peredvizhniki, or the Wanderers, were a movement of Russian Realism born from the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1863. Under the rule of Alexander II, Russia was struggling through a series of liberal reforms that were part of a greater humanitarian movement. The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 deconstructed much of the social […]

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 […]