Natasha's Dance

Orlando Figes

New York : Metropolitan Books, 2002. (2003)

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Non Fiction

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SUMMARY:

"Orlando Figes's A People's Tragedy, wrote Eric Hobsbawm, did "more to help us understand the Russian Revolution than any other book I know." Now, in Natasha's Dance, this internationally renowned historian does the same for Russian culture, summoning the myriad elements that formed a nation and held it together." "Beginning in the eighteenth century with the building of St. Petersburg - a "window on the West" - and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself - its, character, spiritual essence, history, and destiny. What did it mean to be Russian - an illiterate serf or an imperial courtier? And where was the true Russia - in Europe or in Asia? Figes skillfully interweaves the great works - by Dostoevsky and Chekhov, Stravinsky and Chagall - with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons, and all the customs of daily life, from eating, drinking, and bathing habits to beliefs about death and the spirit world. His fascinating characters range high and low; the revered Tolstoy, who left his deathbed to search the wilderness for the Kingdom of God; the serf girl Praskovya, who became Russian opera's first superstar, won the heart of her owner, and shocked society by becoming his wife; the composer Stravinsky, who returned to Russia after fifty years in the West and discovered that the homeland the had left had never left his heart."--BOOK JACKET.

    Copyright © 2002 by Orlando Figes

    ISBN: 08050-5783-8

    Contents

    List of Illustrations and Photographic Acknowledgements - ix

    Notes on the Maps and Text - xv

    Maps - xviii

    Introduction - xxv

    List of Illustrations

    and Photographic

    Acknowledgements

    Every effort has been made to contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be happy to make good in future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention.

    1. Benjamin Paterssen:
Vue de la grande parade au Palais de l’Empereur

Alexandre 1er a St Petersburg, c.
1803. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

    2. Adolphe Ladurnier:
View of the White Hall in the Winter Palace,

St Petersburg,
1838. State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg/

    Petrushka, Moscow

    3. St Basil’s Cathedral, Red Square, Moscow, during the late nineteenth

    century (photo: David King Collection, London)

    4
.
A typical one-street village in central Russia,
c.
1910. Photograph

    by Netta Peacock. Victoria Albert Museum Picture Library,

    London

    5. Natalia Goncharova: backdrop design for
The Firebird (1916)

    Victoria
Albert Museum Picture Library, London

    6. Scvthian figures: late nineteenth-centurv archaeological engraving

    List of Illustrations and Photographic Acknowledgements

    7. Anna Akhmatova at the Fountain House. Copyright © Museum of Anna Akhmatova in the Fountain House, St Petersburg

    8. Igor and Vera Stravinsky arriving at Sheremetevo Airport in Moscow, 21 September 1962. Reproduced from Igor and Vera Stravinsky, A
Photograph Album 1921-1971
(London: Thames Hudson, 1982)

    1. Shifting the huge granite rock for the pedestal of
The Bronze Horseman.
Engraving after a drawing by A. P. Davydov, 1782

    2. Seventeenth-century Muscovite costumes. Engraving from Adam Olearius,
Travels to Muscovy and Persia
(Hamburg: Schleswig, 1669)

    3. The Sheremetev theatre at Ostankino. Photograph copyright © William C. Brumfield.

    4. Gerard de la Barthe: A
Cure Bath in Moscow,
1790. Pushkin Museum, Moscow (photo: AKG London)

    5. The ‘peasant prince’: Sergei Volkonsky in Irkutsk. Daguerreotype by A. Lavignon, 1845 (photo: Novosti, London)

    6. Alexei Venetsianov:
Cleaning Beetroot,
1820. Copyright © 2002, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg/Petrushka, Moscow

    7. A wet nurse in traditional Russian dress. Early-twentieth-century photograph. Private collection. Reproduced from Chloe Oblensky,
The Russian Empire: A Portrait in Photographs
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1979)

    8. Monument to the millennium of Russia in the square in front of St Sophia’s Cathedral, Novgorod. Photograph by Mikhail Mikeshin, early 1910s

    9. Maria Volkonsky and her son Misha. Daguerreotype, 1862. Reproduced from Christine Sutherland,
The Princess of Siberia: The Story of Maria Volkonsky and the Decembrist Exiles
(London: Methuen, 1984)

    10. Etienne-Maurice Falconet:
The Bronze Horseman.
Monument to Peter the Great, 1782 (photo: Hulton Archive, London)

    11. Viktor Gartman: design tor the Kiev city gate (photo: Novosti/ Bridgeman Art Library, London)

    12. Vladimir Shervud: Russian Museum, Red Square, Moscow. Photograph, early 1900s (photo: Alexander Meledin Collection/Mary Evans Picture Library, London)

    13. Ilia Repin: sketches for
The Volga Barge Haulers,
1870. National Gallery, Prague

    14. Tolstoy’s estate at Yasnaya Polyana. Late-nineteenth-century photograph

    15. Elena Polenova: ‘Cat and Owl’ carved door, Abramtsevo workshop, early 1890s. Courtesy Izobrazitel’noe Iskusstvo, Moscow

    16. Church at Abramtsevo. Designed by Viktor Vasnetsov, 1881-2. Photograph copyright © William C. Brumfield

    17.
Gusli
player. Reproduced from Chloe Oblensky,
The Russian Empire: A Portrait in Photographs
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1979)

    18. Nikolai Roerich: costumes for the Adolescents in the first production of
The Rite of Spring,
Paris, 1913 (photo: Lebrecht Collection, London)

    19. Stravinsky transcribes a folk song sung by a peasant
gusli
player on the porch of the Stravinsky house at Ustilug, 1909 (photo: Fondation Theodore Strawinsky/Lebrecht Collection, London)

    20. Hermits at a monastery in northern Russia (photo: Popperfoto, Northampton)

    21. Group of Komi people in typical clothing. Photograph,
c.
1912, by S. I. Sergei. Reproduced from L. N. Molotova,
Folk Art of the Russian Federation from the Ethnographical Museum of the Peoples of the U.S.S.R.
(Leningrad: Khudozhnik RSFSR, 1981)

    22. Vasily Kandinsky: sketches of buildings in the Komi region. From the Vologda Diary, 1889. Centre Pompidou, Musee National d’Art Moderne, Paris. (Copyright © Photo CNAC/MNAM Dist. RMN) © AD AGP, Paris and DACS, London 2002

    23. Masked Buriat shaman with drum, drumstick and horse-sticks. Photograph by Toumanoff, early 1900s

    24. Watercolour copy of a lost self-portrait with Circassian sword and cloak by Mikhail Lermontov, 1837 (photo: Novosti, London)

    25. Vladimir Stasov: study of the Russian letter ‘B’ from a fourteenth-century manuscript of Novgorod. Reproduced in Stasov,
Russkii naroodnyi ornament,
1872) (photo copyright © British Library, London [ref. 7743])

    26
.
Vladimir Stasov: title page of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera score
Sadko,
1897. Photograph copyright © British Library, London [ref. G.1073.a]

    27. Akhmatova and Punin in the courtyard of the Fountain House, 1927. Copyright © Museum of Anna Akhmatova in the Fountain House, St Petersburg

    28. Liubov Popova: stage design for Meyerhold’s 1922 production of the
Magnanimous Cuckold.
Tretyakov Gallery Moscow (photo: Bridgeman Art Library, London)

    29. Alexander Rodchenko: ‘To Her and Me’, illustration from Mayakovsky’s
Pro eto,
1923. Private collection. © DACS 2002

    30. ‘The Russian house inside the Italian cathedral’. Final shot from Andrei Tarkovsky’s
Nostalgia,
1983 (photo: Ronald Grant Archive, London)

    31. Sergei Efron and Marina Tsvetaeva, 1911. Courtesy Viktoria Schweitzer

    1. Nikolai Argunov:
Portrait ofPraskovya Sheremeteva,
1802. Copyright © 2002, State Museum of Ceramics and XVIII Century Estate, Kuskovo/Petrushka, Moscow

    2. Vasily Tropinin:
Portrait of Pushkin,
1827. Pushkin Museum, Moscow (photo: AKG London)

    3. Alexei Venetsianov:
Morning of the Lady of the Manor,
1823. Copyright © 2002, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg/Petrushka, Moscow

    4. Alexei Venetsianov:
In the Ploughed Field: Spring,
1827. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (photo: Bridgeman Art Library, London)

    5. Vasily Perov:
Hunters at Rest,
1871. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (photo: Bridgeman Art Library, London)

    6. Interior of the Terem Palace, the Kremlin, Moscow, restored by Fedor Solntsev (photo: Novosti, London)

    7. Vasily Surikov:
The Boyar’s Wife Morozova,
1 884. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (photo: Scala, Florence)

    8. Imperial Presentation Kovsh by Mikhail Perkin for Faberge, 1906. Copyright © Phototheque de la Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris

    9. Siren vase by Sergei Vashkov for Faberge, 1908. Copyright © 2002, State Historical Museum, Moscow/Petrushka, Moscow

    10. Ilia Repin:
Portrait of Vladimir Stasov,
1873. Copyright © 2002, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

    11. Ilia Repin:
The Volga Barge Haulers,
1873. Copyright © 2002, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg/Petrushka, Moscow

    12. Ivan Kramskoi:
The Peasant Ignatiy Pirogov,
1874. Copyright © 2002, Kiev Museum of Russian Art, Kiev, Ukraine/Petrushka, Moscow

    13. Leon Bakst:
Portrait of Diaghilev with His Nanny,
1906. Copyright © 2002, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg/Petrushka, Moscow

    14. Original score by Igor Stravinsky for
The Rite of Spring,
1913. Private Collection (photo: Bridgeman Art Library, London). Copyright 1912, 1921 by Hawkes Son (London) Ltd. Reproduced by permission of Boosey Hawkes Music Publishrs Ltd

    15. Viktor Vasnetsov: set design for Mamontov’s production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera
The Snow Maiden
at Abramtsevo, 1881 (photo: Novosti, London)

    16. Nikolai Roerich’s set and costumes for
The Rite of Spring,
reproduced by the Joffrey Ballet for its revival of the original ballet in 1987. (Copyright © Herbert Migdoll

    17. Nikolai Roerich:
The Idols,
1901. Copyright © 2002, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg/Petrushka, Moscow

    18. Nikolai Roerich: costume designs for
The Snow Maiden,
1921, lor the Chicago Opera Company production, 1922. Courtesy Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York

    19. Vasily Kandinsky:
Motley Life,
1907. Copyright © Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2002

    10. Vasily Kandinsky:
All Saints II,
1911. Copyright © Stadtische

    Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2002

    21. Vasily Kandinsky:
Oval No.
2, 1925. Centre Pompidou, Musee National d’Art Moderne, CCI, Paris. (Copyright © Photo CNAC/ MNAM l)isr.RMN)(0 AD AGP, Paris and DACS, London 2002

    22. Shaman bird head dress, cedar wood, first half of nineteenth century. From the collection of Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg

    23. Isaak Levitan:
Vladimirka,
1 892. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (photo: Scala, Florence)

    24. Vasily Vereshchagin:
Surprise Attack,
1871 (photo: Christie’s Images, London)