Natasha's dance

Orlando Figes NATASHA'S DANCE

A Cultural History of Russia

Copyright © 2002 by Orlando Figes

ISBN: 08050-5783-8

For Lydia and Alice

Contents

List of Illustrations and Photographic Acknowledgements - ix

Notes on the Maps and Text - xv

Maps - xviii

Introduction - xxv

1 EUROPEAN RUSSIA - I 2. CHILDREN OF I 8 I 2. - 69 3. MOSCOW! MOSCOW! - 147 4. THE PEASANT MARRIAGE - 217 5. IN SEARCH OF THE RUSSIAN SOUL - 289 6. DESCENDANTS OF GENGHIZ KHAN - 355 7. RUSSIA THROUGH THE SOVIET LENS - 431 8. RUSSIA ABROAD - 523

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.

CHAPTER OPENERS

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)

TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS

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

COLOUR PLATE SECTION 1

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)