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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)

COLOUR PLATE SECTION 2

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)

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

Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich © ADAGP, 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)

25. Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin: Bathing the Red Horse, 1912. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (photo: Scala, Florence)

26. Kazimir Malevich: Red Cavalry, 1930. State Russian Museum, St Petersburg (photo: Scala, Florence)

Notes on the Maps and Text

MAPS

Place names indicated in the maps are those used in Russia before 1917. Soviet names are given in the text where appropriate. Since 1991, most Russian cities have reverted to their pre-revolutionary names.

RUSSIAN NAMES

Russian names are spelled in this book according to the standard (Library of Congress) system of transliteration, but common English spellings of well-known Russian names (Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky, or the Tsar Peter, for example) are retained. To aid pronounciation some Russian names (Vasily, for example) are slightly changed (in this case, from Vasilii).

DATES

From 1700 until 1918 Russia adhered to the Julian calendar, which ran thirteen days behind the Gregorian calendar in use in western Europe. Dates in this book are given according to the Julian calendar until February 1918, when Soviet Russia switched to the Gregorian calendar.

USE OF METRIC

All measurements of distance, weight and area are given in the metric system.

NOTES

Literary works cited in this hook are, wherever possible, from an English-language translation available in bookshops.

Maps

INTRODUCTION

In Tolstoy's War and Peace there is a famous and rather lovely scene where Natasha Rostov and her brother Nikolai are invited by their 'Uncle' (as Natasha calls him) to his simple wooden cabin at the end of a day's hunting in the woods. There the noble-hearted and eccentric 'Uncle' lives, a retired army officer, with his housekeeper Anisya, a stout and handsome serf from his estate, who, as it becomes clear from the old man's tender glances, is his unofficial 'wife'. Anisya brings in a tray loaded with homemade Russian specialities: pickled mushrooms, rye-cakes made with buttermilk, preserves with honey, sparkling mead, herb-brandy and different kinds of vodka. After they have eaten, the strains of a balalaika become audible from the hunting servants' room. It is not the sort of music that a countess should have liked, a simple country ballad, but seeing how his niece is moved by it, 'Uncle' calls for his guitar, blows the dust off it, and with a wink at Anisya, he begins to play, with the precise and accelerating rhythm of a Russian dance, the well-known love song, 'Came a maiden down the street'. Though Natasha has never before heard the folk song, it stirs some unknown feeling in her heart. 'Uncle' sings as the peasants do, with the conviction that the meaning of the song lies in the words and that the tune, which exists only to emphasize the words, 'comes of itself. It seems to Natasha that this direct way of singing gives the air the simple charm of birdsong. 'Uncle' calls on her to join in the folk dance.

'Now then, niece!' he exclaimed, waving to Natasha the hand that had just struck a chord. Natasha threw off the shawl from her shoulders, ran forward to face

'Uncle', and setting her arms akimbo, also made a motion with her shoulders and struck an attitude.

Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated by an emigree French governess, imbibed from the Russian air she breathed that spirit, and obtained that manner which the pas de chale would, one would have supposed, long ago have effaced? But the spirit and the movements were those inimitable and unteachable Russian ones that 'Uncle' had expected of her. As soon as she had struck her pose and smiled triumphantly, proudly, and with sly merriment, the fear that had at first seized Nikolai and the others that she might not do the right thing was at an end, and they were all already admiring her.

She did the right thing with such precision, such complete precision, that Anisya Fyodorovna, who had at once handed her the handkerchief she needed for the dance, had tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she watched this slim, graceful countess, reared in silks and velvets and so different from herself, who yet was able to understand all that was in Anisya and in Anisya's father and mother and aunt, and in every Russian man and woman.¹

What enabled Natasha to pick up so instinctively the rhythms of the dance? How could she step so easily into this village culture from which, by social class and education, she was so far removed? Are we to suppose, as Tolstoy asks us to in this romantic scene, that a nation such as Russia may be held together by the unseen threads of a native sensibility? The question takes us to the centre of this book. It calls itself a cultural history. But the elements of culture which the reader will find here are not just great creative works like War and Peace but artefacts as well, from the folk embroidery of Natasha's shawl to the musical conventions of the peasant song. And they are summoned, not as monuments to art, but as impressions of the national consciousness, which mingle with politics and ideology, social customs and beliefs, folklore and religion, habits and conventions, and all the other mental bric-a-brac that constitute a culture and a way of life. It is not my argument that art can serve the purpose of a window on to life. Natasha's dancing scene cannot be approached as a literal record of experience, though memoirs of this period show that there were indeed noblewomen who picked up village dances in this way.² But art can be looked at as a record of belief- in this case, the write's yearning for