Natasha's Dance A Cultural History of Russia

Beginning in the eighteenth century with the building of St. Petersburg and culminating with the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself--its character, spiritual essence, and destiny. Skillfully interweaving the great works--by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall--with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons, and all the customs of daily life, Figes reveals the spirit of "Russianness" as rich and uplifting, complex and contradictory--and more lasting than any Russian ruler or state. Orlando Figesis the author ofA People's Tragedy, recipient of the Wolfson Prize for History and theLos Angeles TimesBook Prize, among others. A regular contributor toThe New York Times,The Washington Post, andThe New York Review of Books, he is a professor of history at the University of London. He lives in Cambridge, England. ANew York TimesNotable Book Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize Orlando Figes'sA People's Tragedy, Eric Hobsbawm wrote, did "more to help us understand the Russian Revolution than any other book I know." Now, inNatasha's Dance, he 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. Petersburga "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, and destiny. What did it mean to be Russianan illiterate serf or an imperial courtier? Figes 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 food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world. His characters range high and low: Tolstoy, who left his deathbed to search for the Kingdom of God; the serf girl Praskovya, who became the Russian opera's first superstar and shocked society by becoming her owner's wife; Stravinsky, who returned to Russia after fifty years in the West and discovered that the homeland he had left had never left his heart. Like the European-schooled countess Natasha performing an impromptu folk dance inWar and Peace, the spirit of "Russianess" is revealed by Figes as rich and uplifting, complex and contradictorya powerful force that unified a vast, riven country and proved more lasting than any Russian ruler or state. "Absolutely brimming with ideas, full of unforgettable stories and characters,Natasha's Dancetells a most remarkable story: How a backward country, obsessed with its backwardness, managed in a single century to produce the most passionate, innovative, searching art and literature of any Western society, in the process transforming Western culture as a whole. In the telling, Orlando Figes displays his gift for narrative power, his love of telling detail, and his great compassion for the lunatics and geniuses who fill his pages. Extraordinary."Michael Ignatieff "A sweeping cultural survey of Russia over the past three centuriesconsistently rich and thought provoking."The Economist "Absolutely brimming with ideas, full of unforgettable stories and characters,Natasha's Dancetells a most remarkable story: How a backward country, obsessed with its backwardness, managed in a single century to produce the most passionate, innovative, searching art and literature of any Western society, in the process transforming Western culture as a whole. In the telling, Orlando Figes displays his gift for narrative power, his love of telling detail, and his great

Orlando Figes is the author of A People’s Tragedy, and recipient of the Wolfson Prize for History and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among others. A regular contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Times Literary Supplement, he is a professor of history at the University of London. He lives in Cambridge, England.