Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia [Hardcover]

As epic and ambitious as his first book A People's Tragedy, Orlando Figes's Natasha's Dance is a sweeping panorama of Russian culture over the centuries. It takes its title from a scene in War and Peace in which the upper-crust Natasha Rostov, visiting her countrified "Uncle", falls instinctively into the rhythms of a peasant dance. Figes finds in this scene an ideal metaphor for his book's central theme--the perpetual see-sawing between the European cultural ideals of the aristocracy in St Petersburg and an "authentic" Russianess, usually seen as embodied in the peasantry and the country. The great debate in Russian culture has been between those who have seen it as a naturally "Western" society and those who have seen its destiny as lying in the East and its vast hinterland.

Around this supporting central theme, Figes has constructed an imposing edifice. The range of his knowledge and the sureness with which he deploys it are very impressive. Whether writing about the music of Stravinsky and Shostakovich or the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, the buildings of St Petersburg or the poetry of Akhmatova, he has something new and original to say. The great cultural achievements of Russia often seem, for those who have only a little knowledge of Russian history, like giant mountains suddenly rising out of featureless terrain. Figes's excellent book gives them a context and fills out many of the details of the surrounding landscape.--Nick Rennison

"One of those books that, at times, makes you wonder how you have so far managed to do without it."

"This fascinating and important book by the author of that widely acclaimed work, A People’s Tragedy, is a remarkable achievement."

"This wide-ranging history of Russia is one of the publishing events of the year."

This text provides a richly evocative exploration of Russia, its culture and people. Vast in scale and woven though with extraordinary stories and characters, it ranges from the splendour of 18th-century St Petersburg to the power of Stalinist propaganda, from folk art to the magic rituals of Asiatic shamans, from the poetry of Pushkin to the music of Mussorgsky and the films of Eisenstein, bringing to life an extraordinary cast of serf artists and aristocrats, revolutionaries and exiles, priests and libertines. Figes's book takes its title from a famous scene in "War and Peace", where the young and beautiful Countess Natasha hears a popular melody and, instinctively aware of the peasant rhythm and steps, begins to dance to it. Tolstoy shows that however grand and foreign-educated they might be, at heart the Russians are Russians. Here Orlando Figes explores the meaning of Natasha's Dance: the often contradictory impulses and shared sensibilities that have given rise to one of the world's most dazzling cultures. He shows how, perhaps more than any other country, Russia's sense of identity is embodied in its culture: not only its great poetry, music, books and paintings, but also in its common ideas, customs, habits and beliefs. Despite Russia's immense size and diversity it is this unique temperament that has held together a people scattered from Europe to Asia and enabled them to survive in the face of their own fearful history.

Orlando Figes is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. His last book, A PEOPLE'S TRAGEDY (Cape 1996), won the NCR Book Award, the Wolfson History Prize, the Longman/History Today Book of the Year Award and the WH Smith Literary Award. He lives in Cambridge.