The history of Russia has seesawed through the centuries between Europe and Asia. In this dichotomy, St Petersburg looked west and Moscow looked east. Power moved between the two cities; the Tsars were crowned in Moscow yet ruled from St Petersburg. But at the turn of the 20th century, just before Tsarist Russia came tumbling down, both cities experienced a sudden, brilliant flowering of the visual, literary and performing arts. Known in Russia as the Silver Age, this cultural renaissance is captured in all its dazzling originality - from the unprecedented synthesis of the arts in the productions of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes to Stanislavsky's groundbreaking stagings of Chekov, to Malevich's revolutionary Black Square - in this impeccably written, sumptuously illustrated volume.