First Russia, Then Tibet

This book combines travel notes by the English traveler, journalist, art historian, and writer Robert Byron (1905–1941) about Russia, India, and Tibet—three countries that, in the early 1930s, stood on the brink of major social and cultural changes. Arriving in the Soviet Union at the beginning of Stalinist repressions, Byron immersed himself in the study of ancient Russian painting, but he also had time to speak with makers of the avant-garde, in particular Shchusev and Greenberg. From a country that is the apotheosis of the Industrial Revolution, through the India thrown into disorder, he went on to pre-industrial Tibet, where the Dalai Lama took refuge in the palace and moved exclusively in a palanquin. Byron set out on his journey in order to find alternative models to those of the West for organizing society’s life, as well as to learn “what this world is made of, and of whom,” and as a result it took the form of an honest, passionate, and visionary account by an eyewitness of the antagonism between two great cultures and the loud historical upheavals of the first half of the 20th century.