This book should be judged not by what it doesn’t contain, but by what it does contain. Solomon Volkov did not compile a historical encyclopedia of Petersburg culture—he inspired us with a story of Russia’s cultural capital. His account is woven from archival documents and solid memoirs, imaginative fantasies and bohemian gossip. That elusive, hard-to-define thing we call a Sense of Place becomes, for the reader, more than reality—a reader’s own dream.
Lev Losev
Solomon Volkov, the most visibly “Petersburg intellectual” in his very person, had a wonderful idea: to describe his city from the viewpoint of literature, music, and art—so generously inspired by Petersburg. It is a dazzling plot, full of energy and magnificence with which the city’s past has been marked since its forced founding in 1703. At the center of the narrative is the flowering of an unusually rich modernist movement in Russia; in its subtext lies the dispersal of Russia’s artistic elite that helped fertilize other cultures. Volkov’s portrait of a usurped capital is comprehensive and incisive; it is saturated with captivating details and delightful gossip. Experts will find in this book a treasure trove of new material and discoveries; for the uninitiated it will serve as an engaging introduction to one of the most dynamic currents in the history of culture of our time.
Michael Scammell, President of the American PEN Club
Solomon Volkov is called the “Russian Eckermann”: he became famous for his published dialogues with the ballet master George Balanchine and the poet Joseph Brodsky, the violinist Nathan Milstein, and the composer Dmitry Shostakovich. For the book about Shostakovich, Volkov received the American Dims Taylor Prize; for the book about Brodsky, the prize of the magazine “Zvezda.” “The History of the Culture of St. Petersburg” was published in the USA, England, Finland, Brazil, and Italy. The press noted that this is the first comprehensive history of the culture of a great city, entering on equal terms the circle of world capitals of modern civilization: Vienna, Paris, London, Berlin, and New York.