Books in the Eurasia Past and Present series

A prevailing belief among Russia's cultural elite in the early twentieth century was that the music of composers such as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Aleksandr Scriabin, and Nikolai Medtner could forge a shared identity for the Russian people across social and economic divides. In this illuminating study of competing artistic and ideological visions at the close of Russia's "e;Silver Age,"e; author Rebecca Mitchell interweaves cultural history, music, and philosophy to explore how "e;Nietzsche's orphans"e; strove to find in music a means to overcome the disunity of modern life in the final tumultuous years before World War I and the Communist Revolution.