Russia could hardly be said to have entered the 20th Century with all flags flying. Indeed, all was not as gold as the glitter of her domes. A scant five years later she became embroiled in a bloody civil war, and while that insurrection was put down and relative calm ensued for the next decade, it should have been clear to any sensitive observer that the old order was on the brink of collapse, that horrendous violence was seething just beneath the surface.

All the more astonishing is it, then, that those years can be—and frequently are—referred to as Russia's “silver age” of arts and letters.