Word: russian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...RaRa Rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen/ Russia's greatest love machine...
...Contemporary, the journal of the Russian Writers Union, is currently serializing At the Last Frontier by Valentin Pikul. The book is a canny mix of fact and rumor about the monk, whose skill in doctoring the Tsarina's sick son gained him inordinate influence over the royal family in the final decade of the Russian empire. By prudish Soviet standards, Pikul's empurpled prose is downright lurid. In one key scene, for example, Rasputin sneaks up to the Tsarina as she prays for her hemophiliac son. Out of the shadows steps the "bony peasant, his face framed...
...proletariat. So do passages alluding to Rasputin's vast sexual appetite and his zest for orgies-which have been amply documented by historians. But the book seemingly has other and more unsavory functions. One is to encourage the xenophobia that still has a strong hold on the many Russian chauvinists in the elite, who believe that alien forces have caused their homeland's troubles down through the ages. One handy target is the German-born Alexandra, who is described in the novel as a featherbrained traitor to Russia. Pikul's fictional Tsar Alexander III is quoted...
...tenuous basis for these charges is the historical fact that Rasputin, for a Russian of his time, was unusually friendly to Jews. Considering his besmirched reputation in other respects, Rasputin would appear to be an unlikely hero to Soviet human rights activists. But at least one celebrated dissident has taken up his cause. Andrei Amalrik told TIME last week that he was writing a book on Rasputin that would show the monk had a good influence on Tsar Nicholas II. "Rasputin was a very simple person with very good ideas," said the exiled Russian writer, who is doing research...
Schumann: Kreisleriana; Novelettes Nos. 1 and 8 (Pianist Youri Egorov, Peters International). Egorov, 25, is the Russian whose biggest break turned out to be losing out in the 1977 Van Cliburn Piano Competition in Fort Worth. His many disappointed partisans in the audience formed a committee to raise the equivalent of the $10,000 grand prize for him, and he soon had all the publicity and bookings a young art ist needs. As this release shows, he has all the more fundamental qualities a young artist needs too: exuberant virtuosity, a formidable command of pianistic sonorities and lots of sensitive...