Word: tsar
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Undershaft: To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect of persons or principles: to aristocrat and republican, to Nihilist and Tsar, to Capitalist and Socialist . . . all faiths, all follies, all causes and all crimes.-Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara...
Glinka: A Life for the Tsar (the National Opera of Belgrade, Oscar Danon conducting; London, 4 LPs). In this Communist-approved version of Glinka's 19th-century flag-waver, as in other current versions, attention has been directed away from the young Tsar and focused on the heroic popular leaders of the national uprising against the invading Poles in 1611-13. With that party-line emendation, the opera's melodramatic plot has been preserved intact. Weak in leading roles (Bass Miro Changalovich and Soprano Maria Glavachevich), the present version is thunderously impressive in its choral and ensemble passages...
Unlike Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov learned English at his English governess' knee. His family belonged to the landed Russian aristocracy, but his liberal-minded father gave up his position at the Tsar's court, sardonically advertised his court uniform for sale, later was assassinated by Russian monarchists. As a refugee from the Revolution, Vladimir worked for a Cambridge degree, lived in France and Germany, wrote eight novels in Russian...
Beginning in 1598, Russia came upon a "Time of Troubles" that lasted well into the next century. After the death of Ivan the Terrible's only heir, the boyar nobles chose Boris Godunov to be the next Tsar. But Boris' hesitation and uncertainty soon gave rise to the rumor that he had killed Ivan's younger brother, Dmitri, to insure his own succession. After seven years a pretender appeared, calling himself Dmitri. Aided by the continued unrest of the boyars and peasants and by a Polish army, this false Dmitri managed to defeat Boris Godunov and seize the throne before...
When he filmed Ten Days That Shook the World in 1927, ten years after the October Revolution that the movie recreated, Sergei Eisenstein had all Leningrad at his disposal. He took over the dead Tsar's Winter Palace, gleefully had himself photographed on the throne, and used the imperial bed for a director's seat. Restaging the revolution with the nightly help of 3000 citizens, Eisenstein broke more palace windows in 1927 than had the real revolutionaries ten years before...