Serf-era and provincial Russia heralded the spectacular turn in cultural history that began in the 1860s. Examining the role of arts and artists in society’s value system, Richard Stites explores this shift in a groundbreaking history of visual and performing arts in the last decades of serfdom. Provincial town and manor house engaged the culture of Moscow and St. Petersburg while thousands of serfs and ex-serfs created or performed. Mikhail Glinka raised Russian music to new levels and Anton Rubinstein struggled to found a conservatory. Long before the itinerants, painters explored town and country in genre scenes of everyday life. Serf actors on loan from their masters brought naturalistic acting from provincial theaters to the imperial stages. Stites’s richly detailed book offers new perspectives on the origins of Russia’s nineteenth-century artistic prowess.

农奴制时代和外省的俄罗斯预示着文化历史的惊人转变，这种转变始于19世纪60年代。理查德-斯蒂茨研究了艺术和艺术家在社会价值体系中的作用，在农奴制最后几十年的视觉和表演艺术的开创性历史中探索了这种转变。省级城镇和庄园参与了莫斯科和圣彼得堡的文化活动，而成千上万的农奴和前农奴进行了创作或表演。米哈伊尔-格林卡（Mikhail Glinka）将俄罗斯音乐提高到了新的水平，安东-鲁宾斯坦（Anton Rubinstein）则为创建一所音乐学院而奋斗。早在流动者之前，画家们就在日常生活的流派场景中探索城市和乡村。从主人那里借来的农奴演员将自然主义表演从省级剧院带到了帝国的舞台上。斯蒂特斯的这本书内容丰富，为俄罗斯十九世纪的艺术实力的起源提供了新的视角。