Written by
in
Orlando Figes, in his cultural history of Russia “Natasha’s Dance“, describes how the civilisation of the aristocracy depended on a limitless supply of cheap labour:
At Kuskovo there was a horn band in which, to save time on the training of players, each musician was taught to play just one note. The number of players depended on the number of notes in a tune; their sole skill lay in playing their note at the appropriate moment.
I loved that book – think I blogged about it a few weeks ago when I was only part way through. I never got round to talking about what a rampaging hypocrite Tolstoy was, though, which was another fascinating aspect of it. I think it’s good to follow up by reading Anne Applebaum’s book Gulag, which sort of continues the story. Throughout both books I got the sense of Russia being a being a constant work-in-progress, as though its leading characters were continually trying to consciously work out where they were going – a disastrous mind-set to get oneself into, even if to step back occasionally and muse is a good thing.
Leave a Reply