From the Other Shore: Russian Comment on Diaghilev's Ballets Russes

Among the many and varied critical responses to Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, two Russian voices have not been heard in the West – Akim Volynskii's (on the right) and Anatolii Lunacharskii's (on the left). The former, Petersburg-based ballet critic from 1911 to 1925, followed the Russian Seasons with anxious dismay as so many stars of the Mariinskii Theatre departed for Paris; the latter, Soviet Russia's Commissar for Enlightenment between 1917 and 1929, witnessed Diaghilev's enterprise first-hand – both before World War I and after – and wrote about it with a mixture of admiration and class-conscious disapproval. These critics’ observations are offered in English translation for the first time.