Tolstoy's spirit returns to ancient lands: James Meek finds the power that Count Leo Tolstoy still holds over Russia's soul beating strongly in the heart of the novelist's great great grandson - the new director of his old estate, Yasnaya Polyana

I see Russia’s future in the brightest of hues. Admittedly, this sort of statement does not befit a dystopian writer like me, who is supposed to make dire predictions, though for some what I am going to tell you will sound as bad as an anti-utopia (while I see it as an almost ideal outcome).

I see Russia’s future in the brightest of hues. Admittedly, this sort of statement does not befit a dystopian writer like me, who is supposed to make dire predictions, though for some what I am going to tell you will sound as bad as an anti-utopia (while I see it as an almost ideal outcome).

By Polly Corrigan
Some people love shoes, some love records. I love Russia. So it was with a happy heart that I trotted off to the first night of the Russian Film Festival in London last week.

Despite the numerous linguistic obstacles thrown up by his novels, especially in their opening sections, Aleksei Ivanov has enjoyed phenomenal popular and critical success in the past five years. In his two breakthrough ‘historical' novels of adventure and fantasy, Heart of the Taiga (Serdtse Parmy, 2003) and Gold of the Rebellion, or Down the River of Gorges (Zoloto bunta, ili vniz po reke tesnin, 2005), Ivanov gives full expression to his fascination with local lore and its relation to Russian history. By contrast, The Geographer who Drank Away his Globe (Geograf globus propil, 2003) and Cheap Porn (the English title given by Ivanov's agents to the untranslatable Bluda i MUDO, 2007) have belied Ivanov's reputation as the kraeved (local historian) from Perm.

by Mikhail Aizenberg
Translated by J. Kates
Zephyr Press, 2007, pp.108
Mikhail Aizenberg has lived and breathed and had his being at the heart of the last generation of poets that came to maturity under the regime of the Soviet Union. He has been not only one of its most eloquent practitioners, but also its chronicler and interpreter.

by Mikhail Bulgakov
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
Penguin, 2007, pp.113
Dystopian novelette by Mikhail Bulgakov, written in Russian in 1925 as Sobachye serdtse. It was published posthumously in the West in 1968, both in Russian and in translation, and in the Soviet Union in 1987. The book is a satirical examination of one of the goals of the October Revolution of 1917: to create a new breed of man, uncorrupted by the past and above petit bourgeois concerns.

by Rafael Grugman
Translated by Geoffrey Carlson
Liberty Publishing House, 2008, pp.239
The scene is the twenty-third century. At the heart of the novel is a love story between a man and a woman who are forced to hide their feelings and pass as homosexuals. Nontraditional Love describes a homosexual world in which heterosexual marriages are forbidden. World history and the classics of world literature Tolstoy, Shakespeare... have been falsified in order to support the ideology of this opposite world.

by Vladimir Sorokin
Translated by Jamey Gambrell
New York Review of Books; 2007; pp.321
In stripped down, poker-faced prose, Sorokin registers a world in which the inhumanity of man to man is exploited by a murderous emerging race who are, by contrast, in sweet mutual harmony with one another. This is a Master and Margarita for the age of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

By Polly Corrigan
Some people love shoes, some love records. I love Russia. So it was with a happy heart that I trotted off to the first night of the Russian Film Festival in London last week.

By Polly Corrigan
Some people love shoes, some love records. I love Russia. So it was with a happy heart that I trotted off to the first night of the Russian Film Festival in London last week.

Rumiantsev’s Arc – Library of a Nation
If the book lies at the heart of Russian culture, then the most vital, life-preserving institution in Russian culture is the library. This issue of ROSSICA focuses on the remarkable history and collections of Russia’s largest library: originally called the Rumiantsev Museum, later the Lenin Library (Leninka) it is now the Russian State Library.

Russian Nights
‘Russian Nights’ Festival is the largest, most ambitious and most varied festival of Russian culture ever to be staged in London. It brings a remarkable range of music and theatre, painting and poetry, photography and architecture to the capital.

The Seductions of Europe
Prince Yusupov and his Arkhangelskoe
This issue is dedicated to Prince Nikolai Yusupov and his magnificent estate Arkhangelskoe near Moscow. Prince Yusupov was one of the outstanding figures of the Age of Enlightenment.

The Seductions of Europe
Prince Yusupov and his Arkhangelskoe
This issue is dedicated to Prince Nikolai Yusupov and his magnificent estate Arkhangelskoe near Moscow. Prince Yusupov was one of the outstanding figures of the Age of Enlightenment.

Russian Nights
‘Russian Nights’ Festival is the largest, most ambitious and most varied festival of Russian culture ever to be staged in London. It brings a remarkable range of music and theatre, painting and poetry, photography and architecture to the capital.

Rumiantsev’s Arc – Library of a Nation
If the book lies at the heart of Russian culture, then the most vital, life-preserving institution in Russian culture is the library. This issue of ROSSICA focuses on the remarkable history and collections of Russia’s largest library: originally called the Rumiantsev Museum, later the Lenin Library (Leninka) it is now the Russian State Library.