Presentation for the IE admission process, as a part of my application for the Marketing program

1. {
Project by Maria Rudko
K. If all of the world´s cultural heritage (sports, music, fashion,
architecture, literature, painting, etc..) was contained in a time capsule,
what would you include to demonstrate the legacy of your country?
* For the IE admission process

2. My country
Russia
Baikal lake. Russia

3. C60H89N15O13
ulture
istory
ation
rigin*Formula alpha-Neoendorphin

4. Russian culture has a long history and can claim a long tradition of dividend in many aspects of the arts,
especially when it comes to literature and philosophy, classical music and ballet, architecture and painting, cinema
and animation, which all had considerable influence on world culture. The country also has a flavorful material
culture and a tradition in technology.
Russian culture started from that of the East Slavs, with their pagan beliefs and specific way of life in the wooded
areas of Eastern Europe. Early Russian culture was much influenced by neighboring Finno-Ugric tribes and by
nomadic, mainly Turkic, peoples of the Pontic steppe. In the late 1st millennium AD the Scandinavian Vikings, or
Varangians, also took part in the forming of Russian identity and Kievan Rus' state.
Kievan Rus' had accepted Orthodox Christianity from the Eastern Roman Empire in 988, and this largely defined
the Russian culture of next millennium as the synthesis of Slavic and Byzantine cultures. After the fall of
Constantinople in 1453, Russia remained the largest Orthodox nation in the world and claimed succession to the
Byzantine legacy in the form of the Third Rome idea.
At different points in its history, the country was also strongly influenced by the culture of Western Europe. Since
Peter the Great's reforms for two centuries Russian culture largely developed in the general context of European
culture rather than pursuing its own unique ways. The situation changed in the 20th century, when the
Communist ideology became a major factor in the culture of the Soviet Union, where Russia, or Russian SFSR, was
the largest and leading part.
Nowadays, Russian cultural heritage is ranked seventh in the Nation Brands Index, based on interviews of some
20,000 people mainly from Western countries and the Far East. That's with the fact, that due to the relatively late
involvement of Russia in modern globalization and international tourism, many aspects of Russian culture, like
Russian jokes and the Soviet Art, remain largely unknown to foreigners.
Culture. History. Nation. Origins.

5. The 19th century is traditionally referred to as the
"Golden Era" of Russian literature. It’s when appear
many of the most significant Russian writers who are
widely known and read in all around the world.
There names speak for themselves. Haven’t you ever
heard about A.S. Pushkin? Pushkin is credited with both
crystallizing the literary Russian language and
introducing a new level of artistry to Russian literature.
His best-known work is a novel in verse, Eugeniy
Onegin.
Prose was flourishing as well. The first great Russian
novelist was Nikolai Gogol. Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor
Dostoyevsky soon became internationally renowned to
the point that many scholars such as F. R. Leavis have
described one or the other as the greatest novelist ever.
In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov
excelled in writing short stories and became perhaps the
leading dramatist internationally of his period.
By the 1880s Russian literature had begun to change. The age of the great novelists was over and short fiction and poetry
became the dominant genres of Russian literature for the next several decades, which later became known as the Silver Age of
Russian Poetry. Previously dominated by realism, Russian literature came under strong influence of symbolism in the years
between 1893 and 1914.
Leading writers of this age include Valery Bryusov, Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Aleksandr Blok, Nikolay Gumilev, Dmitry
Merezhkovsky, Fyodor Sologub, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, Leonid Andreyev, Ivan Bunin, and
Maxim Gorky. While the Silver Age is considered to be the development of the 19th century Russian literature tradition, some
avant-garde poets like Vladimir Mayakovsky tried to overturn it.
Literature

6. Russian influence on Fashion, Theatre, Arts
Ballets Russes
Lev Bakst hugely influenced Paris haute couture in the 1910s with his costumes for the
Ballets Russes, providing an imaginary, wild and exotic Russia that the West craved to
see. In 1925, the French journal Art Goût Beauté captures that interest in its article ‚A la
façon des Ballets Russes‛, claiming that the contemporary Paris fashions recall ‘oriental
bazaars’ gaudy trinkets’ with their ‘marvellously frightening embroidered flowers,
slightly Cubist motifs enriched with crushed mirror pieces, paillettes and big sequins’.
Similarly, the American Harper’s Bazaardeclares in 1922 that ‚the strongest influence in
fashion is Russia‛, while commenting on Coco Chanel’s Russian-inspired collection. She
had a contract with Kitmir House of Embroidery, founded by the exiled Grand Duchess
Maria Pavlovna Romanova, and was the lover of Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich, cousin
of Tsar Nicholas II, for one year.
The West has long taken an interest in Russia’s ethnic heritage. This fascination became
especially prominent during a period of general attraction towards the vernacular and
the primitive at the beginning of the twentieth century.As many Russians emigrated to
Paris around the time of the 1917 revolution. Their cultural impact was phenomenal.
The Ballets Russes (sometimes rendered in English in the singular as "The Russian Ballet") was an itinerant ballet company that
performed between 1909 and 1929 throughout Europe and on tours to North and South America.
The company's productions created a huge sensation around the world, completely reinvigorating the art of performing dance,
bringing many visual artists to public attention, and significantly affecting the course of musical composition. Its ballets have
been variously interpreted as Classical, Neo-Classical, Romantic, Neo-Romantic, Avant-Garde, Expressionist, Abstract, and
Orientalist. The influence of the Ballets Russes lasts to this day.
Princess Nadine Wonlar Larsky in
kokoshnik designed by Diaghilev and
made by Fabergé, the Tsar’s fancy-dress
ball, St Petersburg, 1903 (Wonlar-Larsky,
N. The Russia that I loved. London: Elsie
MacSwinney, 1937)

7. Ballets Russes
For his new productions, Diaghilev commissioned the
foremost composers of the 20th century. This served to
distinguish his ballets from many 19th-century ballets, for
which the music had usually been provided by less inspired
composers such as Riccardo Drigo, Ludwig Minkus, and
Cesare Pugni. His ballets included music by artists such as
Debussy, Milhaud, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Ravel, Satie, Respighi,
Stravinsky and Richard Strauss.
The impresario also engaged conductors who were, or became
eminent in their field during the 20th century, including Pierre
Monteux (1911–16 and 1924), Ernest Ansermet (1915–23),
Edward Clark (1919-20) and Roger Désormière (1925–29).
The ballet "The Rite of Spring‛. Sergei Diaghilev, putting this "wild" ballet music
turned the perception of dance and choreographic vision for years forward. By
combining the work on them geniuses of Russian culture at the beginning of the
twentieth century - the artist and scientist Nicholas Roerich, composer Igor
Stravinsky's ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky.
The Ballets Russes invited the collaboration of rising contemporary fine artists in
the design of sets and costumes. These included Benois himself, Bakst, Braque,
Gontcharova, Larionov, Picasso, Chanel, Matisse, Derain, Miró, de Chirico, Dalí,
Bilibin, Tchelitchev, Utrillo, Nicholas Roerich, and Rouault. In 1917, Pablo Picasso
designed the sets and costumes in the Cubist style for Parade with music by Erik
Satie.
Diaghilev had hired the young Stravinsky at a time when he was virtually unknown to compose the music for The Firebird, after
the composer Anatoly Lyadov proved unreliable. Stravinsky's early ballet scores were the subject of much discussion. The
Firebird (1910) was seen as an astonishingly accomplished work for such a young artist (Debussy is said to have remarked drily:
"Well, you've got to start somewhere!"). Many contemporary audiences found Petrushka (1911) to be almost unbearably dissonant
and confused. The Rite of Spring nearly caused an audience riot. It stunned people because of its willful rhythms and aggressive
dynamics. The audience's negative reaction to it is now regarded as a theatrical scandal as notorious as the failed runs of Richard
Wagner's Tannhäuser at Paris in 1861 and Jean-Georges Noverre's and David Garrick's Chinese Ballet at London on the eve of the
Seven Years' War. However, Stravinsky's early ballet scores are now widely considered masterpieces of the genre.

8. Chanel Paris Moscow Collection, 2008, designed by
Karl Lagerfeld (Lagerfeld, K. Chanel’s Russian
Connection. Göttingen: Steidl, 2009)
Anna Pavlova
She was, of course, involved with the fashionable Ballets
Russes. Chanel designed costumes for four productions,
notably Le Train Bleu in 1924 and Apollon Musagete
(Apollo, Leader of the Muses) in 1929. According to Karl
Lagerfeld, Chanel's current creative director, she, "...helped
Diaghilev to stage (his ballet) again after World War I in
1919". Designing costumes for dancers was perfect for a
designer whose clothes liberated women and allowed them
to move more freely. She once said that, ‚I have always tried
to give women a feeling of being at ease with their time.‛
It was not only creative inspiration that drew her to the
Ballets Russes. She had an affair with Igor Stravinsky, who
composed some of the greatest work of the company. Le
Sacre du Printemps (Rite of Spring) had a particularly
powerful impact - the violent rhythms, combined with the
pagan ferocity of Vaslav Nijinsky's choreography, actually
sparked a riot in the aisles of the Théâtre de Champs
Élysées on its opening night in 1913.
Coco Chanel was heavily influenced by Russia in the 1920s, and one of her most beautiful and innovative perfumes, Cuir de
Russie , was inspired by the rich, birch scented leather of Cossack boots. She also had a 'roubachka' style peasant blouse made
in crepe de chine for her affluent customers, and many of her designs featured the brightly colored embroidery typical of
Russia.
Lagerfeld himself is hugely inspired by the Ballets Russes. He recently designed a costume for the English National Ballet's
production of The Dying Swan as part of its Ballets Russes season (indeed, the company was founded by two Ballets Russes
dancers: Dame Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin). At the time, he commented that, "As a child, I was already inspired by old
images of Anna Pavlova dancing the ballet‛.

9. Russian music
Swan lake, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(fragment)
The Rite of Spring, Igor Stravinsky
(fragment)
The Bolshoi Theatre
The Bolshoi Theatre
Boris Godunov, Modest Mussorgsky
(fragment)
Russian music went through a long history, beginning from ritual folk song and the sacred music of the Russian orthodox
church. The 19th century saw the rise of highly acclaimed Russian classical music, and in 20th century major contributions
by various composers such as Igor Stravinsky as well as Soviet composers, while the modern styles of Russian popular
music developed, including Russian rock and Russian pop.
The first known opera made in Russia was A Life for the Tsar by
Mikhail Glinka in 1836. This was followed by several operas such as
Ruslan and Lyudmila in 1842. Russian opera was originally a
combination of Russian folk music and Italian opera. After the
October revolution many opera composers left Russia. Russia's most
popular operas include: Boris Godunov, Eugene Onegin, The Golden
Cockerel, Prince Igor, and The Queen of Spades.

10. The first great Russian composer to exploit native Russian music traditions into the realm of Secular music was Mikhail Glinka
(1804–1857), who composed the early Russian language operas Ivan Susanin and Ruslan and Lyudmila. They were neither the
first operas in the Russian language nor the first by a Russian, but they gained fame for relying on distinctively Russian tunes
and themes and being in the vernacular.
Russian folk music became the primary source for the younger generation composers. A group that called itself "The Mighty
Five", headed by Balakirev (1837–1910) and including Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908), Mussorgsky (1839–81), Borodin (1833–
87) and César Cui (1835–1918), proclaimed its purpose to compose and popularize Russian national traditions in classical
music. Among the Mighty Five's most notable compositions were the operas The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka), Sadko, Boris
Godunov, Prince Igor, Khovanshchina, and symphonic suite Scheherazade. Many of the works by Glinka and the Mighty Five
were based on Russian history, folk tales and literature, and are regarded as masterpieces of romantic nationalism in music.
Sadko in the Underwater Tsardom by
Ilya Repin
This period also saw the foundation of the Russian Musical Society (RMS) in 1859, led by
composer-pianists Anton (1829–94) and Nikolay Rubinstein (1835–81). The RMS founded
Russia's first Conservatories in St Petersburg and in Moscow: the former trained the great
Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–93), best known for ballets like Swan
Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker. He remains Russia's best-known composer
outside Russia. Easily the most famous successor in his style is Sergey Rakhmaninov
(1873–1943), who studied at the Moscow Conservatory (where Tchaikovsky himself
taught).
The late 19th and early 20th century saw the third wave of Russian classics: Igor
Stravinsky (1882–1971), Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915), Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) and
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975). They were experimental in style and musical language.
Stravinsky was particularly influential on his contemporaries and subsequent generations
of composers, both in Russia and across Europe and the United States. Stravinsky
permanently emigrated after the Russian revolution. Although Prokofiev also left Russia
in 1918, he eventually returned and contributed to Soviet music.
In the late 19th to early 20th centuries, the so-called "romance songs" became very
popular. The greatest and most popular singers of the "romances" usually sang in operas
at the same time. The most popular was Fyodor Shalyapin.

11. Painters
The birch grove , 1879, Kuindzhi
View of the Sea by Moonlight,
1878, Aivazovsky Ivan the Terrible kills his son, Ilya Repin
Realism came into dominance in the 19th century. The realists captured
Russian identity in landscapes of wide rivers, forests, and birch
clearings, as well as vigorous genre scenes and robust portraits of their
contemporaries. Other artists focused on social criticism, showing the
conditions of the poor and caricaturing authority; critical realism
flourished under the reign of Alexander II, with some artists making
the circle of human suffering their main theme. Others focused on
depicting dramatic moments in Russian history. The Peredvizhniki
(wanderers) group of artists broke with Russian Academy and initiated
a school of art liberated from Academic restrictions.
 Leading realists include Ivan Shishkin, Arkhip Kuindzhi, Ivan Kramskoi, Vasily Polenov, Isaac Levitan, Vasily Surikov,
Viktor Vasnetsov and Ilya Repin
Ivan Aivazovsky (originally
Aivazian (July 29, 1817 – May 5,
1900) was an Armenian-Russian
world-renowned painter living
and working in Crimea, most
famous for his seascapes, which
constitute more than half of his
paintings. Aivazovsky is widely
considered as one of the greatest
seascape painters of all times

12. The first half of the 20th century was a turbulent time for Russia: the political system was drastically and violently
transformed.
The First World War started in 1914, Russia was allied with UK and France and fought against Germany, Austro-Hungarian
Empire and Turkey. This war changed completely the map of Europe and lead to the collapse of the Russian Empire as well.
Emperor Nikolay the Second handled the power to the Temporary Government on February 27th 1917. The Temporary
Government attempted to gain control over the country, but it was supported by the bourgeois only. The situation was used by
Bolsheviks who got popularity among soldiers and workers because of their populist slogans and charismatic leader Vladimir
Lenin. Bolsheviks revolted on October 25th 1917. It took four more years of Civil war for Bolsheviks to get control over the
whole Russia. To the end of this period Russian republic was completely devastated. Millions of people were killed, industry
collapsed, famine started, Russia lost control over Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.
Russian art was already in ferment before 1914, but World War I and the Bolshevik revolution transformed the cultural life of
the nation. By late 1917 the private art market was shattered and avant-garde artists had taken charge of existing pedagogical
institutions and founded new ones. The Constructivist and Suprematist movements gained a brief ascendancy.
Constructivism rejected easel painting as an expression of bourgeois-dominated society. Its most famous representative,
Vladimir Tatlin, announced the death of traditional art and constructed three-dimensional, machine-inspired, abstract
sculptures and reliefs. Other Constructivists designed utilitarian products (chairs, clothes, dishware) with a distinctly
industrial veneer to help ‚urbanize the psychology of the masses‛ and usher in the new Communist stage of civilization.
Suprematism was born with Kazimir Malevich’s painting ‚Black Square‛ (1915) and other geometrical abstractions, which
were supposed to point humanity away from capitalist exploitation and the horrors of the world war and toward the
‚crossroads of celestial paths.‛ A philosophical Idealist, Malevich believed that his two-dimensional shapes provided a kind of
cerebral ‚passage into the fourth dimension,‛ comprehension of which was vital if mankind were to imagine a higher reality
and thereby alleviate earthly suffering. Both Constructivists and Suprematists were radical utopians who yearned for the
creation of a new society and the destruction of the old.

13. At the same time, Russia had a unique chance to reinvent itself under the
communism. Many avant-garde artists, poets, and writers were suddenly
ideologically connected to the very top government officials and were given
high posts in the new hierarchy. For a while, the whole country was obsessed
with transforming itself. The communists even allowed a short period of New
Economic Policy (NEP), during which people could freely do small businesses
and the economy bloomed. The famous Soviet posters drawn by Rodchenko and
Mayakovsky come from that epoch. The great Russian filmmakers like
Eisenschtein and Djiga Vertov created their best works during that time. Russian
futurism was on the rise.
A photo by Rodchenko
A poster by Rodchenko with Lila Brik, ‚books‛.
The two movements merged in the figures of El Lissitzky
and Alexander Rodchenko.
Both of these artists made important contributions to the
cultural life of the twentieth century--Rodchenko in the
areas of furniture design and photography, Lissitzky in
exhibition design and architecture.
But their most far-reaching innovations were in the graphic
arts: Soviet propaganda posters and advertising using
geometrical shapes and bold, block lettering that combined
the functionality of Constructivism with the visual
elements of Suprematism. The goal was to subliminally
alter the mentality of the people, infusing in them the
values of both artistic movements and, relatedly,
Communism. As one of their German followers put it,
these designs ‚little by little…hammered into the mass
soul.‛
Soviet era was also the golden age of Russian Science fiction, that was initially
inspired by western authors and enthusiastically developed with the success of
Soviet space program. Authors like Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Kir Bulychov,
Ivan Yefremov, Alexander Belayev enjoyed mainstream popularity at the time.

14. The relevance of Mayakovsky's influence cannot be limited to Soviet poetry. While for years he was considered the Soviet poet
par excellence, he also changed the perceptions of poetry in wider 20th century culture. His political activism as a
propagandistic agitator was rarely understood and often looked upon unfavourably by contemporaries, even close friends
like Boris Pasternak. Near the end of the 1920s, Mayakovsky became increasingly disillusioned with the course the Soviet
Union was taking under Joseph Stalin
On the evening of April 14, 1930, Mayakovsky shot himself. This is disputed by his daughter, Yelena Vladimirovna
Mayakovskaya, a professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at Lehman College in New York City.
Mayakovsky (centre) with friends including Lilya Brik, Eisenstein
(third from left) and Boris Pasternak (second from left).
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (July 19 [O.S. July 7] 1893 – April 14, 1930) was a Russian and Soviet poet, playwright,
artist and stage and film actor. He is among the foremost representatives of early-20th century Russian Futurism.
 Your thoughts, dreaming on a softened brain, like an
over-fed lackey on a greasy settee, with my heart's bloody
tatters I'll mock again; impudent and caustic, I'll jeer to
superfluity. Of Grandfatherly gentleness I'm
devoid, there's not a single grey hair in my
soul! Thundering the world with the might of my voice, I
go by – handsome, twenty-two-year-old.
(From the prologue of A Cloud in Trousers.)

15. In 1921, Akhmatova's former husband Nikolay Gumilyov was prosecuted for his alleged role in
a monarchist anti-Bolshevik conspiracy and on 25 August was shot along with 61 others.
According to the historian Rayfield, the murder of Gumilev was part of the state response to the
Kronstadt Rebellion. The Cheka (secret police) blamed the rebellion on Petrograd's intellectuals,
prompting the senior Cheka officer Yakov Agranov to forcibly extract the names of
'conspirators', from an imprisoned professor, guaranteeing them amnesty from execution.
Agranov's guarantee proved to be meaningless. He sentenced dozens of the named persons to
death, including Gumilev. Maxim Gorky and others appealed for leniency, but by the time
Vladimir Lenin agreed to several pardons, the condemned had been shot. Within a few days of
his death, Akhmatova wrote:
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian writer, dissident and
activist. He helped to raise global awareness of the GULAG and the
Soviet Union's forced labor camp system.
While his writings were often suppressed, he wrote several books most
notably The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan
Denisovich, two of his best-known works. "For the ethical force with
which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature‛
Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970.
He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974 but returned to Russia in
1994 after the Soviet system had collapsed.
Terror fingers all things in the
dark, Leads moonlight to the
axe. There's an ominous knock behind
the wall: A ghost, a thief or a rat…
…Watch your New Year come in a blue Seawave
across the town terrain In such an inexplicable
blue, As if your life can start again, As if there
can be bread and light -- A lucky day -- and
something's left,
As if your life can sway aright, Once swayed
aleft.
Moscow Carol, Joseph Brodsky
(fragment)
Some writers dared to oppose Soviet ideology they were dubbed "dissidents" and could not publish their major works until the
1960s. But the thaw did not last long. In the 1970s, some of the most prominent authors were not only banned from publishing,
but were also prosecuted for their Anti-Soviet sentiments or parasitism. Nobel prize winning poet Joseph Brodsky, novelists
Vasily Aksyonov, Eduard Limonov and Sasha Sokolov, and short story writer Sergei Dovlatov, had to emigrate to the US, while
Venedikt Yerofeyev and Oleg Grigoriev "emigrated" to alcoholism. Their books were not published officially until perestroika,
although fans continued to reprint them manually in a manner called "samizdat" (self-publishing).

16. Notable artists from this era include El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko,
Pavel Filonov and Marc Chagall. The Russian avant-garde reached its creative and popular height in the period between the
Russian Revolution of 1917 and 1932, at which point the revolutionary ideas of the avant-garde clashed with the newly emerged
conservative direction of socialist realism.
In the 20th century many Russian artists made their careers in Western Europe, forced to emigrate by the Revolution. Wassily
Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Naum Gabo and others spread their work, ideas, and the impact of Russian art globally.
Demon sitiing, 1890, Vrubel
Lovers and Red Rooster, 1947-1950, ShagalThe cutting line, Kandinsky
The Russian avant-garde is an umbrella term used to define the
large, influential wave of modernist art that flourished in Russia
from approximately 1890 to 1930. The term covers many separate,
but inextricably related, art movements that occurred at the time;
namely neo-primitivism, suprematism, constructivism, rayonism,
and futurism.
By the turn of the 20th century and on, many Russian artists
developed their own unique styles, neither realist nor avante-
garde. These include Boris Kustodiev, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin,
Mikhail Vrubel and Nicholas Roerich.

17. Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski was a Russian actor and theatre director. His system of acting has developed an
international reach.
Stanislavski's system is a progression of techniques used to train actors to draw believable emotions to their performances.
The method that was originally created and used by Constantin Stanislavski from 1911 to 1916 was based on the concept of
emotional memory for which an actor focuses internally to portray a character's emotions onstage. Later, between 1934–
1938, this technique evolved to a method of physical actions in which emotions are produced through the use of actions.The
latter technique is referred to as Stanislavski's system. The system is the result of Stanislavski's many years of efforts to
determine how someone can control in performance the most intangible and uncontrollable aspects of human behavior,
such as emotions and art inspiration.
Stanislavski believed that if an actor completes the system, the desired emotion should be created and experienced. One
earlier technique used for the system involved a "round the table analysis," a process in which the actors and director
literally sit around a table and put forward their thoughts on the script and the characters until a clear understanding is
formed. This technique involved breaking the script into sections. For the system to work, the structure of the script should
be analyzed and sectioned based on the different characters of the play. Later, this technique was changed to instead
immediately begin rehearsals after the main idea of the play had been discussed, but the sections are still evolved even
through this practice.
Stanislavski believed that the truth that occurred onstage was different than that of real life, but that a 'scenic truth' could be
achieved onstage. A performance should be believable for an audience so that they may appear to the audience as truth.
One of Stanislavski's methods for achieving the truthful pursuit of a character's emotion was his 'magic if.' Actors were
required to ask many questions of their characters and themselves. Through the 'magic if,' actors were able to satisfy
themselves and their characters' positions of the plot. One of the first questions they had to ask was, "What if I were in the
same situation as my character?" Another variation on this is "What would I do if I found myself in this (the character's)
circumstance?‛ The "magic if" allowed actors to transcend the confinements of realism by asking them what would occur
"if" circumstances were different, or "if" the circumstances were to happen to them. By answering these questions as the
character, the theatrical actions of the actors would be believable and therefore truthful.
Stanislavski’s acting system

18. Russia has made a priceless contribution to the world culture. It has given to the world not only great classics and fine arts
masterpieces but entire schools. Russian drama school of Stanislavski and ballet school are the world-famous ones.
Russian literature in known all over the world. The books by Leo Tolstoy and Feodor Dostoevsky are known the same as the
works by Shakespeare and Dumas. ‚War and Peace‛, ‚Anna Karenina‛, Crime and Punishment‛ are translated into almost all
languages. ‚Eugene Onegin‛ by the great Russian poet Pushkin is included into the list of world literature masterpieces of the
19th century, and many remarkable books appeared in the 20th century, for example ‚Master and Margarita‛ by Mikhail
Bulgakov.
Russian classical music is well-known too. The best orchestras in the world play the symphonies by Peter Tchaikovsky, Sergey
Rachmaninoff and Alfred Schnittke. Every staging of ‚Eugene Onegin‛ and ‚The Queen of Spades‛ by Tchaikovsky, ‚Boris
Godunov‛ by Mussorgsky, ‚Tsar’s Bride‛ by Rimsky-Korsakov and ‚Prince Igor‛ by Borodin is a remarkable cultural event.
Russian opera singers and musicians are world-famous. Opera fans of Paris, London, Berlin, Milan and New-York applauded to
Feodor Chaliapin. Great Russian conductors Valery Gergiev and Vladimir Spivakov are today’s idols of classical music fans all
over the world.
Russian ballet, its rich traditions and famous names of the ballet dancers –are the most important cultural symbols of Russia.
Russian school of classical ballet is considered to be the best in the world. Classical ballet came into Russia in the 18th century.
By the end of the 19th century the national school of ballet had finally formed. It has concentrated achievements of the best
ballet schools of the world and enriched their with Russian national dance traditions. Nowadays Russian classical ballet
traditions are supported and developed by dancers and choreographers not only from Russia but from all over the world.
Great masters of Russian avant-garde of the 20th century have brought priceless contribution into the world art.
They have generated new aesthetics of art, architecture and design. The works by Kazimir Malevitch and Vasily Kandinsky are
being explored by critics of various countries. ‚The Black Square‛ by Malevitch (1915) is kept in Moscow, at the State Tretyakov
Gallery.
A special place among the cultural symbols of Russian is occupied by its architectural monuments. Churches, cathedrals and
monasteries constructed in different centuries reflect spirituality of Russia. It is possible to call cultural symbols of the country
Basil’s Cathedral in the centre of Moscow, white-stone temple on the Nerl river, unique Church of Transfiguration in Kizhi.
The Hermitage, Russian Museum and Mariinski Theatre in Saint Petersburg, the Bolshoy Theatre and Tretyakov Gallery in
Moscow are recognized as significant symbols of cultural Russia.

19.  Alexander Vasiliev ‚Beauty in Exile‛/ Slovo, Moscow, 2008
 Joseph Brodsky ‚Christmas poems‛/ Azbuka-classika, St. Petersburg, 2007
 "Russian literature; Leo Tolstoy". Encyclopædia Britannica.
 Marina Ritzarev. Eighteenth-century Russian music. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2006. ISBN 0-7546-3466-3,
ISBN 978-0-7546-3466-9
 ‚Russian Music before Glinka: A Look from the Beginning of the Third Millennium." Marina Ritzarev
(Rytsareva), Bar-Ilan University
 www.waytorussia.net
 www.wikipedia.org
 http://www.russianballethistory.com
 "Dancing into Glory: The Golden Age of the Ballets Russes". Ballets-Russes.com.
 www.bolshoi.ru
Materials used in presentation