Some, like Bunin, Chagall, and Stravinsky, encountered great success in the same Paris that welcomed Americans like Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Talented intellectuals, artists, poets, philosophers, and writers struggled in exile, eking out a living at menial jobs. But the brutality of the Bolshevik takeover forced Russians of all types to flee their homeland, sometimes leaving with only the clothes on their backs.Īrriving in Paris, former princes could be seen driving taxicabs, while their wives who could sew worked for the fashion houses, their unique Russian style serving as inspiration for designers like Coco Chanel. It was a place of artistic experimentation, such as Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. For years, Russian aristocrats had enjoyed all that Belle Époque Paris had to offer, spending lavishly when they visited. But it has also been a place of refuge for those fleeing persecution, never more so than before and after the Russian Revolution and the fall of the Romanov dynasty. Paris has always been a city of cultural excellence, fine wine and food, and the latest fashions. Others became trapped in a cycle of poverty and their all-consuming homesickness for Russia, the land they had been forced to abandon.From Helen Rappaport, the New York Times best-selling author of The Romanov Sisters, comes After the Romanovs, the story of the Russian aristocrats, artists, and intellectuals who sought freedom and refuge in the City of Light. Activists sought to overthrow the Bolshevik regime from afar, while double agents plotted espionage and assassination from both sides. Politics as much as art absorbed the emigrés. Nijinsky, Diaghilev, Bunin, Chagall, and Stravinsky joined Picasso, Hemingway, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein in the creative crucible of the Années folles. Talented intellectuals, artists, poets, philosophers, and writers eked out a living at menial jobs, while others found great success. There, former princes could be seen driving taxicabs, while their wives found work in the fashion houses, where their unique Russian style inspired designers such as Coco Chanel. Paris was no longer an amusement, but a refuge.
Leaving with only the clothes on their backs, many came to France’s glittering capital. But the fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917 forced Russians of all types to flee their homeland.
From the internationally bestselling author of Four Sisters comes the story of the Russian aristocrats, artists, and intellectuals who sought refuge in Belle Époque Paris.įrom the time of Peter the Great, Paris was the playground of the tsarist aristocracy.
0 kommentar(er)
