Russian life in 1917 was not limited to civil confrontations, shootouts, demonstrations and rallies. Many people lived, or at least tried to live peacefully and constructively. The great Fyodor Shalyapin sang and staged opera performances in Moscow and Petrograd; director Vsevolod Meyerhold played the Lermontov Masquerade on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater, and Anna Akhmatova and Sergey Eisenstein applauded him. The future writer Konstantin Paustovsky eagerly absorbed impressions about th...show more