Volkov

When Mr. Volkov says that "as a young man I heard two repeated rumors" about Tchaikovsky's homosexuality, we learn nothing new, but we do get the feel of the culture of literate Russians—the rumors and gossip, the cherished sense of being in the know.

Czar-Crossed Writers Gary Saul Morson 2011

Mr. Volkov describes the effort, after Pushkin's death in 1837, to simplify the great poet's stormy Romantic image and portray him simply as "an Orthodox national poet and monarchist."

Czar-Crossed Writers Gary Saul Morson 2011

Storytelling aside, Mr. Volkov's own judgments, when he offers them, are too often insipid.

Czar-Crossed Writers Gary Saul Morson 2011

Mr. Volkov, who emigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, also tends to name-drop.

Czar-Crossed Writers Gary Saul Morson 2011

Perhaps Mr. Volkov's best story concerns Dostoevsky.

Czar-Crossed Writers Gary Saul Morson 2011

In "Romanov Riches," Solomon Volkov retells many such stories, often entertainingly.

Czar-Crossed Writers Gary Saul Morson 2011

Nicholas I 1796-1855, Mr. Volkov writes, hoped to "maintain the country's cultural 'innocence' " and thought that Pushkin was "more suitable as the instrument of cultural manipulation now that he was dead."

Czar-Crossed Writers Gary Saul Morson 2011

Some of Mr. Volkov's stories merit retelling precisely because they say a great deal about the writer and almost nothing about the Romanovs.

Czar-Crossed Writers Gary Saul Morson 2011

"Derzhavin performed the administrative duties with great zeal and seriousness," Mr. Volkov writes, "wearying Catherine with detailed explanations of confusing and complex judicial cases, while what the empress needed from him was his poetry: she kept hinting that he should write more odes."

Czar-Crossed Writers Gary Saul Morson 2011

Mr. Volkov reports so much weeping in "Romanov Riches" that readers may wonder if Russians cry more easily than we do (they do) and whether a certain kind of Russian anecdote demands copious tears (it does).

Czar-Crossed Writers Gary Saul Morson 2011