During every trip you face the culture of a particular country, this helps you to have a closer look at its citizens and their habits. Culture is a very capacious concept, which includes literature, arts, sculpture, music and theatre. This issue describes literature, music, theatres and museums.

Russian literature has very rich history. It starts from "The Lay of Igor's Campaign" written in the XII century (approximately 1185). However, Russian literature reached its peak in the XIX century, which was undoubtedly considered as "the golden age". This century was enough for the nation to create classics, which artistic value and global influence became equal to European taking into account that Europe started to create its masterpieces much earlier.

Russian literature of the XIX century was initially oriented on West Europe. It is based on the works of the poet and the writer Alexander Pushkin (1799-1873), who is known as the most respected poet of Russia. It was Pushkin who achieved the recognition of Russian literature in the whole world and laid the foundation of its evolution. This was his main contribution to the literature of Russia. Also, Pushkin believed to be a creator of Russian language. Many generations of Russian people raised on his fairy tales, and even more, being adults we face different great Pushkin's works. During your journey you will be able to meet Pushkin's name more than once: you'll have a chance to visit Moscow Pushkin's Musuem, the city of Pushkin, where young Alexander spent his childhood, and listen to "Evgeny Onegin" or "Queen of Spades " opera.

The next great character of Russian literature is F. Dostoevsky. He was called a psychologist of Russian literature for his putting Man's ego as the corner stone of his philosophy. It is Remarkable, that in Europe and the USA people are more aware of his works unlike the other Russian writers. Dostoevsky's philosophy distinguishes two kinds of people: on the one hand, these are people who fight against their passions and succeed, on the other hand - those who seeks to improve the world, basing on abstract theories. These principles can be seen in such works as "Crime and punishment", "The Karamazov Brothers", "Idiot". In St. Petersburg there is a subway station "Dostoevskaya" designed to reproduce the essence of writer's works. At the sane time, every street of St. Petersburg appears to be the place of the events happening in the novels.

The moralist of Russian literature Leo Tolstoy remains the main figure of the verge of the XIX and the XX centuries. Better than anyone before, he described the life of Russian society of the late XIX. His novels "War and Peace", "Anna Karenina", "Sunday" are well known to all educated people. The name of Leo Tolstoy is often equates to idea of Russian literature and culture.

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) showed himself as a true master, who enriched Russian literature with short humor stories. The main theme of his word art was intelligentsia in the process of search for is place in the society, disappointment with ordinary being. The main character of Chekhov's stories - a usual man with his everyday routine and troubles. This great Russian writer is said to be a refined psychologist, expert of implication, who could integrate humor and lyric, who spent his whole life wishing Russia the prosperous future. Chekhov's drama, especially "Chaika", "The Cherry Garden" and "Uncle Vanya" staged by K. Stanislavsky became world famous. Taganrog city is the homeland of Anton Chekhov; there are several museums dedicated to the writer.

Creation of the most genius classic musical compositions was inspired by the works of the great Russian writers. First operas were cast in Russia in the XVII century. It is interesting that their troupes were created from serfdom actors, while the high society was fascinated mostly by Italian singers for the Russian plays were not so widespread. The classic period of Russian drama starts with the play of Glinka's opera "Ivan Susanin". Also he produced the opera based on Pushkin's tale "Ruslan and Ludmila", which premiere took place in 1842 on the Bolshoy's scene. Glinka was the first to implement samples of Russian folk songs in his works, afterwards he was named "The father of Russian music" by his descendants. But the world famous Russian classic music became owing to P. Chaikovsky. In his works he succeeded to merge Russian national elements with European idea of romantics. The ballets "The Swan Lake", "The Nut Cracker", "The Sleeping Beauty" and operas "Eugeny Onegin" and "Queen of Spades" are the most well known works by Chaikovsky. The boom of ballet in Russia is said to be connected with these musical compositions.

Created in 1838 Russian ballet school became world famous owing to a dancer and choreograph Marius Petipa. He succeeded to bring to perfection classic style of dancing and made St. Petersburg the European center of ballet. Sergey Dyagilev was another important person to influence the evolution of ballet. His famous "Russian Seasons" he traveled with all over the world starting from 1909, brought Russian ballet world famous indeed. He managed to involve in the process such grants as Stravinsky, Ravel, Schtrauss, Prokofiev, Dubussi. Decorations to his plays were made by Picasso, Matiss and others. Among members of his troupe was a genius dancer Vazlaw Nezhinsky whose dancing technique remains true mystery till now. Though Dyagilev synthesized three kinds of art in one. However despite Dyagilev's success in West Europe, the Bolshoy Theatre and Kirov Theatre still preferred true classic style of dancing. After a while, the Bolshoy Theatre claims to be the most popular, which starts the up-to now rivalry between the ballet schools of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Mariinsky Theatre produced such glorious dancers as Vazlaw Nezhinsky, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina and later emigrated from Russia Rudolf Nuriev and Michael Baryshnokov, the Bolshoy in its turn is famous for Galina Ulanova, Maya Plesetskaya, Vladimir and Ekaterina Vasiliev. Nevertheless, there is a point of view that the best women dancers are brought up in Petersburg and as for men, the high-class dancers are from Moscow dancing schools. Unfortunately, we can never express the grace and beauty of what is happening on the stage, no matter how much we talk about ballet. This is why we recommend you to visit these theatres in order to create your own vision of Russian ballet.

In 2001 the Bolshoy celebrated its 225 anniversary. The history of the theatre is full of dramatic events: the building of the theatre has been on fire for several times, it was repaired and rebuilt, its troupe disjoined and gathered again. The brand new building of the Bolshoy Theatre was set in XIX century after just another fire and from that moment the Bolshoy Theatre has been the national symbol of Russia and Moscow.

Dramatic art is also widespread in Russia. Every town has its own drama theatre, there are about 70 of them only in Moscow. They differ in style and staging, but in every repertoire you can see the well known characters from Chekhov's "Chaika", Shakespeare, Moliere and modern authors. Talking about drama, we can not avoid mentioning the name of great Konstantin Stanislavsky, who was not only a brilliant actor, but also a fantastic director. He became a founder of the new Russian theatre, which brought realism to the Russian stage. His famous figure "I don't believe" turned into catch-words of modern Russian directors and claimed events on the stage to be closer to reality.

Cultural life can not be defined only by theatres. Museums are true treasury of Russian culture. The most famous of them are the Hermitage and Russian museum in St. Petersburg, the Tretyakov Gallery and Pushkin Museum in Moscow. One of the biggest museum collections is presented in the Hermitage. It is situated in the building of Winter Palace, the former residence of Russian monarchy, erected on the order of Katherine II in 1762 by the architect Rastrelli.

Katherine II is considered to be the creator of the collection having bought first 255 paintings. Up to now the Hermitage contains 2,7 billion of the displays from ancient times till present days. There are numerous masterpieces of European art, sculpture, chinaware collection, gobelins. It is noticeable that the interior of The Hermitage is worth seeing itself. It might take about 2,5 years, to see the whole collection, staying maximum 30 seconds at every display and spending on it 24 hours a week.

Unlike The Hermitage, which presents the collection of West European art, visiting Russian Museum you may take a closer look on creations of Russian fine art. The name of the museum tells for itself. More than 30,000 exhibits collected here fully represent almost one thousand year history of Russian art including icons by Rublev, paintings by Repin, Aivazovsky, Malevich, Shagal.

Also, you will be able to see the collection of Russian fine arts in Moscow Tretyakov Gallery, named after its founder - Pavel Tretyakov, who left Moscow 5,800 paints. The works of Surikov, Vrubel or Brulov became the true pearls of this collection.

The next museum again reminds us of great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. The art museum after Pushkin contains the biggest exhibition of West European paintings, including a wide collection of impressionists. Besides, there is an interesting set of famous sculpture copies from different cultural ages. Here you can find pharaoh sarcophagus and gothic portal of Limburg cathedral. Founded in 1912, the museum became one of the leading in the country and gave Russian people the opportunity to see world famous masterpieces within the country.