Natasha's Dance

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From 1700 until 1918 Russia adhered to the Julian calendar, which ran thirteen days behind the Gregorian calendar in use in western Europe. Dates in this book are given according to the Julian calendar until February 1918, when Soviet Russia switched to the Gregorian calendar.

All measurements of distance, weight and area are given in the metric system.

Literary works cited in this hook are, wherever possible, from an English-language translation available in bookshops.

Maps

In Tolstoy's War and Peace there is a famous and rather lovely scene where Natasha Rostov and her brother Nikolai are invited by their 'Uncle' (as Natasha calls him) to his simple wooden cabin at the end of a day's hunting in the woods. There the noble-hearted and eccentric 'Uncle' lives, a retired army officer, with his housekeeper Anisya, a stout and handsome serf from his estate, who, as it becomes clear from the old man's tender glances, is his unofficial 'wife'. Anisya brings in a tray loaded with homemade Russian specialities: pickled mushrooms, rye-cakes made with buttermilk, preserves with honey, sparkling mead, herb-brandy and different kinds of vodka. After they have eaten, the strains of a balalaika become audible from the hunting servants' room. It is not the sort of music that a countess should have liked, a simple country ballad, but seeing how his niece is moved by it, 'Uncle' calls for his guitar, blows the dust off it, and with a wink at Anisya, he begins to play, with the precise and accelerating rhythm of a Russian dance, the well-known love song, 'Came a maiden down the street'. Though Natasha has never before heard the folk song, it stirs some unknown feeling in her heart.

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