Peter Tchaikovsky wrote the 1812 Overture, which celebrates Russia's defeat of Napoleon. He also wrote The Nutcracker, a Christmas ballet accompanying the adventures of a magical nutcracker soldier.
Igor Stravinsky, a 20 th C. composer wrote The Rite of Spring
Sergei Prokofiev - Peter and the Wolf
Czaritza Anna 1730 - 1740 and Czaritza Elizabeth 1741 - 1762 brought teachers from France to train ballet dancers for the royal court. By about 1850, Russian dancers and composers were creating some of the most stunning ballets in the world.
Moscow State Circus regularly tours the world.
People from over 130 different ethnic groups live in Russia.
The Russian alphabet evolved from Old Slavonic, a language spoken over a thousand years ago. In the tenth century, Cyril and Methodius adapted their language from letters used in ancient:Latin, Greek and Hebrew. The Cyrillic alphabet is used not only in Russian but also in Ukranian and Servian.
The Cyrillic alphabet has 33 letters.
Alexander Pushkin (1799 - 1837) wrote many children's fairy tales in verse that are still popular today.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821 - 1881) wrote The Brothers Karamazov
Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910) wrote War and Peace about Russia's war in 1812 against Napoleon. He also wrote Anna Karenina.
Anton Checkhov (1860 - 1904) was a playwright, who became unbelievably famous for The Cherry Orchard.
During the Soviet era, Alexander Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 but was banished into exile. He returned to Russia as a hero in 1994.