The Daily Telegraph - Features
FROM RUSSIA WITHOUT LOVE: CULTURAL GIANTS IN EXILE
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
The great composer was born in what is now Sontsivka, Ukraine, and made his name in St Petersburg. After the 1917 Revolution, he left Russia with the permission of the authorities, spending the next two decades abroad. Yet his work fell out of favour, and he returned to the Soviet Union in 1936, living out the rest of his career there.
Rudolf Nureyev (19381993)
Having joined what was then the Kirov Ballet and risen to become a principal, Nureyev defected to the West in 1961 at Paris – Le Bourget airport, after falling foul of the KGB for his outspoken views and homosexuality. He went on to become the star principal of the Royal Ballet (and dance partner of Margot Fonteyn) and director of the Paris Opera Ballet.
Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996)
The poet and essayist, whose collections include Elegy for John Donne and Watermark: An Essay on Venice, was “strongly advised” to leave the Soviet Union in 1972 after his work was labelled “pornographic and antiSoviet”. He settled in America, teaching at Columbia and Michigan universities. He was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature and appointed US poet laureate in 1991.
Boris Grebenshchikov (1953-)
A founding father of the modern Russian rock scene, the lead singer of the band Aquarium has collaborated with Annie Lennox, Bob Dylan’s The Band and Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. He came out against the Ukraine invasion in 2022 and has been denounced by Russia as a foreign agent.
Andrey Zvyagintsev (1964-)
The film director, best known for his incendiary social realistic dramas such as Leviathan and Loveless, which are heavily critical of modern Russia, has been nominated for the Palme d’Or and best film at the London Film Festival. He lives in Germany and is working on a new feature, about a Russian oligarch.
Olga Smirnova (1991-)
Hired by the Bolshoi directly after graduation, Smirnova was promoted to prima ballerina four years later, in 2016. She fled Russia in 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine – her grandfather was Ukrainian, and she has said she is “against the war with every fibre of my soul”. She now dances with the Dutch National Ballet.