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Division of Russia into eight guberniyas in 1708

Subdivions of the Russian Empire in 1914

A guberniya (Russian: губерния [ɡuˈbʲernʲɪjə]) (also romanized gubernia, guberniia, gubernya) was a major administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire usually translated as government, governorate, or province. Such administrative division was preserved for sometime upon the collapse of the empire in 1917. A guberniya was ruled by a governor (губернатор, gubernator), a word borrowed from Latin gubernator, in turn from Greek kybernetes. Sometimes the term guberniya was informally used to refer to the office of a governor.

This subdivision type was created by the edict (ukase) of Peter the Great on December 18, 1708, which divided Russia into eight guberniyas. In 1719, guberniyas were further subdivided into provinces (провинции, provintsii). Later the number of guberniyas was increased to 23.

By the reform of 1775, subdivision into guberniyas and further into uyezds (уезды), was based on population size, and the term guberniya was replaced by the synonym of Russian origin: namestnichestvo (наместничество), sometimes translated as "viceroyalty". The term guberniya, however, still remained in use. These viceroyalties were governed by namestniki (наместник) (literal translation: "deputy") or "Governors General" (генерал-губернатор, general-gubernator). Correspondingly, the term "Governorate General" (генерал-губернаторство, general-gubernatorstvo) was in use to refer to the actual territory being governed. The office of Governor General had more administrative power and was in a higher position than the previous office of Governor. Sometimes a Governor General ruled several guberniyas.

By the ukase of the Russian Senate of December 31, 1796, the office of Governorate General was demoted to the previous level of Governorate, and Russia was again divided into guberniyas, which were subdivided into uyezds, further subdivided into volosts (волость); nevertheless several Governorates General made from several guberniyas existed until 1917.

The latter subdivision existed until after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

For the guberniya (Russian: губе́рния, Polish: gubernia, Swedish: län, Finnish: lääni) as subdivisions of the Kingdom of Poland ("Russian Poland") and the Grand Duchy of Finland ("Russian Finland"); see Administrative division of Congress Poland and Governorates of the Grand Duchy of Finland.

After the February Revolution, the Russian Provisional Government renamed governors into guberniya commissars. The October Revolution left the subdivision in place, but the governing apparatus was replaced by guberniya soviets (губернский совет).

Actual subdivisions of the Soviet Union into particular territorial units was subject to numerous changes, especially during the 1918–1929 period. Eventually, in 1929, the subdivision was replaced by the notions of oblast, okrug, and raion.

In post-Soviet republics such as Russia and Ukraine, the term Guberniya is obsolete, yet the word gubernator was reinstated and is used when referring to a governor of an oblast or a krai.

There is another archaic meaning of the word as the word denoted a type of estate in former Lithuania of the Russian Empire till 1917.

See also[link]

• History of the administrative division of Russia
• List of governorates of the Russian Empire

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Viktor Vasnetsov
Self-portrait, 1868
Birth name	Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov
Born	15 May 1848 Vyatka
Died	23 July 1926(1926-07-23) (aged 78) Moscow
Nationality	Russian
Field	Painting
Training	Imperial Academy of Arts
Movement	Symbolism; History painting
Works	A Knight at the Crossroads, Bogatyrs

Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov (Russian: Ви́ктор Миха́йлович Васнецо́в; Lop'jal near Vyatka, May 15 (N.S.), 1848 — Moscow, July 23, 1926) was a Russian artist who specialized in mythological and historical subjects. He was described as co-founder of folklorist/romantic modernism in the Russian painting^[1] and a key figure of the revivalist movement in Russian art.

Biography[link]

Childhood (1848-1858)[link]

Viktor Vasnetsov was born in a remote village Lopyal of Vyatka guberniya in 1848, the second of the six children.^[2] His father Mikhail Vasilievich Vasnetsov, a village priest, was a well-educated 'philosophy-inclined' man interested in natural science, astronomy and painting. His grandfather was an icon painter. Two of Mikhail Vasnetsov's three sons, Viktor and Apollinary, became remarkable painters, the third one becoming a schoolteacher. It was in Lopyal that Viktor started to paint, mostly landscapce and village life scenes. Recalling his childhood in a letter to Vladimir Stasov, Vasnetsov remarked that he "had lived with peasant children and liked them not as a narodnik but as a friend".^[2]

Vyatka (1858-1867)[link]

From the age of ten, Viktor studied in a seminary in Vyatka, each summer moving with his family to a rich merchant village of Ryabovo. During his seminary years, he worked for a local icon shopkeeper. He also helped an exiled Polish artist, Michał Elwiro Andriolli, to execute frescoes for Vyatka's Alexander Nevsky cathedral.

Having graduated from the seminary, Viktor decided to move to Saint Petersburg to study art. He auctioned his paintings of Woman Harvester and Milk-maid (both 1867) in order to raise money required for the trip to the Russian capital.

Saint Petersburg (1867-1876)[link]

Moving House, 1876

In August 1867 Viktor entered the Imperial Academy of Arts. Three years later, the Peredvizhniki movement of realist painters rebelled against the Academism.

Vasnetsov befriended their leader Ivan Kramskoi, referring to him as his teacher. He also became very close to his fellow student Ilya Yefimovich Repin.

It is ironic, but Viktor, whose name is associated with historical and mythological paintings, initially avoided these subjects at all costs. For his graphic composition of Christ and Pontius Pilate Before the People, the Academy awarded a small silver medal to him.

In the early 1870s he executed a lot of engravings depicting contemporary life. Two of them (Provincial Bookseller from 1870 and A Boy with a Bottle of Vodka from 1872) won him a bronze medal at the World Fair in London (1874).

At that period he also started producing genre paintings in oil. Such pieces as Peasant Singers (1873) and Moving House (1876) were warmly welcomed by democratic circles of Russian society.

Paris (1876-1877)[link]

In 1876 Repin invited Vasnetsov to join the Peredvizhniki colony in Paris. While living in France, Viktor studied classical and contemporary paintings, academist and Impressionist alike. At that period, he painted Acrobats (1877), produced prints, and exhibited some of his works at the Salon. It was in Paris that he became fascinated with fairy-tale subjects, starting to work on Ivan Tsarevich Riding a Grey Wolf and The Firebird. Vasnetsov was a model for Sadko in Repin's celebrated painting Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom. In 1877 he returned to Moscow.

Moscow (1877-1884)[link]

Alyonushka

In the late 1870s Vasnetsov concentrated on illustrating Russian fairy tales and bylinas, executing some of his best known pieces: Knight at the Crossroads (1878), Prince Igor's Battlefield (1878), Three tsarevnas of the Underground Kingdom (1879–1881), The Magic Carpet (1880), and Alionushka (1881).

These works were not appreciated at the time they appeared. Many radical critics dismissed them as undermining the realist principles of the Peredvizhniki. Even such prominent connoisseurs as Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov refused to buy them. The vogue for Vasnetsov's paintings would spread in the 1880s, when he turned to religious subjects and executed a series of icons for Abramtsevo estate of his patron Savva Mamontov.

Kiev 1884-1889[link]

In 1884-1889 Vasnetsov was commissioned to paint frescos in the St Vladimir's Cathedral of Kiev. This was a challenging work which ran contrary to both Russian and Western traditions of religious paintings. The influential art critic Vladimir Stasov labelled them a sacrilegious play with religious feelings of the Russian people. Another popular critic, Dmitry Filosofov, referred to these frescoes as "the first bridge over 200 years-old gulf separating different classes of Russian society".

While living in Kiev, Vasnetsov made friends with Mikhail Vrubel, who was also involved in the cathedral's decoration. While they worked together, Vasnetsov taught the younger artist a great deal. It was in Kiev that Vasnetsov finally finished Ivan Tsarevich Riding a Grey Wolf and started his most famous painting, the Bogatyrs.

In 1885 the painter travelled to Italy. The same year he worked on stage designs and costumes for Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Snow Maiden.

Later years (1890-1926)[link]

Frog Tsarevna, 1918

The following two decades were productive for Vasnetsov, but most of his later paintings were perceived as being of secondary importance. He increasingly turned to other media during this period. In 1897 he collaborated with his brother Apollinary on the theatrical design of another Rimsky-Korsakov premiere, Sadko.

At the turn of the century, Vasnetsov elaborated his hallmark "fairy-tale" style of Russian Revivalist architecture. His first acclaimed design was a church in Abramtsevo (1882), executed jointly with Vasily Polenov. In 1894, he designed his own mansion in Moscow. The Russian pavilion of the World Fair in Paris followed in 1898. Finally, in 1904, Vasnetsov designed the best known of his "fairy-tale" buildings — the Tretyakov Gallery.

Between 1906 and 1911, Vasnetsov worked on the design of the mosaics for Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Warsaw; he was also involved in the design of Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Moscow.

A revenue stamp of Russia, 1914

In 1912, he was given a noble title by Czar Nicholas II. In 1914, he designed a revenue stamp intended for voluntary collection for victims of World War I.

Even prior to the Russian Revolution, Vasnetsov became active as a regent of that gallery. He allocated a significant portion of his income to the State Historical Museum, so that a large part of the museum's collection was acquired on Vasnetsov's money. After the October Revolution he advocated removing some of the religious paintings (notably those by Alexander Ivanov) from churches to the Tretyakov Gallery.

In 1918 Vasnetsov participated in the designing of a military uniform for the newly founded Red Army. Vasnetsov is credited with the creation of budenovka (initially named bogatyrka), a military hat reproducing the style of ancient Rus' cone-shaped helmets.

Legacy[link]

A minor planet 3586 Vasnetsov, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1978 is named after Viktor Vasnetsov and Apollinary Vasnetsov.^[3]

In the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Vasnetsov's painting of Ivan the Terrible (see gallery below) is anachronistically presented as if it already existed in that Tsar's lifetime, and as being sent by Ivan to England when he offers to marry Queen Elizabeth I.

Selected works[link]

• 

  Arkhip Kuindzhi. 1869

• 

  Without Kith or Kin (Непомнящий родства). 1871

• 

  Grave-digger. 1871

• 

  Amusement

• TheKnightAtTheCrossroads.jpg

  A Knight at the Crossroads. 1878

• 

  Three queens of the underground kingdom 1879

• 

  Flying Carpet 1880

• 

  Sergius of Radonezh 1882

• 

  Tatiana Mamontova 1884

• 

  Palace of Tsar Berendei. Set desighn for Rimski-Korsakov opera The Snow Maiden, 1885

• 

  The field of Igor Svyatoslavich's battle with the Polovtsy, 1889

• 

  The Virgin and Child (1887).

• 

  His Only-begotten Son and the Word of God 1885-1896

• 

  Russian Saints (monks and bishops) (St. Volodymyr's Cathedral fresco)

• 

  The Temptation 1885-1896. (St. Volodymyr's Cathedral fresco)

• 

  The Baptism of Kievans. (Interior of St. Volodymyr's Cathedral)

• 

  Baptism of Saint Prince Vladimir (1890).

• 

  The Last Judgement, 1904

See also[link]

• List of Russian artists

References[link]

Source[link]

• A. K. Lazuko Victor Vasnetsov, Leningrad: Khudozhnik RSFSR, 1990, ISBN 5-7370-0107-5
• Vasnetsov Gallery
• Poem of seven Fairy Tales Victor Vasnetsov at Tanais Gallery

External links[link]

• Media related to Viktor Vasnetsov at Wikimedia Commons
• Vasnetsov's tomb

Portrait of Fyodor Sologub by Konstantin Somov, 1910.

Fyodor Sologub (Russian: Фёдор Сологу́б, born Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov, Russian: Фёдор Кузьми́ч Тете́рников; March 1 [O.S. February 17] 1863 – December 5, 1927) was a Russian Symbolist poet, novelist, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of European fin de siècle literature and philosophy into Russian prose.

Early life[link]

Sologub was born in St. Petersburg into the family of a poor tailor, Kuzma Afanasyevich Teternikov, who had been a serf in Poltava guberniya, the illegitimate son of a local landowner.^[1] His father died of tuberculosis in 1867, and his illiterate mother was forced to become a servant in the home of the aristocratic Agapov family, where Sologub and his younger sister Olga grew up. Seeing how difficult his mother's life was, Sologub was determined to rescue her from it, and after graduating from the St. Petersburg Teachers' Institute in 1882 he took his mother and sister with him to his first teaching post in Kresttsy, where he began his literary career with the 1884 publication in a children's magazine of his poem "The Fox and the Hedgehog" under the name Te-rnikov.

Sologub continued writing as he relocated to new jobs in Velikiye Luki (1885) and Vytegra (1889), but felt that he was completely isolated from the literary world and longed to be able to live in the capital again; nevertheless, his decade-long experience with the "frightful world" of backwoods provincial life served him well when he came to write The Petty Demon. (He said later that in writing the novel he had softened the facts: "things happened that no one would believe if I were to describe them."^[2]) He felt sympathetic with the writers associated with the journal Severnyi vestnik (Northern Herald), including Nikolai Minsky, Zinaida Gippius, and Dmitry Merezhkovsky, who were beginning to create what would be known as the Symbolist movement, and in 1891 he visited Petersburg hoping to see Minsky and Merezhkovsky, but met only the first.

Early literary career[link]

In 1892 he was finally able to relocate to the capital, where he got a job teaching mathematics, started writing what would become his most famous novel, The Petty Demon, and began frequenting the offices of Severny Vestnik, which published much of his writing during the next five years. There, in 1893, Minsky, who thought Teternikov was an unpoetic name, suggested that he use a pseudonym, and the aristocratic name Sollogub was decided on, but one of the ls was omitted as an attempt (unavailing, as it turned out) to avoid confusion with Count Vladimir Sollogub. In 1894 his first short story, "Ninochkina oshibka" (Ninochka's Mistake), was published in Illustrirovanny Mir, and in the autumn of that year his mother died. In 1896 he published his first three books: a book of poems, a collection of short stories, and his first novel, Tyazhelye sny (Bad Dreams), which he had begun in 1883 and which is considered one of the first decadent Russian novels.

In April 1897 he ended his association with Severny Vestnik and, along with Merezhkovsky and Gippius, began writing for the journal Sever (North). The next year his first series of fairy tales was published. In 1899 he was appointed principal of the Andreevskoe municipal school and relocated to their premises on Vasilievsky Island; he also became a member of the St. Petersburg District School Council. He continued to publish books of poetry, and in 1902 he finished The Petty Demon, which was published partially in serial form in 1905 (in Voprosy zhizni, which was terminated before the final installments). At this time his "Sundays," a literary group that met at his home, attracted poets, artists, and actors, including Alexander Blok, Mikhail Kuzmin, Alexei Remizov, Sergei Gorodetsky, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Leon Bakst, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, and Sergei Auslender. Teffi wrote of him at this period:

His face was pale, long, without eyebrows; by his nose was a large wart; a thin reddish beard seemed to pull away from his thin cheeks; dull, half-closed eyes. His face was always tired, always bored... Sometimes when he was a guest at someone's table he would close his eyes and remain like that for several minutes, as if he had forgotten to open them. He never laughed... Sologub lived on Vasilievsky Island in the small official apartment of a municipal school where he was a teacher and inspector. He lived with his sister, a flat-chested, consumptive old maid. She was quiet and shy; she adored her brother and was a little afraid of him, and spoke of him only in a whisper. He said in a poem: "We were holiday children, My sister and I"; they were very poor, those holiday children, dreaming that someone would give them "even motley-colored shells from a brook." Sadly and dully they dragged out the difficult days of their youth. The consumptive sister, not having received her share of motley shells, was already burning out. He himself was exhausted by his boring teaching job; he wrote in snatches by night, always tired from the boyish noise of his students...

So Sologub lived in his little official apartment with little icon lamps, serving his guests mint cakes, ruddy rolls, pastila [fruit candy], and honey cakes, for which his sister went across the river somewhere on a horsecar. She told us privately, "I'd love to ride on the outside of the horsecar sometime, but my brother won't let me. He says it's unseemly for a lady."... Those evenings in the little apartment, when his close literary friends gathered, were very interesting. ^[3]

Fame and marriage[link]

At the time of the 1905 Revolution his politically critical skazochki ("little tales") were very popular and were collected into a book, Politicheskie skazochki (1906). The Petty Demon was published in a standalone edition in 1907 and quickly became popular, having ten printings during the author's lifetime. Sologub's next major prose work, A Created Legend (1905–1913) (literally "the legend in the making," a trilogy consisting of Drops of Blood, Queen Ortruda, and Smoke and Ash), had many of the same characteristics but presented a considerably more positive and hopeful description of the world. "It begins with the famous declaration that although life is 'vulgar . . . stagnant in darkness, dull and ordinary,' the poet 'creates from it a sweet legend . . . my legend of the enchanting and beautiful.'"^[4]

His increasing literary success was tempered for him by his sister's tuberculosis; in 1906 he traveled with her to Ufa Guberniya for treatment, and in June 1907 he took her to Finland, where she died on June 28. The next month he returned to St. Petersburg and retired after 25 years of teaching. In the autumn of 1908 he married the translator Anastasia Chebotarevskaya (born in 1876), whom he had met at Vyacheslav Ivanov's apartment three years before. Teffi wrote that she "reshaped his daily life in a new and unnecessary way. A big new apartment was rented, small gilt chairs were bought. The walls of the large cold office for some reason were decorated with paintings of Leda by various painters... The quiet talks were replaced by noisy gatherings with dances and masks. Sologub shaved his mustache and beard, and everyone started to say that he resembled a Roman of the period of decline."^[3] He continued publishing poems, plays, and translations; the next year he traveled abroad for the first time, visiting France with his wife, and in September the dramatized version of The Petty Demon was published.

Between 1909 and 1911 The Complete Works of Fyodor Sologub were published in 12 volumes, and in 1911 a collection of critical works appeared, containing over 30 critical essays, notes, and reviews by famous writers. In 1913 he presented a lecture, "The Art Of These Days," that was so successful in St. Petersburg he took it on tour all over Russia. In 1914 he started a magazine, Dnevniki pisatelei (Writers' Journals), and went abroad with his wife, but the outbreak of World War I put an end to the magazine. In 1915 two collections of his stories and tales were published in English, and in 1916 The Petty Demon, all translated by John Cournos.

Fyodor Sologub & Anastacia Tschebotarevskaia (1914)

Sologub continued touring and giving lectures, and in 1917 he welcomed the February Revolution. During the summer he headed the Soyuz Deyatelei Iskusstva (Union of Artists) and wrote articles with a strong anti-Bolshevik attitude. He was opposed to the October Revolution but remained in Petrograd and contributed to independent newspapers until they were terminated. In 1918 he spoke on behalf of the Union Of Artists; published Slepaia babochka (The Blind Butterfly), a collection of new short stories; had a play produced in Yalta; and joined the Petersburg Union of Journalists. But by the end of the year, because of Bolshevik control of publishing and bookselling, he did not have any outlets for his writing. Lev Kleinbort wrote of that period: "Sologub did not give lectures, but lived by selling his things."

Even though he was in principle opposed to emigration, the desperate condition in which he and his wife found himself caused him to apply in December 1919 for permission to leave the country; he did not receive any response. Half a year later he wrote to Lenin personally, again without result. In mid-July 1921 he finally received a letter from Trotsky authorizing his departure, and he made plans to leave for Reval on September 25. But on the evening of September 23 his wife, weakened by privation and driven to despair by the long torment of uncertainty, threw herself off the Tuchkov Bridge and drowned. His wife's death grieved Sologub for the rest of his life, and he referenced it often in his subsequent writing. (A poem dated November 28, 1921, begins "You took away my soul/ To the bottom of the river./ I will defy your wishes/ And follow you."^[5]) He gave up any thought of leaving Russia and relocated into an apartment on the banks of the Zhdanovka River, in which his wife had drowned.

In 1921 the New Economic Policy was begun, and from the end of the year his books (which had been published abroad with increasing frequency, notably in Germany and Estonia) began to appear in Soviet Russia. In December Fimiamy (Incense), a collection of poems, was published; the next two years more poetry collections and translations were published (Balzac's Contes drolatiques, Paul Verlaine, Heinrich von Kleist, Frédéric Mistral), and in 1924 the fortieth anniversary of Sologub's literary activities was celebrated at the Alexandrinsky Theater in Petersburg, with speeches by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Mikhail Kuzmin, Andrei Bely, and Osip Mandelstam, among others. In April of that year he was elected the honorary chairman of the Division of Translators in the Petersburg Union Of Writers, and two years later he became the chairman of the board of the Union. He had literary gatherings in his apartment, attended by such writers as Anna Akhmatova and Korney Chukovsky. His new poems, which had a classic simplicity, were appreciated by those to whom he read them, but they were not printed anymore.

Death and legacy[link]

In May 1927 Sologub became seriously ill, and by summer he could leave his bed only rarely; his last poem was dated October 1. After a long struggle, he died on December 5. Two days later he was buried next to his wife in Smolensk Cemetery.

While Sologub's novels have become his best-known works, he has always been respected by scholars and fellow authors for his poetry. The Symbolist poet Valery Bryusov admired the deceptive simplicity of Sologub's poetry and described it as possessing a Pushkinian perfection of form. Innokenty Annensky, another poet and contemporary of Sologub, wrote that the most original aspect of Sologub's poetry was its author's unwillingness to separate himself from his literature.

[edit] The Petty Demon

The Petty Demon attempted to create a description of poshlost', a Russian concept that has characteristics of both evil and banality. The antihero is a provincial schoolteacher, Peredonov, notable for his complete lack of redeeming human qualities. The novel recounts the story of the morally corrupt Peredonov going insane and paranoid in an unnamed Russian provincial town, parallel with his struggle to be promoted to governmental inspector of his province. The omniscient third-person narrative allowed Sologub to combine his Symbolist tendencies and the tradition of Russian Realism in which he engaged throughout his earlier novels, a style similar to Maupassant's fantastic realism.

Realistic elements of The Petty Demon include a vivid description of 19th-century rural everyday life, while a fantastic element is the presentation of Peredonov's hallucinations on equal terms with external events. While the book was received as an indictment of Russian society, it is a very metaphysical novel and one of the major prose works of the Russian Symbolist movement.^{[citation needed]} James H. Billington said of it:

The book puts on display a Freudian treasure chest of perversions with subtlety and credibility. The name of the novel's hero, Peredonov, became a symbol of calculating concupiscence for an entire generation... He torments his students, derives erotic satisfaction from watching them kneel to pray, and systematically befouls his apartment before leaving it as part of his generalized spite against the universe.^[6]

Works[link]

Sologub in 1913.

Novels[link]

• Bad Dreams
• The Petty Demon
• The Created Legend
  • Drops of Blood
  • Queen Ortruda
  • Smoke and Ash

Short stories[link]

• Light and Shadows
• Beauty
• In the Crowd
• The Glimmer of Hunger
• The White Dog
• Hide and Seek
• The Cave
• The Old House
• The Uniter of Souls
• The Invoker of the Beast
• The Smile
• The Hoop
• The Search
• The White Mother

Plays[link]

• The Triumph of Death
• The Petty Demon (1909)^[7]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Site with biography, bibliography, works
• Works by Fyodor Sologub at Project Gutenberg
• English-language biography, in Pegasos
• English translations of 5 poems by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky, 1921
• English translations of 3 poems

Leo Sirota (May 4, 1885 - February 25, 1965) was a Jewish pianist born in Kamianets-Podilskyi, Podolskaya Guberniya, Russian Empire, now Ukraine.

Leo Sirota began studying piano at the age of five. By the age of nine he was already giving concerts and came to the attention of Paderewski, who invited the boy to study with him. Sirota's parents, however, felt he was too young, and so he attended the conservatories in Kiev and, later, Saint Petersburg. However, in 1904 he went to Vienna to study with Ferruccio Busoni.

He worked as rehearsal pianist with the conductor Jascha Horenstein, whose sister he married. Sirota's Vienna debut concert must have been a memorable occasion: it comprised the Mozart sonata for two pianos with Busoni playing the other piano, followed by the Busoni Piano Concerto, with Busoni conducting, and ended with the two piano version of the Liszt Don Juan Fantasy.

Sirota settled in Japan in 1929, staying there for 15 years, teaching and giving recitals. He was a piano teacher of Minoru Matsuya (1910–1995). While he was in Japan, he championed Yamaha pianos, against the prevailing fashion in Japan for Bechstein and Steinway instruments.

After the Second World War he moved to America and taught in St. Louis. A local radio station frequently asked him to broadcast, and much of his surviving recorded output comes from the paper-based tapes which the studio gave to him after each broadcast. His repertoire was vast, including the complete works of Chopin which he broadcast. His playing is characterised by a luminous tone and unfussy, almost fastidious interpretations, underpinned by an astonishing technique - his rendition of Rosenthal's arrangement of Chopin's minute waltz with the right hand in thirds was said to have astounded Arthur Rubinstein. Because his recorded legacy required specialised remastering, it is only recently that his stature as a pianist has been appreciated.

Sirota died in 1965.

His daughter is Beate Sirota Gordon.

Sources[link]

• Sirota's biography on the Arbiter website
• A memoir of her father by his daughter, Beate

External links[link]

• Leo Sirota performing Chopin Etude Op. 10, No. 9