First Published in 2004. In this original study, Omry Ronen critically examines the term Silver Age, which over the years has gained such wide currency among historians and connoisseurs of twentieth-century Russian culture. His latest research deals with metahistorical and metaliterary value of influential poetic locutions, such as the image of Russia as the sphinx, or the concept of the Silver Age in Russian cultural history.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this study, Ronen critically examines the term "Silver Age", which over the years has gained such wide currency among historians and connoisseurs of 20th century Russian culture. The author traces the origin and the controversial development of what he condemns as an influential misnomer. Ronen sets out to debunk the myth that attributes invention of the term to Nikolai Berdiaev, and in turn traces this widely used catchword in the critical idiom from an abscure, avante-garde manifesto to the present day. He lays to rest the use of the term which he sees as the most misleading constituent of Russia's contemporary cultural self-awareness and self-assessment.

The questing, experimenting, and overstepping of stylistic, moral, and narrowly rational boundaries that characterized Russian modernist writing were frowned upon during most of the seven decades of Soviet rule. Only since the late 1980s have readers had easy access to the literature, memoirs, and critical writings of the immediately pre-Soviet period.

The great age of Russian philosophy spans the century between 1830 and 1930 - from the famous Slavophile-Westernizer controversy of the 1830s and 1840s, through the 'Silver Age' of Russian culture at the beginning of the twentieth century, to the formation of a Russian 'philosophical emigration' in the wake of the Russian Revolution. This volume is a major history and interpretation of Russian philosophy in this period. Eighteen chapters (plus a substantial introduction and afterword) discuss Russian philosophy's main figures, schools and controversies, while simultaneously pursuing a common central theme: the development of a distinctive Russian tradition of philosophical humanism focused on the defence of human dignity. As this volume shows, the century-long debate over the meaning and grounds of human dignity, freedom and the just society involved thinkers of all backgrounds and positions, transcending easy classification as 'religious' or 'secular'. The debate still resonates strongly today.