Pop Gapon and Japanese rifles: 15 amazing stories from pre-revolutionary Russia

This book contains stories of people who lived in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century: poets, bankers, femme fatales, hoaxers, politicians, film producers. Some of the heroes are famous, some are forgotten, but even the celebrities... do not look bronzed here. Leo Tolstoy quarrels with his wife over money, and the first paparazzi secretly films him. Futurist poets tour the country, perform in small clubs, stage street performances and happily make headlines in newspapers. Andrey Aksyonov, a teacher, popularizer of history, author of the podcast “The Decline of the Empire,” in his book talks fascinatingly about the people, events and phenomena of that period in our country, when everything was changing before our eyes and no one could predict how everything would end in a few years.