We recommend the following books, poems, plays, and materials for a deeper understanding of the realities of Imperial/Tsarist Russia at the end of the XIX - beginning of the XX centuries, its people, culture, attitudes, problems and hopes. We hope that they will serve as a source of inspiration for you when working on or choosing your characters.

Andrei Bely [“Petersburg”](http://libcom.org/library/petersburg-andrei-bely)

Aleksandr Blok [“Twelve”](http://russiasgreatwar.org/docs/twelve_notes.pdf)

Fyodor Dostoevsky “Demons/ The Possessed”,  “Teenager/ The Adolescent”

Vladislav Khodasevich “Necropolis” (memoirs)

Maksim Gorky [“The Mother”](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3783); [“The Lower Depths”](http://archive.org/stream/lowerdepthsplayi00gorkiala/lowerdepthsplayi00gorkiala_djvu.txt); “Untimely Thoughts: Essays on Revolution, Culture and the Bolsheviks, 1917-1918”

Anton Chekhov – any short stories; among his plays - especially “The Three Sisters” and “Uncle Vanya”

Leo Tolstoy [“Patriotism and Government”](http://www.nonresistance.org/docs_pdf/Tolstoy/Patriotism_and_Government.pdf)

Boris Akunin “The Diamond Chariot”, “The State Counselor”, “The Coronation”

Aleksandr Kuprin “Junior Captain Rybnikov”

The memoirs of Count Witte