Introduction: Rome envy -- The blueprint: Dmitrii Merezhkovskii's Christ and antichrist -- Relinquishing empire? Valerii Briusov's Roman novels -- A "Roman Bolshevik": Aleksandr Blok's "Catiline" and the Russian Revolution -- The third Rome in exile: refitting the pieces in Viacheslav Ivanov's "Roman sonnets" -- Emperors in red: the poet and the court in Mikhail Kuzmin's Death of Nero -- Conclusion: Bulgakov and beyond
Summary
A wide-ranging study of empire, religious prophecy, and nationalism in literature, 'Russia's Rome' provides the first examination of Russia's self-identification with Rome during a period that encompassed the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and the rise of the Soviet State
