"Moscow & St. Petersburg 1900 to 1920: Art, Life and Culture in Russia's Silver Age"

A review and an interview with the author of a potentially fascinating book on Russia's "Silver Age":
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2010_03_015805.php

Sounds like a decent introductory text -- although in the theory of "why silver age" at the turn of the century, I would go to contemporary Marxist theory first and European modernism second before I would plunge into the Apocalypse theories and religion. But I guess the Apocalypse might better reflect the way thinking of the individual artists at the time.