Russian Dance: A True Story of Intrigue and Passion in Stalinist Moscow Book

Of the many glittering salons of New York in the Jazz Age, none was more prestigious than the one that regularly convened in the Upper West Side home of impresario Max Rabinoff. It was here that celebrities of opera, ballet, politics, and business came together to catch up on the latest high-society gossip, trade quips, and pay homage to their beautiful and vivacious hostess, Helene Rabinoff, known to everyone as Bluet. And it was here that the artistic refugees fleeing the horrors of the Russian Revolution would congregate, no matter which side they supported. On one evening in 1928, a darkly handsome and charismatic Russian doctor by the name of Marc Cheftel stepped into this salon for the very first time. Close to the leaders of the Revolution, Cheftel had played a key role in its earliest days. Now he had come to New York to solicit medical relief aid for the beleaguered Soviet people through the Russian Red Cross. Or so everyone was told. Within months of their first meeting Bluet and Marc would become lovers, each finding in the other the fulfillment of a dream so potent that Bluet would forsake her opulent life and beloved daughter to follow him back to the grinding poverty, terrors, and brutality of Stalin's Russia. But the price would be even higher than that. Soon she would be forced to choose between the life of her lover and the life of her daughter, even while keenly aware of the ultimate tragedy of Marc's mission. The compelling true story of two remarkable individuals caught up in the maelstrom of twentieth-century history, Russian Dance is a timeless tale of ill-starred love and espionage that leaves the reader in its thrall until the very last page. It also provides a ringside seat at one of the bloodiest moments in Soviet history. Working from original sources, including interviews with Bluet herself, award-winning journalist Andrée Aelion Brooks paints an intimate portrait of the couple's romance and later descent into despair. She also opens a rare page in Jewish history by providing fresh insights into the cruel fate meted out by Stalin to the Jewish visionaries and heroes who had been at the heart of the Revolution. We experience the agony of their downfall and dismissal even from the memories of their own people--the very people they tried so hard to serve.Read More