This book explores the immense influence of the composer Richard Wagner on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian writers, musicians and artists. It contains a history of the production of Wagner's works in Russia and the Soviet Union (by directors including Meyerhold and Eisenstein), an account of Wagner's visit to Russia in 1863, and a detailed investigation of the impact of his music and ideas on the Russian Modernist movement. The last two chapters explore the fate of Wagner's works after the 1917 Revolution, when he was first hailed but then reviled, and finally rehabilitated during the years of glasnost.