Aleksei Konstantinovich Tolstoy transcends the labels used to categorize the people and works of art emblematic of his age. Neither a Slavophile nor a Westernizer, radical nor conservative, Tolstoy cultivated lyric and dramatic verse in an epoch famous for its ideologically charged prose. Tolstoy is remembered for his lyric and satirical poetry, the historical novel Kniaz' Serebriany (Prince Serebriany, 1862), and his trilogy of historical dramas in verse based on the reigns of the medieval rulers Ivan the Terrible, his son Fedor, and Boris Godunov. Tolstoy's reputation as a novelist has been overshadowed by his accomplishments as one of the outstanding poets and dramatists of the later nineteenth century, but Kniaz' Serebriany, like his drama and verse, is an artistically and politically complex and sophisticated text. It includes insights into some of the tragic dilemmas of Russian history that remain relevant and compelling today.

During his own lifetime, appreciation...