The Russian Symbolist movement stemmed from a group known as the Intelligentsia, which began in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century. Symbolism was the key element to what is known as the Silver Age in Russia.[ will expand]

"The Symbolists saw art as a way to approach a higher reality. The first wave of Symbolists included Konstantin Balmont (1867-1942), who translated a number of English poets and wrote verse that he left unrevised on principle (he believed in first inspiration); Valery Bryusov (1873-1924), a poet and translator of French Symbolist verse and of Virgil's Aenid, who for years was the leader of the movement; Zinaida Gippius (1869-1945) who wrote decadent, erotic, and religious poetry; and Fyodor Sologub, author of melancholic verse and of a novel, Melky bes (1907; The Petty Demon), about a sadistic, homicidal, paranoid schoolteacher.

Three writers dominate the second wave of Symbolism. Eschatology and anthroposophy shaped the poetry and prose of Andrey Bely, whose novel Petersburg (1913-1922; St.Petersburg) is regarded as the masterpiece of Symbolist Fiction. Aleksandr Blok, who wrote the lyric drama Balganchik (1906; "The Showbooth"), is best known for his drama "Balaganchik" (1918; The Twelve), which describes 12 brutal Red Guards who turn out to be unwttingly led by Jesus Christ. The principal theoretician of the Symbolist movement, Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949), wrote mythic poetry conveying a Neoplatonist philosophy." (Encyclopedia Britanica)

 

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