By Aleksei Shyropaev, poet, publicist, public activist, co-chairman of the National Democratic Alliance

Composition by the painter Andrei Budaev

I am reminiscing about the fair Moscow summer of 1981. The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (we have always called it simply Pushkinskiy) was running an excellent exhibition called Moscow-Paris. It was, I dare say, a pivotal event in the cultural life of the USSR. This exhibition, on the one hand, broadened the scope of the great Russian avant-garde; on the other hand, it depicted its affiliation with the Western avant-garde, revealing the subtle and profound relationship and mutual influence of the Western and Russian art nouveau. It was there in the exhibition’s stands that I first had the chance to see the early collections of the Russian futurist poets. The memory of this magical experience, this contact with the legends, has stayed with me throughout my entire life. The exhibition…