There has been revolution, civil war, famine, invasion, tyranny, and economic collapse, but underlying it all has been the soul and depth of its people. Author Alexander Solzhenitsyn once wrote: “When you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power—he’s free again.” And so whatever the level of tyranny inflicted, the people’s spirit has constantly sought out freedom’s supreme manifestation: art. Now more than ever, art is the subject on everybody’s lips in Moscow. “There’s a real sense of a revival in Russian culture, arts, and literature,” says Sandra Nedvetskaia, co-director of Cosmoscow, the only international art fair in the country, and the former head of Christie’s Russia. “In the ’90s, and around the millennium, we were still getting on our feet and starting to find our…
