Russia’s Rome: Imperial Visions, Messianic Dreams, 1890-1940

(University of Wisconsin Press) This book examines Russia’s self-identification with Rome. Kalb analyzes the Rome-related work of six writers (including Dmitrii Merezhkovskii and Valerii Briusov) and argues that the myth of Russia as the “Third Rome” was resurrected to create a Rome-based discourse of Russian national identity as the empire of the tsars fell and the Soviet state replaced it. Kalb is an associate professor of Russian and comparative literature at the University of South Carolina.