There are many things that help shape Russian culture. The Russians use many artistic tools to express these influences. Music, film, and performance are all used as mediums to express the joys and the pains of the Russian culture, but the most effective and influential is Russian literature. Russian literature has had a lasting effect on Russian arts.
"The various musical compositions, paintings, and performances are also manifestations of the intellectual function literary texts have served for Russian artists and performers."" (Rzhevsky, 1996, p. ix).
One explanation of the heavy use of art for the expression of culture is that Russia was late blooming in producing a strong philosophical tradition. Philosophy was not introduced until late nineteenth- early twentieth century. Literature was a means for the writers to explore and convey their ideas. "Literature, then, has served the Russians as a testing ground---through the imagined situations writers have created---for measuring insights and hypotheses."" (Rzhevsky, 1996, p. x).
"Russian philosophy has always been an integral part of the literature. The seed of existentialism is found in Dostoevsky and passive resistance, used so effectively by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, originated in the works of Tolstoy."" (Russian Literature, 2003).
The Tale of Igor is the product of an anonymous author; however, it is one of Russia's first literary masterpieces. This masterpiece has received endless attention and has played an enormous role in Russian culture. This story has inspired the world of art and is best known to the Western public in the form of an opera composed by Alexander Borodin, Prince Igor, which in turn inspired the art of dance. A ballet based on this tale was given life from the master choreographer Mikhail Fokine. The impact of this tale does not stop there; paintings, such as, Vasily Perov's Yaroslavna's Lament and Viktor Vasnetsov's After Igor Svaitoslavich's battle with the Polovtsians were inspired from this one story.