An original and even iconoclastic writer, philosopher, and critic, Vasilii Rozanov was frequently connected with scandal, controversial views on religion and sex, and outbursts of anti-Semitism. His viewpoints and personal values set him apart from the prevailing ethics and etiquette of the Russian intelligentsia--of both the Left and the Right--from the 1890s to his death in 1919. A contradictory figure, Rozanov espoused different political positions under different pseudonyms simultaneously. He tended to elicit extreme reactions from his contemporaries; the hatred of the Left for Rozanov was more on fastidious moral grounds and for his constant venomous attacks against them than it was for his conservative, religious positions. Soviet cultural commissar Leon Trotsky's extended and virulent comments in his Literatura i revoliutsiia (1924; translated as Literature and Revolution, 1975) provide an index of Rozanov's prominence in Russian cultural life during the Silver Age and his unacceptability to the Soviet regime. Trotsky made...