Though not surprising, it is certainly unfortunate that the man recently labelled 'Russia's leading ballet critic" between 1911 and 1926 remained almost totally forgotten for nearly fifty years. Only since the implementation of'glasnost,' when the stifling restrictions on access to and dissemination of information were lifted in his native land, has the public, Russian and foreign, been afforded entree into Akim Volynskii's remarkable life and career. In his day, Volynskii stood at the center of St. Petersburg's artistic and cultural life, but for several generations after his death virtually no traces of his influence or presence remained. Born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Zhitomir (Ukraine) in 1863, Volynskii already sensed his imminent obscurity by the time he died in Leningrad in 1926: in the brave new world of Soviet conformism, there would be no room for this consummate dissident and radical revisionist. A heretofore