Stray Dog Cafe (aka 'Stray Dog Cellar', 'Stray Dog Cabaret' and the 'Society for Intimate Theatre') is located at Ploshchad Isskustv, Square of the Arts up to Summer Gardens, St. Petersburg, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

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The Stray Dog Café was a meeting place for famous writers and poets during the early 20th century. The Acmeist poets (Nikolay Gumilyov

Nikolay Gumilyov

Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilev was an influential Russian poet who founded the acmeism movement.-Early life and poems:Nikolai was born in the town of Kronstadt on Kotlin Island, into the family of Stepan Yakovlevich Gumilev , a naval physician, and Anna Ivanovna L'vova . His childhood nickname was...

, Mandelshtam

Osip Mandelstam

Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...

, Mikhail Kuzmin

Mikhail Kuzmin

Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin was a Russian poet, musician and novelist, a prominent contributor to the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.Born into a noble family in Yaroslavl, Kuzmin grew up in St. Petersburg and studied music at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov...

, etc.) gathered there to discuss theories of literature, give poetry readings, and perform theatre. They considered themselves "'stray dogs' shunted aside by proper aristocratic

Aristocracy (class)

The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...

 society" which led to the name. The cafe was in disrepair for many years and reopened in 2001.

Run by proprietor Boris Pronin, out of the cellar of the Dashkov mansion. It opened New Year's Eve, 1911 and was shut down by authorities in 1915. Its closing was linked to the start of World War I. A key locale for the followers of the emerging acmeist and futurist literary movements, the Stray Dog clientele rejected the symbolist school of thought.

The previous salon for St. Petersburg poets had been the Tower. This was the apartment of the symbolist poet Vyacheslav Ivanov, who was also responsible for influencing Meyerhold

Vsevolod Meyerhold

Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a great Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatrical producer. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern international theatre.-Early...

's use of theatre. Many of these poets later became patrons of the Stray Dog.

Poets/performers at the Stray Dog Café included Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova

Anna Andreyevna Gorenko , better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova , was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.Harrington p11...

, her husband Nikolai Gumilev, Velimir Khlebnikov

Velimir Khlebnikov

Velimir Khlebnikov , pseudonym of Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov , was a central part of the Russian Futurist movement, but his work and influence stretch far beyond it.Khlebnikov belonged to Hylaea,...

, Vladimir Mayakovsky

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Russian and Soviet poet and playwright, among the foremost representatives of early-20th century Russian Futurism.- Early life :...

, Marina Tsvetaeva

Marina Tsvetaeva

Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was a Russian and Soviet poet. Her work is considered among some of the greatest in twentieth century Russian literature. She lived through and wrote of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed it. In an attempt to save her daughter Irina from...

, Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...

, Sergei Esenin, Mikhail Kuzmin

Mikhail Kuzmin

Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin was a Russian poet, musician and novelist, a prominent contributor to the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.Born into a noble family in Yaroslavl, Kuzmin grew up in St. Petersburg and studied music at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov...

, Osip Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam

Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...

, and Alexander Blok

Alexander Blok

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok was a Russian lyrical poet.-Life and career:Blok was born in Saint Petersburg, into a sophisticated and intellectual family. Some of his relatives were literary men, his father being a law professor in Warsaw, and his maternal grandfather the rector of Saint Petersburg...

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