Maya Plisetskaya (1925–2015), one of the world’s foremost dancers, performed with Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet and later traveled the world performing and lecturing. At the Bolshoi’s gala celebrating her 75th birthday, President Vladimir Putin presented her with Russia’s highest civilian honor, the medal for service to the Russian state, second degree. Tim Scholl is professor of Russian language and literature at Oberlin College. Antonina W. Bouis is the prize-winning translator of more than fifty books, including fiction, nonfiction, and memoirs by such figures as Andrei Sakharov, Elena Bonner, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

“A compelling story about perseverance, hardship, craftiness and, ultimately, a kind of seething acceptance of the system that virtually imprisoned her, even as she found that she couldn’t live without it.”—Sarah Kaufman, Washington Post“Like the swans she danced so often—800 performances of ‘Swan Lake’ and unnumbered renderings of the Dying Swan—Maya Plisetskaya, one of the great ballerinas of the last century, mingled beauty and fierceness. . . . She has much to be angry about and, as the Bolshoi’s prima ballerina assoluta for decades and celebrated worldwide, quite a bit to be grateful for. . . . The Plisetskaya memoir is a moving success. Here is the woman, I proclaims, and we see her—not entirely polished but overwhelming—as if she were dancing.”—Richard Eder, New York Times“The fascinating story of how this artist of implacable will confronted and defied the Soviet regime—and eventually had her way. . . . I, Maya Plisetskaya has the virtues of candor and directness, and it has a real story to tell.”—Robert Gottlieb, Los Angeles Times Book Review“A riveting account of pursuing artistic excellence under Soviet oppression. . . . Plisetskaya doesn’t just tell an incredible story. She also lays bare the hard work and uncertainty involved in putting it all in a book. . . . Reading this memoir feels like listening to a wonderfully strong-willed friend.”—Boston Globe“Almost everything about Plisetskaya, now 76, seemed larger than life. And as her wonderfully intimate and detailed new autobiography reveals, that is the result of both her innately bold, born-to-be-a-diva personality, and of the often perilous Soviet political environment in which she forged her career. . . . This is a fascinating memoir, steeped in ambivalence.”—Chicago Sun-Times“I, Maya Plisetskaya isa memoir of the Terror, the Gulag and the very fertile Soviet arts, by the athletic prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet.”—Washington Post Book WorldSelected as one of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2001 by the Los Angeles Times Book Review