In this highly original study, Omry Ronen critically examines the term "Silver Age", which over the years has gained such wide currency among historians and connoisseurs of twentieth-century Russian culture. The author traces the origin and the controversial development of what he condemns as an influential misnomer. "I do not know who was the first to use this appellation, on whom the blame for launching it falls", lamented the late Russian-American literary historian, Gleb Struve. Ronen sets out to debunk the idea that attributes invention of the term to Nikolai Berdiaev, and in turn traces this widely used catchword in the critical idiom from an obscure avant-garde manifesto to the present day. He convincingly lays to rest the use of a term that he sees as the most misleading constituent of Russia's contemporary cultural self-awareness and self-assessment.