Николай Минский

(January 15 (27), 1855, Glubokoe, Disnensky District, Vilna Province, Russian Empire — July 2, 1937, Paris, France) was a Russian poet and religious thinker. Since 1906 he lived abroad in Paris, becoming one of the leaders of Russian decadence and symbolism, who preached the cult of beauty and pleasure and declared war on social trends in art as harming the "purity" of artistic creativity. He returned to Russia in 1913 after the amnesty, but with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 he emigrated permanently.