ABSTRACT
Crucial to Diaghilev's enterprise was a group of investors approached by Astruc in the spring of 1909. French by bir th and nationality, this group was mostly Jewish in origin and connections. It included the most distinguished names in Jewish banking circles and many of the era's outstanding patrons, collectors and artistic dilettantes; by marriage it embraced 'regilded' aristocrats who had bartered their threadbare titles for a fortune. There is more than a touch of irony in the outpouring of Jewish wealth and Jewish support for an enterprise aimed at restoring the prestige of a regime so notoriously anti-Semitic as the Russia of Nicholas II.
