Mily Balakirev (1837–1910), an outstanding Russian composer, pianist and conductor, the leader of the famous The Five, was a great enthusiast, an excellent interpreter and an ardent promoter of Fryderyk Chopin’s music.

The book by Grzegorz Wiśniewski, picturing a panorama of Polish and Russian cultural life from the end of the nineteenth century, describes vividly and in detail the story of two pilgrimages taken by Balakirev to Żelazowa Wola (1891, 1894). Owing to these pilgrimages, the wide-spread memory of the Chopin’s birthplace, in those days forgotten and neglected, had been restored.