Rodion Shchedrin composed "Anna Karenina" in 1972 and dedicated it to his wife, Maya Plisetskaya, who choreographed the first production of the ballet for the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre.

Whatever visions of the producers, Anna Karenina is first of all, a work by Lev Tolstoy. The ballet deals solely with the main theme of Tolstoy's epic novel - the love question, Anna Karenina's existential dilemma. She is emotionally torn between her husband, the civil servant Karenin, and her love, the charming Vronsky.