When the Bolshoi Ballet came to town last month, it stirred up memories for those who witnessed its tours – and its bold style of ballet – during the days of Soviet rule. But for Maxim Gershunoff, who helped organize and facilitate those tours, the return of the company was especially poignant.

From 1962 to 1972, Mr. Gershunoff was a right-handman to the famed impresario Sol Hurok, who brought the Bolshoi and a steady stream of the world’s best performing artists to American shores. While working in Hurok’s office, the young Mr. Gershunoff mixed with (and managed the demands of) musicians and ballet dancers at a time when Americans were wild for performing arts – especially the mysterious products of the Soviet Union.

Before joining the Hurok office, Mr. Gershunoff trained as a trumpeter at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. He was there at a time when the student body included Giancarlo Menotti, Samuel Barber, and Leonard Bernstein. As a youngster, he was a pal of Jerry Goodman (Benny’s brother), and as a young professional he moved to Hollywood to play in movie, radio, and television orchestras. While there he was pals with Roland Petit and Renee “ZiZi” Jeanmarie – at a time when Howard Hughes was fascinated by her.

Lucky for arts lovers, Mr. Gershunoff, now 81, has put his stories down on paper. His memoir, “It’s Not All Song and Dance: A Life Behind the Scenes in the Performing Arts” (Limelight Editions, $24.95), which he wrote with Leon Van Dyke, is loaded with story after story about what he saw along the way.

When I picked up this book, I intended to skim it for the juicy parts that would be helpful in an interview with the author. I wound up reading every word – and subjecting my friends and family to recitations of his anecdotes. Reading this book is like sitting down with a great uncle who happened to know everyone and anyone in the last 60 years of the stage arts.

Mr. Gershunoff was the conduit in the affair between Bobby Kennedy and Maya Plisetskaya. While working for Columbia Artists Management, he found and later represented Yo-Yo Ma, who at the time wasn’t a big enough name for the corporate agency. He served as a translator and an assistant to conductor Yuri Temirkanov, who later led the Baltimore Symphony – an organization much in the news as of late because its board is replacing the retiring Mr. Temirkanov with a female conductor.

All the insider anecdotes are tantalizing, but I don’t want to spoil them for potential readers. And there is, anyway, a vastly more important reason to read this book. “It’s Not All Song and Dance” bears witness to the exploitative manner in which the Soviet Union treated its artists.

When a Soviet artist toured abroad, Mr. Gershunoff writes, the government would keep a close eye on his or her family back home as a bond to ensure the artist would return. Defecting could mean a life of poverty and pain for those back home. Then there was the small matter of the artists’ fees, which the government helped itself to. Mr. Gershunoff makes this point in the book several times, and here’s just one dance-related example.

On a 1962 Bolshoi tour of America, Ms. Plisetskaya danced “The Dying Swan” on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” As Mr. Gershunoff writes: “The fee for her performance, payable to Hurok Attractions, Inc, was $7,500. Ultimately, the majority of this fee was payable to the ministry of culture of the USSR and was entirely tax-free to the Soviets. The fee due to Maya for her services out of this money was approximately $160. This was the nominal sum allowed by the Soviet government for ‘overseas duty’ by all Soviet artists, no matter their degree of stature of fame.”

But Mr.Gershunoff also tells a touching story about an artist who stood up to the system. Conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky once canceled his guest engagements at the New York Philharmonic and elsewhere in the West, all of which had been arranged by the Soviet concert agency, Gosconcert:

Rozhdestvensky had openly rebelled against the system of having Gosconcert receive 90 percent of his Western fees. … To prove his point, and expose the musical ignorance of his Soviet handlers, he had deliberately submitted to Gosconcert a program of nonexistent works, which was unthinkingly forwarded “as is” to an orchestra in Scandinavia. After receiving the “dummy” program, the orchestra called Rozhdestvensky directly asking him if the program that Gosconcert had sent them was some sort of a joke or was he crazy.

The story had hit the London newspapers, and the New York press was waiting to see who would step in to conduct the Philharmonic. Gosconcert wanted Mr. Temirkanov to do so, but Mr. Gershunoff explained the broader implications to the conductor. By collaborating with the government, Mr. Temirkanov would weaken his fellow artist’s position. The replacement conductor declined, and through a friend, Mr. Rozhdestvensky sent Mr. Temirkanov a simple message: spasibo (thank you).

Stories like this make Mr. Gershunoff’s book a gripping read, but he’s even more charming in person. Now a resident of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Mr. Gershunoff is a dapper dresser with a cheerful, knowing smile. Though his gentlemanly manners suggest a bygone era, he’s quick to deliver his opinions.

Why don’t we see the big ballet stars of the past? “American Ballet Theatre has superb men right now. The mystique and fortune of a Baryshnikov and a Nureyev have to do with exposure and attention because of the political situation,” he said, pronouncing each syllable of “political” with emphasis.

While those men were great artists, sometimes world affairs send up a star of debatable talent, like Van Cliburn: “The parallel would be a not-so-great pianist who became so famous that he sustained his image of a great American icon of a pianist. As far as I’m concerned, he was a political hero.”

On the subject of music and politics today: “China is the focal point in music now,” he told me, putting emphasis on the young pianist Lang Lang.

His take on corporate entities as managers of artists is not sunny; younger artists cannot command the fees and guaranteed audiences that big names can. But they must be found and promoted – as they were in the Hurok days – or there won’t be any big names in the next generation.

“We helped establish these people [performing today] in the 1960s,” said Mr. Gershunoff, who is still representing emerging talent. “I’m interested tomorrow’s world.”

And on the subject of Sol Hurok, his employer and mentor with whom he had a hurtful falling out, he says: “I really loved him, like my father.”