Stasov gave a lot of encouragement to Russian composers and suggested ideas for compositions to them. It is thanks to his suggestions that many great Russian operas were composed: Borodin’s Prince Igor, Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Sadko and The Maid of Pskov and Tchaikovsky's The Tempest and Manfred. Stasov wrote biographies of the composers Glinka, Dargomïzhsky, Musorgsky and Borodin.