Cesar Cui (18 January 1835, Vilnius – 26 March 1918, Petrograd ) was a Russian composer . He is the least known of the five Russian composers who were nicknamed the " Moguchaya Kuchka " ("Mighty Handful"), a group which included Mily Balakirev , Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov , Modest Mussorgsky and Alexander Borodin . Cui’s father came from France and his mother from Lithuania .

Like most Russian composers in the 19th century he was an amateur composer. His main job was as an expert on military fortifications . He became a professor in this subject and wrote important textbooks about military defences. He became a general .

Cui liked his friends from the Moguchaya Kuchka, but was often very critical of music by other Russian composers such as Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff . This may have been because he was jealous of their success. He did not find orchestration easy. Balakirev helped him a lot with the orchestration of some of his compositions . He was best when writing songs and short piano pieces. He liked to write music that sounded Far Eastern in character. Cellists like to play a short piece he wrote called "Orientale".