Curated playlist
Moscow State University alumni
- Anton ChekhovAnton Chekhov's body traveled to Moscow in a railway car meant for oysters. The detail offended his friend Maxim Gorky.
- Lev VygotskyLev Vygotsky's work was banned in the Soviet Union after he died at 37. His ideas on learning still spread worldwide.
- Mikhail GorbachevMikhail Gorbachev refused to declare a state of emergency during the August 1991 coup.
- Wassily KandinskyWassily Kandinsky quit a law career at age 30 to enroll in an art academy in Munich. He became a pioneer of abstraction.
- Ivan TurgenevIvan Turgenev wrote an obituary for Nikolai Gogol and was jailed for a month. Censors had banned it in Saint Petersburg.
- Denis FonvizinLines from Denis Fonvizin's comedies became Russian proverbs. He wrote them under a powerful nobleman's protection.
- Sergei YeseninPoet Sergei Yesenin wrote his farewell poem in his own blood. He was found dead in a Leningrad hotel room at thirty.
- Andrei SakharovAndrei Sakharov built the Soviet Union's most devastating weapon, then spent his life trying to limit its damage.
- Alexander HerzenFor three years, Alexander Herzen's Russian press in London did not sell a single copy.
- Pafnuty ChebyshevA limp kept Pafnuty Chebyshev off the playing fields and steered him toward mathematics.
- Anatoly KhazanovAnatoly Khazanov argued under Soviet censorship that nomads were never self-sufficient.
- Lev ShestovLev Shestov's dissertation was rejected, which blocked him from becoming a doctor of law.
- Alexander ZinovievSoviet writer Alexander Zinoviev was expelled from his country, then returned by choice 21 years later.
- Aleksey Konstantinovich TolstoyCount Aleksey Tolstoy co-created Kozma Prutkov, a fake poet many readers thought was real.
- Fyodor TyutchevFyodor Tyutchev called his poems trifles and often lost the scraps of paper they were written on.