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Curated playlist

Recipients of the Lenin Prize

  • Leonid BrezhnevIn a 2013 Levada Center poll, Russians named Leonid Brezhnev their favorite 20th-century leader.
  • Valentin GlushkoValentin Petrovich Glushko was born on the 2nd of September 1908 in Odesa, and by the age of fourteen he was thinking about flight. Novels by Jules Verne had pulled him toward aeronautics. In 1923 he wrote a letter to Konstantin…
  • Andrei TarkovskyIngmar Bergman called Andrei Tarkovsky the greatest of all filmmakers. Tarkovsky directed only seven feature films.
  • Konstantin ChernenkoSoviet leader Konstantin Chernenko's obituary ran on page two. Page one celebrated his successor, Gorbachev.
  • Sergei ProkofievComposer Sergei Prokofiev died the same day as Joseph Stalin, and his coffin went through back streets.
  • Evgeny LifshitzEvgeny Lifshitz was only the second person to pass Lev Landau's Theoretical Minimum exam. Just 43 people ever did.
  • Dmitri ShostakovichStalin walked out of Dmitri Shostakovich's opera in 1936, and the next day Pravda attacked it.
  • Andrei SakharovAndrei Sakharov built the Soviet Union's most devastating weapon, then spent his life trying to limit its damage.
  • Lev LandauPhysicist Lev Landau was jailed in 1938 over a leaflet comparing Stalinism to Nazism. A letter to Stalin freed him.
  • Alexander ProkhorovWhile studying ruby in 1957, physicist Alexander Prokhorov realized it could serve as a laser's active medium.
  • Valery LegasovIn August 1986, Valery Legasov stood before the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and spoke for five hours. The report he carried for the Soviet delegation ran to 388 pages. Legasov was a Soviet inorganic chemist, not a reactor…
  • Sergey MikhalkovSergey Mikhalkov wrote a friendly giant policeman for children, then anthems for two countries.
  • Georgy SviridovMillions of Soviet viewers heard Georgy Sviridov's music every evening without knowing his name.

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