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Curated playlist

Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour

  • Nikita KhrushchevNikita Khrushchev spent four hours in 1956 tearing down Stalin's reputation. He had helped carry out Stalin's purges.
  • Mikhail GorbachevMikhail Gorbachev refused to declare a state of emergency during the August 1991 coup.
  • 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…
  • Yuri AndropovYuri Andropov saw officers strung up from Budapest lampposts. Historian Christopher Andrew says it haunted him.
  • Konstantin ChernenkoSoviet leader Konstantin Chernenko's obituary ran on page two. Page one celebrated his successor, Gorbachev.
  • Lev KuleshovLev Kuleshov showed the same actor's face beside soup, a coffin and a woman. Audiences saw hunger, grief and desire.
  • Boris YeltsinBoris Yeltsin climbed onto a tank in 1991 to defy a coup. Soldiers sent to crush the protest switched sides.
  • Sergei ProkofievComposer Sergei Prokofiev died the same day as Joseph Stalin, and his coffin went through back streets.
  • Eldar RyazanovEldar Ryazanov first refused to direct a comedy. He wanted to make serious films, but Carnival Night was a hit.
  • Garry KasparovGarry Kasparov won the world chess title at 22 by beating Anatoly Karpov 13-11.
  • 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.
  • Nikolai PodgornySoviet artists erased Nikolai Podgorny from a 1977 painting of the country's leaders. He had been its head of state.
  • Andrey VyshinskyIn 1917, Andrey Vyshinsky signed an order to arrest Lenin. He later became Stalin's feared state prosecutor.
  • Lev LandauPhysicist Lev Landau was jailed in 1938 over a leaflet comparing Stalinism to Nazism. A letter to Stalin freed him.
  • Arvydas SabonisArvydas Sabonis was drafted by Portland in 1986 but did not play in the NBA until 1995. He was 30 by then.
  • Vladimir VernadskyVladimir Vernadsky argued that living things are a geological force. His 1926 book The Biosphere made the case.
  • 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.

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