Curated playlist
Recipients of the Stalin Prize
- Lavrentiy BeriaLavrentiy Beria walked out on Stalin's paralyzed body and told everyone not to panic. No doctor came for twelve hours.
- 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.
- 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.
- Sergei EisensteinSergei Eisenstein reached Hollywood in May 1930 and was sent home within five months.
- Trofim LysenkoTrofim Lysenko, a peasant who learned to read at 13, came to rule Soviet biology. He denied that genes exist.
- Vladimir VernadskyVladimir Vernadsky argued that living things are a geological force. His 1926 book The Biosphere made the case.
- 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.