Curated playlist
Russian people of Ukrainian descent
- Mikhail GorbachevMikhail Gorbachev was born on the 2nd of March 1931 in Privolnoye, a village in the North Caucasus, into a peasant family so poor his parents had married as teenagers and lived in an adobe-walled hut belonging to his grandfather. He died…
- Leonid BrezhnevLeonid Ilyich Brezhnev died on the 10th of November 1982, and within days, leaders from Cuba, Nicaragua, Mozambique, Afghanistan, and India had declared national mourning. He was buried in his Marshal's uniform, medals pinned to his chest,…
- Konstantin ChernenkoKonstantin Ustinovich Chernenko became the de jure leader of the Soviet Union on the 13th of February 1984, and by the time he died just over thirteen months later, Soviet newspapers ran his obituary on page two while page one celebrated…
- Aleksandr SolzhenitsynOn the 9th of May 1945, all of Moscow erupted in fireworks and searchlights to mark Germany's surrender. Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn watched those heavens from a cell in the Lubyanka prison. He had been arrested three months earlier,…
- Vladimir MayakovskyVladimir Mayakovsky shot himself through the heart on the 14th of April 1930, and then the suspicions began. The bullet pulled from his body did not match the model of his pistol. Neighbors reported hearing two shots, not one. Ten days…
- Alexei NavalnyAlexei Navalny boarded a flight from Tomsk to Moscow on the 20th of August 2020 having consumed, by his spokeswoman's account, nothing that morning but a cup of tea purchased at the airport. Within minutes he was screaming aboard the…
- Dmitry MedvedevDmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev was born on the 14th of September 1965 in Leningrad, in what was then the Soviet Union. He grew up in a 40-square-metre apartment on Bela Kun Street in the Kupchino district, the only child of a chemical…
- Leonid AndreyevLeonid Andreyev sold a quarter-million copies of his debut short-story collection in 1901, making him an overnight literary star in Russia. He wrote 25 plays, published explosive fiction that caused public commotion, and became a household…
- Ukrainians in RussiaUkrainians in Russia have never been a marginal presence. As recently as 2015, more than 5,864,000 people identified as Ukrainian or held Ukrainian citizenship while living inside the Russian Federation, placing them among the eight…
- Oleg SalenkoOleg Anatolyevich Salenko entered the world on the 25th of October 1969 in Leningrad, Russian SFSR. His father was Ukrainian and his mother was Russian. This dual heritage would later define his complex international career choices. He…
- Leonid GaidaiLeonid Gaidai graduated from school on the 20th of June 1941. Two days later, the Great Patriotic War began. That timing shaped everything that followed: the injuries, the years in military hospitals, the long road into filmmaking, and…
- Vladimir Solovyov (philosopher)Vladimir Solovyov was born in Moscow in 1853, the second son of one of Russia's most prominent historians, yet he spent his final days as what witnesses described as a homeless pauper, dying at a borrowed estate. Between those two points…