Episodes

  • Prominent Russians: Boris Chirkov.

    Prominent Russians: Boris Chirkov.
    Jul 25 2025
    Prominent Russians: Boris Chirkov.
    The last century brought many remarkable actors, but few were as popular as Boris Chirkov. He was the most admired film celebrity in the Soviet Union during the 1930s and 1940s. Making his cinematic debut in 1927, he went on to play close to 40 roles. Chirkov first attained fame for the role of Maxim, a revolutionary worker from St. Petersburg, in “The Maxim Trilogy,” directed by Grigory Kozintsev. It took Chirkov six years to play the lead in the movie. He even had to leave the theater for a time as filming made it impossible for him to take part in rehearsals.
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    6 mins
  • Prominent Russians: Patriarch Kirill.

    Prominent Russians: Patriarch Kirill.
    Jul 24 2025
    Prominent Russians: Patriarch Kirill.
    Kirill I (secular name Vladimir Gundyaev) is the acting Patriarch of Moscow and all of Russia. Russians’ attitudes towards him are ambiguous: the Orthodox Church has prospered under his leadership, though many people say this prosperity is based on corruption.
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    6 mins
  • Prominent Russians: Sergey Eisenstein.

    Prominent Russians: Sergey Eisenstein.
    Jul 23 2025
    Prominent Russians: Sergey Eisenstein.
    A film director, scriptwriter and theorist and the “father of montage cinema,” Sergey Mikhailovich Eisenstein was one of the world’s most famous and prestigious film directors whose theories still remain the subject of great interest and debate today and whose works are still regarded as among the most significant in cinema history.
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    10 mins
  • Prominent Russians: Anna Pavlova.

    Prominent Russians: Anna Pavlova.
    Jul 23 2025
    Prominent Russians: Anna Pavlova.
    A fragile girl who was at first denied entry to the Russian Imperial Ballet School due to the delicacy of her constitution, Anna Pavlova became one of the most famous classical ballet dancers in history and was a mystery both during her lifetime and after her death.
    Her very birth was the first in a long line of myths connected with Anna Pavlova and her personality. Little Anna was born two months premature and as a newborn she was wrapped in soft wool instead of napkins. She was later quoted as saying it was not wool, but swan down. If this is true, it would prove to be quite symbolic for the ballet dancer whose signature piece would later become the role of the dying swan in Swan Lake.
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    7 mins
  • Prominent Russians: Maya Plisetskaya.

    Prominent Russians: Maya Plisetskaya.
    Jul 22 2025
    Prominent Russians: Maya Plisetskaya.
    Plisetskaya is renowned as one of the world's greatest and most charismatic ballerinas. Her slender physique combined with outstanding technique and effervescent personality have enabled her to steal the hearts of Indira Gandhi, Robert Kennedy and Mao Zedong alike. Plisetskaya has revolutionised the world of ballet once and for all, becoming a role model for millions of aspiring artists worldwide.
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    6 mins
  • Prominent Russians: Aleksandr Borodin.

    Prominent Russians: Aleksandr Borodin.
    Jul 18 2025
    Prominent Russians: Aleksandr Borodin.Aleksandr Porfiryevich Borodin was a Russian composer, chemist and public activist. His best-known work is the opera “Prince Igor” (“Knyaz Igor”). Borodin was born in St. Petersburg from an affair between the 62-year-old Georgian prince Luka Gedianov (or Gedianishvili) and a St. Petersburg commoner, Avdotya Antonova. He was registered as a son of the prince’s serfs Porfiriy and Tatyana Borodins. He remained his father’s serf until 1840, when the prince, just before his death, freed the seven-year-old boy. His real mother was married off to a military medic.
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    8 mins
  • Prominent Russians: Nicholas II.

    Prominent Russians: Nicholas II.
    Jul 18 2025
    Prominent Russians: Nicholas II.Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia. Born 6 May 1868, Nicholas was the oldest son of Tsar Alexander III and his wife Maria Feodorovna. His parents took particular trouble over his education. Nicholas was taught by outstanding Russian academics at home, he knew several languages and had a wide knowledge of history, and he also quickly grasped military science. His father personally guided his education, which was strictly based on religion. Nicholas ascended the throne at age 26 after the unexpected death of his father in 1894. Although a well educated man, he felt unprepared for the hard task as the ruler of the Russian empire, he was not properly prepared to officiate as a monarch and was not fully introduced to top affairs of the state. Nicholas's reign was marked by tragedy from the very beginning. A national celebration to honor the formal coronation of the new tsar turned into a disaster. Overcrowding resulted in a stampede and hundreds of people were crushed to death.
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    6 mins
  • Prominent Russians: Rikhard Zorge.

    Prominent Russians: Rikhard Zorge.
    Jul 18 2025
    Prominent Russians: Rikhard Zorge.
    Rikhard Zorge was a Soviet spy in Japan, and was the first to warn Stalin about Hitler’s plan to attack the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Later that year he also informed the USSR that Japan had no intention to go to war with the Soviet Union. This allowed the USSR to divert military divisions from its eastern borders to fight Nazis in the western front, which ultimately determined the course of World War II. Despite his immense contributions, Stalin’s own James Bond went unrecognized by the Soviet Union for 20 years after his death.
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    10 mins