The Best of Russian Life: Biographies

We culled through 15 years of Russian Life to select readers’ and editors’ favorite stories and biographies for inclusion in a special two volume collection. Totalling over 1100 pages, these two volumes encompass some of the best writing we have published over the last two decades, and include the most timeless stories and biographies – those that can be read again and again.

 

This is Volume II: Biographies. It includes 78 timeless profiles of Russians who have shaped the country’s history and culture, from artists and poets, to entrepreneurs, rulers, spies and favorites, including: Rudolph Abel, Ivan Aivazovsky, Anna Akhmatova. Isaac Babel, Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, Alexander Blok, Karl Bryullov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Catherine II, Anton Chekhov, Sasha Chyorny, Morris and Lona Cohen, Yekaterina Dashkova, False Dmitry I, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Yekaterina Dzhugashvili, Sergei Eisenstein, Tsarina Elizabeth I, Nikolai Ge, Vladimir Gilyarovsky, Nikolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky, Alexander Griboyedov, Maria Hamilton, Fazil Iskander, Ivan the Terrible, Alexander Kolchak, Pavel Korin, Vladimir Korolenko, Ivan Kruzenshtern, Yuri Kuklyachov, Ivan Kulibin, Boris Kustodiev, Mikhail Kutuzov, Lev Landau, Mikhail Lermontov, Alexei Losev, Samuil Marshak, Ilya Mechnikov, Father Alexander Men, Alexander Menshikov, Mikhail Nesterov, Bulat Okudzhava, Tsar Paul I, Victor Pelevin, Andrei Platonov, Georgy Plekhanov, Grigory Potemkin, Sergei Prokofiev, Alexander Pushkin, Alexander Radishchev, Marina Raskova, Nikolai Roerich, Andrei Sakharov, Boris Savinkov, Pyotr Semyonov-Tyanshansky, St. Sergius of Radonezh, Fyodor Shalyapin, Dmitry Shostakovich, Alexander Smirdin, Pyotr Stolypin, Igor Stravinsky, Alexander Suvorov, Peter Tchaikovsky, Valentina Tereshkova, Patriarch Tikhon, Fyodor Tolstoy, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Tyutchev, Galina Ulanova, Fyodor Volkov, Maximilian Voloshin, Vladimir Vysotsky, Sergei Yursky, Nikolai Zabolotsky.