- Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, Hero of the Soviet Union, was a Soviet cosmonaut. On 12 April 1961, he became the first man in space and the first to orbit the Earth. He also received many medals from his home country for his pioneering tour in space.
- Joseph Stalin
Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili ("Ioseb Besarionis Dze Jughashvili";, "Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili") (March 5 1953), better known by his adopted name, Joseph Stalin (alternatively transliterated Josef Stalin), was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. Despite his formal position being originally without significant influence, …
- Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev ; surname more accurately romanized as Khrushchyov ; – September 11, 1971) was the chief director of the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin. He was First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. He was removed from power by his party colleagues in 1964 and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev.
- Valentina Tereshkova
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (born 6 March 1937), is a retired Soviet cosmonaut and was the first woman to fly in space, aboard Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. She was born in Bolshoye Maslennikovo, a small village in the Yaroslavl Oblast. After school she worked in a coat factory, and then studied engineering. She also trained in parachuting at the local Aeroclub, making her first jump at age 22 on 21 May 1959.
- Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev - November 10, 1982) was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (and thus de facto ruler of the USSR) from 1964 to 1982, serving in that position longer than anyone other than Joseph Stalin. He was twice Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (head of state), from 1960 to 1964 and from 1977 to 1982.
- Georgy Zhukov
Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, GCB (June 18, 1974) was a Soviet military commander who, in the course of World War II, led the Red Army to liberate the Soviet Union from the Axis Powers' occupation, to advance through much of Eastern Europe, and to conquer Germany's capital, Berlin.
- Marina Raskova
Marina Mikhailovna Raskova (March 28, 1912-January 4, 1943) was a famous Russian navigator, often referred to as the "Russian Amelia Earhart". She later became one of over 800,000 women in the military service in a huge way by founding three female air regiments which would eventually fly over 30,000 sorties in World War II. Raskova became a famous aviator as both a pilot and a navigator for Russia in the 1930s.
- Andrian Nikolayev
Andrian Grigoryevich Nikolayev,. On both, he set new endurance records for the longest time a human being had remained in orbit. He also served as backup for the Vostok 2 and Soyuz 8 missions. On January 22, 1969, Nikolayev survived an assassination attempt on Leonid Brezhnev, undertaken by Soviet Army officer Viktor Ilyin. He left the cosmonaut corps on January 26, 1982. Nikolayev was also the first person to make a television broadcast from space, in August 1962.
- Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya (September 13, 1923 in the village of Osino-Gay, Gavrilovsky District, Tambov Oblast - November 29, 1941) was a Soviet partisan, Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously).
- Arnold Meri
Arnold Meri (b. 1919) is an Estonian veteran of the Great Patriotic War and a Hero of the Soviet Union. He is the cousin of former President of Estonia, Lennart Meri. Meri voluntarily joined the Red Army in 1940. He was wounded in battle while serving as a platoon commander in north-west Russia in 1941.
- Richard Sorge
Richard Sorge (Russian: Рихард Зорге) (October 4, 1895 - November 7, 1944) is considered to have been one of the best Soviet spies in Japan before and during World War II, which has gained him fame among spies, and espionage enthusiasts. His NKVD codename was "Ramsay". He was also a journalist, working in Germany and Japan.
- Svetlana Savitskaya
Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya (born August 8, 1948, in Moscow, Russia) was a Soviet female aviator and cosmonaut who flew the Soyuz T-7 in 1982, becoming the second woman in space some 19 years after Valentina Tereshkova. She is the daughter of a Soviet military commander Yevgeniy Savitskiy. While on the Salyut 7 space station on July 25, 1984, cosmonaut Savitskaya became the first woman ever to perform a space walk.
- Pavel Popovich
Pavel Romanovich Popovich was a Soviet cosmonaut of Ukrainian descent, arguably the first ethnic Ukrainian to fly in space. Popovich commanded two space flights, Vostok 4 and Soyuz 14. His call sign in these flights was Golden eagle. In 1960, he was selected as one of a group of twenty air force pilots that would train as the first cosmonauts. Vostok 4 was part the first dual space flight, with Andrian Nikolayev on Vostok 3. He retired from the space programme in 1982.
- Kliment Voroshilov
Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov, popularly known as Klim Voroshilov (December 2, 1969) was a Soviet military commander and politician. Voroshilov was born in Verkhneye, near Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk), Ukraine, under the Russian Empire. He joined the Bolshevik party in 1903. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 he was a member of the Ukrainian provisional government and Commissar for Internal Affairs.
- Konstantin Rokossovsky
Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovskiy was a Soviet military commander and Polish Defence Minister.
- Gherman Titov
Gherman Stepanovich Titov (September 11, 1935 - September 20, 2000) was a Soviet cosmonaut and the second person to orbit the Earth (the fourth person in space).
- Valery Chkalov
Valery Pavlovich Chkalov (February 2, 1904 - December 15, 1938) was a Soviet aircraft test pilot and a Hero of the Soviet Union (1938). He developed several new figures of aerobatics. In 1936 and 1937, he participated in several ultralong flights, including a 63-hour flight from Moscow, Soviet Union to Vancouver, Washington, United States "via" the North Pole on an Tupolev ANT-25 plane (June 18-20, 1937), a non-stop distance of.
- Sergei Krikalev
Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalyov is a Russian cosmonaut and veteran of six space flights. He has been dubbed by many "the last Citizen of the USSR " as in 1991–1992 he spent 311 days, 20 hours and 1 minute aboard the Mir space station whilst back on Earth the Soviet Union collapsed. Krikalyov has spent more time in space than any other human being. On August 16, 2005 at 1:44 a.m. EDT he passed the record of 748 days held by Sergei Avdeyev.
- Nikolai Berzarin
Nikolai Erastovich Berzarin was a Russian Red Army General, Hero of the Soviet Union (April 6, 1945)
- Semyon Timoshenko
Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko (Russian: Семён Константинович Тимошенко, "Semën Konstantinovič Timošenko"; - March 31, 1970) was a Soviet military commander and senior professional officer of the Red Army at the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.
- Vladimir Komarov
Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov (Russian: Владимир Михайлович Комаров; March 16, 1927 – April 24, 1967) was a Soviet cosmonaut. He was the first confirmed human to die during a space mission, on Soyuz 1, and the first Soviet cosmonaut to travel into space more than once. He was born in Moscow, USSR (now Russia). He was selected to become a cosmonaut in 1960 with the first cosmonaut group.
- Lyudmila Pavlichenko
Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko was a Soviet sniper during World War II, credited with 309 kills
- Konstantin Feoktistov
Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov (Russian: Константин Петрович Феоктистов; born February 7, 1926 in Voronezh) was a cosmonaut and space engineer. Feoktistov served in the Red Army in World War II and narrowly avoided death after being captured by the Wehrmacht. Commanded to stand at the edge of a pit, he was to be executed by firing squad along with other prisoners.
- Mariya Dolina
Mariya Ivanovna Dolina (Mariya Ivanivna Dolina, ; born December 18, 1922) was a Soviet dive bomber pilot, active primarily on the 1st Baltic Front during World War II. On August 18, 1945 Dolina was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union. Dolina was the eldest daughter of a Ukrainian peasant. In 1932, after Mariya's father lost his leg in the Russian Civil War, the family moved back to Ukraine again.
- Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser ("; Masri: جمال عبد الناصر - " also transliterated as Jamal Abd al-Naser, Jamal Abd an-Nasser and other variants; January 15 1918 - September 28 1970) was the President of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970. Nasser is seen as one of the most important political figures in recent Middle East history. Nasser was well-known for his Arab nationalist and anti-colonial foreign policy.
- Valery Bykovsky
Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky (Russian: Валерий Фёдорович Быковский; born 2 August 1934, Pavlovsky Posad) was a Soviet cosmonaut who flew three manned space mission space flights: Vostok 5, Soyuz 22, and Soyuz 31. He was also backup for Vostok 3 and Soyuz 37. Bykovsky set a new space endurance record when he spent five days in orbit aboard Vostok 5 in 1963, and although this record has been long surpassed, to this day, …
- Vladislav Volkov
Vladislav Nikolayevich Volkov (Russian: Владислав Николаевич Волков; born November 23, 1935, Moscow - June 30, 1971) was a Soviet cosmonaut who flew on the Soyuz 7 and Soyuz 11 missions. He was a member of the second crew to die during a space flight on Soyuz 11. After a normal re-entry, the capsule was opened and the crew was found dead.
- Vasily Chuikov
Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov was a lieutenant general in the Soviet Red Army during World War II, two times Hero of the Soviet Union (1944, 1945), who after the war became a Marshal of the Soviet Union. Born into a peasant family, he joined the Red Army during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and later attended the Frunze Military Academy. Chuikov served in the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in 1939 and in the Russo-Finnish War of 1940.
- Vladimir Aksyonov
Vladimir Viktorovich Aksyonov (born in Giblitsy, Kazimov Rayon, Ryazan Oblast, Russian SFSR on February 1, 1935) is a Soviet cosmonaut, married with two children. He graduated from institute of Engineering with diploma and graduated from Air Force Institute and graduated from polytechnical Institute. He was a candidate technical science. Selected as cosmonaut on March 3, 1973. Vladimir Aksyonov was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union on two occasions.
- Alexander Matrosov
Alexander Matveyevich Matrosov was a famous Soviet infantry soldier during World War II. On 23 February 1943, in the battle for the village of Chernushki near Pskov, Matrosov threw himself onto a German pill-box, blocking the machine-gun with his own body, to allow his unit to advance. For his self-sacrifice in battle, Matrosov was posthumously awarded the distinction Hero of the Soviet Union.
- Yakov Pavlov
Yakov Fedotovich Pavlov was a Hero of the Soviet Union (June 27, 1945) for his heroism during the Battle of Stalingrad. Born in 1917 in Novgorod, Pavlov joined the Red Army in 1938. During the Great Patriotic War, he fought on the South-West, Stalingrad, 3rd Ukrainian and 2nd Belorussian fronts. Pavlov was a commander of a machine gun unit, an artilleryman, and a commander of a reconnaissance unit with the rank of Senior Sergeant.
- Semyon Budyonny
Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny (also spelled Budennii, Budenny, Budyenny etc, Russian: Семён Михайлович Будённый) (October 26, 1973) was a Soviet military commander and an ally of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Budyonny was born into a poor peasant family in the Terek Cossack region of southern Russia. He worked as a farm laborer until 1903, when he was drafted into the army of the Russian Empire, …
- Georgi Beregovoi
Georgi Timofeyevich Beregovoi was a Soviet cosmonaut of Ukrainian descent. He flew on a single space mission, Soyuz 3. He joined the Soviet air force in 1941, and was soon assigned to a ground-attack unit flying the Ilyushin Il-2 "Shturmovik". He flew some 185 combat sorties during the course of World War II and rose quickly through the ranks, finishing the war as a Captain and Squadron Commander. He was decorated as Hero of the Soviet Union.
- Vladimir Dzhanibekov
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Dzhanibekov (Russian: Владимир Александрович Джанибеков; born May 13, 1942) was a cosmonaut who made five flights. He was born in the remote area of Iskandar in the Tashkent region, Uzbekistan. He changed his surname from Krysin when he married to honor his wife's family belonged to a noble kin of the descendants of the medieval Uzbek khan Dzhanibek. His family moved to Tashkent soon after his birth.
- Viktor Gorbatko
Viktor Vassilyevich Gorbatko (Russian: Виктор Васильевич Горбатко; born December 3, 1934 in Ventsy-Zarya) was a Soviet cosmonaut who flew on the Soyuz 7, Soyuz 24, and Soyuz 37 missions. After leaving the space program in 1982 he taught at the Air Force Engineering Academy in Moscow.
- Musa Manarov
Musa Khiramanovich Manarov was born in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR on March 22, 1951. He was a colonel at the Russian Air Force and graduated from Moscow Aviation Institute with an engineering diploma in 1974. Musa was selected as a cosmonaut on December 1, 1978. He is currently married with two children. From December 21, 1987 - December 21, 1988 he flew as flight engineer on Soyuz TM-4. The duration was 365 days 22 hours 38 minutes.
- Pyotr Klimuk
Pyotr Ilyich Klimuk (Belarusian: Пётр Ільі́ч Кліму́к; Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Климу́к; born July 10, 1942 in Komarovka, USSR (now in Belarus) was a Soviet cosmonaut who made three flights into space. Kliumuk attended the Leninski Komsomol Chernigov High Aviation School and entered the Soviet Air Force in 1964. The following year, he was selected to join the space programme. His first flight was a long test flight on Soyuz 13 in 1973.
- Boris Gromov
Boris Vsevolodovich Gromov, (born November 7, 1943 in Saratov, Russia), prominent military and political figure, Colonel-General. He graduated from a Suvorov military cadet school, the Leningrad Military Commanders School and later from the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, as well as the General Staff Academy. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Gromov did three tours of duty (1980-1982, 1985-1986, 1987-1989), …
- Vladimir Titov
Vladimir Georgiyevich Titov, Colonel, Russian Air Force, Ret., and former Russian cosmonaut was born January 1, 1947, in Sretensk, in the Chita Region of Russia. He is married to the former Alexandra Kozlova of Ivanovo Region, Russia. They have two children.
- Valentina Grizodubova
Valentina Stepanovna Grizodubova (May 10 1909 in Kharkov – April 28 1993 in Moscow) was a one of the first female pilots in the Soviet Union and was awarded titles Hero of the Soviet Union and Hero of Socialist Labour. On September 24-25, 1938 as the commander of the crew she completed the flight of the "Rodina" (Russian for "Motherland"), the ANT-37 airplane, setting an international women's record for a straight-line distance flight.