- Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a Russian-American author. Nabokov wrote his first literary works in Russian, but rose to international prominence as a masterly prose English stylist for the novels he composed in the United States. He is also noted for having made significant contributions to lepidoptery and creating a number of chess problems. Nabokov's "Lolita" (1955) is frequently cited as his most important novel, …
- Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian composer, considered by many in both the West and his native land to be the most influential composer of 20th century music. He was a quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian who was named by "Time" magazine as one of the most influential people of the century. In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he also achieved fame as a pianist and a conductor, often at the premieres of his works.
- Alexander Tcherepnin
Alexander Nikolayevich Tcherepnin was a Russian-born composer and pianist. His father, Nikolay Tcherepnin, (pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov) and his son, Ivan Tcherepnin, (a member of the Harvard University faculty) were also composers. His son, Serge, was involved in the roots of electronic music and instruments. His mother (née Benois) was a niece of Alexandre Benois. His early works were fairly original and some of his pieces have enduring popularity.
- Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall (Russian: Марк Захарович Шага́л; Belarusian: Мойша Захаравіч Шагалаў "Mojša Zacharavič Šahałaŭ") (7 July 1887 - 28 March 1985) was a French painter of Russian-Jewish origin who was born in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire. Among the celebrated painters of the 20th century, he is associated with the modern movements after impressionism.
- Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein (born June 22, 1933) is currently the senior U.S. Senator from California, having held office as a Senator since 1992. She is a member of the Democratic Party. Senator Feinstein holds a number of "firsts"; she is San Francisco's first and only female mayor, the first woman to serve in the Senate from California, one of two first female Jewish senators, and the first woman to chair the Rules and Administration committee of that body.
- Vladimir Horowitz
Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz (1 October 1903 - 5 November 1989) was a Russian-American classical pianist. In his prime, he was considered one of the most distinguished pianists of any age. His technique, use of tone color and the excitement of his playing were legendary. Though sometimes criticized for being overly mannered and showy, he has a huge and passionate following and is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century.
- Anna Kournikova
Anna Sergeyevna Kournikova (Russian: Анна Сергеевна Курникова, "Anna Sergeevna Kurnikova;" born June 7, 1981) is a retired Russian professional tennis player and model. Although she never won a major singles tournament, she became one of the best known tennis players worldwide. At the peak of her fame, fans looking for images of Kournikova made her name (or misspellings of it) one of the most common search strings on Google.
- Mikhail Baryshnikov
Mikhail Nikolaevitch Baryshnikov (b January 27, 1948) is a Russian dancer, choreographer, and actor. He is often called the world's greatest living male ballet dancer. Critic Clive Barnes once called him "the most perfect dancer I have ever seen"
- Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942) is an American actor. He is best known for his performances as the tough, wisecracking space pilot Han Solo in the "Star Wars" film series, and the adventurous archaeologist/action hero in the Indiana Jones film series. Ford has also been the star of many high-grossing hits Hollywood blockbusters such as "Air Force One" and "The Fugitive", which have distanced him from his famous Star Wars and Indiana Jones roles.
- Nicolas Slonimsky
Nicolas Slonimsky was a Russian-American composer, conductor, music critic, musician and author. He was born Nikolai Leonidovich Slonimsky in St Petersburg. His maternal aunt, Isabelle Vengerova, was his first piano teacher. He emigrated to the United States in 1923. Slonimsky was a great champion of contemporary music.
- Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin (born August 21, 1973 in Moscow, Russia) is an American entrepreneur who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin is currently the President of Technology at Google and has a net worth estimated at $16.6 billion as of march 9, 2007, making him the 26th richest person in the world together with Larry Page and the 9th richest person in the United States. He is also the 4th youngest billionaire in the world.
- Nikolai Rezanov
Nikolay Petrovich Rezanov was a Russian nobleman and statesman who promoted the project of Russian colonisation of Alaska and California. One of the ten barons of Russia, he was the first Russian ambassador to Japan (1804), and instigated the first attempt of Russia to circumnavigate the globe (1803), commanding the expedition himself as far as Kamchatka. He was also the author of a lexicon of the Japanese language and of several other works, …
- Paul Klebnikov
Paul Klebnikov (June 31963 - July 92004) was an American journalist of Russian descent. His murder in Moscow was seen as a blow against investigative journalism in Russia.
- Igor Sikorsky
Igor Ivanovich (or Ihor Ivanovych) Sikorsky (25 May, 1889 - 26 October, 1972) was a pioneer of aviation who designed the first four-engine fixed-wing aircraft and the first successful helicopter of the most common configuration (single main rotor tail rotor).
- Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff ("Sergej Vasilevič Rakhmaninov", 1 April, 1873 (N.S.) or 20 March 1873 (O.S.) - 28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor, one of the last great champions of the Romantic style of European classical music. ("Sergei Rachmaninoff" was the spelling the composer himself used while living in the West throughout the latter half of his life. However, transliterations of his name include "Sergey" or "Serge", …
- Mstislav Rostropovich
Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich KBE, (March 27 1927 - April 27 2007), known to close friends as “Slava”, was a cellist and conductor. He was married to the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. He was one of the greatest cellists of the twentieth century.
- Anna Tsuchiya
is a Japanese singer, lyricist, model, and actress. She was born to a Russian-American father and Japanese mother.
- Milla Jovovich
Milla Jovovich /Milica Jovović, Ukrainian: Мілла Йовович/Mіlla Jovovič (Born Milica Nataša Jovović on December 17, 1975)) is an Ukrainian-born supermodel, actress, musician, singer, and fashion designer. Jovovich has been described by Paul W.S. Anderson, director of her film "Resident Evil", …
- Alexandr Baranov
Alexandr Andreevich Baranov, sometimes spelled Aleksander or Alexander and Baranof, was born in 1746 in Kargopol, in the Arkhangelsk province of Russia. Alexandr ran away from home at the age of fifteen. He became a successful merchant in Irkutsk, Siberia. He was lured to Russian Alaska, by the growing fur trade there. He became a successful trader there and established and managed trading posts in the Kodiak Island region.
- Vladimir Zworykin
Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin (July 30, 1889 - July 29, 1982) was a Russian-American inventor, engineer, and pioneer of television technology. Zworykin invented a television transmitting and receiving system employing cathode ray tubes. He was instrumental in the practical development of television from the early thirties, including charge storage-type tubes, infrared image tubes and the electron microscope. Several biographers have called him the "true" inventor of television, …
- Yul Brynner
Yul Brynner (July 11, 1920 - October 10, 1985) was a Russian-born Broadway and Hollywood actor. He appeared in many movies and stage productions in the United States. He is best known for his portrayal of the Siamese king in the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical "The King and I" on the stage and on the screen, as well as Rameses II in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille film "The Ten Commandments" and as Chris Adams in "The Magnificent Seven".
- Grigory Shelikhov
Grigory Ivanovich Shelikhov) was a Russian seafarer and merchant born in Rylsk. Shelikhov organized commercial trips of the merchant ships to the Kuril Islands and the Aleutian Islands starting from 1775. In 1783–1786, he led the expedition to the shores of Russian America, during which they founded first Russian settlements in North America (which Shelikhov supervised starting from 1790). Shelikhov was one of the founders of the Russian-American Company, …
- Eugene Volokh
Eugene Volokh (born Yevgeniy Volokh,, February 29, 1968) is an American legal commentator and law professor at the UCLA School of Law (located on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles). He publishes the widely-read weblog "The Volokh Conspiracy" and is commonly cited in the American media.
- Nikolai Sokoloff
Nikolai Sokoloff (1886-1965), was a Russian-American conductor and violinist. He was born in Kiev and studied at Yale. He started his career as a violinist. From 1916 to 1917 he was musical director of the San Francisco People's Philharmonic Orchestra, where he insisted on including women in his orchestra and paying them the same as men. He became the first musical director of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1918 where he remained until 1932.
- Pitirim Sorokin
Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin was a Russian-American sociologist. Academic and political activist in Russia, he immigrated from Russia to the United States in 1923. He founded the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. Like C. W. Mills, he was a vocal opponent of Talcott Parsons' theories. He is best known for his contributions to the social cycle theory.
- Nicole Scherzinger
Nicole Elikolani Prescovia Scherzinger (also known as Nicole Kea) (born June 29, 1978), is an American singer, dancer, songwriter and occasional actress best known for her work as the lead vocalist for the Pussycat Dolls.
- Leonard Blavatnik
Len Blavatnik (born 1957) is an American industrialist, born in Russia, and currently living in New York and London. He emigrated with his family from Russia to the U.S. in 1978, and received a masters in computer science from Columbia University and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School in 1989. In the West, he is known as Len Blavatnik. In 1986 he founded Access Industries, a New York-based international industrial group, …
- Eduard Limonov
Eduard Limonov (real name Eduard Veniaminovich Savenko, ; born February 22, 1943) is a Russian nationalist writer and political dissident, and is the founder and leader of Russia's unregistered National Bolshevik Party. He was convicted in 2002, despite the protests of several State Duma members, for illegally purchasing weapons, and served about 2 years in jail.
- Patricia Polacco
Patricia Polacco (b. July 11 1944, Lansing, Michigan) is the author and illustrator of numerous picture books for children. Although she struggled in school and was unable to read until age 14 due to dyslexia, she found relief by expressing herself through art. Polacco endured teasing and hid her disability until a schoolteacher recognized that she could not read and began to help her. "Thank you, Mr. Falker" is Polacco's retelling of this encounter and its outcome.
- James Franco
James Edward Franco (born April 19 1978) is an American actor, director, screenwriter, film producer, and artist. He began acting during the late 1990s, appearing on the series "Freaks and Geeks" and starring in several teen films. He won a Golden Globe Award for playing the title role in the made-for-television film "James Dean", and has become known among audiences for his role as Harry Osborn in the Spider-Man films.
- Alexander Godunov
Aleksandr Borisovich Godunov (Russian: Александр Борисович Годунов, 28 November, 1949, Sakhalin, USSR — 18 May, 1995, Los Angeles, California) was a Russian ballet dancer and actor, whose defection caused a diplomatic incident between the USA and the USSR. He joined the Bolshoi Ballet in 1971 and rose to become premier dancer before defecting to the USA in 1979. After briefly dancing with the American Ballet Theatre, …
- Nina Khrushcheva
Dr. Nina L. Khrushcheva is a Russian American professor of media and culture in the graduate program of international affairs at The New School, a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute, and from 2002 to 2004 was adjunct assistant professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
- Anton Yelchin
Anton Yelchin (born March 11, 1989) is an American film and television actor. He began performing in the late 1990s, appearing in several television roles, as well as the Hollywood films "Along Came a Spider" and "Hearts in Atlantis". More recently, Yelchin appeared on the television series "Huff" and starred in the films "House of D" and "Alpha Dog".
- Galina Vishnevskaya
Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya is a Russian soprano opera singer and recitalist who was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1966. Vishnevskaya was born in Leningrad. She made her professional stage debut in 1944 singing operetta. After a year studying with Vera Nikolayeva, she won a competition held by the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (with Rachmaninoff's song "O, Do Not Grieve" and Verdi's aria "O patria mia" from "Aida") in 1952.
- Walter Winchell
Walter Winchell (April 7 1897 - February 20, 1972), an American newspaper and radio commentator, invented the gossip column at the "New York Evening Graphic". He broke the journalistic taboo against exposing the private lives of public figures, permanently altering the shape of journalism and celebrity.
- Wassily Leontief
Wassily Wassilyovitch Leontief (August 5, 1905, Munich, Germany - February 5, 1999, New York), was an economist notable for his research on how changes in one economic sector may have an effect on other sectors. Leontief won a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1973.
- Ivan Turchaninov
Ivan Vasilyevich Turchaninov, Russian Иван Васильевич Турчанинов, better known by his Americanized name of John Basil Turchin, was a Union army brigadier general in the American Civil War. Ivan Turchaninov was born near the Don River in Russia and attended the Imperial Military School in St. Petersburg in 1841.
- Larisa Oleynik
Larisa Romanovna Oleynik (born June 7, 1981) is an American actress. She came to fame in the mid 1990s, after starring in the title role of the popular television series, "The Secret World of Alex Mack", and has also appeared in theatrical films, including 1999's "10 Things I Hate about You". Throughout the 2000s, she has mostly appeared in lower-budget films.
- Michael Chekhov
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Chekhov (Russian: Михаил Александрович Чехов, August 29 1891 in Moscow - September 30 1955 in Beverly Hills, California) was an Academy Award-nominated Russian-American actor, director, author, and developer of his own acting technique used by actors such as Clint Eastwood, Marilyn Monroe, Yul Brynner, and Robert Stack.
- Alexander Kerensky
Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky (June 11, 1970) was a Russian revolutionary leader who was instrumental in toppling the Russian monarchy. He served as the second Prime Minister of the Russian Provisional Government until Vladimir Lenin seized power following the October Revolution.