Russian Personalities

People well-known in art, sport, film, fashion

Category Archive: Business

Nikolai Vtorov – the richest man of Russian history

Nikolai Vtorov – the richest man of Russian history

Nikolai Vtorov – the richest man of Russian history


Nikolai Vtorov was the richest man in the Russian Empire. He was called Russian Morgan and Siberian American. The annual profit of the Vtorov concern before the revolution reached $ 660 million based on the exchange rate in 2000.
Alexander Fyodorovich Vtorov, Nikolai’s father, came from Kostroma. At the age of 21 he decided to go into business. To do this, he went to Irkutsk. Trade opportunities were not the most favorable there (there was not yet Trans-Siberian Railway). He began to attend the fair in Verkhneudinsk and started logistics of goods. Soon Vtorov opened his own shop – the famous Vtorovsky Passage in Irkutsk. Soon his shops were opened in 13 cities.
In 1897 Alexander Vtorov and his family moved to Moscow. At that time Nikolai Vtorov was already 31 years old (he was born on April 15, 1866).
In 1900 Nikolai entered into an organized partnership on an equal footing A.F. Vtorov. His father died in 1911. Nikolai got eight million. He was engaged in tea and textiles, organized the Association of the export and domestic trade, joined the board of large banks. Also he was engaged in lending plants, shipping companies and railways. His business developed rapidly.
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Maxim Cherniavsky – Bachelor participant

Maxim Cherniavsky

Businessman Maxim Cherniavsky was eligible bachelor


The second season of the TV show Bachelor on TNT channel ended on May 25, 2014. The protagonist of the show, businessman Maxim Cherniavsky, chose 23-year-old Maria Drigola. Maxim presented Maria with beautiful flowers and said, “I want to breathe with you. I want you to be always with me! .. I want to confess that I really love you.”
At the last moment the second finalist, Alena Pavlova, was refused. “Forgive me, but I love Maria,” – he said. It was a very difficult decision for the young man. Alena could not hold back tears, “I love him and I wanted to have a real family”.
I want to recall that the first heroes of the show The Bachelor Evgeniy Levchenko and Olesya Ermakova broke up after the project.
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Maria Sharapova – successful tennis player

maria sharapova

Maria Sharapova – successful tennis player


Maria Sharapova is a Russian professional tennis player, Honored Master of Sports, five-time Grand Slam winner, Olympic silver medalist in London 2012.
Pretty girl was born on April 19, 1987 in Nyagan. The family of the future tennis player moved there from Gomel because of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. Maria started playing tennis at the age of 4. Yevgeny Kafelnikov (great Russian tennis player) presented little Masha with her first tennis racket.
6-year-old Sharapova (in October 1993) had a chance to play with Martina Navratilova, when she gave tennis lessons in Moscow. Navratilova noticed talented girl and strongly advised her father to send Masha to Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, located in Florida. So in 1994, her family moved to Florida.
Sharapova’s career started in 2001. ITWA (International Tennis Writers Association) named Maria the best tennis player in 2004. Forbes magazine included her in the list of 100 most influential people in the world and she was the only Russian woman in it.
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Foreign billionaires born in the USSR

Global Russians

Foreign billionaires born in the USSR

Global Russians, who were born in the USSR and became billionaires abroad.
111 Russians, 9 Ukrainians, several representatives of Kazakhstan and other former Soviet countries, including the first-ever holder of $ 1 billion from Lithuania were included in Forbes 2014 Billionaires List.
In the list you can find a lot of names of businessmen who were born in the Soviet Union or in the families of Russian immigrants, but built or inherited large business already abroad.
Here are nine bright Global Russians.
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Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky – freed

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky – freed

On December 20, 2013 Mikhail Khodorkovsky was released after spending more than 10 years in prison. He served a 13-year sentence in a penal colony in Segezha (Karelia). Immediately after the liberation businessman flew to Germany. Khodorkovsky suddenly turned from prisoner to a free man. On December 19, Vladimir Putin said that the ex-Yukos CEO wrote a petition for clemency on family grounds. The next day the request was granted.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky (born on June 26, 1963) is a well-known person, a Russian businessman, an oligarch, a philanthropist, a political prisoner.
Mikhail was born into the family of Boris and Marina Khodorkovsky. Both mother and father were chemical engineers, all their life they worked at the Moscow plant. The family lived modestly, his father worked part-time. Mikhail lived with his parents in a two room apartment in Moscow. At school Khodorkovsky was fond of chemistry and mathematics.
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Pavel Durov, Vkontakte founder

Pavel Durov

Pavel Durov, Vkontakte founder


Pavel Durov is a Russian entrepreneur, programmer, dollar billionaire. He is one of the founders of the social networking site Vkontakte (VK), the cross-platform messenger Telegram and other projects. From 2006 to 2014 Pavel was CEO of VKontakte. In the student years, he was the winner of scholarships of the President of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Russian Federation, a three-time laureate of the Potaninsky Scholarship.
Handsome tech prodigy looks a bit like Keanu Reeves’s character, Neo. The Western press often refers to him as Russian Mark Zuckerberg.
The boy was born on October 10, 1984 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). He spent part of his childhood in Turin, Italy, because his father Valery (who holds a Ph. D. in philology) worked there. Pavel’s elder brother Nikolai won medals in international math and programming competitions.
You know, Durov attended an Italian elementary school, and after returning to Russia entered the Academy Gymnasium in St. Petersburg. As a student Durov created his first social network, a forum for teachers and students.
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Eugene Kaspersky – computer crime fighter

Kaspersky - computer crime fighter

Kaspersky – computer crime fighter

Eugene Kaspersky is a Russian programmer, cybersecurity mogul. He is a co-founder, a leading developer and the largest shareholder of Kaspersky Lab. In 2007 he became a CEO of the company.
Eugene was born on October 4, 1965 in Novorossiysk, USSR. He was the only child in the family. His father worked as an engineer-designer of cement plants, and his mother was a historian-archivist.
In 1987 Kaspersky graduated from the Institute of Cryptography, Telecommunications and Computer Science, which was co-sponsored by the Russian Ministry of Defence and the KGB. He worked at a multi-discipline scientific research institute of the Ministry of Defence until 1991.
In October 1989, when the Cascade 1704 virus was detected on his computer, Eugene began studying the phenomenon of computer viruses.
Kaspersky joined the KAMI Information Technologies Center in 1991, where he and his associates developed the AVP anti-virus product. In 1997 Kaspersky co-founded Kaspersky Lab.
To date, Kaspersky is one of the world’s leading experts in the field of virus protection. He is the author of numerous articles and reviews on computer virology, speaks regularly at security seminars and conferences in Russia and abroad.
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