Mikhail Gorbachev is a statesman and public figure of Russia of the 20th century who entered the political world during the Soviet era. You know, Gorbachev became the first and only president of the USSR, the results of his activities entered into Russian history, and also became important factors in the politics of the rest of the world. Perestroika led to a change in life in Russia and the political situation in the world. The role of Gorbachev in the country’s life is ambiguous – some believe that the politician brought more benefit to the people than harm, while others believe that the politician became the cause of all the troubles of modern Russia after the collapse of the USSR.
Mikhail Sergeyevich was born on March 2, 1931 in the Stavropol village Privolnoye. The parents of the future president, Sergei Andreevich and Maria Panteleyevna, were peasants, so his childhood was without wealth and luxury. In the early years, the boy had to go through the German occupation of Stavropol, which left an imprint on the character and political position of the young man in the future.
More »

Boris Yeltsin was a statesman who went down in history as the first president of Russia, and also as a radical reformer of the country.
The boy was born on February 1, 1931 in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) into a simple working-class family. His father Nikolai Ignatievich was engaged in construction, and mother Claudia Vasilyevna was a dressmaker. Soon after the birth of Boris his father was repressed, the boy along with his mother and brother Mikhail lived in Berezniki, Perm Region.
At school the future president studied well and was a class activist. After school Boris became a student at the Ural Polytechnic Institute.
Because of the trauma Boris didn’t have two fingers, so he was not called to serve in the army. But this did not prevent him to play volleyball, became Master of Sports and play for the national team of Yekaterinburg. After the university, Yeltsin worked as a joiner, painter, concrete worker, carpenter, mason, glazier, plasterer and crane operator. By the mid-sixties he had already headed the Sverdlovsk house-building plant. In those same years Boris Nikolayevich became a delegate to the city conference of the Communist Party, then first secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU. And by the beginning of the 1980s Boris became a member of the Central Committee of the Party.
More »

Lavrentiy Beria is one of the most infamous politicians of the 20th century, whose activities are still widely discussed in modern society. He was an extremely controversial personality in the history of the USSR and went through a long political path full of repressions and endless crimes. The head of the NKVD was a cunning and insidious politician. The destinies of entire peoples depended on his decisions.
He worked under the auspices of the then acting head of the USSR, Josef Stalin. You know, after Stalin’s death he was going to rule the country, but in the struggle for power he lost to Nikita Khrushchev and, by decision of the court, was executed as a traitor to the Motherland.
Lavrentiy Pavlovich was born on March 29, 1899 in a village in Abkhazia into the family of poor peasants. He was the third and only healthy child in the family – the elder brother of the future politician died of illness at the age of two, and the sister suffered a serious illness and became deaf and dumb. From the very childhood the boy showed a great interest in education, which was not typical for peasant children. At the same time, parents decided to give the son a chance to become educated. They had to sell half of their house to pay for the boy’s education in the Sukhumi Higher Primary School.
More »

In the autumn of 1933 a strange Russian appeared on the territory of the principality of Andorra. The foreigner amazed the locals with his manners, wealth and the ability to charm people. His name was Boris Skosyrev. He was an adventurer, a Russian emigre. In 1934 Boris became the king of Andorra Boris I. His life was more like an adventure novel than a reality.
Boris Mikhailovich was born on June 12, 1896 in Vilnius, the Russian Empire.
Skosyrev claimed that he was a nobleman who had escaped from Russia after the execution of the whole family and that at one time he had studied at the best universities in England and France. Also he was proud of his friendship with British politician Oliver Locker-Lampson, the future creator of British military aviation. Until 1919 Skosyrev was in Ukraine as part of the British group of assistance to the White Movement.
Once in London, he worked as a military interpreter. Soon Boris was arrested because he was in Britain without registration and paid for living with invalid checks. In 1922, he moved to the Netherlands, where, as he said, he began to provide secret services to the royal family, for which Queen Wilhelmina awarded him the title of Count and the name Orange. This, of course, was not true. The adventurer managed to live in Colombia and many European countries, where he had a reputation as a spy.
More »

Nadezhda Krupskaya was probably the most mysterious character of Russian history in the last century. She wrote about her life herself. In Soviet times, her biography was corrected to be perfect. After the 1990s, this gloss began to be covered with mud, and as thoroughly as it had been previously bleached.
The girl was born on February 14, 1869 in St. Petersburg into a poor aristocratic family. Her father Konstantin Ignatievich Krupsky was a lawyer and her mother Elizaveta Vasilievna Tistrova was a governess. They say, the father was a revolutionary and supported the participants of the Polish uprising in 1863.
Once they wrote that Krupskaya had studied perfectly in the gymnasium and graduated in 1887 with a gold medal. But Nadezhda Konstantinovna in the book My Life wrote that it was always difficult to study, it was difficult to understand and lessons were boring. And no one has ever seen her gold medal, and there were no gymnasium girlfriends who would later (in Moscow or in exile) talk about joint studies.
Then she worked as a teacher in the evening school for workers for 5 years until the very first arrest.
More »

Yuri Andropov is a famous Soviet statesman and politician who led the country from 1982 to 1984, and before that he made a name for himself during his many years as chairman of the State Security Committee. The biography of Andropov is one of the most intricate among all members of the Politburo. According to official data, he was born on June 15, 1914 into the family of railway worker Vladimir Andropov and his wife Evgenia Karlovna Fleckenstein, a music teacher in a women’s gymnasium.
In his brief biography Yuri Vladimirovich wrote that his mother was a foster child in the house of wealthy Jews and received her surname from them. Also, the future secretary-general claimed that he and his mother moved to Mozdok after his father died of typhus. However, according to other people who knew the family, the boy was born a year later, and his mother divorced her husband just a month after the birth of her son and went to the Tver region. Actually, she married only for the sake of changing her surname, fearing of genocide.
More »

Konstantin Chernenko is the sixth leader of the country in the 20th century. In 1984 he was elected General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. To tell the truth, the man had serious health problems at that time, as a result he remained the leader for only one year and twenty-five days.
The future politician was born on September 24, 1911, in the village Bolshaya Tes into the family of peasants. The boy’s father Ustin Demidovich was mining precious metal, and his mother was engaged in plant growing. In 1919, the mother of little Kostya died. After the death of his wife, Ustin Demidovich was left alone with four children. Soon he found a new wife.
As a teenager, Konstantin worked for second-hand dealers. While studying at school, the boy became pioneer and at the age of 14 he joined the Komsomol. From 1926 to 1929 he studied at school in Novoselovo. In 1972, the native village of the future leader was flooded because of the construction of the Krasnoyarsk water storage. Local residents had to move to Novoselovo.
In 1931, Chernenko went to the army. The young man served on the border of Kazakhstan with China. During the service he participated in the destruction of the Batyr Bekmuratov gang, and joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). At the same time, Chernenko was elected secretary of the party organization.
More »