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.
More »

On November 24, 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald, the only suspect in the Kennedy assassination, was killed. One year and a half before his death Lee had returned to America from the Soviet Union.
Russian traces of Lee Harvey Oswald.

It all started with a madhouse
Retired marine’s way to the “evil empire” (it was the name given to the Soviet Union by U.S. President Ronald Reagan) was thorny, but well planned. According to one version, Oswald left the army because “he had to take care of the mother”, and not because of his political views. Whatever it was, Lee provided fake documents of his intention to enter foreign universities and received a student visa to European countries.
On September 20, 1959 he sailed from New Orleans to France, from France to England and then he flew to Helsinki, where he received a Soviet visa. On October 16 Lee arrived in Moscow by train.
More »

Fedor Emelianenko is a four-time MMA world champion, three-time combat sambo world champion. He is number one in the world fighters ranking and winner of many prestigious awards in the field of martial arts. By the way, he is Honored Master of Sports of Russia in combat sambo and master of sports of international class in judo.
Thanks to the incredible fight statistics (30 wins in 31 fights) Fedor was nicknamed The Last Emperor. No one has ever been able to knocked Fedor out.

The boy was born on September 28, 1976 in the Soviet Union into the family of a welder and a teacher. Fedor has elder sister Marina (born in 1974) and two younger brothers – Alexander (born in 1981) and Ivan (born in 1988). Alexander and Ivan are also fighters.
At the age of 10 Fedor was engaged in sambo and judo. And even then he wasn’t like his peers. Fedor worked very hard and spent the nights at the gym many times. The boy took his brother Alexander with him, because the parents were at work. As a result, Alexander became a professional fighter too.
More »

Nikolai Valuev is a Russian giant with a sensitive soul. Also he is known as the Beast from the East. By the way, he is the heaviest and tallest heavyweight boxing champion in history. The boxer is 213 cm tall, and the weight at the peak of the sports career reached 146-151 kg.
Awesome boy was born on August 21, 1973 in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). As a teenager, he played basketball and was a discus thrower.
At one time Valuev attended a circus school, then he entered the Institute of Physical Culture. A year later he left the institute, but graduated from it 10 years later. In 2010, the boxer entered the Moscow University at the Faculty of Economics.
At the age of 20 Nikolai became a boxer. Oleg Shalaev was the first coach of Valuev. His career as a boxer began in 1993 and developed at a rapid pace.
The first fight took place in Berlin, where Nikolai defeated American John Morton. In 1999, Valuev defeated Russian boxer Alexei Osokin and became the heavyweight champion of the country. The following year, the athlete won the title of champion in a fight with Ukrainian boxer Yuri Elistratov.
More »

Boris Johnson is a Mayor of London with Russian name and Russian roots. Actually, he is a British statesman, politician. On May 7, 2015 Boris became a member of the House of Commons. From 2008 to 2016 he was a Mayor of London. And from July 13, 2016 to July 9, 2018 Johnson was a Foreign Minister of Great Britain. Besides, he is a member of the Conservative Party.
He was born on June 19, 1964 in New York, USA. You know, his full name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. He has a brother and two sisters.
His paternal great-grandfather Ali Kemal, a Turkish journalist, married a Circassian slave from southern Russia. Johnson’s great-grandmother left her homeland because of the Caucasian war and was enslaved by the Ottomans. Their descendants later moved to the United States, and from there to England, where they took a popular surname Johnson.
The maternal great-grandfather was American scientist Elias Avery Levy (1879-1969), a native of Kalwaria (then in the Russian Empire) of Jewish descent.
More »

Ella Pamfilova is an influential Russian politician, founder of the movement For a Healthy Russia. She believes that the main wealth of a person is love of people, so the politician calls herself a very rich woman. By the way, she is a candidate for President in 2000 and former chairman (2004 – 2010) of the Civil Society Institute and Human Rights Council of the Russian Federation.
The girl was born on September 12, 1953 in Almalyk, USSR (now Uzbekistan). At school she was a very active and creative child, participated in extracurricular activities. For example, Ella was entrusted to give flowers to General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, when the secretary-general came to Tashkent.
After school the girl decided not to stay in Central Asia and went to the capital of the Soviet Union. There she wanted to enter the Moscow State University. But in those days it was not enough just to pass the entrance exams. Ella was not admitted to the MSU for the reason that she did not pay the Komsomol fees in time. Then the girl chose another university and entered the Moscow Power Engineering Institute.
More »

Mikhail Prokhorov is one of the richest Russians and a beginning politician who makes a huge contribution to the cultural development of Russia. He is a skilled businessman with a background in finance and natural resources. Russian billionaire is the owner of the American basketball team the Brooklyn Nets. By the way, Mikhail participated in the presidential election on March 4, 2012 and took the 3rd place (2nd place in Moscow and St. Petersburg), received 7.98% of the votes.
The boy was born on May 3, 1965 in Moscow into the family of the head of the international administration of the Sports Committee Dmitry Ionovich and engineer Tatyana Mikhailovna. The future billionaire was the second child of his parents. His sister Irina Prokhorova is a literary critic, editor and publisher of New Literary Review magazine. Also she works as a TV presenter on the RBC channel owned by her brother.
At school he had the nickname “Giraffe” because of his height. After school Mikhail entered the prestigious Moscow Finance Institute (MFI). At the end of the first year of the university, the future entrepreneur went to serve in the Soviet Army.
More »