Famous Russians/Ukrainians

[mendeleyev]

From the Mendeleyev Journal:
 
 
Наталья Николаевна Захаренко (Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko) was born on 20 July 1938 in San Francisco to immigrant parents. Her father was from Vladivostok and her mother was born in Barnaul, southern Siberia, but grew up in the Chinese city of Harbin. Her paternal grandfather worked in a chocolate factory in Russia and was killed in street fighting between Red and White Russian soldiers in 1918.
 
She died as a famous American actress on 29 November 1981.

A beautiful girl, she began acting in movies at the age of four and became a successful child actor in such films as Miracle on 34th Street (1947). A well received performance opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and helped her to make the transition from a child performer. She then starred in the musicals West Side Story (1961) and Gypsy (1962). She also received Academy Award for Best Actress nominations for her performances in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963).

Her career continued successfully with films such as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). After this she took a break from acting and had two children, appearing in only two theatrical films during the 1970s. She was married to actor Robert Wagner twice, and to producer Richard Gregson. She had one daughter by each: Natasha Gregson and Courtney Wagner. She starred in several television productions, including a remake of the film From Here to Eternity (1979) for which she won a Golden Globe Award.

Sadly this Russian/American actresses drowned near Santa Catalina Island, California at age 43. She had not yet completed her final film, the science fiction drama Brainstorm (1983) with Christopher Walken, which was released posthumously.

She loved to remind others of her heritage by saying, "I'm very Russian, you know." With a name like Наталья (Natalia) of course those close to her called her "Natasha."

You and I likely remember Natasha by her stage name, Natalie Wood.

Editor's note: Her younger sister, Lana Wood, is also an actress.

[Muzh]

One of the most beautiful women I've ever seen.

[mendeleyev]

1+

[SANDRO43]

NOT one of the most beautiful men I've ever seen :

Юлий Борисович Бринер

[mendeleyev]

I had totally spaced that Yul Brynner was Russian.
 
According to Wikipedia,

he was born on 11 July 1920. He was best known for his portrayal of Mongkut, king of Siam, in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor for the film version; he also played the role more than 4,500 times on stage. He is also remembered as Rameses II in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille film The Ten Commandments, General Bounine in Anastasia and Chris Adams in The Magnificent Seven. Brynner was noted for his distinctive voice and for his shaven head, which he maintained as a personal trademark long after adopting it for his initial role in The King and I. He was also a photographer and the author of two books.
 
Yul Brynner was born Yuliy Borisovich Bryner in 1920.He exaggerated his background and early life for the press, claiming that he was born Taidje Khan of part-Mongol-Tatar parentage, on the Russian island of Sakhalin. In reality, he was born at home in a four-story residence at 15 Aleutskaya Street, Vladivostok, in the Russian Far East (present-day Primorsky Krai, Russia.

 
 
In a typical photo you can see the Slavic influence clearly. He also starred as the character "Vlassov" in the Cold War spy movie "Night Flight from Moscow."
 
 

[Muzh]

I hope you don't mind Belarussians
 
И́сер Даниело́вич
 
Kirk Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch in Amsterdam, New York, the son of Bryna "Bertha" (n�e Sanglel) and Herschel "Harry" Danielovitch, a businessman. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Gomel, Belarus. His father's brother, who emigrated earlier, used the surname Demsky, which Douglas's family adopted in the United States. In addition to their surname, his parents also changed their given names, to Harry and Bertha. Douglas grew up as Izzy Demsky, and legally changed his name to "Kirk Douglas" when entering the Navy during World War II.
 
PS Amsterdam, NY is 40 minutes from my house.
 

[OlgaH]

Igor Sikorsky
a Russian American pioneer of aviation in both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. He designed and flew the world's first multi-engine fixed-wing aircraft, the Russky Vityaz in 1913, and the first airliner, Ilya Muromets, in 1914.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Sikorsky

Vladimir K. Zworykin
a Russian-American inventor, engineer, and pioneer of television technology. Zworykin invented a television transmitting and receiving system employing cathode ray tubes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_K._Zworykin

Stephen Timoshenko
is reputed to be the father of modern engineering mechanics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Timoshenko

[SANDRO43]

Kirk Douglas was born in Amsterdam, New York

Doesn't count, he wasn't born in Russia/USSR .

Natasha Stefanenko
Born 18 April 1971 in Sverdlovsk, she is a Russian-born actress, model, and television presenter who lives and works in both Italy and Russia. At the age of 16, Natasha went to study in Moscow where she eventually earned a degree in Metal Engineering. Natasha was also a swimming champion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natasha_Stefanenko

[Anotherkiwi]

The gorgeous German singer Helene Fischer is another - born as Елена Петровна Фишер in Krasnoyarsk in 1984.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helene_fischer

[JohnDearGreen]

Dancing With The Stars Karina Smirnoff is from Kharkiv Ukraine.
[youtube]qz2K-qrF1n4[/youtube]
She's also on the cover of Playboy this month:

[SANDRO43]

Dancing With The Stars Karina Smirnoff is from Kharkiv Ukraine.

Since 2005 we, too, have Ballando con le Stelle, our version of Dancing With The Stars - the original TV format seems to be the British BBC television series Strictly Come Dancing (a possibly ambiguous title ) - with a number of FSU female dance masters, the longest participation (6) belonging to Muscovite Natalia Titova:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjLRIwdVnH4[/youtube]

She didn't participate this year because her 2007 dancing partner, Neapolitan Olympic swimming champion Massimiliano Rosolino, made her belly swell to proportions severely interfering with competition dancing .

[nicknick]

Since 2005 we, too, have Ballando con le Stelle, our version of Dancing With The Stars - the original TV format seems to be the British BBC television series Strictly Come Dancing (a possibly ambiguous title )

Dancing with the Stars does come from the BBC series Strictly COme Dancing.

The name was chosen as there was a very long running series in the UK - more than 30 years - called Come Dancing.

However, the format had got very stale and viewing figures had plummeted so the show was cancelled.  I guess they wanted to have some connection with that show but without the negative connotations.

The inclusion of the word Strictly was a reference to the film Strictly Ballroom


In the UK version there are 3 professional dancers from Russia, and one dancer from Kazakhstan and one from Lithuania.

[Faux Pas]

Doesn't count, he wasn't born in Russia/USSR .

Natalie Wood wasn't born in Russia either

[Muzh]

Natalie Wood wasn't born in Russia either

Yeah, I thought we were counting also the children of those right out of the boat.

[mendeleyev]

Speaking of Karina Smirnoff, one has to wonder how we can translate Smirnoff from Смiрнова/Смирновa?
 
For those interested, Карина Смiрнова is how her name is spelled in Ukrianian which is k-a-r-i-n-a  S-m-i-r-n-o-v-a and the a at the end of her name designates her as a female, something we don't do in the English language. In Russian the same family name would be spelled Смирновa for a female or just Смирнов for a male.
 
So how do we get "noff" from "nov" is the question?
 
There is a Cyrillic grammar rule regarding voiced and voiceless consonants. 6 Cyrillic consonant letters change form if they are found:
 
- at the end of a word
 
- at the end of a cluster of consonants inside a word
 
 
These 6 Cyrillic letters are:
 
Бб (beh)
 
Вв (veh)
 
Гг (geh)
 
Дд (deh)
 
Жж (zheh)
 
Зз (zh)
 
When you find any of these letters at the end of a word, or at the end of a cluster of consonants (any letter that is not a vowel) inside a word, you change the sound of that letter to it's "voiceless counterpoint."
 
 
Those changes are:
 
Бб (beh) is changed to Пп (peh)
 
Вв (veh) is changed to Фф (ehf)
 
Гг (geh) is changed to Кк (kah)
 
Дд (deh) is changed to Тт (teh)
 
Жж (zheh) is changed to Шш (shch)
 
Зз (zh) is changed to Сс (ess)
   
Lets try some examples:
 
- As seen above, Смирнов which looks like "Smirnov" becomes "Smirnoff." Correctly the "ff" is heard as "fh" here. If your pronunciation sounds like the English "off" at the end keep practicing until you master the "fh" idea.
 
- Which leads us to the word for vodka, водкa. That д (deh) is changed to T (teh) which explains why the way Russians say vodka as VOT-ka.
 
- The word for bus is spelled as автобус, however you speak the в (veh) as an ф (ehf) so that instead of "Ahvtobous" it sounds like "ahf-TOH-bous."
 
- Finally, the word год (year) is changed from god to got, and the word глаз (eye) goes from glazh to glas.
 
...a long but perhaps lasting explanation for those interested in knowing how translators get "noff" from "nov."
 
 

[SANDRO43]

There is a Cyrillic grammar rule regarding voiced and voiceless consonants.

This process of assimilation of velar consonants (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velar_consonant) is not unique to Russian.

In Spanish, to cite just one such case, Bs are often pronounced as Vs: caBallo is usually heard as caVallo.

This process may result in permanent changes over long periods of time: students of German philology may remember the 1st Lautverschiebung (consonant shift/rotation, a.k.a. Grimm's Law) where Proto-Indo-European B-D-Gs became P-T-Ks in Proto-Germanic, followed by a 2nd shift more than a thousand years later in Old High German (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_consonant_shift).

The transliteration to -OFF of Russian -OV endings was favoured by the French, and stuck in many cases due to their cultural influence during Imperial times.  They also caused family names ending in -IN  to receive an extra E (e.g. Balanchine) to maintain some phonetical proximity to the originals.

[Muzh]

This process of assimilation of velar consonants (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velar_consonant) is not unique to Russian.

In Spanish, to cite just one such case, Bs are often pronounced as Vs: caBallo is usually heard as caVallo.

This process may result in permanent changes over long periods of time: students of German philology may remember the 1st Lautverschiebung (consonant shift/rotation, a.k.a. Grimm's Law) where Proto-Indo-European B-D-Gs became P-T-Ks in Proto-Germanic, followed by a 2nd shift more than a thousand years later in Old High German (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_consonant_shift).

The transliteration to -OFF of Russian -OV endings was favoured by the French, and stuck in many cases due to their cultural influence during Imperial times.  They also caused family names ending in -IN  to receive an extra E (e.g. Balanchine) to maintain some phonetical proximity to the originals.

I would make the case for the "C" in Spanish. Spaniards pronounce the C as a Z.

[SANDRO43]

I would make the case for the "C" in Spanish. Spaniards pronounce the C as a Z.

Not really, C before a weak vowel (I, E) becomes a voiceless TH in Castilian and a voiceless S in Latin American Spanish, e.g. centro de la ciudad. Before a strong vowel (A,O,U) it's a K sound.

P.S.: OK, I see your point, Z as in zarzuela is pronounced tharthuela .

[SANDRO43]

Natalie Wood wasn't born in Russia either

No, but Kirk is not as pretty .

[Rubicon]

From the Mendeleyev Journal:
 
 
Наталья Николаевна Захаренко (Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko) was born on 20 July 1938 in San Francisco to immigrant parents. Her father was from Vladivostok and her mother was born in Barnaul, southern Siberia, but grew up in the Chinese city of Harbin. Her paternal grandfather worked in a chocolate factory in Russia and was killed in street fighting between Red and White Russian soldiers in 1918.
 
She died as a famous American actress on 29 November 1981.

A beautiful girl, she began acting in movies at the age of four and became a successful child actor in such films as Miracle on 34th Street (1947). A well received performance opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and helped her to make the transition from a child performer. She then starred in the musicals West Side Story (1961) and Gypsy (1962). She also received Academy Award for Best Actress nominations for her performances in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963).

Her career continued successfully with films such as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). After this she took a break from acting and had two children, appearing in only two theatrical films during the 1970s. She was married to actor Robert Wagner twice, and to producer Richard Gregson. She had one daughter by each: Natasha Gregson and Courtney Wagner. She starred in several television productions, including a remake of the film From Here to Eternity (1979) for which she won a Golden Globe Award.

Sadly this Russian/American actresses drowned near Santa Catalina Island, California at age 43. She had not yet completed her final film, the science fiction drama Brainstorm (1983) with Christopher Walken, which was released posthumously.

She loved to remind others of her heritage by saying, "I'm very Russian, you know." With a name like Наталья (Natalia) of course those close to her called her "Natasha."

You and I likely remember Natasha by her stage name, Natalie Wood.

Editor's note: Her younger sister, Lana Wood, is also an actress.

I love Natalie Wood!!  Total class!!  Very tragic death at such a young age...

[Muzh]

No, but Kirk is not as pretty .

I agree. But he is a local hero. 

[Larry1]

Irving Berlin, one of the most beloved songwriters of the 20th century in America, was born in Mogilev, one of the larger cities of Belarus.  At the time of his birth, 1888, there was no Belarus; the city was part of the Russian empire.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/62130/Irving-Berlin

Absolutely agree that Natalie Wood was one of the most beautiful women ever to appear on film.

[SANDRO43]

Russian/Armenian Аким Михайлович Тамиров (born 29 October, 1899 in Tiflis, he arrived in the US in 1923 on a tour with a troupe of actors and decided to stay).

Played a Greek in Lewis Milestone's 1960 Ocean's Eleven, and a Turk in Jules Dassin's 1964 Topkapi:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJoitZ-QDuY[/youtube]

[nicknick]

Another very influential Russian to add to this list is Vladimir Gavrilovich Raitz.

Who?  I ask you hear.

Well, given that this is the end of August and the peak holiday season, now is quite an apt time to remember him - also, he died almost exactly a year ago.

He might not exactly be very ''famous'' to most people, but he has had a huge influence on British culture since the end of the second world war.

For most Brits nowadays, the whole idea of a holiday means an all-inclusive week or two lying on a beach in Spain, Italy or somewhere similar, getting a suntan and getting drunk - the package holiday. 

Well, guess who invented that?

He also set up the holiday company ''Horizon Holidays'' which, if you're British and over the age of 40, I'm sure you will have heard off.

Although, to be fair, this has started to diminish somewhat in the last few years with the rise of people booking holidays online.  But, we all grew up with package holidays.


Raitz was born in Moscow in 1922 to Jewish parents and eventually ended up in the UK in the 1930s after briefly living in Germany.

His very first package holiday was in 1950 which he arranged with another Russian expat to Corsica and, apart from the price and the exotic location, one of the big selling points was that customers got to eat meat twice a day.

For the benefit of non-British readers, meat was still rationed in Britain at this time like it was during the war.  To get an idea of what things were like, try watching the film ''A Private Function'' - a comedy set during this time.

His company were then the first to send people to Mallorca - or ''Majorca'' as most Brits call it - Malaga and the Costa Brava.

There were a couple of obituaries of him at the time, one from The Economist and one from The Telegraph.  This is part of the one from the Telegraph:-

Vladimir Raitz, who died on August 31 aged 88, was the father of the modern British package holiday, which he pioneered in the days when the nation was still in the grip of postwar austerity and rationing.

In an era of cheap travel to countless destinations, it is easy to forget that 60 years ago � when Raitz launched his business � few in Britain were able to enjoy a foreign holiday at all. A return flight to Nice, for example, then cost �70, the equivalent of about �1,700 today.

What Raitz offered in 1950 was an all-inclusive holiday in Corsica for �32 10s; this paid for a return flight, tented accommodation on the beach, and "delicious meat-filled meals and as much local wine as [you] could put away".

His inaugural flight, with 11 paying customers looking forward to a week in the sun, took off from Gatwick in May 1950 in a government-surplus Dakota DC3. The plane landed at Lyon to refuel before proceeding to its destination, Calvi. The whole journey took six hours.

Raitz later recalled: "When we arrived at Corsica airport, there was nothing at all � not even a little hut. [We had] to shelter from the sun under the wings of the plane while we waited for the bus to pick us up." Once at the beach, the holiday-makers were greeted by large canvas tents, each with two beds. There was an area was set aside for "ablutions", a dining room, bar and dance-floor. "A pastis was a few pence," Raitz said, "a bottle of wine was nine pence."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/finance-obituaries/7980651/Vladimir-Raitz.html

http://www.economist.com/node/16990775


and this is part of the Economist obituary:-

SUN, sea and alcohol, for at least two weeks a year, is now one of the unwritten rights of the British people. All classes claim it, from the scarlet-shouldered shop assistant to the pouting celebrity in Ray-Bans; and the Fates, that tricksy trio, have decreed that two men should disappear simultaneously who made both sorts happy. Colin Tennant, later Lord Glenconner, arranged holidays so exclusive that only the very rich and famous could apply for them. Vladimir Raitz invented the all-in no-frills package tour for Everyman.
:
Mr Raitz was always, proudly, a Muscovite, with a fondness for vodka and Russian songs, a ready laugh and a stubborn urge to organise.

[SANDRO43]

Nick, your story reminds me of another enterprising holidaymaker of some renown, albeit not Russian:

N� dans une famille juive de commer�ants originaires d'Alg�rie, Gilbert Trigano a rejoint pendant la guerre la R�sistance, puis une organisation communiste, les Forces unies de la jeunesse patriotique. � la Lib�ration, il est journaliste pendant quelques ann�es, r�dacteur � L'Avant-Garde, organe de la Jeunesse communiste, puis grand reporter � L'Humanit�.
Club M�diterran�e.

Il rejoint ensuite l'entreprise familiale de toile de tente (la soci�t� familiale Trigano), qui devient fournisseur du Club M�diterran�e. Le Club Med, comme on le surnommera, a �t� cr�� en avril 1950 par G�rard Blitz, champion de natation et diamantaire belge, avec lequel Trigano cr�e un village de toile aux Bal�ares, � Majorque ; suivront l'Italie, la Gr�ce puis bien d'autres implantations. En 1953, Gilbert Trigano devient directeur financier de la soci�t�, dont il devient PDG en 1963.

His family had a business making cotton camping tents and truck tarpaulins, and were suppliers of Club M�diterran�e. He later joined it and became its Financial Manager in 1953, then CEO in 1963.