Famous people who grew up or lived in Russia

Andrei Sakharov1921–1989

📍 48B Zemlyanoy Val (Chkalov Street), Moscow 109004, Russia

I was born in 1921 in Ulyanovsk and grew up in Moscow, the son of a physicist. I became the Soviet Union's most important nuclear weapons designer — the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb …

Catherine the Great1762–1796

📍 Catherine Palace, Sadovaya Street 7, Pushkin, St Petersburg, Russia

I was born Sophie, a minor German princess in the Baltic port of Stettin, and at fourteen I was brought to Russia to marry the heir to the throne. My marriage was cold and lonely, so I…

Diana Vishneva1976–1995

📍 Saint Petersburg, Russia

Diana Vishneva was born in Leningrad in July 1976, and grew up in the city of canals, palaces and white nights, home of the Kirov Ballet. At six she began going to a children's choreography…

Dmitri Mendeleev1834–1848

📍 Tobolsk, Tyumen Oblast, Russia

I was born in February 1834 in Tobolsk, the old capital of Siberia, on the banks of the Irtysh River, the youngest of a very large family. My father, Ivan, was director of the town's…

Fyodor Dostoevsky1878–1881

📍 Kuznechny Lane 5/2, St Petersburg, Russia

I grew up in Moscow in the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, where my father was a doctor; from the window I saw suffering before I understood it. St Petersburg became my city…

Galina Ulanova1952–1998

📍 Kotelnicheskaya Embankment 1/15, Moscow, Russia

In the early 1950s I moved into apartment 185 in the new tower on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment, one of the seven great Stalin-era skyscrapers of Moscow, standing where the Yauza river meets…

Igor Stravinsky1882–1971

📍 Dvortsovy Prospekt, Lomonosov (Oranienbaum), Leningrad Oblast 198412, Russia

I was born Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky on the 17th of June 1882 in Oranienbaum on the Gulf of Finland, the son of Fyodor Stravinsky, a bass at the Imperial Opera in St Petersburg. The…

Leo Tolstoy1828–1910

📍 Yasnaya Polyana, Shchyokinsky District, Tula Oblast 301222, Russia

I was born here in 1828 and have never truly wished to be anywhere else. The estate — twelve miles south of Tula, birch forests, apple orchards — gave me everything War and Peace and Anna…

Lev Yashin1929–1949

📍 Bogorodskoye, Moscow, Russia

I was born in Moscow in October 1929 and grew up in Bogorodskoye, a working-class district on the north-eastern edge of the city, near the forests of Sokolniki and the river Yauza. My…

Maria Sharapova1989–1994

📍 Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia

Maria Sharapova was born in Nyagan, an oil town in western Siberia, in April 1987. Her parents, Yuri and Yelena, came from Gomel in Belarus and had moved east shortly before she was born…

Mathilde Kschessinska1906–1917

📍 Kuybysheva Street 2-4, Saint Petersburg, Russia

In 1906 I moved into the house I had built for myself on the corner of Kronverksky Prospekt and Bolshaya Dvoryanskaya Street, on the Petrograd Side of Saint Petersburg, across the Neva from…

Mikhail Gorbachev1931–2022

📍 Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai, Russia

I was born Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev on the 2nd of March 1931 in Privolnoye, a village in the Stavropol region of southern Russia, the son of peasant farmers who had survived both…

Natalia Makarova1940–1970

📍 Saint Petersburg, Russia

Natalia Romanovna Makarova was born in Leningrad in November 1940, months before the Nazi siege began, and grew up in the city as it slowly recovered from the war. Her childhood was spent…

Natalia Osipova1986–2004

📍 Moscow, Russia

Natalia Osipova was born in Moscow in May 1986 and grew up in the city. As a little girl she was a gymnast, starting at small studios at four or five, and she was determined and ambitious…

Peter the Great1714–1725

📍 Razvodnaya St. 2, Peterhof, Saint Petersburg 198516, Russia

I had seen Versailles and knew Russia must have its equal. But Louis XIV's palace turned its back on the sea — mine would face it. I designed the Grand Cascade myself: water that falls from…

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky1892–1893

📍 Chaikovskogo Street 48, Klin, Moscow Oblast 141600, Russia

I spent the last years of my life at my estate in Klin, outside Moscow, which I bought in 1892 and where I composed some of my final works. The Klin house was a wooden dacha surrounded by…

Tamara Karsavina1894–1902

📍 Rossi Street, Saint Petersburg, Russia

I was born in Saint Petersburg in March 1885. My father, Platon Karsavin, was a principal dancer and mime of the Imperial Ballet, once the favourite pupil of Marius Petipa, and later a…

Tsar Nicholas II1905–1917

📍 Alexander Palace, Pushkin, St Petersburg, Russia

I was born at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, the Tsar's Village south of St Petersburg, and I was attached to it all my life. After the upheavals of 1905 I made it our permanent…

Valentina Tereshkova1937–1945

📍 Bolshoye Maslennikovo, Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia

Valentina Tereshkova was born in March 1937 in Bolshoye Maslennikovo, a small village of wooden houses on the banks of the Volga in the Yaroslavl region, north-east of Moscow. Her father…

Vladimir Lenin1870–1924

📍 Simbirsk, Ulyanovsk, Russia

I was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov on the 22nd of April 1870 in Simbirsk — now Ulyanovsk — on the Volga River, the son of a school inspector who had been elevated to the nobility. My…

Yuri Gagarin1945–1951

📍 Gagarin (Gzhatsk), Smolensk Oblast, Russia

I grew up in the village of Klushino in the Smolensk region, the third of four children. My father, Aleksey, was a carpenter and my mother, Anna, worked as a milkmaid on the collective…