Metronome, The (32 page)

Olga Berggoltz: a Russian poetess that spent the whole blockade in Leningrad and became famous for working on the only functioning radio station of the city. Day in and day out, she read poetry and delivered news, urging the people to hold on to hope. Her husband died of starvation in 1942. She was arrested and imprisoned in 1938, released in 1939.

Marina Tsvetayeva: a renown Russian lyrical poetess. After living abroad, she came back to Russia in 1939. After her husband was executed and her daughter arrested, Tsvetayeva killed herself in 1941.

Osip Mandestam: a Russian poet and writer. Mandestam refused to conform to the Stalinist regime and at one point wrote and read a poem highly critical of Stalin. He was arrested multiple times and died in the Gulag in 1938.

Alexander Lebed

Popular Russian general and politician that placed third in the 1996 Russian presidential election. In 1991, during the communist putsch, he was ordered to send tanks against Boris Yeltsin and the parliament but Lebed refused to obey the order and the putsch collapsed. Lebed served as Russia’s Secretary of the Security Council until 1998, when he left Moscow. He opposed NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders. Died in a helicopter crash in 2002.