There are some actors who symbolize Russia’s new generation, the new times. Rising star Chulpan Khamatova (her Tatar first name translates at “morning star”) has been one of those actors since the mid-1990s.

Pediatric neurosurgeon Zhanna Semenova was born in the tiny mountain republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, home to the towering Mount Elbrus (5,642 meters)—a mountain which could well be a symbol of the heights which Semenova has scaled in her career.

Aidan Salakhova has a boiling mixture of southern blood in her veins: Uzbek, Azerbaidzhani and Armenian. Yet she identifies herself as a Muscovite and a patriot of contemporary Russian art.

Forty-year-old Colonel Yuri Rodionov’s military career has literally taken him to the four corners of Russian earth.

Olga Pleshakova admits to being very ambitious about building the Transaero brand. “I think there is Aeroflot, and then there is us ...

There couldn’t be a better choice for the title “Russia’s Best Defender of Human Rights” than lawyer Karinna Moskalenko. At the end of 2001, Moskalenko, 43, received the award “For Human Rights” from the Russian Federation’s Secretary for Human Rights.

Alexandra Kosteniuk, 17, is not likely most people’s stereotype of a female chess champion. The pretty young Russian sports a provocative smile and a devilish spark in her eye—a far cry from the bookish, hard-nosed competitor some might be led to expect.

When young Andrei Korolyov drew his 400th portrait, he made it to the Russian Book of Records. Soon after, a jury of adult artists and art scholars issued Korolyov an official diploma testifying that his portraits “are characterized by an individual style and bear a resemblance to the original.”

From early in his “happy Soviet childhood,” Andrei Korkunov, 39, dreamed of becoming a factory director. That dream has come true in ways a young Soviet could not have imagined.

Maria Kiselyova dedicated sixteen years to her sport and won two gold medals. But at the end of 2000 she decided to quit sports and take a chance as a sports commentator with NTV channel.

She may be just eighteen, but she has been ruling Russia's pop charts for two years. Alsou Ralifovna Safina (known to her fans as simply Alsou, pronounced “all-soo”), daughter of Lukoil's first vice-president Ralif Safin, has taken the music industry by storm. 

The son of a dairy worker and a truck driver, Nikolai Shuvalov, 42, is modest to a fault. A self-trained artisan in the art of bell making, Shuvalov founded the Italmas workshop in Tutaev, on the banks of the Volga in Yaroslavl region.