“Before, it was possible to just bring out a Russian Bear who raised up a paw, and everyone applauded and said ‘Ooh, super.’ Today that Bear has to do something.”

For the past eight years, Marina Pisklakova, 40, has run the ANNA Center (Association No to Violence), Russia’s first, and most active, hotline and center for battling against domestic violence.

Depending on who you ask, Alexander Vedernikov has either the most or the least enviable job in Russian arts.

The Russian invasion of the NHL is now complete. In June, Ilya Kovalchuk, called “the most exciting prospect since Eric Lindros,” was the NHL’s first pick in the league’s entry draft, leading the Russia media to dub the 18-year-old Muscovite “Ilya the First.”

Eighteen years ago, Anton Nosik considered himself a “marked man” of the Soviet regime. Today he is president of one of Russia’s top internet companies. It is a transition that says much about the distance Russia has traveled in two decades.

Even though his father wanted him to become an engineer, Ilya Bezugly was always more interested in the humanities.

Valery Babanov has spent his career facing down death and confronting the fears most people try to bury in their daily activities. At 36, Babanov is one of the world's leading solo mountain climbers.

Russian politicians have reason to fear Kommersant photographer Dmitry Azarov: he has an eye for their “human side,” for catching them in unexpected and often undignified moments.

In 1998, when Dmitry Slepushkin was asked to paint the portrait of Emperor Nikolai I which would hang in a renovated Great Kremlin Palace, he took the assignment as a great honor.

In Russia’s southern regions there is a huge expanse of steppe called the Eurasian Belt. For thousands of years, this “belt” was the home for nomadic tribes. Natalia Shishlina, 40, is one of the few archaeologists in the world who studies these lost cultures.

Like so many creative types, Kirill Serebrennikov is a character in all senses of the word. He even seems to have a unique hold on reality: on his official website, he wrote that he was born in 1969; when interviewed in 2001, he said that in 2002 he would turn 31. A trained physicist, Serebrennikov seems to have his own special sort of math.

Nothing seemed to augur that Vera Pavlova would become a leading light of 21st century Russian poetry.