Person

Maria Shatalova, wife of the famous Russian football player Pavel Pogrebyak is a lovely 25 year old lady and a mother of 3(!) sons. Travelling around the world and being invited to many glamorous events she still says that home family parties are the best.

RM: What was your favourite holiday when you were a child?

When I first heard from Russian contacts that Boris Berezovsky had died on that cold fateful Saturday afternoon, I was sceptical.  There has been so much hostility in Russia to the Oligarch, most of it justified, that there has been as much misinformation as accurate reporting about his life.  But when his death was confirmed I was not that shocked.  I already knew that he was engulfed by a financial crisis and I had evidence that he was selling off assets.  I also knew that he had been spending a lot of time on his own at his country house near Ascot, Berkshire, depressed, alone and accompanied only by his bodyguard.

Evgeny Dvornikov is a published poet and respected journalist, whose long career included 17 years on the culture section of the Pravda newspaper. One imagines a poet to be an individual, free thinker and I’m intrigued to hear how he dealt with the widespread censorship of the press during his early career as a journalist. What’s more, I hear that he is a wonderful storyteller, and I hope he will be able to bring his experiences to life.

Sergei Makovetsky is the Russian actor, who is loved in Russia for his theatre and cinema characters. This year he comes to perform on London’s West End stage as the Vakhtangov Theatre, where Sergei has been playing for over 30 years, brings its ground-breaking interpretation of Chekhov's “Uncle Vanya” to the UK. Before the magnificent performance started, RussianMind asked Sergei about his expectations from a Russo-British audience as well as about his understanding of the Russian soul:

Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, who is one of the best selling Russian detective fiction writers, an essayist, literary translator and expert on Japanese literature.

His books have nothing to do with politics, however in 2008, Akunin made headlines for his interview with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former Yukos oil giant CEO imprisoned for tax evasion. The interview excerpts were then republished in dozens of newspapers and magazines and rekindled the ongoing debate about the Khodorkovsky’s case.