1. Mr. Hack says:

   June 27, 2017 at 5:30 pm GMT

   Why were the first 7-8 comments erased from this thread?

   AK: You’re looking at the wrong thread.

   •ï¿½Agree: Mr. Hack
2. Jake1 says:

   June 27, 2017 at 6:07 pm GMT

   How is Lev Landau not on this list?

   •ï¿½Replies: @Anatoly Karlin

   @Jake1

   I don't actually know.
   
   Charles Murray stops his database at people born in 1910, but Landau was born in 1908, and he seems significant enough to have an index number a bit above 1.

   Replies: @Jake1, @Anonymous
3. Anatoly Karlin says: •ï¿½Website

   June 27, 2017 at 6:22 pm GMT

   @Jake1

   How is Lev Landau not on this list?

   Replies: @Anatoly Karlin

   I don’t actually know.

   Charles Murray stops his database at people born in 1910, but Landau was born in 1908, and he seems significant enough to have an index number a bit above 1.

   •ï¿½Replies: @Jake1

   @Anatoly Karlin

   Well above 1.0, I would say he should be near the top of any list of physicists born in the Russian Empire/Soviet Union . Not that I'm qualified to judge, just my impression from conversations with several Russian (some Jewish) math/physics professors at the uni I attended.

   , @Anonymous

   @Anatoly Karlin

   In long-lasting impact, Landau tops most every physicist listed.
4. Jake1 says:

   June 27, 2017 at 6:58 pm GMT

   @Anatoly Karlin

   @Jake1

   I don't actually know.
   
   Charles Murray stops his database at people born in 1910, but Landau was born in 1908, and he seems significant enough to have an index number a bit above 1.

   Replies: @Jake1, @Anonymous

   Well above 1.0, I would say he should be near the top of any list of physicists born in the Russian Empire/Soviet Union . Not that I’m qualified to judge, just my impression from conversations with several Russian (some Jewish) math/physics professors at the uni I attended.
5. anonymous •ï¿½Disclaimer says:

   June 27, 2017 at 7:04 pm GMT

   The great Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ranked #11??? NYET!! #4, with Tolstoy #1, Dostoevsky #2, Stravinsky #3.
6. Mao Cheng Ji says:

   June 27, 2017 at 7:20 pm GMT

   Lol. Right, Igor Stravinsky made such a huge difference in so many people’s lives. Sounds like Mr Murray certainly holds a high position in the database of snobs…
7. Mr. Hack says:

   June 27, 2017 at 7:34 pm GMT •ï¿½200 Words

   At least three of the individuals listed were actually Ukrainians, and not Russians: Alexander Archipenko, Kasimir Malevich and last but not least, Dmitry Bortniansky.

   Some of modern art’s great innovators, including Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Archipenko and Alexander Rodchenko, are usually described as Russian artists. But these painters and sculptors were actually born or raised in Ukraine, and thought of themselves as Ukrainian. Their mislabeling is a lingering result of decades of Soviet repression of Ukrainian culture. .Like Malevich, Alexandra Exter, Alexander Archipenko and other Ukrainian-born or bred artists are often lumped in with Russian artists of the time. Yet they were born or raised in Ukraine, where early in the 20th century, Kyiv, Kharkiv and other cities were centers of innovation in painting, theater, sculpture and other arts. Ukrainian artists were at the forefront of international modernist art movements such as Cubism and Futurism…That ended with Stalin. In the 1930s, Ukrainian nationalism and language were forbidden. Only “heroic realism,” propagandistic art in service to the Soviet state, was permitted. All else, including abstract art, was considered decadent, subversive.

   https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-2007-02-19-voa46/405766.html

   .
8. Philip Owen says:

   June 27, 2017 at 9:29 pm GMT

   Prokorov (lasers, Nobel prize) was old enough to be on this list. He was in his 90’s when I met him in the ’90’s.
9. Stan Bosch says:

   June 27, 2017 at 10:50 pm GMT

   Kolmogorov is rated by many as one of a handful of the greatest mathematicians ever and as machine learning’s full potential is unlocked his star will only rise. He gets my vote.
10. siberiancat says:

    June 27, 2017 at 11:17 pm GMT

    Is Petr Kapitsa Jewish? Really?! What’s the evidence?
11. Dmitriev says:

    June 27, 2017 at 11:59 pm GMT •ï¿½100 Words

    Kapitsa wasn’t Jewish, he was basically a Polish/Ukrainian mix, maybe some Russian in there as well. Tamm wasn’t Jewish either – he was a German/Russian mix. Frank was half Jewish, half Russian. Ambartsumian was Armenian.

    Kolmogorov should be way higher. If Popov is on the list, Oleg Losev should be too. Larionov, but no Bilibin? On the authors – no Bulgakov, no Harms, no Shalamov, no Platonov? Seriously though, fuck this list.

    •ï¿½Replies: @Andrei Martyanov

    @Dmitriev

    Shalamov certainly should be in the list.
12. syonredux says:

    June 28, 2017 at 12:26 am GMT •ï¿½100 Words

    On the authors – no Bulgakov, no Harms, no Shalamov, no Platonov? Seriously though, fuck this list.

    RE: Authors,

    Should be borne in mind that they are evaluated according to how highly they are ranked outside of their own languages. E.g., Anglophone writers are ranked according to what non-Anglophone critics think. This was done in order to avoid intra-linguistic bias (German critics over-ranking German writers, French critics over-ranking French writers, etc). However, it also means that writers who have had little influence outside of their home-languages get really low rankings.Among American writers, for example, Hemingway and Faulkner outrank Fitzgerald by massive margins, and this is quite understandable once you bear in mind that Hemingway and Faulkner have had a massive impact on non-Anglophone lit, whereas Fitzgerald’s impact on non-Anglo lit has been rather small.

    •ï¿½Replies: @reiner Tor

    @syonredux

    For what it's worth, in Hungary Bulgakov is considered among the very greatest Russian writers. Perhaps because he was promoted in the 1970s and 1980s as a great example of quality "Soviet" literature. He was quality; and he was Soviet in the sense of having a Soviet passport. (Actually, not having a Soviet passport. I doubt he was ever allowed abroad.) As to his political message, it served two purposes: first, to show how free and liberal the communist regime in Hungary was, and second, to show how free and liberal the USSR was. His criticism of communism was also interpreted as criticism of what was then called "the excesses of Stalinism". Once communism fell, he could be revered simply for being anti-communist.

    , @Cicero

    @syonredux

    I am pretty sure Bulgakov meets the requirement on how highly a writer is ranked outside of his own language. He is probably the best known Russian novelist of the 20th Century alongside Pasternak, and The Master and Margarita holds a towering international reputation. At any rate he would be better known to Western intellectuals than Ivan Goncharov, and that is not meant to knock the latter. Bulgakov's absence from this list is baffling.

    There is no mention of Yesenin, who traveled to the Western countries in the 20's and made a sensation in literary circles. I will admit I never read him, but he seems to be only second to Mayakovsky from that generation.

    In the field of science, Pavlov is missing as well. Considering how proverbial "Pavlov's dog" is, this is another major oversight. And Mechnikov is another outstanding figure in the history of Medicine left out. I think Ilya Ivanov counts as well, as his ideas on cross-species mating and breeding showed up a lot in Western Sci-Fi until at least the 1960's.

    As for figures who do not quite have an "international" stature, I think Vavilov deserves mention because a lot of his work presaged the Green Revolution of the 1960's. Presuming he had not been persecuted by Stalin, he would have been far better known outside of the former USSR. You also have geographers and geologists like Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky, Vernadsky, and Fersman, all very accomplished by any standard. Fock and Ioffe were similarly big names in physics.

    Mikhail Yangel, father of the Soviet Ballistic Missile program only gets looked over because he was born in 1911.

    Not a single representative of the Struve family seems to be present, and it was one of the most successful dynasties of Great Thinkers in the past 500 years.

    Since I could probably cite another hundred or so names I will cut it short here. But I do have to finish with a shout out to Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov; he is more or less the intellectual Godfather to all modern Transhumanists, as our host Anatoly would most certainly agree.

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin

    , @syonredux

    @syonredux

    For the curious, here are Murray's sources for the Western Lit category:

    
    In the following lists, sources used to identify significant figures have a Q (for qualifying source) after their entry. Sources used to compute index scores have an I (for index source) after their entry.

    �

    
    Literature sources specific to the West W. R. Benét, ed. The Reader’s Encyclopedia. 2nd edition. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. (I) H. Bloom. 1994. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company. (Q) A. Burgio. 1963. Storia della Litteratura. 2 vols. Milan: Vallerdi. (QI) O. M. Carpeaux. 1982. História da Literatura Ocidental. 8 vols. Rio de Janeiro: Ediçöes o Cruzeiro. (QI) G. Díaz-Plaja. 1965. La Litteratura Universal. Barcelona: Editiones Danae. (I) A. Eggebrecht. 1964. Epochen der Weltliteratur. Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann Verlag. (Q) E. Laaths. 1953. Geschichte der Weltliteratur: Deutscher Bucherbund. (QI) J. Paxton and S. Fairfield. 1980. Calendar of Creative Man. New York: Facts on File. (Q) G. Wilpert. 1963. Lexikon der Weltliteratur. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag.(QI)
    �

13. georgesdelatour says:

    June 28, 2017 at 1:50 am GMT •ï¿½200 Words

    Stravinsky is easily the most important classical composer of the 20th century; as important to music as Picasso is to painting.

    He massively influenced Messiaen, Boulez, Copland, Bernstein, Steve Reich, Miles Davis & Quincy Jones. He’s also the composer (at least since Wagner) with the greatest cultural reach beyond music. His librettists include Jean Cocteau, Andre Gide & W.H. Auden; Pablo Picasso painted the sets for his ballet Pulcinella; T.S. Eliot & James Joyce both created modernist literary masterpieces inspired by the rhythmic dislocations of the Rite Of Spring.

    The strange thing is, Stravinsky has had a much smaller influence on Russian music than Shostakovich – even though Shostakovich is nowhere near as important a composer, and his music rarely sounds as overtly Russian. This is partly because of the Bolshevik Revolution. After 1917 Stravinsky stayed away from the USSR/Russia, making only one visit home in 1962. Shostakovich endured Stalinism & Socialist Realism & somehow managed to make memorable music under its restrictions.

    BTW I think the list should include Andrei Tarkovsky in the Top Five. His work has been massively influential on other film directors. Alejandro Iñárritu’s “The Revenant” includes many overt quotations from the films of Tarkovsky, for instance.

    •ï¿½Replies: @Mao Cheng Ji

    @georgesdelatour

    
    Stravinsky is easily the most important classical composer of the 20th century
    �

    Says you. Any ordinary person would've probably named something like Gershwin, Ellington, or, for that matter, Khachaturian. And should they be forced to listen to anything by Stravinsky for 3 minutes, he'd be the leading candidate for the top spot in the database of excruciatingly boring.
    
    Anyhow, I would've at least swapped Stravinsky for Nabokov. That guy, aside from being genius and producing esoteric shit nobody in the world gives a fuck about, at least wrote Lolita...

    Replies: @melanf

    , @Anon 2

    @georgesdelatour

    The list testifies to the large Polish diaspora
    that found itself in the Russian Empire after the last
    partition of Poland in 1795, i.e., annexation of the eastern
    territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
    by this German woman, Catherine.
    
    Stravinsky (Strawiński) was descended from old Polish
    nobility, was proud of the fact, spoke some Polish, and visited
    Poland with documentation several times in the 1920s in order
    to obtain Polish citizenship. His house-museum in Ustilug, where
    he composed The Rite of Spring, is in today's Ukraine right
    across the border from Poland. In Paris Stravinsky worked
    with the legendary Polish ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky (Wacław
    Niżyński) and his sister Bronislava who both danced for Ballets
    Russes. In fact, Nijinsky choreographed the Rite of Spring at 24
    in 1913. His sister Bronia outlived him and died in Pacific Palisades, CA
    in 1972.
    
    Lobachevsky, Tsiolkovsky (Ciołkowski), Glinka, and Shostakovich
    all had Polish ancestry. Malevich (Malewicz) was Polish on both sides,
    and the film director Tarkovsky (Tarkowski) had one grandfather who
    was a Polish nobleman.
    
    What this shows is that despite the extreme policy of Russification in the
    Polish lands in the 19th century, the Polish were able to reach the highest
    levels of achievement in art and science (they were prohibited from
    holding political offices). Nijinsky, for example, was mercilessly teased
    by his Russian schoolmates in St. Petersburg, but then he showed them
    what a great fighter and overall athlete he was, and was grudgingly accepted.
    Russia in this sense has a better record than Germany which annexed
    Poland's western territories. Other than von Clausewitz or the physicist Kaluza
    I can't think of any famous Polish Germans in the 19th century. Of course,
    there is Nietzsche but that's controversial.

    Replies: @Anon 2

    , @E

    @georgesdelatour

    I agree it's very strange that Andrei Tarkovsky is not listed at all. Not only that, but there seems to be not a single film director. Was film even a category?

    Tarkovsky is certainly in the top 3 of internationally-influential Russian/Soviet film directors of the 20th century. Other names that come to mind are Sergei Eisenstein, Sergei Parajanov (well, although he wasn't Russian) and Dziga Vertov.

    In animated films, the top "internationally recognized" names would probably be Ivan Ivanov-Vano (the "Russian Walt Disney", whose films were translated into many other languages as well -- his "Snow Queen" was played every Christmas on many US TV channels, with the Russian credits replaced by English ones so that American audiences wouldn't suspect), Yuriy Norshteyn (whose short films usually make international "best animated films of all time" lists at festivals) and Aleksandr Petrov (who won an Oscar a decade ago. His films are animated with paint on glass plates and look like moving paintings). If we looked at Russian opinion as well, Fyodor Khitruk, Garri Bardin, the Brumberg sisters, Eduard Nazarov and Aleksandr Tatarsky would also surely be added to the list.

    As far as the Western influence of Russian musical composers goes, the list looks about right (although in my music theory classes and textbooks in Canada, they really gave a disproportionate amount of weight to Scriabin). Tchaikovsky and especially Rimsky-Korsakov are held in higher esteem in Russia than they are in the West, and would surely be higher in the ranking if Russian opinions were included.

    Is Khachaturian missing because he's Armenian?

    I also agree with those who mentioned Sviridov - a really brilliant composer with very memorable music, but one who is practically unknown outside the USSR, hence his lack of presence here. His "Time, Forward!" is pretty much the unofficial musical anthem of the Soviet Union, so perfectly does it capture the SPIRIT of the utopian aspirations of the USSR -- the beacon of modernity and science always somewhere on the horizon, the building of rocket ships and giant factories. It is a vision both brilliant and terrifying.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyx-RUBQxMQ

    His "Snowstorm suite" is also very good, for example this waltz from it:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm8kpZoX32k

    Interesting that Sergey Taneyev is listed -- a composer noteworthy mainly for church music and music theory (his monumental mathematical analysis of J.S.Bach'a counterpoint, "Convertible Counterpoint in the Strict Style" is especially well-known among music scholars, which may be why he made the cut)

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
14. reiner Tor says: •ï¿½Website

    June 28, 2017 at 3:19 am GMT •ï¿½100 Words

    @syonredux

    
    On the authors – no Bulgakov, no Harms, no Shalamov, no Platonov? Seriously though, fuck this list.
    �

    RE: Authors,
    
    Should be borne in mind that they are evaluated according to how highly they are ranked outside of their own languages. E.g., Anglophone writers are ranked according to what non-Anglophone critics think. This was done in order to avoid intra-linguistic bias (German critics over-ranking German writers, French critics over-ranking French writers, etc). However, it also means that writers who have had little influence outside of their home-languages get really low rankings.Among American writers, for example, Hemingway and Faulkner outrank Fitzgerald by massive margins, and this is quite understandable once you bear in mind that Hemingway and Faulkner have had a massive impact on non-Anglophone lit, whereas Fitzgerald's impact on non-Anglo lit has been rather small.

    Replies: @reiner Tor, @Cicero, @syonredux

    For what it’s worth, in Hungary Bulgakov is considered among the very greatest Russian writers. Perhaps because he was promoted in the 1970s and 1980s as a great example of quality “Soviet” literature. He was quality; and he was Soviet in the sense of having a Soviet passport. (Actually, not having a Soviet passport. I doubt he was ever allowed abroad.) As to his political message, it served two purposes: first, to show how free and liberal the communist regime in Hungary was, and second, to show how free and liberal the USSR was. His criticism of communism was also interpreted as criticism of what was then called “the excesses of Stalinism”. Once communism fell, he could be revered simply for being anti-communist.
15. Cicero says:

    June 28, 2017 at 3:40 am GMT •ï¿½300 Words

    @syonredux

    
    On the authors – no Bulgakov, no Harms, no Shalamov, no Platonov? Seriously though, fuck this list.
    �

    RE: Authors,
    
    Should be borne in mind that they are evaluated according to how highly they are ranked outside of their own languages. E.g., Anglophone writers are ranked according to what non-Anglophone critics think. This was done in order to avoid intra-linguistic bias (German critics over-ranking German writers, French critics over-ranking French writers, etc). However, it also means that writers who have had little influence outside of their home-languages get really low rankings.Among American writers, for example, Hemingway and Faulkner outrank Fitzgerald by massive margins, and this is quite understandable once you bear in mind that Hemingway and Faulkner have had a massive impact on non-Anglophone lit, whereas Fitzgerald's impact on non-Anglo lit has been rather small.

    Replies: @reiner Tor, @Cicero, @syonredux

    I am pretty sure Bulgakov meets the requirement on how highly a writer is ranked outside of his own language. He is probably the best known Russian novelist of the 20th Century alongside Pasternak, and The Master and Margarita holds a towering international reputation. At any rate he would be better known to Western intellectuals than Ivan Goncharov, and that is not meant to knock the latter. Bulgakov’s absence from this list is baffling.

    There is no mention of Yesenin, who traveled to the Western countries in the 20’s and made a sensation in literary circles. I will admit I never read him, but he seems to be only second to Mayakovsky from that generation.

    In the field of science, Pavlov is missing as well. Considering how proverbial “Pavlov’s dog” is, this is another major oversight. And Mechnikov is another outstanding figure in the history of Medicine left out. I think Ilya Ivanov counts as well, as his ideas on cross-species mating and breeding showed up a lot in Western Sci-Fi until at least the 1960’s.

    As for figures who do not quite have an “international” stature, I think Vavilov deserves mention because a lot of his work presaged the Green Revolution of the 1960’s. Presuming he had not been persecuted by Stalin, he would have been far better known outside of the former USSR. You also have geographers and geologists like Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky, Vernadsky, and Fersman, all very accomplished by any standard. Fock and Ioffe were similarly big names in physics.

    Mikhail Yangel, father of the Soviet Ballistic Missile program only gets looked over because he was born in 1911.

    Not a single representative of the Struve family seems to be present, and it was one of the most successful dynasties of Great Thinkers in the past 500 years.

    Since I could probably cite another hundred or so names I will cut it short here. But I do have to finish with a shout out to Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov; he is more or less the intellectual Godfather to all modern Transhumanists, as our host Anatoly would most certainly agree.

    •ï¿½Agree: Anatoly Karlin

    •ï¿½Replies: @Anatoly Karlin

    @Cicero

    Pavlov actually was on Murray's database, but his index number was missing (perhaps because it added up to less than 1), so I decided to leave him out.
    
    Some omissions do probably reflect a certain degree of Western disregard for Russian innovations, in part, surely, because of the hostility with and lack of contacts with the USSR.
    
    Of the Struves, I am most familiar with Peter Struve. He was primarily a political economist, and later political economists aren't on the list (e.g. Marx isn't).
    
    Yesenin is famous in Russia, but far less so in the West. I can see him not making a 1 relative to Shakespeare's 100. However, you are certainly correct about Bulgakov, especially considering he is quite prominent in the West as well. His absence is truly the strangest one.

    Replies: @Anonymous
16. Mao Cheng Ji says:

    June 28, 2017 at 7:28 am GMT •ï¿½100 Words

    @georgesdelatour

    Stravinsky is easily the most important classical composer of the 20th century; as important to music as Picasso is to painting.
    
    He massively influenced Messiaen, Boulez, Copland, Bernstein, Steve Reich, Miles Davis & Quincy Jones. He's also the composer (at least since Wagner) with the greatest cultural reach beyond music. His librettists include Jean Cocteau, Andre Gide & W.H. Auden; Pablo Picasso painted the sets for his ballet Pulcinella; T.S. Eliot & James Joyce both created modernist literary masterpieces inspired by the rhythmic dislocations of the Rite Of Spring.
    
    The strange thing is, Stravinsky has had a much smaller influence on Russian music than Shostakovich - even though Shostakovich is nowhere near as important a composer, and his music rarely sounds as overtly Russian. This is partly because of the Bolshevik Revolution. After 1917 Stravinsky stayed away from the USSR/Russia, making only one visit home in 1962. Shostakovich endured Stalinism & Socialist Realism & somehow managed to make memorable music under its restrictions.
    
    BTW I think the list should include Andrei Tarkovsky in the Top Five. His work has been massively influential on other film directors. Alejandro Iñárritu's "The Revenant" includes many overt quotations from the films of Tarkovsky, for instance.

    Replies: @Mao Cheng Ji, @Anon 2, @E

    Stravinsky is easily the most important classical composer of the 20th century

    Says you. Any ordinary person would’ve probably named something like Gershwin, Ellington, or, for that matter, Khachaturian. And should they be forced to listen to anything by Stravinsky for 3 minutes, he’d be the leading candidate for the top spot in the database of excruciatingly boring.

    Anyhow, I would’ve at least swapped Stravinsky for Nabokov. That guy, aside from being genius and producing esoteric shit nobody in the world gives a fuck about, at least wrote Lolita…

    •ï¿½Replies: @melanf

    @Mao Cheng Ji

    
    Any ordinary person would’ve probably named something like Gershwin, Ellington, or, for that matter, Khachaturian. And should they be forced to listen to anything by Stravinsky for 3 minutes, he’d be the leading candidate for the top spot in the database of excruciatingly boring
    �

    Early Stravinsky is not boring https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7bH82_Lf44
    
    But for most important classical composer of the 20th century Prokofiev is better suited . Here, for example: battle song of the Teutonic knights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXr0m7SaGvs
17. Anon 2 says:

    June 28, 2017 at 7:50 am GMT •ï¿½300 Words

    @georgesdelatour

    Stravinsky is easily the most important classical composer of the 20th century; as important to music as Picasso is to painting.
    
    He massively influenced Messiaen, Boulez, Copland, Bernstein, Steve Reich, Miles Davis & Quincy Jones. He's also the composer (at least since Wagner) with the greatest cultural reach beyond music. His librettists include Jean Cocteau, Andre Gide & W.H. Auden; Pablo Picasso painted the sets for his ballet Pulcinella; T.S. Eliot & James Joyce both created modernist literary masterpieces inspired by the rhythmic dislocations of the Rite Of Spring.
    
    The strange thing is, Stravinsky has had a much smaller influence on Russian music than Shostakovich - even though Shostakovich is nowhere near as important a composer, and his music rarely sounds as overtly Russian. This is partly because of the Bolshevik Revolution. After 1917 Stravinsky stayed away from the USSR/Russia, making only one visit home in 1962. Shostakovich endured Stalinism & Socialist Realism & somehow managed to make memorable music under its restrictions.
    
    BTW I think the list should include Andrei Tarkovsky in the Top Five. His work has been massively influential on other film directors. Alejandro Iñárritu's "The Revenant" includes many overt quotations from the films of Tarkovsky, for instance.

    Replies: @Mao Cheng Ji, @Anon 2, @E

    The list testifies to the large Polish diaspora
    that found itself in the Russian Empire after the last
    partition of Poland in 1795, i.e., annexation of the eastern
    territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
    by this German woman, Catherine.

    Stravinsky (Strawiński) was descended from old Polish
    nobility, was proud of the fact, spoke some Polish, and visited
    Poland with documentation several times in the 1920s in order
    to obtain Polish citizenship. His house-museum in Ustilug, where
    he composed The Rite of Spring, is in today’s Ukraine right
    across the border from Poland. In Paris Stravinsky worked
    with the legendary Polish ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky (Wacław
    Niżyński) and his sister Bronislava who both danced for Ballets
    Russes. In fact, Nijinsky choreographed the Rite of Spring at 24
    in 1913. His sister Bronia outlived him and died in Pacific Palisades, CA
    in 1972.

    Lobachevsky, Tsiolkovsky (Ciołkowski), Glinka, and Shostakovich
    all had Polish ancestry. Malevich (Malewicz) was Polish on both sides,
    and the film director Tarkovsky (Tarkowski) had one grandfather who
    was a Polish nobleman.

    What this shows is that despite the extreme policy of Russification in the
    Polish lands in the 19th century, the Polish were able to reach the highest
    levels of achievement in art and science (they were prohibited from
    holding political offices). Nijinsky, for example, was mercilessly teased
    by his Russian schoolmates in St. Petersburg, but then he showed them
    what a great fighter and overall athlete he was, and was grudgingly accepted.
    Russia in this sense has a better record than Germany which annexed
    Poland’s western territories. Other than von Clausewitz or the physicist Kaluza
    I can’t think of any famous Polish Germans in the 19th century. Of course,
    there is Nietzsche but that’s controversial.

    •ï¿½Replies: @Anon 2

    @Anon 2

    Speaking of Stravinsky and Ballets Russes, there is
    a controversial movie coming out in Russia this fall,
    unless it's banned! It depicts the affair between the
    future tsar Nicholas II and the Polish ballerina Matylda
    Krzesińska (1872-1971). Don't ask me how to spell her
    name in Russian - I only know it ends in -skaya. The name
    of the movie is Matylda. The role of the ballerina is
    played by the Polish actress Michalina Olszańska and
    the role of the tsar by Lars Eidinger (which makes sense
    because the tsar was about 13/16 German).
18. Anon 2 says:

    June 28, 2017 at 8:22 am GMT •ï¿½100 Words

    @Anon 2

    @georgesdelatour

    The list testifies to the large Polish diaspora
    that found itself in the Russian Empire after the last
    partition of Poland in 1795, i.e., annexation of the eastern
    territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
    by this German woman, Catherine.
    
    Stravinsky (Strawiński) was descended from old Polish
    nobility, was proud of the fact, spoke some Polish, and visited
    Poland with documentation several times in the 1920s in order
    to obtain Polish citizenship. His house-museum in Ustilug, where
    he composed The Rite of Spring, is in today's Ukraine right
    across the border from Poland. In Paris Stravinsky worked
    with the legendary Polish ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky (Wacław
    Niżyński) and his sister Bronislava who both danced for Ballets
    Russes. In fact, Nijinsky choreographed the Rite of Spring at 24
    in 1913. His sister Bronia outlived him and died in Pacific Palisades, CA
    in 1972.
    
    Lobachevsky, Tsiolkovsky (Ciołkowski), Glinka, and Shostakovich
    all had Polish ancestry. Malevich (Malewicz) was Polish on both sides,
    and the film director Tarkovsky (Tarkowski) had one grandfather who
    was a Polish nobleman.
    
    What this shows is that despite the extreme policy of Russification in the
    Polish lands in the 19th century, the Polish were able to reach the highest
    levels of achievement in art and science (they were prohibited from
    holding political offices). Nijinsky, for example, was mercilessly teased
    by his Russian schoolmates in St. Petersburg, but then he showed them
    what a great fighter and overall athlete he was, and was grudgingly accepted.
    Russia in this sense has a better record than Germany which annexed
    Poland's western territories. Other than von Clausewitz or the physicist Kaluza
    I can't think of any famous Polish Germans in the 19th century. Of course,
    there is Nietzsche but that's controversial.

    Replies: @Anon 2

    Speaking of Stravinsky and Ballets Russes, there is
    a controversial movie coming out in Russia this fall,
    unless it’s banned! It depicts the affair between the
    future tsar Nicholas II and the Polish ballerina Matylda
    KrzesiÅ„ska (1872-1971). Don’t ask me how to spell her
    name in Russian – I only know it ends in -skaya. The name
    of the movie is Matylda. The role of the ballerina is
    played by the Polish actress Michalina Olszańska and
    the role of the tsar by Lars Eidinger (which makes sense
    because the tsar was about 13/16 German).
19. Anatoly Karlin says: •ï¿½Website

    June 28, 2017 at 9:15 am GMT •ï¿½100 Words

    @Cicero

    @syonredux

    I am pretty sure Bulgakov meets the requirement on how highly a writer is ranked outside of his own language. He is probably the best known Russian novelist of the 20th Century alongside Pasternak, and The Master and Margarita holds a towering international reputation. At any rate he would be better known to Western intellectuals than Ivan Goncharov, and that is not meant to knock the latter. Bulgakov's absence from this list is baffling.

    There is no mention of Yesenin, who traveled to the Western countries in the 20's and made a sensation in literary circles. I will admit I never read him, but he seems to be only second to Mayakovsky from that generation.

    In the field of science, Pavlov is missing as well. Considering how proverbial "Pavlov's dog" is, this is another major oversight. And Mechnikov is another outstanding figure in the history of Medicine left out. I think Ilya Ivanov counts as well, as his ideas on cross-species mating and breeding showed up a lot in Western Sci-Fi until at least the 1960's.

    As for figures who do not quite have an "international" stature, I think Vavilov deserves mention because a lot of his work presaged the Green Revolution of the 1960's. Presuming he had not been persecuted by Stalin, he would have been far better known outside of the former USSR. You also have geographers and geologists like Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky, Vernadsky, and Fersman, all very accomplished by any standard. Fock and Ioffe were similarly big names in physics.

    Mikhail Yangel, father of the Soviet Ballistic Missile program only gets looked over because he was born in 1911.

    Not a single representative of the Struve family seems to be present, and it was one of the most successful dynasties of Great Thinkers in the past 500 years.

    Since I could probably cite another hundred or so names I will cut it short here. But I do have to finish with a shout out to Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov; he is more or less the intellectual Godfather to all modern Transhumanists, as our host Anatoly would most certainly agree.

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin

    Pavlov actually was on Murray’s database, but his index number was missing (perhaps because it added up to less than 1), so I decided to leave him out.

    Some omissions do probably reflect a certain degree of Western disregard for Russian innovations, in part, surely, because of the hostility with and lack of contacts with the USSR.

    Of the Struves, I am most familiar with Peter Struve. He was primarily a political economist, and later political economists aren’t on the list (e.g. Marx isn’t).

    Yesenin is famous in Russia, but far less so in the West. I can see him not making a 1 relative to Shakespeare’s 100. However, you are certainly correct about Bulgakov, especially considering he is quite prominent in the West as well. His absence is truly the strangest one.

    •ï¿½Replies: @Anonymous

    @Anatoly Karlin

    Next to Mendeleev, Pavlov is the most famous Russian scientist. His index would be comparable, too. On any credible list, he is in Top 20.
20. Andrei Martyanov says: •ï¿½Website

    June 28, 2017 at 4:08 pm GMT

    @Dmitriev

    Kapitsa wasn't Jewish, he was basically a Polish/Ukrainian mix, maybe some Russian in there as well. Tamm wasn't Jewish either - he was a German/Russian mix. Frank was half Jewish, half Russian. Ambartsumian was Armenian.
    
    Kolmogorov should be way higher. If Popov is on the list, Oleg Losev should be too. Larionov, but no Bilibin? On the authors - no Bulgakov, no Harms, no Shalamov, no Platonov? Seriously though, fuck this list.

    Replies: @Andrei Martyanov

    Shalamov certainly should be in the list.
21. Andrei Martyanov says: •ï¿½Website

    June 28, 2017 at 4:11 pm GMT

    Sviridov?

    •ï¿½Replies: @melanf

    @Andrei Martyanov

    
    Sviridov?
    �

    A good composer, but among the Russian composers, there are dozens of better composers

    Replies: @Mao Cheng Ji

    , @Anonymous

    @Andrei Martyanov

    Sviridov illustrates Murray list's major flaw - it's a list of what English-speaking academics and journalists are aware of. In this case, Sviridov is a flaming Bolshie who wrote "Врем�, вперед!" - a magnificent piece a fragment from which they frequently heard while watching Soviet TV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn4qjTVT4j8 (it's the same sort of idea as Ravel's Bolero)
    
    Sviridov was an excellent composer who ought to make Top 100 ever but if not for his "Time, forward!", he would not be known in the West at all.
22. melanf says:

    June 28, 2017 at 6:22 pm GMT •ï¿½100 Words

    @Mao Cheng Ji

    @georgesdelatour

    
    Stravinsky is easily the most important classical composer of the 20th century
    �

    Says you. Any ordinary person would've probably named something like Gershwin, Ellington, or, for that matter, Khachaturian. And should they be forced to listen to anything by Stravinsky for 3 minutes, he'd be the leading candidate for the top spot in the database of excruciatingly boring.
    
    Anyhow, I would've at least swapped Stravinsky for Nabokov. That guy, aside from being genius and producing esoteric shit nobody in the world gives a fuck about, at least wrote Lolita...

    Replies: @melanf

    Any ordinary person would’ve probably named something like Gershwin, Ellington, or, for that matter, Khachaturian. And should they be forced to listen to anything by Stravinsky for 3 minutes, he’d be the leading candidate for the top spot in the database of excruciatingly boring

    Early Stravinsky is not boring

    

    But for most important classical composer of the 20th century Prokofiev is better suited . Here, for example: battle song of the Teutonic knights

    
23. melanf says:

    June 28, 2017 at 6:26 pm GMT

    @Andrei Martyanov

    Sviridov?

    Replies: @melanf, @Anonymous

    Sviridov?

    A good composer, but among the Russian composers, there are dozens of better composers

    •ï¿½Replies: @Mao Cheng Ji

    @melanf

    
    A good composer, but among the Russian composers, there are dozens of better composers
    �

    very nice waltz, though.
24. Zenarchy says:

    June 28, 2017 at 7:44 pm GMT •ï¿½100 Words

    Nabokov, possibly the best master of English prose ever (as a Russian!!) is 101?

    And no Platonov at all, one of top 5 or 6 Russian writers of the 20th century?

    And especially – no Bulgakov, whose Master and Margerita regularly tops lists of best books of the 20th century?

    From artistic point of view this list is garbage.
25. Mao Cheng Ji says:

    June 28, 2017 at 8:14 pm GMT

    @melanf

    @Andrei Martyanov

    
    Sviridov?
    �

    A good composer, but among the Russian composers, there are dozens of better composers

    Replies: @Mao Cheng Ji

    A good composer, but among the Russian composers, there are dozens of better composers

    very nice waltz, though.
26. Anonymous •ï¿½Disclaimer says:

    June 28, 2017 at 11:23 pm GMT

    @Anatoly Karlin

    @Jake1

    I don't actually know.
    
    Charles Murray stops his database at people born in 1910, but Landau was born in 1908, and he seems significant enough to have an index number a bit above 1.

    Replies: @Jake1, @Anonymous

    In long-lasting impact, Landau tops most every physicist listed.
27. Anonymous •ï¿½Disclaimer says:

    June 28, 2017 at 11:36 pm GMT •ï¿½100 Words

    @Andrei Martyanov

    Sviridov?

    Replies: @melanf, @Anonymous

    Sviridov illustrates Murray list’s major flaw – it’s a list of what English-speaking academics and journalists are aware of. In this case, Sviridov is a flaming Bolshie who wrote “ВремÑ�, вперед!” – a magnificent piece a fragment from which they frequently heard while watching Soviet TV.

    

    (it’s the same sort of idea as Ravel’s Bolero)

    Sviridov was an excellent composer who ought to make Top 100 ever but if not for his “Time, forward!”, he would not be known in the West at all.
28. Anonymous •ï¿½Disclaimer says:

    June 29, 2017 at 12:10 am GMT

    @Anatoly Karlin

    @Cicero

    Pavlov actually was on Murray's database, but his index number was missing (perhaps because it added up to less than 1), so I decided to leave him out.
    
    Some omissions do probably reflect a certain degree of Western disregard for Russian innovations, in part, surely, because of the hostility with and lack of contacts with the USSR.
    
    Of the Struves, I am most familiar with Peter Struve. He was primarily a political economist, and later political economists aren't on the list (e.g. Marx isn't).
    
    Yesenin is famous in Russia, but far less so in the West. I can see him not making a 1 relative to Shakespeare's 100. However, you are certainly correct about Bulgakov, especially considering he is quite prominent in the West as well. His absence is truly the strangest one.

    Replies: @Anonymous

    Next to Mendeleev, Pavlov is the most famous Russian scientist. His index would be comparable, too. On any credible list, he is in Top 20.
29. Anonymous •ï¿½Disclaimer says:

    June 29, 2017 at 12:19 am GMT

    Another gripe: Akhmatova is there but Tsvetaeva is not? As far as poets go, that’s inexcusable.

    Cherenkov is there but his boss and co-Nobel laureate S. Vavilov is not? His younger brother Nikolai Vavilov was very influential back in the day, too.

    •ï¿½Replies: @Cicero

    @Anonymous

    Just a correction, Nikolai was the elder brother. I mentioned him in my earlier post, and yes I agree he is a scientist worthy of further attention. N.I. Vavilov was a pioneer in breeding disease-resistant crops, alongside I.V. Michurin who focused on fruits and vegetables. Their work could be seen as part of the greater movement in developed countries in the first half of the 20th century that culminated in the Green Revolution of the 1960's which is often credited to Norman Borlaug. Because it involved many scientists from across Europe and the Americas, you cannot single out the Russian participants as exceptional contributors, but they did do some amazing work in light of their persecution by Stalin due to their opposition to Lysenkoism.

    Some other important Russian scientists: Dmitry Chernov in metallurgy, Sergey Lebedev in the development of synthetic rubber, Yakov Frenkel in physics, and Vladimir Barmin in the engineering of rocket launch facilities (he designed Baikonur among others). Borodin, who is on Murray's list for his contributions to music was also a noted chemist.

    For Math, Sergei Sobolev, Mikhail Ostrogradsky, and Moses Schönfinkel were all important names who discoveries had international implications and applications.

    And one last point, if Stravinsky is the most influential Russian, than why is Nicholas Roerich not on the list in some capacity? His artwork and costumes were used to bring Rite of Spring to life, and he was hugely successful as both an artist and archeologist.
30. syonredux says:

    June 29, 2017 at 1:51 am GMT •ï¿½200 Words

    @syonredux

    
    On the authors – no Bulgakov, no Harms, no Shalamov, no Platonov? Seriously though, fuck this list.
    �

    RE: Authors,
    
    Should be borne in mind that they are evaluated according to how highly they are ranked outside of their own languages. E.g., Anglophone writers are ranked according to what non-Anglophone critics think. This was done in order to avoid intra-linguistic bias (German critics over-ranking German writers, French critics over-ranking French writers, etc). However, it also means that writers who have had little influence outside of their home-languages get really low rankings.Among American writers, for example, Hemingway and Faulkner outrank Fitzgerald by massive margins, and this is quite understandable once you bear in mind that Hemingway and Faulkner have had a massive impact on non-Anglophone lit, whereas Fitzgerald's impact on non-Anglo lit has been rather small.

    Replies: @reiner Tor, @Cicero, @syonredux

    For the curious, here are Murray’s sources for the Western Lit category:

    In the following lists, sources used to identify significant figures have a Q (for qualifying source) after their entry. Sources used to compute index scores have an I (for index source) after their entry.

    Literature sources specific to the West W. R. Benét, ed. The Reader’s Encyclopedia. 2nd edition. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. (I) H. Bloom. 1994. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company. (Q) A. Burgio. 1963. Storia della Litteratura. 2 vols. Milan: Vallerdi. (QI) O. M. Carpeaux. 1982. História da Literatura Ocidental. 8 vols. Rio de Janeiro: Ediçöes o Cruzeiro. (QI) G. Díaz-Plaja. 1965. La Litteratura Universal. Barcelona: Editiones Danae. (I) A. Eggebrecht. 1964. Epochen der Weltliteratur. Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann Verlag. (Q) E. Laaths. 1953. Geschichte der Weltliteratur: Deutscher Bucherbund. (QI) J. Paxton and S. Fairfield. 1980. Calendar of Creative Man. New York: Facts on File. (Q) G. Wilpert. 1963. Lexikon der Weltliteratur. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag.(QI)
31. Cicero says:

    June 29, 2017 at 3:19 am GMT •ï¿½200 Words

    @Anonymous

    Another gripe: Akhmatova is there but Tsvetaeva is not? As far as poets go, that's inexcusable.
    
    Cherenkov is there but his boss and co-Nobel laureate S. Vavilov is not? His younger brother Nikolai Vavilov was very influential back in the day, too.

    Replies: @Cicero

    Just a correction, Nikolai was the elder brother. I mentioned him in my earlier post, and yes I agree he is a scientist worthy of further attention. N.I. Vavilov was a pioneer in breeding disease-resistant crops, alongside I.V. Michurin who focused on fruits and vegetables. Their work could be seen as part of the greater movement in developed countries in the first half of the 20th century that culminated in the Green Revolution of the 1960’s which is often credited to Norman Borlaug. Because it involved many scientists from across Europe and the Americas, you cannot single out the Russian participants as exceptional contributors, but they did do some amazing work in light of their persecution by Stalin due to their opposition to Lysenkoism.

    Some other important Russian scientists: Dmitry Chernov in metallurgy, Sergey Lebedev in the development of synthetic rubber, Yakov Frenkel in physics, and Vladimir Barmin in the engineering of rocket launch facilities (he designed Baikonur among others). Borodin, who is on Murray’s list for his contributions to music was also a noted chemist.

    For Math, Sergei Sobolev, Mikhail Ostrogradsky, and Moses Schönfinkel were all important names who discoveries had international implications and applications.

    And one last point, if Stravinsky is the most influential Russian, than why is Nicholas Roerich not on the list in some capacity? His artwork and costumes were used to bring Rite of Spring to life, and he was hugely successful as both an artist and archeologist.
32. E says:

    June 29, 2017 at 5:41 am GMT •ï¿½400 Words

    @georgesdelatour

    Stravinsky is easily the most important classical composer of the 20th century; as important to music as Picasso is to painting.
    
    He massively influenced Messiaen, Boulez, Copland, Bernstein, Steve Reich, Miles Davis & Quincy Jones. He's also the composer (at least since Wagner) with the greatest cultural reach beyond music. His librettists include Jean Cocteau, Andre Gide & W.H. Auden; Pablo Picasso painted the sets for his ballet Pulcinella; T.S. Eliot & James Joyce both created modernist literary masterpieces inspired by the rhythmic dislocations of the Rite Of Spring.
    
    The strange thing is, Stravinsky has had a much smaller influence on Russian music than Shostakovich - even though Shostakovich is nowhere near as important a composer, and his music rarely sounds as overtly Russian. This is partly because of the Bolshevik Revolution. After 1917 Stravinsky stayed away from the USSR/Russia, making only one visit home in 1962. Shostakovich endured Stalinism & Socialist Realism & somehow managed to make memorable music under its restrictions.
    
    BTW I think the list should include Andrei Tarkovsky in the Top Five. His work has been massively influential on other film directors. Alejandro Iñárritu's "The Revenant" includes many overt quotations from the films of Tarkovsky, for instance.

    Replies: @Mao Cheng Ji, @Anon 2, @E

    I agree it’s very strange that Andrei Tarkovsky is not listed at all. Not only that, but there seems to be not a single film director. Was film even a category?

    Tarkovsky is certainly in the top 3 of internationally-influential Russian/Soviet film directors of the 20th century. Other names that come to mind are Sergei Eisenstein, Sergei Parajanov (well, although he wasn’t Russian) and Dziga Vertov.

    In animated films, the top “internationally recognized” names would probably be Ivan Ivanov-Vano (the “Russian Walt Disney”, whose films were translated into many other languages as well — his “Snow Queen” was played every Christmas on many US TV channels, with the Russian credits replaced by English ones so that American audiences wouldn’t suspect), Yuriy Norshteyn (whose short films usually make international “best animated films of all time” lists at festivals) and Aleksandr Petrov (who won an Oscar a decade ago. His films are animated with paint on glass plates and look like moving paintings). If we looked at Russian opinion as well, Fyodor Khitruk, Garri Bardin, the Brumberg sisters, Eduard Nazarov and Aleksandr Tatarsky would also surely be added to the list.

    As far as the Western influence of Russian musical composers goes, the list looks about right (although in my music theory classes and textbooks in Canada, they really gave a disproportionate amount of weight to Scriabin). Tchaikovsky and especially Rimsky-Korsakov are held in higher esteem in Russia than they are in the West, and would surely be higher in the ranking if Russian opinions were included.

    Is Khachaturian missing because he’s Armenian?

    I also agree with those who mentioned Sviridov – a really brilliant composer with very memorable music, but one who is practically unknown outside the USSR, hence his lack of presence here. His “Time, Forward!” is pretty much the unofficial musical anthem of the Soviet Union, so perfectly does it capture the SPIRIT of the utopian aspirations of the USSR — the beacon of modernity and science always somewhere on the horizon, the building of rocket ships and giant factories. It is a vision both brilliant and terrifying.

    

    His “Snowstorm suite” is also very good, for example this waltz from it:

    

    Interesting that Sergey Taneyev is listed — a composer noteworthy mainly for church music and music theory (his monumental mathematical analysis of J.S.Bach’a counterpoint, “Convertible Counterpoint in the Strict Style” is especially well-known among music scholars, which may be why he made the cut)

    •ï¿½Replies: @Anatoly Karlin

    @E

    Film wasn't a category. Though I suspect Americans would completely dominate any such category anyway.
    
    Khachaturian and Sviridov - I like both of them, they are well known in Russia, but very little known in the West.

    Replies: @E
33. Anatoly Karlin says: •ï¿½Website

    June 29, 2017 at 10:30 am GMT

    @E

    @georgesdelatour

    I agree it's very strange that Andrei Tarkovsky is not listed at all. Not only that, but there seems to be not a single film director. Was film even a category?

    Tarkovsky is certainly in the top 3 of internationally-influential Russian/Soviet film directors of the 20th century. Other names that come to mind are Sergei Eisenstein, Sergei Parajanov (well, although he wasn't Russian) and Dziga Vertov.

    In animated films, the top "internationally recognized" names would probably be Ivan Ivanov-Vano (the "Russian Walt Disney", whose films were translated into many other languages as well -- his "Snow Queen" was played every Christmas on many US TV channels, with the Russian credits replaced by English ones so that American audiences wouldn't suspect), Yuriy Norshteyn (whose short films usually make international "best animated films of all time" lists at festivals) and Aleksandr Petrov (who won an Oscar a decade ago. His films are animated with paint on glass plates and look like moving paintings). If we looked at Russian opinion as well, Fyodor Khitruk, Garri Bardin, the Brumberg sisters, Eduard Nazarov and Aleksandr Tatarsky would also surely be added to the list.

    As far as the Western influence of Russian musical composers goes, the list looks about right (although in my music theory classes and textbooks in Canada, they really gave a disproportionate amount of weight to Scriabin). Tchaikovsky and especially Rimsky-Korsakov are held in higher esteem in Russia than they are in the West, and would surely be higher in the ranking if Russian opinions were included.

    Is Khachaturian missing because he's Armenian?

    I also agree with those who mentioned Sviridov - a really brilliant composer with very memorable music, but one who is practically unknown outside the USSR, hence his lack of presence here. His "Time, Forward!" is pretty much the unofficial musical anthem of the Soviet Union, so perfectly does it capture the SPIRIT of the utopian aspirations of the USSR -- the beacon of modernity and science always somewhere on the horizon, the building of rocket ships and giant factories. It is a vision both brilliant and terrifying.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyx-RUBQxMQ

    His "Snowstorm suite" is also very good, for example this waltz from it:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm8kpZoX32k

    Interesting that Sergey Taneyev is listed -- a composer noteworthy mainly for church music and music theory (his monumental mathematical analysis of J.S.Bach'a counterpoint, "Convertible Counterpoint in the Strict Style" is especially well-known among music scholars, which may be why he made the cut)

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin

    Film wasn’t a category. Though I suspect Americans would completely dominate any such category anyway.

    Khachaturian and Sviridov – I like both of them, they are well known in Russia, but very little known in the West.

    •ï¿½Replies: @E

    @Anatoly Karlin

    I think Khachaturian's name is much more likely to be recognized in the West than Sviridov's, though. His "Sabre Dance" is somewhat well-known even here.

    Sviridov, on the other hand, only got some limited public awareness here a decade ago when someone realized that the Metal Gear Solid theme music was plagiarized from one of his works.

    As for film, I think Americans would make up a good chunk of the list, but less than half. It all depends on how it's measured. Living in North America, the rest of the world's film industry except for Japan's is almost invisible, but it still exists and has been influential.
34. E says:

    June 29, 2017 at 5:19 pm GMT •ï¿½100 Words

    @Anatoly Karlin

    @E

    Film wasn't a category. Though I suspect Americans would completely dominate any such category anyway.
    
    Khachaturian and Sviridov - I like both of them, they are well known in Russia, but very little known in the West.

    Replies: @E

    I think Khachaturian’s name is much more likely to be recognized in the West than Sviridov’s, though. His “Sabre Dance” is somewhat well-known even here.

    Sviridov, on the other hand, only got some limited public awareness here a decade ago when someone realized that the Metal Gear Solid theme music was plagiarized from one of his works.

    As for film, I think Americans would make up a good chunk of the list, but less than half. It all depends on how it’s measured. Living in North America, the rest of the world’s film industry except for Japan’s is almost invisible, but it still exists and has been influential.

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