Sergei Diaghilev
1872 – 1929
Russian

Ballet impresario. He was a legendary exemplar of high culture, of modernism, and of bohemianism. Founder of Ballets Russes. His dance company burst onto Europe after World War I and had an enormous impact on dance, music, and art. He was a leading modernist, merged Bohemia with high society, and was himself almost as theatrical as his productions.

Contemporaries
1896–1974Giorgiy Zhukov
1883–1936Grigoriy Zinoviev
1927–2013Tatyana Zaslavskaya
1884–1937Yevgeny Zamyatin
1895–c. 1939Nikolai Yezhov
1896–1934Lev Vygotsky
1883–1954Andrey Vyshinsky
1818–1883Ivan Turgenev
1879–1940Leon Trotsky
1828–1910Count Leo Tolstoy
1902–1982Mikhail Suslov
1862–1911Peter Stolypin
1852–1895Stepnyak
c. 1886–1934Alexandre Stavisky
1906–1977Alexey Stakhanov
1853–1900Vladimir Solovyev
1918–2008Alexander Solzhenitsyn
1891–1945Maria Skobtsova
1928–2014Eduard Shevardnadze
1921–1989Andrey Sakharov
1881–1938Alexey Rykov
c. 1871–1916Grigoriy Rasputin
1885–c. 1939Karl Radek
1856–1918Georgiy Plekhanov
1890–1950Vaslav Nijinsky
1902–1977Alexander Luria
1870–1924Vladimir Lenin
1842–1921Pyotr Kropotkin
1894–1971Nikita Khrushchev
1881–1970Alexander Kerensky
1893–1991Lazar Kaganovich
1880–1942Michel Fokine
1872–1918Alexandra Feodorovna
1877–1926Felix Dzerzhinsky
1821–1881Fyodor Dostoevsky
1888–1938Nikolay Bukharin
1833–1887Alexander Borodin
1923–2011Yelena Bonner
1880–1921Alexander Blok
1909–1997Sir Isaiah Berlin
1899–1953Lavrenti Beria
1838–1906Friedrich Beilstein
1857–1927Vladimir Bekhterev
1904–1983George Balanchine
1814–1876Mikhail Bakunin
1920–1992Isaac Asimov
1818–1881Alexander II