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Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu (UK: , US: , French: [ʒeʁaʁ ɡzavje maʁsɛl dəpaʁdjø] ; born 27 December 1948) is a French actor, known to be one of the most prolific in film history. He has completed over 250 films since 1967, almost exclusively as a lead. Depardieu has worked with over 150 film directors whose most notable collaborations include Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Maurice Pialat, Alain Resnais, Claude Chabrol, Ridley Scott and Bernardo Bertolucci. He is the second highest-grossing actor in the history of French cinema behind Louis de Funès. As of January 2022, his body of work also includes countless television productions, 18 stage plays, 16 records and 9 books. He is mostly known as a character actor and for having portrayed numerous leading historical and fictitious figures of the Western world including Georges Danton, Joseph Stalin, Honoré de Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, Auguste Rodin, Cyrano de Bergerac, Jean Valjean, Edmond Dantès, Christopher Columbus, Obélix, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn.Depardieu is a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur and Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite. He was granted citizenship of Russia in January 2013 (officially adopted name in Russian: Жерар Ксавие Депардьё, romanized: Zherar Ksavie Depardyo), and became a cultural ambassador of Montenegro during the same month.
Depardieu has received acclaim for his performances in The Last Metro (1980), for which he won the César Award for Best Actor, in Police (1985), for which he won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, Jean de Florette (1986), and Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), for which he won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival and his second César Award for Best Actor as well as garnering a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He co-starred in Peter Weir's comedy Green Card (1990), winning a Golden Globe Award, and later acted in many big-budget Hollywood films, including Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996), Randall Wallace's The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), and Ang Lee's Life of Pi (2012).
Depardieu has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault. The French authorities have charged him with rape and, since 2021, have had him under formal investigation. Depardieu has denied any wrongdoing and has not been convicted in connection with any of the accusations against him, but he was stripped of the National Order of Quebec in 2023.

Alexander I (Russian: Александр I Павлович, romanized: Aleksandr I Pavlovich, IPA: [ɐlʲɪkˈsandr ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ]; 23 December [O.S. 12 December] 1777 – 1 December [O.S. 19 November] 1825), nicknamed "the Blessed", was Emperor of Russia from 1801, the first king of Congress Poland from 1815, and the grand duke of Finland from 1809 to his death in 1825. He was the eldest son of Emperor Paul I and Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg.
The son of Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, later Paul I, Alexander succeeded to the throne after his father was murdered. He ruled Russia during the chaotic period of the Napoleonic Wars. As prince and during the early years of his reign, Alexander often used liberal rhetoric, but continued Russia's absolutist policies in practice. In the first years of his reign, he initiated some minor social reforms and (in 1803–04) major liberal educational reforms, such as building more universities. Alexander appointed Mikhail Speransky, the son of a village priest, as one of his closest advisors. The Collegia were abolished and replaced by the State Council, which was created to improve legislation. Plans were also made to set up a parliament and sign a constitution. Alexander also was hostile towards European powers. Unlike his predecessors who tried to westernize Russia so it could compete with European nations, Alexander was a Russian nationalist and Slavophilist who wanted Russia to develop on the basis of Russian culture rather than European.
In foreign policy, he changed Russia's position towards France four times between 1804 and 1812 among neutrality, opposition, and alliance. In 1805 he joined Britain in the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon, but after suffering massive defeats at the battles of Austerlitz and Friedland, he switched sides and formed an alliance with Napoleon by the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and joined Napoleon's Continental System. He fought a small-scale naval war against Britain between 1807 and 1812 as well as a short war against Sweden (1808–09) after Sweden's refusal to join the Continental System. Alexander and Napoleon hardly agreed, especially regarding Poland, and the alliance collapsed by 1810. Alexander's greatest triumph came in 1812 when Napoleon's invasion of Russia proved to be a catastrophic disaster for the French. As part of the winning coalition against Napoleon, he gained territory in Finland and Poland. He formed the Holy Alliance to suppress revolutionary movements in Europe which he saw as immoral threats to legitimate Christian monarchs. He also helped Austria's Klemens von Metternich in suppressing all national and liberal movements.
During the second half of his reign, Alexander became increasingly arbitrary, reactionary, and fearful of plots against him; as a result he ended many of the reforms he made earlier. He purged schools of foreign teachers, as education became more religiously driven as well as politically conservative. Speransky was replaced as advisor with the strict artillery inspector Aleksey Arakcheyev, who oversaw the creation of military settlements. Alexander died of typhus in December 1825 while on a trip to southern Russia. He left no legitimate children, as his two daughters died in childhood. Neither of his brothers wanted to become emperor. After a period of great confusion (that presaged the failed Decembrist revolt of liberal army officers in the weeks after his death), he was succeeded by his younger brother, Nicholas I.

Alexandra Feodorovna (Russian: Александра Фёдоровна; 6 June [O.S. 25 May] 1872 – 17 July 1918), Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine at birth, was the last Empress of Russia as the consort of Emperor Nicholas II from their marriage on 26 November [O.S. 14 November] 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March [O.S. 2 March] 1917. A favourite granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, she was, like her grandmother, one of the most famous royal carriers of haemophilia and bore a haemophiliac heir, Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia. Her reputation for encouraging her husband's resistance to the surrender of autocratic authority and her known faith in the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin severely damaged her popularity and that of the Romanov monarchy in its final years. She and her immediate family were all murdered while in Bolshevik captivity in 1918, during the Russian Revolution. In 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized her as Saint Alexandra the Passion Bearer.

Violetta Trofimovna Bovt (also Boft, Russian: Виолетта Трофимовна Бовт, 9 May 1927 – 22 April 1995) was an American-Soviet ballet dancer.

Natalia Vladimirovna Poryvay (Russian: Ната́лия Влади́мировна Порыва́й; Ukrainian: Наталія Володимирівна Порива́й) (born 31 May 1973), well known as Natasha Korolyova (Russian: Наташа Королёва), is a Russian singer of popular music. She was named Meritorious Artist of Russia (2004).

James Lewin (Russian: Джемс Натанович Левин, romanized: Dzhems Natanovich Levin; 28 October 1887 in Berlin – 31 December 1937 in Chelyabinsk, USSR) was a German-Jewish psychiatrist and physician.

Sofia Sigizmundovna Dzerzhinskaya (born Muszkat; Polish: Zofia Dzierżyńska—Muszkat; Russian: Софья Сигизмундовна Дзержинская—Мушкат; 4 December 1882 – 27 February 1968) was a leading Polish Social Democrat and later Communist politician. During World War II, she was director of the Polish language Tadeusz Kościuszko radio station, broadcasting the communist message into occupied Poland.
From September 1918 through February 1919, Sofia was a member of the Soviet diplomatic mission in Bern. From 1920, she lived in the Soviet Union, in Moscow where she worked as a teacher. In 1922, Sofia worked in the School of Rosa Luxemburg in Moscow, later, 1923–24 at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West. After that, she worked in the Polish Bureau of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. From 1939 to 1943, Sofia worked at the Executive Committee of Comintern. In 1969, her memoirs "Lata wielkich bojów: wspomnienia" were published in Poland by Książka i Wiedza publishing house. She died in Moscow in 1968 and was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery.

Wolf Grigoryevich (Gershkovich) Messing (Russian: Во́льф Григо́рьевич (Ге́ршикович) Ме́ссинг, Polish: Wolf Grigoriewicz Messing, Hebrew: וולף מסינג‎) (10 September 1899 – 8 November 1974) was a self-proclaimed psychic, telepath and stage hypnotist.

Vladimir Solomonovich Pozner (Russian: Влади́мир Соломо́нович По́знер; 5 January 1905 in Paris – 19 February 1992 in Paris) was a French writer and translator of Russian-Jewish descent. His family fled the pogroms to take up residence in France. Pozner expanded on his inherited cultural socialism to associate both in writing and politics with anti-fascist and communist groups in the inter-war period. His writing was important because he made friends with internationally renowned exponents of hardline communism, while rejecting Soviet oppression.

Laurent Terzieff (27 June 1935, in Toulouse – 2 July 2010, in Paris) was a French actor.