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Orkhon

(Encyclopedia)Orkhon ôrˈkŏn, ôr-khŏnˈ [key], river, c.300 mi (480 km) long, rising in the Khangai Mts., N central Republic of Mongolia, and flowing east, then north, past the site of ancient Karakorum, and th...

Moussorgsky, Modest Petrovich

(Encyclopedia)Moussorgsky, Modest Petrovich mədyĕstˈ pĕtrôˈvĭch mo͞osôrgˈskē [key], 1839–81, Russian composer. His name is also transliterated as Mussorgsky and Musorgsky. He was one of the first to pr...

Narezhny, Vasily Trofimovich

(Encyclopedia)Narezhny, Vasily Trofimovich vəsēˈlyē trəfēˈməvĭch nərĕzhˈnē [key], 1780–1825, Russian novelist. He was an important forerunner of Gogol in his realistic descriptions of Ukrainian and C...

Cape Dezhnev

(Encyclopedia)Cape Dezhnev dĕzhˈnəf, Russ. dyāshˈnyəf [key] or East Cape, northeasternmost point of Asia, Russian Far East, on Chukchi Peninsula and on the Bering Strait. It is named after Semyon Dezhnev, the...

Moscow, grand duchy of

(Encyclopedia)Moscow or Muscovy, grand duchy of, state existing in W central Russia from the late 14th to mid-16th cent., with the city of Moscow as its nucleus. Its formation and eventual ascendancy over other Rus...

Gorky, Maxim

(Encyclopedia)Gorky, Maxim or Maksim both: məksyēm gôrˈkē [key] [Rus.,=Maxim the Bitter], pseud. of Aleksey Maximovich Pyeshkov, 1868–1936, Russian writer, b. Nizhny Novgorod (named Gorky, 1932–91). Gorky ...

Sorokin, Vladimir Georgevich

(Encyclopedia)Sorokin, Vladimir Georgevich, 1955–, Russian writer. Trained as an engineer, he turned to Moscow's underground writing world in the 1980s. His iconoclastic work was banned by the Soviets; his first ...

Gorchakov, Aleksandr Mikhailovich, Prince

(Encyclopedia)Gorchakov, Aleksandr Mikhailovich, Prince əlyĭksänˈdər mēkhīˈləvĭch, gərchəkôfˈ [key], 1798–1883, Russian diplomat. After serving (1854–56) as ambassador at Vienna, he became Alexand...

Nemtsov, Boris Yefimovich

(Encyclopedia)Nemtsov, Boris Yefimovich, 1959–2015, Russian physicist and politician. He worked at the Gorky Radiophysics Research Institute (1981–90) before he was elected to the Soviet Congress of People's De...

Yermak

(Encyclopedia)Yermak or Ermak both: yĕrmäkˈ [key], d. 1584?, Russian conqueror of Siberia; his name also occurs as Yermak Timofeyevich. The leader of a band of independent Russian Cossacks, he spent his early ca...