USSR's Top Ten

Ballet dancer Mikhail Barishnikov, tennis player Anna Kournikova and president of Nixon research center Dmitry Simes lead a rating of the most influential people from former USSR who currently live in the US.
   
The rating has been based on an opinion survey of various American researchers, teachers, journalists and experts who study Russian culture, economics, history and politics.

Rating’s participants are all first generation US citizens. Their native tongue is Russian. Their personal reasons for immigration, citizenship acquisition, and level of popularity back home have not been taken into account. Another condition of such rating was to exclude all government officials from the list. Ambassadors for instance, were also forbidden from participating in the rating. 

The final list consists of 50 people. Experts were later told to choose 10 most significant figures.

Director of Institute of Russian Researches Leon Aron was included in the top 10 along with another director of Russian and Asian programs of the center of defense information Nikolay Zlobin. Also, the following people made the top ten: Elena Bonner, Yuri Temirkhanov, Semen Kukes, Ariel Cohen, and Eduard Lozansky.    
 
 Phisics Alexy Abrikosov and Roald Sagdeev, historian Sergay Khruschev, hockey player Pavel Bure, sculptor Ernst Neizvestny and founder of Google search engine Sergey Brin lacked just a few votes in order to get to the top 10.   
 
 

Source: Podrobnosti