“My father was a Party member and he was a pretty high rank military officer under the colonel, junior colonel, I don't know the term. He was a total Stalinist. A bit with a streak of anti-Semitism and very shrewd man, a very kind of nervous man.”

Latvian and American dancer, choreographer, and actor

Mikhail Nikolayevich Baryshnikov is a Latvian and American dancer, choreographer, and actor. He was born in 1948 and became the preeminent male classical ballet dancer of the 1970s and 1980s. He later worked as a dance director and is also known for his work as a choreographer and actor. His public reputation rests on a long career in classical ballet and on the broader range of performance work that followed.