Dmitri Bystrolyotov
1901 – 1975 · 74 years · Crimea · Eastern Europe & Russia
An illegal who worked in Europe for 12 years, recruiting agents and obtaining ciphers, including British Foreign Office papers. Arrested in 1938, he spent 16 years in prisons and camps and after his release wrote the Gulag memoir The Feast of the Immortals.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 20 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 27 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 22 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 12 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 34 years older
- Jean-Paul Sartre — French philosopher and writer, 4 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 5 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 23 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 33 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 31 years older
- Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 7 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 5 years younger
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 20 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 3 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 17 years younger
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 6 years older
- Vladimir Mayakovsky — Futurist poet, 8 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 40 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 17 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 9 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 24 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 57 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 5 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 26 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 8 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 32 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, born the same year
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, born the same year
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 11 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 9 years younger
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 12 years older
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 29 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 45 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 28 years younger
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 54 years older
- Jorge Luis Borges — writer, 2 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 30 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 3 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 18 years younger
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 35 years younger
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 7 years younger
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 1 year older
The world in their lifetime
- 1901 First Nobel Prizes — aged 0, Europe
- 1903 Wright brothers' first flight — aged 2, Americas
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — aged 3, Africa
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 4, Europe
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — aged 4, Middle East
- 1905 Battle of Tsushima — aged 4, Asia
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 7, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 13, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 13, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 13, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 14, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 15, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 17, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 18, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 27, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 28, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 28, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 32, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 35, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 35, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 38, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 40, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 40, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 41, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 44, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 44, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 46, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 47, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 48, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 52, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 52, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 56, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 60, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — aged 65, Asia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 68, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 69, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 74, Asia