The Russians Are Coming Trivia Quiz

Answer: Oleg Popov

Oleg Konstantinovich Popov (1930-2016) enrolled in the Moscow Circus School in 1949. In 1955, Popv started his international career.
At the start of his long career, Popov combined funambulism and juggling with classic clowning.
Popov's most acclaimed awards were the two Orders mentioned in the question, as well as People's Artist of the USSR (1969) and the honorary prize Clown d'Or at the International Circus Festival in Monte Carlo (1981).
Popov toured the world on to the year of his death, at age 86.

Answer: Rudolf Nureyev

Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev was born near Irkutsk in 1938, on the Trans- Siberian Express to Vladivostok. He graduated as ballet dancer in 1958.
On tour in 1961 he met Margot Fonteyn (born 1919), and from 1962 until 1988 they danced together frequently. Even if there was quite a difference in age, Nureyev felt that he and Margot Fonteyn "danced with one body, one soul". If you want an example, check out the "Pas de Deux" from "Swan Lake" danced by Nureyev and Fonteyn - there is an excellent YouTube fragment available.
Nureyev defected in 1961 to the west, and stayed in London, Vienna and Paris. In 1983 he became director of the Paris Opera Ballet.
Nureyev was one of the pioneers in combining classical ballet with modern dance.
Nureyev died in 1993 (aged 54) from heart failure.

Answer: Anna Pavlova

Anna Matyevna Pavlova was born in Saint-Petersburg in 1881. She graduated as a ballerina at the Imperial Ballet School in 1899. From 1907 onwards, she toured abroad, at first with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballet Russe, later with her own ballet company (founded in 1911).
Pavlova is best remembered for her choreography of "The Dying Swan", on music form Saint-Saens' "Le Carnaval des Animaux". If you're interested on seeing Pavlova at work, you'll find a movie of this dance on YouTube.
In 1930 Pavlova was diagnosed with pneumonia. Doctors advised her surgical treatment, but warned her she would never dance again - to which she replied with the quote I've mentioned in the question.
At the night when she was dying (January 23, 1931), she asked to "lay out my swan costume once more". These (perhaps) last words inspired the legend that she danced "The Dying Swan" to her death.

Answer: Mikhail Fokine

Mikhail Mikhailovich Fokine was born in Saint Petersburg in 1880. He enrolled in the Imperial Ballet School and debuted as a dancer in 1898 at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre. At that time, classical ballet concentrated on the footwork only, and Fokine remarked that frequently the choreographer, the costume designer and the set decorator worked fully independently, one from another, which lead to some incongruities in the performance.
Fokine started as a choreographer in 1907, in close association with the set decorator (a college friend of his). Sergei Diaghilev chose Fokine as head choreographer for the company Les Ballets Russes, founded by Diaghilev in 1909.
Fokine staged well over eighty ballets in Europe and the Americas. Some of his best known creations are "Les Sylphides" based upon various works by Frédéric Chopin, and "The Dying Swan" (music by Camille Saint-Saens).

Answer: Anna Netrebko

Anna Yuryevna Netrebko was born in Krasnodar in 1971. She started her career at the Mariinski Theatre in 1993. Since 2006, she has the double nationality of Russian and Austrian (for which citizenship she applied because it was easier for getting the necessary visa to travel abroad).
Some of her grand roles include Violetta in Verdi's "La Traviata", Mimi in Puccini's "La Bohème" and the title role in Massenet's "Manon". She also sang the roles of Lyudmila in Glinka's "Ruslan I Lyudmila" and Natasha in Prokofiev's "Vojna I mir" ("War and Peace").

Answer: Dmitri Hvorostovsky

Dmitri Aleksandrovich Hvorostovsky was born in Krasnoyarsk in 1962. In 1989, he won the aforesaid BBC competition over the Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel, and since 1990 Hvorostovsky tours the world.
He starred in Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin", in Verdi's "Il Trovatore" and "La Traviata", in Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro", and so on. The role in Eugene Onegin is probably his masterpiece, and it has been recorded many times.

Answer: Gala Diakonova

Gala was born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova in Kazan in 1894. She went to Switzerland in 1912 to recover from tuberculosis. Here she met a number of future surrealists: Paul Eluard (whom she married in 1916), Louis Aragon et André Breton. In 1929, Eluard and Gala met Salvador Dali in Spain. Soon after, Gala left Eluard for the younger Dali.

She married Dali in 1934. Dali has portrayed her in several of his works. For instance, in the work "Gala and the Tigers" she poses reclining naked on a floating rock, and a pomegranate bursts open. Out of the pomegranate comes a humongous fish, which opens its beak and spits out two tigers. One of the tigers (the one who seems ready to devour Gala) drops a rifle with a bayonet.

Answer: Aleksandr Antonov

Aleksandr Pavlovich Antonov was born in Moscow in 1898.
In Sergei Eisenstein's masterpiece "Battleship Potemkin", Antonov played the role of the sailor Grigory Vakulinchuk, who instigated the mutiny on the ship. The direct motive for the mutiny was the quality of the (maggot infested) meat used to make soup for the sailors.
At the moment of the legendary scene on the steps from the harbour to the city of Odessa, Vakulinchuk was already dead. His body was carried into the city with a sign "For a Bowl of Soup", to remember the direct cause of the mutiny.
Antonov played also another Bolshevik mutineer in another movie by Eisenstein: in "Stachka" (1925) Antonov was one of the factory workers on strike.

Answer: Natalya Bondarchuk

"Solaris" (1972) is a sci-fi movie about a space station on a remote planet. The three cosmonauts over there were sending very confused messages, so a psychologist was sent to them in order to assess the mission. But this psychologist (role by the Lithuanian actor Donatas Banionis) was stunned to meet on the planet Solaris, a person exactly alike his long deceased wife...
Natalya Sergeevna Bondarchuk was born in 1950 in Moscow. In the movie "Solaris" she played Khari, the deceased wife of the psychologist Kris Kelvin - or at least someone very similar, for she apparently had some talents no Earth inhabitant had. Khari for instance ripped through a solid metal door with her bare hands, and the cuts she sustained while doing so, healed instantly...
Bondarchuk also played Bambi's mother in the two Russian movies "Bambi's Childhood" (1985) and "Young Bambi" (1986), for which she collaborated on the script and which movies she also directed.

Answer: Timur Bekmambetov

Timur Nuruakhitovich Bekmambetov was born in 1961 in Guryev (at that time part of the Soviet Union, nowadays this town has been renamed Atyrau and is situated in Kazakhstan).
Sources differ about his nationality: Wikipedia mentions he has Russian citizenship but names him a Kazakh director, IMDB names him as a Russian-Kazakh director, Rotten Tomatoes speaks only of him as a fine example of Russian cinema.
Bekmambetov debuted in 1994 with "Peshavar Waltz". His first successes in the western hemisphere were the sci-fi movies "Night Watch" (2004) and "Day Watch" (2006).
Bekmambetov came up in his movie "Ben-Hur" with two major differences in comparison to the well-known version of 1959 (directed by William Wyler): first of all the 2016 version is much shorter, secondly the emphasis is more on forgiveness than on revenge in Bekmambetov's version.