The Famous Persons in Russia

Non other than Raj Kapoor

This man was up there with the most popular foreign actors in the USSR. People who grew up in the Soviet Union will not only be able to list all the films he acted in (at least the ones that were in circulation in Soviet times), they will also be able to sing the songs from his films. People of the older generation say that for them Raj Kapoor was a symbol of optimism. They saw how, with a smile on their faces, his heroes would overcome immense suffering, and this gave viewers the strength to fight their own battles and to cope with the unpleasantness in their own lives. One old lady even told me that when her grandchildren gave her a mobile phone, she asked them to find a ringtone with a tune from one of Awaara’s films. Young people today are much less familiar with the work of Raj Kapoor, but they too will have heard of his name.