The Order of Lenin (Russian: Орден Ленина, Orden Lenina), named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union. The order was awarded to:

From 1944 to 1957, before the institution of specific length of service medals, the Order of Lenin was also used to reward 25 years of conspicuous military service.

Those who were awarded the titles "Hero of the Soviet Union" and "Hero of Socialist Labour" were also given the order as part of the award. It was also bestowed on cities, companies, factories, regions, military units and ships. Corporate entities, factories, various educational institutions and military units who received the said Order applied the full name of the order into their official titles.

The order was established by the Central Executive Committee on April 6, 1930.

The first design of the Order of Lenin was made of silver with some lightly gold-plated features. It was a round badge with a central disc featuring Vladimir Lenin's profile surrounded by smokestacks, a tractor and a building, possibly a power plant. A thin red-enamelled border and a circle of wheat panicles surrounded the disc. At the top was a gold-plated "hammer and sickle" emblem, and at the bottom were the Russian initials for "USSR" (Russian: СССР) in red enamel. Only about 800 of this design were minted.

In mathematics, big O notation is used to describe the limiting behavior of a function when the argument tends towards a particular value or infinity, usually in terms of simpler functions. It is a member of a larger family of notations that is called Landau notation, Bachmann–Landau notation (after Edmund Landau and Paul Bachmann), or asymptotic notation. In computer science, big O notation is used to classify algorithms by how they respond (e.g., in their processing time or working space requirements) to changes in input size.

Big O notation characterizes functions according to their growth rates: different functions with the same growth rate may be represented using the same O notation. A description of a function in terms of big O notation usually only provides an upper bound on the growth rate of the function. Associated with big O notation are several related notations, using the symbols o, Ω, ω, and Θ, to describe other kinds of bounds on asymptotic growth rates.

Big O notation is also used in many other fields to provide similar estimates.

Boris Shtokolov (Russian: Борис Тимофеевич Штоколов) (March 19, 1930 – January 6, 2005) was a famous Soviet and Russian singer, one of the greatest basses of the 20th century.

Boris Shtokolov was born in the city of Kuznetsk, Kemerovo Oblast (USSR). In 1949 he entered the Ural State Conservatory in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) but wanted to became a military pilot. Georgy Zhukov having heard his singing said: "There are many guys like you in aviation, but in opera singing you are unique". In 1950-1951 he was singing at the Sverdlovsk Philarmonic Society before he became a soloist at the Sverdlovsk Opera and Ballet Theater. In 1959 he was invited to the Mariinsky Theatre in Leningrad where he gained world fame as a leading soloist from 1959 to 1989. At the Mariinsky Theater he sang a great number of roles, such as Ruslan, Don Basilio, Boris Godunov, Ivan Susanin, the title role in Anton Rubinstein's The Demon, Prince Gremin, Mefistofele, and many others.

Boris Shtokolov also was a prominent theorist of opera singing and respiration techniques. In 1995 he published a book Burn, burn, my star: How to sing.

Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov (Russian: Гео́ргий Васи́льевич Свири́дов; his patronymic is also transliterated Vasil'yevich, Vasilievich, and Vasil'evich) (December 16, 1915 – January 5, 1998) was a Soviet neoromantic composer.

Sviridov was born in 1915 in the town of Fatezh in the Kursk guberniya of the Russian Empire (present-day Kursk Oblast). His father, Vasily Sviridov, a sympathizer of the Bolshevik cause during the Russian Civil War that followed the Russian Revolution, was killed when Georgy was four. The family moved to Kursk, where Sviridov, still in elementary school, learned to play his first instrument, the balalaika. Learning to play by ear, he demonstrated such talent and ability that he was accepted into the local orchestra of Russian folk instruments. He enrolled in a music school in 1929, and following the advice of his teacher, M. Krutinsky, came to Leningrad in 1932, where he studied piano at the Leningrad Central Music College, graduating in 1936. From 1936 to 1941, Sviridov studied at the Leningrad Conservatory under Peter Borisovich Ryazanov and Dmitri Shostakovich. Mobilized into the Soviet armed forces in 1941, just days after his graduation from the conservatory, Sviridov was sent to a military academy in Ufa, but was discharged by the end of the year due to poor health.

Sergey Kuryokhin (Russian: Серге́й Анато́льевич Курёхин, akas include: Sergei Kuriokhin, Sergei Kurekhin, Sergueï Kouriokhine, Sergey Kuriokhin, etc.; 16 June 1954 – 9 July 1996) was a Russian film actor, film composer, pianist, music director, experimental artist and writer, based in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Kuryokhin began his acting career as a piano and keyboard player with a school band in Leningrad. After playing with professional jazz-bands as well as popular rock musicians, Kuryokhin went through several stages in his career, and eventually became one of the most recognisable names and faces in Russia during the 1980s and 1990s.^{[citation needed]}

By the end of his life, he had emerged as an avant-garde film composer, performance artist and film actor. Outside Russia he is primarily known as a jazz and experimental musician, through his works released since 1981 on UK's Leo Records, as well as his concert tours with Ensemble Pop-Mekhanika and his happening show also titled Pop Mekhanika. He also made a significant contribution to several albums (in particular: Triangle, Taboo and Radio Africa) of the famous Russian rock band Aquarium.^{[citation needed]}