WLev Osipovich Alburt is a chess Grandmaster, writer and coach. He was born in Orenburg, Russia, and became three-time Ukrainian Champion. After defecting to the United States in 1979, he became three-time U.S. Champion.
WViktor Ivanovich Belenko is a Russian-born American aerospace engineer and former Soviet pilot who defected to the West while flying his MiG-25 jet fighter and landed in Hakodate, Japan. George H. W. Bush, the Director of Central Intelligence at the time, called the opportunity to examine the plane up close an "intelligence bonanza" for the West. Belenko later became a U.S. aerospace engineer.
WSergei Viktorovich Fyodorov is a Russian former professional ice hockey player and the current head coach of CSKA Moscow of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). During his playing career, for which he is best known for his 13 seasons with the Detroit Red Wings, Fedorov was primarily a centre, but occasionally played as a winger or defenceman.
WAnatoli Mikhailovich Granovsky was a NKVD agent who defected to the West in 1946 and authored an autobiographical book about his career in Soviet intelligence. Granovsky was the son of a high-ranking Soviet bureaucrat, Mikhail Granovsky, who was a victim of the Stalinist Purges of the late 1930s. To find his father in the Soviet Gulag system, Granovsky allowed himself to be arrested by the NKVD on false charges and interred in the same penal system. As a result of his past friendships with the children of his father's high-ranking former colleagues, Granovsky was recruited as an NKVD agent to spy on those same acquaintances in July 1939. After defecting to Sweden in autumn 1946, Granovsky wrote the book I Was an NKVD Agent.
WVyacheslav Anatolevich "Slava" Kozlov is a Russian former professional ice hockey left winger.
WViktor Andreevich Kravchenko was a Ukrainian-born Soviet defector, known for writing the best-selling book I Chose Freedom, published in 1946, about the realities of life in the Soviet Union.
WAlexander Gennadevich Mogilny is a Russian former professional ice hockey player and the current president of Amur Khabarovsk of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). He was the first National Hockey League (NHL) draftee to defect from the Soviet Union in order to play in North America.
WArkady Nikolayevich Shevchenko was a Soviet diplomat who was the highest-ranking Soviet official to defect to the West.
WIgor Yuryevich Shpilband is an American ice dancing coach and former competitor for the Soviet Union. He is the 1983 World Junior champion with former partner Tatiana Gladkova.