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Karpatov. Anatoly Cherkasov. Maxim Bralovsky. General Borschevsky. Aelx Serov. Klebanov. Yakov Yurovski. Yasha Kobik. Andrei Kokchak. Ike Bykovsky. Sergei. Professor Ukrinsky. Anatoly Dobrynin. Yuri.

Character list from The Cherry Orchard? Roll call of the first cosmonauts? A list of Big Blue's bedpost notches?

Of course not. This is Elya Baskin's résumé. Baskin -- who you likely recognize from Moscow on the Hudson or Enemies: A Love Story or Air Force One or Thirteen Days; you know, movies with Russians in them -- has spent most of his twenty-four-year career as a professional Russian, which is a pretty impressive feat. What's even more impressive is that he managed to work pretty much constantly through the entire 1980s without once getting killed by Sylvester Stallone.

The end of the Cold War might have seemed like a calamity for someone like Baskin, but his professional Russian parts have continued unabated -- though these days he's more likely to play a cartoon of a Russian (he was, for example, the Russian in Austin Powers's comically stereotypical United Nations) or an errant-but-just-as-dangerous Russianesque type (a Chechen terrorist in Air Force One) or a friendly neighbourhood Russian (as on the sitcom Becker). In short, for two decades Hollywood has needed Russians, and Elya Baskin been their go-to man.

Of course, he never gets to play the lead Russian; that honour is reserved for Russians like Gary Oldman and Robin Williams. And we should point out to Elya's agent that the fact that Elya didn't land the part of the drunken Russian cosmonaut in Armageddon (played by Peter Stormare) is, in our minds, a firing offense. We should also point out that Elya Baskin did play the role of "Timoshenko" in the 1988 film, Zits. That is all we have to point out.