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Yakov Smirnoff - Biocrawler (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29) |
 | | Smirnoff, birth name Yakov Naumovich Pokhis, was born in a Jewish family in Odessa, Ukraine, at the time part of the Soviet Union. |
 | | It is also worth noting that at the peak of Smirnoff's celebrity in the mid-1980s, he did not say "Soviet Russia" — he said "Russia," as the Soviet Union had been around since 1917, was still extant, and showed no signs of going anywhere any time soon. |
 | | Smirnoff added the "Soviet" qualifier after the fall of the USSR, long after his fame had faded, to specify that he was referring to the communist regime and not the present state. |
| www.biocrawler.com /encyclopedia/Yakov_Smirnoff (950 words) |
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