Galina Vishnevskaya, 86, Soviet Opera Star And Dissident Heroine

She spent two decades as the Bolshoi’s prima donna assoluta and the USSR’s most venerated classical singer – until she and husband Mstislav Rostropovich were blacklisted for having sheltered dissident author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. They emigrated to the US in 1974, as famous Cold War icons as well as renowned artists.