Here they are, for the first time ever—the most typical Russian faces, a real pair of average physiognomy, courtesy of a racially-nervous little study we dug up for your amusement. Bonus: 250 most Russian last names.

A nifty thing about the Soviet Union was its massive diversity, the motley union of coexisting nations and nationalities. Obviously, the project to find the "absolute Russian" face wouldn't be possible back in Soviet times, but with all those socialism-inspired sensitivities long dissolved, the "geno-geographers" of Genofond have been busy. For several decades, they've been digging through all the photos at the anthropological museum, layering residents of the Russian territory down to these blurry, solemn-looking composites.

Project director Dr Yelena Balanovskaya happily revealed the couple to Vlast, a subsidiary of the Kommersant Publishing House—"See how they look like the classical cinematic Ivan and Maria?" (Traditional names for fairy tale protagonists, etc.) There goes that article's awkward moment number one of one hundred...

The study concluded that the most ethnically Russian Russians tend to populate the area that geographically overlaps with that of the Ancient Rus circa Grozny times and isolated little villages and towns with poor birth rates, bordering on extinction. Seems like the rest of us not quite so ethnically Russian Russians are statistically advantaged to avoid extinction in isolated little villages. Yey.

The study included a search for the most Russian last names. An original list of 15,000 was narrowed down to 250 after researches ran around the Russian Federation with needles and droppers.

Of the leaders, Gorbachev cracks the top 250 at 158, Brejnev wallows behind at 3,767, Khrushev staggers at 4,248, Putin barely makes the list at 14,250 but Yeltsin doesn't, and while Lenin is at 1,421, Stalin's real last name, Jughashvili, wasn't considered for the study, "for obvious reasons." Apparently, certain things are a little more obvious to these guys than others. Jerks.

Top 25 Most Russian Russian Last Names:
1 Smirnov
2 Ivanov
3 Kusnetsov
4 Popov
5 Sokolov
6 Lebedev
7 Koslov
8 Novikov
9 Morozov
10 Petrov
11 Volkov
12 Soloviev
13 Vasiliev
14 Zaitsev
15 Pavlov
16 Semenov
17 Golybiev
18 Vinogradov
19 Bogdanov
20 Vorobiev
21 Federov
22 Mihailov
23 Beliaev
24 Tarasov
25 Belov

[E-News]