Three heroes of Russian culture died this summer, marking an end to their epochs—beloved actor Oleg Yankovsky, national folk singer Lyudmila Zykina and non-conformist author Vasily Aksenov.

OLEG YANKOVSKY February 23, 1944 - May 20, 2009

Yankovsky's last performance, as Metropolitan Philip in Tsar

Yankovsky is most known for his roles in Andrei Tarkovsky's surreal opuses The Mirror and Nostalghia, as Gorchakov and in the iconic scene, carrying a candle across a sulphur pool.

In Russia, Yankovsky enjoyed a nationally renowned career with a cult following. On stage, screen and television, Yankovsky has been a Communist Party leader, a German soldier, Chekov's crushed hero and psychiatrist to troubled patient (Malcolm McDowell). He ran the Kinotavr Film Festival in Sochi. Shortly after the Cannes premiere of his superior, last performance as Ivan the Terrible's nemesis, Philip Kolychev, in Pavel Lungin's Tsar, Yankovsky died from pancreatic cancer at age 65.

Here he is as many Russians remember him, delivering the final lines of the 1979 tv-musical comedy The Very Same Muchhausen, as a cheerful, non-conformist baron rebelling against a dull, rigid society: "A serious face is not yet an indication of intellect. All stupid things in the world are being done with exactly that expression on face. Smile, gentlemen, smile!"

LYUDMILA ZYKINA 10 June 1929 – 1 July 2009

Svetlana Medvedeva wishes a Happy 80th Birthday to Zykina

Dubbed the “Queen of Russian folk music” and the “Russian Edith Piaf,” singer Lyudmila Zykina became a national icon as a folk singer. Zykina revived and popularized traditional, national folk song with her almost-operatic style and orchestral backing, first gaining exposure with her most popular song, a Russian favorite, Volga. With countless honors and awards including Artist of the Soviet Union, Hero of Socialist Labor and the Lenin prize, she was an uplifting cultural staple for the people of the Soviet Union and a beloved performer long after its collapse. Her 2004 anthology spanned 20 disks. Dmitri Shostakovich has referred to Zykina as "more than a brilliant interpreter, she was a coauthor, co-creator of composers."

An early TV appearance, a song about sailors on leave

VASILY AKSYONOV August 20, 1932 - July 6, 2009

Aksyonov after receiving the Booker-Open Russia Prize in 2004

Aksyonov made his early literary contributions in the 60s the magazine Youth. After Stalin's death, Aksyonov became a major figure of the "youth prose" movement, contrasting the standard culture of drab socialist-realism. Beloved and influenced by the leftist intelligentsia and the bohemian-hipster stilyagi, Aksyonov's Western, pro-American and liberal views as well as the 1979 involvement with Metropol magazine caused problems with KGB and his famed, dissident novels, The Burn and The Island of Crimea, were only published abroad.

Aksyonov spent a quarter of a decade in the US, teaching at prestigious universities and working as a journalist. He published an epic trilogy of novels (turned TV mini-series), Generations of Winter in 1994, a multi-generational story of Soviet life, and the award winning historical novel Voltairiens and Voltairiennes on the meeting of Voltaire and Empress Catherine II, for which he was awarded the Booker-Open Russia Prize in 2004. He died while hospitalized after a stroke earlier this year.

A scene from Journey (1966), based on Aksyonov's novel Halfway to the Moon.

Three icons lost.

Throughout World War II, Zykina worked in a machine tool factory as a tuner, in Moscow, before becoming a sort of a superstar, a Russia-loving, rounded crooner. Her kind of musical patriotism is extinct, but the political perspective gained over the years doesn't make the older generations shed their adoration—even happily expatriated old folks still blare her on Sundays.

Yankovsky recently admitted to Pravda that as a child, he witnessed his father's arrest and gulag sentencing. From a time when complete devotion to the theatrical arts and its audience was nearly spiritual, he maintained his purpose, extending memory. In Nostalghia, he was as melancholy and homesick as Tarkovsky, the two reflected each other. His glee was as hypnotic as his mystical sadness, his death leaving fans despondent.

Aksenov saw most of his family taken away to the labor camps and has stated, "If in this country one starts erecting Stalin statues again, I have to reject my native land. Nothing else remains." His death left many yarning for a counter-cultural hero and perhaps, a central cultural enemy as well.

An actor, a singer, a writer—three cultural icons, three epochs dissolved by time leaving three separate nostalgias.