1927. Mstislav Rostropovich was born

90 years ago, March 27, 1927, Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich, cellist, conductor, People's Artist of the USSR was born. In 1969, Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya supported Alexander Solzhenitsyn, inviting him to live in his cottage near Moscow. Rostropovich wrote an open letter to Brezhnev in defense of Solzhenitsyn. In 1978, he and Galina Vishnevskaya were deprived of Soviet citizenship, in which they were restored only in 1990. In 1991, Rostropovich was in the ranks of the White House defenders.