January 18

César Antonovich Cui (Russian: Це́зарь Анто́нович Кюи́, Tsezar' Antonovič Kjui) (18 January [O.S. 6 January] 1835 – 13 March 1918) was a Russian composer and music critic of French and Lithuanian descent. His profession was as an army officer and a teacher of fortifications, and his avocational life has particular significance in the history of music. In this sideline he is known as a member of The Five, a group of Russian composers under the leadership of Mily Balakirev dedicated to the production of a specifically Russian type of music.

Vladimir Rostislavovich Gardin (Russian: Влади́мир Ростисла́вович Га́рдин) (born Vladimir Rostislavovich Blagonravov (Благонра́вов); 18 January [O.S. 6 January] 1877 – 28 May 1965) was a pioneering Russian film director and actor who strove to raise the artistic level of Russian cinema.
He first gained renown as a stage actor in the adaptations of Russian classics by Vera Komissarzhevskaya and other directors. In 1913, he turned to cinema and started producing screen versions of great Russian fiction: Anna Karenina (1914), The Kreutzer Sonata (1914), Home of the Gentry (1914), War and Peace (1915, co-directed with Yakov Protazanov), and On the Eve (1915).
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, he organized and presided over the first film school in the world, now known as VGIK. With the advent of sound pictures, he stopped directing and returned to acting. His roles won him a high critical acclaim and the title of People's Artist of the USSR (1947). Gardin published two volumes of memoirs in 1949 and 1952. Another book, The Artist's Life and Labor, followed in 1960.

Mikhail Pavlovich Shishkin (Russian: Михаил Павлович Шишкин, born 18 January 1961) is a Russian writer. He is considered one of the best contemporary Russian writers.
Mikhail Shishkin was born in 1961 in Moscow.
Shishkin studied English and German at Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. After graduation he worked as a street sweeper, road worker, journalist, school teacher, and translator. He debuted as a writer in 1993, when his short story "Calligraphy Lesson" was published in Znamya magazine. Since 1995 he has lived in Zurich, Switzerland. He averages one book every five years.
Shishkin's books have been translated into more than ten languages.His prose is universally praised for style, e.g., "Shishkin's language is wonderfully lucid and concise. Without sounding archaic, it reaches over the heads of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (whose relationship with the Russian language was often uneasy) to the tradition of Pushkin." He deals with universal themes like death, resurrection, and love. Shishkin has been compared to numerous great writers, including Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Nabokov and James Joyce, while he admits to being influenced by Chekhov along with Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Bunin, saying "Bunin taught me not to compromise, and to go on believing in myself. Chekhov passed on his sense of humanity – that there can’t be any wholly negative characters in your text. And from Tolstoy I learned not to be afraid of being naïve."