Notable residents

Andrei Arlovski, grew up and lived in Minsk before moving to the US to fight in the Ultimate Fighting Championship Victoria Azarenka, former World No. 1 tennis player and 2012 and 2013 Australian Open winner, born in Minsk moving to Arizona at 16 Red Auerbach, American basketball coach Yuri Bessmertny, kickboxer Svetlana Boginskaya, gold medal winning gymnast at the 1988 and 1992 Olympics, birthplace Isaac Boleslavsky, chess grandmaster Masha Bruskina, World War II partisan Dimitry Elyashkevich, producer and camera operator, birthplace Avraham Even-Shoshan (1906–84), Israeli linguist and lexicographer Sophie Fedorovitch, ballet, opera and theatre designer, birthplace Boris Gelfand, chess Grandmaster Moisei Ginzburg, constructivist architect Marina Gordon, soprano, birthplace Oleg Karavayev, wrestler and Olympic champion Boris Khaykin, conductor Graeme Mitchell, architect Maryna Linchuk Louis Burt Mayer, American film producer, one of the founders of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Isaak Mazel, chess master Max Mirnyi, tennis player Yulia Raskina, individual rhythmic gymnast, won the All-Around Silver at the 2000 Sydney Olympics Alexander Rybak, winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 for Norway, birthplace Yuri Shulman, chess grandmaster Vanda Skuratovich, Roman Catholic activist Mark Slavin, Israeli Olympic Greco-Roman wrestler and victim of the Munich massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics Anna Smashnova, tennis player Rachel Wischnitzer, architect and art historian Simcha Zorin, World War II partisan