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As a boy growing up in Leningrad, Mark Shterenberg developed a fascination with the way things worked — the challenge of taking them apart, the responsibility of putting them back together.

By World War II, even as scientists were manufacturing gallons of phages to combat cholera, dysentery, and gangrene in Stalingrad and Leningrad, much the West had given up on phages.

He was born Feb. 9, 1985, in Leningrad and was a graduate of the distinguished Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet, whose notable male alumni also include Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev.

From the moment of its triumphant 1937 premiere in Leningrad, the heroic symphony has been laden with political baggage that is not likely to be unnoticed on the Children’s Symphony tour.

Mr Patrushev is one of three Putin loyalists who have served with him ever since the 1970s in St Petersburg, when Russia's second city was still known as Leningrad.