Ivan Susanin was a Russian national hero and martyr of the early-17th-century Time of Troubles. According to the popular legend, Polish troops seeking to kill Tsar Mikhail hired Susanin as a guide. Susanin persuaded them to take a secret path through the Russian forests, and neither they nor Susanin were ever heard from again.

Matvey Kuzmich Kuzmin was a Russian peasant who was killed in World War II. He was posthumously the oldest person to be named a Hero of the Soviet Union on May 8, 1965 based on his age at death.