Igor Korchilov
Igor Korchilov is a top-level Russian-English conference interpreter who worked with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev from 1987 to 1990, a period that covered the Cold War era. Biography. Birth and childhood. Igor Korchilov was born in Murmansk, Russia. He grew up in the southern city of Kislovodsk, which is not far from Stavropol where Mikhail Gorbachev was born. Education. After finishing his secondary education, Korchilov worked as a film projectionist and as a disc jockey. It was during these two occupations that Korchilov heard of Elvis Presley's music, through a record that was brought back  by a Georgia ballet company member from the United States. Because of Presley's music, he became interested in learning the English language and soon bought an English course book from a village bookshop to teach himself. He then prepared for and passed the entrance examinations for the "Maurice Thorez" Foreign Languages Institute, the best foreign-languages school in Moscow (now Moscow State Linguistic University). From 1961 to 1967, Korchilov attended the "Maurice Thorez" and earned a diploma majoring in English and Spanish. From 1967 to 1968, Korchilov attended the United Nations Interpretation and Translation School in Moscow which earned  him a certificate majoring in simultaneous interpretation. Later in the spring of 1968, Korchilov was sent to work as a junior conference interpreter at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. It was during this assignment that he interpreted during delicate summit meetings between the Heads of State and Government of the Soviet Union and the United States. Then from 1985 to 1986, Igor Korchilov attended the school for Advanced Studies at the Russian Foreign Ministry's Diplomatic Academy in Moscow to earn a diploma on International Relations with a French language major. As linguist and author. Korchilov was  an interpreter for the Secretaries-General of the United Nations, and the Russian General-Secretary and other top officials of the Soviet Union for thirty years. He is the author of the book "Translating History: The Top Russian Interpreter's Twenty-Five Years on the Front Line of Diplomacy" (1997) published in the United States, Britain, Australia, Poland, China, the Czech Republic. Korchilov's book was also printed under the subtitles "30 Years On The Front Lines Of Diplomacy With A Top Russian Interpreter" and "The Summits That Ended The Cold War, As Witnessed by Gorbachev's Interpreter". "Translating History