Igor Korchilov

Igor Korchilov
Born	Russia
Occupation	Conference Interpreter

Igor Korchilov is a top-level Russian-English conference interpreter who worked with Mikhail Gorbachev from 1987 to 1990, a period that covered the Cold War era.

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.

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.

...
Wikipedia