Yelena Khanga

Yelena Abdulaevna Khanga (; born 1 May 1962), sometimes transliterated as Elena Hanga, is a Russian journalist, television personality, and writer, who is best known for hosting the Russian television programs Pro eto (1997–2000) and Printsip domino (2001–2006) on NTV. Khanga was born in Moscow to a Zanzibari politician Abdullah Kassim Hanga and a Russian-American mother born to an interracial American couple who fled the United States due to racism. Early life Khanga was born in Moscow to parents Abdullah Kassim Hanga (1932–1969) and Lily Golden (1934–2010). Her father was a Zanzibari politician who served as prime minister of Zanzibar in 1964, and was later executed without trial in 1969 for an alleged plot to overthrow the regime of Abeid Karume. Her mother was born in Tashkent to American parents Oliver Golden (1892–1940) and Bertha Bialek (1905–1985). Oliver was an African-American from Mississippi and graduate of the Tuskegee Institute, while Bialek was a white woman from New York City of Polish-Jewish descent. They immigrated together to the Soviet Union in 1931, as interracial marriage was outlawed in much of the United States at the time and socially unaccepted, settling in Tashkent where they became specialists in the Uzbek cotton industry. Khanga's mother was an academic and alumna of Moscow State University in Africana studies, who later worked at the Institute of African Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and taught at the University of Chicago. Growing up, Khanga was a youth tennis player coached by Russian former professional tennis player Anna Dmitrieva, and later graduated from Moscow State University in 1984, with a degree in journalism.