troika

troikka, kolmivaljakko A Russian carriage drawn by a team of three horses abreast.
1880, (w), translating Fyodor Dostoyevsky, (w), Book XII, Chapter VI, http://archive.org/stream/brotherskaramazo00dostpage/786/mode/2up page 787:

A great writer of the last epoch, comparing Russia to a swift troika galloping to an unknown goal, exclaims 'Oh, troika, birdlike troika, who invented thee!' and adds, in proud ecstasy, that all the peoples of the world stand aside respectfully to make way for the recklessly galloping troika to pass.

When Gogol wrote his great passage on the troika speeding across the steppes, he likened it to Russia itself, advancing across the earth.

Travelling part of the way by rail and the remainder by troika, he reached Orenburg shortly before Christmas.

The investigator suspected the poor dead bastards were just a vodka troika that had cheerily frozen to death.

The bare troika of Boolean operators brought them into metaphorical being.

“He said, 'Let me get the best people.' And that's what he did. He got John Kalodner and Gary Gersh and Tom Zutaut, and they became stars in their own right.” Over the ensuing decade, that troika of talent-finders would bring a host of multiplatinum artists—from Cher and Aerosmith to Guns N' Roses and Nirvana—to Geffen.

No longer is the best picture going to be a toss-up between that troika of national-historical heavies: Argo, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty.