Activities and affiliations

Government and administration Russian Federation state institutions 1936–

Moscow's first elected mayor, who told the U.S. ambassador of the coming coup

On 20 June 1991 Popov handed U.S. Ambassador Jack Matlock a note warning of a coup and naming Pavlov, Kryuchkov, Yazov and Lukyanov; the warning reached Gorbachev via Washington, though Matlock later wrote in his memoirs that it may have been a false alarm.

Born in Moscow on 31 October 1936 to parents from the Azov Greek community, he graduated from Moscow State University's economics faculty, became a candidate of economic sciences in 1963, a doctor in 1970 and a professor in 1971. He headed the production management laboratory in 1967–1971 and the management department in 1971–1988, and served as dean of the economics faculty (sources differ on a 1977 or 1978 start), then edited Voprosy Ekonomiki in 1988–1990, popularizing the concept of the 'command-administrative system'. Elected a USSR People's Deputy in 1989, he co-chaired the Interregional Deputies Group with Sakharov, Yeltsin and others, chaired the Moscow City Council from 1990 and on 12 June 1991 became Moscow's first elected mayor with 65.3% of the vote.

Government and administration Russian Federation state institutions 1937–2000 ○ Heart attack

Constitutional Assembly chairman and first elected mayor of Saint Petersburg

"Volodya, just don't turn to bronze" — last words to Putin, February 2000

Anatoly Sobchak was a legal scholar and democratic reformer who became the first democratically elected mayor of Saint Petersburg (1991–1996) and co-authored the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation as chairman of the Constitutional Assembly. A popular Leningrad State University law professor whose students included Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, he was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989 and co-chaired the Inter-Regional Deputies Group alongside Andrei Sakharov and Boris Yeltsin. During the August 1991 coup he organized resistance in Leningrad, negotiating with the military commander to keep troops off the streets and rallying 200,000 citizens on Palace Square. Corruption allegations forced him into exile in Paris from 1997 until Putin, then prime minister, secured his return in 1999.

Government and administration Russian Federation state institutions 1945–2022 ○ Natural causes

The philosopher who proposed the one sentence that declared the Soviet Union dead at Belovezh

At the Belavezha hunting lodge, turning to Shushkevich and Kravchuk: 'Would you guys agree to sign a sentence which would state that the Soviet Union as the subject of international law is ceasing to exist?'

Yeltsin's closest aide and the intellectual architect of the Soviet dissolution. A Marxist philosophy teacher from the Urals, he rose through perestroika to become Yeltsin's right hand, and in September 1991 delivered the 'Burbulis Memorandum' (Gaidar's group's strategy document) to Yeltsin at his Black Sea retreat, setting Russia on a course of economic independence. That December in the Belavezha forest, he turned to Shushkevich and Kravchuk and asked, 'Would you agree to a sentence stating the USSR as a subject of international law is ceasing to exist?', and co-signed the accords that opened with those words. He became a lightning rod for criticism of the reforms and was removed by spring 1992, spending his later decades quietly as a Duma deputy and senator.

Government and administration Russian Federation state institutions 1952–

A ruler who recast the loss of the Soviet Union as a narrative of state restoration

“The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

Vladimir Putin is a Russian politician and former Soviet security officer who rose to national power amid the crises of the 1990s. Alternating between the presidency and premiership, he strengthened federal and presidential authority while making the restoration of Russia’s international influence a central narrative of rule. In 2005, he called the Soviet collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” a remark that condensed his memory of dissolution as a Russian experience of loss and dislocation. His rule also narrowed political competition and independent media while expanding the state’s military interventions abroad.