Activities and affiliations

Scholarship and theory 1949–

the British economic historian whose three-position taxonomy of NEP's failure shaped the historiographical debate

Why did NEP fail? I should like to distinguish three ways in which this question has been answered: rational abandonment, irrational or political decision, and constrained choice.

Mark Harrison is a British economic historian who studied economics at Cambridge and modern history at Oxford, and taught at the University of Warwick from 1975, researching the Soviet economy for over four decades. His 1980 paper 'Why Did NEP Fail?' identified three positions in the historiographical debate (rational abandonment, irrational or political decision, and constrained choice), a taxonomy that has structured assessments of NEP ever since. His work expanded into the economics of warfare, state secrecy, and coercion, earning the Alec Nove Prize for Accounting for War (1996) and producing Secret Leviathan (2023), a landmark study of information control under Soviet communism.

Scholarship and theory 1949–

The interpreter who mediated summit diplomacy

He recalled interpreting as searching for the threads connecting two languages.

Pavel Palazhchenko is an interpreter and writer whose work documents the decisive conversational spaces of late Soviet diplomacy. As the English interpreter for Mikhail Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze, he took part in the US-Soviet summits at Geneva, Reykjavik, Malta and elsewhere. His memoir records not only leaders’ words but also the working processes of arms-control negotiations and the growth of trust, offering a Soviet-side account of the peaceful end of the Cold War. He later continued as an international-relations analyst and press official at the Gorbachev Foundation.

Government and administration Burkina Faso state institutions 1949–1987 ✕ Assassinated

The 'African Che' who traded the state Mercedes fleet for Renault 5s

“While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.” — speech a week before his assassination, 1987

A Marxist pan-Africanist revolutionary of Burkina Faso. Taking power at thirty-three in 1983, he renamed the country 'land of upright people' and drove mass vaccination, literacy and women's-rights campaigns. He rejected IMF structural adjustment and was assassinated in the 1987 coup of his comrade Blaise Compaoré.

Agriculture and land policy Soviet Union state institutions 1949–2019 ○ Natural causes

Full cavalier of the Order of Labour Glory, collective-farm mechanizer

Viktor Baklanov arrived from his native Siberian village at the Gigant collective farm in Ukraine as an eighteen-year-old mechanizer in 1967, and over 37 years on the same farm earned all three classes of the Order of Labour Glory to become a full cavalier.

Soviet agricultural worker and state figure who spent his career as a mechanizer at the Gigant collective farm in Dnepropetrovsk Oblast, distinguishing himself in all-Union and republic-level harvest competitions. He became a full cavalier of the Order of Labour Glory, 3rd class (1975), 2nd class (1982), and 1st class (1987), and was elected a People's Deputy of the USSR (1989–1991) on the collective-farm quota during perestroika.

Economy, finance and planning Soviet Union state institutions 1949–

The last Gosplan chairman who presided over the dissolution of Soviet planning

On the end of the planned economy: "We proposed a mechanism to bring the vulnerable closer to public goods through the market. But nobody wanted to listen."

The last steward of Soviet central planning, he managed the transition from plan to market as First Deputy Prime Minister and inaugural Minister of Economy and Forecasting under the Pavlov government, when Gosplan was reorganized into the new ministry in May 1991. After the USSR's dissolution, he transformed into a successful post-Soviet industrial entrepreneur, founding the Avtotor auto assembly group.

Government and administration Lithuania state institutions 1950–

Economist-statesman of restored independence, Lithuania's shortest-serving premier

On the night of 12–13 January 1991, hearing that buildings in Vilnius were being assaulted, he withdrew with his family to Druskininkai to hide; when he returned to Vilnius on 13 January, Gediminas Vagnorius had already been put in charge of the government.

Albertas Šimėnas was born on 17 February 1950 in Papilių village, Anykščiai district. He studied economics and mathematics at Vilnius University, took a candidate's degree in economics in 1981, worked at a research institute under the State Planning Committee, and lectured afterwards. Elected to the Supreme Council in 1990, he signed the 11 March Act, led the government from 10 to 13 January 1991, and later served as economy minister, as a Seimas member in 1996–2000, and as an executive of Lithuanian Railways.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1950–2002 ○ Killed in crash

The airborne deputy commander who, sent against the White House, switched sides and helped break the August coup

On the night of 20 August 1991, with Grachev's consent, Lebed returned to the White House and secretly told the defenders: 'The assault will begin at 2:00 AM.'

Born into poverty in Novocherkassk, the son of a carpenter who had spent years in the Gulag, he witnessed the Novocherkassk massacre at age twelve and became a Soviet airborne forces general. He served as a battalion commander in Afghanistan and was appointed deputy commander of the Airborne Forces for combat training in February 1991. On the first day of the August coup he led Tula paratroopers to surround the White House on Pavel Grachev's orders, but switched to Yeltsin's side the next day and secretly informed the defenders of the planned 2:00 AM assault, a defection that helped break the coup. After retiring from the army he placed third in the 1996 presidential election, negotiated an end to the First Chechen War as Secretary of the Security Council, and was governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai when he died in a helicopter crash.

Economy, finance and planning Soviet Union state institutions 1950–2017 ○ Heart disease

The first legal Soviet millionaire, whose 90,000-ruble party dues payment forced the cooperative law to be amended twice

The party organizer wrapped both arms around the stacks of cash, stared with wild eyes, and with a trembling hand wrote in the party card: 'Salary for January 1989: three million rubles.' The average monthly wage at the time was 200 rubles.

The first legal millionaire of the USSR and founder of the Tekhnika cooperative. In January 1989 he paid himself a salary of 3 million rubles, and when his deputy's party dues of 90,000 rubles were broadcast on the programme Vzglyad, a national scandal erupted that forced the government to amend the cooperative law twice. He later served as a People's Deputy and State Duma deputy, becoming an emblematic figure of early Russian capitalism.

Social movements and organizing Affiliation unconfirmed 1950–2021 ○ Natural causes

The Estonian dissident who helped break the silence at Hirvepark

At Hirvepark, Madisson called for the secret protocols to be published and their consequences liquidated.

Tiit Madisson was an Estonian dissident and writer who spent 1980–1986 as a political prisoner. After his release, he founded MRP-AEG and helped organise the 1987 Hirvepark meeting, which demanded publication of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact's secret protocols and the liquidation of their consequences. The rally became a key moment in the return of public political action in late Soviet Estonia, and the authorities forced him into exile in Sweden. After returning, he took part in Estonia's restoration politics and nationalist organisations; his later writings also drew criticism for Holocaust denial.

Political and party leadership Popular Front of Estonia (Rahvarinne) 1950–2022 ○ Natural causes

Architect of mass mobilization and independence politics

On live television on 13 April 1988, he proposed the idea of a Popular Front.

Edgar Savisaar was an Estonian politician and co-founder of the Popular Front of Estonia, helping turn demands for reform into mass politics. On live television on 13 April 1988, he proposed a Popular Front to support perestroika; the movement soon pressed for democracy and the restoration of Estonian independence. He became the first prime minister of restored Estonia, while economic hardship and later political controversies exposed the limits and tensions of his governing project.

Scholarship and theory 1950–2025 ○ Natural causes

A revisionist historian of Soviet political history

He likened the archives to laboratories where he could try to explain the unimaginable.

J. Arch Getty was an American historian of Soviet political history and Stalinism who taught and conducted research at UCLA. In Origins of the Great Purges (1985), he challenged the picture of Stalinism as the product of seamless central control, emphasizing weak party organization, local autonomy, and conflict within the leadership. That approach became a major strand of the Western revisionist debate surrounding Khrushchev’s revelations and the interpretation of Stalinism, although it did not absolve Stalin or the party leadership of responsibility for terror. After Soviet archives opened, he and other scholars used new records to reassess the scale of repression and the workings of state violence.

Scholarship and theory 1950–

The historian who interpreted the Prague Spring between the tanks and the memory wars

The experience of the occupation, the incredible solidarity in August 1968: that belongs to those very rare historical moments that not everyone gets to live through, and one can count oneself lucky to have experienced it.

Jan Pauer is a Czech-born historian who witnessed the Prague Spring of 1968 and emigrated to West Germany the following year. In 1995 he published Prag 1968, the definitive account of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and spent his career at the University of Bremen's Research Centre for Eastern Europe studying modern Czechoslovak history. In his 2011 ENRS article, he argued that the invasion marked 'the start of a civil society opposition and the historical end of reform communism,' contending that the Prague Spring was buried twice: first by Soviet tanks and then by the memory politics of post-1989 Czechia.

Scholarship and theory 1950–

An archival journalist who reconstructed the Cold War's most dangerous crises

He recast the Cuban Missile Crisis not as a summit-room myth, but as an hour-by-hour crisis compounded by accidents.

Michael Dobbs is a British-born journalist and nonfiction author who reported from the front lines of the Cold War's end and other international conflicts. As a Washington Post correspondent and bureau chief in Eastern Europe, Paris, and Moscow, he chronicled the collapse of the socialist bloc and its international consequences. One Minute to Midnight cross-checked American, Soviet, and Cuban sources to reconstruct the Cuban Missile Crisis hour by hour, showing that the danger of nuclear war was far greater than familiar summit-room myths suggested. His method shifts attention from great-power leaders alone to commanders, civilians, and accidents that could magnify a crisis.

Scholarship and theory 1950–2023 ○ Died

The institutional economist who crystallized the 50-year debate over the Kosygin reform in a single book title

In 1977, when he defended his candidate's dissertation on the 'Asiatic mode of production,' the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee, the official reviewer, submitted an evaluation whose essence was: 'This is not Marxism.'

An institutional economist of Tatar origin born in Moscow, he graduated with honours from the MSU economics faculty and taught political economy there, attracting attention with a controversial dissertation on the 'Asiatic mode of production' that the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee denounced as 'not Marxism.' In 1993 he helped Kuzminov found the Higher School of Economics (HSE), serving as its first department chair, first vice-rector, and first full professor, becoming a central architect of the Russian institutional-economics school. As editor of the 2017 collective monograph 'Missed Chance or Last Valve? On the 50th Anniversary of the Kosygin Reforms of 1965,' he crystallized the polarized historiographical debate: reform as a lost opportunity for the planned economy versus its last safety valve, in a single title.

Scholarship and theory 1950–

A historian who reread Sino-Soviet relations through Cold War archives

In 1995 he spent over a million yuan of his own money to buy declassified Russian archives, which he then opened to fellow scholars free of charge.

Shen Zhihua is a historian of the Cold War, the Soviet Union, and Sino-Soviet relations who led the Center for Cold War International History Studies at East China Normal University. He expanded the documentary basis of Chinese Cold War scholarship by personally collecting declassified Russian materials and editing large archival compilations. His work explains the Sino-Soviet split through the interaction of state interests and competition within the international communist movement, questioning accounts that reduce China’s choices to ideological solidarity alone. His studies of the Korean War and the Sino-Soviet alliance trace the calculations of China, the Soviet Union, and Korea, bringing a major Chinese interpretation of the Cold War to an international readership.

Scholarship and theory 1950–2025 ○ Stroke

Leader of the Soyuz faction who nearly turned a parliamentary session into a constitutional coup

On 17 June 1991, as the concluding speaker of the session, Alksnis told the Supreme Soviet that the Union Treaty was unconstitutional and that deputies must back Pavlov's Cabinet because it 'works for the USSR, for the preservation of this state.'

A Soviet Air Force colonel of Latvian descent who became the most visible hardliner in the USSR Congress of People's Deputies. As co-chairman of the Soyuz faction, he demanded martial law, called for Gorbachev's ouster, and on 17 June 1991 urged an immediate vote on Pavlov's emergency-powers resolution, drawing the accusation that he was staging a constitutional coup. After the Soviet collapse he served two terms in the Russian Duma, was beaten by riot police defending the anti-Yeltsin parliament in 1993, and spent his last decades as an unreconstructed Soviet patriot.

Scholarship and theory 1950–

Economic historian who argued partial reform would only destroy the planning system

'Analyses of "Gorbachev's economists" never mention the words "charlatan" or "ignoramus."'

A Soviet-born economist who emigrated to the United States, trained at Novosibirsk University and the University of Pennsylvania. In his 1988 article 'Lessons of the 1965 Soviet Economic Reform,' he argued that resistance from central ministries and Gosplan to the Kosygin reform was not mere bureaucratic self-interest but a rational recognition that partial market reform would destroy the central planning system without putting any workable alternative in its place. Together with Michael Ellman he edited The Destruction of the Soviet Economic System; this systemic incompatibility thesis became a key argument in the historiographical debate over why Soviet reforms consistently failed.

Social movements and organizing Affiliation unconfirmed 1950–

The electrician who pasted “The Fifth Modernisation” on Democracy Wall, deported after eighteen years in prison

Born 20 May 1950, he pasted “The Fifth Modernization” on the Xidan Democracy Wall in December 1978, spent a total of eighteen years in prison across 1979–1993 and 1994–1997, and was deported to the United States on 16 November 1997.

Raised in a senior-cadre family in Beijing, he wandered the countryside as a Red Guard and saw the traces of famine before becoming an electrician at the Beijing Zoo. In December 1978 he pasted “The Fifth Modernisation — Democracy” on the Xidan Democracy Wall, arguing that Deng Xiaoping’s four modernisations were hollow without democracy, and published the journal Explorations. Arrested in March 1979, he received fifteen years for “counter-revolutionary propaganda and leaking military secrets”; released in 1993, he was rearrested and sentenced to fourteen more. Deported to the United States on medical grounds in 1997, he continues the democracy movement in exile.

Government and administration Latvia state institutions 1951–

The physicist who walked Latvia out of the USSR and commanded the nights of the barricades

On the night of 20 January 1991, after Soviet special forces stormed Latvia's Interior Ministry, killing five, Godmanis telephoned Soviet interior minister Boris Pugo, who told him: 'I was not involved.'

A Latvian physicist turned politician, Godmanis earned his doctorate in solid-state physics and taught at the University of Latvia before joining the Latvian Popular Front in 1987. After the Front's victory in the 1990 Supreme Council elections, he became the first prime minister of a Latvia that had declared the restoration of its independence, and during the January 1991 barricades he coordinated the defense of strategic sites and personally telephoned Soviet interior minister Boris Pugo, who denied any involvement in the OMON attack. He returned as prime minister in 2007, steering Latvia through the global financial crisis until his resignation in 2009.

Political and party leadership Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) 1951–1977 ✕ Killed in custody, (date disputed)

Angolan doctor and revolutionary killed in the 1977 Nitista purge

After the events of 27 May 1977 she fled with her partner, was captured three weeks later, convicted at a secret trial and died in custody; sources give differing dates for the killing.

Born in Angola, she was a doctor and revolutionary. She joined the Portuguese Communist Party and led its Communist Students' League (UEC) alongside Zita Seabra, and at the time of the 1974 Carnation Revolution she was in Moscow attending a Komsomol congress as the UEC's delegate. Returning to Angola in 1975, she joined the pro-Soviet orthodox wing around Nito Alves and José Van-Dúnem. Arrested after the events of 27 May 1977, she was convicted at a secret trial and died in custody; sources give conflicting dates for her death.

Science and technology Soviet Union state institutions 1951–1986 ✕ Killed in explosion

The first victim of Chernobyl, standing in the pump hall when the reactor exploded, his body never recovered

Seconds before the explosion, he called a fellow pump operator: "I need to recharge the lower feed for 22… Okay, come on. So it's shortened, one sec…" Those were his last words.

Born in Kropyvnia, Kyiv Oblast, he began working at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1973 and became a senior operator of the main circulation pumps (GCN) in the reactor shop of Unit 4. On the night of 26 April 1986, during a safety test, he was in the northern GCN pump hall when two explosions ripped through the reactor building; he was killed instantly, buried under the debris. His body was never recovered and is presumed entombed inside the Sarcophagus; a memorial plaque marks the dividing wall between Units 3 and 4.

Science and technology Soviet Union state institutions 1951–1986 ✕ Accidental death

A commissioning engineer caught in the Chernobyl disaster

Colleagues carried him from the ruined instrument room, but he never regained consciousness and died at 6 a.m. in the Pripyat hospital.

Vladimir Shashenok was a technician who commissioned and tested instrumentation and automation systems at nuclear power plants. While taking part in tests at Chernobyl Unit 4, he suffered spinal and rib fractures and severe thermal and radiation burns in the explosion; colleagues rescued him and carried him to the Pripyat hospital, where he died without regaining consciousness. He was one of the two people who died on the day of the disaster, marking how technical work at the plant placed ordinary workers at its immediate front line.

Economy, finance and planning Soviet Union state institutions 1951–2020 ○ COVID-19

The Cricova winery chief who testified to the vineyard destruction of Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign

'On weekends they forced us out with axes to chop the vines,' he recalled, and those who tried to protect the vineyards got 14–15 years in prison.

A Moldovan winemaker and industrial manager, he led the Cricova wine combine as director general for 29 years, from 1987 to 2016. As chief engineer during Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign, he testified that workers were forced to chop vines with axes on weekends and that those who tried to protect the vineyards received 14–15 years in prison, providing the most vivid ground-level account of the vineyard destruction.

Scholarship and theory 1951–

Romanian-American political scientist and authority on the 1989 revolutions

In Bucharest in June 1990, he witnessed miners violently crushing anti-government protesters, an experience he said gave him insight into 'barbarity in its crassest, most revolting form.'

Born into a Romanian communist elite family and defecting in 1981, he is a political scientist who has analysed Stalinism and the collapse of East European communist systems from a comparative politics perspective. His 2003 Stalinism for All Seasons provided a definitive synthesis of Romanian communism, and in 2006 he chaired the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship, steering the country's landmark reckoning with its past. His 2009 article on the causes, meanings and consequences of 1989 became a benchmark for scholarship on the revolutions, arguing that ethnic conflict and authoritarian backsliding in the aftermath do not diminish their 'generous message' and colossal impact.