People of the Revolution and the USSR

Russian Federation state institutions Socialist-bloc reform leader 1932–2016 ○ Natural causes

The Soviet banker who testified about reform's hidden origins

He later recalled that the 1991 reform had originated with the KGB and Kryuchkov.

Arnold Voylukov was a senior Soviet banker who experienced the inner workings of late Soviet monetary administration. He matters not only as an official in the institution that carried out the January 1991 currency reform, but also as a memoirist who later said that the idea came from the KGB and Vladimir Kryuchkov rather than from the Finance Ministry or Valentin Pavlov. His account illuminates the institutional tensions around the reform and how a covertly prepared measure damaged public trust.

Russian Federation state institutions Socialist-bloc reform leader 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.

Russian Federation state institutions Socialist-bloc reform leader 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.

Russian Federation state institutions Socialist-bloc reform leader 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.

Russian Federation state institutions Socialist-bloc reform leader 1956–2009 ○ Heart attack

Architect of shock therapy, the economist who dismantled the planned economy and laid the first stones of Russian capitalism

3 October 1993, live on television: "At this hour we cannot rely only on police and security forces. Muscovites, all Russians who cherish democracy and freedom, gather at the Mossovet building!" — thousands poured into the streets.

Grandson of writers Arkady Gaidar and Pavel Bazhov. After Moscow State University, he edited the economic sections of Kommunist and Pravda, arguing for market reform from within the party press. In November 1991 he became Yeltsin's Deputy PM and Minister of Economy and Finance; on 2 January 1992 he liberalised prices and launched privatisation, converting the Soviet planned economy into a market system. He served as Acting PM (June–December 1992) and during the 1993 constitutional crisis went on live television to call Muscovites into the streets. His reforms averted famine and collapse but wiped out millions' savings, a legacy that remains Russia's most polarising policy debate.