People of the Revolution and the USSR
- Vladimir Ivanovich Nevsky Владимир Иванович Невский The revolutionary-historian who seized the railways in October and wrote the party's history
- Evgeny Samuilovich Varga Varga Jenő The Marxist economist who predicted the Great Depression, and was punished for arguing capitalism could adapt
- Boris Ignatyevich Arvatov Борис Игнатьевич Арватов The Saint-Just of the avant-garde, theorist of production art
- Mikhail Alexandrovich Lifshitz Михаил Александрович Лифшиц Builder of Marxist aesthetics who defended absolute truth and beauty against relativism
- Alexei Matveyevich Rumyantsev Алексей Матвеевич Румянцев The political economist who opened Khrushchev's economic debate, and institutional founder of Soviet sociology
- Georgy Arkadyevich Arbatov Георгий Аркадьевич Арбатов The USSR's preeminent Americanist who built a think-tank on Arbat Street, not in Akademgorodok, and designed détente
- Georgy Khosroevich Shakhnazarov Георгий Хосроевич Шахназаров Founder of Soviet political science and brains of perestroika's political reform
- Roy Alexandrovich Medvedev Рой Александрович Медведев The Marxist historian who put Stalinism on trial
- Tatyana Ivanovna Zaslavskaya Татьяна Ивановна Заславская Founder of Soviet economic sociology; her 1983 report lit the intellectual fuse of perestroika
- Sergo Anastasi Mikoyan Серго Анастасович Микоян A historian who reconstructed the Cold War’s hidden record
- Abel Gezevich Aganbegyan Абел Гезевич Аганбегян Gorbachev's chief economic adviser and the market-reform architect of perestroika
- Yuri Nikolayevich Afanasyev Юрий Николаевич Афанасьев The historian who called the conservative majority 'aggressively obedient'