People of the Revolution and the USSR
- Alexander Ivanovich Herzen Александр Иванович Герцен Founder of Russian peasant socialism, publisher of The Bell
- Nikolai Platonovich Ogarev Николай Платонович Огарёв Russian utopian socialist theorist who co-edited Kolokol with Herzen
- Nikolai Yakovlevich Danilevsky Николай Яковлевич Данилевский Pan-Slavist philosopher who theorized cultural-historical types to argue for Russia's civilizational distinctiveness
- Pyotr Lavrovich Lavrov Пётр Лаврович Лавров Foundational theorist of Narodnik philosophy whose Historical Letters declared the intelligentsia's 'debt to the people'
- Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky Николай Гаврилович Чернышевский The revolutionary democrat whose What Is to Be Done? remade Lenin and shaped a generation of revolutionaries
- Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov Николай Фёдорович Фёдоров The founder of Russian cosmism who made the resurrection of the dead into a scientific common task of humanity
- Nikolai Alexandrovich Dobrolyubov Николай Александрович Добролюбов The literary critic who died at 25 but became the teacher of an entire generation of Russian revolutionaries
- Nikolai Konstantinovich Mikhailovsky Николай Константинович Михайловский The narodnik intelligentsia's 'ruler of thoughts,' founder of the subjective method in sociology and the theory of heroes and the crowd
- Pyotr Nikitich Tkachev Пётр Никитич Ткачёв The Russian Jacobin Narodnik who first theorized a conspiratorial vanguard dictatorship, precursor to Leninist party doctrine
- Nikolai Yegorovich Zhukovsky Николай Егорович Жуковский The 'Father of Russian Aviation' who gave aerodynamics its mathematical foundations, built Russia's first wind tunnel, and founded TsAGI
- Vera Ivanovna Zasulich Вера Ивановна Засулич From a narodnik revolver to Marxist criticism, half a century of one woman's revolutionary life
- Lev Grigorievich Deitch Лев Григорьевич Дейч Co-founder of the Emancipation of Labour group and a Menshevik pioneer at the origins of Russian Marxism
- Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov Георгий Валентинович Плеханов The father of Russian Marxism: against his own pupils’ revolution
- Vladimir Lvovich Burtsev Владимир Львович Бурцев 'Sherlock Holmes of the Revolution' who serially exposed Tsarist secret police agents provocateurs
- Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky Михаил Иванович Туган-Барановский From Legal Marxism to ethical socialism: the economist who pioneered business cycle theory
- Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon Михаил Осипович Гершензон Russian cultural historian who launched the Vekhi collection and urged the intelligentsia toward spiritual self-awareness
- Yekaterina Dmitriyevna Kuskova Екатерина Дмитриевна Кускова A publicist who moved between reformist socialism and anti-party politics
- Pyotr Berngardovich Struve Пётр Бернгардович Струве From Marxism through liberalism to conservative anti-Bolshevism: the thinker who traced the arc of a Russian intelligentsia
- Sergei Nikolayevich Bulgakov Сергей Николаевич Булгаков The Marxist economist who became a priest and built the theological system of Sophia
- Sergei Nikolaevich Prokopovich Сергей Николаевич Прокопович An economist who analysed the tension between markets and state control
- Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev Николай Александрович Бердяев A Russian thinker who left Marxism to found a Christian existentialist philosophy of freedom
- Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin Иван Александрович Ильин Hegelian legal philosopher who deemed October a 'national catastrophe' and became a White émigré ideologue
- Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin Питирим Александрович Сорокин SR leader imprisoned by both Tsar and Bolsheviks, who became founder of Harvard's sociology department