Founder of Soviet political science and brains of perestroika's political reform
"Gorbachev, me, all of us were double-thinkers — we had to balance truth and propaganda in our minds all the time. It was the choice between dissidence and surrender."
Armenian-born political scientist and Doctor of Law from Baku. He founded the Soviet Political Science Association and led it for 17 years, pioneering the theory of socialist democracy and becoming one of the earliest Soviet theorists to acknowledge interest-group pluralism within society. As Gorbachev's aide, he designed the constitutional reform that abolished the Party monopoly, introduced competitive elections, and created the Soviet presidency. After the USSR's collapse he wrote the memoir The Price of Freedom and also published science fiction under the pseudonym Georgy Shakh.
Career timeline
1941–1945Artillery platoon commander and battery reconnaissance chief; fought through Königsberg, Sevastopol, and Minsk
1949–1952Graduated law at Azerbaijan State University; postgraduate at the Institute of Law, USSR Academy of Sciences
1952–1960Editor at Politizdat publishing house
1960–1964Editorial work at Political Self-Education and Problems of Peace and Socialism (Prague)
1964–1988Consultant, then deputy and first deputy head of CC Department for Relations with Socialist Countries (GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Cuba)
1969Doctor of Law: dissertation 'Socialist Democracy: Problems and Perspectives'
1973–1990President of the Soviet Association of Political Sciences; vice-president of IPSA
1987Corresponding member of USSR Academy of Sciences; deputy of USSR Supreme Soviet
1988–1991Assistant to Gorbachev, then adviser to USSR President: designed political reform and constitutional revision
1990–1991People's Deputy; chairman of the Supreme Soviet subcommittee on constitutional legislation
1992–2001Director of the Center for Global Problems, Gorbachev Foundation
A historian who reconstructed the Cold War’s hidden record
As his father's personal secretary, he recorded the Cuban negotiations, and the documents he later donated revealed that tactical nuclear weapons remained in Cuba after the missile withdrawal.
Sergo Mikoyan was a Soviet and Russian historian of Latin America and Soviet foreign policy, as well as the son of Anastas Mikoyan. His experience accompanying his father to Cuba in 1962, together with his personal records, helped reveal that Soviet tactical nuclear weapons remained on the island after the public missile withdrawal and that the negotiations deepened the rift with the Cuban leadership. As editor of the journal Latin America, he helped shape the field and later joined collaborative Soviet-American research on the Cold War.
Career timeline
1952Graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations
1956Completed postgraduate study at the same institute
1957–1960Academic editor of World Economy and International Relations
1960–1990Researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations
1962Accompanied Anastas Mikoyan during the Cuban negotiations
1970–1990Editor-in-chief of the monthly journal Latin America
1990sCollaborated with U.S. universities and archival projects
Gorbachev's chief economic adviser and the market-reform architect of perestroika
Perestroika is a revolutionary renewal of the whole of Soviet society — growth cannot be separated from democratization and glasnost. (1988)
Armenian mathematical economist born in Tbilisi. As director of Novosibirsk's IEiOPP (1966–1984), he shaped the economics of Siberian development and the BAM railway, and founded the journal EKO. In 1985 he became Gorbachev's chief economic adviser, proposing enterprise autonomy, market elements, and foreign trade opening within the planned economy. He was Academician-Secretary of the Academy's Economics Department (1986–1989) and after the Soviet collapse served as rector of the Academy of National Economy (1989–2002), training Russia's post-Soviet managerial class.
Career timeline
1955–1961Economist at the State Committee on Labour and Wages
1961–1966Sector head at Novosibirsk IEiOPP; director at 33
1966–1984Director of IEiOPP; chair of BAM science council; founded and edited EKO
1974Full academician of USSR Academy of Sciences (corresponding member 1964)
1985–1989Gorbachev's economic adviser; chair of Commission for the Study of Productive Forces
1986–1989Academician-Secretary of Economics Department; Academy Presidium member
1989–2002Rector of the Academy of National Economy under the USSR, then Russian government
2002–presentChair of Economic Theory and Policy at the Academy; continued publishing
The historian who argued the USSR built nations, not destroyed them, the 'revenge of the past' thesis
In sixth grade I gave a report on how the Soviet Union had defeated fascism and built cities the size of San Francisco since the war. My teacher blanched. From that day until I graduated, I was known as Comrade Suny.
An Armenian-American historian who transformed the paradigm of Soviet nationalities studies. In his 1993 book The Revenge of the Past, he overturned the Cold War consensus that the Soviet system repressed and Russified nationalities, arguing instead that Soviet nationality policy, through territorial demarcation, language codification, and ethnic bureaucracies, institutionalized and built national identities, ultimately creating the very nations that would destroy the Union. This 'revenge of the past' thesis became the dominant paradigm in post-Soviet nationalities research. He is also noted for major studies of each South Caucasus nation and won the Deutscher Memorial Prize for his 2020 biography of Stalin.
Career timeline
1968–1981Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor of History, Oberlin College
1981–1995Alex Manoogian Chair in Modern Armenian History, University of Michigan
1995–2005Professor of Political Science and History, University of Chicago
2005President, AAASS
2005–2015Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History, University of Michigan
2015–2022William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History, University of Michigan
1993Published The Revenge of the Past, transforming the paradigm of Soviet nationalities studies
2021Deutscher Memorial Prize for Stalin: Passage to Revolution
Nobel laureate who showed why the Kosygin reform was structurally doomed by extractive institutions
From Why Nations Fail: 'Soviet Russia generated rapid growth as it caught up rapidly with some of the advanced technologies in the world but was running out of steam by the 1970s because of a lack of creative destruction.'
Born to an Armenian family in Istanbul and later becoming an MIT economics professor, Daron Acemoglu is a leading institutional economist who won the 2024 Nobel Prize, alongside Simon Johnson and James Robinson, for explaining the institutional origins of prosperity gaps between nations. In Why Nations Fail (2012), written with Robinson, he analyzed the Soviet economy, arguing that prices under central planning were disconnected from real value and could not price innovation, while tying bonuses to the total wage fund killed any incentive for enterprises to automate, making the Kosygin reform structurally doomed from the start. His insight that sustained growth is impossible without inclusive institutions has had broad influence across development economics and political economy.
