People

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Socialist-bloc reform leader 1924–2001 ○ Natural causes

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.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Socialist-bloc reform leader 1932–

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.