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People of the Revolution and the USSR
Activity(set)
Affiliation
Position
Citizenship(set)
Background(set)
Era
People of the Soviet Union
People of the wider world
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Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin Пётр Алексеевич Кропоткин
Rurikid prince, founder of anarcho-communism, geographer of Mutual Aid: escaped the Peter and Paul Fortress
Scholarship and theory
1842–1921
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Vera Ivanovna Zasulich Вера Ивановна Засулич
From a narodnik revolver to Marxist criticism, half a century of one woman's revolutionary life
Scholarship and theory · Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP)
1849–1919
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Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin Иван Владимирович Мичурин
Self-taught plant breeder whose name was hijacked by Lysenko
Scholarship and theory
1855–1935
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Lev Grigorievich Deitch Лев Григорьевич Дейч
Co-founder of the Emancipation of Labour group and a Menshevik pioneer at the origins of Russian Marxism
Scholarship and theory · Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP)
1855–1941
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Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky Константин Эдуардович Циолковский
From a deaf provincial teacher to the father of cosmonautics. The self-taught visionary whose rocket equation opened the space age
Scholarship and theory
1857–1935
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Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon Михаил Осипович Гершензон
Russian cultural historian who launched the Vekhi collection and urged the intelligentsia toward spiritual self-awareness
Scholarship and theory
1869–1925
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David Borisovich Riazanov Давид Борисович Рязанов
Founder of the Marx-Engels Institute and independent Marxist who never stopped disagreeing
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1870–1938
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Pyotr Berngardovich Struve Пётр Бернгардович Струве
From Marxism through liberalism to conservative anti-Bolshevism: the thinker who traced the arc of a Russian intelligentsia
Scholarship and theory · Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets)
1870–1944
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Yuri Mikhailovich Steklov Юрий Михайлович Стеклов
First Soviet editor of Izvestia, architect of the Soviet constitution
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1873–1941
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Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev Николай Александрович Бердяев
A Russian thinker who left Marxism to found a Christian existentialist philosophy of freedom
Scholarship and theory
1874–1948
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Yevgeny Viktorovich Tarle Евгений Викторович Тарле
Historian of Napoleon who won world renown, survived Academic Case exile, and returned under Stalin's personal protection
Scholarship and theory
1874–1955
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Vladimir Ivanovich Nevsky Владимир Иванович Невский
The revolutionary-historian who seized the railways in October and wrote the party's history
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Union
1876–1937
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Alexander Andreyevich Svechin Александр Андреевич Свечин
“The Russian Clausewitz”. Theorist of strategy and operational art
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1878–1938
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Emelyan Mikhailovich Yaroslavsky Емельян Михайлович Ярославский
The Party's Chief Atheist, Called 'the Soviet Priest'
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1878–1943
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Vladimir Viktorovich Adoratsky Владимир Викторович Адоратский
IMEL director and the first Marxist philosopher to publicly anoint Stalin as a theorist
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1878–1945
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Platon Mikhailovich Kerzhentsev Платон Михайлович Керженцев
Proletkult theorist who became architect of Stalin-era arts censorship
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1881–1940
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Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky Павел Александрович Флоренский
Russian Orthodox priest-theologian who worked on Soviet electrification while wearing his cassock
Religion · Russian Orthodox Church
1882–1937
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Aleksei Kapitonovich Gastev Алексей Капитонович Гастев
From proletarian poetry to the science of labour: founder of Soviet social engineering who trained half a million workers
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1882–1939
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Nikolai Nikolaevich Sukhanov Николай Николаевич Суханов
Author of 'Notes on the Revolution' and agrarian economist in whose apartment the Bolshevik CC voted for armed uprising
Scholarship and theory · Mensheviks (RSDLP)
1882–1940
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Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum Всеволод Михайлович Эйхенбаум
Russian anarchist intellectual who theorized anarchist synthesis and chronicled the revolution the Bolsheviks suppressed
Ideology and propaganda · Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (Makhnovists)
1882–1945
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Nikolai Kakurin Николай Какурин
Red Army commander who was chief of staff of the Tambov suppression and became a historian of the Civil War
Military command · Soviet Union
1883–1936
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Yevgeni Alexeyevich Preobrazhensky Евгений Алексеевич Преображенский
The theorist of primitive socialist accumulation
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1886–1937
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Dmitry Ivanovich Shcherbakov Дмитрий Иванович Щербаков
A geologist who helped design the Soviet uranium search
Scholarship and theory
1893–1966
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Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin Михаил Михайлович Бахтин
Philosopher of dialogue and carnival, returned after thirty years of oblivion
Scholarship and theory
1895–1975
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Sofia Aleksandrovna Yanovskaya Софья Александровна Яновская
Bolshevik mathematician who resurrected mathematical logic in the Soviet Union
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1896–1966
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Anna Mikhailovna Pankratova Анна Михайловна Панкратова
Leading historian of the working class who drove destalinization in scholarship: first woman full academician in Soviet historical studies
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1897–1957
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Yevsei Grigoryevich Liberman Евсей Григорьевич Либерман
Theoretical catalyst of the 1965 Soviet economic reform
Scholarship and theory
1897–1981
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Boris Aleksandrovich Chagin Борис Александрович Чагин
The doyen of Soviet Marxist history of philosophy who alone survived his institute's purge
Scholarship and theory
1899–1987
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Alexei Nikolayevich Leontiev Алексей Николаевич Леонтьев
Founder of activity theory who laid the institutional foundations of Marxist psychology
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1903–1979
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Mikhail Alexandrovich Lifshitz Михаил Александрович Лифшиц
Builder of Marxist aesthetics who defended absolute truth and beauty against relativism
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1905–1983
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Alexei Matveyevich Rumyantsev Алексей Матвеевич Румянцев
The political economist who opened Khrushchev's economic debate, and institutional founder of Soviet sociology
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Union
1905–1993
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Vadim Aleksandrovich Trapeznikov Вадим Александрович Трапезников
An automation scientist who pressed technology toward economic reform
Scholarship and theory
1905–1994
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Alexander Vasilievich Korobov Александр Васильевич Коробов
Gosplan career planner who served from wartime reconstruction through the Kosygin reform preparations
Scholarship and theory
1907–1967
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Yakov Abramovich Kronrod Яков Абрамович Кронрод
Leader of the 'commodity school' in Soviet political economy who argued for the law of value and economic democracy
Scholarship and theory
1912–1984
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Isai Izrailevich Gurevich Исай Израилевич Гуревич
A nuclear theorist who made reactor design possible
Scholarship and theory
1912–1992
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Lev Nikolayevich Gumilev Лев Николаевич Гумилёв
Historian who reinvented Eurasianism with the theory of ethnogenesis and passionarity
Scholarship and theory
1912–1992
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Alexander Mikhailovich Prokhorov Александр Михайлович Прохоров
Nobel-winning laser co-inventor who helmed the Great Soviet Encyclopedia for three decades
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1916–2002
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Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg Виталий Лазаревич Гинзбург
From the H-bomb's 'second idea' to the Nobel Prize: a century-spanning theoretical physicist
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1916–2009
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Nikolai Nikolayevich Inozemtsev Николай Николаевич Иноземцев
Intellectual architect of Brezhnev-era détente
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1921–1982
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Mikhail Ivanovich Semiryaga Михаил Иванович Семиряга
Soviet military historian who first broke the official silence on Winter War casualties, revealing 53,522 dead
Scholarship and theory
1922–2000
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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
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1923–2010
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Tatyana Ivanovna Zaslavskaya Татьяна Ивановна Заславская
Founder of Soviet economic sociology; her 1983 report lit the intellectual fuse of perestroika
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Union
1927–2013
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Fyodor Mikhailovich Burlatsky Фёдор Михайлович Бурлацкий
Architect of Khrushchev's reforms and pioneer of Soviet political science
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1927–2014
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Oleg Timofeyevich Bogomolov Олег Тимофеевич Богомолов
An economist of socialist economic integration and reform
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1927–2015
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Ivan Timofeyevich Frolov Иван Тимофеевич Фролов
The philosopher who gave perestroika its humanist foundations: from defending genetics to founding the science of Man
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1929–1999
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Yuly Yakovlevich Olsevich Юлий Яковлевич Ольсевич
Soviet economist who identified two incompatible regulators, plan and quasi-market, as the core contradiction of the Kosygin reform
Scholarship and theory
1929–2016
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Grigori Fedotovich Krivosheyev Григорий Фёдорович Кривошеев
The statistician who made Soviet war losses countable
Scholarship and theory
1929–2019
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Alexander Yevgenyevich Bovin Александр Евгеньевич Бовин
Brezhnev's foreign-affairs speechwriter who put détente into prose, then became its sharpest television commentator
Scholarship and theory · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
1930–2004
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Alexandr Viktorovich Nemtsov Александр Викентьевич Немцов
Russia's foremost alcohol epidemiologist, whose estimate that the anti-alcohol campaign saved over a million lives anchors the scholarship
Scholarship and theory
1933–
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Vladislav Alexandrovich Kutuzov Владислав Александрович Кутузов
The Soviet historian who laid the foundation of Leningrad Affair studies
Scholarship and theory
1933–2016