People of the Revolution and the USSR
- Georgy Khosroevich Shakhnazarov Георгий Хосроевич Шахназаров Founder of Soviet political science and brains of perestroika's political reform
- Zhores Alexandrovich Medvedev Жорес Александрович Медведев The dissident biologist who argued the archives contain no evidence Stalin planned a Jewish deportation
- 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
- Fyodor Mikhailovich Burlatsky Фёдор Михайлович Бурлацкий Architect of Khrushchev's reforms and pioneer of Soviet political science
- Oleg Timofeyevich Bogomolov Олег Тимофеевич Богомолов An economist of socialist economic integration and reform
- Ivan Timofeyevich Frolov Иван Тимофеевич Фролов The philosopher who gave perestroika its humanist foundations: from defending genetics to founding the science of Man
- Sergo Anastasi Mikoyan Серго Анастасович Микоян A historian who reconstructed the Cold War’s hidden record
- 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
- Grigori Fedotovich Krivosheyev Григорий Фёдорович Кривошеев The statistician who made Soviet war losses countable
- Merab Konstantinovich Mamardashvili Мераб Константинович Мамардашвили The philosopher who spoke consciousness aloud
- Alexander Yevgenyevich Bovin Александр Евгеньевич Бовин Brezhnev's foreign-affairs speechwriter who put détente into prose, then became its sharpest television commentator
- Abel Gezevich Aganbegyan Абел Гезевич Аганбегян Gorbachev's chief economic adviser and the market-reform architect of perestroika
- 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
- Vladislav Alexandrovich Kutuzov Владислав Александрович Кутузов The Soviet historian who laid the foundation of Leningrad Affair studies
- Yuri Nikolayevich Afanasyev Юрий Николаевич Афанасьев The historian who called the conservative majority 'aggressively obedient'
- Grigory Isaakovich Khanin Григорий Исаакович Ханин The economist who exposed Soviet growth statistics as an 84-fold exaggeration and recalculated the real record
- Nikolai Yakovlevich Petrakov Николай Яковлевич Петраков An economist who carried price theory into the transition to a market economy
- Nina Alexandrovna Andreyeva Нина Александровна Андреева The Leningrad chemistry lecturer whose 'I Cannot Forsake My Principles' became the manifesto of anti-perestroika forces
- Leonid Moiseyevich Sabsovich Леонид Моисеевич Сабсович The economist who blueprinted Stalin's accelerated industrialization, standard-bearer of the 'socialist city' Urbanists