People of the Revolution and the USSR
- Algirdas Brazauskas Algirdas Brazauskas The communist who split his party from Moscow and became independent Lithuania's first president
- Gavriil Kharitonovich Popov Гавриил Харитонович Попов Moscow's first elected mayor, who told the U.S. ambassador of the coming coup
- Anatoly Aleksandrovich Sobchak Анатолий Александрович Собчак Constitutional Assembly chairman and first elected mayor of Saint Petersburg
- Kazimiera Danutė Prunskienė Kazimira Danutė Prunskienė She tried to negotiate independence through pragmatism; her resignation removed the last obstacle to the military option
- Gennady Eduardovich Burbulis Геннадий Эдуардович Бурбулис The philosopher who proposed the one sentence that declared the Soviet Union dead at Belovezh