People of the Revolution and the USSR
- Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachev Дмитрий Сергеевич Лихачёв Gulag survivor, world authority on Old Russian literature, moral conscience of late Soviet society
- Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kurnosov Владимир Александрович Курносов Author and technical director of the 'Shelter' that encased Chernobyl's ruined Reactor 4
- Tatyana Ivanovna Zaslavskaya Татьяна Ивановна Заславская Founder of Soviet economic sociology; her 1983 report lit the intellectual fuse of perestroika
- 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
- 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
- Yuri Nikolayevich Afanasyev Юрий Николаевич Афанасьев The historian who called the conservative majority 'aggressively obedient'
- Yevgeny Grigoryevich Yasin Евгений Григорьевич Ясин A liberal economist who helped design the transition from a planned to a market economy
- 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