Gulag survivor, world authority on Old Russian literature, moral conscience of late Soviet society
Solovki, autumn 1929. Warned that an arrest squad was coming for him, he hid all night among the woodpiles, listening to execution volleys. At dawn he understood: "Someone else was taken instead of me — I must now live for two."
Philologist and cultural historian from St. Petersburg. Arrested in 1928 for counter-revolutionary activity, he spent four years at Solovki camp. After release, he joined the Pushkin House, becoming the world's foremost authority on Old Russian literature. He led studies of The Tale of Igor's Campaign and edited the 12-volume Monuments of Literature of Ancient Rus'. Elected Academician in 1970, he served as first chairman of the Soviet Cultural Foundation (1986–1993). He never joined the Communist Party, opposed Sakharov's Academy expulsion, and was called 'Russia's conscience' while a People's Deputy during perestroika. In 1998 he became the first recipient of the restored Order of St. Andrew.
Career timeline
1928–1932Arrested for counter-revolutionary activity; Solovki camp and Belbaltlag
1938Research fellow, IRLI (Pushkin House), USSR Academy of Sciences
1947Doctor of Philology
1953Corresponding Member, USSR Academy of Sciences
1970Full Academician, USSR Academy of Sciences
1986–1993Chairman, Soviet (later Russian) Cultural Foundation
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.
Career timeline
1941–1945Artillery platoon commander and battery reconnaissance chief; fought through Königsberg, Sevastopol, and Minsk
1949–1952Graduated law at Azerbaijan State University; postgraduate at the Institute of Law, USSR Academy of Sciences
1952–1960Editor at Politizdat publishing house
1960–1964Editorial work at Political Self-Education and Problems of Peace and Socialism (Prague)
1964–1988Consultant, then deputy and first deputy head of CC Department for Relations with Socialist Countries (GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Cuba)
1969Doctor of Law: dissertation 'Socialist Democracy: Problems and Perspectives'
1973–1990President of the Soviet Association of Political Sciences; vice-president of IPSA
1987Corresponding member of USSR Academy of Sciences; deputy of USSR Supreme Soviet
1988–1991Assistant to Gorbachev, then adviser to USSR President: designed political reform and constitutional revision
1990–1991People's Deputy; chairman of the Supreme Soviet subcommittee on constitutional legislation
1992–2001Director of the Center for Global Problems, Gorbachev Foundation
Author and technical director of the 'Shelter' that encased Chernobyl's ruined Reactor 4
He personally climbed into a 'bathyscaphe' suspended from a crane hook to survey the ruined reactor.
A Soviet nuclear construction engineer from Tambov, he joined VNIPIET in 1953 after graduating from the Leningrad Institute of Civil Engineering and spent his entire career at that one institute. He led the project to remediate the 1957 Kyshtym disaster, and in 1986 became the author and technical director of the 'Shelter' (Sarcophagus) that sealed Chernobyl's Reactor 4 in just 206 days: he personally surveyed the ruined reactor suspended in a 'bathyscaphe' from a crane hook and devised engineering solutions without world precedent. He later served as general director of VNIPIET (1989–1998), contributing to the recovery from the Arzamas explosion and the Kirovakan earthquake.
Career timeline
1953Joined VNIPIET as an engineer
1957Led the Kyshtym (Chelyabinsk-65) accident remediation project
1985–1989Chief engineer, VNIPIET
1986Author and technical director, 'Shelter' (Sarcophagus) project, Chernobyl Reactor 4
1989–1998General director, VNIPIET
1996Awarded Honoured Builder of the Russian Federation
Founder of Soviet economic sociology; her 1983 report lit the intellectual fuse of perestroika
"As one of just eleven academician-economists receiving a high salary from the state, I consider myself personally responsible to the people for the state of the economy and society" — 1983
Born in Kyiv, she abandoned physics for economics after reading Marx's Capital. At Novosibirsk's Akademgorodok, her rural research pioneered Soviet economic sociology, and in 1983 she wrote a report diagnosing how planned economies breed alienation and rigidity. The KGB seized every copy, but the leaked text, the 'Novosibirsk Manifesto', became an intellectual catalyst for perestroika. She was president of the Soviet Sociological Association, founding director of VTsIOM, and a People's Deputy who worked with Sakharov and Yeltsin.
Career timeline
1943–1950Three years of physics at Moscow State, then economics with honors
1950–1963Institute of Economics, agrarian sector; earns Kandidat degree 1956
1963–1987Novosibirsk IEiOPP; heads social problems department 1967; founds the economic-sociological school
1968Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences
1981Full academician — one of only five women at the time
1983The 'Novosibirsk Manifesto': diagnoses structural flaws and social rigidity in Soviet planning
1986–1991President of the Soviet Sociological Association
1988–1992Founding director of VTsIOM, the All-Union Public Opinion Research Center
1989–1991People's Deputy; works with Sakharov and Yeltsin in the Interregional Deputies' Group
An economist of socialist economic integration and reform
He later argued that stagnation in the Soviet economy gave perestroika its first impulse.
Oleg Bogomolov was a Soviet economist and academic institution-builder who studied international economic relations within the socialist world. His comparative work on Hungarian and Yugoslav reforms examined both the rigidity of planned management and the possible uses of market mechanisms. In 1983, when Yuri Andropov initiated preparations for economic reform, Bogomolov joined the relevant commission and supplied expertise to its deliberations. He later argued for gradual reform that combined markets with social protection, widening the economic options considered during perestroika.
Career timeline
1949Graduated from the Institute of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Foreign Trade
1954Received a candidate degree in economics
1962–1969Worked in the CPSU Central Committee apparatus and foreign-trade institutions
1967–1977Headed the Chair of Economic Geography of Foreign Socialist Countries at Moscow State University
1969–1991Director of the Institute of Economics of the World Socialist System
1981Elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences
1983Joined the commission preparing Andropov-era economic reform
1989–1991Deputy of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR
The philosopher who gave perestroika its humanist foundations: from defending genetics to founding the science of Man
"I criticize the very concept of 'Party science.' Politics concerns only the philosophical interpretation of science, not the evaluation of science itself" — Genetics and Dialectics, 1968
A Marxist philosopher who dismantled Lysenkoism on philosophical grounds. As Gorbachev's advisor, he placed 'authentic humanism' at the core of perestroika and pioneered bioethics and the interdisciplinary study of Man. Served as Pravda editor-in-chief and Politburo member.
Career timeline
1953Graduated Philosophy Faculty, Moscow State University (silver medal)
1958Kandidat in philosophy — Determinism and Teleology
1965–1968Assistant to CPSU Central Committee Secretary for Ideology
1966Doctor of Philosophical Sciences — Problems of Biological Methodology
1968–1977Editor-in-chief, Voprosy Filosofii; publishes Genetics and Dialectics
1976Corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences
1987Full Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences
1986–1987Editor-in-chief, Kommunist; host of 'Philosophical Conversations' on Central TV
1987–1989Science, education and culture advisor to General Secretary Gorbachev
1989–1991Editor-in-chief, Pravda
1989–1990Secretary, CPSU Central Committee
1990–1991Member of Politburo, CPSU Central Committee
1991–1999Founding director, Institute of Man, Russian Academy of Sciences
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.
Career timeline
1955–1961Economist at the State Committee on Labour and Wages
1961–1966Sector head at Novosibirsk IEiOPP; director at 33
1966–1984Director of IEiOPP; chair of BAM science council; founded and edited EKO
1974Full academician of USSR Academy of Sciences (corresponding member 1964)
1985–1989Gorbachev's economic adviser; chair of Commission for the Study of Productive Forces
1986–1989Academician-Secretary of Economics Department; Academy Presidium member
1989–2002Rector of the Academy of National Economy under the USSR, then Russian government
2002–presentChair of Economic Theory and Policy at the Academy; continued publishing
Russia's foremost alcohol epidemiologist, whose estimate that the anti-alcohol campaign saved over a million lives anchors the scholarship
"The anti-alcohol campaign saved the lives of more than 1 million individuals." Nemtsov's conclusion from a quarter-century of research.
A pioneer of alcohol epidemiology who graduated from the Moscow Medical Institute, trained as a psychiatrist, and spent his career at the Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry. Spurred by the 1985 anti-alcohol campaign, he developed methodologies to estimate real alcohol consumption and the scale of alcohol-related mortality, arriving at the benchmark estimate that the campaign saved roughly one million lives. Tracking the waves of alcohol-driven excess mortality through the Gorbachev era and the post-Soviet collapse, his empirical work became a cornerstone of demographic debate on Russia's mortality crisis.
Career timeline
1933Born in Moscow
1977Awarded Doctor of Medical Sciences
1982Began researching alcoholism; from 1985, its epidemiology
1987Developed methodology for estimating real alcohol consumption
1990Developed methodology for alcohol-related mortality estimation
1996Head, Dept. of Informatics and Systems Research, Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry
2011Published A Contemporary History of Alcohol in Russia (Södertörn University)
The historian who called the conservative majority 'aggressively obedient'
27 May 1989, at the First Congress of People's Deputies, to the conservative deputies: "You here make up an aggressively obedient majority. … We are creating a Stalinist-Brezhnevite Supreme Soviet."
A historian who coined the phrase 'aggressively obedient majority' to describe the conservative bloc at the First Congress of People's Deputies in 1989. A scholar of the French Annales school, he led the de-Stalinization of Soviet historiography as rector of the Moscow State Institute of History and Archives (1986–1991) and served as co-chair of the Inter-Regional Deputies Group alongside Sakharov and Yeltsin, driving democratic reform. In 1991 he founded the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH), carving an independent intellectual space out of a former Party school, and spent his final decades openly criticizing the authoritarian drift of both Yeltsin and Putin.
Career timeline
1957–1966Komsomol secretary, Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric station
1972–1981Professor and pro-rector, Higher Komsomol School
1983–1986History editor, Kommunist journal
1986–1991Rector, Moscow State Institute of History and Archives; leads de-Stalinization of Soviet historiography
1989–1993People's Deputy of the USSR; co-chair, Inter-Regional Deputies Group
1990–1992Co-founder and co-chair, Democratic Russia movement; quits CPSU
1991–2003Founder and rector, Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH)
A liberal economist who helped design the transition from a planned to a market economy
In 1968, watching Soviet tanks crush the Prague Spring, Yasin later recalled: 'It all became clear to me in 1968.'
Yevgeny Yasin was an economist who developed reform proposals for moving the late Soviet planned economy toward a market economy. As a co-author in the Shatalin group’s 500 Days programme, he helped formulate a blueprint for rapid market transition, then worked in the reforming Russian state after the Soviet collapse. As Yeltsin’s economy minister, he represented the liberal reform line while confronting disputes over the transition’s social costs and the state’s capacity. He later shaped economic policy education and public debate through the Higher School of Economics and the Liberal Mission Foundation.
Career timeline
1957Graduated from the Odesa Institute of Hydraulic Engineering; bridge-construction engineer
1963Graduated from Moscow State University, Faculty of Economics
1964–1973Head of department and laboratory at the Research Institute of the Central Statistical Administration
1973–1989Headed a laboratory at the Central Institute of Economics and Mathematics, USSR Academy of Sciences
1989–1991Department head at the USSR Council of Ministers’ State Commission on Economic Reform; co-author of the 500 Days programme
1994–1997Minister of Economy of the Russian Federation
1998–2021Academic supervisor of the Higher School of Economics
2000–2019President of the Liberal Mission Foundation
An economist who carried price theory into the transition to a market economy
Through the 500 Days programme, he pushed his research on price formation toward a plan for transforming the Soviet economy into a market.
Nikolai Petrakov was a Soviet economist who used mathematical analysis to study price formation and the balancing of costs, output, and incomes in a planned economy. He pursued market mechanisms and price reform, and in 1990 joined Stanislav Shatalin and Grigory Yavlinsky as a co-author of the 500 Days programme. The programme sought to move the Soviet economy toward a market through privatization, price liberalization, and a transfer of authority to the republics, placing Petrakov’s research and policy work at the junction of economic modelling and urgent political choice. He later founded the Institute for Market Problems and led research on market transition and economic policy.
Career timeline
1959Graduated from the Faculty of Economics, Moscow State University
1963Earned a Candidate of Economic Sciences degree for research on industrial profitability and pricing
1970–1989Professor of economics at Moscow State University
1972Earned a Doctor of Economic Sciences degree for research on pricing in a planned economy
1984–1990Corresponding member, then full member, of the USSR Academy of Sciences
1990Economic aide to the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, then to the President of the USSR
1990Co-author of the Shatalin-Yavlinsky 500 Days programme
1990–2014Founder and first director of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for Market Problems
The Leningrad chemistry lecturer whose 'I Cannot Forsake My Principles' became the manifesto of anti-perestroika forces
"Our media are lying about Stalin now. They are blackening our history."
A Leningrad chemist and CPSU member who, on 13 March 1988, published 'I Cannot Forsake My Principles' in Sovetskaya Rossiya, a full-throated defense of Stalin and an attack on perestroika. The article, drafted with the backing of Central Committee secretary Yegor Ligachev, was denounced by Pravda as the 'manifesto of anti-perestroika forces' and became the shock that drove Gorbachev to radicalize political reform ahead of the 19th Party Conference. After 1991 she founded the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (VKPB) and served as its general secretary, but neither she nor her party ever gained significant traction in post-Soviet Russia.
Career timeline
1961Graduated Leningrad Technological Institute as chemical engineer
1966Joined the CPSU
1972–1988Assistant, then senior lecturer in physical chemistry, Leningrad Technological Institute
1979–1981Expelled from CPSU; reinstated after Party Control Committee review
1988.03Published 'I Cannot Forsake My Principles' in Sovetskaya Rossiya
1989Founded Yedinstvo (Unity) society; chair of its Coordinating Council
1991–2020Founded All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (VKPB); General Secretary
