People of the Revolution and the USSR
- Mark N. Katz Mark N. Katz A scholar who reread war after withdrawal
- Mark R. Beissinger Mark R. Beissinger Political scientist who argued the Soviet collapse was produced by the event-driven tide of nationalism, not structural inevitability
- Edward W. Walker Edward W. Walker A political scientist who analyzed Soviet dissolution through the paradoxes of federalism
- Timothy Garton Ash Timothy Garton Ash British historian who coined 'refolution' to define the peaceful revolutions of 1989
- Vasyl Marochko Василь Марочко A historian of the Holodomor’s mechanisms and memory
- Csaba Békés Békés Csaba A historian who placed 1956 within Cold War international politics
- Rafael Reuveny Rafael Reuveny Israeli-born political economist who established the causal-mechanism framework linking the Soviet-Afghan war to the USSR's collapse
- Serhii Mykolayovych Plokhy Сергій Миколайович Плохій Harvard historian who argued Chernobyl was a direct cause of the Soviet collapse
- Vladislav Martinovich Zubok Владислав Мартинович Зубок The Cold War historian who read the Soviet collapse as 'a perfect storm and a hapless captain': a man-made disaster
- Helen Graham Helen Graham The British historian who named the Spanish Civil War 'the war before the lights went out'
- Oleg Vitalyevich Khlevniuk Олег Витальевич Хлевнюк An archival historian of Stalin's political power
- Orlando Figes Orlando Figes A historian who wove revolutionary social history into human experience
- Sergei Viktorovich Iarov Сергей Викторович Яров A historian who widened the blockade story from heroism to everyday ethics
- Stephen Mark Kotkin Stephen Mark Kotkin The structural analyst of the Soviet collapse who argued the system was not dying
- Anatol Paul Lieven Peter Paul Anatol Lieven The historian-journalist who chronicled Baltic independence
- Frank Dikötter Frank Dikötter Author of the “People’s Trilogy”, who used provincial party archives to put the Great Famine’s death toll at 45 million
- Leonid Anatolyevich Naumov Леонид Анатольевич Наумов The Moscow history teacher who read the Great Terror through its regional statistics
- Yuri Mikhailovich Kilin Юрий Михайлович Килин A historian who recalculated the Winter War casualty record
- Hope M. Harrison Hope M. Harrison A Cold War historian who recast the Berlin Wall's origins
- Kirill Anatolyevich Boldovsky Кирилл Анатольевич Болдовский A historian tracing what the Leningrad Affair left unresolved
- Terry Martin Terry Martin The historian who redefined the USSR as an 'affirmative action empire' rather than a 'prison of nations'
- Anne Applebaum Anne Applebaum A historian of Soviet and Eastern European memory
- Aleksandr Vladimirovich Pyzhikov Александр Владимирович Пыжиков A historian of the 1950s-60s USSR and the Russian church schism
- Aleksandr Vladlenovich Shubin Александр Владленович Шубин A historian who reads the Soviet collapse as elite power struggle
- Ivan Yotov Krastev Иван Йотов Кръстев Bulgarian political thinker who argued that the post-1989 imperative to imitate the West bred illiberal backlash in Eastern Europe
- Kate Brown Kate Brown Environmental historian who traced Chernobyl's concealed death toll
- Simon Jonathan Sebag Montefiore Simon Sebag Montefiore A historian of power's intimate worlds
- Asif Siddiqi Asif Siddiqi The Bangladeshi-American historian who founded the modern archival study of the Soviet space program
- Daniel Kowalsky Daniel Kowalsky American historian who reassessed Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War using declassified archives
- Daron Acemoglu Daron Acemoğlu Nobel laureate who showed why the Kosygin reform was structurally doomed by extractive institutions
- Francine Hirsch Francine Hirsch American historian who argued the USSR continued the imperial ethnographic practices of the tsarist state
- Adam Higginbotham Adam Higginbotham A journalist who traced the structure of disaster
- Jay Bhattacharya Jayanta Bhattacharya A health economist who traced causal links in public policy
- Lara Pawson Lara Pawson British journalist and writer who tracked Angola's 1977 massacre through interviews
- David Brandenberger David Brandenberger The American Soviet historian who mapped the three schools of Leningrad Affair historiography
- Kristen Ghodsee Kristen Ghodsee An ethnographer of the social costs of the post-1989 transition
- Polly Jones Polly Jones A historian of de-Stalinization, memory, and cultural change
- Hennadii Hryhorovych Yefimenko Геннадій Григорович Єфіменко A historian of state and society in Soviet Ukraine
- Jeronim Perović Jeronim Perović The Swiss historian whose archival research overturned the received Yugoslav narrative of the Tito-Stalin split
- Andrei Valerevich Sushkov Андрей Валерьевич Сушков Historian who advanced an alternative theory that corruption among Leningrad leaders provoked the late-Stalinist purge
- Nancy Qian Nancy Qian An economist who traces state policy through historical data
- Andrei Mikhailovich Markevich Андрей Михайлович Маркевич A quantitative reinterpreter of Russian economic history
- László Ritter Ritter László An archival historian of Cold War military affairs
- Sergey Sergeyevich Radchenko Сергей Сергеевич Радченко Cold War historian who traced the Sino-Soviet split to inequality within the alliance and clashing national interests
- Alexei Vasilyevich Safronov Алексей Васильевич Сафронов A historian of the Soviet economy's reform possibilities and limits
- Ahmed Ismail Samatar Axmed Ismaaciil Samatar Somali scholar who critiqued the Barre regime's rhetoric against its reality
- Ainius Lasas Ainius Lašas Lithuanian political scientist of Baltic politics and international relations
- Artemy Mikhailovich Kalinovsky Артемий Михайлович Калиновский Cold War historian who analyzed the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan as a 'long goodbye'
- Gentiana Kera Gentiana Kera Historian of socialist-era Albanian historiography and its party control
- James Heinzen James Heinzen A historian who anatomized the Soviet countryside state