People of the Revolution and the USSR
- Boris Dmitriyevich Grekov Борис Дмитриевич Греков Founder of Soviet medieval studies; established the feudal interpretation of Kievan Rus
- Boris Zakharovich Shumyatsky Борис Захарович Шумяцкий The revolutionary who built Soviet cinema's golden age and dreamed of a Soviet Hollywood
- Ivan Mikhailovich Gronsky Иван Михайлович Гронский The literary commissar who coined 'socialist realism' with Stalin
- Aleksei Ivanovich Stetsky Алексей Иванович Стецкий Propaganda chief who moved from Bukharin's 'red professor' circle to Stalin's side
- Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov Андрей Александрович Жданов The ideology manager whose name marked Stalinist culture
- Pavel Fyodorovich Yudin Павел Фёдорович Юдин Stalinist philosopher-diplomat who built orthodoxy, then incubated the foundations of Soviet cultural history
- Alexander Sergeyevich Shcherbakov Александр Сергеевич Щербаков Stalin's wartime propaganda chief and Moscow party boss, whose death became a spark for the Doctors' Plot
- Mark Borisovich Mitin Марк Борисович Митин Stalin-era chief philosophical authority who installed dialectical materialism as state doctrine
- Mikhail Borisovich Khrapchenko Михаил Борисович Храпченко Soviet arts chief felled by the Zhdanov anti-formalism campaign, who rebuilt a career as a leading Gogol and Tolstoy scholar
- Vladimir Semyonovich Kruzhkov Владимир Семёнович Кружков The ideology bureaucrat who co-wrote Stalin's biography, enforced the Zhdanov line, and fell in a sex scandal
- Nikolai Aleksandrovich Mikhailov Николай Александрович Михайлов Stalin's youth mobilizer turned Thaw-era Culture Minister, a party apparatus survivor
- Georgy Fyodorovich Alexandrov Георгий Фёдорович Александров Stalin's chief ideological supervisor, broken by a philosophy debate
- Yuri Andreyevich Zhdanov Юрий Андреевич Жданов Stalin's son-in-law who criticized Lysenko, recanted, then built Rostov University over 31 years as rector