Propaganda-trained culture minister who executed glasnost-era cultural liberalization
In June 1989, the USSR Supreme Soviet reviewed Premier Ryzhkov's proposed cabinet and rejected Zakharov's renomination as culture minister. For the first time in decades, the rubber-stamp legislature told a sitting minister he was unqualified and sent him packing.
Trained as an economist, he rose through the Leningrad party organization's propaganda and agitation apparatus to reach Moscow, where Gorbachev appointed him Minister of Culture in 1986. His tenure oversaw a decisive shift in Soviet cultural policy: the publication of previously banned books, the relaxation of film censorship, and expanded autonomy for artistic creation. He personally mediated the acrimonious split of the Moscow Art Theatre. In 1989 the newly empowered Supreme Soviet rejected his renomination, the first major case of the legislature exercising real confirmation power over a sitting minister. After leaving office, he served as deputy premier of the Russian republic and later wrote memoirs judging the Gorbachev era a 'reign of missed opportunities.'
Career timeline
1957–1973Lecturer in political economy at Tomsk and Leningrad institutes; doctorate in economics (1973)
1973–1983Head of Propaganda and Agitation Department, then Secretary of Leningrad Oblast Committee, overseeing culture, science, and education
1983–1986First Deputy Chief of CC Propaganda Department → Second Secretary of Moscow City Committee under Boris Yeltsin
1986–1989Minister of Culture of the USSR, lifting bans on books, easing censorship, and granting theatres autonomy during glasnost
1989–1990Deputy Chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers
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
Second human to orbit Earth and builder of Soviet military space systems
"Once you have your arms and legs arranged properly, space sleep is fine... I slept like a baby." — the first human to sleep in orbit, Vostok 2, August 1961.
Soviet cosmonaut and military space commander. On 6 August 1961, aboard Vostok 2, he became the second human to orbit Earth; his 17-orbit, 25-hour flight, the first long-duration mission, proved humans could eat, sleep, and work in space. At 25, he remains the youngest orbital pilot in history. He was the first to manually pilot a spacecraft, the first to film Earth from orbit, and the first to experience space sickness. After his flight he led cosmonaut training for the Spiral orbital spaceplane, and from 1979 to 1991 served as First Deputy Chief of GUKOS/UNKS, the USSR Ministry of Defence space directorate, overseeing military space systems including the Marshal Nedelin-class tracking ships. Elected to the Russian State Duma as a CPRF member (1993–2000).
Career timeline
1957Graduated Stalingrad Military Aviation School; fighter pilot, Leningrad Military District
1960Selected in first cosmonaut group
1961.04Backup pilot for Vostok 1 (Yuri Gagarin)
1961.08Vostok 2 — 17 orbits, 25 hr 18 min; second human to orbit Earth
1965–1968Head of cosmonaut training group for Spiral orbital spaceplane
1968Graduated Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy
1972Graduated General Staff Military Academy; Deputy Chief of Space Command and Control
1973–1979Deputy Chief of GUKOS for research and development
1979–1991First Deputy Chief of UNKS, USSR MoD; Lt. Gen. → Col. Gen.
The conservative apparatchik who founded the Russian republic's Communist Party
Gorbachev later said: 'I have known Polozkov for a very long time. He is an honest, decent fellow, but stupid and uneducated. Someone writes something for him, and he recites it.'
Founding First Secretary of the Communist Party of the RSFSR (1990–1991), the first republican-level Communist Party in Russian history, and the public face of the conservative anti-perestroika opposition within the CPSU. In May 1990 he contested Boris Yeltsin for the chairmanship of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet and led in early counts before the Politburo ordered him to stand down; weeks later the founding congress elected him to lead the new Russian party. A provincial apparatchik who had run the Krasnodar party organization for five years, he rose to the CPSU Politburo but was caught between reformers and hardliners, resigning after a heart attack in August 1991. He remained a symbolic elder of the Russian communist movement through the CPRF's consultative council after the party's dissolution.
Career timeline
1957–1962Komsomol and party functionary, Solntsevo district, Kursk Oblast
1969–1972Deputy department head, Kursk Oblast Party Committee
1972Chairman, Rylsk District Executive Committee
1973–1978CPSU Central Committee apparatus
1980–1983CPSU Central Committee apparatus
1983–1984Ideology secretary, Krasnodar Krai Party Committee
1984–1985Sector head, Organizational-Party Work Dept, CPSU CC
1985–1990First Secretary, Krasnodar Krai Party Committee
1990–1991First Secretary, CPRSFSR CC · CPSU Politburo member
The party apparatus gatekeeper who managed Gorbachev's documents, then betrayed him
On August 18, 1991, Boldin flew to Foros alongside Baklanov, Varennikov, and Shenin to deliver an ultimatum to Gorbachev — the man whose paper flow he had managed for a decade.
An economist by training who graduated from the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy and the CC Academy of Social Sciences, he worked in the Central Committee apparatus from 1961 and later served as agricultural department head and economic commentator at Pravda. In 1981 he became Gorbachev's assistant, and in 1987 he was appointed head of the CC General Department, the office controlling the entire document flow of the Politburo and Secretariat, adding the post of presidential chief of staff in 1990. During the August 1991 coup, however, he sided with the State Emergency Committee and was one of the four emissaries who flew to Foros to confront Gorbachev; arrested after the coup's failure, he was detained and then amnestied in 1994.
Career timeline
1961–1965Central Committee apparatus
1969–1981Pravda agricultural department head and economic commentator
1981–1987Assistant to CC Secretary and General Secretary Gorbachev
1987–1991Head of the CC General Department
1990–1991Chief of Staff to the President of the USSR
On August 19, 1991, the day the GKChP coup began, Shebarshin 'demonstratively' played tennis all day.
The last chief of the KGB First Chief Directorate, a career officer who built decades of field experience in Pakistan, India, and Iran. He kept his distance from the August 1991 coup, served a single day as acting KGB chairman after its failure before Boris Yeltsin blocked him, and later chronicled Soviet foreign intelligence's final chapter in his memoirs.
Career timeline
1958–1962Interpreter and Third Secretary, Soviet Embassy in Pakistan
1962Joined KGB First Chief Directorate, trained at School No. 101
1964–1968KGB intelligence officer under diplomatic cover, Pakistan
1971–1977Deputy rezident, then rezident, KGB India
1979–1983KGB rezident in Iran
1983–1987Deputy chief, then chief, Information-Analytical Directorate, PGU KGB
1987–1989Deputy chief of PGU KGB (Middle East and Africa)
1989–1991Deputy Chairman of the KGB and Chief of the First Chief Directorate
Khrushchev's son and Chelomei's guidance-system engineer
During the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969, Khrushchev tried to watch the historic moment through a telescope from Ukraine — with a KGB officer at his side.
Soviet rocket engineer and computer scientist. The son of Nikita Khrushchev, he developed guidance systems for cruise missiles and the Proton space booster at Vladimir Chelomei's OKB-52 design bureau, contributing to submarine-launched missiles, military spacecraft, Moon vehicles, and the Proton booster. At age 28 he was named a Hero of Socialist Labor and awarded the Order of Lenin in 1963. He later served as first deputy director of the Control Computer Institute (INEUM), and after moving to the United States in 1991 taught Cold War history and the Soviet space program at Brown University's Watson Institute while publishing several books on his father's era.
Career timeline
1958Graduated Moscow Power Engineering Institute; joined OKB-52 (Chelomei design bureau)
1958–1968OKB-52 engineer → deputy department chief — guidance systems for cruise missiles, military spacecraft, Moon vehicles, Proton booster
1959Awarded Lenin Prize
1963–1964Leading constructor and deputy head of OKB-52
1963Hero of Socialist Labor and Order of Lenin
1968–1991Control Computer Institute (INEUM) — section head → first deputy director
1991–2020Moved to USA; Senior Fellow and professor, Watson Institute, Brown University
The first director of Chernobyl who built the plant and was held responsible for its catastrophe
In the station courtyard I saw pieces of graphite under my feet, but I still could not imagine that the reactor had been destroyed.
Born in Tashkent as the eldest son of Russian workers, he studied energy engineering and built his career at thermal power plants. In 1970 he was appointed construction manager and first director of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which he led for sixteen years; plagued by construction delays and defective materials, he submitted his resignation, but a Party supervisor tore it up. Dismissed immediately after the 1986 disaster, he was sentenced to ten years in 1988; after his release he continued working on Chernobyl liquidation until his death in Kyiv in 2021.
Career timeline
1959Graduated Tashkent Polytechnic, joined Angren Thermal Power Plant
1966Rose to deputy chief engineer at Slavyansk Thermal Power Plant
1970–1986First director and construction manager, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
1986.07Expelled from CPSU and dismissed after the disaster; arrested in August
1988.07Sentenced to 10 years, served in Donetsk penal colony
1991.09Released early, worked in Ukraine's trade ministry
1995–2015Chernobyl liquidation work at Ukrinterenergo
Soviet physicist who linked fusion science, Chernobyl, and nuclear disarmament
Less than a month after absorbing radiation at Chernobyl, Velikhov chaired an international meeting on nuclear test-ban verification — turning disaster into a disarmament opening.
Soviet physicist who pioneered plasma physics for controlled fusion and MHD power. His 1959 thesis discovered magnetorotational instability, now foundational to astrophysics; in 1962 he identified electrothermal instability. He led the Soviet controlled-fusion program from 1973 and was Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1978–1991), bridging the Kurchatov Institute and the Academy. During Chernobyl (1986) he served as Gorbachev's science advisor for reactor containment, then led science diplomacy for nuclear disarmament. After the Soviet collapse he sustained the Kurchatov Institute and became founding chairman of ITER, building the framework for joint US-Soviet-European-Japanese fusion research.
Career timeline
1958Graduated from Moscow State University, Physics
1961Joined the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy
1971–1978Director, Magnetic Laboratory, Troitsk branch
1973–1991Scientific head, Soviet controlled-fusion program
1978–1991Vice-President, USSR Academy of Sciences
1986Science advisor to Gorbachev for Chernobyl cleanup
1989–1990Member, CPSU Central Committee
1989–2015Director → President → Honorary President, Kurchatov Institute
The last Chief of the Soviet General Staff, who refused to fire on civilians and twice drafted military reform
“These were young people expressing their views in the square. The task before me was to resolve the conflict without bloodshed.” — when asked why he refused the Kazakh party leadership's order to deploy troops against the 1986 Alma-Ata protests.
A professional soldier who rose from conscript to the highest military post in the USSR: Chief of the General Staff. As commander of the Central Asian Military District, he refused the Kazakh party leadership's demand to send troops against the December 1986 Alma-Ata protests, resolving the standoff without bloodshed. Twice entrusted with drafting military reform, first as First Deputy Chief of the General Staff under Gorbachev and again as Chief in 1991, he advocated shorter conscription, brigade-based organization, and a defensive posture, clashing with Defence Minister Yazov and later the Russian military establishment. Appointed Chief of the General Staff after the August 1991 coup, he held the post barely four months before the Soviet Union itself dissolved, making him the last man to hold the office.
Career timeline
1954Conscripted, artillery regiment, Turkestan Military District
1967–1968Motor rifle battalion commander, GSVG — seized airfield and key points near Prague
1979–1981Commander, 28th Combined Arms Army, Belorussian Military District
1984–1987Commander, Central Asian Military District — refused to deploy troops to Alma-Ata, Dec 1986
1987–1988First Deputy Chief, General Staff — drafted military reform, clashed with Yazov, removed
1989–1991First Deputy Chief of General Staff & Warsaw Pact Joint Armed Forces Chief of Staff
1991.08Chief of the General Staff, USSR — appointed after coup, dismissed as USSR dissolved
1992–1994Military inspector-adviser, presidential military adviser, retired 1994
A popular historian who reconstructed Russia’s tragedies through archives and drama
In 1989 Radzinsky became the first in the USSR to publish Yakov Yurovsky's note and the executioners' testimony, letting them recount the murder of the imperial family second by second.
Edvard Radzinsky is a Russian historian, playwright, and broadcaster who brought the country’s history and tragic figures to a wide audience. Trained at the Moscow Archive Institute, he began in theatre before writing biographies of Nicholas II, Rasputin, Stalin, and other figures. In his 1997 Stalin biography, he used newly accessible records and testimony to argue that Beria may have poisoned Stalin, a claim that remains an interpretation in an unresolved debate rather than established fact. His vivid, psychological histories became widely read, while professional historians criticized aspects of his sourcing and interpretation.
Career timeline
1959Graduated from the Moscow Archive Institute
1958–Began as a playwright; his first play, My Dream… India, premiered
1960s–Published plays including 104 Pages About Love
1976–Began writing popular histories of Russian historical figures
1993Published The Last Tsar
1997Published Stalin, raising a death controversy through secret records and testimony
1990s–Hosted the Mysteries of History television series
Moscow's first elected mayor, who told the U.S. ambassador of the coming coup
On 20 June 1991 Popov handed U.S. Ambassador Jack Matlock a note warning of a coup and naming Pavlov, Kryuchkov, Yazov and Lukyanov; the warning reached Gorbachev via Washington, though Matlock later wrote in his memoirs that it may have been a false alarm.
Born in Moscow on 31 October 1936 to parents from the Azov Greek community, he graduated from Moscow State University's economics faculty, became a candidate of economic sciences in 1963, a doctor in 1970 and a professor in 1971. He headed the production management laboratory in 1967–1971 and the management department in 1971–1988, and served as dean of the economics faculty (sources differ on a 1977 or 1978 start), then edited Voprosy Ekonomiki in 1988–1990, popularizing the concept of the 'command-administrative system'. Elected a USSR People's Deputy in 1989, he co-chaired the Interregional Deputies Group with Sakharov, Yeltsin and others, chaired the Moscow City Council from 1990 and on 12 June 1991 became Moscow's first elected mayor with 65.3% of the vote.
Career timeline
1957Secretary of the Komsomol committee, Moscow State University
1960–1961Secretary of the Komsomol committee, Moscow State University
1959–1971MSU economics faculty: graduate student → docent → head of management laboratory
1971–1988Head of the management department, MSU economics faculty
1978–1980Dean of the economics faculty, Moscow State University
Architect of perestroika cadres, last surviving Politburo member
In January 1989, Vilnius city party leaders sent Razumovsky a second appeal for a response to their criticisms — none came, and that December the Lithuanian CP declared independence.
Gorbachev's cadre chief, Razumovsky headed the CC Organizational-Party Work Department (1985–1988) and chaired the Party Building and Cadre Policy Commission (1988–1990), driving the largest personnel turnover of perestroika. An agronomist who rose to First Secretary of Krasnodar Kraikom (1983–1985), he became CC Secretary and candidate Politburo member in 1986. Under Gorbachev's banner of intra-party democracy, his rigid delegate quotas fueled a backlash in Lithuania's Communist Party that contributed to its secession. He later served as Consul General in Shanghai (1990–1992) and is, as of 2025, the last living member of the 1986 Politburo.
Career timeline
1958Graduated Kuban Agricultural Institute, collective farm agronomist
1959–1961First Secretary, district Komsomol committee
1964–1967First Secretary, Korenovsk District Party Committee
1967–1971Head, Organizational-Party Work Dept, Krasnodar Kraikom
1971–1973Deputy then head of sector, CC Org-Party Work Dept
1973–1981Chairman, Krasnodar Krai Executive Committee
1981–1983Head, Agricultural Dept, USSR Council of Ministers Admin
1983–1985First Secretary, Krasnodar Kraikom CPSU
1985–1988Head, CC Org-Party Work Dept (succeeding Ligachev)
1986–1990Secretary, CPSU Central Committee
1988Head, CC Party Building and Cadre Work Dept
1988–1990Chairman, CC Commission on Party Building and Cadre Policy; candidate PB member
The historian whose archival discoveries rewrote the study of the Tito-Stalin split
When sources that had been 'absolutely inaccessible' before finally opened, he recalled that he, a historian, entered 'a completely new era', regretting only that it came only in his mid-fifties.
A Soviet and Russian historian specializing in modern Yugoslav history and Cold War international relations in Eastern Europe. From 1966 at the Institute of Slavic Studies, he was among the first to exploit newly opened Soviet archives in the late 1980s, unearthing records of Stalin's meetings with Yugoslav and Bulgarian communist leaders (1946–1948) that laid the documentary foundation for the post-Cold War reassessment of the Tito-Stalin split. His several hundred publications include the co-edited volume The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944–1949 (1997) with Norman Naimark and the annotated Cominform conference minutes, earning him international recognition.
Career timeline
1960Graduated from Moscow State University, History Faculty (Southern and Western Slavs)
1962–1966Postgraduate studies, Institute of Slavic Studies, USSR Academy of Sciences
1966–2022Researcher, senior researcher, head of International Relations sector (1990–1993), leading researcher, Institute of Slavic Studies RAS
1987Published The Soviet Union and the New Yugoslavia, 1941–1947
1997Co-edited The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944–1949 with Norman Naimark
1998Co-edited The Cominform Conferences, 1947, 1948, 1949: Documents and Materials
2014Editorial board and preface, USSR-Yugoslavia Summit Meetings, 1946–1964
2021Awarded the Sreznevsky Gold Medal of the Institute of Slavic Studies
The Kurchatov chemist who led science at Chernobyl, then left the full truth on tapes before hanging himself
"I did not lie in Vienna… but I did not tell the full truth."
Valery Legasov was a Soviet inorganic chemist and first deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, who arrived at the Chernobyl disaster site on the evening of 26 April 1986 as the scientific leader of the government commission. He proposed dropping boron and sand into the burning reactor, spent a total of 60 days on site, and later presented a five-hour report to the IAEA in Vienna that drew international attention but stopped short of revealing the RBMK reactor's full design flaws. On 27 April 1988, the day after the disaster's second anniversary, he hanged himself in his Moscow apartment; the audio tapes he recorded beforehand exposed the cover-ups and systemic failures of the Soviet nuclear establishment and became a primary source for historians.
Career timeline
1961–1964Engineer → shift supervisor, Siberian Chemical Combine (Tomsk-7)
1964–1972Researcher, Kurchatov Institute; Candidate of Chemical Sciences 1967, Doctor of Chemical Sciences 1972
1972–1983Deputy director for scientific work, Kurchatov Institute
1981Full member, USSR Academy of Sciences
1983–1988First deputy director, Kurchatov Institute; Chair of Radiochemistry, Moscow State University
1986–1988Member, government commission for Chernobyl accident liquidation
Gromyko protégé and arms negotiator remembered for the "Walk in the Woods"
On July 16, 1982, Kvitsinsky and Paul Nitze left the formal Geneva arms talks for an unofficial walk in the woods, sketching a compromise on intermediate-range nuclear forces. Both governments rejected it — but the conversation became Lee Blessing's Broadway play "A Walk in the Woods."
A leading Soviet Germanist and protégé of Andrei Gromyko, Yuli Kvitsinsky served on the front lines of Soviet diplomacy toward the West for over three decades. As head of the Soviet delegation to the Geneva INF negotiations from 1981, his famous "walk in the woods" with American negotiator Paul Nitze in July 1982, an informal attempt to sketch a compromise on intermediate-range nuclear missiles, became an iconic Cold War moment that later inspired a Broadway play. As Ambassador to West Germany (1986–1990), he helped prepare the "Two Plus Four" treaty framework for German reunification, and as First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1991 he oversaw European security affairs. After a post-Soviet hiatus, he returned as Russia's ambassador to Norway (1997–2003) and served as a CPRF deputy in the State Duma until his death.
Career timeline
1959–1965Translator, attaché, third secretary, second secretary, USSR Embassy in the GDR
1965–1978Second secretary, first secretary, expert-consultant, deputy head, Third European Department, USSR MFA
1978–1981Minister-Counsellor, USSR Embassy in the FRG
1981–1986Ambassador-at-Large, USSR MFA; head of USSR delegation to Geneva nuclear arms talks
1986–1990Ambassador of the USSR to the FRG; candidate member (1986–89), full member (1989–90) of CPSU Central Committee
1990–1991Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR
1991First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR (May–September)
1997–2003Ambassador of Russia to Norway
2003–2010Deputy, State Duma (4th & 5th convocations); First Deputy Chairman, International Affairs Committee
Last First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party on the eve of the Soviet dissolution
Addressing the Central Committee upon his election as First Secretary in June 1990: "We will never return to the days when the party monopolised power. But neither will we allow Ukraine to become a testing ground for political experiments."
A mechanical engineer by training, Gurenko rose from technologist to factory director at the Donetsk Machine-Building Plant before turning to party work in 1976. He served as secretary of the Donetsk Oblast Party Committee and deputy chairman of the Ukrainian SSR Council of Ministers, and took part in the disaster response as deputy chairman of the state commission after the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Backed by Gorbachev, he became First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party Central Committee and a full member of the CPSU Politburo in June 1990, only to resign in August 1991 when party activity was banned after the failed coup. In independent Ukraine he returned to parliament and chaired the economic policy committee, helping reorganize the former communist political current.
Career timeline
1958–1976Donetsk Machine-Building Plant: engineer-technologist → director (1970–1976)
1976–1980Secretary, Donetsk Oblast Committee, Communist Party of Ukraine
1980–1987Deputy Chairman, Council of Ministers, Ukrainian SSR
1986Deputy Chairman, State Commission for the Chernobyl accident
1987–1990Secretary → Second Secretary, CPU Central Committee
1990–1991First Secretary, CPU Central Committee; Member, CPSU Politburo
1998–2006People's Deputy, Verkhovna Rada (3rd–4th convocations); Chairman, Committee on Economic Policy
The general who gave the operational order to clear Rustaveli Avenue
'Not a single demonstrator died from a shovel. That was invented by Mr Sobchak together with the Georgian fascists.'
As commander of the Transcaucasus Military District, he gave the operational order to clear the independence rally on Tbilisi's Rustaveli Avenue on 9 April 1989, an action that left 21 civilians dead. The Sobchak commission named him, yet the chain of command ran upward to Defence Minister Yazov and the republican party leadership, and Rodionov became the only figure publicly held to account within that structure. He had previously commanded the 40th Army in Afghanistan (1985–86), and in 1996 Yeltsin made him Russia's Defence Minister, only to sack him ten months later when he refused to subordinate the army's budget to the government's reform plans.
Career timeline
1954–1970Graduates Oryol Tank School, serves with Group of Soviet Forces Germany, gold medal at Malinovsky Armoured Academy
1970–1980Commands regiment, then deputy commander and commander 24th 'Iron' Motor Rifle Division. General Staff Academy with distinction
1980–1986Commander 28th Army Corps (Czechoslovakia), Commander 5th Army (Far East), Commander 40th Army in Afghanistan
1986–1989First Deputy Commander Moscow Military District, then Commander Transcaucasus Military District. Directs dispersal of Tbilisi rally, 9 April 1989
1989–1997Head of General Staff Academy (1989–96). RF Defence Minister (1996–97), sacked for refusing to subordinate military budget to government reform plans
The economist who exposed Soviet growth statistics as an 84-fold exaggeration and recalculated the real record
"The resulting economic mechanism combined all the worst features of both command and market economies": his verdict on the 1965 reform.
He was an economist who began recalculating Soviet official statistics using independent methods in the 1970s, arriving at the explosive finding that national income had grown not by the official 84.4 times but by only 6.6 times between 1928 and 1985. His 1987 article 'The Crooked Figure,' co-authored with Vasily Selyunin in Novy Mir, caused a sensation across Soviet society. He went on to write a multi-volume Economic History of Russia in the Modern Era, offering a dispassionate analysis of the achievements and failures of the Soviet planned economy; of the 1965 Kosygin reform he delivered the verdict that it 'combined all the worst features of both command and market economies.'
Career timeline
1959Graduated from Leningrad Institute of Finance and Economics
1959–1962Economist at industrial enterprises, Riga
1965–1973Lecturer, Novosibirsk State University
1979–1986Lecturer, Institute for Advanced Training, Iskitim
1986–1991Head of Economic Laboratory, Tuva Complex Department, Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences
1992Doctor of Economics, Central Economic-Mathematical Institute
1995–presentProfessor, Novosibirsk State Technical University
2003–2011Published Economic History of Russia in the Modern Era, vols. 1–3
Tereshkova's backup cosmonaut, the physically strongest candidate Kamanin judged too reserved for the spotlight
"We decided it was worth trying": after she and her fiancé, skydiving instructor Sergey Kiselev, discussed the secret-police recruitment offer at their favorite café until closing time.
A mechanical engineer and nationally ranked parachutist, she was one of five women selected in 1962 for the Soviet Union's first female cosmonaut group. She trained as Valentina Tereshkova's primary backup for the Vostok-6 flight; Nikolai Kamanin rated her the best physically among the candidates but judged her too introverted for the worldwide propaganda role the first woman in space would have to play. Later she prepared with Valentina Ponomaryova for what would have been the first all-female spacewalk on Voskhod, but the mission was cancelled; after the women's group disbanded in 1969, she spent her career as a researcher at the Cosmonaut Training Center and earned a Candidate of Psychological Sciences degree.
Career timeline
1954–1959Graduated Ural Polytechnic Institute, mechanical engineering
1955–1962National parachute team, Master of Sport (1959), ~700 jumps
1959–1962Engineer, Uralenergomontazh design bureau
1962.03Selected for women's cosmonaut group; completed cosmonaut training
1963.05Primary backup to Tereshkova for Vostok-6
1964–1967Graduated Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy; pilot-cosmonaut-engineer
1966Trained with Ponomaryova for Voskhod all-female spacewalk (cancelled)
1969–1991Researcher and senior researcher at TsPK; Candidate of Psychological Sciences (1980); retired as Colonel
The chief engineer who refused to believe the reactor was destroyed and kept pumping water into its ruins
He smashed his glasses and cut his wrists with the shards, forcing the court to postpone his trial.
Nikolai Fomin was a Soviet nuclear engineer who joined the Chernobyl plant in 1972 and rose to chief engineer in 1981. Arriving at the plant shortly after the April 26, 1986 explosion, he refused to accept reports that the reactor was destroyed and ordered water to be pumped into the wreckage of Unit 4 for hours, while sending a subordinate on a reconnaissance mission that delivered a fatal radiation dose. Arrested after the disaster, he was sentenced to 10 years but was released early after a pre-trial suicide attempt and subsequent confinement in a psychiatric hospital; he later worked at the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant before retiring.
Career timeline
1972Started at Chernobyl NPP
1981–1986Chief Engineer, Chernobyl NPP
1987Sentenced to 10 years; imprisoned
1988Transferred to psychiatric hospital; released early
A field enforcer of the Soviet Union's final crisis
After Black January, he personally led the Nagorno-Karabakh Organizing Committee as Moscow's man on the ground.
Viktor Polyanichko was a Soviet party organizer and political adviser who carried Moscow's policy into local power structures in Afghanistan and the South Caucasus. As Second Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party, he sought to restore Baku's authority after Black January and led the Nagorno-Karabakh Organizing Committee, combining party administration with coercive force. He is remembered both as an attempted broker in a collapsing federation and as Moscow's hard-line intermediary in a conflict that deepened beyond Soviet control. After the Soviet Union's collapse he became head of an interim administration at deputy-prime-minister rank in Russia, and was assassinated in North Ossetia in 1993.
Career timeline
1959–1964First Secretary, Orsk City Komsomol Committee
Constitutional Assembly chairman and first elected mayor of Saint Petersburg
"Volodya, just don't turn to bronze" — last words to Putin, February 2000
Anatoly Sobchak was a legal scholar and democratic reformer who became the first democratically elected mayor of Saint Petersburg (1991–1996) and co-authored the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation as chairman of the Constitutional Assembly. A popular Leningrad State University law professor whose students included Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, he was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989 and co-chaired the Inter-Regional Deputies Group alongside Andrei Sakharov and Boris Yeltsin. During the August 1991 coup he organized resistance in Leningrad, negotiating with the military commander to keep troops off the streets and rallying 200,000 citizens on Palace Square. Corruption allegations forced him into exile in Paris from 1997 until Putin, then prime minister, secured his return in 1999.
Career timeline
1989–1990USSR People's Deputy
1989–1990Co-chair, Inter-Regional Deputies Group (with Sakharov & Yeltsin)
The last Soviet premier and an August coup participant
Eight days after taking office, on the evening of 22 January 1991, Pavlov ordered 50- and 100-ruble notes exchanged for new bills within three days, with only 1,000 rubles per person swapped immediately. Days earlier he had publicly promised that no monetary reform would take place.
He graduated from the Moscow Finance Institute in 1958 and worked in the finance ministries of the RSFSR and the USSR, joining the CPSU in 1962 and heading Gosplan's finance, cost and price department from 1979 to 1986. He chaired the USSR State Committee on Prices from 1986 to 1989 and served as Minister of Finance until 14 January 1991, when Gorbachev appointed him premier as the Council of Ministers became the Cabinet of Ministers and its head was retitled Prime Minister. In August 1991 he was one of the organizers of the State Committee on the State of Emergency; on 22 August Gorbachev relieved him of the premiership, and he was arrested on 23 August and held at Matrosskaya Tishina prison, with the Supreme Soviet confirming his resignation on 28 August.
