People of the Revolution and the USSR

Socialist-bloc reform leader 1897–1981 ○ Heart attack

Theoretical catalyst of the 1965 Soviet economic reform

'What is profitable for society should be profitable for every enterprise' — the central proposition of his 1962 Pravda article

Soviet economist. His article 'Plan, Profit, Premium' in Pravda (September 1962) triggered the all-union economic discussion that led to the 1965 Kosygin reform, the most significant Soviet attempt to introduce profitability and enterprise autonomy into the planned economy. He argued that what is profitable for society must also be profitable for each enterprise. In the 1920s he created the USSR's first machine-accounting station. Arrested on fabricated charges in 1938, he was rehabilitated in late 1939. His wife Regina Horowitz was the sister of pianist Vladimir Horowitz.

Soviet Union Socialist-bloc reform leader 1898–1989 ○ Natural causes

An Old Bolshevik survivor who pressed the Soviet leadership toward de-Stalinization

When Mikoyan urged him to leave for Sochi, Snegov refused to go until his Party card was returned.

Alexei Snegov was an Old Bolshevik who had worked in the early Soviet party apparatus before fabricated charges during the Great Purge sent him to the Gulag for more than fifteen years. Released and rehabilitated in 1954, he became an adviser to Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan, bringing the leadership testimony about camp violence and the need to rehabilitate victims. Alongside Olga Shatunovskaya, he pressed Khrushchev to condemn Stalin and the cult of personality at the 20th Party Congress. He continued to advocate a deeper de-Stalinization, drawing surveillance and official attacks, and was briefly expelled from the Communist Party in 1967 before being reinstated.

Soviet Union Socialist-bloc reform leader 1905–1993 ○ Natural causes

The political economist who opened Khrushchev's economic debate, and institutional founder of Soviet sociology

'All formations arose spontaneously — only the socialist formation came into being through organized mass action. Might not all our problems stem from this?' — at a closed institute meeting, recalled by V.A. Yadov

Economist of the Khrushchev thaw. He placed Liberman's 1962 article in Pravda, triggering the economic reform debate, and founded the first Soviet sociological institute. Edited Kommunist and Pravda; removed for his liberal orientation.

Soviet Union Socialist-bloc reform leader 1918–2010 ○ Natural causes

A fiscal realist who warned against abrupt prohibition

On April 4, 1985, Dementsev warned that cutting vodka production would cost the budget 4 billion rubles in 1986 and 15 to 16 billion by 1990.

Viktor Dementsev was an economic administrator who rose from regional finance offices to the upper ranks of Soviet financial management. In 1985 he publicly challenged the abrupt production cuts proposed for the anti-alcohol campaign, exposing the structural tension created by the state budget's reliance on alcohol revenue. His warning calculated not only lost income but also the likely growth of moonshine and resulting sugar shortages, making him a revealing witness to the campaign's fiscal and social contradictions.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Socialist-bloc reform leader 1923–2010 ○ Natural causes

The USSR's preeminent Americanist who built a think-tank on Arbat Street, not in Akademgorodok, and designed détente

"Our major secret weapon is to deprive you of an enemy" — Arbatov explaining the end of the Cold War to American scientists at UC Irvine, December 1988

The Americanist who shaped every Soviet leader's US policy from Brezhnev to Gorbachev. He founded the Institute of the USA and Canada (ISKAN) in 1967, directed it for 28 years, and laid the intellectual groundwork for SALT and détente.

Soviet Union Socialist-bloc reform leader 1927–2013 ○ Natural causes

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.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Socialist-bloc reform leader 1929–1999 ○ Natural causes

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.

Soviet Union Socialist-bloc reform leader 1930–2011 ○ Natural causes

Chief economic theorist of late perestroika, architect of the 'regulated market' between radical reformers and conservative planners

"If we win on the financial front, we shall win everything" — Lenin, a phrase Abalkin was fond of quoting

Soviet political economist. As director of the Institute of Economics (1986) he built perestroika's intellectual groundwork, then served as chairman of the State Commission for Economic Reform and Deputy Prime Minister (1989–1990). His 'regulated market economy' called for phased marketization under state control, contrasting with Shatalin's 500-Day shock therapy. The program was sent back by the Supreme Soviet in May 1990, and once Gorbachev backed Shatalin's radical plan, the Ryzhkov government's collapse ended Abalkin's deputy premiership in early 1991. After the collapse, as editor of Voprosy Ekonomiki, he founded a Russian school of socio-economic thought, opposing Yeltsin's liberalization and advocating a Chinese-style model.

Russian Federation state institutions Socialist-bloc reform leader 1932–2016 ○ Natural causes

The Soviet banker who testified about reform's hidden origins

He later recalled that the 1991 reform had originated with the KGB and Kryuchkov.

Arnold Voylukov was a senior Soviet banker who experienced the inner workings of late Soviet monetary administration. He matters not only as an official in the institution that carried out the January 1991 currency reform, but also as a memoirist who later said that the idea came from the KGB and Vladimir Kryuchkov rather than from the Finance Ministry or Valentin Pavlov. His account illuminates the institutional tensions around the reform and how a covertly prepared measure damaged public trust.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Socialist-bloc reform leader 1934–1997 ○ Natural causes

Architect of the 500 Days programme, radical reform economist who tried to convert the Soviet planned economy to the market in one leap

It is not a question now of saving socialism, communism or any other -ism, it is a question of saving our country, our people — at a Party Central Committee plenum, 1990

Born near Leningrad. A student of Kantorovich, he advanced input-output modelling and optimal planning theory, became a full academician (1987), and Academician-Secretary of the Economics Department (1989). In 1990, under Gorbachev and Yeltsin's joint mandate, he led the working group that drafted the '500 Days' programme for market transition, a radical plan directly opposing Abalkin's gradualism. Not adopted at Union level but partially implemented in Russia, it became the intellectual foundation for his student Gaidar's 1992 shock therapy. After the collapse he headed the 'Reforma' foundation, helped found the United Democratic Party, and served as honorary president of Spartak Moscow.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Socialist-bloc reform leader 1934–2015 ○ Natural causes

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.

Russian Federation state institutions Socialist-bloc reform leader 1936–

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.

Russian Federation state institutions Socialist-bloc reform leader 1937–2000 ○ Heart attack

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.

Russian Federation state institutions Socialist-bloc reform leader 1945–2022 ○ Natural causes

The philosopher who proposed the one sentence that declared the Soviet Union dead at Belovezh

At the Belavezha hunting lodge, turning to Shushkevich and Kravchuk: 'Would you guys agree to sign a sentence which would state that the Soviet Union as the subject of international law is ceasing to exist?'

Yeltsin's closest aide and the intellectual architect of the Soviet dissolution. A Marxist philosophy teacher from the Urals, he rose through perestroika to become Yeltsin's right hand, and in September 1991 delivered the 'Burbulis Memorandum' (Gaidar's group's strategy document) to Yeltsin at his Black Sea retreat, setting Russia on a course of economic independence. That December in the Belavezha forest, he turned to Shushkevich and Kravchuk and asked, 'Would you agree to a sentence stating the USSR as a subject of international law is ceasing to exist?', and co-signed the accords that opened with those words. He became a lightning rod for criticism of the reforms and was removed by spring 1992, spending his later decades quietly as a Duma deputy and senator.

Soviet Union Socialist-bloc reform leader 1947–

Russia's only vice president: stood with Yeltsin against the coup, then fell to Yeltsin's tanks

During the shelling of the White House on 4 October 1993, Rutskoy shouted live on radio: "If the pilots can hear me, get your combat machines up! This gang has settled in the Kremlin.… Save the perishing democracy!"

One of the last Heroes of the Soviet Union and the only vice president Russia ever had. A combat pilot who flew 485 sorties in the Su-25 over Afghanistan, was shot down twice and captured, and received the Hero of the Soviet Union title in 1988. Elected RSFSR vice president in 1991 as Yeltsin's running mate, he helped organize the White House defense during the August coup, delivered a letter to Lukyanov demanding a medical examination of Gorbachev, and persuaded Patriarch Alexy II to declare the Church's support for Yeltsin. He later broke with Yeltsin over economic policy and power concentration, sided with the parliament, and was proclaimed acting president during the 1993 constitutional crisis before being arrested when tanks shelled the White House.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Socialist-bloc reform leader 1952–

Architect of the 500 Days Program: perestroika economist who drafted a rapid transition from planned economy to market

During coal-mine research in the 1970s, a collapse trapped him and four workers waist-deep in ice water for ten hours. Three died in hospital after rescue. Yavlinsky later recalled: "We were saved, but three out of five died in hospital."

Soviet economist and politician from Lviv. After graduating from the Plekhanov Institute and researching coal-mine labour, he became head of the Joint Economic Department of the USSR Council of Ministers in 1989 under Leonid Abalkin. In 1990, with Mikhail Zadornov and Aleksei Mikhailov, he authored the 500 Days Program (a roadmap for transitioning from a planned to a market economy in under two years) and was appointed Deputy Chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers. When Gorbachev compromised with Nikolai Ryzhkov's alternative, Yavlinsky resigned in October 1990; he founded the EPICenter think tank and later launched Yabloko in 1993, becoming a fixture of Russia's liberal opposition.

Russian Federation state institutions Socialist-bloc reform leader 1956–2009 ○ Heart attack

Architect of shock therapy, the economist who dismantled the planned economy and laid the first stones of Russian capitalism

3 October 1993, live on television: "At this hour we cannot rely only on police and security forces. Muscovites, all Russians who cherish democracy and freedom, gather at the Mossovet building!" — thousands poured into the streets.

Grandson of writers Arkady Gaidar and Pavel Bazhov. After Moscow State University, he edited the economic sections of Kommunist and Pravda, arguing for market reform from within the party press. In November 1991 he became Yeltsin's Deputy PM and Minister of Economy and Finance; on 2 January 1992 he liberalised prices and launched privatisation, converting the Soviet planned economy into a market system. He served as Acting PM (June–December 1992) and during the 1993 constitutional crisis went on live television to call Muscovites into the streets. His reforms averted famine and collapse but wiped out millions' savings, a legacy that remains Russia's most polarising policy debate.