Yevgeny Zamyatin was a naval engineer and author. He wrote short stories, plays and essays. His masterpiece, WE, was written in 1920-21 and was banned in Russia on the grounds of being ideologically undesirable. It was quickly translated and published in many languages around the world, finally being published in Russia in 1988.

Bela Shayevich is a Soviet-American writer, translator and illustrator. She translated Nobel Prize Winner Svetlana Alexievich's Second-Hand Time.