The Moscow School was planned as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of openness allowed the exhumation of the suppressed people, histories and literature of pre-Soviet times and the USSR’s early years. Lena Nemirovskaya and Yuri Senokosov were Soviet intellectuals, she an art historian, he a philosopher; comfortably placed in the official intellectual hierarchy, uncomfortable in their Soviet skins. They were the planners — planning to illuminate how freedom might be used.
蘇聯領導人米哈伊爾?戈爾巴喬夫(Mikhail Gorbachev)的開放政策允許蘇聯成立之前以及蘇聯早期受打壓的人物、歷史和文學作品重見天日，在這種背景下，列娜?內米洛夫斯卡婭(Lena Nemirovskaya)和尤里?塞諾科索(Yuri Senokosov)醞釀創辦莫斯科政治研究學院(Moscow School of Political Studies)。這兩個人是蘇聯時期的知識分子，前者是藝術史學家，后者是哲學家；他們舒適地位列官方知識分子階層，卻對自己的蘇聯人身份感到不自在。作為學院的規劃者，他們計劃向人們闡明如何利用自由。