Lech Wałęsa is a Polish politician, a former trade union and human rights activist, and also a former electrician. He co-founded Solidarity ("Solidarność"), the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland from 1990 to 1995 (succeeded by Aleksander Kwaśniewski).

Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the former Eastern bloc. He is now an American citizen. In July 1978, Pacepa was a two-star Romanian Securitate general who simultaneously held the rank of advisor to President Nicolae Ceauşescu, acting chief of his foreign intelligence service and state secretary in Romania’s Ministry of Interior.

Tudor Bompa was one of the fathers of periodization, a training system developed by the Soviets that aimed for optimal performance by varying the training stress throughout the year rather than maintaining a constant training focus. Bompa's training theory was laid out in his seminal work "Theory and Methodology of Training". Bompa's understanding of assisted the Eastern Bloc domination of athletic competitions for three decades.

Amanda Lear is a French model, adult model, polyglot, painter, novelist, actress, media personality, composer, lyricist, singer and gay icon who was a Disco Queen in Continental Europe, the Eastern Bloc and most other parts of the world in the mid 1970s to the early 1980s.

Günter Guillaume, was an intelligence agent of East Germany's secret service, the Stasi. Guillaume emigrated with his wife, Christel to West Germany 1956 with orders to penetrate the West German political system and report on it. He rose through the hierarchy of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, eventually becoming a close aide to West German chancellor Willy Brandt.

Roy Gutman (born March 5, 1944, New York City) is an American journalist and author. Gutman graduated from Haverford College, in 1966, majoring in History, and from London School of Economics in 1968 with a masters degree in International Relations. Roy Gutman joined Newsday in January 1982 and served for eight years as National Security Reporter in Washington. While European Bureau Chief, from late 1989 to 1994, he reported the downfall of the Polish, East German, …

Lukas Ridgeston (also Lucas Ridgeston, April 5, 1974) is a Slovakian actor in gay erotic movies and model in Bel Ami gay erotic magazines and books. He was born in Bratislava, then part of the former Czechoslovakia, now capital of Slovakia. In 2005 he made his final appearance as an actor but he is still very much involved with Bel Ami as a cameraman, editor and director of Internet episodes.

Hugo Race is an Australian rock musician and record producer who has been based in Europe since 1989. He was a member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, before forming The Wreckery in the 1980s. He is currently a member of Hugo Race and the True Spirit. Race is currently residing in Catania, Sicily. True Spirit have released 12 albums. At least 6 of these are available through Glitterhouse records, Germany.

Pierre Mulele (August 11, 1929 - October 3 [or October 9, depending on the source], 1968) was a Congolese revolutionary who was briefly minister of education in Patrice Lumumba's cabinet. In 1964, during the Simba rebellions, Mulele, who had previously undergone training in the Eastern bloc as well as Red China, led a Maoist faction in the province of Kwilu. After the rebellion's defeat, he fled into exile in Congo-Brazzaville.

Ronald Lee is a Canadian Romani writer, linguist and activist. He began to work with the Canadian Roma as an activist in 1965, through "the Kris Romani" (Romani internal judicial assembly) trying to get a better understanding between Roma and non-Roma, to combat prejudice and misinformation in newspapers and to help the Roma represent themselves.

Rainer Rupp (born 1945 in Saarlouis, Germany) was a top spy who worked under the pseudonyms Mosel and later Topas for the GDR in the NATO headquarters in Brussels from 1977 until 1989, releasing documents of the highest importance to the Eastern Bloc. Rupp grew up in West Germany with strong leftist political leanings. In 1968, as a student in Mainz, work as a spy for the GDR was suggested to him, and he agreed out of conviction.

Gen. Amin Hafiz was a Syrian politician, military officer and a member of the Ba'th Party. Hafiz led a coup d'État against the government of Syria in 1963, in the turbulent years after the break-up of the United Arab Republic (UAR), installing the National Council of the Revolutionary Command (NCRC) at the head of government. The NCRC was dominated by the Syrian branch of the radical, pan-Arab Ba'th Party, and Hafiz became its President.

Leszek Moczulski is a Polish historian and politician, a member of various organizations opposing the communist regime in the People's Republic of Poland and the co-founder of the first non-communist and not-underground political party in the Eastern Bloc. Leszek Moczulski was born June 7, 1930 in Warsaw. Shortly after the war and the Communist take-over of power in Poland, Moczulski became involved in various communist organizations.

Georgi Nikolov Glouchkov (born January 10, 1960 in Tryavna) is a Bulgarian former professional basketball player. A 6 ft 8 in (204 cm) forward, he was the first player from an Eastern bloc country to compete in the American National Basketball Association (NBA). Glouchkov began playing with Bulgaria's national team at the age of seventeen. He also played with the club Akademik Varna, and by the mid-1980s, he had established a reputation as one of Europe's top five players.

Yan Pavol Stastny (born September 30, 1982 in Quebec City, Quebec) is a Canadian-born American ice hockey player of Slovak descent, who plays for the St. Louis Blues. Yan comes from a notable hockey family, and is the son of Hockey Hall of Famer Peter Stastny (one of the first star Eastern Bloc players to defect to the West), his uncles Anton and Marian Stastny also played in the NHL, and his brother Paul Stastny plays for the Colorado Avalanche.

Heberto Castillo Martínez was a Mexican civil engineer and political activist. Castillo was born in Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz, and received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the National Autonomous University. An accomplished engineer, he taught several courses at the UNAM and at the National Polytechnic Institute, wrote several textbooks and invented the tridilosa. He became a political activist and got involved in several workers' rights struggles, …

Leonid Georgievich Yengibarov (March 15, 1935 - July 25, 1972) was a Soviet clown and actor. Leonid Yengibarov was born in Moscow to an Armenian father and a Russian mother. He started his career as a boxer. In 1955 he joined the State School of Circus Art, Clownship department. After graduation in 1959 he moved to Yerevan and joined the Armenian state circus. He was one of the first Soviet clowns to create the poetic, intellectual clownery, which made spectators think, …

Boris Meissner was a (Baltic-)German lawyer (international law specialist), well-known for his research on Eastern European history and politics. Meissner was born into family of a Baltic German judge and spent his childhood in Pärnu, Estonia. Meissner studied at Tartu University (graduating with a diploma in economics, 1935). He worked as a bank official in independent Estonia and in 1939 followed the so-called "Umsiedlung".

Kroum Pindoff is a Bulgarian Canadian bussinessman born in Aegean/Greek Macedonia<sup></sup&gt; and raised in Bulgaria. Pindoff participated in the Second World War as part of the Bulgarian army, and their allies the Germans. Later when Bulgaria joined the Allies, he fought against the German army.^; He and Eva, his German-born wife, both survivors of the horrors of war, …