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This article focuses on the training and career paths of four CPSU international relations experts before they went on to work under Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid‑1980s. Often presented as “reformers” by some, or self-proclaimed internal dissidents by others, thanks to new archives and sources this article calls these representations into question in order to re-establish the essence of their mission. In analyzing their political careers, the image of an original international elite appears, a group permanently in contact with the outside world. But more so, the Soviet system that developed before our eyes—a more complex system than it seems— shows a will to let heterodox ways of thinking prosper. . . as long as they served the interests of the Party.