Nekrasov

And finally, an excellent point from John Nekrasov.

One main player, in Moscow, was Pavel Alekseevich Nekrasov, who had originally trained as an Orthodox theologian before turning to mathematics.

The details are a bit much to go into here, but the gist is this: Nekrasov thought he had found a mathematical proof of free will, ratifying the beliefs of the church.

He invented the Markov chain as an example of random behavior that could be generated purely mechanically, but which displayed the same features Nekrasov thought guaranteed free will.

For a brief period in the 1980s, Soviet technicians and advisers lived in 25 or 30 apartments in Macroyan Kohna, said Viacheslav Nekrasov, who directs the Russian cultural center in Kabul.