The Foundation for Social Inventions of the USSR was founded in 1986 by Gennady Alferenko, a social innovator and entrepreneur, to launch initiatives for turning Russia into an open civil society. In 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev contacted Gennady Alferenko after reading his article on a national campaign to facilitate innovators and change-makers, and asked him to set up a national fund promoting social innovations. Alferenko established the Foundation for Social Inventions at the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, as a readers' voluntary association.