The names of Turing, Minsky, and McCarthy, the founders of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence in the west, are now familiar to everybody. However, little is known about the history of AI developments under the Iron Curtain of the USSR, although sometimes the competition between two systems was not less acute that in space. Below is a forgotten story of Soviet AI presented through the lens of the life of heroes of those events, Andrey Leman and his colleagues. The year 1955 can be considered as the start of Soviet AI, when a group of mathematicians got access to computer M-2 and began software engineering to solve scientific inquiries and math puzzles. Andrey Leman (1940–2012), who is now known for his co-authorship of Weisfeiler-Leman algorithm, and contributions to the first Soviet database INES and the first world champion Kaissa in chess, was one of the early members of Kronrod's group who at the time was developing first programs of AI.