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Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg (January 27, 1891 – August 31, 1967) was a Soviet writer, journalist, and propagandist, whose 1954 novel, The Thaw, lent its name to the Khrushchev Thaw. A controversial figure in Soviet literature, he began his career as a journalist writing anti-German propaganda during World War II. After experiencing the excesses of Stalinism, he became a critic of the Soviet system, but, nonetheless remained a part of it. For this reason he was not well received in the dissident community, many of whom suffered great consequences for their protest.

Pluto is the second-largest known dwarf planet in the solar system and the tenth largest observed body directly orbiting the Sun. It orbits between 29 and 49 AU from the Sun, and was the first Kuiper Belt object to be discovered. Approximately one-fifth the mass of the Earth's Moon, Pluto is composed primarily of rock and ice. From its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, Pluto was considered the solar system's ninth planet. On August 24, 2006, the IAU defined the term "planet" for the first time. This definition excluded Pluto, which was then reclassified under the new category of dwarf planet.