People of the Revolution and the USSR

Comintern Communism 1870–1932

French socialist and teachers’ union activist who led the Committee for the Third International

He organised internationalist socialists against the war and served as secretary of the Committee for the Third International during the founding of the French Communist Party.

A teacher, Loriot joined the Socialist Party in 1901 and became active in the teachers’ union. During the First World War he opposed support for the war and backed the Zimmerwald position, serving as secretary of the Committee for the Resumption of International Relations and later the Committee for the Third International. At the Tours Congress in 1920 he joined the leadership of the newly formed French Communist Party.

Independent activity Communism 1883–1942 ✕ Shot

Swiss communist who organised Lenin’s sealed-train journey in 1917 and sat on the Comintern’s founding presidium

He organised Lenin’s party’s passage through Germany in 1917 and represented the Swiss communists at the Comintern’s founding congress in 1919.

From St. Gallen, he worked on the left of the Swiss Social Democrats and joined the Zimmerwald movement. After the February Revolution of 1917 he was the chief organiser of the sealed-train journey that took Lenin’s party from Switzerland across Germany back to Russia. At the Comintern’s founding congress in 1919 he represented the Swiss communists and sat on the presidium, and he helped found the Communist Party of Switzerland. A member of the National Council from 1917 to 1922, he later moved to the Soviet Union, was arrested in the purges in 1938 and was shot in a camp in 1942; he was rehabilitated in 1956.

Comintern Communism 1892–1924 ✕ Killed in action

Comintern agent known as Nenin who built revolutionary committees in southern Bessarabia and led the Tatarbunary Uprising

Born Vasily Surov and known as Nenin or Ninin, he was born in 1892 in a village of Ryazan Governorate, worked at the Putilov plant in Petrograd and, qualified as a military medical assistant, served on the Romanian Front in the First World War. After the war he joined the Bolsheviks, and from May 1922, as a Comintern agent, he led the Soviet-controlled party committee in southern Bessarabia, organising revolutionary committees in Cahul, Ismail and Cetatea Albă counties. He urged the participants to count on the Red Army once the rising began, and on the night of 15–16 September 1924 at Tatarbunary he proclaimed a Moldavian Soviet Republic as part of the Ukrainian SSR. In the suppression he was mortally wounded by a gendarme while fleeing, according to English Wikipedia, or fell in the last battle, according to Russian Wikipedia. His identity was established only in 1967.