People of the Revolution and the USSR

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) Soviet communism 1868–1941 ○ Natural causes

The Bolshevik elder removed by Stalin for trying to Sovietize Georgia gently

"The establishment of Soviet power in Georgia had the outward appearance of a foreign occupation, because in the country itself there was nobody ready to take part in a rebellion": report to the Central Committee, December 1921

Born in Guria to a priest's family, Makharadze studied at Tbilisi Theological Seminary and the Warsaw Veterinary Institute before joining the Social Democratic movement in 1891. He became one of the few Bolshevik leaders in Menshevik-dominated Georgia, and as chairman of the Georgian Revolutionary Committee in February 1921 proclaimed the Soviet republic, only to be removed by Stalin in July for his moderate treatment of the Menshevik opposition and insistence on Georgian sovereignty, replaced by Mdivani. This ousting was the direct prelude to the 1922 Georgian Affair; Makharadze later held the chairmanships of Gosplan, Sovnarkom, and the Supreme Soviet Presidium in Georgia, and was one of the few Old Bolsheviks to survive the Great Purge, dying a natural death in 1941.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1869–1939 ○ Peritonitis

She built the Soviet school and library system from the shadow of her husband

Trotsky described her Iskra room: it always smelled of burned paper, because she warmed the secret letters over a flame to read them, and she kept the aliases and addresses of hundreds of underground agents in her head.

Lenin's wife and closest comrade, but an organizer in her own right. Born in Saint Petersburg into an impoverished noble family, she joined Marxist circles and taught and propagandized among workers before marrying Lenin in Shushenskoye exile in 1898. As Iskra's secretary in emigration she ran the network of codes, aliases and addresses through which the party held together, and after 1917 she built Soviet education: the likbez literacy campaign, the unified labor school and a nationwide library network. In 1925 she briefly backed the New Opposition, then publicly recanted, and in 1928 her attack on Chukovsky's fairy tales effectively barred him from children's literature. She also ran the purging of 'harmful' library stock, yet intervened for intended victims of the terror. She died of peritonitis on 27 February 1939, the day after her 70th birthday; her ashes rest in the Kremlin Wall.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1870–1924 ○ Illness

The helmsman who changed course at every fork

Night, 16 April 1917 (3 April O.S.), Finland Station, Petrograd. Returning from exile, Lenin spoke from an armoured car, condemning the Provisional Government and calling for a continent-wide European proletarian revolution; over the following days he set out the April Theses.

Lenin was a Russian revolutionary, politician and theorist, born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in Simbirsk in the Russian Empire. He led the Bolshevik faction from the 1903 RSDLP split and directed the October Revolution of 1917. His government redistributed land, nationalised banks and large industry, withdrew from the First World War by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and promoted world revolution through the Communist International. At the same time its state security services carried out the Red Terror, in which tens of thousands were killed or interned, and it defeated right- and left-wing anti-Bolshevik armies in the Civil War of 1917–1922. Facing wartime devastation, famine and popular uprisings, he proposed the New Economic Policy in 1921. He died at Gorki on 21 January 1924, and Stalin succeeded him as the pre-eminent figure in the Soviet government.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1870–1926 ○ Leukemia

From revolutionary engineer to Soviet diplomatic architect, the only Bolshevik who could do business with Western capital

In 1893, the young Krasin visited Tolstoy to argue that revolution was inevitable. The great apostle of non-violence "began to stamp with rage," as Krasin's wife Liubov, who was present, recorded.

From Siberian exile under the Tsar to general director of Siemens-Schuckert Russia, then to the Soviet state's first People's Commissar of Foreign Trade, Krasin's trajectory was unique among Bolsheviks. During the 1905 revolution he led the Combat Technical Group, handling arms and finance, and built the underground 'Nina' press in Baku to print Iskra. He quit politics in 1909, rose through Siemens to become its Russian head, then returned at Lenin's call in 1918. Architect of the state monopoly on foreign trade and the 1921 Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement, he was the only senior Bolshevik at home in Western business circles; Lenin rated him the party's ablest practical organizer.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1872–1952 ○ Natural causes

The first woman cabinet minister, who made women's liberation the revolution's business

Of the proclamation of Soviet power by the Second Congress of Soviets at Smolny, Kollontai recalled: "the greatest, the most memorable moment of my life."

Born in St Petersburg, the daughter of General Mikhail Domontovich, and through her mother the granddaughter of a Finnish factory owner. At the Second Congress of Soviets in October 1917 she was elected People's Commissar for Welfare, becoming the first woman cabinet minister, and resigned soon after over the Brest-Litovsk peace. She helped found the Zhenotdel in 1919, working against female illiteracy and publicising new labour and family arrangements, and in 1920 joined the Workers' Opposition and was defeated. From 1922 she held diplomatic posts in Norway, Mexico and Sweden, was promoted to ambassador in 1943, a posting that was a sort of exile leaving her no further political role at home, and died in Moscow in 1952 of a heart attack.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1874–1920 ○ Natural causes

The woman Bolshevik closest to Lenin: death saved her from the Purge

In 1914 Lenin sent her alone as the Bolshevik representative to the Brussels International Socialist Bureau conference. He wrote: "I am convinced that you are one of those who develops, grows stronger, becomes more energetic and bolder when alone in a responsible post."

A French-born Bolshevik revolutionary and one of Lenin's closest comrades. As the first head of the Zhenotdel (the party's Women's Department) in 1919, she built the framework for Soviet women's emancipation policy and presided over the First International Conference of Communist Women in 1920.

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) Soviet communism 1876–1947 ○ Natural causes

The 'Demon' Underground and the Only Woman Vice-Chair of Sovnarkom

In the Bolshevik underground she took the codename 'Demon' (Демон) — by one account, from Lermontov's poem used as a cipher book. The name stuck for life as an emblem of her fierce revolutionary persona.

An Iskra agent and Bolshevik organiser co-opted to the Central Committee in 1903, she helped lead the 1905 and 1917 Moscow uprisings. During the Civil War she served as political commissar of the 8th and 13th Armies and became the first woman awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Her role organising the Red Terror as Crimean party secretary in 1920–21 remains fiercely debated. In 1939 she became Deputy Chair of Sovnarkom (the only woman to hold that post) and was one of the very few Old Bolshevik women to survive the Stalin-era purges, dying in 1947.

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) Soviet communism 1878–1924 ○ Illness

First commissar to resign demanding a coalition, buried on Red Square

「A socialist government must be formed from all Soviet parties… the only other path is to preserve a purely Bolshevik government by means of political terror.」 — Resignation statement, 4 November 1917

A Bolshevik from the Iskra agent network. As Moscow Soviet chairman in 1917 he led the October uprising and became the first People's Commissar for Trade and Industry, but resigned demanding a multi-party socialist coalition. Later returned to economic administration; buried on Red Square.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1878–1943 ○ Stomach cancer

The Party's Chief Atheist, Called 'the Soviet Priest'

Khrushchev recalled: "In the Party we called Yaroslavsky 'the Soviet priest.'" His own maxim: "The struggle against religion is the struggle for socialism."

Yaroslavsky was the supreme ideologue of Soviet anti-religious policy. As chairman of the League of Militant Atheists (1925–1943), he directed the USSR's organized campaign against religion. Joining the RSDLP in 1898, he led the Moscow armed uprising in October 1917 and served as Military Commissar of the Moscow Military District. As Secretary of the Party Collegium (1924–1934), he helped enforce party discipline and purges. He authored The Bible for Believers and Unbelievers, was Stalin's loyal supporter and the official interpreter of Party history, and was elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1939.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1878–1945 ○ Illness

IMEL director and the first Marxist philosopher to publicly anoint Stalin as a theorist

"Lenin teased me as 'Aduracky' — foolish — for my naivety." — family memoirs

A Bolshevik philosopher from Kazan. In 1929 he was the first to publicly hail Stalin as 'theoretician of Leninism.' As IMEL director (1931–1939), his Marx-Engels edition defined how the communist world read the classics for decades.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1881–1940 ○ Heart attack

Proletkult theorist who became architect of Stalin-era arts censorship

From his front-page Pravda article 'Time Builds Airplanes,' 18 July 1923: 'We lost 7,000 working hours today waiting for a meeting to begin. With that expenditure of labor power, we could have built one or even two airplanes. We waited another half-airplane's worth of time before the meeting finally started.' The article sparked the founding of the Time League.

Joined the Bolsheviks in 1904. As a Proletkult theorist he led the 'Time' League and pioneered Soviet scientific labour organization (NOT). First chairman of the State Committee on the Arts (1936–38), he built the institutional framework for Stalin-era cultural control and later completed his History of the Paris Commune.