People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Left critics of Bolshevism 1873–1928

The man who made Lenin furious over philosophy, then died swapping his own blood: a forerunner of cybernetics

Every organisation, on achieving decisive influence in society, inevitably — regardless of how democratic its programme — tries to impose its own internal structure on the whole social order. Every collective recreates the social environment in its own image and likeness.

Bolshevik co-founder and Lenin's early philosophical rival. His 'Tektology,' a universal organizational science, made him a forerunner of systems theory and cybernetics. Founder of the world's first blood transfusion institute, he died in 1928 during an exchange transfusion self-experiment.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Left critics of Bolshevism 1876–1936 ○ Died

Vyborg Bolshevik organizer who turned the Women's Day protest into the February Revolution

On 28 February, hearing of the Provisional Government's formation, Kayurov shouted to the soldiers: "Comrades! Has the workers' blood been flowing in the streets of Petrograd for three days merely to exchange one landlord for another?"

A metalworker who joined the RSDLP in 1898, Kayurov was a Bolshevik organizer in Petrograd's Vyborg district who, on 23 February 1917, defied the party committee's caution and transformed the women textile workers' International Women's Day strike into a revolutionary general strike. On 27 February he led an armed detachment that raided arsenals for rifles, freed revolutionaries from prisons, and attacked police stations: the moment the street protest became an armed uprising. After heading the 5th Army's political department in the Civil War, he worked in economic administration until 1932, when he and his son founded the Union of Marxist-Leninists with Ryutin's platform, an open challenge to Stalin; he died in Kazakh exile in 1936.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Left critics of Bolshevism 1876–1937 ✕ Executed

A physician of the Left Opposition who shares a name with the first president of Russia

He has no connection to Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia. Even the Russian spellings differ: Eltsin for him, Yeltsin for the president.

He was born in 1876 in Zvenigorodka, Kiev Governorate (some sources give 1875). He joined the RSDLP in 1897 and completed medical studies at Novorossiysk University in Odessa the following year, working thereafter as a physician. Exiled to Ufa Governorate in 1910 for revolutionary activity, he worked as a sanitary doctor in Belebey and attached himself to the Bolsheviks. After the revolution he served in local soviets and on various commissions, and from 1923 he belonged to the Left Opposition and signed the Declaration of 46. Expelled from the party in 1927, he was exiled to Ust-Vym early the next year and held in the Suzdal political isolator in 1929. Arrested again in 1936 and exiled to Siberia, he was one of the organizers of a hunger strike by political prisoners in Magadan that year. He was shot in 1937 and rehabilitated on 23 November 1956. His son Viktor Borisovich Eltsin was also active in the opposition.

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1877–1937 ✕ Executed

The revolutionary soldier who founded Post No. 1 at Lenin's Mausoleum

In a letter to Trotsky from Siberian exile dated 6 June 1928, Muralov wrote: "I would rather be drawn and quartered than write a confession. Even if I am alone — I will not write it."

Born on a farm, Grecheskie Roty, he left at seventeen for an agricultural school and joined the Bolsheviks in 1903 while working as an assistant agronomist in Podolsk. After serving on the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee in October 1917 he became the first commander of the Moscow Military District, and in the Civil War he sat on the Revolutionary Military Councils of the Eastern Front and the 12th Army. He signed the Declaration of the 46 in 1923, joining the Left Opposition, and in 1924 he founded Post No. 1 at Lenin's Mausoleum; after defending his views at the 15th Party Congress in 1927 he was expelled and exiled to Siberia. Arrested in Novosibirsk on 17 April 1936, he was sentenced to death on 30 January 1937, shot on 1 February 1937, and rehabilitated posthumously by the Supreme Court of the USSR in April 1986.

Georgia state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1877–1937 ✕ Executed

The Georgian communist who led Lenin's last fight against Stalin's centralization

"Being shot is not enough for me; I need to be quartered! It was I who brought the 11th Army here. I betrayed my people and helped Stalin and Beria, these degenerates, enslave Georgia and bring Lenin's party to its knees." — At his NKVD trial, 1937

Born into Georgian nobility, Mdivani joined the Bolsheviks in 1903 and fought in the Caucasus revolutionary underground and Civil War. As chairman of the Georgian Sovnarkom in 1922, he led opposition to Stalin's 'autonomization' plan, defending Georgia's sovereign rights within the Soviet federation (a dispute that drew Lenin into his last political battle on Mdivani's side against Stalin and Ordzhonikidze). He joined the Left Opposition in 1923, was expelled and exiled in 1928, reinstated in 1931, and shot in 1937 during the Great Purge.

Soviet Ukraine state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1879–1925 ✕ Suicide

First woman to lead a Soviet government, between revolution and terminal illness

As German troops advanced on Kyiv, Bosch refused to abandon the city without a fight. Her comrades had to forcibly evacuate her.

A Bolshevik of German settler background, she became the first woman to head a Soviet government as acting leader of Ukraine's People's Secretariat in 1917. In Swiss exile she opposed Lenin on the national question; later she signed the Left Opposition's Declaration of 46. She died in 1925 after years of incurable illness.

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1879–1940 ✕ Assassinated · Mexico

The orator who built the Red Army, felled by an ice axe

25 October 1917, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd. As Menshevik and Right SR delegates walked out in protest against the Bolshevik insurrection, Trotsky declared of them from the chair: 'Go where you belong from now on, into the dustbin of history!'

Born on 7 November 1879 (O.S. 26 October) in Yanovka, Kherson Governorate, in the Russian Empire, into a Jewish farming family. After the February Revolution of 1917 he joined the Bolsheviks and, as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, helped lead the October rising. As People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs he negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and from 1918 to 1925 he headed Military and Naval Affairs, building the Red Army and leading it to victory in the Civil War. From 1923 he led the Left Opposition, but Stalin outmanoeuvred him: expelled from the party in 1927, exiled to Alma-Ata in 1928, deported in 1929, and stripped of Soviet citizenship in 1932. In exile he argued in The Revolution Betrayed (1936) that the USSR had become a degenerated workers' state, and founded the Fourth International in 1938. He was killed in Mexico City in August 1940 by the NKVD agent Ramón Mercader.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Left critics of Bolshevism 1884–1937 ✕ Executed

Editor of Krasnaya Nov, Marxist critic who discovered Babel and Pasternak and led Pereval against RAPP

1921, in Lenin's Kremlin apartment. At the founding meeting of Krasnaya Nov, Gorky showed a collection of Indian tales. Lenin cut him short: "We pay for this in gold currency. This year there will be famine." Voronsky recalled: "Two truths collided — one said man does not live by bread alone, the other answered: but what if there is no bread?"

Marxist critic who founded Krasnaya Nov and discovered Babel and Pasternak. As leader of the Pereval group, he championed art as cognition of life against RAPP's class-war aesthetics. Joined the Left Opposition in 1923; executed in 1937.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Left critics of Bolshevism 1885–1937 ✕ Executed

Leader of the Workers' Opposition, defeated by Lenin, devoured by the Purge

At his closed Military Collegium trial on 2 September 1937 he pleaded not guilty, refusing to confess to the terrorist conspiracy or to implicate others. He maintained that the programme of the Workers' Opposition had been right.

A skilled metal turner born into a poor Old Believer family in Murom, he joined the RSDLP in 1901 and sided with the Bolsheviks after the 1903 split. Working in French, German and British factories, he absorbed the European labor movement firsthand and ran the party's clandestine Scandinavian courier network during the war. In February 1917 he was the most senior Bolshevik in the capital, active in the Russian Bureau of the CC and the Petrograd Soviet's executive committee. After October he became the first People's Commissar of Labor, laying the foundations of the eight-hour day; at the end of the Civil War he and Kollontai led the Workers' Opposition, which Lenin defeated at the Tenth Congress in 1921. Sidelined into diplomacy, expelled in 1933 and imprisoned in 1935, he was executed on 2 September 1937 on fabricated charges. Rehabilitated in 1963 and restored to the party in 1988.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Left critics of Bolshevism 1886–1937 ✕ Executed

The theorist of primitive socialist accumulation

Victor Serge recalled: "He had driven himself so hard that during meetings it seemed he might at any moment drop off to sleep; but his brain was still fresh, and crammed with statistics."

A Bolshevik economic theorist and co-author, with Bukharin, of The ABC of Communism (1919), the foundational textbook of early communist parties worldwide, he served as a Central Committee Secretary during state-building. As an initiator of the Declaration of 46 (1923) and the Left Opposition's chief polemicist, he formalized the theory of 'primitive socialist accumulation' in The New Economics (1926), arguing that surplus must be transferred from the peasant sector to fund industrialization, framing the NEP debate. He returned to the Stalin line in 1929 but soon broke over collectivization violence, joined an underground opposition group, and was executed in 1937.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Left critics of Bolshevism 1887–1924 ✕ Suicide

Bolshevik revolutionary and metalworker from Lugansk, a leader of the Workers' Opposition

As one of the leaders of the Workers' Opposition in 1920–1921 he defended collegial management of industry and workers' interests, was defeated by Lenin at the 10th Party Congress, and, disillusioned with the NEP and the bureaucratization of the party, shot himself on 7 May 1924.

Born in 1887 in Lugansk, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, into a peasant family, he worked from childhood as a metal turner at the Lugansk cartridge factory. He joined the RSDLP in 1904, was exiled to Arkhangelsk and Yakutsk provinces and escaped twice, and during the reaction of 1907–1910 belonged to the SR party before returning to the Bolsheviks. In March 1917 he became a member of the Lugansk Bolshevik committee, in August was elected chairman of the metalworkers' union board, and in November was elected to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. In March 1918 he headed the SNK of the Lugansk region and then became deputy chairman of the SNK of the Donets-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, and after the civil war he served on the VTsSPS presidium and as chairman of the Union of Communications Workers.

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1887–1936 ✕ Executed

A revolutionary who consistently pursued the intra-party left line, from Left Communism to the United Opposition

In February 1918, as chairman of the Moscow Regional Bureau, he led the resolution opposing Lenin's course of accepting the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.

Having joined the Bolsheviks in 1905 and endured six years in tsarist prisons and exile, he led the Left Communists against the Brest-Litovsk Treaty as chairman of the Moscow Regional Bureau in 1918. During the Civil War he served on the Revolutionary Military Council of the 5th Army and chaired the Ufa Revolutionary Committee, then adhered to every major intra-party left opposition: the Democratic Centralists (Decists), the Declaration of the 46 (1923), and the United Opposition (1926–27). Expelled and exiled in 1927, he returned to work as head of the Economic Research Sector of the RSFSR People's Commissariat of Finance, but was arrested and shot in 1936.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Left critics of Bolshevism 1887–1937 ✕ Executed

Leader of the 'Democratic Centralists' who demanded inner-party workers' democracy

'To call such an economy socialist means committing a crime before the working class and discrediting the ideas of communism.' From 'The Agony of Petty-Bourgeois Dictatorship', written December 1931, published 1932

Born into a Russian peasant family in the village of Mostaushka, Tula Governorate, he worked as a house painter from the age of 15, joined the revolutionary movement in 1905 and became a Bolshevik in 1912. After the October Revolution he served as chairman of the Moscow Provincial Executive Committee and of the Kharkov provincial revkom, deputy chairman of VSNKh, secretary of VTsIK and chairman of the Small Sovnarkom. In the early 1920s he led the 'Democratic Centralists' demanding inner-party democracy, was expelled at the 15th Party Congress in 1927 and exiled, and later became a key theoretician of the Left Opposition. In December 1931 he wrote 'The Agony of Petty-Bourgeois Dictatorship', analysing the Soviet system as a 'deformed state capitalism'; he was executed in Moscow on 28 September 1937.

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1887–1937 ✕ Executed

From Moscow uprising artillery commander to Left Communist and Democratic Centralist

Building socialism in pre-industrial Russia alone was 'a side turning off the main highway of European socialism' — foredoomed to failure.

A Moscow law student and Bolshevik from 1907, he formed a Marxist theorists' trio with Nikolai Bukharin and Valerian Osinsky. In October 1917 he commanded the heavy artillery that secured Bolshevik victory in Moscow, and served as People's Commissar of Trade and Industry in early 1918. A Left Communist opponent of Brest-Litovsk, he spent the next decade in successive oppositions (Democratic Centralist, signatory of the Declaration of 46, and United Opposition ally of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev) consistently pressing for party democracy. From 1921–1927 he sat on the Gosplan Presidium, chaired the Vesenkha financial commission, served on the Council of Labor and Defense, and edited Pravda. He regarded Russian socialism in isolation as 'a side turning off the main highway of European socialism, foredoomed to failure,' and after expulsion declared the revolution dead under Stalin.

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1888–1936 ✕ Executed

The Red commander of the Urals

In 1926, after Zinoviev broke with Stalin, the Left Opposition weighed an alliance. Mrachkovsky: 'With no one — Zinoviev will run and Stalin will deceive.'

A Bolshevik organizer and Civil War hero from the Urals, he led the Special Northern Expeditionary Detachment to capture Tobolsk and was twice awarded the Order of the Red Banner. He later commanded military districts before becoming the first head of Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) construction. A key figure in the Left Opposition, he coined the famous warning 'Zinoviev will run away, and Stalin will deceive,' and was executed at the first Moscow Trial in 1936.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Left critics of Bolshevism 1889–1945 ✕ Executed

Worker-Bolshevik who demanded press freedom from Lenin, sparking the 'myasnikovshchina' polemic

'Seventeen, then. Too many. But there is no other way. Revolution is not a ball.' — Myasnikov, planning the execution of Mikhail Romanov, 1918.

A Russian revolutionary and Motovilikha metalworker. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1905 and as deputy chairman of the Perm Cheka organized the execution of Grand Duke Mikhail Romanov in 1918. After the Civil War he openly attacked party censorship, demanding press freedom 'from monarchists to anarchists inclusive', a challenge that provoked Lenin's direct rebuttal and was branded 'myasnikovshchina.' Expelled from the RCP(b) in 1922, he founded the Workers' Group. In French exile he published 'The Latest Deception,' theorizing the USSR as state capitalism. He returned in 1944, was arrested, and executed the following year.

Soviet Ukraine state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1890–1937 ✕ Executed

The Bolshevik between revolution and the industrial plan

January 1937, in the dock at the second Moscow trial. The German writer Lion Feuchtwanger recorded: "I shall never forget how Georgy Pyatakov, a gentleman of medium height, middle-aged, with a small bald patch and a reddish, old-fashioned, trembling pointed beard, stood before the microphone and calmly, diligently narrated how he had wrecked the industry entrusted to him. He explained, pointing with an outstretched finger, like a university lecturer — a historian delivering a report on the life and deeds of a long-dead man named Pyatakov, striving to clarify every detail, seized by the single desire that his listeners and students should understand everything correctly."

A Bolshevik revolutionary and the first head of Soviet Ukraine. As a Left Communist, he fiercely opposed Lenin over the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the national question, and was one of only six Bolsheviks named in Lenin's Testament. Expelled as a Left Oppositionist, he recanted and returned to drive the Five-Year Plans as Deputy Commissar of Heavy Industry, before becoming chief defendant at the second Moscow show trial and being executed in 1937.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Left critics of Bolshevism 1892–1937 ✕ Executed

The young oppositionist of the Revolutionary Military Council

On 7 November 1927, the tenth anniversary of the Revolution, Smilga hung portraits of Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev from his apartment opposite the Kremlin with a banner reading 'Let's Fulfill Lenin's Testament.' Stalin's supporters broke in and wrecked the apartment; beaten in the street and arrested, he escaped custody later that day.

A Latvian-born Bolshevik revolutionary and economist. He joined the party at fourteen and was elected to the Central Committee at twenty-four in 1917, becoming Lenin's key collaborator during his Finnish hideout. During the October Revolution he transported pro-Bolshevik troops from Finland to Petrograd; in the Civil War he served as a Revolutionary Military Council member on every major front and as head of the Red Army's Political Directorate. A principal leader of the Left Opposition, he led its last public demonstration in November 1927. After renouncing Trotskyism in 1930 he was reinstated, but secretly continued in Ivan Smirnov's underground opposition organisation. He was executed in January 1937.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Left critics of Bolshevism 1888/1890–1937 ✕ Executed

The Left Opposition secretary whom Lenin called a 'brilliant worker'

According to his daughter Zorya's recollection, Lenin called him a "brilliant worker."

Born in Samara to a working-class family, he began working at nine and became a metal fitter and turner at the Hartmann locomotive works in Lugansk at fourteen. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1905, worked on the Lugansk committee, and as a delegate to the 1912 Prague Conference met Lenin before being arrested and exiled to Narym. During the February Revolution of 1917 he led his regiment out in Kostroma, then served as secretary of the Moscow Party Committee, a Central Committee member (1919–1921) and CC secretary (1920–1921). One of the leaders of the Left Opposition who signed the Declaration of the 46, he was expelled in 1927 and exiled to Semipalatinsk, reinstated in 1930, and shot in 1937 as a main defendant in the Second Moscow Show Trial.