People

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.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Left critics of Bolshevism 1881–1936 ✕ Executed

The Siberian Bolshevik of the Left Opposition

Stripped of his commissar post in 1927, Smirnov, penniless, went to the labor exchange to register as an unemployed precision mechanic. When he wrote 'People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs' in the box marked 'last position held,' the petty clerk at the window stared dumbfounded at the tall, greying man with lively eyes standing before him.

A Bolshevik who joined the RSDLP in 1899, he endured seven arrests and years of prison and exile in service of the revolutionary movement. A Civil War-era party organizer in the Urals and Siberia and chairman of Sibrevkom, he played a decisive role in defeating Kolchak's White forces. In the 1920s, he became a leading figure of the Left Opposition. Even after his 1927 expulsion, he led a clandestine opposition group from 1931, reestablishing contact with Trotsky via Berlin, and was arrested in 1933, sentenced to death at the first Moscow Trial in 1936, and executed.

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1884–1928 Death circumstances disputed

Bolshevik military leader of 1917 and the Civil War

On the evening of 24 October 1917, Lashevich ordered A. V. Belyshev, the Military Revolutionary Committee commissar aboard the cruiser Aurora, to restore traffic across the Nikolaevsky Bridge that junkers had drawn apart the day before, and the task was carried out.

Born in 1884 in Odessa, in the Russian Empire, into a Jewish merchant family; he joined the RSDLP in 1901 and was a Bolshevik from 1903. In 1917 he took part in the October rising in Petrograd, and in the Civil War he commanded the 3rd Army. In 1925 he became First Deputy Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the USSR Revolutionary Military Council. After joining the United Opposition in 1926 he was demoted and worked at the Chinese Eastern Railway in Harbin until his death in 1928.

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 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 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 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.