People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1872–1963 ○ Natural death

Microbiologist who headed the puppet government chosen by the Soviet embassy in 1940 and requested Latvia’s incorporation into the USSR

Born the son of a tenant on a manor in Mazsalaca, Livonia, he studied at the Tartu Veterinary Institute, took part in the revolution of 1905 and emigrated to Switzerland, working at a tuberculosis institute in Davos. He served as a military veterinarian in the Serbian army in the First World War and as a captain in the veterinary units of the Latvian War of Independence. In 1919 he founded a Microbiology Institute at the University of Latvia, and in 1923 he defended the first doctoral thesis in Latvia; politically he supported social democracy. In June 1940 the Soviet embassy offered him the leadership of the new puppet government; as prime minister, and from 21 July acting president, he requested Latvia’s incorporation into the Soviet Union. He chaired the Latvian SSR Supreme Soviet’s presidium in 1940–1952, joined the Communist Party in 1941 and died in Riga in 1963.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1877–1937 ✕ Executed

Stalin's close friend and the 17-year organizational backbone of the Soviet state, the first fall that opened the Great Purge

"Coco, they are old Bolsheviks like me, like you. You won't shed the blood of old Bolsheviks!" Yenukidze tried to dissuade Stalin from putting Kamenev and Zinoviev on trial and executing them. Stalin replied: "Remember, Avel — whoever is not with me is against me."

An Old Bolshevik (party member since 1898), co-founder of the Baku Social-Democratic organization and the underground 'Nina' press in the Caucasus. As Secretary of VTsIK (1918–1922) and then the TsIK of the USSR (1922–1935), he managed the apparatus of the Soviet state's highest formal body for 17 years, across the formation and consolidation of the Union. A close member of Stalin's inner circle and godfather to Nadezhda Alliluyeva, he was the first individual recipient of the Order of Lenin (No. 3). His expulsion in 1935, the first member of the XVII Congress Central Committee to fall, was a significant prelude to the Great Purge.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1890–1946 ✕ Probable suicide

Poet and doctor whom Zhdanov forced on Estonia as puppet prime minister in June 1940, and who led the petition to join the Soviet Union

Born to a farming family near Viljandi, he studied medicine in Kiev and served as a military physician in the First World War and the Estonian War of Independence. He became a well-known poet and radical socialist under the pen name Johannes Barbarus. After the Soviet occupation of June 1940, Andrei Zhdanov forced President Konstantin Päts to appoint him prime minister of a communist-dominated puppet government, and he headed the delegation that delivered the petition to join the Soviet Union. He then chaired the Estonian SSR Supreme Soviet’s presidium, fled to Soviet Russia when the Germans came in 1941, and after returning in 1944 was investigated by the NKVD over his role in the War of Independence. He died in the presidential residence in Kadriorg, Tallinn, in November 1946, most probably by suicide, though murder has also been suggested.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1892–1937 ✕ Suicide

Architect of Byelorussian Soviet statehood who turned the gun on himself

On 16 June 1937, publicly denounced at the Party congress for insufficiently purging 'enemies of the people,' Chervyakov returned to his office during the recess and shot himself. Officials attributed it to 'family reasons.'

He signed the 1919 manifesto proclaiming the Byelorussian SSR and served as its first head of government and state (1920–1937). A USSR Central Executive Committee co-chairman, he championed Belarusisation and founded the Belarusian State University. He shot himself in 1937 amid the Great Purge after Party censure.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1906–1991 ○ Natural causes

The 20-year formal head of state of the Russian republic under Brezhnev

"He had the firm administrative hand of an authoritative man and knew construction better than anyone." — Contemporary assessment

Mikhail Yasnov rose from leather worker and courier to the formal head of state of the Russian SFSR for nearly two decades. As Moscow City Executive Committee chairman (1950–1956), he directed the second reconstruction of the capital: completing the Stalinist high-rises, launching mass housing in the southwest, opening the metro ring line, and doubling residential construction. He served briefly as RSFSR premier (1956–1957), then spent nineteen years as Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet Presidium (1966–1985), the republic's ceremonial head of state throughout the Brezhnev era. A construction engineer who had directed Moscow's defensive fortifications during the Battle of Moscow, he was remembered by contemporaries as harsh but effective.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1914–1994 ○ Natural causes

The Latvian who chaired the Soviet of Nationalities for a decade under Brezhnev

On December 8, 1983, at a Human Rights Day press conference, Rubenis described the exiled Andrei Sakharov as "a talented but sick man" whose banishment to Gorky "was necessary above all for himself, to preserve his peace of mind."

A Moscow-born Latvian Soviet politician who served as Chairman of the Latvian SSR Council of Ministers and Chairman of its Supreme Soviet Presidium before chairing the Soviet of Nationalities (1974–1984) for a decade under Brezhnev. His decade-long tenure was a rare case of a non-Russian republican cadre stably occupying a key federal parliamentary post, and he exemplified the loyal technocrats Arvīds Pelše elevated after the 1959 purge of Latvian national communists.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1920–2006 ↓ Left office 1974

Uzbek SSR figure who chaired the Soviet of Nationalities

In a meeting with Crimean Tatar civil rights activists, she openly opposed their return to Crimea, bluntly stating that Uzbekistan needed their labor.

Rising from the Uzbek republic leadership, she chaired the Soviet of Nationalities. Her career shows the link between central power and republic elites under Brezhnev.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1934–1993 ○ Natural causes

A Soviet republican leader who asserted institutional authority in crisis

“A state of emergency was declared and troops were sent in without the republic’s consent.”

Elmira Kafarova was an Azerbaijani Soviet politician and diplomat who moved through education and foreign-affairs administration before leading the republic’s Supreme Soviet. In January 1990, she publicly protested the declaration of emergency in Baku and the entry of Soviet troops, stating that the decision had been taken while she was in Moscow and without her knowledge. Her institutional dissent, unusual within the Soviet republican leadership, illuminates how the nationalities crisis became a collision among republican institutions, a mass movement, and Union power.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1935–2020 ○ Died

Ukrainian SSR head of state during Chernobyl who pushed the evacuation of 526,000 children from Kyiv against Moscow's resistance

Recalling the interior deputy minister's report on the morning of 26 April 1986: 'The fire was put out, everything is fine. The people? Some are having a wedding, some are gardening, some are fishing in the Pripyat River.'

As Chairwoman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR during the Chernobyl disaster, she defied Moscow's directives and oversaw the evacuation of 526,000 children from Kyiv and contaminated zones in just five days. Born the daughter of a miner in Kryvyi Rih, she rose through Komsomol and the deputy ministry of education to become the republic's formal head of state in 1985, spending her tenure navigating between central information control and the realities on the ground. In 1989 she refused to sign the resolution banning the People's Movement of Ukraine (Rukh), and after retirement led children's and women's welfare foundations while maintaining a sympathetic view of the Soviet system and a critical stance toward independent Ukraine.