People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1920–2021 ↓ Removed 1990

The conservative Second Secretary inside perestroika

At the Plenum of February 6, 1990, Ligachev, pressed to resign, declared: 'Damn it, I want to work!' But he was not removed from the Politburo days later: he lost the CC secretary post and the Politburo seat at the July 1990 congress, taking 776 votes against 3,642 for deputy general secretary.

He was first secretary of Tomsk province from 1965 to 1983, seventeen years in which oil and gas extraction grew and the towns of Strezhevoy and Kedrovy were built. In 1979, when the Ob exposed a mass grave of Great Terror victims at Kolpashevo Yar, the region moved to destroy the remains and the traces of the burial; he denied any involvement. Brought to Moscow on Andropov's initiative in April 1983 as head of the CC organizational-party work department, he became a secretary that December and a full Politburo member in April 1985. As de facto second man in 1985-1988 he backed early reform and drove the anti-alcohol campaign, which he later admitted was a mistaken strategy. In July 1990 he lost the CC secretary post and his Politburo seat.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1924–1994 ○ Natural causes

Georgian film director whose Repentance fired the cultural starting gun of glasnost

When Repentance was shelved, Abuladze kept the only video copy under his bed, fearing it would be destroyed.

A Georgian Soviet film director. His debut Magdana's Donkey (1955), co-directed with Rezo Chkheidze, won the Cannes short film prize and signaled Soviet cinema's return to the international stage. His trilogy of The Plea (1967), The Wishing Tree (1976), and Repentance (1984) marked his peak; Repentance, shelved for two years after completion, was the first Soviet film to confront the Stalinist terror in allegorical form, and its 1986 release at the Fifth Congress of the Filmmakers' Union became the cultural starting gun of glasnost. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1987; Abuladze later served as a People's Deputy of the USSR (1989–1991).

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1925–2011 ○ Natural causes

Ligachev protégé who led Leningrad during early perestroika

At the March 1989 Politburo session, Solovyov reported that all seven Leningrad party leaders had been defeated and insisted voters were rejecting perestroika itself, not the candidates.

He spent over two decades building the Leningrad Metro before rising through the party apparatus as a technical cadre. Appointed First Secretary of the Leningrad Oblast Committee in 1985 and candidate Politburo member in 1986, he oversaw the Soviet Union's second city during early perestroika. In the March 1989 elections for the Congress of People's Deputies, he ran unopposed yet roughly 60 percent of voters crossed his name off the ballot. He and all seven Leningrad party leaders were defeated, a watershed moment that signaled the collapse of party authority.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1927–2015 ○ Natural causes

The last orthodox Soviet finance minister who rejected market reform during perestroika

"I won't vouch that the workers won't take to the streets" — Boris Gostev, warning that cooperatives earning a thousand rubles a month would create a class of rich that socialist society could not abide.

An engineer-economist trained at the Moscow Technological Institute of Light Industry, Gostev rose from shoe-factory dispatcher through Gosplan and the CPSU Central Committee's Economic Department to become Minister of Finance of the USSR in December 1985, appointed by his former superior Nikolai Ryzhkov. During his four-year tenure he confronted the fiscal devastation of the anti-alcohol campaign, ballooning budget deficits, and the spread of cooperatives, while consistently opposing market reform. He imposed steep progressive taxes on cooperative incomes and famously warned that 'I won't vouch that the workers won't take to the streets,' refusing to countenance any wealth accumulation that threatened socialist equality. He founded what is now the Budget and Treasury Academy and, after his dismissal in 1989, spent thirteen years there as a professor.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1927–2015 ○ Natural causes

An economist of socialist economic integration and reform

He later argued that stagnation in the Soviet economy gave perestroika its first impulse.

Oleg Bogomolov was a Soviet economist and academic institution-builder who studied international economic relations within the socialist world. His comparative work on Hungarian and Yugoslav reforms examined both the rigidity of planned management and the possible uses of market mechanisms. In 1983, when Yuri Andropov initiated preparations for economic reform, Bogomolov joined the relevant commission and supplied expertise to its deliberations. He later argued for gradual reform that combined markets with social protection, widening the economic options considered during perestroika.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1928–1991 ✕ Fatal fall

The last treasurer who guarded the party coffers through perestroika

At the 28th Party Congress on July 9, 1990, Kruchina disclosed from the podium that the CPSU Central Committee held a reserve of 4.9 billion rubles — the only moment in party history when its finances were laid bare before the delegates.

Born in rural Altai and trained as an agronomist, Kruchina rose through the Komsomol and party agricultural apparatus. As First Secretary of the Tselinograd Oblast Committee (1965–1978), he directed the Kazakh virgin lands campaign and became a Hero of Socialist Labor. In 1983, with Gorbachev's backing, he became Administrator of Affairs of the CPSU Central Committee: the party's chief treasurer, overseeing its property, foreign aid, and the 'party gold.' At the 28th Party Congress in 1990, glasnost forced him to reveal a party reserve of 4.9 billion rubles. Days after the failed August 1991 coup, he fell to his death from his Moscow apartment; similar fatal falls of his predecessor Pavlov and official Lisovolik made him central to the mystery of the party's missing billions.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1928–2016 ○ Natural causes

CPU secretary who oversaw the anti-alcohol campaign in Ukraine and testified that Ligachev ordered the Massandra wine library destroyed

I poured the contents of the third, fourth, fifth glass and so on under the table. The secretary sitting next to me whispered: 'Listen, my trousers are soaked and there's vodka in my shoes!'

A metallurgical engineer by training, he joined party work in 1957 and rose through first secretary posts in Kramatorsk, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Nikolaev before serving 16 years as a secretary of the CPU Central Committee from 1971. When Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign began in 1985, Pogrebnyak oversaw its implementation in Ukraine; he later testified that Yegor Ligachev demanded the destruction of Massandra's 150-year wine library and that only Vladimir Shcherbitsky's intervention with Gorbachev saved it. In 1987 he was dispatched to Lviv as first secretary amid rising nationalist sentiment, serving until 1990, and after the Soviet collapse chaired the Ukraine-Poland society while publishing memoirs.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1929–2022 ○ Natural causes

From tractor factory to Politburo: the 'director of the Central Committee'

When summoned by Andropov in January 1983 to replace the deceased Kiselyov, Slyunkov demurred, citing his limited party experience. Andropov's reply was brief: 'Today the biggest politics is economics. Go and do that politics.'

A Soviet economic manager turned politician, Slyunkov rose from worker to director of the Minsk Tractor Works, then served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Byelorussia (1983–1987) and a full member of Gorbachev's Politburo as CC Secretary for economic policy (1987–1990). In Belarus he boosted agricultural output by 30% and eliminated unprofitable farms, earning him the nickname 'director of the Central Committee' for his hands-on managerial style. Brought to Moscow in 1987 to head the CC Economic Department, he helped steer early perestroika from planning toward market-oriented reforms, but friction with Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov and a stroke forced his retirement in 1990.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1930–2005 ○ Natural causes

Editor of Moscow News who led the charge in breaking Soviet taboos during the glasnost era

「You can't go to bed a mute and wake up talking」: on the incremental widening of what could be said as censorship eased.

A Moscow Historical Archive Institute graduate, he worked as an Izvestia correspondent and founding editor of Zhurnalist magazine before his appointment in August 1986 as deputy chairman of Novosti Press Agency and editor-in-chief of Moscow News. He transformed the weekly from a 35,000-copy English-language propaganda sheet into a glasnost flagship printing 3 million copies in eight languages. Week after week he broke taboos (Stalin's purges, the Afghan war, KGB operations, religion) and during the August 1991 coup he rallied 11 independent newspapers to produce the joint edition Obshchaya Gazeta in defiance of the putschists.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1932–1994 ↓ Party dissolved 1991

The last deputy general secretary before dissolution

On the morning of 21 August 1991, with the coup clearly collapsing, Ivashko telephoned Vice President Yanayev from the Central Committee building and requested a plane to see Gorbachev. Refused, he was forced to board the flight to Foros alongside the very putschists — Yazov, Lukyanov and others — whose coup he had refused to endorse.

A mining engineer and economist from Kharkiv, he spent two decades in the Ukrainian party apparatus before succeeding Shcherbitsky as First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party in 1989. In 1990 Gorbachev created the post of Deputy General Secretary for him, the only person ever to hold it. After the August 1991 coup, Gorbachev's resignation made Ivashko the final leader of the CPSU, but within five days the party's activity was suspended, and Soviet communism ended with him.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1935–

The conservative apparatchik who founded the Russian republic's Communist Party

Gorbachev later said: 'I have known Polozkov for a very long time. He is an honest, decent fellow, but stupid and uneducated. Someone writes something for him, and he recites it.'

Founding First Secretary of the Communist Party of the RSFSR (1990–1991), the first republican-level Communist Party in Russian history, and the public face of the conservative anti-perestroika opposition within the CPSU. In May 1990 he contested Boris Yeltsin for the chairmanship of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet and led in early counts before the Politburo ordered him to stand down; weeks later the founding congress elected him to lead the new Russian party. A provincial apparatchik who had run the Krasnodar party organization for five years, he rose to the CPSU Politburo but was caught between reformers and hardliners, resigning after a heart attack in August 1991. He remained a symbolic elder of the Russian communist movement through the CPRF's consultative council after the party's dissolution.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1935–2006 ↓ Natural causes

The party apparatus gatekeeper who managed Gorbachev's documents, then betrayed him

On August 18, 1991, Boldin flew to Foros alongside Baklanov, Varennikov, and Shenin to deliver an ultimatum to Gorbachev — the man whose paper flow he had managed for a decade.

An economist by training who graduated from the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy and the CC Academy of Social Sciences, he worked in the Central Committee apparatus from 1961 and later served as agricultural department head and economic commentator at Pravda. In 1981 he became Gorbachev's assistant, and in 1987 he was appointed head of the CC General Department, the office controlling the entire document flow of the Politburo and Secretariat, adding the post of presidential chief of staff in 1990. During the August 1991 coup, however, he sided with the State Emergency Committee and was one of the four emissaries who flew to Foros to confront Gorbachev; arrested after the coup's failure, he was detained and then amnestied in 1994.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1936–

Architect of perestroika cadres, last surviving Politburo member

In January 1989, Vilnius city party leaders sent Razumovsky a second appeal for a response to their criticisms — none came, and that December the Lithuanian CP declared independence.

Gorbachev's cadre chief, Razumovsky headed the CC Organizational-Party Work Department (1985–1988) and chaired the Party Building and Cadre Policy Commission (1988–1990), driving the largest personnel turnover of perestroika. An agronomist who rose to First Secretary of Krasnodar Kraikom (1983–1985), he became CC Secretary and candidate Politburo member in 1986. Under Gorbachev's banner of intra-party democracy, his rigid delegate quotas fueled a backlash in Lithuania's Communist Party that contributed to its secession. He later served as Consul General in Shanghai (1990–1992) and is, as of 2025, the last living member of the 1986 Politburo.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1936–2014 ○ Natural causes

From Kiev regional party leader to Gorbachev's last chief of staff

The day Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, he called Revenko in and joked, 'Want to see a Soviet millionaire?' The two then allocated the entire million-plus dollars to children's oncology centres and Chernobyl areas. When done, Gorbachev smiled: 'Well, no more millionaire.'

Ukrainian Soviet party and state official who rose to first secretary of the Kiev Oblast Committee, the capital region's top party post, then became Gorbachev's chief of staff as head of the USSR Presidential Apparatus in the union's final months. Moving up through Komsomol and party bodies, he became first secretary of the Kiev Oblast Committee in 1985 and was elected to the CPSU Central Committee in 1986. In 1990 he joined the Presidential Council, and in August 1991 Gorbachev made him head of the Presidential Apparatus, where he managed the shift from party to presidential rule. After the dissolution he was vice president of the Gorbachev Foundation before returning to Kiev.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1936–

Organizational-Party Work deputy chief who witnessed Sumgait, and said 'we were a day late'

Gorbachev says we were three hours late: nothing of the sort. We were a day late! Because we waited a whole day for the decision to send in troops.

A railway engineer who rose through the party apparatus to become deputy head of the CPSU Central Committee Organizational-Party Work Department (1987–1988) under Gorbachev. On the night of February 28, 1988, he and KGB deputy chairman Filipp Bobkov arrived in Sumgait, where he witnessed the mutilated corpses of the pogrom and later testified that Moscow's response was 'a day late, not three hours.' He later served as First Secretary of the Zaporizhzhia obkom (1988–1990) and Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and Politburo member (1990–1991), before working in Moscow as vice-president of the Russian Union of Commodity Producers after the USSR dissolved.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1937–2009 ○ Natural causes

The last Politburo member who tried to save the USSR and went to prison for it

Attributed to Shenin after the coup's defeat and reported according to media data, the GKChP members made the main mistake: having said 'A,' they did not say 'B' and all the rest of the alphabet.

Born in 1937 in Stalingrad Oblast, he was convicted in 1958 of violating safety rules after two workers died at his construction site, receiving a one-and-a-half-year sentence and being released early after nine and a half months. He joined the CPSU in 1962 and served as First Secretary of the Achinsk city committee (1974-1977), party adviser in Afghanistan (1977-1983), first secretary of the Krasnoyarsk kraikom (1987-1990). As CC secretary and Politburo member from 1990 he oversaw organizational-party work and was called the third man in the CPSU after Gorbachev and Ivashko, supported the GKChP and on 18 August 1991 flew to Gorbachev at Foros, and was arrested on 23 August 1991. Released on health grounds in October 1992 and amnestied in February 1994, he died aged 71 on 28 May 2009.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1937–2014 ○ Natural causes

An economist who carried price theory into the transition to a market economy

Through the 500 Days programme, he pushed his research on price formation toward a plan for transforming the Soviet economy into a market.

Nikolai Petrakov was a Soviet economist who used mathematical analysis to study price formation and the balancing of costs, output, and incomes in a planned economy. He pursued market mechanisms and price reform, and in 1990 joined Stanislav Shatalin and Grigory Yavlinsky as a co-author of the 500 Days programme. The programme sought to move the Soviet economy toward a market through privatization, price liberalization, and a transfer of authority to the republics, placing Petrakov’s research and policy work at the junction of economic modelling and urgent political choice. He later founded the Institute for Market Problems and led research on market transition and economic policy.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1937–2017 ○ Natural causes

Architect of women's and family policy in the perestroika era, the fourth woman ever on the Politburo

“I simply refuse to be limited. I would not tolerate it for a minute.” — pushing back against being pigeonholed as the Politburo's 'woman's issues' token

Galina Semyonova was one of only four women in Soviet history to serve as a full member of the CPSU Politburo. As a Central Committee secretary in the late Gorbachev period, she was responsible for family, women's, and demographic policy. For a decade from 1981, she edited Krestyanka (Peasant Woman), transforming the magazine's content toward fashion, family, and culture and raising its circulation from 6 million to 22 million, connecting with the daily lives of millions of Soviet women. Elevated to the Politburo and Secretariat at the 28th Party Congress in 1990, she drove Central Committee resolutions to improve women's social standing and pushed for a new State Committee on Family and Women's Affairs. During the August 1991 coup, she was one of the few in the party leadership who refused to recognize the authority of the GKChP putschists.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1937–

The last-generation secretary who rebuilt the Russian Communist Party

On 25 October 1991 Kuptsov met Yeltsin at the Kremlin and urged him to rescind the ban on the Russian Communist Party. Yeltsin refused; Kuptsov then spent a year and a half as the underground First Secretary, steering the party to its reconstituting congress.

A metallurgical engineer who rose from a Vologda collective farm and steel mill through the party ranks, he served as First Secretary of the Vologda Regional Committee (1985–1990). In 1990 he was brought to Moscow as a CPSU Central Committee Secretary, heading the department for socio-political organizations and helping found the Communist Party of the RSFSR. Elected its First Secretary in August 1991 to replace the hardline Ivan Polozkov, he refused to endorse the GKChP coup but was nonetheless investigated for 'complicity.' After Yeltsin banned the party, Kuptsov kept its organizational skeleton alive underground and steered the February 1993 reconstituting congress that became the CPRF, then served eleven years as Zyuganov's first deputy chairman while the new Russian Communist Party consolidated.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1938–2017 ○ Renal failure

First Secretary of the Baku Party Committee who blocked buses from entering Baku, shifting the violence to Sumgait

“I realized that it was a pogrom. I ordered all roads to the city blocked from these settlements. The order was executed. The buses went to Sumgait.”

A Soviet and Azerbaijani party and state official who rose through the construction sector to become First Secretary of the Baku City Party Committee in 1983. In February 1988, as buses carrying Azerbaijani refugees expelled from Armenia converged on Baku, he ordered the city's access roads blocked; the measure kept violence out of Baku but diverted the bus convoys to Sumgait, where the pogrom erupted days later. After the dissolution of the USSR, he served as the first president of independent Azerbaijan's football association (1992–2003), steering the country into UEFA and FIFA membership.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1938–2020 ○ Natural causes

The Leningrad chemistry lecturer whose 'I Cannot Forsake My Principles' became the manifesto of anti-perestroika forces

"Our media are lying about Stalin now. They are blackening our history."

A Leningrad chemist and CPSU member who, on 13 March 1988, published 'I Cannot Forsake My Principles' in Sovetskaya Rossiya, a full-throated defense of Stalin and an attack on perestroika. The article, drafted with the backing of Central Committee secretary Yegor Ligachev, was denounced by Pravda as the 'manifesto of anti-perestroika forces' and became the shock that drove Gorbachev to radicalize political reform ahead of the 19th Party Conference. After 1991 she founded the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (VKPB) and served as its general secretary, but neither she nor her party ever gained significant traction in post-Soviet Russia.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1941–

An insider witness to the collapse of reform

He recalled that his task had “extended the history of the Soviet state by one day.”

Andrei Grachev was a specialist in international affairs and a journalist who worked on the international meaning and domestic politics of Soviet reform. After the August 1991 coup, he became Mikhail Gorbachev’s aide and final presidential press secretary, observing at close range both negotiations to preserve the Union and the disintegration of its state institutions. His memoirs and deposited personal papers document the tension between perestroika’s promise of democratic renewal and the acceleration of the Union’s collapse.