People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1923–2005 ○ Natural causes

The architect of glasnost: the ideology chief who dismantled the ideology

May 19, 1983, on Eugene Whelan's farm in Amherstburg, Ontario. Walking a lane between corn and soybean fields, Yakovlev later said he "threw caution to the wind" and told Gorbachev what he considered utter stupidities in foreign affairs. By the end of that walk the two were comrades in reform.

Born 2 December 1923 in the village of Korolyovo, Yaroslavl province, into a peasant family. Called up in 1941, he commanded a marine infantry platoon on the Volkhov Front, was gravely wounded in the legs in August 1942, and was demobilised in February 1943. He joined the party in 1944, moved to the Central Committee apparatus in 1953, and studied at Columbia University in 1958–59 as an exchange student. In November 1972 an article against great-power chauvinism pushed him out of the party apparatus; from 1973 he spent ten years as ambassador to Canada. He became director of IMEMO in August 1983, then propaganda chief in 1985 and a full Politburo member in 1987, driving glasnost and the re-examination of history. In 1989 he chaired the inquiry that confirmed the secret protocols. He died in Moscow on 18 October 2005 after a long illness.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1929–2025 ○ Natural causes

The last ideology secretary who dismantled ideology opened the spetskhran and abolished party orthodoxy

In autumn 1988 he obtained Solzhenitsyn's works through the KGB. He admired One Day in the Life but dismissed Gulag Archipelago as mere polemic — then opened the spetskhran and returned Solzhenitsyn's published books to the open shelves.

A peasant's son from Yaroslavl, Medvedev earned a doctorate in economics from Leningrad University, rose through the propaganda and science departments, and became CC secretary in 1986 and Politburo member with the ideology portfolio in 1988. He repealed Zhdanov's 1946 crackdown on the journals Zvezda and Leningrad, abolished subscription limits on periodicals, and returned forbidden books, including works by Solzhenitsyn and Trotsky, from the spetskhran to open library shelves. He replaced CPSU history and scientific communism courses with 20th-century socio-political history and served on the commission re-examining Stalin-era repressions. A core Gorbachev intimate, he left all posts with the Soviet collapse and spent his remaining decades as a researcher at the Gorbachev Foundation.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1932–2012 ○ Natural causes

The last leader of Armenia's Communist Party before the Soviet collapse

In late 1990, he led Armenia's Communist Party while the political foundations of its rule were already shaking.

Stepan Pogosyan was an Armenian Communist Party politician and historian who spent much of his career directing mass media and publishing in Soviet Armenia. He represented a party leadership whose state base and political influence were weakening as the socialist system came apart. From late 1990 to 1991, he served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia and as a member of the CPSU Central Committee Politburo, then retired from political work.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1934–

A politician who linked internationalism with regional rule

In February 1978, during an Asia-Africa people's solidarity session in Nicosia, Black September militants took him hostage; within forty minutes everyone except the Egyptian and Palestinian delegates was released.

Alexander Dzasokhov was a Soviet party and diplomatic politician whose career grew out of youth organizations and solidarity work with Asia and Africa. After serving as ambassador to Syria and leading the North Ossetian party organization, he reached a position where international politics and the nationality question converged. At the 28th CPSU Congress he was elected to the Politburo and Central Committee Secretariat, making him part of the last Soviet leadership as reform and the Union’s dissolution intersected. He later served in the Russian State Duma and as president of the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, where he dealt with federal relations and interethnic tensions.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1934–2023 ○ Natural causes

Propaganda-trained culture minister who executed glasnost-era cultural liberalization

In June 1989, the USSR Supreme Soviet reviewed Premier Ryzhkov's proposed cabinet and rejected Zakharov's renomination as culture minister. For the first time in decades, the rubber-stamp legislature told a sitting minister he was unqualified and sent him packing.

Trained as an economist, he rose through the Leningrad party organization's propaganda and agitation apparatus to reach Moscow, where Gorbachev appointed him Minister of Culture in 1986. His tenure oversaw a decisive shift in Soviet cultural policy: the publication of previously banned books, the relaxation of film censorship, and expanded autonomy for artistic creation. He personally mediated the acrimonious split of the Moscow Art Theatre. In 1989 the newly empowered Supreme Soviet rejected his renomination, the first major case of the legislature exercising real confirmation power over a sitting minister. After leaving office, he served as deputy premier of the Russian republic and later wrote memoirs judging the Gorbachev era a 'reign of missed opportunities.'

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1940–2022 ○ Natural causes

Ideology secretary of the pro-Moscow Lithuanian Communist Party who proclaimed the 'National Salvation Committee' in the Vilnius crackdown

On 13 January 1991, his recorded voice boomed from the loudspeakers of Soviet BMPs advancing on the Vilnius TV tower: 'Brother Lithuanians! The nationalist and separatist government, which confronted the people, has been overthrown!'

A farmer's son from southern Lithuania, Jermalavičius studied at Vilnius University and the Leningrad Higher Party School, then spent two decades as a researcher at the Party History Institute, publishing on atheism and religion. In 1990 he became ideology secretary of the pro-Moscow Lithuanian Communist Party (CPSU platform), fiercely opposing independence, and on 11 January 1991 he announced the creation of the 'National Salvation Committee of the Lithuanian SSR', which claimed to be the sole legitimate government, providing the political pretext for the Soviet military operation that killed 14 civilians two days later. Convicted in 1999 of anti-state organization and incitement to violently overthrow the government, he served eight years, then moved to Russia where he continued writing in defence of the Soviet system until his death.