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 1890–1937 ✕ Executed

Worker-Bolshevik premier of the Russian Republic destroyed by the state he helped industrialize

Arrested on 27 June 1937 while still performing his duties — seized during a session of the very Central Committee plenum that had just expelled him.

An Old Bolshevik who joined the party at fourteen as a factory worker, Sulimov rose through the Ural party apparatus to become Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR (1930–1937), overseeing the republic's industrialization during the first two five-year plans. A member of the Central Committee (1923–1937) and the OrgBuro (1927–1930), he was among the highest-ranking Bolsheviks of worker origin to lead a Soviet government. Arrested during the June 1937 Central Committee Plenum immediately after Vyacheslav Molotov accused him of political disloyalty, he was tried for wrecking, espionage, and participation in an anti-Soviet terrorist organization of the Right, and executed on 27 November 1937. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956, and the city of Cherkessk bore his name, Sulimov, from 1934 to 1937.

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 1891–1939 ✕ Shot in

The economic administrator who led Ukraine's government for 11 years, caught between Stalin's demands and the famine

In June 1932 Chubar reported to Stalin and Molotov that "tens of thousands of malnourished, starving and swollen people" were dying of famine "in every village", and asked for grain relief. Stalin replied that "Chubar is mistaken ... Ukraine has been given more than it should get".

An economic administrator born to a poor Ukrainian peasant family in Fedorivka, he joined the RSDLP in 1907. From 1923 he chaired the Ukrainian SSR's Council of People's Commissars for eleven years, driving industrialisation and collectivisation, and in June 1932 he reported the famine to Stalin and Molotov and requested emergency grain. He also bore responsibility for enforcing collectivisation and the 1932–33 famine, and in 2010 the Kyiv Court of Appeal ruled him one of the organisers of the Holodomor. A full Politburo member from 1935, he was arrested in 1938 and shot the next year, then rehabilitated in 1955.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1894–1937 ✕ Jumped during interrogation

The decade-long head of Byelorussia's government who signed the Academy purge, then stood in the same dock

On 21 June 1937, during interrogation in a fifth-floor room of the Minsk NKVD, Goloded — accused as a 'Polish spy' — threw himself from the window; the official cause was suicide, but unofficial accounts claim he was beaten to death and the jump staged.

Born a peasant who herded cattle from age seven, he joined the Bolsheviks in 1918 and from 1927 chaired the Byelorussian government for a decade, leading the industrialization and collectivization that turned the republic from an agrarian into an industrial land, for which he received the Order of Lenin in 1935. Yet he who had personally signed the resolution expelling the republic's academicians fell victim to the same terror: arrested in 1937 as a 'Polish spy,' he died after throwing himself from a fifth-floor NKVD window in Minsk.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1894–1969 ○ Natural causes

Khrushchev's loyal executor: a peasant-born apparatchik who twice led Soviet Ukraine's government

'Silence was his trump card. He'd wait for Khrushchev to propose something, then say: "Yes, yes, of course, that's exactly right."' — William Taubman

Soviet party and state leader who twice headed the Ukrainian SSR government (1938–1939, 1947–1954) and served 15 years as Chairman of its Supreme Soviet Presidium (1954–1969). Born to a poor peasant family, he joined the Bolsheviks in 1918 and organized Red partisans. In the 1930s he formed a lasting patron-client bond with Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow's Bauman district, riding that connection to the chairmanship of the Ukrainian Council of People's Commissars during the Great Purge. He organized partisan resistance under German occupation and led postwar reconstruction. Remembered as a classic yes-man whose silence was his trump card.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1895–1973 ○ Natural causes

The weaver who became wartime premier of the Russian republic

On 10 October 1941 Stalin named Khokhlov to the Western Front Military Council alongside Zhukov and Bulganin: 'Block the road to Tula and Moscow as long as possible.' The three names appear together on every order of the Battle of Moscow.

Born to a peasant family in Gubino near Moscow, he started work as a weaver at ten, then in 1918 raised a detachment of 125 fellow villagers and joined the Red Army, fighting in the Civil War on the Eastern Front before being badly wounded. After the Leningrad Financial Academy he rose through the Moscow Oblast soviet and the Central Union of Consumer Societies (Tsentrosouz), becoming Chairman of the RSFSR Council of People's Commissars in 1940. When the Great Patriotic War broke out he served on the Western Front Military Council, directing troop and supply transportation during the Battle of Moscow and earning a lieutenant-general's rank: the only RSFSR premier to hold a front-line generalship. After the war he returned to Tsentrosouz to rebuild the rural cooperative network shattered by war, then headed the State Trade Inspectorate from 1955 until retirement in 1965.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1898–1940 ✕ Executed

Yezhov’s longtime secretary, source of the first deposition against him

On 14 January 1939 she was forced to sign a confession that her old chief had drawn her into a conspiracy. The first deposition of the Yezhov case came from his own longtime secretary.

Born in Borisoglebsk in 1898, she first met Yezhov at a Kislovodsk resort in the summer of 1925 and from 1926 worked as a technical secretary in the Central Committee apparatus. When Yezhov took charge of a CC department in 1930 she became his secretary and stayed at his side until 1936, then worked briefly in the NKVD secretariat before returning to the CC. Her husband was Mikhail Ryzhov, who rose to deputy commissar of internal affairs under Yezhov. Arrested on 17 December 1938 after Yezhov's fall, she was interrogated by Beria himself, and at her interrogation of 14 January 1939 she was forced to sign a statement confessing that she had belonged to a counterrevolutionary conspiracy since 1931 and that her old chief had recruited her. That deposition became the starting point of the political case against Yezhov. On 26 January 1940 the Military Collegium sentenced her to death on charges of counterrevolutionary activity; she was shot the next day, and was rehabilitated in September 1956.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1901–1943 ○ Natural causes

Wartime RSFSR acting premier who oversaw civilian evacuation amid the Moscow panic

In May 1942, with German forces deep inside Soviet territory, Pamfilov became Acting Chairman of the RSFSR Sovnarkom. Until his death of heart failure less than a year later, he administered the entire Russian republic behind the front.

The son of an accountant who joined the Party as a teenager, Pamfilov rose through civil war and Kronstadt service to become a Soviet administrator. After managing Moscow's housing trust and serving as RSFSR People's Commissar of Public Utilities, he became deputy chairman of the USSR Evacuation Council in 1941, where prioritising party families over civilians contributed to the Moscow panic. In May 1942 he became Acting Chairman of the RSFSR Council of People's Commissars, administering the Russian republic through the war's most critical year until his death of heart failure. His ashes were interred in the Kremlin Wall and the Moscow Academy of Public Utilities was renamed in his honour.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1905–1950 ✕ Executed

Chairman of the Leningrad City Executive Committee and one of the six executed in the Leningrad Affair

On 13 August 1949, Lazutin was summoned with other Leningrad leaders to Georgy Malenkov's office and arrested on the spot.

Born into a working-class family in Petropavlovsk, in present-day Kazakhstan, he began working as a railway fitter at fourteen. After rising through the Komsomol in Kazakhstan, he was transferred to Leningrad in 1937, and during the siege he served as city party secretary for trade and industry, responsible for keeping the city supplied. As chairman of the Leningrad City Executive Committee (effectively mayor) from 1946 to 1949, he oversaw the post-war reconstruction plan, the resumption of television broadcasting, and the dedication of the cruiser Aurora as a permanent memorial. Arrested in August 1949 in Georgy Malenkov's office alongside other Leningrad leaders, he was one of the six chief defendants in the fabricated Leningrad Affair, sentenced to death on 30 September 1950 and shot the following day.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1908–1978 ○ Natural causes

The RSFSR premier who rose in the Leningrad Affair's wake and fell at the 19th Party Congress

In October 1952, immediately after the 19th Party Congress, Chernousov was removed from the Orgburo and the RSFSR premiership. His next job was director of the Moscow Searchlight Plant.

A technocratic party official born in Syzran to a railway worker, Chernousov began in Komsomol and graduated from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. From 1939 to 1948 he served as Second Secretary of the Moscow Oblast Committee under Alexander Shcherbakov, then was appointed RSFSR premier in March 1949 after Mikhail Rodionov was purged in the Leningrad Affair. Immediately after the 19th Party Congress in October 1952 he was stripped of all party posts and demoted to director of the Moscow Searchlight Plant; only after Stalin's death was he brought back as Deputy Minister of the Automobile Industry, ending his career quietly in Gosplan and Comecon.