People of the Revolution and the USSR
- József Révai Révai József Overseer of culture in the Rákosi era
- Rudolf Herrnstadt Rudolf Herrnstadt Editor of Neues Deutschland who helped draft the 1953 New Course, moved against Ulbricht and was purged as a “faction”
- Fred Oelßner Fred Oelßner Economist and the SED’s chief ideologue until 1958, when he was expelled from the Politburo in the Schirdewan affair
- Anton Ackermann Anton Ackermann German communist who drafted the KPD’s 1945 appeal and argued for a “special German road to socialism”
- Géza Losonczy Losonczy Géza A reform communist journalist
- Wolfgang Leonhard Wolfgang Leonhard Youngest member of the Ulbricht Group who fled to Yugoslavia in 1949 and became a leading Western scholar of Soviet communism
- Günter Schabowski Günter Schabowski The East German Politburo spokesman whose mistake brought down the Berlin Wall
- Imre Pozsgay Pozsgay Imre The reformist Politburo member who called 1956 a 'popular uprising' and dismantled his own party's orthodoxy