People of the Revolution and the USSR

Independent activity Non-Bolshevik socialists 1861–1920 ○ Natural death

German trade-union leader who signed the 1918 agreement with Stinnes and met the Kapp Putsch of 1920 with a general strike

Born in Marienburg, he grew up in an orphanage and became a wood turner. He joined the Social Democrats in 1885, chaired the General Commission of the German Trade Unions from 1890, and sat in the Reichstag in 1893–1898 and 1903–1920. In 1913 he became the first President of the International Federation of Trade Unions. He led the SPD’s right wing, and in the First World War supported the civil truce and the renunciation of strikes. On 15 November 1918 he signed an agreement with Hugo Stinnes under which employers for the first time accepted the unions as workers’ representatives, with the eight-hour day and works councils, while the unions rejected the radical socialists’ demands. In 1919 he became chairman of the new General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB), and in March 1920 he organised the general strike against the Kapp Putsch. He died in Berlin later that year.

Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1863–1919 ✕ Assassinated

Lawyer who founded the USPD against the war and co-chaired the Council of People’s Deputies with Ebert in 1918

After Ebert’s government bloodily suppressed the revolutionary Volksmarinedivision in December 1918, Haase and fellow USPD delegates resigned from the Council of the People’s Deputies in protest.

Born to a Jewish family in East Prussia, he made his name as a lawyer defending socialists and in 1911 became SPD co-chairman alongside Bebel. In August 1914 he opposed war credits but had to read the party’s statement in their favour in the Reichstag. In 1917 he founded the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) with the war’s opponents. In November 1918 he co-chaired the Council of People’s Deputies with Ebert, leaving the government after the Christmas crisis. Shot outside the Reichstag in October 1919, he died in November.

Labour Party (United Kingdom) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1863–1935

British Labour organizer and politician who led the international disarmament effort.

Henderson worked as an iron foundryman and became active in the trade-union movement. He helped establish the Labour Representation Committee in 1900, chaired the conference that formed the Labour Party in 1906, and served as party secretary from 1911 to 1934, building its organization and broadening its base. He was president of the Board of Education in 1915–16, home secretary in 1924, and foreign secretary from 1929 to 1931. Elected president of the League of Nations Disarmament Conference in 1932, he pursued international negotiations even as the conference ultimately failed; his work for peace and disarmament earned him the 1934 Nobel Peace Prize.

Germany state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1865–1939 → Died in exile

SPD politician who proclaimed the republic from a Reichstag window on 9 November 1918 and became Weimar’s first head of government

On 9 November 1918, he proclaimed Germany a republic from a Reichstag window. In June 1919, he resigned as head of government rather than sign the Treaty of Versailles.

A printer from Kassel who became an SPD journalist and Reichstag deputy, he joined Prince Max of Baden’s cabinet in October 1918. On 9 November, hearing that Liebknecht was about to proclaim a socialist republic, he proclaimed a republic first from a Reichstag window, to Ebert’s fury. A People’s Deputy, he became head of government in February 1919 but resigned in June rather than accept the Treaty of Versailles. He was mayor of Kassel in the 1920s, survived a far-right cyanide attack in 1922, went into exile in 1933 and died in Copenhagen.

Labour Party (United Kingdom) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1866–1937 ○ Natural causes

Politician who gave up the Labour chairmanship in 1914 over war credits and later became Britain’s first Labour prime minister

He resigned as Labour chairman in 1914 over Britain’s entry into the war and war spending; in 1931 he led a national government and lost Labour’s support.

Born into poverty in Lossiemouth, Scotland, he became an organiser of the Independent Labour Party and Labour and was chairman of the party from 1911. When Labour backed the government’s war credits in August 1914 he resigned the chairmanship and was fiercely attacked for his opposition to the war. In 1924 he became Britain’s first Labour prime minister and recognised the Soviet Union, returning as prime minister in 1929. Forming a National Government with the Conservatives in the crisis of 1931, he was expelled from Labour. He died at sea in 1937.

Germany state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1867–1919 ✕ Assassinated

Journalist who overthrew the Bavarian monarchy in Munich in November 1918, proclaimed the People’s State and was assassinated the next year

He organized the November 1918 Bavarian Revolution, overthrew the monarchy and proclaimed the People’s State; he was assassinated in February 1919 while on his way to resign.

Born to a Jewish merchant family in Berlin, he was a theatre critic and editor of the SPD’s Vorwärts before moving to Munich. He joined the USPD against the war and was jailed for leading the munitions strike of January 1918. On 7 November he led demonstrators from a rally on the Theresienwiese round the barracks, and the next day proclaimed the People’s State of Bavaria and became premier. His publication of documents on German war guilt earned him the right’s hatred. Heavily defeated in the January 1919 election, he was assassinated by Count Arco-Valley on 21 February on his way to resign.

Non-Bolshevik socialists 1868–1920 ✕ Murdered by officers

Editor of the Social Democratic Népszava who was murdered by an officer detachment in 1920 for exposing the White Terror

A former schoolteacher, he wrote for Népszava from 1903, led the organisation of teachers, and in 1906 became president of the Free Association of Hungarian Teachers. He was state secretary for education in Mihály Károlyi’s coalition government, but during the Soviet Republic declined any role on grounds of principle and criticised the dictatorship of the proletariat in the National Assembly of Councils. In September 1919 he became responsible editor of Népszava and wrote articles exposing the White Terror. On 17 February 1920 officers of the Ostenburg detachment abducted and murdered him together with his colleague Béla Bacsó and threw the bodies into the Danube. Horthy’s amnesty of 1921 ensured the killers were never punished.

Germany state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1868–1946 ○ Natural causes

SPD defence minister who said “someone has to be the bloodhound” and used the Freikorps to crush the left risings of 1919

He directed the suppression of the 1919 Berlin uprising with Freikorps and army forces, then authorized summary executions by military forces in a March order.

A basket-maker from Brandenburg who became an SPD journalist, he entered the Reichstag in 1906 and was known as its military expert. Sent to Kiel as the government’s representative in November 1918, he calmed the mutiny and became governor. After the Christmas crisis he joined the Council of People’s Deputies for military affairs and, saying “someone has to be the bloodhound”, organised the Freikorps that crushed the January rising and the March battles. First defence minister from February 1919, he resigned after the Kapp Putsch of 1920, later governed the province of Hanover and was arrested after the July 1944 plot.

Georgia state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1868–1953 → Died in exile

Leader of the Georgian Mensheviks who headed the government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia in 1918–1921

Born in Guria, western Georgia, in 1868, he took up Marxism at the Warsaw Veterinary Institute and in the 1890s led Mesame Dasi, Georgia’s first legal Marxist organization. He sided with the Mensheviks in 1903 and sat in the First State Duma in 1906. In 1917 he chaired the Tbilisi Soviet and the National Council of Georgia; in May 1918 he headed the session that declared independence, and from July he led the government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, carrying out land reform and social legislation. After the Red Army invasion of 1921 he went into exile in France, led the government-in-exile and died near Paris in 1953.

Spanish Republic state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1869–1946 ○ Illness

The UGT worker-leader they called the Spanish Lenin, a prime minister broken between revolution and war

In November 1936 Largo Caballero appointed four CNT leaders to his cabinet: anarchists whose programme was the abolition of the state took ministerial office in one. One of them, the health minister Federica Montseny, was the first woman to hold a ministry in Spanish history.

A man who left school at seven, worked as a stucco plasterer and became a union leader. At the head of the UGT he was sentenced to life for the general strike of August 1917, and under the Primo de Rivera dictatorship he took a seat on the Council of State to keep the organization alive, a choice argued over for the rest of his life. As labour minister of the Second Republic he pushed through the eight-hour day in the countryside, and around the Asturias rising of 1934 he moved so far left that his supporters called him the Spanish Lenin. In September 1936 he became prime minister and war minister, and in November brought four CNT leaders into the cabinet, seating anarchists in a government for the first time; but he clashed continuously with the communists and the Soviet advisers over rebuilding a regular army and over the pace of the revolution. After the May Days of 1937 he refused to outlaw the POUM, lost his ministers and fell. In exile in France he was seized by the Gestapo and held in Sachsenhausen until the liberation of 1945.

Non-Bolshevik socialists 1869–1947 ○ Natural causes

A historian who linked scholarship with social democracy

In Moscow in 1940, he signed the peace treaty that ended the Winter War.

Väinö Voionmaa was a Finnish historian, professor and Social Democratic politician who helped shape the early republic. He founded institutions for workers’ education and joined scholarship to popular political work through parliament, diplomacy and social policy. As a Social Democratic member of Finland’s delegation to the Moscow Peace Treaty negotiations in 1940, he signed the settlement that ended the Winter War, embodying the difficult compromises imposed on Finland between war and great-power politics.

Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1870–1940 ○ Died in prison

PSOE right-wing leader, Speaker of the Cortes; joined Casado's coup, refused exile, and died in Franco's prison

"The great majority, the masses, they cannot leave, and I, who have always lived with the workers, will continue with them and with them I will stay. Whatever is their fate will be mine," to the socialist daily La Voz, March 1939

A Marxist revisionist who started as a philosophy professor in Madrid and succeeded Pablo Iglesias as leader of the PSOE and UGT in 1925. As Speaker of the Constituent Cortes (1931) he held to a moderate parliamentarism, and his opposition to the armed rising of October 1934 cost him his party base. During the Civil War he stayed in Madrid seeking a negotiated peace, and in March 1939 joined Colonel Casado's coup against Negrín, serving on the National Defence Council; but Franco demanded unconditional surrender. When every other council member fled, Besteiro refused, telling the socialist daily La Voz that he had always lived with the workers and would share their fate; a Francoist court martial sentenced him to life imprisonment and he died in Carmona prison.

Germany state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1870–1944 ○ Natural death

Social Democratic chancellor whose government accepted the Treaty of Versailles under an Allied ultimatum

Born in Darkehmen in the Province of Prussia, he worked as a lawyer’s clerk, co-founded the office employees’ union and was second chairman of the General Commission of Trade Unions from 1908 to 1918. Elected to the Reichstag for the SPD in 1912, he became labour secretary in Max von Baden’s cabinet in October 1918. When Scheidemann resigned in protest at the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, Bauer, until then a vocal critic of the treaty, succeeded him and got it through the National Assembly. His government carried out tax reform and extended social insurance, but was forced out in March 1920 over the negotiations conducted with the Kapp putschists. He was later vice-chancellor and treasury minister, and the Barmat corruption scandal cost him his seat in 1925. He died in Berlin in 1944.

Austria state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1870–1950 ○ Natural death

Austrian Social Democratic leader who signed the Treaty of Saint-Germain and founded the Second Republic in 1945

Born to an ethnic German farming family in Moravia, he studied law in Vienna, joined the Social Democrats and entered the Imperial Council in 1907. An Austromarxist theorist of “personal autonomy” on the national question, he was criticised by Lenin and Stalin. In 1918 he became the first chancellor of German-Austria, leading a grand coalition that introduced the eight-hour day among other reforms, and had to accept the ban on union with Germany and the territorial losses of Saint-Germain. He supported the Anschluss in 1938. In April 1945, at Soviet direction, he formed a provisional government, and that year became president. He died in Vienna in 1950.

Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1871–1925 ○ Peritonitis

SPD leader who headed the revolutionary government of 1918, steered the councils into parliamentary democracy and became the first president

During the November Revolution of 1918, Ebert led the Council of People’s Representatives and advocated elections to a National Assembly. Elected the first president of the German Republic in 1919, he served until 1925.

Born to a tailor in Heidelberg, he worked as a saddler, became a party organiser in Bremen and in 1913 succeeded Bebel as SPD co-chairman. In the war he backed war credits and the Burgfrieden. Taking over the chancellorship on 9 November 1918, he led the Council of People’s Deputies and that night won the army’s support in a secret pact with General Groener. Elected president by the National Assembly in February 1919, he put down risings from left and right with the army, the Freikorps and emergency decrees under Article 48. He died in office in 1925 after an appendicitis operation.

Italian Socialist Party (PSI) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1872–1926 ○ Heart failure

Italian Socialist leader who took his party into the Comintern but refused to expel the reformists, causing the Livorno split of 1921

He moved the Socialist Party left during the war and led it into the Comintern, but in 1921 refused to break with reformists as the Communists split away.

Born in Spotorno, he became a central leader of the Italian Socialist Party and in 1914 succeeded the ousted Mussolini as editor of Avanti!. He pushed the party left during the war, joined the Zimmerwald movement and after the October Revolution led the PSI into the Comintern. At the Second Congress of 1920 he sat on the presiding committee and was elected to the Executive, but in 1921 he rejected the principle of breaking with the reformists and stayed at the head of the Socialist Party as the Communists split away. In 1924 he led the party’s left wing into the Communist Party, and in 1926 died of heart failure on his way to an underground party meeting.

French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1872–1950 ○ Heart disease

France's first Socialist prime minister, who left behind paid holidays and the 40-hour week

'I rarely left my desk while in power; but whenever I went out and crossed the Paris suburbs and saw the roads covered with processions of jalopies, motorcycles and tandems, with working-class couples in matching pullovers, I had the feeling that, despite everything, I had brought a kind of clearing, a break in the clouds, into difficult and obscure lives', statement at the Riom trial, March 1942

A literary critic drawn into politics by the Dreyfus affair, he kept the Socialist SFIO's 'old house' standing at the 1920 Congress of Tours when the majority left to found the Communist Party. As prime minister of the 1936 Popular Front government he brokered the Matignon Agreements and enacted two weeks of paid holidays and the 40-hour week, becoming France's first Socialist and first Jewish head of government and a target of the far right. One of the eighty parliamentarians who voted against full powers for Pétain in 1940, he turned Vichy's Riom trial into a platform for defending the Popular Front, survived internment near Buchenwald, and briefly headed a caretaker government in late 1946.

Italy state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1873–1951 ○ Natural causes

A reformist politician who organized compromises between fascism's fall and the monarchy

In June 1943, he secretly urged the king to dismiss Mussolini, appoint Badoglio, and break Italy's alliance with Germany.

Ivanoe Bonomi was a politician who moved from reformist socialism into the center of Italian liberal parliamentary politics. His record during fascism's rise included insufficient resistance and support for Mussolini's government, a compromise that later shaped criticism of his leadership. From 1942 he reconnected anti-Fascist forces, secretly urging King Victor Emmanuel III in 1943 to dismiss Mussolini and appoint Pietro Badoglio, then chairing the six-party Committee of National Liberation. He subsequently managed the difficult transition among the monarchy, the resistance, and the Allies, helping carry Italy toward postwar parliamentary institutions.

Finland state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1873–1963 ○ Natural causes

Finnish labour leader who became the world’s first Social Democratic head of government and then joined the Red government

Born in Kannus in Central Ostrobothnia in 1873, he emigrated to America at 17, worked in the mines and joined the radical Western Federation of Miners. Back in Finland from 1900, he entered Parliament for the Social Democrats in 1907, chaired the Finnish Trade Union Federation in 1912–1917 and was Speaker in 1913. In 1917 he became vice-chairman of the Senate’s economic department, the world’s first social democratic prime minister. In the civil war he was commissar for supply in the People’s Delegation, signed the 1 March treaty with Soviet Russia and fled to Russia after the defeat. In 1919–1920 he advised the British-organised Murmansk Legion, for which the Communist Party of Finland sentenced him to death. From 1922 to 1949 he edited the social democratic paper Raivaaja in the United States, and the 1944 Lex Tokoi cleared him of the civil war charges.

Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1875–1946 ○ Natural causes

German social-democratic politician and co-chair of the Independent Social Democratic Party.

A painter and journalist, Crispien opposed the Social Democratic Party's support for the war and helped found the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) in 1917. He served as interior minister in Württemberg's provisional government in 1918–19 and became a USPD co-chair in 1919. He attended the Communist International's Second Congress in 1920 as a USPD delegate but opposed its admission conditions and merger with the Communist Party of Germany. After most of the USPD reunited with the Social Democratic Party in 1922, he joined its leadership; he went into exile after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933.

Germany state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1876–1931 ○ Natural causes

A Social Democratic politician of the Weimar Republic who served twice as chancellor.

Müller joined the Social Democratic Party in 1893 and rose to its leadership. As foreign minister from 1919 to 1920, he signed the Treaty of Versailles for Germany. His first chancellorship in 1920 combined the suppression of left-wing uprisings with reforms expanding disability employment, primary education, unemployment benefits and workers’ social protection. He returned as chancellor in 1928 to lead a grand coalition, which collapsed amid the Great Depression and disputes over financing unemployment insurance; he resigned in 1930.