People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1887–1936 ✕ Executed

A revolutionary who consistently pursued the intra-party left line, from Left Communism to the United Opposition

In February 1918, as chairman of the Moscow Regional Bureau, he led the resolution opposing Lenin's course of accepting the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.

Having joined the Bolsheviks in 1905 and endured six years in tsarist prisons and exile, he led the Left Communists against the Brest-Litovsk Treaty as chairman of the Moscow Regional Bureau in 1918. During the Civil War he served on the Revolutionary Military Council of the 5th Army and chaired the Ufa Revolutionary Committee, then adhered to every major intra-party left opposition: the Democratic Centralists (Decists), the Declaration of the 46 (1923), and the United Opposition (1926–27). Expelled and exiled in 1927, he returned to work as head of the Economic Research Sector of the RSFSR People's Commissariat of Finance, but was arrested and shot in 1936.

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1887–1937 ✕ Executed

From Moscow uprising artillery commander to Left Communist and Democratic Centralist

Building socialism in pre-industrial Russia alone was 'a side turning off the main highway of European socialism' — foredoomed to failure.

A Moscow law student and Bolshevik from 1907, he formed a Marxist theorists' trio with Nikolai Bukharin and Valerian Osinsky. In October 1917 he commanded the heavy artillery that secured Bolshevik victory in Moscow, and served as People's Commissar of Trade and Industry in early 1918. A Left Communist opponent of Brest-Litovsk, he spent the next decade in successive oppositions (Democratic Centralist, signatory of the Declaration of 46, and United Opposition ally of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev) consistently pressing for party democracy. From 1921–1927 he sat on the Gosplan Presidium, chaired the Vesenkha financial commission, served on the Council of Labor and Defense, and edited Pravda. He regarded Russian socialism in isolation as 'a side turning off the main highway of European socialism, foredoomed to failure,' and after expulsion declared the revolution dead under Stalin.

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1887–1938 ✕ Executed

The Siberian food chief whose name is one letter away from a Politburo member

His surname is Koganovich, while the Politburo member Lazar Kaganovich spelled his Kaganovich. That one letter is why the initial-less "Kaganovich" in the list of the 46 is so often misread.

Born in Kostroma, he joined the RSDLP in 1905 and was arrested several times before the revolution. He took part in establishing Soviet power in Kostroma in 1917 and worked in food procurement during the civil war. From April 1920 he chaired the Siberian Food Committee and sat on the Siberian Revolutionary Committee with a deciding vote. In 1927 he joined the Left Opposition and signed the platform of the 83. He was arrested on 20 June 1937, sentenced to death by the Supreme Court on 17 March 1938, shot the same day, and rehabilitated on 10 July 1958. Annotated editions of the Declaration of 46 identify him as the initial-less "Kaganovich" in the list of signatories. He is not Lazar Kaganovich, who at the time headed the organizational-instruction department of the Central Committee.