People of the Revolution and the USSR

Belarus state institutions Nationalism 1879–1928 → Died in exile

Chairman of the Rada of the Belarusian People’s Republic from 1919 until his death, leading it in exile from Prague

Born in 1879 into the family of a village church deacon in the Grodno Governorate, he graduated from the seminary in Vilnius, worked as a teacher and from 1909 was employed at the Vilnius State Bank. In 1917, as chairman of the Borisov Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, he was a delegate to the First All-Belarusian Congress and joined its executive committee. In 1918 he was state controller and then secretary for finance and for trade in the People’s Secretariat, and became one of the leaders of the Socialist Federalist party. He became chairman of the Rada on 13 December 1919, went into exile in 1920 and represented the Rada from Kaunas and Berlin and, from 1923, Prague. In 1921 he organised a conference in Prague that condemned the Peace of Riga, and in 1925 he refused to accept the decision to dissolve the government in exile. He died in Prague in 1928.

Turkey state institutions Nationalism 1882–1948 ○ Heart attack

Eastern Front commander of the Turkish War of Independence who invaded Armenia in 1920 and imposed the Treaty of Alexandropol

Born in Istanbul in 1882, he graduated at the top of his class from the Ottoman Military College and fought at Gallipoli, at Kut and on the Caucasus front in the First World War. Joining Mustafa Kemal’s national movement, he commanded the Eastern Front in the War of Independence. He invaded Armenia in September 1920 and took Kars and Alexandropol; during the campaign his army displaced and massacred tens of thousands of Armenian civilians. He signed the Treaty of Alexandropol in December and the Treaty of Kars in 1921. In 1924 he founded the Progressive Republican Party, the first opposition party, which was closed; elected speaker of the Grand National Assembly in 1946, he died in office in 1948.

Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR) Nationalism 1883–1979 ○ Died

Journalist and politician who, as vice-president and later president of Sfatul Țării, led the movement for Bessarabia’s union with Romania

Born to poor peasants in Cubolta, Bessarabia, in 1883, he graduated from the Chișinău seminary and entered the University of Yuryev, but as a Socialist Revolutionary had to quit after the 1905 revolution. Sought by the Tsarist authorities after printing the hymn “Deșteaptă-te, române!”, he took refuge in Iași and studied there in 1908–1912. From 1913 he published the newspaper Cuvânt moldovenesc in Chișinău, writing unceasingly for union, and in 1917 he founded the Moldovan National Party. He was elected first vice-president, then president of Sfatul Țării. After 1918 he served as minister for Bessarabia and in other posts and joined the National Peasants’ Party; in 1924 he accused the Romanian government of turning Bessarabia into an “inferno”. Arrested in 1950, he was sentenced in the Soviet Union to 25 years’ hard labour, was held until 1957 and died in 1979.

Nationalism 1884–1955 → Died in exile

Musavat leader who headed the Azerbaijani National Council that declared the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918

Born near Baku in 1884, he founded Hummet, a Muslim social-democratic organization, in 1904. He took part in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution in 1909, and after returning to Baku in 1913 he became the chief of Musavat. As head of the Azerbaijani National Council he declared the independence of the Azerbaijan Republic on 28 May 1918. After the republic fell in 1920 he directed resistance until his arrest, but because he had once hidden Joseph Stalin from the police he was released and taken to Moscow. He escaped to Finland in 1922, lived in exile in Turkey, Poland and Romania, and died in Ankara in 1955.

Hungary Nationalism 1886–1944 ✕ Executed by hanging

National radical politician who denounced the Novi Sad massacre in parliament and was executed for preparing an anti-Nazi uprising

He was born at Szarvas. In 1923 he founded the Guardians of Race Party with Gömbös but drew away, forming the National Radical Party in 1930; in the 1930s he turned to speaking out against antisemitism. In 1939 he returned to parliament for the Independent Smallholders’ Party. Turning against the war in late 1941, he called in the Christmas issue of Népszava for an Independence Front to take Hungary out of the war and bring land reform and universal suffrage; in January 1942 he warned Bárdossy of the coming Novi Sad massacre and then denounced it in parliament as “a state-organized pogrom”. Wounded in a gunfight resisting arrest when the Germans occupied Hungary on 19 March 1944, he was freed in October and in November elected president of the Liberation Committee of the Hungarian National Uprising, but was arrested again and hanged at Sopronkőhida on 24 December.

Estonia state institutions Nationalism 1890–1945 ○ Died of cancer in exile in Sweden

Law professor and Estonia’s last constitutional prime minister who, acting as president, formed the Tief government in 1944

Born in Kirbla Parish in the Governorate of Estonia, he studied law at St Petersburg University and taught Roman and Estonian law at the University of Tartu until 1944. Editor-in-chief of Postimees and speaker of the lower chamber, he was prime minister from 1939 until Soviet troops entered Estonia in June 1940; after President Konstantin Päts was arrested by the Soviets he became, under the constitution, prime minister in the duties of the president. On 29 July 1941 he asked the Germans to let him form an independent government and was refused, and he declined to head the Self-Administration. On 7 February 1944 he appealed by radio for men to answer the call-up, and 38,000 registered. In June he appointed Otto Tief deputy prime minister, and in September, as the Germans withdrew, formed the Tief government. He then reached Sweden, where he died of gastric cancer in January 1945.