People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1877–1937 ✕ Executed

The revolutionary soldier who founded Post No. 1 at Lenin's Mausoleum

In a letter to Trotsky from Siberian exile dated 6 June 1928, Muralov wrote: "I would rather be drawn and quartered than write a confession. Even if I am alone — I will not write it."

Born on a farm, Grecheskie Roty, he left at seventeen for an agricultural school and joined the Bolsheviks in 1903 while working as an assistant agronomist in Podolsk. After serving on the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee in October 1917 he became the first commander of the Moscow Military District, and in the Civil War he sat on the Revolutionary Military Councils of the Eastern Front and the 12th Army. He signed the Declaration of the 46 in 1923, joining the Left Opposition, and in 1924 he founded Post No. 1 at Lenin's Mausoleum; after defending his views at the 15th Party Congress in 1927 he was expelled and exiled to Siberia. Arrested in Novosibirsk on 17 April 1936, he was sentenced to death on 30 January 1937, shot on 1 February 1937, and rehabilitated posthumously by the Supreme Court of the USSR in April 1986.

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1879–1940 ✕ Assassinated · Mexico

The orator who built the Red Army, felled by an ice axe

25 October 1917, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd. As Menshevik and Right SR delegates walked out in protest against the Bolshevik insurrection, Trotsky declared of them from the chair: 'Go where you belong from now on, into the dustbin of history!'

Born on 7 November 1879 (O.S. 26 October) in Yanovka, Kherson Governorate, in the Russian Empire, into a Jewish farming family. After the February Revolution of 1917 he joined the Bolsheviks and, as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, helped lead the October rising. As People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs he negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and from 1918 to 1925 he headed Military and Naval Affairs, building the Red Army and leading it to victory in the Civil War. From 1923 he led the Left Opposition, but Stalin outmanoeuvred him: expelled from the party in 1927, exiled to Alma-Ata in 1928, deported in 1929, and stripped of Soviet citizenship in 1932. In exile he argued in The Revolution Betrayed (1936) that the USSR had become a degenerated workers' state, and founded the Fourth International in 1938. He was killed in Mexico City in August 1940 by the NKVD agent Ramón Mercader.

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1880–1918 ✕ Killed during rebellion

Tsarist officer turned Red commander who took Kyiv, battled in Bessarabia, and rebelled against Brest-Litovsk

After taking Kyiv he reported to Lenin: 'I ordered artillery to strike at high-rise and rich palaces, at churches and priests.'

A peasant-born officer of the Imperial Russian Army who distinguished himself in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, he joined the Left SRs in 1917 and commanded the defense of Petrograd during the October Revolution. In early 1918 he seized Kyiv, establishing Soviet power in Ukraine, then led operations on the Romanian front to defend Bessarabia. Appointed commander of the Eastern Front in June 1918, he rebelled against the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in July, declared a 'war against Germany,' and was killed in Simbirsk.

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1883–1938 ✕ Executed

He arrested the Provisional Government in 1917; Stalin arrested him in 1937

Summoned to be shot, he gave his jacket and shoes to his cellmates. According to Yuri Tomsky, he said: "Tell people that Antonov-Ovseenko was a Bolshevik and remained a Bolshevik to his last day." Twenty-one years earlier he had arrested the Provisional Government.

Born into a Chernigov noble family, he joined the revolutionary movement in 1901. In October 1917, as secretary of the Military Revolutionary Committee, he prepared the seizure of the Winter Palace with Podvoisky and Chudnovsky and carried out the arrest of the Provisional Government. He commanded Soviet forces in the south and in Ukraine during the Civil War, and in 1921 chaired the plenipotentiary commission for the suppression of the Tambov peasant rising, signing its decision to use poison gas. Head of the Red Army Political Directorate from 1922, he was removed in January 1924 for defending Trotsky, then served as plenipotentiary to Czechoslovakia, Lithuania and Poland. Named RSFSR People's Commissar of Justice in 1937, he was arrested that year and shot on 10 February 1938. He was rehabilitated on 25 February 1956.

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1884–1928 Death circumstances disputed

Bolshevik military leader of 1917 and the Civil War

On the evening of 24 October 1917, Lashevich ordered A. V. Belyshev, the Military Revolutionary Committee commissar aboard the cruiser Aurora, to restore traffic across the Nikolaevsky Bridge that junkers had drawn apart the day before, and the task was carried out.

Born in 1884 in Odessa, in the Russian Empire, into a Jewish merchant family; he joined the RSDLP in 1901 and was a Bolshevik from 1903. In 1917 he took part in the October rising in Petrograd, and in the Civil War he commanded the 3rd Army. In 1925 he became First Deputy Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the USSR Revolutionary Military Council. After joining the United Opposition in 1926 he was demoted and worked at the Chinese Eastern Railway in Harbin until his death in 1928.

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1888–1936 ✕ Executed

The Red commander of the Urals

In 1926, after Zinoviev broke with Stalin, the Left Opposition weighed an alliance. Mrachkovsky: 'With no one — Zinoviev will run and Stalin will deceive.'

A Bolshevik organizer and Civil War hero from the Urals, he led the Special Northern Expeditionary Detachment to capture Tobolsk and was twice awarded the Order of the Red Banner. He later commanded military districts before becoming the first head of Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) construction. A key figure in the Left Opposition, he coined the famous warning 'Zinoviev will run away, and Stalin will deceive,' and was executed at the first Moscow Trial in 1936.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Left critics of Bolshevism 1939–1976 ✕ Executed

The naval officer who mutinied for Leninist principles against the Brezhnev regime

In his final letter to his son before execution: "Be strong and believe that life is beautiful. Be positive and believe that the Revolution always wins."

A Soviet Navy captain 3rd rank and political officer (zampolit) who, in November 1975, led a mutiny aboard the anti-submarine frigate Storozhevoy. Denouncing the corruption and stagnation of the Brezhnev era, Sablin aimed to sail from Riga to Leningrad and broadcast a call for a return to Leninist principles and a new communist revolution. The mutiny was crushed by Soviet air attacks before reaching its goal. Sablin was convicted of treason and executed by firing squad. His action, one of the most dramatic acts of Leninist dissent from within the late Soviet military, later inspired Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October.

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism ?–1920 ✕ Killed by pursuing troops

Red Army division commander who raised the "Red Army of Truth" against grain requisitioning in 1920

From a peasant family of Novouzensk district, Samara province, he fought in the First World War and returned to Novouzensk in 1917 as a second lieutenant, becoming the first chairman of the district soviet. A Left Socialist Revolutionary, after the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion he called himself a communist without joining the party. As commander of the Red Army's 22nd Division he held Uralsk through an 80-day siege in 1919, but was removed from the front "for inept command and a corrupting policy". In 1920, while forming the 9th Cavalry Division, he learned of his dismissal and on 14 July renamed the division the "1st Red Army of Truth" and rose in revolt. He was killed by a pursuing detachment near the aul of Koim on 6 September 1920.