People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1878–1958 ○ Natural causes

Worker-Bolshevik who gave his name to Dnipropetrovsk and led Soviet Ukraine for two decades

In February 1915, a tsarist court stripped him of all rights and sentenced him to lifelong exile in Turukhansk — punishment for a worker-deputy who had spoken against the war.

A worker-Bolshevik, born the son of a tailor, who began laboring at age eleven. Elected to the Duma (1912), he was exiled to Siberia for anti-war speeches. After the October Revolution, as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, he helped found the Cheka. From 1919 to 1938 he served as Soviet Ukraine's head of state, signed the 1922 treaty creating the USSR, and was a candidate Politburo member. He survived the Great Purge but was dismissed in 1939, ending his career as deputy director of the Museum of the Revolution. The city of Ekaterinoslav was renamed Dnipropetrovsk in his honor in 1926 and carried his name until 2016.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1890–1946 ✕ Murdered

Pioneer of Ukrainian national communism, the original 'Shumskyism'

In April 1926, Shumsky met Stalin privately in Moscow for over two hours, demanding Kaganovich's replacement by Ukrainian Vlas Chubar and accelerated Ukrainization. Stalin's resulting Politburo letter condemned 'Shumskyism' as nationalist deviation — a watershed in the suppression of Ukrainian national communism.

A symbol of Ukrainian national communism and the prototype of 'Shumskyism': the demand for substantive republican autonomy against Moscow's centralism. A Borotbist who rose to the CP(b)U Politburo, he drove the de-Russification of Ukraine's cities and proletariat and the promotion of Ukrainian cadres as People's Commissar of Education (1924–1927). His 1926 confrontation with Stalin led to his condemnation for 'nationalist deviation' and removal from all posts; his name became shorthand for the suppression of Ukrainian autonomy within the Soviet system. Arrested in 1933, he endured the Solovki camps and Krasnoyarsk exile before the NKVD murdered him upon release in 1946; rehabilitated in 1958.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1891–1939 ✕ Shot in

The economic administrator who led Ukraine's government for 11 years, caught between Stalin's demands and the famine

In June 1932 Chubar reported to Stalin and Molotov that "tens of thousands of malnourished, starving and swollen people" were dying of famine "in every village", and asked for grain relief. Stalin replied that "Chubar is mistaken ... Ukraine has been given more than it should get".

An economic administrator born to a poor Ukrainian peasant family in Fedorivka, he joined the RSDLP in 1907. From 1923 he chaired the Ukrainian SSR's Council of People's Commissars for eleven years, driving industrialisation and collectivisation, and in June 1932 he reported the famine to Stalin and Molotov and requested emergency grain. He also bore responsibility for enforcing collectivisation and the 1932–33 famine, and in 2010 the Kyiv Court of Appeal ruled him one of the organisers of the Holodomor. A full Politburo member from 1935, he was arrested in 1938 and shot the next year, then rehabilitated in 1955.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1897–1938 ✕ Executed

Civil War hero who commanded the Grozny defence, then drove industrialization and collectivization as First Secretary of three republics

In February 1933, Gikalo wrote to the Politburo requesting troika authority to try a 'kulak and White Guard conspiracy' in the Tractorotsentr system — a republican party chief personally petitioning to accelerate the purge machinery.

A Ukrainian Bolshevik from Odessa, Gikalo earned the Order of the Red Banner for commanding the defence of Grozny (1918) during the Civil War. From 1929 he served as First Secretary of three Soviet republics in succession, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Byelorussia, driving industrialization and collectivization; in Byelorussia he presided over purges that halved party membership. A candidate CC member (1934–1937) and NKVD troika participant, he was arrested shortly after reassignment to Kharkov in 1937, shot in 1938, and rehabilitated in 1955.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1903–1983 ○ Died ; day and place disputed

Head of state in the Brezhnev-Kosygin collective leadership

In a 1965 Baku speech he attacked the heavy-industry bias and called gas exports to the West a sell-off of Siberia, but it was a counterattack after a newspaper criticized the Kharkiv party organization he had led; Suslov called his views revisionist.

Of Ukrainian origin and born in Karlovka, Poltava province, to a foundry worker's family; Soviet sources give his birth as 18 February 1906, while his passport year of 1903 came from adding three years during the Civil War. A sugar-industry engineer and party member from 1930, he became USSR Deputy People's Commissar for the Food Industry in 1940, but Mikoyan had him dismissed in 1942 for falsely reporting that he had personally supervised a front-line sugar plant's evacuation. First Secretary of the Kharkiv obkom from 1950, Ukrainian party First Secretary from 1957 and a CPSU Secretary from 1963, he was one of the main organizers of Khrushchev's removal. Head of state from 1965 and one pillar of the collective leadership, he was removed from the Politburo in 1977 and resigned the presidency that June; sources differ on the day and place of his January 1983 death.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1908–1996 ↓ Dismissed 1972

The republic first secretary removed for investing in Ukrainian culture

Suslov shouted, "Your Cossacks are an archaism!" Shelest shot back: "Without those Cossacks you wouldn't be here; they defended the borders from nomadic hordes."

First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine from 1963 to 1972, he steered the republic through the Khrushchev-to-Brezhnev transition and the 1968 Czechoslovak crisis. He channelled major funding into Ukrainian cultural heritage: the Khortytsia historical reserve, the Pyrohiv open-air museum of folk architecture, and the 26-volume 'History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR.' Shelest advocated Ukrainian economic and cultural interests within the Soviet framework until Brezhnev's faction removed him in 1972 on charges of 'Ukrainian nationalism.' His fall crystallises the central tension in Soviet federalism between republican autonomy and central control.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1917–2001 ↓ Transferred 1976

Brezhnev-era official across agriculture and government

At a 1973 Presidium meeting, Brezhnev blindsided Polyansky with a demotion to agriculture minister. Polyansky rose trembling: "No one told me." Brezhnev shot back: "Now we're talking."

A top Soviet official, Politburo member and First Deputy Premier, who authored the 'Polyansky Report' that indicted Khrushchev ahead of his 1964 ouster. Later served as Minister of Agriculture and as ambassador to Japan and Norway.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1918–1990 ○ Natural causes

The Brezhnev-era republic-builder who led Ukraine for 17 years, linchpin of the Dnepr clan

"What fool invented this word perestroika? Why rebuild the house? We are fine! What is there to rebuild?" — Shcherbitsky on Gorbachev's reforms.

Rising through the party apparatus in the Dneprodzerzhinsk-Dnepropetrovsk industrial belt, he served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine from 1972 to 1989 and sat on the CPSU Politburo for 18 years (1971–1989). Sharing Brezhnev's Dnepr network, he oversaw Ukraine's intensive industrialisation and economic expansion for 17 years, multiplying the republic's GDP more than fourfold. Briefly demoted for opposing Khrushchev's decentralisation schemes, he returned to power after Brezhnev's takeover. He drew criticism for the information blackout and the decision to proceed with the Kyiv May Day parade after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, and in 1989 became the last old-guard republic leader replaced by Gorbachev.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1941–2020 ○ Natural causes

The last Soviet culture minister

In his diploma performance as Hitler, Gubenko poured all his hatred for the man who killed his parents into the role. Lyubimov saw it and immediately brought him to the Taganka Theatre.

An actor and film director who rose from war orphan to People's Artist of the RSFSR. He was the first working arts professional to become Soviet Minister of Culture (1989–1991) since Anatoly Lunacharsky. After the USSR collapsed, he entered left-wing politics, serving as chair of the Duma's Culture Committee and deputy speaker of the Moscow City Duma, where he defended Soviet cultural heritage. Following the Taganka Theatre split, he founded and led the Sodruzhestvo Aktyorov Taganki until his death in 2020.