People of the Revolution and the USSR

Georgia state institutions Left critics of Bolshevism 1877–1937 ✕ Executed

The Georgian communist who led Lenin's last fight against Stalin's centralization

"Being shot is not enough for me; I need to be quartered! It was I who brought the 11th Army here. I betrayed my people and helped Stalin and Beria, these degenerates, enslave Georgia and bring Lenin's party to its knees." — At his NKVD trial, 1937

Born into Georgian nobility, Mdivani joined the Bolsheviks in 1903 and fought in the Caucasus revolutionary underground and Civil War. As chairman of the Georgian Sovnarkom in 1922, he led opposition to Stalin's 'autonomization' plan, defending Georgia's sovereign rights within the Soviet federation (a dispute that drew Lenin into his last political battle on Mdivani's side against Stalin and Ordzhonikidze). He joined the Left Opposition in 1923, was expelled and exiled in 1928, reinstated in 1931, and shot in 1937 during the Great Purge.

Comintern Left critics of Bolshevism 1897–1935 ✕ Suicide

Comintern architect of the Canton uprising who led the first party-apparatus challenge to Stalin's collectivization

At the 16th Party Congress in 1930, he took the podium and openly assailed Stalin's forced collectivization. When he finished, the hall fell silent — his was one of the few speeches not greeted by applause.

A Georgian Bolshevik who left a deep mark on the Chinese revolution as a Comintern operative. In 1927 he chaired the August 7 Emergency Conference, engineered the removal of Chen Duxiu, elevated Mao Zedong to the Politburo, and approved the Canton uprising. He also advanced the theory that China's 'Asiatic mode of production' made it possible to bypass the capitalist stage. In 1930 he and Syrtsov formed the first party-apparatus opposition to Stalin's forced collectivization; demoted and marginalized, he shot himself in 1935 under threat of arrest.