From Balkan revolutionary to head of Soviet Ukraine: the diplomat who became an opposition theorist
"Our misfortune is that we held responsible posts and power turned our heads." Final plea at the 1938 Moscow trial
A pan-European revolutionary of Bulgarian ethnic origin who also held Romanian citizenship, Rakovsky founded the Balkan Social Democratic Federation. As chairman of the Ukrainian Council of People's Commissars from 1919 to 1923 he helped build the Ukrainian Soviet state, and he later served as Soviet ambassador to Britain and France. A Left Opposition theoretician who challenged Stalin's nationalities policy and party bureaucratisation, he was expelled in 1927, admitted his errors to Stalin in 1934 and was readmitted in 1935. Sentenced to 20 years at the Third Moscow Trial in 1938, he was shot at Oryol on 11 September 1941 and rehabilitated on 4 February 1988.
Career timeline
1890–1896Medical studies in Geneva, Berlin, Montpellier; active in European socialist movements
1910Revived Romanian Social Democratic Party; founded Balkan Social Democratic Federation, first secretary
1919–1923Chairman of Sovnarkom of Ukraine; People's Commissar of Foreign and Internal Affairs
1919–1927Member of the Central Committee of the RCP(b); Orgburo member (1919–1920)
1923–1927Plenipotentiary representative of the USSR to Britain (1923–1925) and France (1925–1927)
1927–1935Left Opposition leader; expelled from party, exiled to Astrakhan, Saratov, Barnaul
1934–1937Admitted his errors to Stalin in 1934, readmitted to the party in November 1935; head of scientific institutes administration at RSFSR Health Commissariat
1937–1941Expelled again in 1936, arrested January 1937, Third Moscow Trial 20-year sentence; shot at Oryol on 11 September 1941
First woman to lead a Soviet government, between revolution and terminal illness
As German troops advanced on Kyiv, Bosch refused to abandon the city without a fight. Her comrades had to forcibly evacuate her.
A Bolshevik of German settler background, she became the first woman to head a Soviet government as acting leader of Ukraine's People's Secretariat in 1917. In Swiss exile she opposed Lenin on the national question; later she signed the Left Opposition's Declaration of 46. She died in 1925 after years of incurable illness.
Career timeline
1901Joined RSDLP; active in Bolshevik faction after the 1903 split
1907–1911Underground revolutionary work in Kyiv; secretary of the Kyiv Committee
1912–1914Arrested, exiled to Siberia, escaped via Japan and the US to Switzerland
1914–1917Swiss exile; opposed Lenin on the national question in the 'Baugy group'
1917.04–07Chair of South-Western Regional Party Committee; VI Party Congress delegate
1917.12–1918.03Acting head, People's Secretariat of Ukraine; People's Secretary of Internal Affairs
1918–1919Chair of Penza Party Committee; political commissar on Caspian-Caucasus Front
1923–1924Joined the Left Opposition; signed the Declaration of 46
Founder and head of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, close friend of Stalin and Kirov
March 1902, Moscow. Nineteen-year-old Fyodor raised a homemade red banner — 'Inviolability of the Person! Freedom of Speech! Freedom of Assembly!' — the signal launching the student demonstration. Arrest, prison, expulsion: thus 'Artyom' was born.
An Old Bolshevik from 1901, he rose from Donbas miner and railway worker to organizer of Russian immigrant workers in Australia, and in 1918 founded and led the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic. A close friend of Stalin and Kirov, he chaired the All-Ukrainian Military Revolutionary Committee and CEC during the Civil War and served as Moscow Party executive secretary. He defended Soviet power against German occupiers and Denikin's White Army, dying at 38 in the 1921 aerowagon derailment. His infant son was adopted and raised by Stalin.
Career timeline
1901–1902Joined RSDLP; led student demonstration at Moscow Technical School, expelled and jailed
1903–1905Underground revolutionary work in Donbas and Kharkov; led December 1905 Kharkov armed uprising
1906–1910Delegate to IV Congress; party work in Perm and Moscow; sentenced to lifetime Siberian exile, escaped
1911–1917Organized Russian workers in Brisbane, Australia; led general strike; published Echo of Australia
1917–1918Elected CC member at VI Congress; founded DKSR, chairman of its Council of People's Commissars
1918–1919Chairman of All-Ukrainian CVRK; chairman of All-Ukrainian CEC
1920Plenipotentiary in Bashkiria; suppressed 'Black Eagle' uprising; executive secretary of Moscow Party Committee
1920–1921Chairman of All-Russian Miners' Union CC; organized International Miners' Union
The Bolshevik between revolution and the industrial plan
January 1937, in the dock at the second Moscow trial. The German writer Lion Feuchtwanger recorded: "I shall never forget how Georgy Pyatakov, a gentleman of medium height, middle-aged, with a small bald patch and a reddish, old-fashioned, trembling pointed beard, stood before the microphone and calmly, diligently narrated how he had wrecked the industry entrusted to him. He explained, pointing with an outstretched finger, like a university lecturer — a historian delivering a report on the life and deeds of a long-dead man named Pyatakov, striving to clarify every detail, seized by the single desire that his listeners and students should understand everything correctly."
A Bolshevik revolutionary and the first head of Soviet Ukraine. As a Left Communist, he fiercely opposed Lenin over the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the national question, and was one of only six Bolsheviks named in Lenin's Testament. Expelled as a Left Oppositionist, he recanted and returned to drive the Five-Year Plans as Deputy Commissar of Heavy Industry, before becoming chief defendant at the second Moscow show trial and being executed in 1937.
Career timeline
1910–1917Joined Bolsheviks, Kiev underground, exile and emigration
1917–1918Kiev chairman, State Bank seizure, Left Communist faction
1918–1920CP(b)U Central Committee secretary, head of Ukraine government, GRU chief
1920–1927Donbas, Gosplan & VSNKh deputy chairman, Left Opposition
1928–1930Readmitted to party, Gosbank chairman, credit reform
1930–1936Deputy & 1st Deputy Commissar of Heavy Industry, Five-Year Plans
1936–1937Arrested, chief defendant at second Moscow trial, executed
Founder of Ukrainian Bolshevism, signatory of the Declaration of the 46
Sentenced to death by Petliura's forces, he escaped wounded at the last moment and hid until the Red Army arrived.
Yakov Drobnis was a Jewish worker-revolutionary who joined the Bolsheviks in 1906 at age sixteen, helped found the Ukrainian Communist Party in 1918 and served on its Central Committee through five convocations. During the Civil War he organized partisan detachments against Petliura and Denikin, chaired the Poltava and Odessa soviets, and served as secretary of the Ukrainian CP Central Committee in 1922. A signatory of the 1923 'Declaration of the 46', the founding document of the Left Opposition, he was expelled in 1927, reinstated in 1930, and executed in 1937 as a defendant at the second Moscow Show Trial.
Career timeline
1906Joined RSDLP (Bolsheviks)
1918–1920Co-founded Ukrainian CP; CC member through five convocations
1920–1922Chairman, Poltava and Odessa soviet executives
1922–1923Secretary, CC of Ukrainian CP
1923Signed 'Declaration of the 46,' joined Left Opposition
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.
Career timeline
1908Joined the Ukrainian Social Democratic Spilka
1917–1919Left-wing UPSR leader, then Borotbist Central Committee member
1919People's Commissar of Education, Ukrainian SSR (first term)
1920Led Borotbist merger into CP(b)U; Politburo & Orgburo member, Comintern ECCI member
1921–1923Plenipotentiary of the Ukrainian SSR to Poland
1924–1927People's Commissar of Education (second term); led Ukrainization drive
1927Condemned for 'Shumskyism'; rector in Leningrad
1933–1946Arrested, imprisoned, exiled; killed by NKVD upon release (rehabilitated 1958)
Ukrainian otaman who took Odesa for the Reds, then turned to revolt and pogrom
Proclaiming revolt in his May 1919 Universaл, he cried: "Ukrainian people! Take power into your own hands. Let there be no dictatorship of any one man or any one party."
The Ukrainian otaman who took Odesa for the Soviets in the spring of 1919, he rose against them in May and his troops massacred Jews at Yelysavethrad and elsewhere. He was shot by Makhno's men in July.
Career timeline
1901–1907Volunteered for the imperial army, fought in the Russo-Japanese War, and won three Crosses of St George.
1914–1916Served as an officer on the Southwestern Front in World War I, rising to staff-captain.
1918Led peasant partisans in Kherson province against the Austro-German occupiers and the Hetmanate.
1918–1919Served as chief of the Kherson Division of the Ukrainian People's Republic (Directory).
1919-02Went over to the Red Army, commanding the 1st Zadniprovska Brigade and then the 6th Ukrainian Soviet Division, and took Odesa in April.
1919-05Led the Hryhoriv uprising against the Red Army in May.
