Activities and affiliations

Government and administration Ethiopia state institutions 1892–1975 ✕ Murdered by the Derg after deposition

Moderniser and anti-fascist icon who never touched the land order that finally undid his dynasty

In 1936 he told the League of Nations, 'God and history will remember your judgment.'

Descended from the Solomonic dynasty, Haile Selassie I was the 20th-century emperor who modernised Ethiopia and, with his 1936 speech to the League of Nations, became a global symbol of anti-fascism. From his regency he drove reform through the 1931 constitution and the abolition of slavery, and after exile under Italian occupation he returned with British forces in 1941 to restore the throne. But his modernisation, which left the northern rist and gult tenures and the southern land-grant system intact through compromise with the nobility and clergy, never freed the peasantry from tenancy, and the 1972 Wollo famine turned opinion against him. Deposed by the Derg in September 1974, he was strangled on the junta's orders the following August, months after the proclamation that nationalised the land system his reign had preserved.

Government and administration Ethiopia state institutions 1921–1977 ✕ Killed in military purge

Early chairman of the Derg

In July 1975 he proposed a united front of 'all the forces that rejected the ancient regime, built from the base'; Mengistu and his supporters opposed this strategy.

An Ethiopian officer who became Derg chairman in late 1974. He served as head of state during nationalization of land and major industries but could not contain the internal military struggle. He was killed in February 1977, after which Mengistu consolidated predominance.

Military command Ethiopia state institutions 1931–1977 ✕ Shot on

The Derg's last independent leader

On 3 February 1977 he was outside the capital presenting a flag to a militia unit, which observers thought saved his life. Arrested at Derg headquarters on 11 November, he was shot the next day.

An Ethiopian officer of the founding generation of the Derg, the military committee that deposed the emperor in 1974. A major in the Fourth Division, he was elected its vice-chairman and became a lieutenant colonel after April 1975. In 1976 he directed the recruitment of tens of thousands of peasants for a militia bound for the Eritrean front, and was seen as symbolizing a conservative, nationalistic and religious outlook. He survived the 3 February 1977 shootout to become first vice-chairman, only to be executed on Mengistu's orders on 12 November 1977.

Political and party leadership Workers' Party of Ethiopia 1937–

Consolidation of Derg rule

At a Derg meeting he vowed of the aristocrats who called dark-skinned, kinky-haired people slave "Barias": "I shall soon make these ignoramuses stoop and grind corn!"

A leader of Ethiopia’s Derg, the military committee emerging from the 1974 revolution. He consolidated predominance after the 1977 power struggle and led military and party-state institutions. Land reform and state-led development proceeded amid political repression and prolonged war.