Activities and affiliations

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1928–1995 ○ Stomach cancer

From Soviet military propagandist to the historian who opened the secret archives

Finding Lenin's 1918 telegram ordering the public hanging of a hundred kulaks — 'hang without fail, so the people see' — Volkogonov said: 'Lenin was the last bastion to fall in my own mind.'

A colonel-general who headed the Soviet military's psychological warfare directorate and served as deputy chief of the Main Political Administration, Volkogonov began writing a critical Stalin biography in 1978 using secret Central Committee archives. Completed in 1983 but banned until glasnost enabled publication in 1989, the book sent a shock through Soviet historiography. As director of the Institute of Military History he followed with critical biographies of Lenin and Trotsky; the Leaders trilogy won the Russian Federation State Prize posthumously. In his final years he served as Yeltsin's defence advisor and a Duma deputy, chaired commissions that declassified millions of KGB and Party documents, and described his lifelong Bolshevik faith as 'Utopian captivity.'

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1928–2006 ○ Natural causes

The last GlavPUR chief who stood to defend the military political organs through perestroika

He declared: "My principles are not changed like banknotes. I will not be the gravedigger of the political organs" — choosing resignation over the liquidation of the military political apparatus.

A career political officer who spent his entire working life in the Soviet armed forces' political apparatus, Lizichev was chosen by Gorbachev in 1985 to succeed Alexei Yepishev as Chief of the Main Political Directorate and lead perestroika in the military. He initially pursued renewal of the political organs, but when reform veered toward anti-army propaganda and the liquidation of the political officer system itself, he broke openly with the General Secretary. Declaring "My principles are not changed like banknotes — I will not be the gravedigger of the political organs," he chose resignation over complicity, becoming the last GlavPUR chief to defend the institution of party control over the armed forces before the Soviet collapse.

Military command Romania state institutions 1928–2016 ○ Convicted: 15 yrs for manslaughter; paroled 2014

The Romanian general who switched sides on the morning of the revolution and brought down a dictator

On the morning of 22 December, he asked a trusted doctor to put a plaster cast on his perfectly healthy left leg, hoping to avoid being sent back to crush the revolution.

A Romanian communist artillery officer, he rose to deputy defense minister by 1986. On 22 December 1989, moments after Ceaușescu appointed him defense minister, he issued the order withdrawing troops to barracks, then organized the dictator's helicopter escape before defecting to the revolution. On 25 December he organized and oversaw the drumhead trial and execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu. After the revolution he served as defense minister and national economy minister, but in 2008 was convicted of aggravated manslaughter for the Timișoara crackdown and sentenced to fifteen years.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1928–2023 ○ Natural causes

The last C-in-C of the Soviet Navy, the nuclear submariner who first patrolled under the Arctic ice

"I take full responsibility." — to the Black Sea Fleet commander who hesitated before the 1988 ramming of US warships in Soviet waters

The last Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy. In 1962, as captain of the November-class SSN K-21, he conducted the first Arctic under-ice autonomous patrol by a Soviet nuclear submarine and drafted the navy's first under-ice manoeuvring manual. He went on to command the 19th Submarine Division of Delta-class ballistic-missile submarines, the Northern Fleet, and served as Chief of the Main Naval Staff before becoming C-in-C and Deputy Minister of Defence in 1985. Under his command the Soviet Navy reached its zenith, with more than 200 ships deployed worldwide at any time, and in 1988 he authorised the Black Sea ramming operation 'Naval' against intruding US warships, taking personal responsibility. After the dissolution of the USSR he briefly served as the sole C-in-C of the CIS Navy, and in retirement founded the Russian Union of Submariners, leading it until 2014.

Military command Laos state institutions 1929–2011 ○ Died of illness in the US

Royal Lao Army general who led the CIA-backed Hmong army

Sources differ on the endpoint in May 1975: one has 5 May, when he was ordered before Souvanna Phouma to cooperate with the Pathet Lao; another has 14 May, when he left Long Tieng by helicopter as the shelling began.

A Hmong soldier from Nonghet in Xiangkhouang Province, Laos, and the only ethnic Hmong to reach general officer rank in the Royal Lao Army. During the 1960s and 1970s he commanded the CIA-trained and -supported irregular 'Secret Army' based at Long Tieng, fighting the Pathet Lao and the People's Army of Vietnam. Evacuated to Thailand in May 1975 amid the communist takeover, he then emigrated to the United States, settling in California by way of Montana, and became a leader of the Hmong American community, helping halt the forced repatriation of Laotian and Hmong refugees from Thailand in the late 1980s and 1990s. In 1981 he was among the founders of the United Lao National Liberation Front (Neo Hom). Charged in the United States in 2007 with plotting to overthrow the Lao government, he saw all federal charges dropped in 2009.

Military command Cuba state institutions 1930–1989 ✕ Executed by firing squad

Cuban general of the African expeditionary campaigns

As commander of the Cuban expeditionary force in Ethiopia from 1977, he directed the Jijiga counter-offensive that, with Soviet military advisers, broke the Somali army. Sources date the recapture of Jijiga to 4 or 5 March 1978.

Arnaldo Ochoa Sánchez (1930–1989) was a divisional general of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and a Hero of the Republic of Cuba. Born in Cacocum, he joined Column 2 under Camilo Cienfuegos in 1958 and fought in the Sierra Maestra, helped defeat the Bay of Pigs invasion, and sat on the Communist Party of Cuba's Central Committee for more than twenty years. He fought against the FNLA in Luanda in 1975 and in 1977 took command of the Cuban expeditionary force in Ethiopia during the Ogaden War. Awarded the Hero title in 1984, he was convicted of drug trafficking and treason in 1989 and executed by firing squad on 13 July. Sources give his second given name as Tomás or Teodomiro and his age at death as 58–59 or 57.

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.

Military command Somalia state institutions 1931–2016 ○ Died in exile

Barre's vice-president who commanded the Ogaden War

After Barre was badly injured in a 1986 car crash, Samatar served as de facto head of state for several months.

A Frunze Military Academy-trained general, he was a key figure of the Siad Barre regime and the supreme commander of the Ogaden War. Defence minister from 1970 and vice-president from 1971, he was elected to the Politburo and as deputy secretary-general at the 1976 founding congress of the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party, embodying the military's hold over the party after the Supreme Revolutionary Council's dissolution. In 1987 he became the first prime minister since the 1969 coup, but a US court later ordered him to pay $21 million over the Isaaq genocide.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1932–

The deputy defence minister who, at Tbilisi, pushed for force without waiting for the Politburo

"A decision must be adopted here on the scene": to the Georgian Defence Council, Tbilisi, 8 April 1989

A career officer who rose from Suvorov military school to the top of the Soviet Army, Kochetov was promoted to Army General in 1988 and appointed First Deputy Minister of Defence in January 1989. That April he was dispatched to Tbilisi, where he told the Georgian Defence Council that 'the magnitude of the crisis is not fully appreciated in Moscow' and that 'a decision must be adopted here on the scene,' opening the path to the use of force without Politburo clearance. The crackdown on 9 April killed 21 people, and subsequent documentary research established that Kochetov was acting on Yazov's instructions and that Gorbachev had not been informed in advance.

Military command Angola state institutions 1933–2000 ○ Natural causes

Founder of Angola's People's Armed Forces and its first Defence Minister

After the October 1976 plenum, Carreira officially declared that "for the MPLA, the only socialism that exists is the socialism of Marx, Engels and Lenin, scientific socialism."

First Defence Minister of independent Angola, founder and commander-in-chief of the People's Armed Forces (FAPLA), and the MPLA's military strategist second only to Agostinho Neto. After the October 1976 Central Committee plenum he officially declared that 'for the MPLA, the only socialism that exists is the socialism of Marx, Engels and Lenin, scientific socialism,' marking the party's adoption of Marxism-Leninism. He directed the suppression of the 1977 Nitista uprising and its military tribunals, but lost power after Neto's death in 1979 and spent his last years denouncing Angola's 'savage capitalism.'

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1934–

The general who sent men onto the Chernobyl roof when the robots died

'How is this possible?' I still cannot stop asking myself. 'Did we come from the Stone Age, to collect sheets of lead and cut makeshift protection for vital organs?'

A Soviet civil defence general and doctor of technical sciences. Four months after the Chernobyl explosion, when every remote-controlled robot had failed, the government commission handed him the most dangerous decontamination zone. He ordered lead sheeting stripped from the walls of government offices and improvised into protective gear, then ran 3,828 soldiers through the roofs of reactor 3 in 40–90-second shifts; they cleared 200 tonnes of highly radioactive debris by hand. He developed radiation sickness, wrote two books about the operation, and was nominated for Hero of the Soviet Union, only to be struck from the list after a conflict with the chief of staff of the Kiev Military District.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1935–2000 ○ Heart attack

Second human to orbit Earth and builder of Soviet military space systems

"Once you have your arms and legs arranged properly, space sleep is fine... I slept like a baby." — the first human to sleep in orbit, Vostok 2, August 1961.

Soviet cosmonaut and military space commander. On 6 August 1961, aboard Vostok 2, he became the second human to orbit Earth; his 17-orbit, 25-hour flight, the first long-duration mission, proved humans could eat, sleep, and work in space. At 25, he remains the youngest orbital pilot in history. He was the first to manually pilot a spacecraft, the first to film Earth from orbit, and the first to experience space sickness. After his flight he led cosmonaut training for the Spiral orbital spaceplane, and from 1979 to 1991 served as First Deputy Chief of GUKOS/UNKS, the USSR Ministry of Defence space directorate, overseeing military space systems including the Marshal Nedelin-class tracking ships. Elected to the Russian State Duma as a CPRF member (1993–2000).

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1935–

The last Chief of the Soviet General Staff, who refused to fire on civilians and twice drafted military reform

“These were young people expressing their views in the square. The task before me was to resolve the conflict without bloodshed.” — when asked why he refused the Kazakh party leadership's order to deploy troops against the 1986 Alma-Ata protests.

A professional soldier who rose from conscript to the highest military post in the USSR: Chief of the General Staff. As commander of the Central Asian Military District, he refused the Kazakh party leadership's demand to send troops against the December 1986 Alma-Ata protests, resolving the standoff without bloodshed. Twice entrusted with drafting military reform, first as First Deputy Chief of the General Staff under Gorbachev and again as Chief in 1991, he advocated shorter conscription, brigade-based organization, and a defensive posture, clashing with Defence Minister Yazov and later the Russian military establishment. Appointed Chief of the General Staff after the August 1991 coup, he held the post barely four months before the Soviet Union itself dissolved, making him the last man to hold the office.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1936–2014 ○ Died, prolonged illness

The general who gave the operational order to clear Rustaveli Avenue

'Not a single demonstrator died from a shovel. That was invented by Mr Sobchak together with the Georgian fascists.'

As commander of the Transcaucasus Military District, he gave the operational order to clear the independence rally on Tbilisi's Rustaveli Avenue on 9 April 1989, an action that left 21 civilians dead. The Sobchak commission named him, yet the chain of command ran upward to Defence Minister Yazov and the republican party leadership, and Rodionov became the only figure publicly held to account within that structure. He had previously commanded the 40th Army in Afghanistan (1985–86), and in 1996 Yeltsin made him Russia's Defence Minister, only to sack him ten months later when he refused to subordinate the army's budget to the government's reform plans.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 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.

Military command Angola state institutions 1939–1977 ✕ Executed after capture; exact date unconfirmed

Angolan political-military leader and co-leader of the Nitista current with Nito Alves

On 20-21 May 1977 the MPLA Central Committee removed him and Nito Alves on fractionism charges; the abortive coup of 27 May followed.

An Angolan soldier, politician and anticolonial ideologue. Influenced by his Marxist-oriented family, he abandoned medical studies for the MPLA, coordinated its clandestine Luanda committee, and was nicknamed 'Filósofo'. In January 1970 he enlisted in the Portuguese colonial army on a military-intelligence mission to seize weapons and was imprisoned until the Carnation Revolution freed him in 1974. Elected the youngest Central Committee member at the July 1974 Lundoji conference, he was named FAPLA national political commissioner and deputy chief of staff in March 1975. He attended the 25th CPSU Congress with Nito Alves and was a leader of the orthodox-communist Nitista current. Removed in May 1977, he was captured and executed.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1939–2012 ○ Died

The highest-ranking general who sided with Yeltsin during the August coup, commanding the White House defense

"The army will not go against the people" (at a press conference during the August 1991 coup)

As chief of the Soviet Signal Troops and Deputy Chief of the General Staff, he also took part in the Chernobyl disaster response. During the August 1991 coup, he was the highest-ranking active-duty general to break with the State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP) and side with Boris Yeltsin, organizing the White House defense headquarters in Moscow; he was appointed RSFSR Defence Minister on 20 August and promoted to Army General on 24 August. In an ironic turn, he helped storm the same White House he had defended during the October 1993 constitutional crisis, and in 1997 was arrested and convicted on corruption charges.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1939–2017 ○ Pneumonia

Soviet Air Defence Forces lieutenant colonel who correctly dismissed the Oko false alarm and prevented nuclear war

The siren howled, but I just sat there for a few seconds, staring at the big, back-lit, red screen with the word 'launch' on it.

A Soviet Air Defence Forces lieutenant colonel. On 26 September 1983, while on duty at the Serpukhov-15 early-warning command centre, the Oko satellite system reported five US ICBMs had been launched, but Petrov judged that a first strike would involve hundreds of missiles, not five, and ground radar showed no confirmation, so he reported a system malfunction rather than an incoming attack. His decision prevented what could have become a Soviet retaliatory nuclear strike and earned him the title 'the man who saved the world.' He received neither disgrace nor reward for his actions, retired early in 1984, and lived in obscurity in a Moscow suburb until his death from pneumonia in 2017.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1939–2022 ○ Natural causes

The last Soviet Chief of General Staff, undone by the August coup

On 22 August 1991, with the GKChP coup collapsing and Yazov under arrest, Moiseyev became acting Soviet Defence Minister for a single day. The next day, he too was dismissed.

The last Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces (1988–1991). A protégé of Dmitry Yazov who rose through the Far Eastern Military District to the military's second-highest post, Moiseyev directed the Afghanistan withdrawal and took part in arms control negotiations, but backed Yazov in the August 1991 coup and was dismissed after its collapse.

Military command Yemen state institutions 1942–1986 ✕ Killed by gunfire at the meeting

South Yemen's defence minister, shot in the January 1986 Aden violence

On 13 January 1986 guards of Ali Nasir Muhammad opened fire on opposition Politburo members in the Central Committee meeting hall; he was killed there.

A South Yemeni soldier and politician who served as a Politburo member of the Yemeni Socialist Party and as minister of defence. He joined the National Liberation Front against British colonial rule, rose through the army after independence, and after the party split sided with the al-Tugma faction that supported Abdul Fattah Ismail. He was killed on 13 January 1986 when Ali Nasir Muhammad's guards opened fire on opposition Politburo members at the Central Committee meeting hall in Aden; his death was one of the triggers of the civil war that followed.

Political and party leadership South African Communist Party (SACP) 1942–1993 ✕ Assassinated

The SACP leader who kept the revolutionary flame alive after laying down arms

“We are negotiating to create better conditions for socialism. I am a communist.” — Interview shortly before his assassination, 1993

General Secretary of the South African Communist Party and Chief of Staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe, he led the left wing of the liberation movement from armed struggle through the turn to negotiations. His assassination by a far-right immigrant in 1993 nearly derailed South Africa's democratic transition, but instead galvanized the final agreement on the 1994 elections.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1942–2014 ○ Died

The air-defense general who ordered KAL 007 shot down, later commander-in-chief of the Russian Air Force

"I will always be convinced that I gave the right order": Kornukov on the KAL 007 shootdown.

Born the son of a Donetsk miner in the Ukrainian SSR, Anatoly Kornukov rose through the Soviet air-defence forces to become the general who, on 1 September 1983, ordered the shootdown of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 as it crossed Sakhalin. When his superiors refused to take responsibility, he directed the interceptor pilot Major Osipovich to destroy the target on his own authority, maintaining to his death that the order was justified under Soviet and international law. Neither rewarded nor punished for the incident, he kept rising and in 1998 became the first commander-in-chief of the unified Russian Air Force. The decision cost 269 civilian lives, and he later declared he would 'always be convinced that I gave the right order.'

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1942–2020 ○ Natural causes

The last Soviet defence minister and final Marshal of Aviation

On 25 December 1991, as Gorbachev's nuclear briefcase was transferred to Yeltsin, Shaposhnikov told the press: "The nuclear button is in reliable hands."

A career officer who rose from fighter pilot to Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Air Force over three decades, Shaposhnikov played a decisive role in the August 1991 coup when, as air force chief, he proposed to Defence Minister Yazov that troops be withdrawn from Moscow and the Emergency Committee be dissolved. After the coup's collapse Gorbachev appointed him the Soviet Union's last Defence Minister, and on 26 August 1991 he was promoted Marshal of Aviation, the final person in Soviet history to receive a rank bearing the word 'marshal.' He oversaw the transfer of nuclear command from Gorbachev to Yeltsin, served as CIS Joint Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief and later as Secretary of Russia's Security Council, before heading Aeroflot and advising Sukhoi.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1942–2021 ○ COVID-19

The Soviet air force general who personally led 1,927 helicopter drops over the burning Chernobyl reactor

"Tons of graphite were burning inside the reactor. Firefighters were powerless. We decided to extinguish the hearth from helicopters."

Born to a Mokshan peasant family and trained at the Orenburg military aviation school, he flew reconnaissance missions in the 1968 Czechoslovakia invasion, the 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict, and over Afghanistan in 1979. As chief of staff of the Kyiv Military District Air Force, he received the call about the Chernobyl explosion on 26 April 1986, flew immediately to the site, and for ten days led helicopter crews dumping 4,925 tons of sand, lead, and boron into the burning reactor from 200 metres, personally flying over the crater. He continued serving until 1998 despite radiation exposure, then spent his final years as a United Russia deputy in the State Duma.