Activities and affiliations

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1943–

The last Soviet soldier to leave Afghanistan, the face of the Soviet withdrawal

On 15 February 1989, standing on the Friendship Bridge, he told a Soviet TV reporter: "There is not a single Soviet soldier left behind me."

A Soviet general who served three tours in the Soviet–Afghan War and, as the last commander of the 40th Army (1987–1989), directed the Soviet withdrawal. He was made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1988 for Operation Magistral, which lifted the siege of Khost. On 15 February 1989 he crossed the Friendship Bridge on foot, the last Soviet soldier to leave Afghanistan, the symbolic end of the nine-year war. He went on to command the Kyiv Military District, served as First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, and as Deputy Minister of Defence of Russia. In 1991 he ran for vice-president alongside Nikolai Ryzhkov. In the post-Soviet era he served twelve years as governor of Moscow Oblast, embodying the political transition of the Soviet military elite.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1943–1992 ○ Cancer

The 40th Army commander who halved Afghan losses, then Russia's first Chief of General Staff

Defence Minister Pavel Grachev came to his hospital ward in person to pin the General of the Army shoulder boards on him. Dubynin, already terminal with cancer, could not rise from the bed.

Soviet and Russian military commander. As commander of the 40th Army in Afghanistan (1986–87), he introduced large-scale helicopter assaults and computer-aided command, halving irrecoverable losses and becoming the first commander to challenge the concealment of casualty figures. As Northern Group of Forces commander (1989–92), he executed the orderly withdrawal of Soviet troops from Poland. Appointed first Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces in June 1992, he restrained President Yeltsin's ill-considered nuclear-force reforms and secured approval for the Topol-M, Borei-submarine, and Iskander programs that became the technical foundation of post-Soviet Russian defence. He received his General of the Army shoulder boards on his hospital deathbed and was posthumously named Hero of the Russian Federation.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1944–2015 ○ Died

The Soviet air-defence interceptor pilot who shot down KAL 007

"I knew this was a civilian plane. But for me this meant nothing": Osipovich's 1991 Izvestia recollection.

A Su-15 interceptor pilot of the Soviet Air Defence Forces, Gennady Osipovich shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747, over Sakhalin on 1 September 1983. He fired warning bursts, but his fighter was loaded with armour-piercing rather than tracer rounds, so the flight crew never saw them, and although he glimpsed two rows of windows and knew he was chasing a civilian airliner, he launched his missiles without positively identifying the target, killing all 269 people aboard. In a 1991 Izvestia interview he admitted that the official claim of tracer fire was untrue, and he spent his later years in quiet retirement in Maykop.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1945–

A party cadre who moved from army organization to the late Soviet Politburo

In April 1991, while responsible secretary of the All-Army Party Committee, he joined the late Soviet Politburo.

Mikhail Semyonovich Surkov was a Soviet party organizer and politician whose career developed within the armed forces' political apparatus. After working in party-control posts in the army, he entered the Politburo shortly before the Soviet Union's dissolution, embodying the late system's reliance on institutional cadres amid crisis. He later carried that experience into the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the State Duma, and the Accounts Chamber.

Military command Angola state institutions 1945–1977 ✕ Executed (failed coup)

The radical MPLA interior minister who sought Soviet backing only to die in a failed coup

At the 1977 Central Committee he declared, 'As for me, I am the revolution incarnate,' demanding the immediate resignation of the leadership.

Nito Alves was the first interior minister of Angola and leader of the radical 'Nitista' faction within the MPLA. A guerrilla commander in the Dembos region during the independence war, he won the interior ministry at independence and used it to plant loyalists throughout the new state apparatus. In March 1976 he led Angola's delegation to the 25th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, presenting himself as head of the 'purely Marxist-Leninist wing' to win Soviet backing, which pushed Neto's leadership to adopt Marxism-Leninism formally. After the failed coup of May 1977 he was captured and shot by firing squad.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1945–2011 ○ Natural causes

Soviet airborne forces commander and deputy defence minister in the August 1991 coup

On 19 August 1991, during the GKChP coup, Achalov coordinated the entry of airborne troops into Moscow and was tasked with blockading the Ostankino television centre.

Born on 13 November 1945 in the village of Atamash, Atninsky District, Tatar ASSR, and died in Moscow on 23 June 2011. He graduated from the Kazan Tank School (1966) and the Armoured Forces Academy (1973), commanded the 7th Guards Airborne Division (1978), the 8th Guards Army (1985–1987) and the Leningrad Military District as chief of staff (1987–1989), and became a major-general in 1980. He commanded the Soviet Airborne Forces from January 1989 to December 1990 and was Deputy Minister of Defence of the USSR from December 1990 to September 1991, becoming colonel-general in 1989. Named in the GKChP indictment among the deputy defence ministers who joined the conspiracy at the 17 August 1991 meeting, he sided with the Supreme Soviet in the 1993 crisis, was appointed Defence Minister by Alexander Rutskoy, arrested and amnestied in February 1994.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1947–

Russia's only vice president: stood with Yeltsin against the coup, then fell to Yeltsin's tanks

During the shelling of the White House on 4 October 1993, Rutskoy shouted live on radio: "If the pilots can hear me, get your combat machines up! This gang has settled in the Kremlin.… Save the perishing democracy!"

One of the last Heroes of the Soviet Union and the only vice president Russia ever had. A combat pilot who flew 485 sorties in the Su-25 over Afghanistan, was shot down twice and captured, and received the Hero of the Soviet Union title in 1988. Elected RSFSR vice president in 1991 as Yeltsin's running mate, he helped organize the White House defense during the August coup, delivered a letter to Lukyanov demanding a medical examination of Gorbachev, and persuaded Patriarch Alexy II to declare the Church's support for Yeltsin. He later broke with Yeltsin over economic policy and power concentration, sided with the parliament, and was proclaimed acting president during the 1993 constitutional crisis before being arrested when tanks shelled the White House.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1948–2012 ○ Meningitis

The airborne commander who held the coup's key and handed it to Yeltsin

'With a single airborne regiment I could restore order in two hours': Grachev's boast on the eve of the First Chechen War proved the prelude to disaster.

Pavel Grachev was an airborne general who earned the Hero of the Soviet Union title in Afghanistan for achieving objectives with minimal losses, rising to command all Soviet Airborne Forces in December 1990. On the first day of the August 1991 coup he obeyed Defence Minister Yazov's order and brought the 106th Guards Airborne Division into Moscow, but the next day he opposed the planned storming of the White House, switched his allegiance to Yeltsin, and sent troops to defend the parliament: the pivot that broke the coup's military spine. After the Soviet collapse he became Russia's first defence minister, backed Yeltsin during the 1993 constitutional crisis, and presided over the disastrous First Chechen War, leaving office in 1996 amid corruption allegations and the derisive nickname 'Pasha-Mercedes.'

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1950–2002 ○ Killed in crash

The airborne deputy commander who, sent against the White House, switched sides and helped break the August coup

On the night of 20 August 1991, with Grachev's consent, Lebed returned to the White House and secretly told the defenders: 'The assault will begin at 2:00 AM.'

Born into poverty in Novocherkassk, the son of a carpenter who had spent years in the Gulag, he witnessed the Novocherkassk massacre at age twelve and became a Soviet airborne forces general. He served as a battalion commander in Afghanistan and was appointed deputy commander of the Airborne Forces for combat training in February 1991. On the first day of the August coup he led Tula paratroopers to surround the White House on Pavel Grachev's orders, but switched to Yeltsin's side the next day and secretly informed the defenders of the planned 2:00 AM assault, a defection that helped break the coup. After retiring from the army he placed third in the 1996 presidential election, negotiated an end to the First Chechen War as Secretary of the Security Council, and was governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai when he died in a helicopter crash.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1955–

The Tamanskaya Division battalion chief of staff who turned ten tanks to defend the White House during the August coup

I decided that whatever order I was given, I wouldn't shoot anyone.

A Soviet Army major serving as chief of staff of a tank battalion in the Guards Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division. On 19 August 1991, he led ten tanks to the Kalinin Bridge near the White House under GKChP orders, but after meeting Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, he turned his tanks around to defend the Russian parliament. The tank from his battalion, No. 110, was the one Boris Yeltsin climbed to deliver his historic speech, an image that became the symbol of the coup's defeat. After the coup he was ostracized within the division, left the army in 2000, and spent the 1990s scraping by on security and funeral-agent jobs.

Military command Russian Federation state institutions 1966–

A Russian general shaped by obedience and uncompromising war

In August 1991, three protesters died when the armored column he commanded collided with a barricade in a Moscow tunnel.

Sergey Surovikin is a Russian military commander who began as a late-Soviet officer and rose to the highest levels of the post-Soviet armed forces. During the August 1991 coup attempt, he led a Taman Division BMP battalion into a Moscow tunnel where three protesters died in the confrontation; he was detained, but charges were dropped on the grounds that he had followed orders. He later commanded in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Syria, and Ukraine, gaining recognition for operational effectiveness alongside scrutiny over civilian harm. His career traces one route by which the Soviet command structure survived its state’s dissolution and reappeared in Russia’s militarized power.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1968–1991 ✕ Crushed to death

Afghan war veteran, the youngest and last Hero of the Soviet Union, killed confronting an armored vehicle during the August coup

He jumped onto a BMP armored vehicle to throw canvas over its observation slits. The gunner spun the turret and threw him off, but he got up, ran after it, and climbed on again.

A Guards sergeant who served in Afghanistan and worked as a forklift driver in Moscow after demobilization. In the early hours of 21 August 1991, he answered Rutskoy's call for 'Afghan brothers' and joined the defense of the Russian White House; in the Tchaikovsky Tunnel he tried to blind a BMP armored vehicle by covering its observation slits with canvas and was crushed to death, becoming one of the coup's only three fatalities. Posthumously awarded Hero of the Soviet Union and the Medal 'Defender of a Free Russia' No. 1.

Military command Russian Empire 1729/1730–1800 ○ Died of illness

Russian imperial field marshal and generalissimo, the 'Russian Hannibal'

In the 1799 Italian and Swiss expedition of the War of the Second Coalition he commanded the Austro-Russian army, drove the French from Italy and was made generalissimo. France nevertheless won in Switzerland and the campaign's aim was not achieved.

A Russian imperial general and military theorist, field marshal in 1794 and generalissimo in 1799. He suppressed Pugachev's Rebellion and the Kościuszko Uprising and took part in the annexation of Crimea and the Kuban, and was undefeated in major engagements. His birth in 1729 or 1730 remains unsettled; he died of illness in Saint Petersburg on 18 May 1800.

Military command Affiliation unconfirmed c.1885–1919 ✕ Murdered

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.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1904/1905–1964 ✕ Air crash

Marshal who helped plan the liberation of the Balkans, then commanded the Strategic Rocket Forces

On 19 October 1964 an Il-18 of the Soviet Air Force carrying Biryuzov's delegation to the 20th anniversary of Belgrade's liberation strayed from its landing course and struck Mount Avala, killing 18 people, 11 crew and 7 delegation members; his ashes were placed in the Kremlin wall.

Biryuzov was born in Skopin, in Ryazan Governorate; the official Russian biography records a merchant's family, while other accounts describe a working-class family of Russian ethnicity. He enlisted in the Red Army on 15 September 1922, graduated from the VTsIK Combined Military School in 1926 and the Frunze Academy in 1937, then commanded the 132nd Rifle Division from 1939. Wounded five times in the first year of the German invasion, he was later chief of staff of the 2nd Guards Army and of the Southern, 4th Ukrainian, and 3rd Ukrainian fronts, helping plan the liberation of the Donbass and Crimea and the Jassy-Kishinev and Belgrade offensives. He commanded the Air Defence Forces and then the Strategic Rocket Forces and became Chief of the General Staff in March 1963, dying in a plane crash on Mount Avala on 19 October 1964.

Military command Affiliation unconfirmed c. 1953–2001 ✕ Assassinated (al-Qaeda; ISI alleged)

Panjshir Valley guerrilla commander, the "Lion of Panjshir," who fought Soviet forces and the Taliban

In an interview: "We thought the CIA knew everything. But they didn't. They supported some bad people."

Born in Jangalak village, Bazarak, in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley, into an ethnic Tajik family; his father, Dost Mohammad Khan, was a colonel in the Royal Afghan Army. Educated at the Lycée Esteqlal in Kabul, he studied engineering at Kabul Polytechnic Institute and joined Burhanuddin Rabbani's Jamiat-i Islami. After the 1979 Soviet invasion he fought Soviet and Afghan communist forces with guerrilla warfare; during a 1983 truce with Soviet commanders he created the Shura-e Nazar, uniting 130 commanders from 12 provinces. Civil war with Hekmatyar devastated Kabul, and the Afghanistan Justice Project and Human Rights Watch held his forces responsible for abuses including the 1993 Afshar operation. From 1996 he led the Northern Alliance's military resistance to the Taliban, and was assassinated by al-Qaeda operatives on 9 September 2001.