The revolutionary wave and the world war 333

Government and administration Latvia state institutions 1877–1942 ○ Died

Latvia's prime minister in the war of independence, later dictator after the 1934 coup

On the day of the occupation his radio address ordered no resistance: "I will remain in my place and you remain in yours."

Prime minister of Latvia's provisional government from November 1918, he survived the Soviet army, a German coup and Bermondt's army in turn and led the Riga peace and land reform of 1920. He set up a dictatorship by coup in 1934 and, deported by the Soviets in 1940, died in prison in 1942.

Diplomacy and international organization Comintern 1877–1950 ○ Natural causes

Co-founder of Bulgarian communism, from the Comintern to head of state

On 22 September 1923, Kolarov and Dimitrov launched the anti-fascist armed uprising. Crushed, they led the survivors across the Yugoslav border — sentenced to death in absentia, beginning 22 years of exile.

Co-founder of the Bulgarian Communist Party and Comintern General Secretary (1922–24). He personally directed the failed September 1923 uprising, spent 22 years in Soviet exile as the Krestintern's agrarian theorist, then returned to lead Bulgaria's Stalinization as head of state and prime minister.

Social movements and organizing General Confederation of Labour (CGT, France) 1877–1964 ○ Natural causes

From syndicalism through the Comintern to the Fourth International: a French internationalist across a century of revolution

Lenin described Rosmer as "a man who knows how to keep his mouth shut in five or six languages." — quoted in Philippe Robrieux's internal history of the French Communist Party

American-born French revolutionary syndicalist and a key figure in the Comintern leadership. With Pierre Monatte he published La Vie ouvrière and organised anti-war internationalism; he spent seventeen months in Moscow helping found the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern). A Political Bureau member of the French Communist Party, he was expelled in 1924 for defending Trotsky, thereafter committing to the Left Opposition and Trotskyism. In 1938 he hosted the founding conference of the Fourth International at his home in Périgny. In his later years he signed the Manifesto of 121 against the Algerian War and wrote the classic memoir Lenin's Moscow.

Military command Japan state institutions 1877–1966 ○ War-crimes conviction, released 1955

A militarist leader of Japan's Imperial Way faction

When young naval officers assassinated Prime Minister Inukai in the 1932 May 15 Incident, War Minister Araki praised the killers as 'irrepressible patriots.'

Sadao Araki was a general of the Imperial Japanese Army and a leading figure of the Imperial Way faction, advocating a militarism that joined emperor-centered national reconstruction to external expansion. As Army Minister after the 1931 Manchurian Incident, he helped consolidate the Kwantung Army's fait accompli into state policy and supported the Northern Expansion Doctrine aimed at the Soviet Far East. Yet the young officers he had cultivated escaped his control and erupted in the February 26 Incident, after which he left active service. Convicted of Class A war crimes at the postwar International Military Tribunal for the Far East, he received a life sentence and was released in 1955.

Military command Russian White movement 1877–1973 ○ Died

Commander of the West Russian Volunteer Army who led German Freikorps against Riga

Refusing Yudenich's order to join the Narva front, in October 1919 he proclaimed himself 'representative of Russian state power' and marched on Riga.

A Russian cavalry officer who styled himself 'Prince Avalov', he gathered tens of thousands of German Freikorps men who refused to leave Latvia into the West Russian Volunteer Army and attacked Riga in October 1919, only to be repelled. In exile he led a Russian fascist organization in Berlin and died in New York in 1973.

Security, intelligence and policing France state institutions 1878–1940 ✕ Killed when aircraft was shot down

The Paris prefect of police, hard on the left and indulgent to the leagues, whose dismissal lit the fuse of 6 February

'Then I shall be in the street', on the telephone with Daladier as he was removed, 3 February 1934. The right-wing press read it as notice that he would take to the streets; Chiappe said he had meant only that he would be out of a job

A Corsican from Ajaccio who rose through the police administration and served as prefect of police of Paris from 1927 to 1934. He had a standing reputation for severity toward left-wing demonstrations and indulgence toward the street actions of the far-right leagues, and was popular with the right-wing press and the veterans' associations. When Prime Minister Édouard Daladier removed him on 3 February 1934, the right read it as the republic striking down its own policeman, and three days later the Place de la Concorde erupted. He remained a central figure of Paris right-wing politics after his dismissal, and died in 1940 when the aircraft carrying him to take up the Vichy post of high commissioner in the Levant was shot down over the Mediterranean.

Industry and production Affiliation unconfirmed 1878–1946 ○ Natural causes

A military organizer who bridged industry and war

Mannerheim remembered him as a colleague whose industrial experience and ability to organize an army were both needed by Finland.

Rudolf Walden was a Finnish industrialist who helped build the paper industry and became a military and state organizer. His work organizing the White rear and supply system in the 1918 civil war led to a long partnership with Mannerheim, and during the Winter War he represented headquarters in the cabinet. After the war he became defence minister and signed the Moscow Peace Treaty for Finland, helping manage a state that had lost territory while preserving its independence. Conservative toward organized labour, he shifted during the Winter War toward recognizing trade unions as legitimate negotiating partners in a national emergency.

Diplomacy and international organization Japan state institutions 1878–1948 ✕ Executed

A statesman caught between diplomacy and responsibility under military pressure

In June 1945 he approached Malik, while the Soviet side prolonged the talks to gain time for its war preparations against Japan.

Kōki Hirota was a Japanese imperial diplomat and politician who proclaimed international cooperation yet failed to restrain the military’s policy of expansion in China and beyond. As foreign minister and prime minister, he helped restore the active-duty military-minister system and advanced the Anti-Comintern Pact, choices that narrowed civilian autonomy. In June 1945 he approached Soviet ambassador Yakov Malik to explore mediation for ending the war, but the Soviet government used the contacts to delay while preparing its entry into the war against Japan. Convicted of war crimes at the Tokyo Trial, he was hanged in 1948 as the only civilian executed there, a responsibility and sentence that remain contested.

Military command United States state institutions 1878–1952 ○ Natural causes

An international relief commander amid famine

In October 1921, Haskell cabled Hoover that starvation would peak in winter and strike sixteen million people.

William N. Haskell was a U.S. Army officer who combined military command with postwar international relief administration. Appointed by Herbert Hoover, he directed the American Relief Administration’s operations in Soviet Russia from 1921 to 1923, organizing the large-scale distribution of food and medical supplies during the famine. His task required negotiating both the controls and the cooperation of Bolshevik officials while sustaining the speed and administrative accountability of relief. He later held senior commands in the New York National Guard and directed civilian-defense work, extending his career across military and state administration.

Military command France state institutions 1878–1960 ○ Natural causes

A French general whose 1940 command exposed the tension between mountain-war expertise and an old command system

On Christmas night 1914, wounded, he led his company in holding the Tête des Faux summit against a numerically superior German attack, earning two citations.

Robert Touchon was a French general who built his reputation through mountain warfare and infantry instruction, rising on the strength of First World War combat and Alpine commands. After the German breakthrough in May 1940, he commanded the Sixth Army, hastily placing forces moved from the Maginot Line along the Aisne and committing Charles de Gaulle’s 4th Armoured Division at Montcornet. The armoured force lacked full integration and coordinated support, while his army could only hold parts of the front before retreating. Retired after the armistice, Touchon later served on Vichy’s National Council and the Lyon section of its State Court, leaving a record that joins military authority to collaboration with an authoritarian regime.

Political and party leadership Comintern 1878–1965 ○ Natural causes

The Comintern's first secretary, who taught Mussolini and branded him traitor

"I had never seen a more wretched human being" — on first meeting Mussolini in Lausanne

Russian-born Italian socialist. First secretary of the Comintern, she taught Mussolini Marxism and publicly denounced him as a traitor when he embraced fascism. She broke with Bolshevism in 1922 and led Italy's maximalist socialist faction.

Government and administration France state institutions 1878–1966 ○ Natural causes

A republican statesman who urged resistance in the face of defeat

In June 1940, he argued that France should continue the war from North Africa.

Paul Reynaud was a French republican statesman and lawyer whose independent positions ranged across economics, colonial policy, and defence. Facing Nazi Germany, he pressed for wartime financial mobilisation and modern warfare built around tanks and air power. When France collapsed in 1940, he sought to preserve the alliance with Britain and continue the war from North Africa, but resigned as premier after the armistice camp prevailed and was subsequently detained by Vichy and Germany. After liberation he returned to parliament and remained a prominent defender of parliamentary government.

Military command Ukrainian People's Republic 1879–1926 ✕ Assassinated

Ukrainian independence leader who headed the People's Republic but whose role in pogroms remains fiercely contested

Do not separate the fate of Ukraine from the fate of Russia. If Russia suffers defeat, the consequences of this catastrophe will also affect Ukraine.

A social-democratic journalist from Poltava who rose from military secretary of the Central Rada in 1917 to commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian People's Army and head of the Directorate of the Ukrainian People's Republic. He fought to defend Ukrainian independence against Bolsheviks, White armies, and Poland, but was forced into exile, first in Poland and then Paris, after defeat in 1920. An estimated 50,000 Jews were massacred by forces under his command, and whether he was unable or unwilling to stop the killings remains fiercely disputed. In 1926 he was assassinated in Paris by the Jewish anarchist Sholem Schwarzbard, who called it vengeance for the pogroms.

Government and administration Finland state institutions 1879–1943 ○ Natural causes

Finnish forest scientist and statesman who built forest-type theory and led the cabinet on the eve of war

During the Winter War the poorly equipped reservists, sent out with little beyond civilian clothes, a belt and a rifle, were popularly nicknamed 'Model Cajander'. The label stuck to him as premier, though responsibility for the defence shortfalls was not his alone.

Finnish forest scientist and politician. Born in Uusikaupunki, he took a botany doctorate in 1903 based on Siberian fieldwork, became docent in botany at Helsinki in 1904 and professor of silviculture in 1911. Acting director-general of the Forest Board (Metsähallitus) in 1918 and director-general in 1934, he led state forest administration until his death. He was prime minister three times, in 1922, 1924 and 1937, and chaired the National Progressive Party from 1933. He resigned after the Winter War began and died at the Parliament House on 21 January 1943.

Military command France state institutions 1879–1945 ✕ Executed

A tank-war innovator who became the Secret Army's first commander

On 9 June 1943, the Secret Army commander Vidal was arrested at Paris's La Muette station.

Charles Delestraint was a French general shaped by captivity in the First World War and by command of armoured units, whose advocacy of tanks reflected a changing theory of modern war. After France's defeat and the armistice, he chose resistance and, selected by Charles de Gaulle, became the first commander of the Secret Army, bringing several movements' military structures together. Working with Jean Moulin, he helped extend the organisation across occupied France, but his arrest on 9 June 1943 created the succession crisis behind the Caluire meeting. Deported to Natzweiler-Struthof and Dachau, he was killed shortly before liberation and posthumously made a Companion of the Liberation.

Social movements and organizing General Confederation of Labour (CGT, France) 1879–1954 ○ Illness

The syndicalist who led the CGT for 31 years, signed the Matignon Agreements and won the Nobel Peace Prize

'The labour movement has never won a greater victory', radio address just after the conclusion of the Matignon Agreements, June 1936

A match-factory worker who became secretary-general of the CGT at thirty in 1909 and led it until 1940, the public face of French trade unionism. Starting as a revolutionary syndicalist, he moved to reformism when he accepted the union sacrée in 1914, helped draft the labour clauses of the Versailles Treaty and co-found the International Labour Organization. He led the reunified CGT into the Matignon Agreements in 1936, was interned under Vichy and deported to Germany, and after the war became founding president of Force Ouvrière, the 1948 breakaway from the communist-led CGT, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1951.

Military command Italy state institutions 1879–1958 ○ Natural causes

The general who sought an Italian exit from the Axis under the monarchy

“The Axis is besieged, it is in a closed ring; it is necessary to get out.”

Vittorio Ambrosio was an Italian cavalry officer and general who served in both world wars and commanded forces during the invasion of Yugoslavia. As Chief of the Italian Armed Forces General Staff in 1943, he concluded after the defeats in North Africa and Sicily that Italy could not remain tied to Germany, and worked through the king and the military command to remove Mussolini and negotiate an armistice with the Allies. His course was not a democratic break with Fascism so much as a monarchic and military attempt to manage Italy's withdrawal from the war; the September armistice nonetheless failed to prevent German occupation and the disintegration of Italian command.

Diplomacy and international organization Poland 1880–1931 ○ Natural causes

A peasant-movement diplomat who shaped the Riga peace

When the talks stalled over the border, Dąbski proposed confidential one-to-one negotiations with his Soviet counterpart Adolph Joffe, a move that broke the impasse and led to the preliminary treaty.

Jan Dąbski was a Polish peasant-movement politician and journalist who connected agrarian politics, parliamentary work, and diplomacy after independence. As Poland’s delegation head in the final phase of the Polish-Soviet War, he sought a compromise between military gains and the realities of an eastern border settlement. In Riga he held confidential talks with Adolph Joffe, helped secure the preliminary treaty of 12 October 1920, and signed the definitive peace treaty the following year. He later defended peasant parties and parliamentary democracy, while the partition of Ukrainian and Belarusian lands under the Riga settlement remained a lasting historical consequence of the diplomacy he led.

Political and party leadership Affiliation unconfirmed 1880–1935 ○ Died

Founder of the Lithuanian Communist Party who headed Soviet Lithuania and Litbel

When Lenin demanded he recruit more Lithuanians into the Red Army, he refused, warning it would erode what support his government had.

Founder of the Lithuanian Communist Party, he headed the Soviet government of Lithuania from December 1918 and Litbel in 1919, without winning peasant support. After the defeat he handled Baltic affairs in the Comintern and died in Moscow in 1935.

Political and party leadership Social Democratic Party of Finland 1880–1939 ✕ Died in prison

Head of Finland's 1918 Red revolutionary government, who later led the exiled Communist Party and served the Comintern

In July 1917, as Manner cried 'To free Finland!', the Eduskunta passed the Supreme Power Act and the gallery answered with the Finnish national anthem.

Finnish socialist revolutionary who led Finland's 1918 Red government as chairman of the People's Delegation. After the civil war's defeat, he fled to Soviet Russia, co-founded the Finnish Communist Party, and led it for fourteen years while serving on the Comintern executive committee.

Government and administration Spanish Republic 1880–1940 ○ Natural causes

The last president of the Republic who embodied the republican cause but crossed into France and resigned when Catalonia fell

'Peace, pity, and pardon.' On 18 July 1938, the second anniversary of the rising, Azaña spoke for seventy-four minutes from Barcelona's city hall, pleading for an end to the bloodshed and reconciliation. Neither Franco's camp nor the hardliners in his own Republic would listen.

The last President of the Second Spanish Republic and the symbolic centre of the Republican cause throughout the Civil War. As war minister and prime minister from 1931 he drove military reform, anti-clerical legislation and land redistribution; in 1934 he built the Popular Front and won the 1936 election, becoming president, but once the war began real power passed to his prime ministers. In July 1938 he appealed for 'Peace, Pity, Pardon' from the Barcelona city hall, but Franco would accept only unconditional surrender, and after Catalonia fell in February 1939 Azaña walked the Pyrenees into France and resigned. Condemned as desertion even inside republican ranks, his act stripped the remaining Republic of legitimacy, and he died in occupied France a year later.

Military command France state institutions 1880–1941 ○ Killed in crash

A general who embodied the military case for defeat and armistice

On 22 June 1940, he signed the armistice for France in the Compiègne forest.

Charles Huntziger was a French Army general who built his career in the colonial infantry, on the Balkan front in the First World War, and in overseas commands and negotiations between the wars. Commanding the Second Army at Sedan in 1940, he failed to stop the German breakthrough, and his decisions remained part of the dispute over responsibility for France’s defeat. He judged that the capacity to continue fighting was nearing its limit and chaired Pétain’s delegation that signed the 22 June armistice. As Vichy’s Minister of War, he then helped reorganize the military of the collaborationist state until his death in a plane crash in 1941.

Social movements and organizing Affiliation unconfirmed 1880–1943 ○ Natural causes

Lathe operator who led Berlin’s Revolutionary Stewards, chaired the council Executive in 1918 and later wrote the revolution’s history

During the November Revolution of 1918, he chaired the Executive Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils. He led the Revolutionary Stewards in organising political strikes against the war from 1916.

A lathe operator from rural Thuringia, he became a leader of the turners’ branch of the Berlin metalworkers’ union. In the war he led the Revolutionary Stewards, a clandestine network of factory delegates, organising the 1916 strike against Liebknecht’s arrest and the mass strikes of April 1917 and January 1918. On the night of 9 November 1918 he occupied the Reichstag and called council elections, and as chairman of the Executive Council of the Greater Berlin workers’ and soldiers’ councils was formal head of the council regime. He later joined and left the KPD, and published a three-volume history of the revolution in 1924–1925.

Diplomacy and international organization Japan state institutions 1880–1946 ○ Died in prison

A diplomat who drove imperial Japan's continental diplomacy

When Matsuoka left Moscow in April 1941, Stalin himself came to the station to see him off.

Yosuke Matsuoka was a diplomat and politician of imperial Japan whose career joined continental expansion after the Manchurian Incident to the country's growing international isolation. He defended Manchukuo at the League of Nations, helping lead Japan out of the organization, then became president of the South Manchuria Railway and foreign minister. In 1941 he pursued both the alliance with Germany and Italy and the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact with Molotov, but fell from office after advocating war against the Soviet Union following Germany's invasion. Detained after the war as a suspected war criminal, he died of illness during the trial before judgment.