Moldova

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1881–1925 ✕ Murdered

The Bessarabian 'Red Robin Hood' who rose from Tsarist outlaw to legendary Soviet Civil War commander

In May 1917, during Carmen at the Odesa Opera House, the recently pardoned Kotovsky appeared to a standing ovation, delivered a revolutionary speech from the stage, and watched his prison shackles auctioned for 10,000 rubles.

A Bessarabian revolutionary commander. Notorious under the Tsar as a bandit who sided with the poor, he led Red cavalry in the Civil War and helped establish the Moldavian ASSR. Mythologized in his lifetime as a legend of Soviet folklore; murdered in 1925.

Left Opposition 1885–1938 ✕ Executed

Co-founder and chief theoretician of the Left SR Party: from coalition with the Bolsheviks to the July 1918 uprising

"We, as political actors, at a moment when an event of immense historical significance is taking place, could least of all occupy ourselves with moral characterization. It was clear to us that our place was with the revolution." — First PLSR Congress, November 1917

Co-founder and chief theoretician of the Left SR Party. Entered coalition with the Bolsheviks, then led the July 1918 uprising against the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. After its suppression he endured repeated exile and was executed in 1938.

Military and defence 1894–1920 ✕ Burned alive in a locomotive firebox

Moldovan nobleman turned Bolshevik revolutionary who established Soviet power in the Far East

Standing alone and unarmed before the cadets of Russky Island, Lazo declared: 'For this Russian land on which I now stand, we will die but give it to no one!'

A Moldovan boyar by birth and an Imperial Russian Army officer, Lazo joined the 1917 Revolution and became the Bolshevik military leader who established Soviet power across Siberia and the Russian Far East. He seized control of Krasnoyarsk for the Soviet, commanded the Transbaikal Front against Grigory Semyonov's White forces, and after underground work and partisan warfare in Primorye, organized the January 1920 Vladivostok uprising that ended Kolchak's rule in the Far East. Captured by Japanese troops in April 1920, he was burned alive in a locomotive firebox alongside his comrades, becoming one of the most commemorated martyrs of the Soviet Civil War.

Military and defence 1896–1937 ✕ Executed

Civil War hero who turned the Kiev Military District into a laboratory for reform

After his arrest, he wrote to Stalin: 'I will die with words of love for you and the Party.' Stalin scrawled in the margin: 'Rascal and prostitute.' Voroshilov added: 'A perfectly accurate definition.'

Born to a Jewish pharmacist in Kishinev, he studied chemistry in Basel due to tsarist quotas. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1917 and became a legendary Civil War commander through a 400-km breakout from Odessa to Zhitomir through enemy lines. As commander of the Kiev Military District he drove military reform (mechanized and airborne experiments, deep-operations doctrine) and became Komandarm 1st rank in 1935. He was shot in 1937 in the Tukhachevsky case and rehabilitated in 1957.

Socialist-bloc leader 1918–2013 ○ Natural causes

The republic first secretary who ruled Moldavia for nearly 20 years as Brezhnev's close ally

Of writer Ion Druță, forced to relocate to Moscow, Bodiul said publicly: 'If he returns home, I'll hang him on the first lamppost.'

He served nearly 20 years as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldavia, one of the longest-serving republican party chiefs in Soviet history. A close Brezhnev ally, he transformed agrarian Moldavia with new industries (machine-building, electronics, food processing) and built some of Europe's largest orchards and livestock complexes. Yet he also pursued aggressive Russification: suppressing Romanian, closing churches, and threatening writer Ion Druță with hanging. Elevated to Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers in 1980, his 2003 Order of the Republic award provoked eight Moldovan writers to renounce their own medals in protest.

Economic management 1951–2020 ○ Died of COVID-19

The Cricova winery chief who testified to the vineyard destruction of Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign

'On weekends they forced us out with axes to chop the vines,' he recalled, and those who tried to protect the vineyards got 14–15 years in prison.

A Moldovan winemaker and industrial manager, he led the Cricova wine combine as director general for 29 years, from 1987 to 2016. As chief engineer during Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign, he testified that workers were forced to chop vines with axes on weekends and that those who tried to protect the vineyards received 14–15 years in prison, providing the most vivid ground-level account of the vineyard destruction.