Soviet Union

Foreign statesman 1909–1978 ✕ Shot dead with his family, April

Afghan prince who overthrew his cousin to found a republic, then was killed five years later in the same palace by a communist coup

At the 1977 Moscow summit he told Brezhnev bluntly: 'We will never allow you to dictate to us how to run our country… Afghanistan shall remain poor, if necessary, but free in its acts and decisions.'

A Barakzai prince appointed prime minister by his cousin King Zahir Shah in 1953, Daoud Khan pursued a decade of Soviet-leaning modernization, earning the moniker 'Red Prince,' and pressed the Pashtunistan dispute to the brink of war with Pakistan. In 1973 he overthrew the monarchy in a bloodless coup backed by leftist army officers and declared himself the first president of the Republic of Afghanistan, but then purged the communists from his government, imposed a one-party constitution, and pivoted his foreign policy toward Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the West. He and 18 members of his family were shot dead by Khalqist army officers inside the Arg palace during the Saur Revolution of April 1978, a flashpoint that installed the PDPA regime and set the stage for the Soviet-Afghan War.

Socialist-bloc leader 1917–1979 ✕ Suffocated with pillows

Afghan communist founder whose overthrow and murder by his protégé Amin triggered the Soviet invasion

Taraki: 'We ask you to render practical and technical assistance with men and armament.' Kosygin: 'This is a very complicated problem.' Taraki: 'While you are taking counsel Herat will fall.' (telephone conversation, 18 March 1979, during the Herat uprising)

Nur Muhammad Taraki was the founding General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) who became the first Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan after the Saur Revolution of April 1978. Born to a Pashtun peasant family, he encountered Marxism at night school in Bombay and later wrote the first social-realist novel in Pashto, The Journey of Bang, earning the label 'Afghanistan's Maxim Gorky.' Once in power he imposed radical land reform and secularization that ignited armed uprisings across the countryside, and his repeated pleas for Soviet military intervention were rebuffed by Kosygin and Brezhnev. In September 1979 his protégé Hafizullah Amin overthrew and suffocated him, a killing that became the proximate trigger for the Soviet invasion two months later.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1929–1979 ✕ Killed by Soviet special forces

Khalq strongman who engineered the Saur Revolution and fell to Soviet guns three months after seizing power

Amin ordered his adjutant to warn the Soviet advisers of the attack. The adjutant replied, 'It is the Soviets who are shooting.' Amin snatched an ashtray and hurled it at him, shouting, 'You're lying! That cannot be!'

Amin was the de facto number two of the PDPA's Khalq faction and the military architect of the April 1978 Saur Revolution. Drawn to Marxism while studying in the United States, he returned to Afghanistan and built a network of officers that made the coup possible, then climbed from deputy premier through foreign and defense ministries to become the regime's true strongman. In September 1979 he deposed and executed his mentor Nur Muhammad Taraki and seized the party leadership and all top state posts, but his brutal purges and the spreading insurgency convinced the Kremlin he was uncontrollable. On 27 December 1979 KGB special forces stormed the Tajbeg Palace and killed him, opening the Soviet-Afghan War.

Scholar 1950–

Economic historian who argued partial reform would only destroy the planning system

'Analyses of "Gorbachev's economists" never mention the words "charlatan" or "ignoramus."'

A Soviet-born economist who emigrated to the United States, trained at Novosibirsk University and the University of Pennsylvania. In his 1988 article 'Lessons of the 1965 Soviet Economic Reform,' he argued that resistance from central ministries and Gosplan to the Kosygin reform was not mere bureaucratic self-interest but a rational recognition that partial market reform would destroy the central planning system without putting any workable alternative in its place. Together with Michael Ellman he edited The Destruction of the Soviet Economic System; this systemic incompatibility thesis became a key argument in the historiographical debate over why Soviet reforms consistently failed.