People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1930–2023 ○ Natural causes

The last head of government of the Soviet Union: from aviation minister to liquidator of an empire

In the aftermath of the August 1991 coup, Silayev — now effectively the Soviet Union's last premier — sent Yeltsin an open letter asking him to halt decrees transferring union property to Russia. He was dismissed a month later.

Born to a peasant family in Nizhny Novgorod, Silayev rose from shop-floor engineer to director of the Gorky Aviation Plant. As Minister of Aviation Industry (1981–1985) he oversaw the MiG-29, Su-27, Tu-160, and Buran space shuttle, and in 1986 he chaired the government commission on Chernobyl. In 1990 Yeltsin made him RSFSR premier; after the August 1991 coup he became chairman of COMSE, making him the Soviet Union's de facto last head of government. When he tried to halt Yeltsin's unilateral seizure of union property, he was dismissed within a month: a transitional figure who could not stop the dissolution he came to oppose.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1934–2019 ○ Natural causes

First to open the door to the cosmos, and the first to draw it from inside

"It was so quiet I could even hear my heart beat. I was surrounded by stars and was floating without much control." — the first human to walk in space, 18 March 1965.

A Siberian miner's son, Leonov became the first human to walk in space on 18 March 1965, floating outside Voskhod 2 for twelve minutes, and nearly dying when his suit ballooned so badly he had to bleed oxygen to squeeze back into the airlock. He was also the first artist in space, sketching an orbital sunrise with coloured pencils tethered together in weightlessness. A decade later, as commander of Soyuz 19, he led the Soviet half of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (the first US-Soviet docking in orbit) and forged a lifelong friendship with American commander Thomas Stafford. From 1976 to 1982 he served as deputy director of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center and chief cosmonaut, overseeing the next generation. Twice Hero of the Soviet Union and a major general of aviation, he produced over 200 space-themed paintings across a life that fused exploration with art.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1937–

The textile-worker 'Chaika,' first woman in space

At the launch pad: "Hey, sky! Take off your hat!" — quoting Mayakovsky, June 16, 1963.

The first woman to fly solo in space: aboard Vostok-6 in 1963, the textile-worker 'Chaika' orbited Earth 49 times over 71 hours alone, a symbol of proletarian women's liberation through science. Later became the first woman general in Russian military history.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1937–

Gorbachev's last agriculture Politburo member: operational chief of perestroika farm policy

In August 1991, when the GKChP was formed, Stroev refused to recognise it — one of the few perestroika-era Politburo members who did not side with the coup.

Stroev began as a collective-farm shepherd in the Oryol countryside and graduated from the Michurinsk Horticultural Institute, a classic Soviet agricultural technocrat. Over three decades he rose through the Oryol party apparatus to become oblast first secretary in 1985, and in 1989 Gorbachev brought him to Moscow as Central Committee Secretary for Agriculture, adding Politburo membership in 1990. As the operational chief of perestroika farm policy, he oversaw the reorganisation of the agro-industrial complex and the response to a deepening food crisis, and he refused to endorse the GKChP during the August 1991 coup. After the Soviet collapse he reinvented himself as a post-Soviet regional heavyweight, serving as governor of Oryol Oblast (1993–2009) and chairman of the Federation Council (1996–2001).

Soviet Union Soviet communism 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.