People of the Revolution and the USSR

Mensheviks (RSDLP) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1864–1926 ✕ Suicide

Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet in the dual-power era, face of revolutionary defencism

"Deprived of direct contact with his people, he lost his power of resistance. Even a mighty oak, overturned by a storm and torn from the soil that fed it, withers. So it was with Chkheidze." — Irakli Tsereteli at his funeral, 1926

A Georgian nobleman and Menshevik who produced the first Georgian translation of the Communist Manifesto. In 1917 he chaired the Petrograd Soviet during dual power but opposed the October Revolution; he went on to lead Georgia's independence and its government-in-exile in Paris.

Mensheviks (RSDLP) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1885–1938 ✕ Executed

The Menshevik Labour Minister sent to calm the crowds during the April Crisis

On 20 April 1917, as 15,000 armed soldiers and sailors gathered before the Mariinsky Palace outraged by Milyukov's note, Skobelev and Gots were sent to address them: their speeches were unavailing.

A son of Baku's wealthy Molokan merchant class, he studied at the Vienna Polytechnic and helped edit Trotsky's Vienna Pravda. After the February Revolution he became deputy chairman of the Petrograd Soviet; during the April Crisis he was sent with Abram Gots to calm the armed crowds outside the Mariinsky Palace, and on 5 May 1917 he entered the first coalition government as Minister of Labour. He opposed the October Revolution but later reconciled, joining the Bolshevik Party in 1922 and working in the Soviet foreign trade system until his execution during the Great Purge in 1938.