People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1868–1940 ○ Natural causes (died in Kyiv)

Bolshevik agrarian policymaker: first Agriculture Commissar, later VP of Ukraine's Academy of Sciences

In October 1905 he led multi-thousand revolutionary meetings in Kyiv, and after the 17 October Manifesto the crowd wrecked the City Duma building. His 18 October 1905 balcony speech became a charge in his 1908–09 trial; he fled to Finland and was later exiled to Siberia.

Born 20 August (O.S.)/1 September 1868 in Lubny, Poltava Governorate; died 2 December 1940 in Kyiv. His grandfather emigrated from Württemberg in 1818; his father was a carpenter; his mother came from impoverished Polish landowner nobility. The family took Russian subjecthood in 1882, and he took it himself at university. He joined a Social-Democratic student circle in Bern in 1891 and was a delegate to the 5th RSDLP Congress (London, 1907). In November 1917 he became RSFSR People's Commissar for Agriculture, then People's Commissar for Food (December 1917 – February 1918), enforcing the grain monopoly and requisitioning. Removed as Tambov Governorate Executive Committee chairman in 1920–21 for failing against the Tambov rebels, he later served as People's Commissar for Land Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR (1927–29) and vice-president of Ukraine's Academy of Sciences (1931–38).

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1872–1933 ✕ Suicide

Architect of Ukrainization: the cultural revolutionary who turned the gun on himself

In the spring of 1918, after the Brest crisis, Stalin told Ukraine's leaders to stop "playing at government and republic"; Skrypnyk's Ukrainian TsIK answered by telegram: "the source of its actions is not this or that commissar, but the will of the working masses of Ukraine."

Born on 13 (25) January 1872 in the village of Yasynuvata, Bakhmut uezd, Yekaterinoslav gubernia, the son of a railway telegrapher and a zemstvo midwife. A party member from 1897, he was sent to Ukraine on Lenin's orders in December 1917 and chaired the People's Secretariat, the first Soviet Ukrainian government, then headed the Cheka department against counter-revolution in 1918–1919. From 1927 to February 1933 he was People's Commissar of Education of the Ukrainian SSR, and in 1932 he opposed high grain-procurement targets.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1879–1937 ✕ Executed

Father of Soviet signals intelligence and founder of the Cheka Special Department

"If it's a cipher, go ahead and crack it," he taunted the tsarist police holding his mathematical notebooks. They never did.

An Old Bolshevik who mastered cryptography in the revolutionary underground, Bokii chaired the Petrograd Cheka and directed Special Departments on the Eastern and Turkestan Fronts before designing and founding the Cheka's Special Department (Спецотдел) in 1921. He led it for sixteen years, unifying cryptography, radio interception, direction-finding, and state-secrets protection into a single service, thereby creating the institutional foundation of Soviet signals intelligence. He also served as curator of the Solovki special-purpose camp (SLON), helping shape the early Gulag system. His concurrent fascination with esoteric mysticism and plans for a Tibetan expedition were later weaponised against him as pretext for his arrest and execution.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1880–1948 ○ Heart attack

The operational commander of October, sidelined by the revolution he led

"You know how stubborn I am — listen, then later don't do it. But write everything down so I feel heard." Advising Eisenstein on the film October, 1927.

Nikolai Podvoisky, a village priest's son who left seminary for the Bolsheviks, was the de facto field commander of the October armed uprising: as head of the Military Revolutionary Committee's operational trio, he directed the storming of the Winter Palace. He became Soviet Russia's first People's Commissar for Military Affairs, only to be pushed aside by Trotsky four months later, and during the Civil War organized Vsevobuch, universal military training. He designed the Red Star and the Order of the Red Banner, then devoted himself to mass physical culture as chairman of the Red Sport International. Sidelined under Stalin, he survived the purges, wrote his memoirs, and at 61 volunteered to dig Moscow's defence trenches.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1885–1951 ○ Natural causes

From 1st Cavalry Army commissar to the purge's personnel executioner

"Motor warfare, mechanisation, aviation and chemistry were invented by military specialists. For now, the main thing is the little horse. The decisive role in the coming war will be played by the cavalry."

A Bolshevik since 1904, he rose from tailor to professional revolutionary. Together with Budyonny and Voroshilov, he co-founded the 1st Cavalry Army and served on its Revolutionary Military Council, emerging as a Civil War hero. Appointed Deputy People's Commissar of Defence and head of the Command and Leadership Personnel Directorate in 1937, he became a central executioner of the Great Purge, spearheading the investigation into an 'illegal fascist conspiracy' among officers in the Kiev Military District. During World War II, as head of Glavupraform he oversaw all Red Army formation and manpower, though his dogmatic insistence on cavalry over mechanisation drew sharp postwar criticism.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1886–1921 ✕ Killed in action

Civil War commander who helped defend Tsaritsyn and establish Soviet power in Ukraine

Captured by Makhno, he pulled out a letter from his anarchist brother Artem urging him that 'it was not too late' — but Makhno shot him anyway.

Born in 1886 to a Ukrainian peasant family in Ekaterinoslav Governorate, he joined the Bolsheviks in 1904 as a worker at the Lugansk locomotive factory. During the 1905 Revolution he led armed worker detachments; after 1917 he helped establish Soviet power in the Donbas alongside Kliment Voroshilov, fought White forces and German occupiers, and cooperated with Stalin and Voroshilov in the defense of Tsaritsyn. As special plenipotentiary of the 1st Cavalry Army and commander of the 14th Cavalry Division, he fought in the Polish-Soviet War and against Wrangel before being killed in a Makhnovist ambush on 3 January 1921. Twice posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner, he was immortalized in Vsevolod Ivanov's novel and the 1942 film Alexander Parkhomenko, entering the pantheon of Soviet Civil War heroes.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1889–1935 ○ Pulmonary tuberculosis

Stalin's first secretary, keeper of his archive and author of his first biography

Bazhanov recalled Tovstukha matching ballot handwriting against registration forms: who crossed out Stalin's name? "He had only half a lung, but Stalin had complete confidence in him."

Stalin's first personal secretary (1918–1935) and head of the CC Secret Department (1926–1930), Tovstukha ran Stalin's private secretariat and controlled access to the Lenin Institute archive. He authored the first official biography of Stalin for the Granat Encyclopedia (1922) and directed the first edition of Lenin's Collected Works. As an émigré he joined the French Socialist Party and worked as a labourer; after returning he became secretary at the People's Commissariat for Nationalities, where his lifelong attachment to Stalin began. His management of the documentary record, above all selective access to Lenin's and Trotsky's papers, was a decisive ideological tool for the Stalin faction.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1889–1938 ✕ Executed

The first People's Commissar for Naval Affairs, whose Baltic sailors tipped the scales in October 1917

November 1, 1917, Gatchina Palace. Dybenko, having surrounded Kerensky-Krasnov's forces with thousands of armed sailors, addressed the Cossack delegation: "Hand over your general. Soviet power guarantees you safe passage home." By morning, General Krasnov was under arrest and Kerensky had fled in disguise. In one week, the fate of the revolution had been sealed.

Born to a Ukrainian peasant family in Chernigov, he became a Baltic Fleet sailor and joined the Bolshevik underground. Elected chairman of Tsentrobalt in April 1917, he funnelled thousands of armed sailors from Helsingfors and Kronstadt into Petrograd during the October Revolution, tipping the balance, arresting General Krasnov, and dispersing the Constituent Assembly. He captured Crimea and liberated Tsaritsyn during the Civil War, then helped crush the Kronstadt and Tambov rebellions. His marriage to Alexandra Kollontai made them the revolution's most celebrated couple.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1891–1939 ✕ Shot in

The economic administrator who led Ukraine's government for 11 years, caught between Stalin's demands and the famine

In June 1932 Chubar reported to Stalin and Molotov that "tens of thousands of malnourished, starving and swollen people" were dying of famine "in every village", and asked for grain relief. Stalin replied that "Chubar is mistaken ... Ukraine has been given more than it should get".

An economic administrator born to a poor Ukrainian peasant family in Fedorivka, he joined the RSDLP in 1907. From 1923 he chaired the Ukrainian SSR's Council of People's Commissars for eleven years, driving industrialisation and collectivisation, and in June 1932 he reported the famine to Stalin and Molotov and requested emergency grain. He also bore responsibility for enforcing collectivisation and the 1932–33 famine, and in 2010 the Kyiv Court of Appeal ruled him one of the organisers of the Holodomor. A full Politburo member from 1935, he was arrested in 1938 and shot the next year, then rehabilitated in 1955.