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 1870–1928 ○ Died (heart failure)

The Civil War food administrator who designed the grain dictatorship

A story tells that he fainted from hunger on a train while travelling to organize grain seizures, but the anecdote is unverified; it circulated in the 1939 film Lenin in 1918, and one chronicle calls it a tale from later Soviet propaganda. Lenin's June 1919 order doubling his salary is documented.

Born in 1870 at Alyoshki (now Oleshky, Ukraine) as the son of a minor official in a poor, many-child family, he organized a Marxist student circle in 1891. Arrested in 1893 and expelled from the Kherson agricultural school, he worked as a statistician; he joined the RSDLP in 1898 and served as an Iskra agent in Ufa and Kharkiv before a three-year Olonets exile in 1902. In 1917 he led the Ufa soviet and city duma and sent grain echelons to Petrograd; as People's Commissar for Food from February 1918 to December 1921 he proposed the food dictatorship at the 8 May 1918 Sovnarkom meeting and organized the food detachments and kombedy. He later served as Deputy Chairman of Sovnarkom, Rabkrin chief and Gosplan chairman. He died in the Crimea in May 1928 and was buried in the Kremlin Wall.

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 Union Soviet communism 1887–1967 ○ Natural causes

The Soviet Union's greatest partisan commander, who raided all the way to the Carpathians

"The flames lit up the slopes of the Carpathians… it was as bright as day at night, and the roar of burning oil drowned out even the engines of the German planes that never gave us rest." — Kovpak recalling the 1943 Bytkiv oilfield raid.

A Soviet partisan commander from Ukraine. He organized a unit at Putivl in 1941 and led it on daring raids thousands of kilometers behind German lines, all the way to the Carpathians, earning the title Hero of the Soviet Union twice.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1888–1938 ✕ Executed

Ukrainian Soviet state-builder and scholar-politician, revolutionary bureaucrat across education, party, and control

As counting commission chair at the 17th Party Congress in 1934, he reported to Kaganovich that many ballots were cast against Stalin; according to his son Dmytro's testimony, he regarded this as signing his own death sentence.

A founding-generation Bolshevik Ukrainian statesman who helped create the CP(B)U and served as Chairman of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee. He led the delegation of the Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets at the Brest-Litovsk peace talks and signed the treaty establishing the USSR. Twice People's Commissar of Education (1922–1924, 1933–1938), he succeeded Mykola Skrypnyk in 1933 and implemented the rollback of Ukrainization. As the first editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia and a full member of the Academy of Sciences, he helped build Soviet Ukraine's scholarly infrastructure. He also served as CC Secretary of the CP(B)U and head of Workers' and Peasants' Inspection. Arrested in a cinema with his family in November 1937, he was sentenced after a 20-minute trial to a term meaning death and shot the same day; rehabilitated in 1956.

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 1890–1938 ✕ Executed

From Ukrainian Borotbist to People's Commissar of Finance: the man who funded the Five-Year Plans

When Grinko was arrested as an 'enemy of the people' in 1937, the 1-, 3-, and 5-ruble notes bearing his signature became a political embarrassment. Authorities rushed out replacement notes with identical designs — minus his name — and resolved never to print any official's signature on Soviet banknotes again.

A Ukrainian revolutionary from Kharkov Governorate who led the left-SR Borotbist party before joining the Bolsheviks in 1920. After serving as Ukraine's education commissar and Gosplan chairman, he moved to Moscow in 1926 as deputy head of the USSR State Planning Committee and deputy commissar for agriculture. Appointed People's Commissar of Finance in October 1930, he mobilized resources for rapid industrialization and restructured fiscal institutions during the first two Five-Year Plans. His signature on Soviet ruble notes made him one of the most visible economic officials in the country. Arrested during the Great Terror, he was a defendant in the Third Moscow Trial and was shot in 1938. Posthumously rehabilitated in 1959.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1890–1946 ✕ Murdered

Pioneer of Ukrainian national communism, the original 'Shumskyism'

In April 1926, Shumsky met Stalin privately in Moscow for over two hours, demanding Kaganovich's replacement by Ukrainian Vlas Chubar and accelerated Ukrainization. Stalin's resulting Politburo letter condemned 'Shumskyism' as nationalist deviation — a watershed in the suppression of Ukrainian national communism.

A symbol of Ukrainian national communism and the prototype of 'Shumskyism': the demand for substantive republican autonomy against Moscow's centralism. A Borotbist who rose to the CP(b)U Politburo, he drove the de-Russification of Ukraine's cities and proletariat and the promotion of Ukrainian cadres as People's Commissar of Education (1924–1927). His 1926 confrontation with Stalin led to his condemnation for 'nationalist deviation' and removal from all posts; his name became shorthand for the suppression of Ukrainian autonomy within the Soviet system. Arrested in 1933, he endured the Solovki camps and Krasnoyarsk exile before the NKVD murdered him upon release in 1946; rehabilitated in 1958.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1890–1950 ✕ Executed

Stalin's artillery chief from Tsaritsyn: Marshal who blocked the T-34, KV-1 and Katyusha

What the hell do we need rocket artillery for? The main thing is the horse-drawn gun.

A Stalin favourite since the Battle of Tsaritsyn, Kulik headed the Red Army's artillery directorate from 1937 to 1941, where his extreme conservatism led him to block the T-34 and KV-1 tanks, Katyusha rockets, and submachine guns, the very weapons that later saved the Soviet Union. His disastrous field commands in the Winter War and against Germany brought court-martial, demotion from Marshal to major-general in 1942, and eventual execution for treason in 1950.

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.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1892–1937 ✕ Executed

The master of the Ukrainian security apparatus

On 7 July 1937, he went to Khabarovsk station to greet his replacement Genrikh Lyushkov and was arrested on the spot on a warrant signed by Yezhov. On 27 November — his 45th birthday — he was shot under the 'special procedure.'

Head of the Ukrainian GPU and NKVD (1923–1937) and the dominant figure in republican security. He directed repression during the Holodomor, sat on a Politburo troika with capital-punishment authority, and orchestrated fabricated nationalist cases. Commissar of State Security 1st Rank (1935); arrested and executed in 1937.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1892–1941 ✕ Killed in action

Southwestern Front commander who fell in the Kiev encirclement

On 26 June 1941, German Chief of Staff Halder noted: 'The enemy facing Army Group South displays firm and energetic leadership.' Amid the chaos of the Brody tank battle, Kirponos's Southwestern Front held.

Born to a poor Ukrainian peasant family, he was conscripted in 1915 and joined the Bolsheviks in 1918, fighting the Civil War with Shchors's division. After the Frunze Academy he served as commandant of the Kazan Infantry School, then commanded the 70th Rifle Division in the Winter War: outflanking Vyborg across the frozen Gulf of Finland and earning the Hero of the Soviet Union. Appointed commander of the Kiev Special Military District in January 1941, he led the Southwestern Front from the first day of Barbarossa, directing the tank battle at Brody and the defence of Kiev. On 20 September 1941 he was killed by mortar shrapnel trying to break out of the Kiev encirclement, the highest-ranking Soviet commander to die in the catastrophe.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1892–1970 ○ Natural causes

The cavalryman who closed Stalingrad's southern pincer

In August 1941, taking command of the Bryansk Front, Yeryomenko promised Stalin personally: "I will smash that scoundrel Guderian." The promise failed; Guderian encircled Kiev instead.

Born to a poor Ukrainian peasant family, Yeryomenko rose from a conscript in the First World War to Marshal of the Soviet Union. He fought the Civil War in Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army and survived the purges as a cavalry officer. At Stalingrad he commanded the Southeastern (later Stalingrad) Front, planning the city's defence with Khrushchev and closing the southern pincer of Operation Uranus to trap Paulus's 6th Army. He led no fewer than eight fronts during the war, ending it at the head of the 4th Ukrainian Front liberating Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Made a Marshal in 1955, his battlefield record far outran his political weight. He was also a diarist: despite a ban on wartime journals, he kept one throughout.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1893–1939 ✕ Executed

Chekist who went from chairing the Kabardino-Balkar troika to heading the NKVD prison department

As chair of the Kabardino-Balkar NKVD troika in 1937, he led repression; in 1937–38 he directly participated in the killing of Solovki special-prison inmates.

Born Luka Gritsyuk to a Ukrainian farm labourer's family in Dolsk, Volhynia, he won all four classes of the St George Cross in the First World War, joined the party in 1918 and helped organise the Dubrovytsia uprising. In the Cheka from 1920, he took part in the operation that lured General Tyutyunnyk out of Poland. From 1934 to 1937 he ran the Kabardino-Balkar NKVD and chaired the republic's special troika. From October 1937, as deputy head and then head of the NKVD prison department, he took a direct part in killing the inmates of the Solovki special-purpose prison. Arrested in October 1938, he was shot on 23 February 1939 and rehabilitated in 1955.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1894–1948 ○ Kidney disease

Twice Hero who drove the 3rd Guards Tank Army from Stalingrad to Prague

During the Kursk battle, German aircraft strafed Rybalko's car. His driver was killed, his adjutant gravely wounded, and the car plunged into a ditch. Rybalko emerged unscathed, switched vehicles, and carried on commanding.

Starting as a private, he commanded the 3rd Guards Tank Army from Kursk to Prague and was twice made Hero of the Soviet Union. Wounded five times in World War I and the Civil War, he led the postwar reorganization of Soviet armor as its commander before dying of illness at 53.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1894–1969 ○ Natural causes

Khrushchev's loyal executor: a peasant-born apparatchik who twice led Soviet Ukraine's government

'Silence was his trump card. He'd wait for Khrushchev to propose something, then say: "Yes, yes, of course, that's exactly right."' — William Taubman

Soviet party and state leader who twice headed the Ukrainian SSR government (1938–1939, 1947–1954) and served 15 years as Chairman of its Supreme Soviet Presidium (1954–1969). Born to a poor peasant family, he joined the Bolsheviks in 1918 and organized Red partisans. In the 1930s he formed a lasting patron-client bond with Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow's Bauman district, riding that connection to the chairmanship of the Ukrainian Council of People's Commissars during the Great Purge. He organized partisan resistance under German occupation and led postwar reconstruction. Remembered as a classic yes-man whose silence was his trump card.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1895–1940 ✕ Executed

Yezhov’s confidant who kept the Great Terror’s ledgers

In the summer of 1938 the albums of the mass operations piled up in Moscow, more than a hundred thousand names awaiting review. The records chief who fixed guilt and sentence out of that paper heap was Tsesarsky.

Born to a clerk's family in Odessa, he passed from the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Borotbists into the Bolshevik party in 1919. He worked in the Central Committee apparatus in the 1930s, from 1935 as report aide to CC secretary Yezhov, and when Yezhov took over the NKVD he followed him in, holding a plenipotentiary post created for him before heading the GUGB 8th Department in charge of records and registration. The album reviews of the mass operations and the paperwork of the execution lists passed through his hands, and in 1937 he was promoted to senior major of state security. In 1938 he headed the Secret Political (4th) Department and then the Moscow oblast NKVD before being shunted off to run the Ukhto-Izhemsky camp; arrested in December 1938 right after Yezhov's fall, he was sentenced by the Military Collegium and shot in January 1940. Rehabilitation was denied in 2002.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1895–1970 ○ Natural causes

Marshal of the Soviet Union, People's Commissar for Defence 1940-1941

Marshal Vasilevsky recalled that on 7 January 1940, at the Main Military Council, Stalin asked who would take command during a long silence; Timoshenko rose and said he was ready to take it on if given everything discussed, hoping not to let him down.

Born in 1895 in Bessarabia's Orman, in an ethnic Ukrainian peasant family, Timoshenko was drafted in 1914 and rose through Budyonny's cavalry in the Civil War. He commanded cavalry corps and military districts in the 1920s-1930s, then the North-Western Front in the Winter War, breaking the Mannerheim Line. Appointed People's Commissar for Defence in May 1940, he pressed to re-equip and mechanise a Red Army gutted by the purges. Chaired Stavka from 23 June 1941, then commanded fronts, retaking Rostov-on-Don that November. After the May 1942 Kharkov encirclement failed and he lost the Stalingrad Front, he led the North-Western Front until March 1943, then served as Stavka representative; from 1960 he held honorary posts. He died in 1970.