People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1934–

The last minister who tried to preserve the Soviet machine-tool industry through perestroika

Asked in 2012 about the state of the industry, Panichev answered: 'Many development programs have already been adopted. Over thirty government documents on machine-tool building alone. Nothing has budged.'

Nikolai Panichev was the last Minister of Machine Tool and Instrument Building Industry of the USSR (1986–1991), a production administrator who rose from lathe operator to director at the Leningrad Ilyich plant over twenty-five years before joining the ministry. As minister he sought to keep Soviet machine-tool manufacturing competitive by introducing CNC machines, flexible manufacturing modules, and robotic complexes, but the sector was caught between the old command system and the half-built market reforms. After the Soviet collapse he founded the Russian machine-tool association Stankoinstrument and chaired the public council of former USSR and RSFSR ministers. His 2004 memoir Razlom (Fracture) offers a first-hand account of late-Soviet industrial achievement and the failure of reform.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1934–

The general who sent men onto the Chernobyl roof when the robots died

'How is this possible?' I still cannot stop asking myself. 'Did we come from the Stone Age, to collect sheets of lead and cut makeshift protection for vital organs?'

A Soviet civil defence general and doctor of technical sciences. Four months after the Chernobyl explosion, when every remote-controlled robot had failed, the government commission handed him the most dangerous decontamination zone. He ordered lead sheeting stripped from the walls of government offices and improvised into protective gear, then ran 3,828 soldiers through the roofs of reactor 3 in 40–90-second shifts; they cleared 200 tonnes of highly radioactive debris by hand. He developed radiation sickness, wrote two books about the operation, and was nominated for Hero of the Soviet Union, only to be struck from the list after a conflict with the chief of staff of the Kiev Military District.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1934–

Youngest KGB general turned its highest-ranking defector-critic

"I like Americans very much. But after seven months here I am convinced more than ever that the Communist system is better than yours." — 24-year-old KGB officer Kalugin, posing as a Fulbright scholar to Newsweek, 1959.

A KGB Major General who, as the youngest general in the agency's history, headed foreign counterintelligence (Directorate K) and directed Cold War espionage against the United States. He broke with the service in the late 1980s, publicly denouncing its corruption, backed Yeltsin during the 1991 coup, and emigrated to the US, where his memoirs exposed the inner workings of the KGB.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1934–1968 ✕ Killed in crash

The first human smile to leave the Earth

Re-entry: the capsule engulfed in 3,000-degree plasma, ten Gs pressing on his body. Inside, Gagarin whistled — Shostakovich's "The Motherland Hears, The Motherland Knows." He later wrote in his autobiography: "I sang that song the whole way down to Earth."

A collective-farm carpenter’s son circled the planet in 108 minutes on April 12, 1961: “Poyekhali!”, let’s go. In the middle of the Cold War he became the one man both camps loved. Training for a return to space, he died in a MiG crash in 1968. He was thirty-four.

Soviet Union state institutions 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 state institutions Soviet communism 1934–2019 ○ Natural causes

The cosmonaut who spent five days alone in orbit, setting a solo spaceflight record that still stands

On 18 June 1963, while Vostok 5 was still orbiting, the Party Central Committee reviewed his application and admitted him as a full member without a candidate period.

Soviet cosmonaut, the fifth to fly in space. Launched on 14 June 1963 aboard Vostok 5, he orbited Earth 81 times over nearly five days, setting a solo space endurance record that still stands. The original Vostok plan called for two women to fly simultaneously, but the mission was restructured as one woman and one man: Bykovsky launched two days before Valentina Tereshkova. He went on to command Soyuz 22 (1976) and Soyuz 31 (1978) with East Germany's first cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn, becoming the only Vostok/Voskhod-era cosmonaut to complete three spaceflights.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1934–2022 ○ Died

The communist propagandist who became Ukraine's first president and signed the Soviet Union out of existence

It was a long road we walked to Belavezha. It was not by accident; it was our deliberate choice because we had no other option.

A party man who spent three decades climbing the propaganda and ideology apparatus of the Ukrainian Communist Party, Kravchuk pivoted to 'national communism' after becoming chairman of the Supreme Soviet in 1990. At the Novo-Ogaryovo negotiations he insisted on a confederation, not a federation, and delayed the signing of the new Union Treaty until September; after the August 1991 coup collapsed, he presided over Ukraine's Declaration of Independence on 24 August. Elected Ukraine's first president on 1 December 1991, he signed the Belavezha Accords with Yeltsin and Shushkevich a week later, formally ending the Soviet Union. His presidency saw the surrender of Ukraine's nuclear arsenal and a deep economic slump, but he stepped down after a peaceful electoral defeat and remained active in politics as a deputy.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1934–2023 ○ Natural causes

Propaganda-trained culture minister who executed glasnost-era cultural liberalization

In June 1989, the USSR Supreme Soviet reviewed Premier Ryzhkov's proposed cabinet and rejected Zakharov's renomination as culture minister. For the first time in decades, the rubber-stamp legislature told a sitting minister he was unqualified and sent him packing.

Trained as an economist, he rose through the Leningrad party organization's propaganda and agitation apparatus to reach Moscow, where Gorbachev appointed him Minister of Culture in 1986. His tenure oversaw a decisive shift in Soviet cultural policy: the publication of previously banned books, the relaxation of film censorship, and expanded autonomy for artistic creation. He personally mediated the acrimonious split of the Moscow Art Theatre. In 1989 the newly empowered Supreme Soviet rejected his renomination, the first major case of the legislature exercising real confirmation power over a sitting minister. After leaving office, he served as deputy premier of the Russian republic and later wrote memoirs judging the Gorbachev era a 'reign of missed opportunities.'

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1935–

A steadfast defender of Latvia's Communist Party at the Soviet Union's end

After the August 1991 coup attempt, he was arrested, becoming a jailed defendant after trying to preserve the Soviet union-wide order.

Alfrēds Rubiks was a Latvian communist politician formed by work in Riga's municipal administration and the Communist Party of Latvia. In the conflict between the Soviet system and Latvian independence, he sought to preserve the party's union-wide order, and his support for the August 1991 coup attempt brought arrest, conviction, and imprisonment. After his release, he continued that political line as leader of the Socialist Party of Latvia and later as a Member of the European Parliament.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1935–2000 ○ Heart attack

Second human to orbit Earth and builder of Soviet military space systems

"Once you have your arms and legs arranged properly, space sleep is fine... I slept like a baby." — the first human to sleep in orbit, Vostok 2, August 1961.

Soviet cosmonaut and military space commander. On 6 August 1961, aboard Vostok 2, he became the second human to orbit Earth; his 17-orbit, 25-hour flight, the first long-duration mission, proved humans could eat, sleep, and work in space. At 25, he remains the youngest orbital pilot in history. He was the first to manually pilot a spacecraft, the first to film Earth from orbit, and the first to experience space sickness. After his flight he led cosmonaut training for the Spiral orbital spaceplane, and from 1979 to 1991 served as First Deputy Chief of GUKOS/UNKS, the USSR Ministry of Defence space directorate, overseeing military space systems including the Marshal Nedelin-class tracking ships. Elected to the Russian State Duma as a CPRF member (1993–2000).

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1935–2012 ✕ Suicide

Last chief of Soviet foreign intelligence

On August 19, 1991, the day the GKChP coup began, Shebarshin 'demonstratively' played tennis all day.

The last chief of the KGB First Chief Directorate, a career officer who built decades of field experience in Pakistan, India, and Iran. He kept his distance from the August 1991 coup, served a single day as acting KGB chairman after its failure before Boris Yeltsin blocked him, and later chronicled Soviet foreign intelligence's final chapter in his memoirs.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1935–2020 ○ Natural causes

Khrushchev's son and Chelomei's guidance-system engineer

During the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969, Khrushchev tried to watch the historic moment through a telescope from Ukraine — with a KGB officer at his side.

Soviet rocket engineer and computer scientist. The son of Nikita Khrushchev, he developed guidance systems for cruise missiles and the Proton space booster at Vladimir Chelomei's OKB-52 design bureau, contributing to submarine-launched missiles, military spacecraft, Moon vehicles, and the Proton booster. At age 28 he was named a Hero of Socialist Labor and awarded the Order of Lenin in 1963. He later served as first deputy director of the Control Computer Institute (INEUM), and after moving to the United States in 1991 taught Cold War history and the Soviet space program at Brown University's Watson Institute while publishing several books on his father's era.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1935–2021 ○ 10-year sentence 1988, served 5, freed 1991

The first director of Chernobyl who built the plant and was held responsible for its catastrophe

In the station courtyard I saw pieces of graphite under my feet, but I still could not imagine that the reactor had been destroyed.

Born in Tashkent as the eldest son of Russian workers, he studied energy engineering and built his career at thermal power plants. In 1970 he was appointed construction manager and first director of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which he led for sixteen years; plagued by construction delays and defective materials, he submitted his resignation, but a Party supervisor tore it up. Dismissed immediately after the 1986 disaster, he was sentenced to ten years in 1988; after his release he continued working on Chernobyl liquidation until his death in Kyiv in 2021.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1935–2024 ○ Natural causes

Soviet physicist who linked fusion science, Chernobyl, and nuclear disarmament

Less than a month after absorbing radiation at Chernobyl, Velikhov chaired an international meeting on nuclear test-ban verification — turning disaster into a disarmament opening.

Soviet physicist who pioneered plasma physics for controlled fusion and MHD power. His 1959 thesis discovered magnetorotational instability, now foundational to astrophysics; in 1962 he identified electrothermal instability. He led the Soviet controlled-fusion program from 1973 and was Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1978–1991), bridging the Kurchatov Institute and the Academy. During Chernobyl (1986) he served as Gorbachev's science advisor for reactor containment, then led science diplomacy for nuclear disarmament. After the Soviet collapse he sustained the Kurchatov Institute and became founding chairman of ITER, building the framework for joint US-Soviet-European-Japanese fusion research.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1935–2024 ○ Natural causes

The final head of Soviet Moldavia's Communist Party

He called the 1991 banning of the Communist Party “an illegitimate act.”

Grigore Eremei was a Moldavian party and state official whose career reached its decisive moment at the end of the Soviet system. As First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldavia in 1991, he occupied the republic's leading party post while the Union was breaking apart and Moldova moved toward independence. After the party was dissolved, he continued in public life as a Moldovan diplomat and parliamentarian, linking a Soviet political career to the institutions of the independent republic.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1935–

The last Soviet trade minister, formed in consumer cooperatives

In 1987, he reported declining sugar reserves to the government, putting figures to the consumer crisis.

Kondrat Terekh was a Soviet economic administrator who rose from village-cooperative bookkeeper to become the last Minister of Trade of the USSR (1986–91) during perestroika. Bearing responsibility for all-Union consumer distribution until the planned economy's collapse, he stood at the front line of a consumer crisis of rationing and shortages.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1935–2020 ○ Died

Ukrainian SSR head of state during Chernobyl who pushed the evacuation of 526,000 children from Kyiv against Moscow's resistance

Recalling the interior deputy minister's report on the morning of 26 April 1986: 'The fire was put out, everything is fine. The people? Some are having a wedding, some are gardening, some are fishing in the Pripyat River.'

As Chairwoman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR during the Chernobyl disaster, she defied Moscow's directives and oversaw the evacuation of 526,000 children from Kyiv and contaminated zones in just five days. Born the daughter of a miner in Kryvyi Rih, she rose through Komsomol and the deputy ministry of education to become the republic's formal head of state in 1985, spending her tenure navigating between central information control and the realities on the ground. In 1989 she refused to sign the resolution banning the People's Movement of Ukraine (Rukh), and after retirement led children's and women's welfare foundations while maintaining a sympathetic view of the Soviet system and a critical stance toward independent Ukraine.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1935–

The last Chief of the Soviet General Staff, who refused to fire on civilians and twice drafted military reform

“These were young people expressing their views in the square. The task before me was to resolve the conflict without bloodshed.” — when asked why he refused the Kazakh party leadership's order to deploy troops against the 1986 Alma-Ata protests.

A professional soldier who rose from conscript to the highest military post in the USSR: Chief of the General Staff. As commander of the Central Asian Military District, he refused the Kazakh party leadership's demand to send troops against the December 1986 Alma-Ata protests, resolving the standoff without bloodshed. Twice entrusted with drafting military reform, first as First Deputy Chief of the General Staff under Gorbachev and again as Chief in 1991, he advocated shorter conscription, brigade-based organization, and a defensive posture, clashing with Defence Minister Yazov and later the Russian military establishment. Appointed Chief of the General Staff after the August 1991 coup, he held the post barely four months before the Soviet Union itself dissolved, making him the last man to hold the office.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1936–1988 ✕ Suicide

The Kurchatov chemist who led science at Chernobyl, then left the full truth on tapes before hanging himself

"I did not lie in Vienna… but I did not tell the full truth."

Valery Legasov was a Soviet inorganic chemist and first deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, who arrived at the Chernobyl disaster site on the evening of 26 April 1986 as the scientific leader of the government commission. He proposed dropping boron and sand into the burning reactor, spent a total of 60 days on site, and later presented a five-hour report to the IAEA in Vienna that drew international attention but stopped short of revealing the RBMK reactor's full design flaws. On 27 April 1988, the day after the disaster's second anniversary, he hanged himself in his Moscow apartment; the audio tapes he recorded beforehand exposed the cover-ups and systemic failures of the Soviet nuclear establishment and became a primary source for historians.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1936–2010 ○ Cancer

Gromyko protégé and arms negotiator remembered for the "Walk in the Woods"

On July 16, 1982, Kvitsinsky and Paul Nitze left the formal Geneva arms talks for an unofficial walk in the woods, sketching a compromise on intermediate-range nuclear forces. Both governments rejected it — but the conversation became Lee Blessing's Broadway play "A Walk in the Woods."

A leading Soviet Germanist and protégé of Andrei Gromyko, Yuli Kvitsinsky served on the front lines of Soviet diplomacy toward the West for over three decades. As head of the Soviet delegation to the Geneva INF negotiations from 1981, his famous "walk in the woods" with American negotiator Paul Nitze in July 1982, an informal attempt to sketch a compromise on intermediate-range nuclear missiles, became an iconic Cold War moment that later inspired a Broadway play. As Ambassador to West Germany (1986–1990), he helped prepare the "Two Plus Four" treaty framework for German reunification, and as First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1991 he oversaw European security affairs. After a post-Soviet hiatus, he returned as Russia's ambassador to Norway (1997–2003) and served as a CPRF deputy in the State Duma until his death.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1936–2014 ○ Died, prolonged illness

The general who gave the operational order to clear Rustaveli Avenue

'Not a single demonstrator died from a shovel. That was invented by Mr Sobchak together with the Georgian fascists.'

As commander of the Transcaucasus Military District, he gave the operational order to clear the independence rally on Tbilisi's Rustaveli Avenue on 9 April 1989, an action that left 21 civilians dead. The Sobchak commission named him, yet the chain of command ran upward to Defence Minister Yazov and the republican party leadership, and Rodionov became the only figure publicly held to account within that structure. He had previously commanded the 40th Army in Afghanistan (1985–86), and in 1996 Yeltsin made him Russia's Defence Minister, only to sack him ten months later when he refused to subordinate the army's budget to the government's reform plans.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1936–2020 ○ COVID-19

Belarus's first prime minister; co-signed the Belovezh Accords and later testified the Russian delegation alone arrived with a plan

'Neither I, nor Shushkevich, nor Kravchuk, nor Fokin knew such a document would be prepared and signed': Kebich insisted only the Russian delegation arrived with a plan for the Belovezh Accords.

A mechanical engineer from the Belarusian Polytechnic Institute, he rose through Minsk factories into the Belarusian Communist Party apparatus and became Chairman of the BSSR Council of Ministers in 1990. In December 1991 he co-signed the Belovezh Accords alongside Shushkevich, formally dissolving the USSR; he later testified that the Russian delegation alone arrived with a prepared plan while the Belarusian and Ukrainian sides did not know such a document would be drafted, revealing the tension between spontaneity and premeditation at the meeting. He lost the 1994 presidential election overwhelmingly to Alexander Lukashenko and thereafter served as a parliamentary deputy supporting Lukashenko's pro-Russian and constitutional-revision agenda.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1937–1991 ✕ Suicide, shooting order disputed

From Latvian KGB chief to USSR interior minister, a guardian of order shattered in the coup he backed

He took his own life with a pistol in his apartment on 22 August 1991, with an arrest warrant issued. The order of the shots is disputed: prosecutors held he fired first, while Yavlinsky's account and the later investigation concluded his wife fired last.

Born into a family of Latvian communists and a graduate of the Riga Polytechnical Institute, he rose through Komsomol and party work to chair the Latvian KGB in 1980–1984 and lead the Communist Party of Latvia in 1984–1989. As USSR interior minister from December 1990 he pursued a hard line on law and order, and in August 1991 joined the State Emergency Committee (GKChP), mobilizing the interior apparatus behind it. When the coup collapsed he took his own life with a pistol in his Moscow apartment on 22 August 1991.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1937–

Tereshkova's backup cosmonaut, the physically strongest candidate Kamanin judged too reserved for the spotlight

"We decided it was worth trying": after she and her fiancé, skydiving instructor Sergey Kiselev, discussed the secret-police recruitment offer at their favorite café until closing time.

A mechanical engineer and nationally ranked parachutist, she was one of five women selected in 1962 for the Soviet Union's first female cosmonaut group. She trained as Valentina Tereshkova's primary backup for the Vostok-6 flight; Nikolai Kamanin rated her the best physically among the candidates but judged her too introverted for the worldwide propaganda role the first woman in space would have to play. Later she prepared with Valentina Ponomaryova for what would have been the first all-female spacewalk on Voskhod, but the mission was cancelled; after the women's group disbanded in 1969, she spent her career as a researcher at the Cosmonaut Training Center and earned a Candidate of Psychological Sciences degree.