People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism

The chief designer of the Volga inflatable airlock that made Leonov's spacewalk possible

On 18 March 1965, Alexei Leonov opened the hatch of the Volga airlock after it had inflated in orbit and stepped into space.

Boris Mikhailov was the chief designer at Engineering Plant 918 (later NPO Zvezda) in Tomilino near Moscow, where in mid-1964 he led the team that designed, built, and tested the Volga inflatable airlock in just nine months. A metal airlock would not fit the Voskhod spacecraft, so his flexible structure, folded for launch and inflated on orbit, was the only solution. On 18 March 1965, Alexei Leonov walked into space through this airlock in humanity's first spacewalk.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1900/1902–1945 Dalian, ; circumstances unconfirmed

Far East NKVD chief, the highest-ranking defector

On the night of June 13, 1938, Lyushkov arrived at Border Detachment 59 in field uniform with decorations, told the outpost commander that he was meeting an agent alone on the other side, then crossed the border and surrendered to the Japanese.

Born in Odessa, he served in the Soviet state security organs and from the 1920s held senior Cheka, OGPU and NKVD posts in Ukraine, Moscow and the Far East. In 1930 he carried out an industrial espionage mission against the Junkers company in Germany, and in 1936-1937 he headed the Azov-Black Sea and then the Far East NKVD, directing mass arrests and executions of the Great Purge. While Far East NKVD chief in 1937 he took part in the forced deportation of 171,781 Soviet Koreans to Central Asia, the USSR's first mass ethnic deportation, with estimates of deaths ranging from about 16,500 to 50,000. In June 1938 he realised he was about to be arrested, crossed into Manchukuo and surrendered to the Japanese with a mass of Soviet military intelligence, and in August 1945 he was shot by his Japanese handlers as Soviet troops closed on Dalian.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism ?–? ○ Natural causes

KGB security officer who commanded border troops under Andropov

After the 1969 Sino-Soviet border clashes, Soviet border troop strength nearly doubled within three years — an expansion Kozlovsky oversaw.

A Soviet KGB official who supervised the Chief Directorate of Border Troops (GUPV) under Yuri Andropov, playing a key role in tightening border enforcement and internal control during the Brezhnev era. His career embodies the institutionalised security function of the KGB in the late Soviet period.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1904/1905–1964 ✕ Air crash

Marshal who helped plan the liberation of the Balkans, then commanded the Strategic Rocket Forces

On 19 October 1964 an Il-18 of the Soviet Air Force carrying Biryuzov's delegation to the 20th anniversary of Belgrade's liberation strayed from its landing course and struck Mount Avala, killing 18 people, 11 crew and 7 delegation members; his ashes were placed in the Kremlin wall.

Biryuzov was born in Skopin, in Ryazan Governorate; the official Russian biography records a merchant's family, while other accounts describe a working-class family of Russian ethnicity. He enlisted in the Red Army on 15 September 1922, graduated from the VTsIK Combined Military School in 1926 and the Frunze Academy in 1937, then commanded the 132nd Rifle Division from 1939. Wounded five times in the first year of the German invasion, he was later chief of staff of the 2nd Guards Army and of the Southern, 4th Ukrainian, and 3rd Ukrainian fronts, helping plan the liberation of the Donbass and Crimea and the Jassy-Kishinev and Belgrade offensives. He commanded the Air Defence Forces and then the Strategic Rocket Forces and became Chief of the General Staff in March 1963, dying in a plane crash on Mount Avala on 19 October 1964.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1901/1902–1983 ○ Natural causes

Armenian party functionary who managed the international communist movement in late Stalinism

In August 1953, CC official A. L. Dedov reported to Khrushchev that Grigoryan's colleagues 'point to close relations between Grigoryan and Beria.'

Born in an Armenian village in Azerbaijan, Grigoryan rose from army newspaper editor to head of publishing and propaganda in the Moscow party apparatus. In 1949 he succeeded Mikhail Suslov as chairman of the Foreign Policy Commission (International Department), overseeing CPSU relations with communist parties worldwide until 1953. His tenure coincided with the deepening Tito–Stalin split after the Cominform's founding, the victory of the Chinese Revolution, and the Korean War. Elected a candidate member of the Central Committee at the 19th Party Congress in 1952, he was removed after Beria's fall, transferred to the Foreign Ministry, and dropped from the Central Committee.