People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1873–1918 ✕ Assassinated

The Petrograd Cheka chairman who resisted the terror, and became its trigger

“I am not soft at all. If there is no other way, I will shoot every counter-revolutionary with my own hand and be perfectly calm. I oppose executions because they are inexpedient — they only provoke bitterness and produce no positive results.” — to his Petrograd Cheka comrades

Born to a Jewish family in Cherkassy. After graduating from Kiev University's law faculty, he joined the RSDLP in 1898, initially siding with the Mensheviks. At the VI Congress in August 1917 he entered the Bolshevik Party and was elected to the Central Committee; during the October insurrection he directed the uprising from the Military Revolutionary Party Center. Appointed first chairman of the Petrograd Cheka in March 1918, he opposed hostage-taking and extrajudicial executions, maintaining a more restrained line than Moscow. He was assassinated on 30 August 1918 (the same day Lenin was wounded) and his death became the immediate trigger for the official proclamation of the Red Terror.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1876–1921 ○ Cholera

Founder of Rabotnitsa and organizer of Russia's first International Women's Day

On the eve of Rabotnitsa's first issue in February 1914, police raided the editorial office and arrested the entire board, Samoilova included. The publication permit had been a trap. But Anna Yelizarova, who arrived late and escaped the sweep, got the first issue out on 23 February — International Women's Day.

Daughter of an Irkutsk priest, she studied philosophy at the Bestuzhev Courses. In Paris in 1902 she met Lenin and joined Iskra, then spent a decade as an underground propagandist, arrested three times. As Pravda's editorial secretary, the letters from working women moved her to organize Russia's first International Women's Day in 1913. In 1914 she co-founded Rabotnitsa, the first Marxist newspaper for working women; she revived it after the February Revolution. She headed Zhenotdel in Ukraine, served on Kommunistka's board, and led the political department of the Volga agit-steamer Red Star before dying of cholera in Astrakhan in 1921.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1878–1918 ✕ Executed

The 'Caucasian Lenin', Marxist theorist of the national question and leader of the Baku Commune

As the Baku Commune crumbled, a comrade's wife urged him to flee first. Shaumyan answered: "What will the workers say to me? It would be a disgrace to flee first."

Pioneer of Armenian Marxism and leader of the Caucasus Bolsheviks. Born to a Tiflis merchant family, he studied at Riga Polytechnic and Berlin University, organizing Armenia's first Marxist circle in 1899. He translated the Communist Manifesto into Armenian, pioneered Armenian Marxist literary criticism, and was elected a candidate CC member at the 1912 Prague Conference. In 1918 he chaired the Baku Council of People's Commissars, the 'Baku Commune', and famously debated Lenin by correspondence on the national question. Captured and shot with the 26 Baku Commissars in September 1918, he became a Bolshevik martyr.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1883–1921 ✕ Accidental death

Founder and head of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, close friend of Stalin and Kirov

March 1902, Moscow. Nineteen-year-old Fyodor raised a homemade red banner — 'Inviolability of the Person! Freedom of Speech! Freedom of Assembly!' — the signal launching the student demonstration. Arrest, prison, expulsion: thus 'Artyom' was born.

An Old Bolshevik from 1901, he rose from Donbas miner and railway worker to organizer of Russian immigrant workers in Australia, and in 1918 founded and led the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic. A close friend of Stalin and Kirov, he chaired the All-Ukrainian Military Revolutionary Committee and CEC during the Civil War and served as Moscow Party executive secretary. He defended Soviet power against German occupiers and Denikin's White Army, dying at 38 in the 1921 aerowagon derailment. His infant son was adopted and raised by Stalin.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1885–1918 ✕ Executed

Tatar revolutionary who led the Kazan Muslim Socialist Committee and became the first head of the Soviet Muslim Commissariat

Born in 1885 into a merchant family, in Kazan or in Kazaevo in Perm province according to different records, he took part in the 1905 revolution. After the St Petersburg Polytechnic he moved in 1912 to the law faculty of the Psychoneurological Institute, where he met Mikhail Frunze among others and organised a circle of Muslim students. After the February Revolution he led the Muslim Socialist Committee in Kazan and its newspaper Qızıl Bayraq, became a member of the Kazan Military Revolutionary Committee in October and was elected to the Constituent Assembly. In January 1918, on Lenin’s advice, he became head of the Muslim Commissariat (Muskom) and sent sailors to crush the Trans-Bulak Republic. Appointed extraordinary food commissar for the Volga in July, he was captured and executed after Komuch’s People’s Army took Kazan in August.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1891–1918 ✕ Assassinated

Petrograd's press commissar whose assassination helped trigger the Red Terror

“Comrades, do you think I am looking at my watch? No — I am looking at the clock of humanity, the clock of the world revolution.”

Petrograd's Commissar for Press and Propaganda and a magnetic crowd orator who built the Bolshevik censorship apparatus and founded Krasnaya Gazeta. Shot dead by an SR militant on 20 June 1918, his assassination, alongside Uritsky's murder and the attempt on Lenin, became the spark for the full-scale Red Terror.

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) Soviet communism 1896–1917 ✕ Murdered

The 21-year-old commissar who brought Kronstadt sailors to the revolution

Freed from Kresty Prison on the day of the October Revolution, he went straight to the front as political commissar of the combined sailor-soldier detachment blocking the Kerensky-Krasnov advance on Petrograd.

The young Bolshevik who led Kronstadt and brought the Baltic Fleet sailors to the revolution. Freed from Kresty Prison during the October Revolution, he helped repel Kerensky's counter-offensive, then was sent to the Romanian Front where a clandestine officers' group murdered him.