People of the Revolution and the USSR

Activity
Any Security, intelligence and policing 1 Industry and production 1 Literature and arts 1
Affiliation

Most people

Any Soviet Unionstate 1

All 1 affiliations

Soviet Union

Soviet Unionstate 1
Position
Any Imperial establishment and White movement 1 Marxism and communism 1
Citizenship(set)
Any Soviet Union 453 Russia 3 Germany 1 Japan 1 United States 1
Background
Any Russia 3
Era(set)
Any

People of the Soviet Union

The old regime and its challengers1905–1917 130 The revolutionary generation1917–1940 12 People of the Stalin era1929–1953 3 People of the thaw and the stagnation1953–1985 5 The last generation1985–1991 13

People of the wider world

The age of the Internationals and empires1820–1917 5 The revolutionary wave and the world war1917–1945 9 The Cold War and decolonization1945–현재 1 Scholars of this history1892–현재 25
Citizenship: Russia People of the Stalin era 1929–1953 Clear all

Alexei N. Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Алексей Николаевич Толстой
Russia Russia 1883–1945 ○ Lung cancer

The Red Count: from émigré to pillar of Stalinist letters

“There is no real friend of Russia in the world except the Soviet government.” — wartime address, 1941

Born a Count of the Tolstoy family, he sided with the Whites and emigrated in 1919. Unable to endure life in Paris and Berlin, he returned in 1923, the 'Red Count,' beloved of the regime. His epic Road to Calvary trilogy and unfinished Peter the First earned three Stalin Prizes; he also gave Soviet letters its seminal science fiction (Aelita, The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin). During the war he wrote some sixty patriotic essays and drafted Stalin's 1941 Red Square address.

Career timeline
  • 1907–1917Debuts with poetry collection Lirika; enters Petersburg literary scene with The Lame Landlord
  • 1918–1923Emigrates via Odessa–Constantinople–Paris–Berlin; writes Aelita and Nikita's Childhood
  • 1923Returns to USSR permanently; hailed as a symbolic repatriate
  • 1930–1941Writes Peter the First, completes The Road to Calvary; acting Writers' Union head 1936–38
  • 1939Elected full Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences
  • 1941–1943Wins two Stalin Prizes; donates 100,000 rubles for a tank
  • 1941–1945Frontline correspondent; publishes sixty wartime essays and Russian Character
  • 1945Posthumous Stalin Prize for play Ivan the Terrible

Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov

Николай Николаевич Поликарпов
Soviet Union Soviet communism Russian Empire → Soviet Union Russian 1892–1944 ○ Stomach cancer

The 'King of Fighters' who dominated Soviet fighter aviation for a decade

Returning from his 1939 delegation to Germany, Polikarpov found his design bureau gone — his engineers, I-200 project, and factory had all been transferred to the newly formed MiG OKB.

Soviet aircraft designer known as the 'King of Fighters.' His I-15 biplane and revolutionary I-16 monoplane formed the backbone of Soviet fighter aviation (1934–1941), seeing combat in Spain, China, Khalkhin Gol, and the early Great Patriotic War. Arrested in 1929 on fabricated sabotage charges and sentenced to death, he was reprieved to work at OGPU prison design bureau TsKB-39, where he produced the I-5; amnestied in 1931, fully rehabilitated posthumously in 1956. During his 1939 delegation to Germany, his bureau was transferred to Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich to form the MiG OKB; he rebuilt OKB-51 and continued designing advanced fighters. He also created the U-2 (Po-2), over 30,000 built.

Career timeline
  • 1916–1918Engineer at Russo-Baltic Carriage Factory under Igor Sikorsky; production head for S-16 fighter
  • 1918–1923Technical department, Dux factory (GAZ No. 1); rose to head of technical department
  • 1923–1928Chief designer at GAZ No. 1; designed R-1, I-1, U-2
  • 1929–1931Arrested; developed I-5 at OGPU prison design bureau TsKB-39; amnestied 1931
  • 1933–1939Head of Brigade No. 2, TsKB-39 → chief designer at Plants 84, 156, 1; I-15 and I-16 fighters
  • 1940–1944Director and chief designer of OKB-51; I-185 fighter; professor at MAI from 1943

Nikolai Vladimirovich Skoblin

Николай Владимирович Скоблин
Imperial establishment and White movement Russia Russian 1893–1937/1938? ✕ Disappeared, death unresolved

A White general turned clandestine Soviet collaborator

After luring Miller to the 1937 meeting, Skoblin vanished from Paris.

Nikolai Skoblin was a White Army officer of the First World War and Russian Civil War who became famous as the young major general commanding the Kornilov Shock Division. In exile he rose within the Russian All-Military Union, yet was recruited by Soviet intelligence and operated inside the émigré military milieu. His alleged role in passing material about a supposed Tukhachevsky conspiracy to Reinhard Heydrich places him at the centre of the dispute over whether forged German documents helped drive the purge or were shaped and used on Stalin’s initiative. After helping abduct Yevgeny Miller in 1937, Skoblin disappeared, and the circumstances of his death remain uncertain.

Career timeline
  • 1914–1917Russian Army officer in the First World War
  • 1917–1918Battalion commander in the Kornilov Shock Detachment
  • 1918–1920Commander of the Kornilov Shock Regiment and Division, White major general
  • 1920–1929Exile in Gallipoli and Bulgaria, commanding the Kornilov Regiment
  • 1929–1937Commander of the Kornilov Regiment in the Paris ROVS
  • 1935–1937Head of the ROVS Inner Line counter-intelligence
  • 1937Disappeared after assisting the abduction of Miller