Avar religious leader and mufti of the North Caucasus who led anti-Bolshevik uprisings in Dagestan and Chechnya in 1918–1925
Born in 1859 to an aristocratic Avar landowning family in the village of Gotsob in Dagestan, he was an Islamic scholar. In May 1917 the congress of the Union of Highlanders of the North Caucasus made him mufti of the North Caucasus, and in August he was proclaimed Imam of Dagestan and Chechnya but gave up the title three days later. He fought the Bolsheviks in 1918, and in 1919 he collaborated with Denikin’s Volunteer Army as a lesser evil than the communists. In September 1920 he raised and led the Dagestan uprising, which was put down in May 1921. Moving to Chechnya to prepare another rising, he was arrested in September 1925 and shot that October.
Career timeline
1895–1903Naib of Koisubu, Avar District
1917Mufti of the North Caucasus
1917Proclaimed Imam of Dagestan and Chechnya; gave up the title three days later
A lawyer-statesman who held White Siberia together through compromise
He told Kolchak that the government’s authority, and Kolchak’s own, was falling with every passing hour.
Pyotr Vologodsky was a lawyer and statesman shaped by Siberian regionalism and the Socialist Revolutionary movement, advocating local self-government and legal reform before 1917. In 1918 he led Siberia’s anti-Bolshevik government and managed compromises among right-wing, socialist, and regionalist forces. He remained head of government after Kolchak’s seizure of power, criticized the crisis produced by military arbitrariness and administrative weakness, and resigned in 1919 before emigrating to China.
Career timeline
1887–1897Clerk, judge, and assistant prosecutor in Siberian judicial institutions
1897–1917Tomsk attorney and member of the city duma
1902–1907Leader in Tomsk Socialist Revolutionary organization and Siberian regionalism
1917Tomsk provincial commissar and senior chairman of the Omsk court chamber
1918.01–06Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia
1918.06–11Chairman of the Provisional Siberian Government
1918.11–1919.11Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Government
1920–1925Exile in China, working in legal and émigré affairs
Commander of the West Russian Volunteer Army who led German Freikorps against Riga
Refusing Yudenich's order to join the Narva front, in October 1919 he proclaimed himself 'representative of Russian state power' and marched on Riga.
A Russian cavalry officer who styled himself 'Prince Avalov', he gathered tens of thousands of German Freikorps men who refused to leave Latvia into the West Russian Volunteer Army and attacked Riga in October 1919, only to be repelled. In exile he led a Russian fascist organization in Berlin and died in New York in 1973.
Career timeline
1901Enlisted as kapellmeister in the 1st Argun Regiment
1904–1905Fought in the Russo-Japanese War; awarded the Cross of St George
1918Head of recruitment and counterintelligence, Southern Army, Kiev
1919.04Formed a volunteer detachment at the Salzvedel POW camp
1919.07Formed the Count Keller detachment at Mitava
1919.09Proclaimed himself CinC of the West Russian Volunteer Army; marched on Riga in October
1925Published memoirs 'In the Struggle against Bolshevism'
1933Founded the Russian National-Socialist Movement (ROND)
Tatar lawyer and Duma deputy who headed the national administration of Idel-Ural
Born in 1878 in the village of Tashsu near Kazan, he studied law at the University of Paris in 1901–1906 on Ismail Gasprinsky’s advice. In 1906 he joined the Central Committee of Ittifaq al-Muslimin, and he sat for Kazan province in the Second and Third State Dumas. In 1917 he was on the executive committee of the All-Russian Muslim Council, and on 5 January 1918 he was elected chairman of the Milli Idare, the body of national-cultural autonomy of the Muslims of Inner Russia and Siberia, becoming head of the Idel-Ural State. When the Bolsheviks took Kazan and Ufa provinces he fled to Finland; at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 he pleaded for the peoples of Idel-Ural, without result. He moved to Turkey in 1925, became a professor of legal history and a member of parliament, and died in Istanbul in 1957.
Career timeline
1901–1906Law studies at the University of Paris
1906Member of the Central Committee of Ittifaq al-Muslimin
1907–1912Member of the Second and Third State Dumas for Kazan province
1917Member of the executive committee of the All-Russian Muslim Council
1918Chairman of the Milli Idare (head of the Idel-Ural State)
1925–1957Professor of legal history in Ankara and Istanbul
1931–1954Member of the Turkish parliament (three terms)
The first Korean communist, who gave her life bridging the Russian Revolution and Korean liberation
On September 16, 1918, dragged before Ataman Kalmykov's White Cossacks to be shot, her final cry: 'Freedom and independence for Korea!'
Born to Korean migrants in Siberia, she joined the Bolsheviks in 1916, becoming the first Korean communist. Dispatched to the Far East on Lenin's orders, she served as Commissar of Foreign Affairs for the Khabarovsk Soviet, co-founded the Korean Socialist Party with Yi Tong-hwi, and organized Korean Red Guard units against White and Japanese forces before her execution in 1918 at 33, a symbolic figure bridging the Russian Revolution and the Korean independence struggle.
Career timeline
1916Joined the RSDLP(B)
1917Secretary, Khabarovsk Bolshevik branch & Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Far Eastern Council of People's Commissars
1918.04Co-founded the Korean Socialist Party in Khabarovsk
1918.06–08Organized Korean and international Red Guard units against White and Japanese forces
1918.09.04Captured by White and Japanese forces
1918.09.16Executed by White Cossacks in Khabarovsk
First head of the Crimean People’s Republic, the first elected mufti of Crimea and the poet of the Crimean Tatar anthem
Born in 1885 in the village of Büyük Sonaq near Dzhankoy, the son of an imam, he went to Istanbul in 1908 to study law and theology, founded the Young Tatar Writers’ Association and the secret organisation Vatan (Homeland), and returned to Crimea in 1912. In March 1917 he became chairman of the Crimean Muslim Executive Committee and the first mufti of Crimea elected by delegates rather than appointed by the Minister of the Interior. Arrested in June for anti-government agitation, he was freed after a protest bearing 5,000 signatures. He prepared the Qurultay and in December became chairman and director of justice of the Directory of the Crimean People’s Republic, but was arrested by the Bolsheviks in January 1918 and killed without trial by sailors in Sevastopol on 23 February. His poem “Ant etkenmen” became the Crimean Tatar national anthem.
Career timeline
1908–1912Studied law and theology in Istanbul; co-founded Vatan
1913Law faculty of the Psychoneurological Institute, St Petersburg
1917Chairman of the Crimean Muslim Executive Committee; mufti of Crimea
1917–1918Chairman and director of justice of the Directory of the Crimean People’s Republic
Appealing for return in 1921, he declared: “Soviet power is the only power representing Russia and its people.”
Yakov Slashchov was a Russian imperial officer who became a White general and a central commander in the defence of Crimea during the Civil War. Taking the Perekop Isthmus at the end of 1919, he repelled repeated Red Army attacks in early 1920 and kept Wrangel's Crimean base alive with limited forces. Reports of harsh repression and looting under his command stand alongside his battlefield reputation, exposing the violence of White rule. After exile, he returned to Soviet Russia and taught tactics, embodying the uneasy absorption of defeated military expertise into the new state.
Career timeline
1905Graduated from the Pavlovsk Military School; ensign in the Life Guards Finland Regiment
1911–1917Studied at the Nicholas Military Academy; taught tactics at the Page Corps
1917Commander of the Moscow Guards Regiment
1918Joined the Volunteer Army; chief of staff to Shkuro and commander in Kuban formations
1919Commander of the 4th Infantry Division and the 3rd Army Corps of the Armed Forces of South Russia
1919–1920Commander of the Crimean defence; operated the Perekop Isthmus fortifications
1922–1929Tactics instructor at the Soviet Vystrel higher officers' courses
Leader of the Bashkir national movement who proclaimed Bashkir autonomy, commanded the Bashkir Army and took it over to the Soviet side
Born in 1890 in Kuzyanovo, Ufa province, he taught Turkic history at the Qasimiya madrasa in Kazan. In 1917 he joined the Socialist Revolutionaries and was elected to the Constituent Assembly; with Sharif Manatov he organised the Bashkir Central Shuro, proclaimed Bashkir autonomy and became commander of the Bashkir Army. Arrested by the Bolsheviks in February 1918 and freed in April, he fought alongside Dutov and Kolchak, but in February 1919 took his troops over to the Soviet side. He became chairman of the Bashrevkom in 1920, resigned in June in protest at the curtailing of autonomy and led the Basmachi movement in Turkestan. He emigrated in 1923, became a Turkish citizen in 1925, a professor at Istanbul University and a doctor of the University of Vienna, and died in Istanbul in 1970.
Career timeline
1909–1915Teacher at the Qasimiya madrasa in Kazan
1915–1917Bureau supporting the Muslim deputies of the State Duma
1917–1919Deputy chairman of the Bashkir Central Shuro; commander of the Bashkir Army
1919–1920Military commissar and deputy chairman of the Bashrevkom; chairman in 1920
1920–1923Leader of the Basmachi movement in Turkestan
The pianist-turned-revolutionary who drove the KPD's ultra-left turn, and became the anti-Stalinist left's perpetual dissident
“Comrade Maslow, who is playing at Leftism and wishes to exercise himself 'hunting Centrists,' has more zeal than sense.” — Lenin, singling him out by name in his 'Letter to the German Communists' (14 August 1921).
Born into a Ukrainian Jewish merchant family, he abandoned a concert-pianist career to study physics under Einstein and Planck, then the First World War radicalized him into the KPD's founding. As Ruth Fischer's lifelong partner he took the party chairmanship in 1924 and drove 'Bolshevisation', a break with the united front and a one-sided crusade against Social Democracy, until Stalin and Thälmann displaced and expelled him in 1926, leaving him a lifelong anti-Stalinist dissident.
Career timeline
1919Founding member of the KPD; agitates among Russian POWs for the Spartacus League
1920–1923KPD Central Committee; leads Berlin left wing with Fischer; foreign-affairs editor, Die Rote Fahne
1924–1925KPD chairman; drives 'Bolshevisation' and the party's ultra-left turn
1924–1926Arrested by German authorities; sentenced to 4 years, released July 1926 due to failing health
1926Expelled from the KPD for opposing Stalin and Thälmann; backs the United Opposition
1928Co-founds the Leninbund with Urbahns and Fischer; soon resigns
1934–1937Works closely with Trotsky; active in the Fourth International movement's International Secretariat
1937–1941Exile in Paris and Cuba; breaks with Trotsky, founds Marxist-Leninist International Group
