From Warsaw boy patriot to Comintern old revolutionary: the Pole who returned in the sealed train
“As a six-year-old boy I dreamed of becoming a rebel leader and freeing Poland from the 'Muscovites' and 'Swabians'.” — from his memoirs Za 50 Let
A Polish revolutionary who endured twenty years of tsarist prisons and Siberian exile, emerging as a gold-medal ethnographer of Siberia's indigenous peoples. He led the anti-Piłsudski split of the Polish Socialist Party into its internationalist left wing, then joined the Bolsheviks on Lenin's sealed train. He helped found the International Red Aid (MOPR), built the Soviet radio broadcasting system, and spent nearly sixty years on the front lines of revolutionary struggle, outliving the Great Purge to die of natural causes at 77.
Career timeline
1882Joins 'Proletariat', the first Polish socialist party
1884–1891Arrested, sentenced to 10 years; serves at Kara penal colony; initiates mass poisoning protest (1889)
1891–1904Exiled to Yakutia, Irkutsk, Minusinsk — ethnographic research awarded gold medal; meets Lenin and Krupskaya
1904–1907Returns to Warsaw, leads PPS left wing; pushes Piłsudski out and splits the party (1906)
1907–1914Exile in Austrian Galicia — directs workers' health fund in Drohobych, PPS-Left abroad organiser
1914–1917Swiss exile — attends Zimmerwald Conference, internationalist left activist
1917Returns to Russia with Lenin in the sealed train; commissar for Polish affairs in Kharkov
1918Joins RKP(b) with seniority backdated to 1906; serves in Ukrainian NKID and Polish Bureau
1920Member of Polrevkom — attempt to establish a Polish Soviet government in Białystok
1921Responsible Secretary of the CP(b)U Central Committee (March–December)
1922–1923Secretary of the Comintern Executive Committee (ICCI)
1925–1928Editor-in-chief of Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star)
1928–1930Editor-in-chief of Rabochaya Gazeta and children's magazine Murzilka
1931–1933First chairman of the All-Union Radio Committee — creates Soviet radio broadcasting system
1933–1937Head of museum department, RSFSR Narkompros; editor of Sovetsky Muzey
1937–1941Editor of Nasha Strana; directs Polish-language Radio Moscow broadcasts after German invasion
A Pole who passed through the German and Russian revolutions and tried to bring revolution home
As the Red Army prepared to march on Warsaw in 1920, he joined Radek in repeatedly urging Lenin to halt — warning him not to overestimate the revolutionary consciousness of the Polish worker.
Co-founder of Polish communism, he established the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKPiL) in 1893 together with Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches. Active in the German SPD's left wing, he helped build the Spartacus League and the German Communist Party, and after the Russian Revolution joined the Bolsheviks, becoming one of Lenin's close advisers on agrarian policy. During the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 he served as chairman of the Polish Provisional Revolutionary Committee, and later became the first chairman of International Red Aid (MOPR) and first rector of the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West.
Career timeline
1889Co-founded Polish Workers' Union
1893Co-founded SDKPiL with Luxemburg and Jogiches
1896Doctorate from Zurich University
1906–1907SDKPiL delegate to RSDLP London Congress; candidate CC member
1914–1918Spartacus League; imprisoned in Germany for anti-war activity
The Comintern's first secretary, who taught Mussolini and branded him traitor
"I had never seen a more wretched human being" — on first meeting Mussolini in Lausanne
Russian-born Italian socialist. First secretary of the Comintern, she taught Mussolini Marxism and publicly denounced him as a traitor when he embraced fascism. She broke with Bolshevism in 1922 and led Italy's maximalist socialist faction.
Career timeline
1897Left Russia for Brussels; earned a doctorate in philosophy and literature at the New University
1900Joined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI); organised immigrant textile workers
1912–1914PSI Central Committee member and Avanti! editor; worked alongside Mussolini
1915–1916Participated in the Zimmerwald and Kienthal anti-war conferences
1917Returned to Russia and joined the Bolshevik Party
1919–1920First secretary of the Comintern; organised the 1st and 2nd Congresses
1922–1930Broke with Bolshevism; returned to Italy to lead the PSI maximalist faction
1930–1945Led the PSIm (Maximalist Socialist Party); anti-fascist work in Swiss, French, and US exile
Founder of the Lithuanian Communist Party who headed Soviet Lithuania and Litbel
When Lenin demanded he recruit more Lithuanians into the Red Army, he refused, warning it would erode what support his government had.
Founder of the Lithuanian Communist Party, he headed the Soviet government of Lithuania from December 1918 and Litbel in 1919, without winning peasant support. After the defeat he handled Baltic affairs in the Comintern and died in Moscow in 1935.
Career timeline
1903Joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party
1914Met Lenin in Kraków
1917Joined the Bolsheviks in Petrograd; commissar for Lithuanian affairs
1918Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party; editor of Tiesa
1918–1919Headed Soviet Lithuanian government, then Litbel's Council of People's Commissars
1923–1935Worked on the Comintern Executive Committee
Trade union leader who commanded the Finnish Red Guards from January to March 1918
Born in Kuopio in 1880, he joined the labour movement while studying law at Helsinki University. He was one of the leading Red Guard organisers in Helsinki during the 1905 general strike and in 1907 became the first chairman of the Finnish Trade Union Federation, losing the post in 1911 over his drinking. One of the most radical voices of 1917, openly calling for armed revolution, he was elected to the five-man committee of the Red Guards and in January 1918, without any military training, succeeded Ali Aaltonen as their commander-in-chief. Removed on 20 March after a series of defeats, he organised the defence of Viipuri with Edvard Gylling and escaped to Petrograd in May. He helped found the exiled Communist Party of Finland and worked in the Karelian Workers’ Commune, but was arrested in the Great Purge and shot in Petrozavodsk in 1937.
Career timeline
1907–1911First chairman of the Finnish Trade Union Federation (SAJ)
1917Commander of the Kymi Paper Mill Red Guard; member of the five-man Red Guard committee
1918Commander-in-chief of the Red Guards; member of the People’s Delegation
1920–1923Several posts in the Karelian Workers’ Commune
1931–1935Head of the revolution research department, Karelian Research Institute
Finnish socialist who was Red Finland’s commissar of finance and later headed the government of Soviet Karelia
Born in Kuopio in 1881, the statistician and economist took his doctorate in 1909 with a thesis on crofting and became the Social Democrats’ agrarian expert. He sat in the Diet for the party from 1908 to 1917, was its vice chairman, and in November 1917 co-wrote “We demand” with Kuusinen. In the civil war he was Commissar of Finance of the People’s Delegation, led the talks for the 1 March treaty with Soviet Russia and signed it, and organised the defence of Viipuri at the end. Escaping to Sweden, he headed the Stockholm bureau of the Communist Party of Finland and in 1920 reported to Lenin on Karelian autonomy. As chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Soviet Karelia in 1923–1935 he pursued Finnicisation, was condemned for “nationalist chauvinism” and removed, and was shot in Moscow in 1938.
Career timeline
1905Editor-in-chief of the Marxist journal Sosialistinen aikakausilehti
1908–1917Social Democratic member of the Diet; party vice chairman
1918Commissar of Finance, Finnish People’s Delegation
1918–1920Head of the Stockholm bureau of the Communist Party of Finland
1920–1923Leading the Karelian Workers’ Commune
1923–1935Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Karelian ASSR
Interior commissar of Soviet Lithuania, a Lithuanian communist leader killed in the Great Terror
He urged that Lithuania remain an independent state, yet imagined that independence as socialist.
A Lithuanian communist leader, he was commissar for internal affairs of Soviet Lithuania and Litbel in 1918 and 1919. In exile he worked in the Comintern and wrote the history of the Lithuanian labour movement; arrested in 1938, he was shot in 1940.
Career timeline
1906Joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (Central Committee member from 1907)
1909Arrested and sentenced to four years' katorga, later exiled to the Yenisei province
1917Deputy commissar for Lithuanian affairs in Petrograd, editor of Tiesa
1918–1919Commissar for internal affairs of the first Soviet Lithuanian government
1920Secretary of the Lithuanian CP's Foreign Bureau (Comintern executive representative from 1921)
1926–1935Chairman of the Comintern International Control Commission
Russian anarchist intellectual who theorized anarchist synthesis and chronicled the revolution the Bolsheviks suppressed
In Golos Truda, 1917: 'Once their power has been consolidated and legalized, the Bolsheviks… will start running the life of the country and of the people from the top. They will develop an authoritarian political and state apparatus that will crush all opposition with an iron fist.'
Russian anarchist intellectual and leading theorist of the Makhnovshchina. Editor of Golos Truda in Petrograd, co-founder of the Nabat Confederation in Ukraine, and chairman of the Makhnovist Military Revolutionary Council, he developed the theory of anarchist synthesis to unite communist, individualist, and syndicalist anarchists. After exile from Soviet Russia in 1922, he wrote The Unknown Revolution, the definitive anarchist history of 1917–1921, and opposed the Platformist centralization pushed by his comrade Makhno.
Career timeline
1904Drops out of St. Petersburg University law faculty; joins Socialist Revolutionary Party; organizes workers' study groups
1905Participates in Bloody Sunday march and helps form the St. Petersburg Soviet; imprisoned at Peter and Paul Fortress
1907Arrested by Okhrana, deported to Siberia; escapes and flees to France
1911Becomes anarchist under Apollon Karelin's influence; joins Brotherhood of Free Communists in Paris
1915–1916Flees anti-war persecution in France to USA; edits Golos Truda in New York
1917Returns to Petrograd after February Revolution; relaunches Golos Truda as leading anarcho-syndicalist organ
1918–1920Co-founds Nabat Confederation in Ukraine; chairs Makhnovist Military Revolutionary Council; arrested twice by Cheka
1922Exiled from Soviet Russia after hunger strike and Profintern delegate intervention
1924–1939Moves to Paris at Sébastien Faure's invitation; contributes to Anarchist Encyclopedia; writes for anarchist periodicals in five languages
1940Completes The Unknown Revolution in Marseille while living in poverty
1945Dies of tuberculosis in Paris; buried at Père Lachaise near Nestor Makhno
The behind-the-scenes organizer who wove international anarcho-syndicalism from Amsterdam 1907 to the IWMA
February 1921. Behind Kropotkin's coffin, 20,000 anarchists filled Moscow's streets — the last anarchist demonstration permitted in Soviet Russia. Schapiro and Berkman had organized the funeral commission.
The key linchpin of international anarcho-syndicalism. As secretary of the Amsterdam International, he built a cross-continental network; during the Revolution he worked within the Bolshevik state while maintaining his anarchist critique. Expelled in 1922, he co-founded the IWMA in Berlin.
Career timeline
1901–1907Active in London's Jewish anarchist movement; Arbeter Fraynd group member; runs Jubilee Street Club
1907Delegate to Amsterdam International Anarchist Congress; elected International Bureau secretary, edits its Bulletin
1915Signs International Anarchist Manifesto on the War; breaks with Kropotkin's pro-Allied position
1917–1920Returns to Russia; Golos Truda editor; works for Commissariats of Jewish Affairs and Foreign Affairs
1921Organizes Kropotkin's funeral; co-authors The Russian Revolution and the Communist Party; negotiates prisoner release at RILU congress
1922Arrested in Moscow; freed by international protest campaign and permanently expelled from Soviet Union
1922–1932Co-founds IWMA in Berlin, secretariat secretary; publishes Rabochii Put' for clandestine distribution in Russia
1932–1939Mediates CNT-FAI conflict in Barcelona; edits La Voix du Travail in France; emigrates to New York
1945–1946Edits New Trends journal in New York; dies of heart failure
Head of the Estonian Workers' Commune and leader of the 1924 rising
He governed eastern Estonia as head of the Estonian Workers' Commune proclaimed at Narva in November 1918; arrested in 1937 during Stalin's Great Purge, he died on 11 December 1937 of injuries from a beating during interrogation.
Head of the Estonian Workers' Commune proclaimed at Narva in November 1918, he governed eastern Estonia for two months and organized the Tallinn rising of 1924. Arrested in 1937, he died under beating during interrogation.
Career timeline
1905Schoolteacher who joined the Bolsheviks and entered revolutionary work
1912Editor of the workers' paper Kiir in Narva
1917Chairman of the Estonian Soviet executive committee; led the seizure of power in Tallinn
1918Chairman of the Council of the Estonian Labour Commune
1921Underground leader of the CP of Estonia; directed the December 1924 uprising
1926Political commissar of the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy
1929Deputy head, then head, of the civil air fleet main administration
1935Member and executive secretary of the Comintern International Control Commission
Sun Yat-sen's political advisor, architect of the First United Front, and the Comintern's global emissary
When American KMT supporters warned Sun Yat-sen, asking 'Do you know that Borodin is a pseudonym? Do you know his real name — Gruzenberg?', Sun replied: 'I know. Lafayette.'
Sun Yat-sen's political advisor and the Comintern's global emissary who engineered the First United Front between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party. Born into a Jewish family, he joined the Bund at sixteen and the Bolsheviks in 1903, then after the 1905 Revolution emigrated to Chicago, where he ran a school for exiled Russian revolutionaries. In 1919 he became the first Soviet consul in Mexico and helped found the Mexican Communist Party. From 1923 in Guangzhou, he reorganized the Kuomintang into a Leninist vanguard party and established the Whampoa Military Academy. The United Front he built gave the CCP a foothold in mass politics, but it collapsed when Chiang Kai-shek purged the communists in 1927.
Career timeline
1903Joins the RSDLP; Bolshevik
1905–1907Revolutionary work in Riga; delegate to the 4th Party Congress in Stockholm
1907–1918Exile in the United States; runs an immigrant school in Chicago
1919First Soviet consul in Mexico; helps found the Mexican Communist Party
1919–1922Comintern agent touring Europe and the Americas
1923–1927Sun Yat-sen's political advisor; KMT reorganization, First United Front, Whampoa Academy
1932–1949Editor-in-chief of Moscow News and the Soviet Information Bureau
1949–1951Arrested in anti-cosmopolitan campaign; dies in Lefortovo prison
Petrograd Finnish Bolshevik who helped Lenin escape to Finland in 1917 and sat on the Red Guards’ three-man command in 1918
Born in Kronstadt in 1885 to a Petersburg Finnish working family, he worked in St Petersburg as a turner among other jobs and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, siding with the Bolsheviks. He organised Lenin’s escape to Finland in the summer of 1917 and guarded him around the October Revolution. Over the winter of 1917–1918 he and his brother Jukka procured arms for the Finnish Red Guards; when Haapalainen was dismissed on 20 March 1918 he formed a three-man command with Evert Eloranta and Adolf Taimi, then took over the Lempäälä front. After the defeat he rose to corps commander in the Red Army and quarrelled with Kuusinen and Manner in the Communist Party of Finland, which dropped him from its Central Committee in 1927. Expelled from the army for alcoholism in 1935 and sentenced to death, he died of tuberculosis in 1936 before the sentence was carried out.
Career timeline
1903Joined the RSDLP (Bolshevik)
1917Organised Lenin’s escape to Finland; Lenin’s bodyguard
1918Three-man command of the Red Guards; commander of the Lempäälä front
1919–1922Commissar and inspector of the Red Army’s Finnish units
1918–1927Leadership of the Communist Party of Finland
The anarchist peasant commander who fought Bolsheviks, Whites, Germans, and nationalists in succession
Kremlin, June 1918. Lenin told Makhno, "If anarchists were like you, we'd gladly work together." Two years later, Makhno would be betrayed by the Bolsheviks twice.
Ukrainian anarcho-communist revolutionary. Led a peasant army and built the Free Territory, an experiment in anarchist self-governance. Allied with the Red Army twice to defeat the Whites, and was betrayed each time. Exiled in 1921, he wrote his memoirs in Paris.
Career timeline
1906Joins Huliaipole anarcho-communist 'Union of Free Grain-Growers'; begins expropriations
1910Sentenced to death, commuted to life hard labour; educated in anarchist theory by Arshinov in Butyrka prison
1917–1918Amnestied, returns to Huliaipole as soviet chair; organizes Black Guard; confiscates landlords' land
1919.02–06Allies with Red Army, commands 3rd Brigade, 1st Zadneprovsk Division; breaks when Trotsky declares him an outlaw
1919.07–10Commander-in-chief of the RPAU; 600-km raid through Denikin's rear disrupts White advance on Moscow; proclaims Free Territory
1920.10–11Re-allies with Red Army against Wrangel, fights in Crimea; Red Army surrounds and destroys his units after victory
1921–1925Retreats across Romania, Poland, and Danzig to exile in Paris
1925–1934Active in anarchist circles in Paris exile; writes memoirs; dies of bone tuberculosis
Buryat revolutionary, drafter of Mongolia's 1924 constitution, victim of the Great Terror
At the third party congress in August 1924, as leader of the leftist faction he joined the rightists led by Dambadorj in accusing Danzan of representing bourgeois interests and dealing with American and Chinese firms; Danzan and Bavaasan were sentenced and shot within twenty-four hours.
A Buryat from Transbaikalia, he was elected first chairman of the Buryat-Mongol Central National Committee (Burnatskom) in April 1917 and helped lay the foundations of Buryat autonomy. In 1920 he became secretary of the Mongol-Tibet section of the Comintern's Far Eastern Secretariat. After the 1921 revolution he served until 1925 as chairman of Mongolia's Revolutionary Military Council, a government adviser, a member of the MPRP Central Committee presidium and a deputy in the Great and Small Khural. He helped draft the 1924 constitution and argued for the non-capitalist path at the third party congress, where he also joined in denouncing Danzan. Arrested in Moscow on 19 June 1937 (custody records date it 19 July), he was sentenced in 1938; sources disagree on the sentencing date and on when and where he was executed. A review of his case began in 1955 and he was rehabilitated in 1957.
Career timeline
1917Elected first chairman of the Buryat-Mongol Central National Committee (Burnatskom)
1918Elected in absentia as education minister of the Provisional Siberian Government
1920Secretary of the Mongol-Tibet section, Comintern Far Eastern Secretariat
1921–1925Chairman of Mongolia's Revolutionary Military Council, government adviser, member of the MPRP Central Committee presidium, deputy in the Great and Small Khural
1924Helped draft the constitution; joined in denouncing Danzan at the third party congress
1926–1930Studied at the Red Professors' Institute
1927–1934Research and teaching at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV), professor of political economy from November 1934
The Comintern's first envoy who midwifed the Chinese Communist Party
In 1920 Shanghai, discussing party-building with Chen Duxiu, he diagnosed: "The new-thought movement in China is surging but too complex — Anarchism, syndicalism, Social Democracy, guild socialism, a chaos without a mainstream. People write articles and speak empty words but take absolutely no practical action. This can never propel the Chinese revolution forward."
The Comintern's first envoy to China, who in 1920 worked with Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu to lay the foundation for the Chinese Communist Party. After his recall, he became a founder of Soviet sinology in Moscow.
Career timeline
1913–1918Emigrated to US and Canada; joined Socialist Party of America
1918Joined RCP(b) in Vladivostok
1919–1920Captured by Whites, exiled to Sakhalin; escaped via prisoner uprising
1920–1927ECCI Far Eastern Dept head & China representative; assisted CCP founding
1926Chairman, Comintern Far Eastern Bureau in Shanghai
1927–1929Economic work in Irkutsk
1929–1934Oriental studies in Moscow; Profintern Pacific Secretariat secretary
1934–1953Professor, Moscow State University; Academy of Sciences researcher; sinology publications
