People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1939–2000 ✕ Suicide

The Deputy Prosecutor General whose TV broadcast lit the fuse of the Sumgait pogrom

On 27 February 1988, on Central Television, he named the two youths killed in the Askeran clash as Azerbaijanis; that night the Sumgait pogrom erupted.

A Soviet military jurist of Belorussian birth, Alexander Katusev was appointed Deputy Prosecutor General of the USSR in 1987 and led high-profile corruption investigations in Uzbekistan. His name entered history on 27 February 1988, when he appeared on Central Television and named two Azerbaijani youths killed in a clash near Askeran, specifying their nationality; the broadcast became the immediate spark for the Sumgait pogrom that evening. As Chief Military Prosecutor (1989–1991), he investigated and debunked the Panfilov Twenty-Eight myth in his essay 'Another's Fame,' but was forced into retirement after the August coup.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1939–

The Georgian First Secretary who asked Moscow for troops, then resigned after 21 died

Patiashvili later recalled: 'Gorbachev phoned and said, in a tone that left no room for argument: The square must be cleared immediately, and the army will handle it. I understood he knew about the plan and supported it.'

He succeeded Shevardnadze as First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party in 1985, but dismantled most of his predecessor's reform experiments and drove the opposition underground. In April 1989, facing independence protests sparked by the Abkhaz autonomy dispute, he asked Moscow to send troops and on 8 April convened the republic's Defence Council, which decided to disperse the demonstrators by force. Before dawn the next day, Soviet troops armed with sapper shovels and poison gas descended on unarmed civilians, killing 21; Patiashvili accepted responsibility and resigned within two weeks. He remained in Georgian politics, twice ran for president against Shevardnadze, and supported the 2003 Rose Revolution, though he later criticized Saakashvili.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1939–2012 ○ Died

The highest-ranking general who sided with Yeltsin during the August coup, commanding the White House defense

"The army will not go against the people" (at a press conference during the August 1991 coup)

As chief of the Soviet Signal Troops and Deputy Chief of the General Staff, he also took part in the Chernobyl disaster response. During the August 1991 coup, he was the highest-ranking active-duty general to break with the State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP) and side with Boris Yeltsin, organizing the White House defense headquarters in Moscow; he was appointed RSFSR Defence Minister on 20 August and promoted to Army General on 24 August. In an ironic turn, he helped storm the same White House he had defended during the October 1993 constitutional crisis, and in 1997 was arrested and convicted on corruption charges.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1939–2017 ○ Pneumonia

Soviet Air Defence Forces lieutenant colonel who correctly dismissed the Oko false alarm and prevented nuclear war

The siren howled, but I just sat there for a few seconds, staring at the big, back-lit, red screen with the word 'launch' on it.

A Soviet Air Defence Forces lieutenant colonel. On 26 September 1983, while on duty at the Serpukhov-15 early-warning command centre, the Oko satellite system reported five US ICBMs had been launched, but Petrov judged that a first strike would involve hundreds of missiles, not five, and ground radar showed no confirmation, so he reported a system malfunction rather than an incoming attack. His decision prevented what could have become a Soviet retaliatory nuclear strike and earned him the title 'the man who saved the world.' He received neither disgrace nor reward for his actions, retired early in 1984, and lived in obscurity in a Moscow suburb until his death from pneumonia in 2017.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1939–2022 ○ Natural causes

The last Soviet Chief of General Staff, undone by the August coup

On 22 August 1991, with the GKChP coup collapsing and Yazov under arrest, Moiseyev became acting Soviet Defence Minister for a single day. The next day, he too was dismissed.

The last Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces (1988–1991). A protégé of Dmitry Yazov who rose through the Far Eastern Military District to the military's second-highest post, Moiseyev directed the Afghanistan withdrawal and took part in arms control negotiations, but backed Yazov in the August 1991 coup and was dismissed after its collapse.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1939–

A Moscow party organizer at the Soviet Union's end

His life, he later recalled, was divided into a before and after the Communist Party ban.

Yuri Prokofyev was a Soviet party cadre who rose through Moscow's party and administrative organizations. As first secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee, he worked at the point where reform collided with the party's disintegration, and joined the Politburo in 1990. He was involved in the activity of the State Committee on the State of Emergency in 1991 without being a member, then turned to memoir writing and technology enterprises after the Soviet Union and the Communist Party were banned.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1940–2022 ○ Natural causes

Ideology secretary of the pro-Moscow Lithuanian Communist Party who proclaimed the 'National Salvation Committee' in the Vilnius crackdown

On 13 January 1991, his recorded voice boomed from the loudspeakers of Soviet BMPs advancing on the Vilnius TV tower: 'Brother Lithuanians! The nationalist and separatist government, which confronted the people, has been overthrown!'

A farmer's son from southern Lithuania, Jermalavičius studied at Vilnius University and the Leningrad Higher Party School, then spent two decades as a researcher at the Party History Institute, publishing on atheism and religion. In 1990 he became ideology secretary of the pro-Moscow Lithuanian Communist Party (CPSU platform), fiercely opposing independence, and on 11 January 1991 he announced the creation of the 'National Salvation Committee of the Lithuanian SSR', which claimed to be the sole legitimate government, providing the political pretext for the Soviet military operation that killed 14 civilians two days later. Convicted in 1999 of anti-state organization and incitement to violently overthrow the government, he served eight years, then moved to Russia where he continued writing in defence of the Soviet system until his death.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1941–

An insider witness to the collapse of reform

He recalled that his task had “extended the history of the Soviet state by one day.”

Andrei Grachev was a specialist in international affairs and a journalist who worked on the international meaning and domestic politics of Soviet reform. After the August 1991 coup, he became Mikhail Gorbachev’s aide and final presidential press secretary, observing at close range both negotiations to preserve the Union and the disintegration of its state institutions. His memoirs and deposited personal papers document the tension between perestroika’s promise of democratic renewal and the acceleration of the Union’s collapse.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1941–2020 ○ Natural causes

The last Soviet culture minister

In his diploma performance as Hitler, Gubenko poured all his hatred for the man who killed his parents into the role. Lyubimov saw it and immediately brought him to the Taganka Theatre.

An actor and film director who rose from war orphan to People's Artist of the RSFSR. He was the first working arts professional to become Soviet Minister of Culture (1989–1991) since Anatoly Lunacharsky. After the USSR collapsed, he entered left-wing politics, serving as chair of the Duma's Culture Committee and deputy speaker of the Moscow City Duma, where he defended Soviet cultural heritage. Following the Taganka Theatre split, he founded and led the Sodruzhestvo Aktyorov Taganki until his death in 2020.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1942–2014 ○ Died

The air-defense general who ordered KAL 007 shot down, later commander-in-chief of the Russian Air Force

"I will always be convinced that I gave the right order": Kornukov on the KAL 007 shootdown.

Born the son of a Donetsk miner in the Ukrainian SSR, Anatoly Kornukov rose through the Soviet air-defence forces to become the general who, on 1 September 1983, ordered the shootdown of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 as it crossed Sakhalin. When his superiors refused to take responsibility, he directed the interceptor pilot Major Osipovich to destroy the target on his own authority, maintaining to his death that the order was justified under Soviet and international law. Neither rewarded nor punished for the incident, he kept rising and in 1998 became the first commander-in-chief of the unified Russian Air Force. The decision cost 269 civilian lives, and he later declared he would 'always be convinced that I gave the right order.'

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1942–2020 ○ Natural causes

The last Soviet defence minister and final Marshal of Aviation

On 25 December 1991, as Gorbachev's nuclear briefcase was transferred to Yeltsin, Shaposhnikov told the press: "The nuclear button is in reliable hands."

A career officer who rose from fighter pilot to Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Air Force over three decades, Shaposhnikov played a decisive role in the August 1991 coup when, as air force chief, he proposed to Defence Minister Yazov that troops be withdrawn from Moscow and the Emergency Committee be dissolved. After the coup's collapse Gorbachev appointed him the Soviet Union's last Defence Minister, and on 26 August 1991 he was promoted Marshal of Aviation, the final person in Soviet history to receive a rank bearing the word 'marshal.' He oversaw the transfer of nuclear command from Gorbachev to Yeltsin, served as CIS Joint Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief and later as Secretary of Russia's Security Council, before heading Aeroflot and advising Sukhoi.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1942–2021 ○ COVID-19

The Soviet air force general who personally led 1,927 helicopter drops over the burning Chernobyl reactor

"Tons of graphite were burning inside the reactor. Firefighters were powerless. We decided to extinguish the hearth from helicopters."

Born to a Mokshan peasant family and trained at the Orenburg military aviation school, he flew reconnaissance missions in the 1968 Czechoslovakia invasion, the 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict, and over Afghanistan in 1979. As chief of staff of the Kyiv Military District Air Force, he received the call about the Chernobyl explosion on 26 April 1986, flew immediately to the site, and for ten days led helicopter crews dumping 4,925 tons of sand, lead, and boron into the burning reactor from 200 metres, personally flying over the crater. He continued serving until 1998 despite radiation exposure, then spent his final years as a United Russia deputy in the State Duma.

Soviet communism 1943–

The engineer who became the first person in Soviet history to run against a sitting General Secretary

At the First Congress in May 1989, he stood before the microphone and offered himself as a candidate against Gorbachev. 'To set a precedent,' he said. By 1,415 to 689, the assembly voted to keep his name off the ballot.

Born in Oryol in 1943, Obolensky was a geophysical engineer who spent twenty years at the Polar Geophysical Institute on the Kola Peninsula, where in 1987 he founded the first informal reform group in the region, the Voluntary Society for Assistance to Perestroika. Elected a People's Deputy of the USSR in 1989, he made history at the First Congress by putting forward his own candidacy for Chairman of the Supreme Soviet against Mikhail Gorbachev: the first alternative candidacy against a sitting General Secretary in Soviet history. After the August 1991 coup attempt, he was elected chairman of the parliamentary commission investigating it, and he opposed the dissolution of the USSR, regarding the Belovezha Accords as unconstitutional.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1943–

The last Soviet soldier to leave Afghanistan, the face of the Soviet withdrawal

On 15 February 1989, standing on the Friendship Bridge, he told a Soviet TV reporter: "There is not a single Soviet soldier left behind me."

A Soviet general who served three tours in the Soviet–Afghan War and, as the last commander of the 40th Army (1987–1989), directed the Soviet withdrawal. He was made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1988 for Operation Magistral, which lifted the siege of Khost. On 15 February 1989 he crossed the Friendship Bridge on foot, the last Soviet soldier to leave Afghanistan, the symbolic end of the nine-year war. He went on to command the Kyiv Military District, served as First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, and as Deputy Minister of Defence of Russia. In 1991 he ran for vice-president alongside Nikolai Ryzhkov. In the post-Soviet era he served twelve years as governor of Moscow Oblast, embodying the political transition of the Soviet military elite.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1943–1992 ○ Cancer

The 40th Army commander who halved Afghan losses, then Russia's first Chief of General Staff

Defence Minister Pavel Grachev came to his hospital ward in person to pin the General of the Army shoulder boards on him. Dubynin, already terminal with cancer, could not rise from the bed.

Soviet and Russian military commander. As commander of the 40th Army in Afghanistan (1986–87), he introduced large-scale helicopter assaults and computer-aided command, halving irrecoverable losses and becoming the first commander to challenge the concealment of casualty figures. As Northern Group of Forces commander (1989–92), he executed the orderly withdrawal of Soviet troops from Poland. Appointed first Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces in June 1992, he restrained President Yeltsin's ill-considered nuclear-force reforms and secured approval for the Topol-M, Borei-submarine, and Iskander programs that became the technical foundation of post-Soviet Russian defence. He received his General of the Army shoulder boards on his hospital deathbed and was posthumously named Hero of the Russian Federation.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1944–

The last Soviet-aligned communist leader of Estonia amid a party split

When the party split in 1990, Sillari became first secretary of the faction that retained its link to the CPSU.

Enn-Arno Sillari rose from factory engineering into the city and central structures of the Estonian Communist Party. When the party split in 1990 between a majority seeking Estonian sovereignty and a faction remaining with the CPSU, he led the latter, attempting to preserve both the Soviet institutional link and an organized communist movement in Estonia. As a CPSU Central Committee Politburo member and first secretary of the CPSU-aligned Estonian Communist Party in 1990–91, his authority was tied to a union whose political basis was collapsing. He continued to lead the party after Estonia restored independence, but resigned after its defeat in the 1992 parliamentary elections and later worked in business.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1944–2015 ○ Died

The Soviet air-defence interceptor pilot who shot down KAL 007

"I knew this was a civilian plane. But for me this meant nothing": Osipovich's 1991 Izvestia recollection.

A Su-15 interceptor pilot of the Soviet Air Defence Forces, Gennady Osipovich shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747, over Sakhalin on 1 September 1983. He fired warning bursts, but his fighter was loaded with armour-piercing rather than tracer rounds, so the flight crew never saw them, and although he glimpsed two rows of windows and knew he was chasing a civilian airliner, he launched his missiles without positively identifying the target, killing all 269 people aboard. In a 1991 Izvestia interview he admitted that the official claim of tracer fire was untrue, and he spent his later years in quiet retirement in Maykop.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1945–

A Georgian party official at the edge of Soviet collapse

“The law should be enforced, but it should be enforced without victims.”

Givi Gumbaridze was a Communist Party official who rose from archival and party-organizational work to the top leadership of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. A former state-security chief, he governed as national mobilization intensified and party rule collided with popular demands. After the bloody Tbilisi crackdown of 1989, he called for both accountability and order, but could not reverse the crisis of Soviet authority.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1945–

The Sumgait party boss handed a flag and photographed at the head of the mob

Left isolated by the crowd, the republic flag thrust into his hands, Muslimzade walked where the mob led him; the scene was filmed and sent to the Party Central Committee.

A Komsomol careerist who rose to first secretary of the Sumgait city party committee, he was the party official who faced the crowd at the outset of the February 1988 Sumgait pogrom and, in attempting to calm it, found himself handed an Azerbaijan SSR flag and photographed leading the march. Muslimzade later maintained that he was steering the column away from the Armenian district toward the sea, but the tail of the procession splintered into groups that fanned out into Armenian neighbourhoods. Dismissed from all posts and expelled from the party days after the pogrom, he became both a scapegoat for the violence and an enduring symbol of the party's loss of control.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1945–

A party cadre who moved from army organization to the late Soviet Politburo

In April 1991, while responsible secretary of the All-Army Party Committee, he joined the late Soviet Politburo.

Mikhail Semyonovich Surkov was a Soviet party organizer and politician whose career developed within the armed forces' political apparatus. After working in party-control posts in the army, he entered the Politburo shortly before the Soviet Union's dissolution, embodying the late system's reliance on institutional cadres amid crisis. He later carried that experience into the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the State Duma, and the Accounts Chamber.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1945–2011 ○ Natural causes

Soviet airborne forces commander and deputy defence minister in the August 1991 coup

On 19 August 1991, during the GKChP coup, Achalov coordinated the entry of airborne troops into Moscow and was tasked with blockading the Ostankino television centre.

Born on 13 November 1945 in the village of Atamash, Atninsky District, Tatar ASSR, and died in Moscow on 23 June 2011. He graduated from the Kazan Tank School (1966) and the Armoured Forces Academy (1973), commanded the 7th Guards Airborne Division (1978), the 8th Guards Army (1985–1987) and the Leningrad Military District as chief of staff (1987–1989), and became a major-general in 1980. He commanded the Soviet Airborne Forces from January 1989 to December 1990 and was Deputy Minister of Defence of the USSR from December 1990 to September 1991, becoming colonel-general in 1989. Named in the GKChP indictment among the deputy defence ministers who joined the conspiracy at the 17 August 1991 meeting, he sided with the Supreme Soviet in the 1993 crisis, was appointed Defence Minister by Alexander Rutskoy, arrested and amnestied in February 1994.