People of the Revolution and the USSR

Activity(set)
Any Political and party leadership 2 Government and administration 3 Legislature and state representation 1 Military command 2 Scholarship and theory 3 Literature and arts 1
Affiliation

Most people

Any Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks 1

All 1 affiliations

Soviet Union

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks 1
Position
Any Marxism and communism 1 Nationalism 1
Citizenship(set)
Any Soviet Union 193 China 40 Germany 39 France 38 Russia 38 Hungary 32 Poland 24 East Germany 15 Czechoslovakia 13 United Kingdom 12 Italy 11 United States 11 Romania 10 Democratic People's Republic of Korea 9 Spain 8 Bulgaria 7 Cambodia 7 Estonia 7 Mongolia 6 Yugoslavia 6 Angola 5 Vietnam 5 Yemen 5 Afghanistan 4 Azerbaijan 4 Cuba 4 Finland 4 Georgia 4 Turkey 4 Albania 3 Congo - Brazzaville 3 Czechia 3 Japan 3 Laos 3 Latvia 3 Lithuania 3 Austria 2 Belarus 2 Ethiopia 2 Greece 2 India 2 Indonesia 2 Korea 2 Madagascar 2 Moldova 2 Mozambique 2 Portugal 2 South Africa 2 Ukraine 2 Argentina 1 Belgium 1 Brazil 1 Chile 1 DR Congo 1 Egypt 1 Ghana 1 Grenada 1 Iran 1 Kazakhstan 1 Kyrgyzstan 1 Netherlands 1 Peru 1 Tanzania 1 Turkmenistan 1 Uzbekistan 1
Background
Any Ukraine 2
Era
Any

People of the Soviet Union

The last generation1985–1991 1

People of the wider world

The revolutionary wave and the world war1917–1945 1
Political and party leadership Citizenship: Ukraine Clear all

Stepan Bandera

Степан Андрійович Бандера
Nationalism Ukrainian Ukrainian 1909–1959 ✕ Poisoned

Ukrainian nationalist politician and leader of the OUN-B.

Bandera led Ukrainian nationalist underground activity in eastern Galicia, then part of Poland. A leader in the OUN, he was sentenced to death for organizing the 1934 assassination of Polish interior minister Bronisław Pieracki; the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. After the OUN split in 1940, he led its radical OUN-B faction, which proclaimed a Ukrainian state in Lviv shortly after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and pledged cooperation with Nazi Germany. German authorities detained him and sent him to Sachsenhausen concentration camp; after the war he led the OUN-B émigré organization in West Germany.

Career timeline
  • 1929Joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).
  • 1931Became head of propaganda for the OUN.
  • 1933Became head of the OUN's home executive in Poland.
  • 1934Was sentenced to death for organizing the assassination of the Polish interior minister; the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
  • 1940Led the OUN-B faction after the OUN split.
  • 1941–1944Arrested by German authorities and imprisoned at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
  • 1945Became leader of the OUN's foreign organization.
  • 1959Assassinated in Munich by KGB agent Bohdan Stashynsky.

Vitold Pavlovych Fokin

Вітольд Павлович Фокін
Ukraine state institutions Marxism and communism Ukraine Ukrainian 1932–2025 ○ Natural causes

From Soviet economic planner to independent Ukraine’s first prime minister

In 2016, the man who had signed away the USSR revealed his own grief: 'As a man, I'm ashamed to admit it, but when Crimea was annexed, I cried like a child.'

Vitold Fokin was a Ukrainian Soviet economic official who began as a mining engineer and experienced both the operation of a planned economy and the pressures of state transformation. He led Ukraine’s government around independence while confronting economic crisis and the collapse of the Union. In December 1991, he signed the Belovezha Accords for Ukraine alongside Leonid Kravchuk, helping establish the post-Soviet order. Late in life, his controversial positions in the Donbas negotiations ended his public role.

Career timeline
  • 1954–1963Mining engineer and manager in the Luhansk region
  • 1963–1971Manager in the Donbas anthracite industry
  • 1971–1987Department head and deputy chair of Ukraine’s State Planning Committee
  • 1987–1990Deputy chair of Ukraine’s Council of Ministers and head of the State Planning Committee
  • 1990–1991Chair of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR
  • 1991–1992First prime minister of Ukraine
  • 1991Ukrainian signatory of the Belovezha Accords
  • 2020First deputy head of Ukraine’s delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group