People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1870–1926 ○ Leukemia

From revolutionary engineer to Soviet diplomatic architect, the only Bolshevik who could do business with Western capital

In 1893, the young Krasin visited Tolstoy to argue that revolution was inevitable. The great apostle of non-violence "began to stamp with rage," as Krasin's wife Liubov, who was present, recorded.

From Siberian exile under the Tsar to general director of Siemens-Schuckert Russia, then to the Soviet state's first People's Commissar of Foreign Trade, Krasin's trajectory was unique among Bolsheviks. During the 1905 revolution he led the Combat Technical Group, handling arms and finance, and built the underground 'Nina' press in Baku to print Iskra. He quit politics in 1909, rose through Siemens to become its Russian head, then returned at Lenin's call in 1918. Architect of the state monopoly on foreign trade and the 1921 Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement, he was the only senior Bolshevik at home in Western business circles; Lenin rated him the party's ablest practical organizer.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1870–1928 ○ Died (heart failure)

The Civil War food administrator who designed the grain dictatorship

A story tells that he fainted from hunger on a train while travelling to organize grain seizures, but the anecdote is unverified; it circulated in the 1939 film Lenin in 1918, and one chronicle calls it a tale from later Soviet propaganda. Lenin's June 1919 order doubling his salary is documented.

Born in 1870 at Alyoshki (now Oleshky, Ukraine) as the son of a minor official in a poor, many-child family, he organized a Marxist student circle in 1891. Arrested in 1893 and expelled from the Kherson agricultural school, he worked as a statistician; he joined the RSDLP in 1898 and served as an Iskra agent in Ufa and Kharkiv before a three-year Olonets exile in 1902. In 1917 he led the Ufa soviet and city duma and sent grain echelons to Petrograd; as People's Commissar for Food from February 1918 to December 1921 he proposed the food dictatorship at the 8 May 1918 Sovnarkom meeting and organized the food detachments and kombedy. He later served as Deputy Chairman of Sovnarkom, Rabkrin chief and Gosplan chairman. He died in the Crimea in May 1928 and was buried in the Kremlin Wall.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1872–1950 ○ Natural causes

The founder of Soviet statistics whom Lenin rebuked and relied on

On August 16, 1921, Lenin wrote to Popov that the Central Statistical Board, 'which lags behind an unofficial group of writers, is a model bureaucratic institution.'

Pavel Popov was the first head of the Central Statistical Administration (ЦСУ), which produced the data foundation for Soviet central planning. A zemstvo statistician, he met Lenin and Tsiurupa in Ufa exile, a connection that secured his appointment to lead the state statistical apparatus in 1918. Under his direction, ЦСУ compiled the world's first inter-sectoral balance of a national economy for 1923/24. Lenin rebuked him in 1921 (calling ЦСУ 'a model bureaucratic institution') yet Popov remained until 1926 and served on the Gosplan Presidium. He survived the purges and worked in Gosplan until 1948, a rare longevity for a non-Bolshevik who joined the party only in 1924.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1872–1959 ○ Natural causes

Early architect of electrification and planning

December 23, 1920, Petrograd. Krzhizhanovsky presents the GOELRO plan. Lenin rises and calls it 'the Party's second programme.' On the vast map behind them, thirty red lights blink — the power stations of the future.

One of Lenin's oldest comrades: they founded the League of Struggle together in 1893, shared arrest and exile. In Butyrka prison he wrote the Russian lyrics of the revolutionary anthem 'Warszawianka.' As lead architect of the GOELRO electrification plan and first chairman of Gosplan, he directed the world's first comprehensive national development plan, the methodological prototype for every Soviet five-year plan. As vice-president of the Academy of Sciences he founded the Energy Institute and laid the scientific basis for the unified energy system. Sidelined in the late 1930s for criticising Stalin, he escaped the purges and was rehabilitated as a Hero of Socialist Labour in 1957.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1874–1940 → Died in prison

The Menshevik statistician who designed Gosplan's early control figures and balance method, leading voice of genetic planning

December 27, 1929, at the All-Union Conference of Marxist Agrarians. Stalin, from the rostrum, aimed directly at Groman's theory that 'the October Revolution gave the peasantry less than the February Revolution.' When a voice from the audience asked 'Who was it?' Stalin answered: 'It was Groman.' In that moment, genetic planning received its political death sentence.

Statistician and economist, born in Moscow to a German father and Russian mother. Joined the RSDLP in 1898 as a Menshevik, co-authoring the agrarian program; as head of the Penza statistical bureau he developed a multi-phase sampling method. After the February Revolution he chaired the Petrograd food-supply commission, and in 1921 joined Gosplan where he headed the Conjunctural Institute, designing the first Control Figures and the balance method. With Bazarov he championed the genetic planning approach; after Stalin's public condemnation he was arrested in 1930 and as lead defendant in the 1931 Menshevik Trial received ten years, dying in the Suzdal camp.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1878–1938 ✕ Executed

'The countryside is against us': the deputy finance commissar who said it to the Politburo

'The countryside, except for a small section of the poor peasants, is against us.' One sentence from Deputy Finance Commissar Frumkin's letter to the Politburo, 15 June 1928. It became the starting pistol for the crackdown on the Right Opposition.

An Old Bolshevik who joined the Bund in 1898 before entering the RSDLP, Frumkin served in the Food Commissariat during the Civil War and as deputy commissar for foreign trade and finance under NEP. In June 1928, at the height of the grain-procurement crisis, he sent a letter to the Politburo declaring that 'the countryside, except for a small section of the poor peasants, is against us': a direct indictment of Stalin's forced-requisition policy and its destruction of the smychka, the worker-peasant alliance. That single letter made him the first man formally accused of the 'Right Deviation,' the opening salvo of Stalin's liquidation of the NEP coalition. Arrested in October 1937, he was shot in July 1938 and rehabilitated in 1956.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1878–1938 ✕ Executed

The commissar who steered from famine's shadow to NEP finance, then fell under industrialization's demands

At the 5 April 1930 Politburo meeting Stalin passed an obscene note mocking Bryukhanov, who had proposed nickel alloy coinage, and Mezhlauk appended a drawing of the hanging commissar; both were shot in 1938.

A Bolshevik from 1902, born in Simbirsk as the son of a land-surveyor official; he studied at Moscow and Kazan universities without graduating and was expelled for revolutionary activity. Under the Tsar he endured repeated arrests and exile, headed the Bolshevik committee in Ufa and chaired the Ufa Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, and was a delegate to the Seventh (April) All-Russian Conference. During the Civil War he helped organize mass grain requisitions and directed the food detachments and punitive expeditions, and became People's Commissar of Finance on 16 January 1926. Removed on 18 October 1930 and relegated to secondary posts, he was arrested on 3 February 1938, shot on 1 September 1938 and rehabilitated in 1956; some reference works give his death as 30 June 1942.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1879–1937 ✕ Executed

The Polish revolutionary who ran Lenin's financial pipeline from Kraków to Stockholm

April 13, 1917, Stockholm station. Parvus waited for Lenin, who arrived on the sealed train. Lenin refused to meet him in person and used Ganetsky as intermediary. Parvus asked: "Peace is necessary. What does he intend to do?" Ganetsky relayed the question; Lenin answered: "I am not interested in diplomacy. My task is social-revolutionary agitation."

A Polish revolutionary from Warsaw who co-founded the SDKPiL and became Lenin's trusted financial operative. During World War I he partnered with Alexander Parvus to establish trading companies in Copenhagen and Stockholm, channelling profits from scarce wartime goods into revolutionary coffers, a route central to the 'German gold' controversy. After the October Revolution he helped build the Soviet financial system as deputy head of the State Bank and a collegium member of Narkomvneshtorg, later serving as plenipotentiary to Latvia and signing the Treaty of Kars before perishing in the Great Terror.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1880–1936 ✕ Suicide

Chief of the Soviet trade unions, third man of the Right Opposition

"They accuse us abroad of a one-party regime. Not true. We have many parties. Only one is in power, and the rest are in prison." At the 11th Party Congress in 1922, the hall answered Tomsky with a storm of applause.

A leading figure of the Soviet trade-union movement, he headed the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions from 1918 and entered the Politburo in 1922. In the trade-union controversy of 1920–1921 he defended union autonomy against Trotsky's program of militarizing the unions, and in 1929 fell with Bukharin and Rykov as the "Right deviation." A lithographer with minimal formal schooling, he shot himself at his Bolshevo dacha on 22 August 1936 as news of an investigation against him was published. His family too was repressed in the late 1930s, and he was fully cleared only in 1988.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1880–1937 ✕ Executed

The pragmatic Bolshevik who designed and led the Far Eastern Republic

After Krasnoshchyokov was dismissed during an illness, Lenin protested in a letter to Molotov: "We have harassed this man, who undoubtedly has brains, energy, knowledge and experience."

The first head of the Far Eastern Republic (1920–1921) and a key architect of the early Soviet mixed-economy experiment. After emigrating to America in 1902, he graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and worked as a labour attorney before returning to Russia in 1917 and immediately joining the Bolsheviks. He persuaded Lenin to create a buffer state in the Far East to secure Japan's withdrawal during the Civil War, personally drafting the republic's constitution in English and securing the Gongota Agreement with Japan as premier and foreign minister. He later served as Deputy People's Commissar for Finance, joined the Presidium of Vesenkha, and founded Prombank, laying the institutional foundations for industrial finance under the NEP.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1882–1932 ○ Natural causes

An imaginative economic theorist who bridged NEP and central planning, co-founded Gosplan, and championed Jewish agricultural settlement

"The real heroism with which he conquers physical disabilities which long ago would have overwhelmed a less unbreakable spirit." — Arthur Ransome, British journalist who met Larin in Moscow, 1920

An economist and revolutionary born in Simferopol. A founding member of Gosplan, he advocated centralized planning based on his study of the German war economy. He led the Jewish agricultural settlement movement (OZET) and wrote prolifically despite lifelong muscular dystrophy.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1882–1938 ✕ Executed

Architect of NEP industrialization who championed trusts against Glavkist centralization

“We can manage well only by decentralizing industrial management, bringing the management body closer to the factory, while centralizing leadership of industry as a whole.” — defending trusts against Glavkist centralizers.

A Bolshevik engineer and economic manager from a Moscow merchant family, Bogdanov chaired the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh) of the RSFSR from 1921 to 1925, designing the institutional architecture of industry under the New Economic Policy. He oversaw the production of the first Soviet tank at the Sormovo plant and, as chairman of the Council of Military Industry, introduced planned production cooperation among military factories during the Civil War. A committed defender of the trust form of industrial organization with broad enterprise autonomy, he opposed the centralized 'Glavkist' model and chaired the Main Concession Committee to attract foreign capital. As head of Amtorg in the United States from 1930 to 1934, he helped pave the way for Soviet-US diplomatic relations, but was arrested in 1937 during the Great Purge and executed in 1938.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1884–1937 ✕ Executed

First People's Commissar for Agriculture who laid the statistical foundations of Soviet planning

On October 29, 1917, when Lenin urged the Central Committee to ready itself to seize power immediately, Milyutin was the first to oppose him: "We are not ready to strike the first blow; we are unable to depose and arrest the authorities in the immediate future." Lenin argued against him point by point. Exactly one week later, Milyutin was in charge of food supplies for that very insurrection.

As the first Sovnarkom People's Commissar for Agriculture (1917), he helped shape the revolutionary government's land policy. An economic theorist who began as a Menshevik and joined the Bolsheviks in 1910, he later headed the Central Statistical Administration (TsSU) and served as deputy chairman of Gosplan, building the statistical and calculative infrastructure of Soviet planning. A technocrat who sustained the state economic apparatus through the transitions from War Communism to NEP to the Five-Year Plans, he was arrested and executed in 1937 on charges of belonging to a 'Right counter-revolutionary organization.'

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1884–1941 ✕ Executed

The finance commissar who passed from Cheka to the Left Opposition

In the prison train, Valentina Polyakova confronted her: 'Your false testimony got my husband shot.' Yakovleva answered: 'It was Yezhov's order. They kept me awake fifteen days and nights — I lost control and signed.'

An Old Bolshevik who led the Petrograd Cheka during the revolution, she was also a leader of the Left Opposition in 1924–26. After serving as the Russian republic’s finance commissar, she was arrested in 1937, given a long prison sentence, and shot in the 1941 mass execution at Oryol prison.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1885–1918 ✕ Executed

Tatar revolutionary who led the Kazan Muslim Socialist Committee and became the first head of the Soviet Muslim Commissariat

Born in 1885 into a merchant family, in Kazan or in Kazaevo in Perm province according to different records, he took part in the 1905 revolution. After the St Petersburg Polytechnic he moved in 1912 to the law faculty of the Psychoneurological Institute, where he met Mikhail Frunze among others and organised a circle of Muslim students. After the February Revolution he led the Muslim Socialist Committee in Kazan and its newspaper Qızıl Bayraq, became a member of the Kazan Military Revolutionary Committee in October and was elected to the Constituent Assembly. In January 1918, on Lenin’s advice, he became head of the Muslim Commissariat (Muskom) and sent sailors to crush the Trans-Bulak Republic. Appointed extraordinary food commissar for the Volga in July, he was captured and executed after Komuch’s People’s Army took Kazan in August.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1885–1944 ○ Natural causes

Architect of the chervonets who tamed NEP inflation, then broke with Stalin as the first high-ranking Soviet financial defector

Lenin to Sheinman, 28 February 1922: "At present the State Bank = a bureaucratic paper game. There is the truth for you, if you want to hear not the sweet communist-official lies, but the truth."

A Bolshevik since 1903, he chaired the Helsinki Soviet in 1917 and served in the Constituent Assembly. Across two terms as Gosbank chairman (1921–24, 1926–29), he introduced the gold-backed chervonets that tamed hyperinflation under the NEP. Lenin rebuked him for running a "bureaucratic paper game," yet that institution-building made monetary stabilization possible. Recalled from abroad in 1929, he refused to return, becoming an early nevozvrashchenets and escaping the purges in London exile.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1886–1938 ✕ Executed

The labour commissar who steered the statification of Soviet trade unions

Arthur Ransome met him soon after his December 1918 appointment and described "a clean-shaven, intelligent young man, whose attention to business methods is reflected in his Commissariat"; Schmidt said the commissariat was controlled directly by the unions.

Born in Saint Petersburg on 17 (29) December 1886, the son of a domestic servant, and listed as German in the Russian-language biography. He joined the RSDLP in 1905 as a railway fitter, worked as a painter in German emigration from 1907 to 1911, and from 1915 served as secretary of the Petrograd committee. After February 1917 he was secretary of the Petrograd Party Committee and the Central Council of Trade Unions and a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee, and was appointed People's Commissar for Labour in November 1917, serving until 1928. He was Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of People's Commissars from 1928 to 1930; arrested in January 1937, sentenced to death by the Military Collegium on 28 January 1938 and shot the same day, and rehabilitated on 30 July 1957.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1887–1938 ✕ Executed

First chairman of VSNKh; theorist of the Left Communists and of Democratic Centralism

Sent in November 1917 to break the sabotage of State Bank officials, he became the bank's first manager and obtained the keys to its vaults and cash for the Sovnarkom, moving to the chairmanship of VSNKh on 23 December.

Born in Kursk province into a small-landed noble family, he studied law at Moscow University and joined the Bolsheviks in 1907. Appointed a commissioner of the State Bank in November 1917 after the October Revolution, he secured the keys to its vaults and its funds, and in December became the first chairman of the Supreme Economic Council (VSNKh). A theoretical leader of the Left Communist group that opposed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, he co-led the Democratic Centralism group in 1920-21, which demanded open discussion and the representation of minority views in the party. He later served as deputy chairman of Gosplan and head of the Central Statistical Administration, was arrested in 1937, executed on 1 September 1938 and rehabilitated in 1957.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1888–1937 ✕ Executed

First People's Commissar for Justice, Gosplan deputy chairman, and victim of the Great Purge

On October 24-25, 1917, he was in the Smolny Institute helping direct the armed uprising; within days, at 29, he became the Soviet government's first People's Commissar for Justice.

Born into a noble family in Saratov, he joined the Bolsheviks in 1903 and took part in the 1905 revolution. After the October Revolution he was appointed the first People's Commissar for Justice in the original Sovnarkom, then served in the Supreme Economic Council (VSNKh), led economic bodies in Siberia and the Urals, chaired the Oil Syndicate (Neftesindikat) and Donugol, and became deputy chairman of Gosplan. Within the party he sat on the Central Committee from the Sixth Congress (1917) onward; in 1918 he was a 'Left Communist' opposing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty before later backing Stalin. Arrested in 1937 on false charges, he was sentenced to death and shot; rehabilitated in 1956.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1888–1937 ✕ Executed

Bolshevik industrial administrator who rose from the Cheka to chair VSNKh RSFSR

In 1936 Lobov received the Order of Lenin for his commissariat's overfulfillment of the production plan. One year later the same party arrested him for 'anti-Soviet terrorist' activity; he was sentenced and shot on the same day, 30 October 1937.

Son of a forester in Smolensk, he worked as a labourer and draftsman before joining the Bolsheviks in 1913. During the Civil War he chaired the Petrograd, Saratov and Bashkir Chekas, becoming an early cadre of the Soviet security organs. Under NEP he managed the fuel and oil syndicate, then became chairman of VSNKh RSFSR in 1926, laying the administrative basis for industrialization. As People's Commissar for Timber Industry from 1932, he oversaw lumber supply for the Five-Year Plans and received the Order of Lenin in 1936. Arrested in June 1937, he was shot on 30 October 1937 and rehabilitated in 1956.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1888–1939 ✕ Killed in prison in

The finance commissar of NEP stabilization

At the 14th Party Congress in December 1925, before 1,306 delegates, Sokolnikov took the rostrum to demand Stalin's removal as General Secretary and the continuation of NEP. He was the only speaker to demand this from the rostrum. The move failed to win a majority.

Bolshevik leader killed in prison under Stalin. Born Grigory Brilliant, he took a law degree and a doctorate in economics at the Sorbonne and was fluent in six languages. After the October Revolution he oversaw bank nationalization and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and in the Civil War commanded the 8th Army that completed the defeat of Denikin. As Finance Commissar he directed the 1922–1924 monetary reform, stabilizing the ruble with the gold-backed chervonets. He advocated hard financial policy and gradual socialist construction, opposing forced industrialization and collectivization, and at the 14th Party Congress of 1925 demanded Stalin's resignation as General Secretary.