People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1873–1955 ○ Natural causes

He built the Soviet government apparatus and studied the religious dissenters of the empire

On the night of October 1917, after the Smolny session, he put Lenin up in his own apartment. He fastened every chain and lock on the front door, loaded two revolvers, and dozed on the sofa listening for sounds — only to catch Lenin tiptoeing past him to the desk, pretending his host was asleep. By grey morning Lenin pulled from his pocket the handwritten draft of the famous Decree on Land and read it aloud. Bonch-Bruevich greeted the household: 'Congratulations on the first day of the Socialist Revolution.'

As Lenin's de facto personal secretary and first Administrator of Affairs of Sovnarkom (1917–20), he laid the foundations of the Soviet administrative apparatus. An ethnographer of Russian religious sectarianism, he was the driving force behind the 1919 law legalising conscientious objection.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1874–1935 ○ Natural causes

Iskra agent across three revolutions, KOMZET chairman who shaped Soviet nationality policy and the Birobidzhan Jewish experiment

On December 30, 1922, he declared open the First All-Union Congress of Soviets — the moment that formalized the birth of the USSR.

An Old Bolshevik who joined the RSDLP in 1898. Born into Polish nobility, he was expelled from Moscow University, studied electrical engineering in Paris, and worked in Belgian factories as a member of the Belgian Workers' Party. An Iskra agent through all three Russian revolutions, he served on the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee during October 1917 and chaired the Moscow Soviet. As KOMZET chairman he advanced the Birobidzhan Jewish Autonomous Oblast experiment, and as chairman of the Committee of the North he designed administrative and economic policy for northern indigenous peoples. His ashes are interred in the Kremlin Wall.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1878–1918 ✕ Executed

The 'Caucasian Lenin', Marxist theorist of the national question and leader of the Baku Commune

As the Baku Commune crumbled, a comrade's wife urged him to flee first. Shaumyan answered: "What will the workers say to me? It would be a disgrace to flee first."

Pioneer of Armenian Marxism and leader of the Caucasus Bolsheviks. Born to a Tiflis merchant family, he studied at Riga Polytechnic and Berlin University, organizing Armenia's first Marxist circle in 1899. He translated the Communist Manifesto into Armenian, pioneered Armenian Marxist literary criticism, and was elected a candidate CC member at the 1912 Prague Conference. In 1918 he chaired the Baku Council of People's Commissars, the 'Baku Commune', and famously debated Lenin by correspondence on the national question. Captured and shot with the 26 Baku Commissars in September 1918, he became a Bolshevik martyr.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1881–1938 ✕ Executed

Lenin’s successor as premier, destroyed as the Right Opposition

In November 1917 Rykov resigned from Sovnarkom and the Central Committee alongside Kamenev, Zinoviev and others, objecting that the government had not formed a coalition of all socialist parties. Sources date this to 16 or 17 November; he retracted it a few days later.

Rykov became chairman of Sovnarkom after Lenin's death, leading the Soviet government for six years and embodying the administrative continuity of NEP. During the Civil War he had directed the wartime economy as chairman of VSNKh and overseen Red Army logistics. As premier he stood with Bukharin and Tomsky as the core of the party's 'Right,' championing the worker-peasant alliance, gradual socialist construction through the market, and balanced industrialization. He opposed Stalin's forced collectivization and breakneck industrialization during the 1928-29 grain crisis, was branded the 'Right Opposition' and removed as premier in 1930, arrested in 1937, executed after the third Moscow trial of 1938, and rehabilitated in 1988.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1883–1921 ✕ Accidental death

Founder and head of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, close friend of Stalin and Kirov

March 1902, Moscow. Nineteen-year-old Fyodor raised a homemade red banner — 'Inviolability of the Person! Freedom of Speech! Freedom of Assembly!' — the signal launching the student demonstration. Arrest, prison, expulsion: thus 'Artyom' was born.

An Old Bolshevik from 1901, he rose from Donbas miner and railway worker to organizer of Russian immigrant workers in Australia, and in 1918 founded and led the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic. A close friend of Stalin and Kirov, he chaired the All-Ukrainian Military Revolutionary Committee and CEC during the Civil War and served as Moscow Party executive secretary. He defended Soviet power against German occupiers and Denikin's White Army, dying at 38 in the 1921 aerowagon derailment. His infant son was adopted and raised by Stalin.

Soviet Union 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 Soviet communism 1885–? ○ Later fate unknown

A local Soviet official caught in the revolution's backlash

On March 2, 1921, the Kronstadt insurgents arrested and imprisoned him.

Pavel Vasiliev was a Bolshevik local official who led the Kronstadt Soviet at the end of the Russian Civil War. He represented Soviet authority as sailors and workers opposing war communism and party rule turned their demands into an open confrontation. In March 1921 the insurgent forces arrested him alongside Nikolai Kuzmin, making his detention a revealing moment in the tension between revolutionary Soviet democracy and the party’s monopoly of power.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1886–1925 ✕ Killed in crash

Lenin's periphery-builder who brought Soviet power to Belarus and Armenia

When news of the October Revolution reached Minsk, Myasnikov immediately formed and led a Military Revolutionary Committee, and Soviet power was established there without bloodshed.

An Armenian Bolshevik born to a merchant family in Nakhichevan-on-Don. He joined the RSDLP in 1906 and was administratively exiled to Baku for illegal literature, where Shaumyan influenced him. In 1917 he led the Western Front Bolsheviks in Minsk and played the leading role in establishing Soviet power there. He chaired the Byelorussian SSR Central Executive Committee in February 1919, then from May 1921 headed the Armenian SSR Council of People's Commissars, building Soviet Armenia's state institutions and economy. From 1922 he chaired the Transcaucasian SFSR Union Council and served as first secretary of the Transcaucasian Kraikom. He wrote on Marxist-Leninist theory and Armenian literature. On 22 March 1925 his aircraft caught fire and crashed near Tiflis, killing him alongside Atarbekov and Mogilevsky; the cause of the fire was never established.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1887–1937 Died in custody

Worker-poet known as Tsishka Hartny who headed the first Soviet government of Byelorussia

Born into a peasant family in Kapyl in 1887, he worked as a tanner, joined the Hramada in 1904 and wrote for Nasha Niva. From 1913 he worked in Petrograd factories and wrote poetry under the pen name Tsishka Hartny. In 1918, as secretary of the Belarusian National Commissariat, he campaigned for a Belarusian republic against Vilgelm Knorin and Alexander Myasnikov and won the support of Lenin and Stalin. From 1 January to 3 February 1919 he headed the Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government of the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia. He later ran publishing and cultural institutions and became an academician, but was expelled from the party in 1931, arrested in 1936 and died in 1937 in a psychiatric hospital in Mogilev; some accounts say he took his own life.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1888–1928 ✕ Executed

Crimean Tatar national communist who pressed Crimean Tatar interests as head of the Crimean ASSR and was executed

Born in 1888 into a merchant family in Bakhchysarai, he worked from the age of 14 at the newspaper Terciman, where Ismail Gasprinsky tutored him. He took part in the 1905 revolution and lived in the Ottoman Empire in 1909–1912. In 1916 he chaired a Crimean Tatar labour union, and in 1917 he was a Qurultay delegate and led the left wing of Milliy Firqa. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1918 and served in the Cheka special department on the Caucasus front in 1919–1920. From December 1920 he called for Crimea to be recognised as a famine region, and in 1921–1924 he was People’s Commissar of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection of the Crimean ASSR. As chairman of the Crimean Central Executive Committee from 1924 he opposed Jewish resettlement, but in 1928 he was executed on charges linked to a murder case; he was rehabilitated in 1990.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1891–1940 ○ Died

Bolshevik chairman of the Turkestan Sovnarkom in 1917–1918 who crushed the Kokand Autonomy and attacked Bukhara

Born in Uralsk in 1891, he worked as a railway clerk in Orenburg and Tashkent. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1917, sat on the executive committee of the Tashkent Soviet, was elected to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee at the Second Congress of Soviets and helped organise the armed rising in Tashkent in November. As chairman of the Turkestan Sovnarkom from November 1917 to November 1918 he rejected a coalition, declaring that Muslims could not be admitted to the supreme organ of power, and put down by force the bids for autonomy in Ashgabat and Kokand. In March 1918 he tried with the Young Bukharans to overthrow the Emir of Bukhara and had to retreat. He chaired the Far Eastern Council of the National Economy in 1923–1928, later worked as an architect and died in Moscow in 1940.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1892–1938 ✕ Executed

Architect of Soviet science administration, from Lenin's personal secretary to Academy permanent secretary

When State Bank director Shipov was arrested and brought to Smolny, Gorbunov was "obliged, as a mark of special courtesy and greatly to my annoyance, to let him have my bed while I slept on chairs."

Nikolai Gorbunov was a Bolshevik technocrat who built the early administrative apparatus of the Soviet government as Secretary of Sovnarkom and Lenin's personal secretary from November 1917. As rector of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University (1923–1929) and permanent secretary of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1935–1937), he was a pivotal link in science administration, actively backing Nikolai Vavilov's plant explorations and the creation of VASKhNIL. He led the Pamir expedition (1932–1935), organizing the 1933 first ascent of Stalin Peak, the USSR's highest summit, and joined climber Yevgeny Abalakov in the final assault. Arrested in 1938 in the 'climbers' case' during the Great Purge, he was executed and rehabilitated in 1954.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1893–1936 ✕ Poisoned

Stalin's closest friend turned Beria's first victim: the red prince of Abkhazia

Stalin's words to Lakoba: 'I am Koba, you are Lakoba.' On the night of December 27, 1936, after dinner at Beria's residence, he collapsed with violent vomiting. His driver testified that Lakoba's last whispered words were: 'Beria killed me.'

Bolshevik leader who governed Soviet Abkhazia from 1922 to 1936, advancing agriculture and Black Sea resort development. Stalin's close friend, he was poisoned by Beria and posthumously rehabilitated.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1894–1938 ✕ Executed

The Kazakh Bolshevik strategist who argued for a unified Turkestan against Stalin's national delimitation

In June 1923, Stalin accused Ryskulov of 'pan-Turkism.' From the floor, Ryskulov retorted: "Just months ago, Comrade Stalin, you praised Sultan-Galiev as a devoted communist. Reversing that now is sheer political convenience."

Kazakh Bolshevik revolutionary and a pivotal leader of the Turkestan ASSR. He argued that the Turkic-speaking peoples of Central Asia constituted a single historical nation and opposed Stalin's national delimitation; at the June 1923 IV Conference he openly rebutted Stalin's accusation of 'pan-Turkism.' As RSFSR deputy Sovnarkom chairman (1926–1937), he drove the Turkestan–Siberian Railway and Karaganda industrial complex. During the 1932–1933 Kazakh famine, he wrote directly to Stalin documenting the mass starvation from forced collectivisation and secured food relief. Executed 1938, rehabilitated 1956.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1896–1938 ✕ Executed

Son of a Bukharan merchant who rose from the Jadid reform movement to become the first head of government of Soviet Uzbekistan

Russian diplomat Alexander Barmine recalled: "Fayzulla Khodzhayev, called the 'Lenin of the Uzbeks,' was small, wiry, and full of consuming energy, in spite of the malaria which often gave his face a greenish tinge. He enjoyed life, and could laugh gaily beneath a crushing load of work. He knew his people, was a great orator, and was much loved."

Born to a wealthy merchant family in Bukhara, Khodzhayev was sent to Moscow at age 11 and confronted the gap between traditional society and modern Europe. He joined the Jadid movement in 1916, co-founded the Young Bukharan Party, and after a failed 1918 coup against the Emir, fled to Tashkent under a death sentence. In 1920 he became Chairman of the Council of People's Nazirs of the Bukharan PSR, and in 1924 the first Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Uzbek SSR, leading Central Asia's national delimitation and integration into the USSR. He opposed Stalin's cotton monoculture drive, lost influence, and was arrested in 1937, sentenced to death at the Third Moscow Trial.