People of the Revolution and the USSR
Political and party leadership
Left critics of Bolshevism
The revolutionary generation 1917–1940
Clear all
- Alexander Alexandrovich Bogdanov Александр Александрович Богданов The man who made Lenin furious over philosophy, then died swapping his own blood: a forerunner of cybernetics
- Christian Georgievich Rakovsky Христиан Георгиевич Раковский From Balkan revolutionary to head of Soviet Ukraine: the diplomat who became an opposition theorist
- Leon Davidovich Trotsky Лев Давидович Троцкий The orator who built the Red Army, felled by an ice axe
- Ivan Nikitich Smirnov Иван Никитич Смирнов The Siberian Bolshevik of the Left Opposition
- Prosh Perchevich Proshian Прош Перчевич Прошьян Left SR People's Commissar in the first Soviet coalition: 'the core of the party'
- Mikhail Mikhailovich Lashevich Михаил Михайлович Лашевич Bolshevik military leader of 1917 and the Civil War
- Alexander Konstantinovich Voronsky Александр Константинович Воронский Editor of Krasnaya Nov, Marxist critic who discovered Babel and Pasternak and led Pereval against RAPP
- Maria Alexandrovna Spiridonova Мария Александровна Спиридонова Face of the Left SR Party and peasant tribune: the last revolutionary opposition leader to challenge the Bolsheviks from the left
- Alexander Gavrilovich Shlyapnikov Александр Гаврилович Шляпников Leader of the Workers' Opposition, defeated by Lenin, devoured by the Purge
- Boris Davidovich Kamkov Борис Давидович Камков Co-founder and chief theoretician of the Left SR Party: from coalition with the Bolsheviks to the July 1918 uprising
- Yevgeni Alexeyevich Preobrazhensky Евгений Алексеевич Преображенский The theorist of primitive socialist accumulation
- Timofei Vladimirovich Sapronov Тимофей Владимирович Сапронов Leader of the 'Democratic Centralists' who demanded inner-party workers' democracy
- Vladimir Mikhailovich Smirnov Владимир Михайлович Смирнов From Moscow uprising artillery commander to Left Communist and Democratic Centralist
- Isaac Zakharyevich Steinberg Исаак Захарович Штейнберг First People's Commissar of Justice under Lenin: the Left SR who defended revolutionary legality against the Cheka
- Gavriil Ilyich Myasnikov Гавриил Ильич Мясников Worker-Bolshevik who demanded press freedom from Lenin, sparking the 'myasnikovshchina' polemic
- Georgy Leonidovich Pyatakov Георгий Леонидович Пятаков The Bolshevik between revolution and the industrial plan
- Yakov Naumovich Drobnis Яков Наумович Дробнис Founder of Ukrainian Bolshevism, signatory of the Declaration of the 46
- Ivar Tenisovich Smilga Ivars Smilga The young oppositionist of the Revolutionary Military Council
- Stepan Maximovich Petrichenko Степан Максимович Петриченко The sailor who led the Kronstadt rebellion, became a Soviet spy, and died in a camp
- Alexander Sapozhkov Александр Сапожков Red Army division commander who raised the "Red Army of Truth" against grain requisitioning in 1920
- Leonid Petrovich Serebryakov Леонид Петрович Серебряков The Left Opposition secretary whom Lenin called a 'brilliant worker'