People of the Revolution and the USSR

Activity(set)
Any Political and party leadership 27 Government and administration 17 Monarchs and royalty 4 Military command 32 Security, intelligence and policing 6 Economy, finance and planning 3 Industry and production 2 Agriculture and land policy 2 Ideology and propaganda 2 Social movements and organizing 27 Scholarship and theory 23 Science and technology 3 Literature and arts 10 Religion 4 Law and justice 8
Affiliation

Most people

Any Russian Empire state institutions 1 Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR) 1

All 2 affiliations

Russia

Russian Empire state institutions 1 Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR) 1
Position
Any Imperial establishment and White movement 1 Conservatism and Christian democracy 1
Citizenship
Any Russia 2
Background
Any Russia 2
Era(set)
Any

People of the Soviet Union

The old regime and its challengers1905–1917 2 The revolutionary generation1917–1940 16 People of the Stalin era1929–1953 16 People of the thaw and the stagnation1953–1985 30 The last generation1985–1991 6

People of the Chinese revolution and the People’s Republic

People of the Mao era1949–1976 5

People of the wider world

The age of the Internationals and empires1820–1917 2 The revolutionary wave and the world war1917–1945 14 The Cold War and decolonization1945–현재 12
Ideology and propaganda The old regime and its challengers 1905–1917 Clear all

Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev

Константин Петрович Победоносцев
Russian Empire state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy Russia Russia 1827–1907 ○ Natural causes

The 'Grand Inquisitor' who made autocracy a creed

To Nicholas II he is reported to have said: "The prolongation of the existing order depends on keeping the country in a frozen state. The slightest warm breath of spring, and everything will collapse."

The chief conservative ideologue of Alexander III's Russia and Ober-Procurator of the Most Holy Synod from 1880 to 1905. He drafted the Manifesto on Unshakeable Autocracy of April 1881, which killed Loris-Melikov's constitutional reform and inaugurated reactionary counter-reforms: parish school expansion, tighter censorship, and repression of religious minorities. A formidable jurist who wrote the three-volume Course of Civil Law, in Reflections of a Russian Statesman he denounced parliamentarism as 'the great lie of our time.' Tutor to Alexander III and Nicholas II, he was in office when the Synod excommunicated Tolstoy in 1901, and resigned after the October Manifesto of 1905; the autocratic order he spent his life defending was precisely what the revolutionary generation set out to destroy.

Career timeline
  • 1846Graduates Imperial School of Jurisprudence; enters Senate service
  • 1860–1865Professor of civil law, Moscow University
  • 1861Appointed law tutor to Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich
  • 1865Becomes law tutor to the future Alexander III
  • 1868–1880Publishes 3-volume Course of Civil Law; doctorate in civil law
  • 1872Member of the State Council
  • 1880–1905Ober-Procurator of the Most Holy Synod; de facto head of Russian Orthodox Church
  • 1881.04Drafts Manifesto on Unshakeable Autocracy; Loris-Melikov reforms scrapped
  • 1884Drives parish school reform (273 schools to 43,696 by 1902)
  • 1896Publishes Moscow Collection, attacking parliamentarism and democracy
  • 1901Survives assassination attempt; Synod excommunicates Tolstoy during his tenure
  • 1905.10Resigns after the October Manifesto; retains only State Council and Senate seats

Semyon Leontyevich Maslov

Семён Леонтьевич Маслов
Russian Provisional Government state institutions Imperial establishment and White movement Russian Russian 1873–1938 ✕ Executed

A Socialist-Revolutionary agrarian thinker who championed peasant cooperation

“We talk too much; at moments like these, action is necessary.”

Semyon Leontyevich Maslov was a Socialist-Revolutionary agrarian economist and organiser of the peasant cooperative movement. He supported land reform but opposed unsanctioned seizures of estates, seeking to join legal reform with rural self-government. As minister of agriculture in October 1917, he lived through the Provisional Government’s final hours and arrest in the Winter Palace, while continuing to defend the Constituent Assembly and cooperative politics. His later defence of cooperative autonomy conflicted with the direction of Soviet policy, and he was executed in 1938 and rehabilitated in 1988.

Career timeline
  • 1897–1903Exiled to Kazan, then graduated from Kazan University’s law faculty
  • 1902–1913Statistician in the Kazan zemstvo, peasant-press editor and Socialist-Revolutionary publicist
  • 1913–1917Worked in Moscow agricultural cooperation and helped organise the Central Flax-Growers’ Association
  • 1917.04–10Deputy chair of the Main Land Committee and member of the All-Russian Council of Peasant Deputies’ executive committee
  • 1917.10.03–25Minister of Agriculture in the Provisional Government
  • 1917.10–1918Arrested in the Winter Palace, then joined the underground Provisional Government and Constituent Assembly
  • 1921–1929Chair of Selsko-Soyuz, professor and vice-rector of the All-Russian Cooperative Institute
  • 1930–1938Exiled and rearrested before being executed in 1938