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 Ukrainian State (Hetmanate)state 1 Soviet Unionstate 1

All 2 affiliations

Soviet Union

Soviet Unionstate 1

Ukraine

Ukrainian State (Hetmanate)state 1
Position
Any Imperial establishment and White movement 1 Marxism and communism 1
Citizenship
Any Soviet Union 3
Background
Any Russia 3
Era(set)
Any

People of the Soviet Union

The old regime and its challengers1905–1917 3 The revolutionary generation1917–1940 7 People of the Stalin era1929–1953 40 People of the thaw and the stagnation1953–1985 74 The last generation1985–1991 14

People of the Chinese revolution and the People’s Republic

The reform generation1976–현재 1

People of the wider world

The revolutionary wave and the world war1917–1945 5 The Cold War and decolonization1945–현재 1 Scholars of this history1892–현재 1
Science and technology The old regime and its challengers 1905–1917 Clear all

Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev

Владимир Михайлович Бехтерев
Soviet Union Russia 1857–1927 ○ Natural causes

The brain pioneer who diagnosed Stalin

On 23 Dec 1927, after examining Stalin, Bekhterev told colleagues: 'I have just examined a paranoiac with a withered arm.' He was dead the next day.

Founder of reflexology (objective psychology) and discoverer of ankylosing spondylitis. In 1907 he established the Psychoneurological Institute, the world's first comprehensive human-sciences research center; in 1927, after diagnosing Stalin with paranoia, he died suddenly.

Career timeline
  • 1878Graduates Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy; joins psychiatric clinic
  • 1881–1884Doctor of Medicine; trains in Leipzig, Paris, Berlin under Wundt, Charcot, Flechsig
  • 1885–1893Professor of Psychiatry, Kazan University; founds psychophysiological lab
  • 1892First describes ankylosing spondylitis (Bekhterev's disease)
  • 1893–1913Chair of Nervous & Mental Diseases, Military Medical Academy; founds Neurological Herald
  • 1907Founds Psychoneurological Institute, world's first comprehensive human-sciences center
  • 1907–1910Publishes Objective Psychology (3 vols), founding reflexology
  • 1923Twice examines Lenin as consulting neurologist
  • 1927Honored Scientist of the RSFSR; dies suddenly after examining Stalin

Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky

Владимир Иванович Вернадский
Soviet Union Soviet communism Soviet Union Russia 1863–1945 ○ Natural causes

Founder of biogeochemistry who reconceived the Earth through the biosphere and noosphere

“Everything good in my life I owe to Natasha. We lived 56 years soul to soul, thought to thought.” — diary entry on the day of his wife's death, 1943.

Starting as a mineralogist, he founded the new science of biogeochemistry and formulated the concepts of the biosphere and noosphere, making him a forerunner of modern Earth system science. He served as the first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1918) and organized the Soviet Radium Institute, laying the institutional groundwork for early Soviet uranium and atomic research. Once a Kadet Central Committee member and deputy education minister in the Provisional Government, he stayed in the USSR under the Academy's protection and won the Stalin Prize in 1943.

Career timeline
  • 1898–1911Professor of Mineralogy, Moscow University
  • 1906–1917Kadet Central Committee member & State Council deputy
  • 1917Deputy Minister of Education, Provisional Government
  • 1918–1921First President, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences
  • 1922–1939Director, Radium Institute of the USSR
  • 1927–1945Director, Biogeochemical Laboratory, Academy of Sciences

Pyotr Ioakimovich Palchinsky

Пётр Иоакимович Пальчинский
Imperial establishment and White movement Soviet Russian 1875–1929 ✕ Executed

The Provisional Government's last technocrat who directed the defense of the Winter Palace

As the palace fell, Palchinsky burst in before the advancing Red Guards shouting that an agreement had been reached and a deputation from the City Council and Soviet was on its way.

A mining engineer from Kazan who sympathized with anarchist ideas in his youth, Palchinsky took part in the 1905 Revolution and was forced into emigration. In 1917 he served as Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry and briefly as Governor-General of Petrograd; on 25 October, as Kishkin's assistant, he directed the defense of the Winter Palace and, moments before the building fell, burst in to announce the ministers' decision to surrender to the Bolshevik forces. Released and reintegrated under the Soviet system, he chaired the Russian Technical Society and consulted on GOELRO and the Dnieper hydroelectric project, but was caught in the repressive aftermath of the Shakhty Trial, arrested in 1928, and shot the following year for 'counter-revolutionary wrecking.'

Career timeline
  • 1900Mining engineer, Donbas coalfield survey
  • 1902–1905Manager, Golovinsky coal mines, Irkutsk
  • 1906–1913Emigration (London, Turin, Rome); mining dept., Turin World Exhibition
  • 1915–1917Central War Industry Committee
  • 1917.03–10Deputy Minister of Trade & Industry; Governor-General of Petrograd (Aug–Sep)
  • 1917.10.25Head of Winter Palace defense, arrested
  • 1918–1928Chairman, Russian Technical Society; GOELRO & Dnieprostroi consultant
  • 1928–1929Arrested, sentenced to death, executed