Narodniks
1851–1895
✕ Struck by a train at a crossing
He killed the tsar's gendarme chief with a dagger, then introduced the Russian revolution to the West with his pen
On the eve of assassinating Mezentsov in 1878, Kravchinsky wrote: 'Long enough have we preached love — the time has come to call forth hatred. Merciless, bloody vengeance shall henceforth be the answer to your crimes.'
A writer and revolutionary who served as a bridge between the Russian Narodnik movement and the West. After activity in the Chaikovsky Circle he assassinated gendarme chief Mezentsov with a dagger in 1878 and fled into exile; in London he published Underground Russia (1883), introducing the Russian revolutionary movement to the West for the first time, and founded the Russian Free Press Fund and the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, becoming the hub of émigré anti-tsarist agitation.
Career timeline
1872–1873Joined the Chaikovsky Circle; conducted socialist propaganda among St. Petersburg workers
1873–1874Went to the People — agitated peasants in Tver and Tula, arrested and escaped
1875–1876Fought in Herzegovina uprising against Ottoman rule; wrote for Bakuninist journal Rabotnik in Geneva
1877Joined the Benevento insurrection with Malatesta and Cafiero; arrested and amnestied
1878Joined Land and Liberty, edited its journal; assassinated Mezentsov on 4 August; fled abroad in November
1883Published Underground Russia — the West's first comprehensive account of the Russian revolutionary movement
1889Published The Career of a Nihilist (Andrei Kozhukhov), a novel of revolutionary life
1890–1895Founded the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom and Russian Free Press Fund; edited monthly Free Russia
The parliamentarian the Tsar called 'fat-bellied': last chairman of the Imperial Duma
In February 1917, Rodzianko telegraphed the Stavka: "The capital is in a state of anarchy. The government is paralysed. Any delay is fatal. The last hour has struck." Nicholas II read it and told his court minister: "That fat-bellied Rodzianko has sent me some more nonsense."
Of Ukrainian noble stock, Rodzianko co-founded the Octobrist Party in 1905, pursuing constitutional reform of the Tsarist system through parliamentarism. As chairman of the Third and Fourth Dumas (1911–1917), he openly denounced Rasputin and confronted the wartime government's paralysis. During the February Revolution he led the Provisional Committee of the Duma and drove the negotiations for Nicholas II's abdication, but his constitutional-monarchy project collapsed when Grand Duke Michael refused the throne. He emigrated to Yugoslavia in 1920, dying in poverty after completing his memoir The Reign of Rasputin. Reviled by monarchist émigrés as a traitor and dismissed by the left, Rodzianko embodied the brief, thwarted experiment of Russian parliamentary politics.
Career timeline
1905Co-founds the Octobrist Party on a constitutional-monarchist platform
1907–1911Deputy, Third State Duma; vice-chairman from 1909
1911–1912Chairman, Third Duma (succeeding Guchkov)
1912–1917Chairman, Fourth Duma; participates in the Progressive Bloc
1917.02–03Heads Provisional Committee of the Duma; leads abdication talks with Nicholas II
summer 1917Founds Liberal Republican Party with Guchkov
1917.10–1920Anti-Bolshevik activity in Don and Crimea under Denikin and Wrangel
1920–1924Exile in Yugoslavia; writes The Reign of Rasputin: an Empire's Collapse
From Legal Marxism to ethical socialism: the economist who pioneered business cycle theory
At the April 1900 Pskov meeting to organize Iskra, he sat alongside Lenin, Martov, and Struve — but he never actually joined the underground Social Democratic movement.
A leading exponent of Legal Marxism, Tugan-Baranovsky gained international recognition with his 1894 Industrial Crises in Contemporary England, which pioneered an endogenous theory of capitalist business cycles. Together with Pyotr Struve he advanced Marxist economic-historical analysis against the Narodniks and attended the 1900 organizational meeting of Iskra, but later broke with orthodox Marxism toward an 'ethical socialism' grounded in Kantian ethics, laying the theoretical foundations of the cooperative movement. After the February Revolution he served as finance minister in the Ukrainian Central Rada and was a founding member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences; his cycle theory influenced Keynes, Robertson, and Kalecki.
Career timeline
1888Graduated Kharkov University, Candidate of Sciences in natural sciences
1894Published Industrial Crises in Contemporary England, MA in political economy from Moscow University
1895–1899Privatdozent in political economy, St. Petersburg University
1898Published The Russian Factory in Past and Present, doctorate from Moscow University
1900Participated in the Iskra organizational meeting (Pskov)
1901–1905Worked in Poltava zemstvo, wrote Outlines from the Recent History of Political Economy
1906–1913Privatdozent and professor at St. Petersburg University and Polytechnic Institute
1909–1917Editor-in-chief of Vestnik Kooperatsii (Cooperative Digest)
1917.08–11Finance Minister (Secretary) of the Ukrainian Central Rada
1918Founding member, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences; head of socio-economic department
The priest who led the march, and ended a double agent
After Bloody Sunday, Gapon wrote: "We no longer have a tsar. Today a river of blood divides him from the Russian people. It is time for the Russian workers to begin the struggle for the people's freedom without him."
On January 9, 1905, he led 150,000 workers in a petition march to the Winter Palace, where troops opened fire. He survived to write "We no longer have a Tsar," but when his double game with the police came to light, SR combatants hanged him the next year.
Career timeline
1902–1904Organizes the police-sponsored Assembly of Factory Workers
1905.01.09Leads the Winter Palace petition march, Bloody Sunday
1905–1906Exile; contacts with the revolutionary parties
1906His police ties exposed; hanged by SR combatants
The Tsentralka sailor whose killing ignited the Potemkin mutiny; his Odessa funeral became a mass revolutionary demonstration
'To delay means to fail the revolution. At this moment, everywhere, workers and peasants are striking out. We must join the common fight.'
Born into a Ukrainian peasant family in Volhynia, he was conscripted into the Black Sea Fleet in 1898 and became an artillery non-commissioned officer on the battleship Potemkin. He joined the RSDLP in 1903, helped found the Sevastopol Sailors' Tsentralka (Central Committee), and hid a red flag aboard ship as he prepared the fleet-wide uprising. On 27 June 1905, confronting officers over maggot-infested meat, he was mortally wounded by Chief Officer Giliarovsky's rifle; two days later his funeral in Odessa swelled into a mass political demonstration that the Potemkin answered by shelling the city.
Career timeline
1898Conscripted into the Black Sea Fleet
1900Graduates mine-artillery school; assigned as gunner, battleship Potemkin
1903Joins RSDLP; helps found the Sevastopol Sailors' Tsentralka
1905.06.27Mortally wounded by Chief Officer Giliarovsky during the Potemkin mutiny; dies aboard
The torpedo quartermaster who headed the Potemkin mutiny, then was hanged in Sevastopol in 1907
In his 1907 memoir Rakovsky recalled boarding the Potemkin at Constanța in 1905 and being greeted by Matushenko with the words: "We are 300 social democrats ready to die." That is Rakovsky's recollection, not verified verbatim speech.
Born on 2 May 1879 into a poor peasant family in Derhachi, Kharkov province. After the 1891 famine he left school, working as a railway oilman in Kharkov, a port labourer in Odessa, a stoker on a Vladivostok steamer and a docker in Rostov-on-Don, where he joined a Marxist study circle. Conscripted into the Black Sea Fleet in November 1900, he passed the Kronstadt torpedo-machinery school, served on the training ship Berezan and was assigned to the building battleship Potemkin in March 1902. In November 1904 he was among the leaders of the Lazarev barracks mutiny in Sevastopol, was amnestied, and then helped the Social Democrats while joining no party. On 14 June 1905 (O.S.; 27 June N.S.) he headed the mutiny as chairman of the ship's committee, then went through exile in Romania, Switzerland, the USA and France. He returned to Russia in 1907, was arrested, and was hanged in Sevastopol.
Career timeline
1900.11Conscripted into the Black Sea Fleet
1902.03Torpedo quartermaster, battleship Potemkin
1905.06.14Led Potemkin mutiny; chairman of the ship's committee (14 June O.S. = 27 June 1905 N.S.)
1905.06–1907.06Exile in Romania, Switzerland, USA, and France
1907.07Returned to Russia; arrested in Nikolaev; sentenced to death by a military court in Sevastopol
1907.10.20Hanged in Sevastopol (20 Oct O.S. = 2 Nov 1907 N.S.)
