People of the Revolution and the USSR

Russian Empire Imperial establishment and White movement 1846–1904 ✕ Assassinated

The last hardline Interior Minister of tsarism, who urged a "small victorious war" to hold back revolution

"We need a small victorious war to hold back revolution" — the words attributed to Plehve on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War, as recorded by his rival Sergei Witte.

Born into a Russified German noble family, Plehve rose to prominence as Director of the Police Department after Alexander II's assassination in 1881, systematically destroying the terrorist organization Narodnaya Volya through a network of secret agents. As Minister of the Interior from 1902, he crushed peasant uprisings in Poltava and Kharkov, curtailed the zemstvos, briefly experimented with Zubatov's police-sponsored trade unions before shutting them down, and pursued an uncompromising hardline defense of the autocracy. On 28 July 1904, Yegor Sazonov of the SR Combat Organization threw a bomb into his carriage on Izmailovsky Prospekt, killing him. His death opened the door to Sviatopolk-Mirsky's 'era of trust' and the political crisis on the very eve of Bloody Sunday.

Russian Empire Imperial establishment and White movement 1848–1909 ○ Heart attack

The Imperial Russian admiral who led the Baltic Fleet to catastrophe at Tsushima

He later wrote: 'Had I possessed even a spark of civic courage, I should have cried out to the whole world: protect these last resources of the fleet! Do not send them to be slaughtered! But I lacked that spark.'

Vice-admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy who commanded the Second Pacific Squadron in the Russo-Japanese War, completing an unprecedented voyage of an all-steel battleship fleet from the Baltic to the Far East, only to suffer catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Tsushima against Tōgō Heihachirō's Japanese fleet. He sensed from the outset that the expedition was a reckless gamble, yet sailed anyway, declaring that 'public opinion must be satisfied,' and later confessed that had he possessed 'even a spark of civic courage,' he would have 'cried out to the whole world: do not send these last resources of the fleet to be slaughtered.' Severely wounded and taken prisoner during the battle, he was court-martialed upon his return but acquitted on account of his injuries; he died in seclusion on New Year's Eve 1909.

Russian Empire Imperial establishment and White movement 1849–1915 ○ Natural causes

The fixer his Tsar could not forgive

1888: he warned the Tsar's aides, to their faces, that using two freight locomotives to speed the imperial train was reckless. Days later the Borki derailment proved him right. Alexander III remembered — and made him Director of State Railways.

Architect of the empire's modernization: the Trans-Siberian railway, the gold standard. In 1905 he made peace with Japan and wrung the October Manifesto from a cornered Tsar, who never forgave him for it. He died sidelined, writing his memoirs.

Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) Imperial establishment and White movement 1850–1910 ○ Heart failure

The Roman law scholar and Kadet leader who chaired Russia's first constitutional parliament

On 27 April 1906, opening the First Duma: "I bow to the State Duma. A great deed is being accomplished; the will of the people receives its expression in a legislative body founded on immutable laws."

Sergei Muromtsev, a Roman law scholar and founding leader of the Kadet Party, was the face of Russian constitutionalism. As a Moscow University professor, he pioneered the sociological study of law and chaired the Moscow Juridical Society. In 1906 he was elected chairman of the First State Duma (426 of 436 votes), leading Russia's first constitutional representative body; after its dissolution he was jailed for signing the Vyborg Appeal. His 1910 funeral became the largest opposition demonstration since 1905, enshrining him as a legend of Russia's constitutional history.

Russian Empire Imperial establishment and White movement 1850–1925 ✕ Executed

The last premier of the empire, who begged to be excused

Led to execution in 1925, partly paralysed, his last words were: 'I am tired of life. Thank God!'

The last prime minister of the Russian Empire. Appointed in January 1917, he begged the Tsar to rescind the post, citing his incompetence. As a loyal subject he accepted, but when the February Revolution broke he proved incapable of decisive action. He survived the revolution as a cobbler and garden guard, until the OGPU executed him, partly paralysed, in the 1925 'lyceist' case.

Russian Empire Imperial establishment and White movement 1853–1920 ✕ Executed

Cavalry general who led the 11th Army in the Brusilov Offensive and joined the White movement

In his 2 March 1917 telegram to Nicholas II, he denounced the State Duma as a 'criminal band' and ended: 'I, an unshakeably loyal subject of Your Majesty, sobbing, am compelled to say that perhaps the most painless way out is to meet the conditions already stated.'

Vladimir Viktorovich Sakharov was an Imperial Russian general of the cavalry whose fifty-year career spanned the Russo-Turkish War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Russo-Japanese War, and the First World War. Appointed commander of the 11th Army in 1915, he led the secondary axis of the Brusilov Offensive, capturing Brody and taking tens of thousands of prisoners. Sent to Romania in late 1916 as commander of the Danube Army, he became de facto commander of the Romanian Front as assistant to King Ferdinand I. His telegram to Nicholas II during the February Revolution, denouncing the Duma while tearfully advising abdication, captured the fractured loyalties of the imperial officer corps. Removed after the revolution, he joined the White movement in Crimea and was shot by Green partisans in 1920.

Russian Empire Imperial establishment and White movement 1853–1926 ○ Heart failure

Designer of the 1916 Brusilov Offensive and the last great tsarist commander, who later joined the Red Army

'The 12th Cavalry Division must die. Not all at once, but by evening' — Brusilov's order to General Kaledin, 29 August 1914

Designer and commander of the 1916 Brusilov Offensive, widely regarded as the Russian army's greatest victory of the First World War. He devised breakthrough tactics based on simultaneous strikes along the entire front that shattered the Austro-Hungarian army and were later studied as a textbook case in Soviet military science. During the 1917 revolution he served briefly as supreme commander-in-chief but could not halt the army's disintegration; after the civil war he joined the Bolsheviks' Red Army and served as inspector of cavalry. His decision, a tsarist general cooperating with the Soviet regime, was condemned as betrayal by the White emigration and treated as pragmatic patriotism by the Soviet side.

Russian Empire Imperial establishment and White movement 1854–1918 ✕ Murdered

The Northern Front commander who forced the Tsar's abdication at Pskov

Nicholas II is reported to have said in exile: 'God gives me the strength to forgive all my enemies and tormentors, but General-Adjutant Ruzsky I cannot forgive.'

An infantry general of Imperial Russia who earned the title 'Conqueror of Galicia,' he commanded the Third Army, the Northwestern Front, and the Northern Front during the First World War. As commander of the Northern Front headquartered at Pskov during the February Revolution, he received Nicholas II's train and pressed the Tsar to introduce a responsible ministry and then to abdicate, relaying the unanimous telegrams of Chief of Staff Alekseyev and the front commanders. After an hour and a half of argument, the moment the Tsar's will broke was the moment the military declared it would no longer defend the dynasty. Late in the Civil War he refused a Red Army command, calling it 'a war of Russians against Russians,' and stayed at the Caucasian mineral waters; in 1918 he was taken as a hostage and killed by the Cheka.

Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) Imperial establishment and White movement 1854–1933 ○ Died

Kadet orator who branded the gallows 'Stolypin's necktie'

What Mr. Purishkevich calls the Muravyov collar, his descendants will perhaps call the Stolypin necktie…

A Russian liberal politician who began as a progressive zemstvo activist in Tver province, helped found the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party, and served in all four State Dumas. One of the Duma's finest orators, on 17 November 1907 he denounced Stolypin's field courts-martial from the rostrum as 'Stolypin's necktie,' a phrase that became emblematic of the repression; an enraged Stolypin challenged him to a duel, and Rodichev had to apologize. After the February Revolution he served as the Provisional Government's Commissar for Finnish Affairs, opposed the October Revolution by joining the White camp, and died in exile in Lausanne.

Russian Empire Imperial establishment and White movement 1855–1906 ○ Heart failure

The face of 1905: repression orders in one hand, reform promises in the other

When Mosolov read the draft ordering troops to "spare no bullets," he asked, "Are you out of your mind?" Trepov replied, "No. Tomorrow they'll likely have to shoot. So far I haven't shed a drop of blood. The only way to prevent that is this phrase."

Son of a notorious St. Petersburg mayor, he rose through the Moscow police to become the most powerful man in the empire during the 1905 Revolution: Governor-General of St. Petersburg with dictatorial powers, Assistant Minister of the Interior, and head of the police and gendarmes, all at once. His October 1905 order to "spare no bullets and use no blanks" became the revolution's defining image of autocratic brutality, even as he simultaneously helped push through the October Manifesto and its promise of civil liberties. Shunted to palace commandant after the Manifesto, he remained the tsar's most trusted advisor until his sudden death from heart failure in 1906.

Russian Empire Imperial establishment and White movement 1856–1929 ○ Illness

The Grand Duke who drew a revolver on the Tsar and forced constitutional reform

In October 1905, when Nicholas II leaned toward military dictatorship, Grand Duke Nicholas drew his revolver and declared: 'If Your Majesty does not accept Witte's programme, I will shoot myself before your eyes.'

Grandson of Nicholas I and uncle of Nicholas II, he was the most respected Romanov of the dynasty's final decades. During the 1905 Revolution, when the Tsar inclined toward military dictatorship, the Grand Duke drew his revolver and threatened to shoot himself on the spot unless Nicholas II accepted Witte's reform programme, an act that forced the issuance of the October Manifesto and Russia's turn toward constitutional monarchy. Appointed supreme commander at the outbreak of World War I, he led the Eastern Front through the disaster at Tannenberg and the shell shortages of 1915 before the Tsar relieved him and reassigned him as viceroy and commander in the Caucasus. After the Revolution he lived in seclusion in Crimea until escaping aboard a British battleship in 1919; in exile he was briefly proclaimed emperor by White forces in the Russian Far East.