People of the Revolution and the USSR

1911–1998 ○ Natural causes

The writer whose banned novel became the emblem of glasnost

Stalin speaks in Children of the Arbat: "Death solves all problems — no man, no problem." In one sentence, the cold logic of an era.

A Soviet Jewish writer who grew up on Moscow's Arbat Street. Arrested by the NKVD in 1933 and exiled to Siberia for three years, he later commanded a tank unit through to Berlin. His novel Children of the Arbat, written in the 1960s, was suppressed for over twenty years until glasnost finally brought it to light in 1987, making it a literary landmark of de-Stalinization. Heavy Sand (1979), depicting a Jewish family's struggle under Nazi occupation, was hailed as the first Russian-language Holocaust novel.

1933–2012 ○ Natural causes

First professional Koryak writer and USSR People's Deputy

After his 1989 election as a USSR People's Deputy, he refused a Moscow apartment and returned to his native Palana. 'Each of my books is a Confession for me,' he said.

The first professional Koryak writer, widely known by his pen name Koyanto (Коянто, 'Reindeer Man'), he was a foundational figure of Koryak literature. After graduating from the Northern Faculty of the Herzen Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad and the Higher Literary Courses at the Gorky Literary Institute, he devoted his life to rendering the lives, myths, and identity of the Koryak and other northern indigenous peoples in poetry and prose, beginning with his first collection Songs of Alney (1969). His prose work The Upper People Can Wait (1976) stirred controversy with its sharp critique of Soviet bureaucratic policies toward the North. In 1989 he was elected a USSR People's Deputy from the Koryak Autonomous Okrug, championing indigenous rights, and after the Soviet dissolution he continued to serve his homeland as chair of the human rights commission and adviser to the governor.

1936–

The artist who gave the Singing Revolution its name

On 11 September 1988, from the stage of Eestimaa Laul before 300,000 people, he declared: "One day, no matter what, we will win!" Those words became the slogan of Estonia's freedom struggle.

An Estonian artist and caricaturist, Valk coined the term "Singing Revolution" in an article published in Sirp ja Vasar on 17 June 1988, a week after the spontaneous night-singing demonstrations at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds. At the Eestimaa Laul gathering that September, he declared before 300,000 people, "One day, no matter what, we will win!" (Ükskord me võidame niikuinii!), a phrase that became the independence movement's defining slogan. A founding member of the Estonian Heritage Society and the Popular Front (Rahvarinne), he served in the Estonian Supreme Council from 1990 to 1992 and voted on 20 August 1991 for the restoration of independence.

1949–1991 ✕ Murdered

A documentary filmmaker who recorded Latvia's independence struggle from the ground

On the evening of 20 January 1991 he carried his camera to the barricades to show the world OMON's assault on the Interior Ministry, and was shot dead while filming at Bastejkalns.

Andris Slapiņš was a Latvian documentary filmmaker and cinematographer who worked at Riga Film Studio. His films explored Livonian culture as well as Latvian history and social life, showing how documentary could connect suppressed memory with present struggle. He was killed in Riga on 20 January 1991 while filming the attack on the Interior Ministry, and the footage he helped create became part of the international memory of Latvia's independence movement.

1961–1996 ○ Heart attack

The composer whose five 'Fatherland' songs became the emotional engine of the Singing Revolution

He silenced the band and, barehanded before 300,000 people, conducted the crowd as they sang 'I am Estonian and will remain Estonian.'

An Estonian composer and musician whose 'Five Patriotic Songs' cycle channeled the independence aspirations of the Singing Revolution in the late 1980s, uniting the masses in emotion. His 1987 protest ballad 'No Land Is Alone', written in solidarity with the anti-phosphorite mining movement, became the prelude to the Revolution; the five songs premiered at the Tartu Pop Festival in May 1988 and reached their peak at the 'Eestimaa Laul' concert in September, where 300,000 gathered at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds. He died of a heart attack in 1996 at the age of 35, leaving nearly 200 works across diverse genres, but history remembers him above all as the composer of Estonia's independence movement.

1963–1991 ✕ Shot dead

The architect and poet shot dead rushing a BMP as the troops pulled back, the last of the coup's three martyrs

In a video recording, Ilya stands before a tank and shouts at the soldiers: 'What are you doing? People are dying!'

A Moscow Architectural Institute graduate who worked as an architect and wrote poetry posthumously collected in Yevtushenko's Strophes of the Century. During the August 1991 coup, in the early hours of 21 August, he rushed at a BMP in the Tchaikovsky Tunnel after another armored vehicle had been set ablaze and the troops were pulling back; he was shot in the head and died at the scene. Posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union, Krichevsky was one of the coup's only three fatalities, and his Jewish funeral, with a rabbi and an Orthodox priest officiating together, became a public symbol of the new Russia's multi-ethnic identity.