People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1904–2008 ○ Heart attack

The oldest practicing surgeon in history and the key propagandist of Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign

A Leningrad professor, hearing of the young Uglov's surgical reports, called them 'the fabrications of Baron Munchausen', then examined the operations and withdrew the remark.

Born to a peasant family in Siberia, Uglov graduated from Saratov Medical Institute and served as a surgeon through the Winter War and the 900-day Siege of Leningrad. He pioneered operations on the esophagus, mediastinum, lungs, and heart, and earned a Guinness World Record as the oldest practicing surgeon, operating until age 102. During the 1985 anti-alcohol campaign, he was its key propagandist: his articles claiming that no dose of alcohol is acceptable and that drunkenness was alien to the Russian people were distributed nationwide, and he chaired the Union for the Struggle for National Sobriety. In his later years, he courted controversy by blaming alcoholism on a Jewish conspiracy and classifying rock music as a drug, aligning himself with the Russian nationalist right.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1925–2013 ○ Natural causes

Last President of the USSR Academy of Sciences and pioneer of computational mathematics in Siberia

“Science is a single living organism, not a conglomerate of autonomous mechanisms. Unfortunately, neither the politicians nor the scientific community have the concept of saving domestic science.” — 17 December 1991

An applied mathematician who built the centre of computational mathematics in Siberia and rose to the pinnacle of Soviet science administration. He pioneered nuclear-reactor calculations, atmospheric and ocean modelling, and mathematical immunology, laying the foundations with splitting methods and adjoint-equation theory. In 1964 he founded the Computing Centre in Novosibirsk, the USSR's first large-scale numerical-modelling centre. As GKNT Chairman and Deputy Premier from 1980, then Academy President from 1986, he steered Soviet science through perestroika. He became the last President of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1929–2021 ○ Natural causes

The father of Soviet cardiology who ran Kremlin medicine for 20 years

“Nuclear war, unless it is prevented, would lead to the extinction of life on Earth and possibly in the Universe. Can we take such a risk?” — Nobel lecture, Oslo, 1985

Yevgeny Chazov was a Soviet cardiologist who pioneered thrombolytic therapy for myocardial infarction and oversaw Kremlin medicine for twenty years, treating successive leaders from Brezhnev to Chernenko. In 1980 he co-founded International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War with American cardiologist Bernard Lown, receiving the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, a rare Cold War collaboration across the blocs.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1930–2016 ○ Natural causes

The last chairman of Soviet state science policy and a uranium geologist

Receiving the Global Energy Prize in 2009 he observed: "The Earth has always alternated between cold and warm periods, and humans have lived through only a very short moment on the geological time scale."

Soviet geologist and science administrator. His work on uranium deposits across Central Asia and Russia established the resource base for the Soviet nuclear fuel cycle, and in the final perestroika years he served simultaneously as chairman of the State Committee for Science and Technology (GKNT) and Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers: the last person to direct Soviet science and technology policy. As Vice President of the Soviet and then Russian Academy of Sciences from 1988 to 2013, he led the Earth sciences section and became a leading authority on radioactive waste disposal and Arctic research. He authored over 700 scientific papers and 28 monographs.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1930–2019 ○ Natural causes

Communist physicist whose semiconductor heterostructures opened the IT era

Demonstrating Russia's social stratification in the 2000s, he held up a wine glass and said: 'The contents of this glass belong — alas! — to just ten percent of the population. And the stem that holds the glass is the rest of the population.'

Zhores Alferov was a Soviet applied physicist who pioneered semiconductor heterostructure physics and built the first continuous-wave room-temperature semiconductor laser in 1968, laying the physical foundation for fiber-optic communication, CDs, and barcode readers. For this work he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000. As director of the Ioffe Institute from 1987, chairman of the St. Petersburg Scientific Center from 1989, and vice-president of the USSR and Russian Academy of Sciences, he preserved Russia's basic science through the collapse of the Soviet Union. He served in the State Duma from 1995 on the Communist Party list, defending science funding and fiercely opposing the 2013 Academy reforms. Named after Jean Jaurès, he remained a communist all his life while leading one side of the Cold War's optoelectronics race.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1931–1995 ○ Radiation-related illness

The deputy chief engineer who supervised the Chernobyl safety test and later argued the reactor's design was the real cause

The reactor protection system designed to stop the fission in an emergency situation played the role of atomic bomb detonator.

Born into a poor family in Siberia, he ran away from home at 14, trained at the Norilsk technical school, and graduated with honors from the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute. He spent fourteen years installing naval nuclear reactors at a shipyard in the Soviet Far East before moving to Chernobyl in 1973, where he became deputy chief engineer in charge of Units 3 and 4. On 26 April 1986 he supervised the safety test at Unit 4 that ended in disaster; he insisted design flaws caused the accident but was convicted in 1987 and sentenced to ten years, released early in 1990 on health grounds. From prison he wrote to expose the RBMK's structural defects and authored Chernobyl: How It Was; the 1992 IAEA advisory report partly vindicated his argument.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1935–2021 ○ 10-year sentence 1988, served 5, freed 1991

The first director of Chernobyl who built the plant and was held responsible for its catastrophe

In the station courtyard I saw pieces of graphite under my feet, but I still could not imagine that the reactor had been destroyed.

Born in Tashkent as the eldest son of Russian workers, he studied energy engineering and built his career at thermal power plants. In 1970 he was appointed construction manager and first director of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which he led for sixteen years; plagued by construction delays and defective materials, he submitted his resignation, but a Party supervisor tore it up. Dismissed immediately after the 1986 disaster, he was sentenced to ten years in 1988; after his release he continued working on Chernobyl liquidation until his death in Kyiv in 2021.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1935–2024 ○ Natural causes

Soviet physicist who linked fusion science, Chernobyl, and nuclear disarmament

Less than a month after absorbing radiation at Chernobyl, Velikhov chaired an international meeting on nuclear test-ban verification — turning disaster into a disarmament opening.

Soviet physicist who pioneered plasma physics for controlled fusion and MHD power. His 1959 thesis discovered magnetorotational instability, now foundational to astrophysics; in 1962 he identified electrothermal instability. He led the Soviet controlled-fusion program from 1973 and was Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1978–1991), bridging the Kurchatov Institute and the Academy. During Chernobyl (1986) he served as Gorbachev's science advisor for reactor containment, then led science diplomacy for nuclear disarmament. After the Soviet collapse he sustained the Kurchatov Institute and became founding chairman of ITER, building the framework for joint US-Soviet-European-Japanese fusion research.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1936–1988 ✕ Suicide

The Kurchatov chemist who led science at Chernobyl, then left the full truth on tapes before hanging himself

"I did not lie in Vienna… but I did not tell the full truth."

Valery Legasov was a Soviet inorganic chemist and first deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, who arrived at the Chernobyl disaster site on the evening of 26 April 1986 as the scientific leader of the government commission. He proposed dropping boron and sand into the burning reactor, spent a total of 60 days on site, and later presented a five-hour report to the IAEA in Vienna that drew international attention but stopped short of revealing the RBMK reactor's full design flaws. On 27 April 1988, the day after the disaster's second anniversary, he hanged himself in his Moscow apartment; the audio tapes he recorded beforehand exposed the cover-ups and systemic failures of the Soviet nuclear establishment and became a primary source for historians.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1937–

The chief engineer who refused to believe the reactor was destroyed and kept pumping water into its ruins

He smashed his glasses and cut his wrists with the shards, forcing the court to postpone his trial.

Nikolai Fomin was a Soviet nuclear engineer who joined the Chernobyl plant in 1972 and rose to chief engineer in 1981. Arriving at the plant shortly after the April 26, 1986 explosion, he refused to accept reports that the reactor was destroyed and ordered water to be pumped into the wreckage of Unit 4 for hours, while sending a subordinate on a reconnaissance mission that delivered a fatal radiation dose. Arrested after the disaster, he was sentenced to 10 years but was released early after a pre-trial suicide attempt and subsequent confinement in a psychiatric hospital; he later worked at the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant before retiring.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1953–1986 ○ Radiation exposure

Soviet nuclear engineer and Unit 4 shift supervisor who directed the response and died of radiation exposure

"I did everything correctly. I don't understand why it happened."

A Soviet nuclear engineer born in Novosibirsk, he graduated from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute in 1976, joined the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in September 1979 and became shift supervisor of Reactor Unit 4 on 10 July 1984. During the safety test on the night of 26 April 1986 he gave the order to shut down the reactor and the AZ-5 button was pressed at 01:23:39, though witness testimony differs on who physically pressed it. He remained at Unit 4 until about 8 a.m., calling the fire brigade and ambulance and having feedwater valves opened by hand, and absorbed a lethal dose of over 15 Gy. He died of acute radiation syndrome in Moscow Hospital No. 6 on 11 May 1986, aged 33, with some English-language sources recording 10 May; he was posthumously awarded the 3rd-degree Order For Courage in 2008.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1960–1986 ✕ Radiation exposure

The 25-year-old senior reactor control engineer who pressed the AZ-5 button at Chernobyl's Unit 4

While studying control-rod documentation, Toptunov told his friend Sasha Korol that 'in certain circumstances, the rods could accelerate rather than slow the reaction': three months later, that insight became reality under his own finger on the AZ-5 button.

Leonid Toptunov was the Senior Reactor Control Engineer (SIUR) at Chernobyl's Unit 4, a 25-year-old technician at the control panel during the night of the 26 April 1986 disaster. Only three months into independent duty and facing his first shutdown, he pressed the AZ-5 emergency shutdown button under pressure from deputy chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov, but a design flaw in the RBMK control rods caused a reactivity surge that triggered the explosion; he returned to the control room afterward to manually open water supply valves, absorbing a lethal 1,300 rem before dying in a Moscow hospital on 14 May.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1962–1986 ✕ Acute radiation syndrome

The first firefighter at Chernobyl, who climbed onto the roof of Unit 3 without being told of the radioactive danger

'Everything turned out okay. We will live until we're a hundred'... from a letter to his wife, written from his Moscow hospital bed as radiation destroyed his body.

Volodymyr Pravyk was a Soviet firefighter and lieutenant in the MVD who commanded the Third Watch of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant's Fire Brigade No. 2 (ВПЧ-2). When Reactor 4 exploded on 26 April 1986, his unit was first to respond: within two minutes Pravyk was on the scene, and at 01:56 he led a team onto the roof of Unit 3 to prevent the fire from spreading to the still-operational reactor, working in fields later estimated at over 6,000 roentgens per hour. He received the highest confirmed radiation dose of any Chernobyl victim, 1,520 REM (nearly triple a lethal dose), and died of acute radiation syndrome in Moscow on 11 May 1986, never having been told of the radioactive danger.