People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1872–1963 ○ Natural death

Microbiologist who headed the puppet government chosen by the Soviet embassy in 1940 and requested Latvia’s incorporation into the USSR

Born the son of a tenant on a manor in Mazsalaca, Livonia, he studied at the Tartu Veterinary Institute, took part in the revolution of 1905 and emigrated to Switzerland, working at a tuberculosis institute in Davos. He served as a military veterinarian in the Serbian army in the First World War and as a captain in the veterinary units of the Latvian War of Independence. In 1919 he founded a Microbiology Institute at the University of Latvia, and in 1923 he defended the first doctoral thesis in Latvia; politically he supported social democracy. In June 1940 the Soviet embassy offered him the leadership of the new puppet government; as prime minister, and from 21 July acting president, he requested Latvia’s incorporation into the Soviet Union. He chaired the Latvian SSR Supreme Soviet’s presidium in 1940–1952, joined the Communist Party in 1941 and died in Riga in 1963.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1887–1938 ✕ Executed

Latvian Bolshevik who denounced NKVD case fabrication in court

In the trial record cited by Khrushchev in 1956, Rudzutak asked to report NKVD fabrication and coerced confessions to the Central Committee.

Latvian Bolshevik and trade-union leader. Born to peasant farmhands, he joined the party in 1905 and was sentenced to hard labour in 1909, released in 1917. He served as People's Commissar of Railways, a full Politburo member and head of the Central Control Commission; arrested in May 1937, he denied guilt in court and denounced NKVD case fabrication. Shot on 29 July 1938, he was rehabilitated when the 1955 review established the case was falsified.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1890–1940 ✕ Executed

Architect of terror in Siberia, recanted his confession under torture

"Choose: the pen or the rubber truncheon." He took the pen, falsely confessed, then wrote to Stalin recanting it all.

Born to a Latvian farmhand, Eikhe joined the Social Democracy at fifteen in 1905. After years as a miner and stoker in Britain, he returned to Russia and, with Stalin's backing, ruled Siberia as its de facto master, driving brutal collectivisation and dekulakisation. A candidate Politburo member from 1935, he sat on an NKVD troika during the Great Terror, signing thousands of summary death sentences. Arrested in 1938, he was beaten with rubber truncheons until an eye was destroyed, yet refused to confess to espionage. In a famous letter to Stalin he repudiated his forced confession. Shot in 1940, Khrushchev cited him in the 1956 Secret Speech and he was posthumously rehabilitated.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1892–1937 ○ Died in prison

A party organiser who drove collectivisation forward

In 1930, after being told that 82.4 percent of peasant households had entered collective farms, he replied that it was “too little.”

A Latvian peasant’s son who became a Bolshevik, Bauman rose through revolutionary and party-organisational work into the central leadership. He was a key operator in forcing comprehensive collectivisation in the countryside and drove its rapid implementation while leading the Moscow party organisation. Made a scapegoat for the 1930 excesses, he later continued enforcing party policy in Central Asia and in scientific administration. Arrested in 1937, he died during interrogation and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1955.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1893–1938 ✕ Executed

A planner purged by the system he served

During government meetings, Mezhlauk drew caricatures of his colleagues. 532 sketches survived in Voroshilov's secret files; after Mezhlauk was arrested, Beria forwarded one with a note: 'V. Mezhlauk's work.'

A theorist and chief operator of Soviet planned economy, he led the drafting of the first three Five-Year Plans. As Gosplan chairman he oversaw industrialization targets and resource allocation, and in 1929 negotiated the Ford contract that built the Gorky Auto Plant. He edited the newspaper For Industrialization and was known for his satirical caricatures of party officials drawn during meetings. Of Latvian origin, he was arrested during the Great Terror on charges of leading a 'Latvian counterrevolutionary organization' and shot in 1938.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1894–1938 ✕ Executed

The Hammer of Leningrad

In his final plea: "Please take into account that I slandered a great many honest people during the investigation... About myself I have nothing to say, because I know my fate well."

A Latvian Bolshevik who rose through Siberian and Belarusian security posts to become the NKVD chief of Leningrad and an enforcer of the Great Terror. He directed the Kirov murder investigation, deported over 11,000 'former people', fabricated the 'Belarusian National Centre' case, and organised large-scale national operations targeting Latvians. Promoted to Yezhov's deputy NKVD commissar and Moscow NKVD chief in early 1938, he was arrested within months by the same apparatus, shot, and posthumously denied rehabilitation.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1895–1937 ✕ Executed

Latvian-born Civil War hero turned defendant in the Tukhachevsky trial

On the night of 7 August 1920, Eideman's Right-Bank Group crossed the Dnieper to seize the Kakhovka bridgehead, a position sixty kilometres from Perekop that turned the flank and rear of Wrangel's army.

A Latvian-born Soviet commander and writer whose defence of the Kakhovka bridgehead as 13th Army commander helped break Wrangel's offensive from Crimea. He later trained Red Army cadres at the Frunze Military Academy and built the Osoaviakhim civilian defence apparatus, but in 1937 he was shot as a defendant in the Tukhachevsky trial and rehabilitated in 1957.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1897–1937 ✕ Executed

The statistician who counted a population that displeased Stalin

When the 1937 census results reached the Kremlin, Kraval's numbers shattered the myth of population growth Stalin had been promoting. Four months later he was under arrest.

A Latvian Soviet economist and statistician, Doctor of Economic Sciences, who as deputy chairman of Gosplan and head of TsUNKhU directed the 1937 All-Union Population Census. The low figures, which reflected population losses from collectivization and famine, enraged the political leadership and sealed his downfall. The statistical methodology he established formed the foundational data infrastructure of Soviet planned economy.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1897–1938 ✕ Executed

Built the world's largest bomber force, then died the death he had sentenced others to

“He would personally inspect flying officers… it is chiefly owing to him that the Air Force is the powerful weapon it is today.” — defector Alexander Barmine

Latvian Bolshevik who built the Red Army Air Forces into the world's largest bomber fleet. As VVS commander from 1931, Alksnis personally earned his pilot's wings, flew almost daily, and oversaw the sharashka that produced the Polikarpov I-5 fighter. He sat on the Special Judicial Presence that condemned Tukhachevsky and seven other generals to death in June 1937, insisting on the death penalty for every defendant. Arrested in the Latvian Operation that November, tortured into confessing to espionage, and shot at Kommunarka in July 1938.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1904–1966 ○ Natural causes

From Ulmanis's favorite novelist to the architect of Latvia's Sovietization

On 21 July 1940, the motion to join the USSR was moved in the Latvian Saeima by none other than the country's most beloved novelist, Vilis Lācis.

Born the son of a port worker, Lācis became Latvia's most widely read novelist with Fisherman's Son (1933). Enjoying the patronage of Kārlis Ulmanis's nationalist regime while maintaining underground Communist ties, he became Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (later Council of Ministers) of the Latvian SSR in 1940, serving 19 years and overseeing agricultural collectivization and the mass deportations of 1949. As a writer, he reached the pinnacle of Soviet letters with the Stalin Prize-winning novels Storm and To the New Shore. He also served as Chairman of the Soviet of Nationalities (1954–1958). His works, translated into over 50 languages, remain the most widely read body of Latvian literature.