People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1895–1975 ↓ Removed 1958

The uniformed premier pushed aside by Khrushchev

On the Western Front in 1941, German bombers flying in formation toward Moscow made Bulganin frantic: 'Why aren't we shooting them down?' Zhukov looked up from his map: 'Calm yourself, Nikolai Alexandrovich. If we shoot here they will bomb our own positions; let the rear units deal with them.'

A Chekist-turned-administrator, Bulganin rose through Moscow city administration, the MELZ electric-lamp plant and the RSFSR premiership to Stalin's trust. From 1938 he was a deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and twice headed the Gosbank board, and during the war he served on the military councils of the Western, 2nd Baltic and 1st Belorussian fronts. Made a Marshal in November 1947 so that the parade reviewer's rank would not fall below the parade commander's, he was valued not as a strategist but as a reliable executor. After Stalin's death he took Defence, then in 1955 the premiership, forming the 'B&K' duo with Khrushchev and touring Yugoslavia, India and Britain. In the 1957 Anti-Party Group crisis he vacillated between the camps; in 1958 he lost both the premiership and the marshal's rank. He died in Moscow in 1975.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1905–1997 ↓ Left office 1985

The conservative premier of late Brezhnevism

Shortly before his death he wrote to Yeltsin: 'Bury me at public expense — I have no savings.' The premier who ran the Soviet economy for five years lived his entire life in a three-room apartment, spending his salary on buses he donated to schools.

A practical economic manager from Dnipropetrovsk who succeeded Kosygin as Chairman of the Council of Ministers at age 75. An honest engineer far removed from political ambition, he served as premier under three general secretaries: Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko. While he embodied the bureaucratic continuity of late stagnation, in 1984 he chaired a reform commission that explored enterprise autonomy and the concept of a 'socialist market,' laying groundwork for ideas later realised under perestroika.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1909–2004 ○ Natural causes

The non-Politburo power who was the institutional memory of the Soviet government for 25 years

In 1979 Brezhnev stalled his Hero of Socialist Labour — Smirtyukov was, he said, a key figure in the government's feud with the CC. Kosygin took it to the Politburo himself; Tikhonov and Shcherbitsky backed it, and the award passed.

He joined the Council of People's Commissars apparatus at 21 in 1930 and served in the Kremlin for 60 years until 1990, the living embodiment of the Soviet government machinery. As Mikoyan's assistant, he handled wartime Red Army supply for the State Defence Committee; from 1964 he served for 25 years as Administrator of Affairs of the Council of Ministers under Kosygin, Tikhonov, and Ryzhkov. Alone among non-Politburo officials, he received the most secret Politburo decisions, and Central Committee department heads were instructed to coordinate major plans with him. His institutional memory was the axis that kept the state running through every change of leadership.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1913–2008 ○ Natural causes

Brezhnev-era industrial technocrat who ran the Russian republic for 12 years

Brezhnev, appointing Solomentsev as RSFSR premier: 'We have no separate Communist Party of Russia — I lead the Russian party organizations as General Secretary, and I ask you to be my deputy for the Russian Federation.'

A mechanical engineer from the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute who rose from defense-plant floors to chair the RSFSR Council of Ministers for an unprecedented 12 years (1971–1983), managing the economy of the largest Soviet republic as Brezhnev's unofficial 'deputy for the Russian Federation.' Elevated to the Politburo and chairmanship of the Party Control Committee in 1983, he led the 1987–1988 commission to rehabilitate victims of Stalin-era repression but was abruptly purged by Gorbachev at the September 1988 CC plenum.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1914–1989 ○ Natural causes

Belarusian partisan leader who rose to Brezhnev's Politburo and served as USSR First Deputy Premier for thirteen years

If I were asked today to lead such an operation, I would not accept. I ask the Czechs to forgive us.

A Belarusian partisan leader who became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Belarus in 1956, then served as a full Politburo member and First Deputy Premier of the USSR for thirteen years from 1965, overseeing economic policy and acting as Brezhnev's political supervisor during the 1968 Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1915–2002 ○ Natural causes

The Donetsk-born Soviet economic manager who led Ukraine's government for 15 years through the Brezhnev era

"The explosion was reported to central authorities within hours, but the full implications were not realized until two days later." — At a Kyiv press conference on 8 May 1986, explaining the information lag in the early Chernobyl response.

Rising from an engineer in the Donetsk industrial belt through the party apparatus, Lyashko chaired the Council of Ministers of Soviet Ukraine from 1972 to 1987, the longest tenure in that post's history, spanning the entire Brezhnev era of stability and the onset of perestroika. In 1986 he headed the republican government commission dealing with the Chernobyl disaster, telling a press conference that central authorities had been informed within hours although the full scale emerged only two days later. Alongside First Secretary Shcherbitsky, he embodied the institutional stability of a party-government division of labour that faithfully executed central policy. After retirement he published a four-volume memoir, The Burden of Memory.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1917–1983 ○ Cancer

Belarus's premier for nearly 20 years who rose to First Secretary and candidate Politburo member, then died of cancer two years later

He seized on the idea of the Minsk Metro and lobbied Moscow relentlessly until he got his way. He laid the first stone himself.

Born into an Old Believer peasant family in Gomel and trained as a teacher of Belarusian language and literature, Kiselyov served nearly twenty years as Chairman of the Byelorussian SSR Council of Ministers (1959–1978), steering the republic's postwar reconstruction and industrialisation as a pragmatic economic manager. He tenaciously lobbied Moscow to secure the Minsk Metro and the Zhlobin steel plant, rose to Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers in 1978, then returned to Minsk in 1980 as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Belarus and candidate member of the CPSU Politburo, succeeding Pyotr Masherov. He prioritised stable management over reform but died of cancer barely two years into the role.