People of the Revolution and the USSR

Activity(set)
Any Political and party leadership 174 Government and administration 102 Legislature and state representation 12 Monarchs and royalty 3 Military command 48 Security, intelligence and policing 26 Diplomacy and international organization 37 Economy, finance and planning 17 Industry and production 3 Agriculture and land policy 3 Ideology and propaganda 12 Social movements and organizing 52 Scholarship and theory 11 Education 2 Science and technology 1 Literature and arts 18 Religion 6 Law and justice 8
Affiliation

Most people

Any Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) 1

All 1 affiliations

East Germany

Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) 1
Position
Any Marxism and communism 1
Citizenship
Any Cuba 1 Germany 1
Background
Any Cuba 1 Germany 1
Era(set)
Any

People of the Soviet Union

The revolutionary generation1917–1940 4 People of the Stalin era1929–1953 3 People of the thaw and the stagnation1953–1985 2

People of the wider world

The revolutionary wave and the world war1917–1945 6 The Cold War and decolonization1945–현재 2
Education The Cold War and decolonization 1945–현재 Clear all

Wolfgang Leonhard

Wolfgang Leonhard
Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) Communism Germany Germany 1921–2014 ○ Natural death

Youngest member of the Ulbricht Group who fled to Yugoslavia in 1949 and became a leading Western scholar of Soviet communism

Born Vladimir Leonhard in Vienna, he went into Soviet exile with his Communist mother in 1935; she was arrested in 1936 and spent twelve years in the Vorkuta camps. After the Comintern school he became an announcer for Radio Free Germany, and on 30 April 1945 he returned to Berlin as a member of the Ulbricht Group. He worked in the agitation and propaganda department of the KPD and then SED Central Committee and from 1947 lectured at the party college. Convinced that Germany would replicate the Soviet system, he fled via Czechoslovakia to Yugoslavia in March 1949 and moved to West Germany in 1950. His 1955 memoir Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder became an international bestseller, and from 1966 to 1987 he taught Soviet history at Yale.

Career timeline
  • 1935Went into Soviet exile with his mother
  • 1943Announcer at Radio Free Germany
  • 1945Returned to Berlin with the Ulbricht Group
  • 1947Lecturer at the SED party college
  • 1949Fled to Yugoslavia
  • 1955Published his memoir
  • 1966–1987Professor at Yale

Conrado Benítez García

Conrado Benítez García
Cuba Cuba ✕ Killed in the Escambray, 1961

Cuban volunteer teacher, symbol and first martyr of the 1961 literacy campaign

On 5 January 1961 a counterrevolutionary band under Osvaldo Ramírez killed him at Tinajitas, Trinidad; Cuban sources place this six days into the literacy campaign. He was unarmed. At least the peasant Heliodoro Rodríguez Linares was killed with him.

Born into a poor family in Matanzas, Cuba. Most sources give 19 February 1942; Escambray records 18 February. He worked as a shoeblack and baker to help support his family and, after finishing sixth grade in 1954, continued studying at night. Answering the 1960 call for volunteer teachers, he trained from 12 May to August at the pedagogical school in Minas de Frío in the Sierra Maestra and, after graduating that August, was posted with Magalys Olmos López to the San Ambrosio mountains of Sancti Spíritus, where he built a school in an old sawmill at La Sierrita and taught 44 children by day and adults at night. He was killed in the Escambray on 5 January 1961 by a counterrevolutionary band under Osvaldo Ramírez. Cuban sources record him as the campaign's first victim; the Conrado Benítez brigade took his name, dated 17 January 1961 by Cuban sources and April 1961 by English-language ones.

Career timeline
  • 1942Born in Matanzas
  • 1960Volunteer teacher training at Minas de Frío (May–August)
  • 1960Posted to the San Ambrosio area after graduating in August and began literacy teaching
  • 1961Killed in the Escambray on 5 January