From fired shipyard worker to 'mother of independent Poland'
On the strike's third day, after Wałęsa declared it over, she and Alina Pienkowska blocked the gates and turned the workers back, transforming a pay dispute into a solidarity strike.
A crane operator at the Gdańsk Lenin Shipyard whose dismissal in August 1980 set off the strike that became Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Eastern Bloc. She worked sixteen years as a welder, exceeded 270% of her output quota and was honored as a Hero of Socialist Labor, but after publicly accusing a supervisor of embezzling the workers' fund she faced secret-police harassment and became an open dissident. On the strike's third day, after Wałęsa declared it over, she and Alina Pienkowska ran to turn the workers back from the gates and transformed a pay dispute into a solidarity strike. She later broke with Wałęsa, denouncing his 'cult of personality' and the union's drift from its founding ideals, and died in the 2010 Smolensk air crash.
Career timeline
1950Joined the Gdańsk Lenin Shipyard, working sixteen years as a welder before becoming a crane operator
1968Denounced a supervisor's embezzlement of the workers' fund; her whole department defended her against dismissal
1978Co-founded the Free Trade Unions of the Coast (WZZ) and edited the underground paper Robotnik Wybrzeża
1980.08.07Dismissed for illegal union activity, five months before retirement
1980.08.14Her firing ignited the Gdańsk strike; served on the MKS presidium and signed the August Agreement
1980.09Member of the presidium of the NSZZ Solidarity founding committee
1981.12Co-organized the shipyard strike after martial law, then spent nineteen months in internment and prison
1990Returned briefly to the shipyard, retired in 1991, and kept criticizing Wałęsa and post-Solidarity politics
The East German Politburo spokesman whose mistake brought down the Berlin Wall
Asked 'When does it take effect?' at the press conference, he shuffled through his papers and replied: 'As far as I know… immediately, without delay.'
The GDR's leading propagandist, he rose from editor-in-chief of Neues Deutschland to SED Politburo member and First Secretary of East Berlin. On 9 November 1989, asked at a press conference when new travel regulations would take effect, he answered 'immediately, without delay,' triggering the rush that breached the Berlin Wall that night. He later called his mistake 'the final nail in the coffin' of the regime; after reunification he was convicted for the border deaths, but his public acceptance of moral guilt earned him a reduced sentence.
Career timeline
1947Began journalism career as editor at FDGB paper Tribüne
1952Joined the SED
1967–1968Studied at the CPSU party academy in Moscow
1978–1985Editor-in-chief of Neues Deutschland, the SED central organ
1981–1989SED Central Committee member and Politburo candidate, full member from 1984
1985–1989First Secretary of the SED East Berlin district
1989.11.09Triggered the Wall's fall by announcing travel rules effective immediately
1997–2000Sentenced to 3 years for border deaths; pardoned after serving one
Reagan's NSC Soviet expert who assembled the 'Soviet 101' briefing papers and the last US ambassador to the USSR
Matlock recalled, "I've never had a better student than Ronald Reagan. He knew that he didn't know a lot of things, and he wasn't ashamed of it."
Jack Matlock was an American Soviet specialist who fell in love with Russia reading Dostoevsky and spent a 35-year Foreign Service career immersed in US-Soviet relations, beginning with translating Kennedy-Khrushchev messages during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis from the Moscow embassy. As Reagan's NSC senior director for European and Soviet affairs, he assembled the 'Soviet 101' curriculum: 24 briefing papers by CIA and State Department analysts, and role-played Gorbachev in mock summits to prepare Reagan for Geneva. Appointed ambassador to the USSR in 1987, he witnessed the country's final four years and later judged Gorbachev's failure to secure a written SDI-sharing commitment from Reagan at Geneva a 'strategic error.'
Career timeline
1929Born Greensboro, NC; Duke University (BA), Columbia University (MA)
1956–1971Foreign Service: Vienna, Moscow, West and East Africa; translated Kennedy-Khrushchev correspondence during Cuban Missile Crisis
1971–1974State Department Director of Soviet Affairs
1974–1978Deputy Chief of Mission, US Embassy Moscow
Royal Lao Army general who led the CIA-backed Hmong army
Sources differ on the endpoint in May 1975: one has 5 May, when he was ordered before Souvanna Phouma to cooperate with the Pathet Lao; another has 14 May, when he left Long Tieng by helicopter as the shelling began.
A Hmong soldier from Nonghet in Xiangkhouang Province, Laos, and the only ethnic Hmong to reach general officer rank in the Royal Lao Army. During the 1960s and 1970s he commanded the CIA-trained and -supported irregular 'Secret Army' based at Long Tieng, fighting the Pathet Lao and the People's Army of Vietnam. Evacuated to Thailand in May 1975 amid the communist takeover, he then emigrated to the United States, settling in California by way of Montana, and became a leader of the Hmong American community, helping halt the forced repatriation of Laotian and Hmong refugees from Thailand in the late 1980s and 1990s. In 1981 he was among the founders of the United Lao National Liberation Front (Neo Hom). Charged in the United States in 2007 with plotting to overthrow the Lao government, he saw all federal charges dropped in 2009.
Career timeline
1960s–1975Major general, Royal Lao Army; commanded the CIA-backed 'Secret Army' based at Long Tieng
1975Evacuated to Thailand, then emigrated to the United States
1981Among the founders of the United Lao National Liberation Front (Neo Hom)
2007–2009Charged in the US under the Neutrality Act; all federal charges dropped
Ideologue of Angolan liberation, MPLA founding member
In the 27 May 1977 Fractionism conflict, the Nitista faction's Thirteen Theses in my Defence accused Lara of being a 'social democrat' and leading the MPLA's alleged turn right. Responsibility for the ensuing mass purge is attributed to Lara and Iko Carreira under Neto's authority.
Full name Lúcio Rodrigo Leite Barreto de Lara, known by the war name Tchiweka; an Angolan revolutionary and physicist-mathematician, and a founding member and leader of the MPLA. He joined the Angolan Communist Party in 1955 and signed the MPLA's founding manifesto of December 1956, becoming its main ideologue and the figure credited with its Marxist-Leninist orientation. He was secretary of organisation and cadres from 1962 and secretary-general in 1964-65, promulgated the constitution and swore in Agostinho Neto as first president in November 1975, served as acting president of Angola from 10 to 20 September 1979 after Neto's death, and left public life in 2003 for health reasons. Historians and witnesses attribute responsibility for the mass purge that followed the 27 May 1977 Fractionism conflict to Lara and Iko Carreira under Neto's authority.
Career timeline
1949–1958Studied mathematics at the University of Lisbon, graduating in 1952, then entered the University of Coimbra in 1954 for physical chemistry, abandoning the course in 1958.
1955–1956Joined the Angolan Communist Party, active alongside the Portuguese Communist Party, and was a founding signatory of the December 1956 MPLA manifesto.
1959Fled PIDE political police pursuit from Lisbon, passing through West and East Germany, Italy, Tunisia and Morocco, and arranged the MPLA's first international office in Conakry.
1962–1965Elected secretary of organisation and cadres and Central Committee member at the first national conference in December 1962; secretary-general in 1964-65 and effective number two of the party from 1964.
1974–1975Led the first MPLA delegation into Luanda on 8 November 1974; promulgated the Constitution on 10 November 1975 and swore in Agostinho Neto as the country's first president.
1977–1985Re-elected to the MPLA Central Committee on 10 December 1977 as the second-ranking Political Bureau member after Neto and party vice-president, responsible for organisation and ideology; in 1985 José Eduardo dos Santos removed him from the Political Bureau, leaving him on the Central Committee.
1979Acting president of Angola from 10 to 20 September 1979 after Neto's death; convened the 2nd MPLA Congress on 11 September and worked for the election of José Eduardo dos Santos on 20 September.
1975–2003Was a member of the Angolan parliament from independence until 2003, resigning his legislative mandate in November 2003 for health reasons; the Ministry of Defence retired him as an army general in 2004, though he refused to use the rank.
Writer and economist, rapporteur of Benin's National Conference
In the 10 March 1991 first round he took third place with 165,174 votes (14.21%); one reference gives 162,498 votes instead.
Beninese writer, economist and politician. Born in Porto-Novo in 1929, he served as Dahomey's information minister from 1960 to 1963. In the 1991 presidential election he placed third in the first round with 14.21% as the candidate of Notre Cause commune, and in 2006 he became Benin's first Médiateur de la République.
Career timeline
1958–1960In Paris wrote L'Afrique révoltée and Afrique debout and edited the left-wing paper L'Étudiant Noir.
1960–1963Secretary of state at the presidency and information minister of Dahomey.
1964–After a Harvard International Affairs Center appointment he taught at the Geneva Graduate Institute and Georgetown University.
1991–1996National Assembly deputy and chair of the commission on foreign relations, cooperation, development, defence and security.
1996–1999Minister of Planning, Economic Restructuring and Employment Promotion.
2006–2013First Médiateur de la République of Benin.
The Czech novelist who insisted the Prague Spring was a universal attempt to reconcile socialism with freedom
From 'The Czech Fate' in Listy, December 1968: "The Prague Spring moved Czechs and Slovaks to the center of world history… the nation had beheld its own greatness."
A Czech-French novelist. He joined the Communist Party in his youth and was expelled twice; his speech demanding an end to censorship at the 1967 Writers' Congress opened the intellectual prelude to the Prague Spring. After the Warsaw Pact invasion he published 'Český úděl' ('The Czech Fate'), arguing the Prague Spring held universal significance as an attempt to reconcile socialism and democracy, sparking a fierce polemic with Václav Havel, who called it self-centered megalomania. He went into exile in France in 1975, achieved world fame with The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), and died in Paris in 2023.
Career timeline
1948Joins the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
1950Expelled from the party
1952–1970Lectures on world literature at FAMU
1956Readmitted to the party
1967Speech at IV Writers' Congress; intellectual prelude to Prague Spring
Cuban general of the African expeditionary campaigns
As commander of the Cuban expeditionary force in Ethiopia from 1977, he directed the Jijiga counter-offensive that, with Soviet military advisers, broke the Somali army. Sources date the recapture of Jijiga to 4 or 5 March 1978.
Arnaldo Ochoa Sánchez (1930–1989) was a divisional general of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and a Hero of the Republic of Cuba. Born in Cacocum, he joined Column 2 under Camilo Cienfuegos in 1958 and fought in the Sierra Maestra, helped defeat the Bay of Pigs invasion, and sat on the Communist Party of Cuba's Central Committee for more than twenty years. He fought against the FNLA in Luanda in 1975 and in 1977 took command of the Cuban expeditionary force in Ethiopia during the Ogaden War. Awarded the Hero title in 1984, he was convicted of drug trafficking and treason in 1989 and executed by firing squad on 13 July. Sources give his second given name as Tomás or Teodomiro and his age at death as 58–59 or 57.
Career timeline
1958Joined Column 2 under Camilo Cienfuegos and fought in the Sierra Maestra.
1961Fought against Brigade 2506 at the Bay of Pigs.
1975Fought against the FNLA in Luanda, Angola.
1977–1978Commanded the Cuban expeditionary force in Ethiopia during the Ogaden War.
1984Awarded the title Hero of the Republic of Cuba by Fidel Castro.
1987–1988Headed the Cuban military mission in Angola and took part in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale.
1989Tried on drug-trafficking and treason charges and executed by firing squad on 13 July.
The pragmatic diplomat who engineered the Cold War's final transition
In his November 29, 1989 Malta briefing memo, Baker wrote that Bush should project a "new pace and purpose" while leading as much as Gorbachev.
James Baker was a lawyer and Republican political operator who became central to American conservative politics through his long alliance with George H. W. Bush. After serving as treasury secretary on currency and international finance, he became secretary of state and helped manage the diplomacy of the Cold War's final years, German reunification, and the Gulf crisis. He did not treat Gorbachev's reforms as a matter of faith, weighing them against American interests and allied stability, yet he persuaded Bush to reach toward perestroika and translated that choice into the agenda and working arrangements of the 1989 Malta summit. His cautious realism slowed the inertia of confrontation while turning rapid change into negotiations that Washington could help manage.
Career timeline
1930Born in Houston, Texas
1952–1954Graduated from Princeton and served as a Marine officer
1957–1980Practiced corporate law in Houston
1981–1985White House chief of staff under President Reagan
1985–1988U.S. secretary of the treasury; advanced the Plaza Accord and Baker Plan
1989–1992U.S. secretary of state; managed the Malta summit and late-Cold War diplomacy
1992–1993Returned as White House chief of staff in the Bush administration
2010s–Advised on public policy and international affairs
Hungary's last old-guard party chief, caught between reform and retreat and overtaken by both
"If not, anarchy, chaos and — let there be no illusion — white terror will prevail" (29 Nov 1988)
Born to a working-class family in Miskolc, he joined the party at 14 and climbed steadily through the agitprop and regional apparatus to succeed János Kádár as General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party in May 1988. Championing 'model change' (gradual reform within the communist framework), he soon revealed his limits: his November 1988 speech warning of 'white terror' showed a leader who misread the tempo of transformation entirely. The following year he was sidelined by the radical reform faction of Miklós Németh; after the party reconstituted as the Hungarian Socialist Party, he led its rump hardline successor but failed to win any seat in the 1990 election.
Career timeline
1945Joined Hungarian Communist Party at age 14
1954–1956Head of Agitprop, Borsod county party committee
1974–1979Head of HSWP Central Committee Agitprop Department
1984–1987First Secretary, Budapest Party Committee
1985–1989Member, HSWP Politburo
1987.06–1988.11Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister)
1988.05–1989.10HSWP General Secretary, succeeded Kádár
1989.12–1990Acting chairman of refounded HSWP; lost 1990 election
A reform communist who sought to democratize socialism
Recalling a 1967 visit in which he laid his reform plans before his old roommate Gorbachev, Mlynář said: 'It seemed to me he understood very well what I was talking about.'
Zdeněk Mlynář was a Czechoslovak Communist politician and lawyer who sought to join socialism to democratic control and active citizenship. During the Prague Spring of 1968, he served as a Central Committee secretary, worked in Alexander Dubček's reform leadership, and helped shape the political and legal team that drafted the Action Programme. After the Warsaw Pact invasion he signed the Moscow Protocols, then confronted the limits of reform and the reality of occupation by resigning his posts and later leaving the party. He signed Charter 77 and emigrated to Austria, where he became a political scientist and an important interpreter of the Prague Spring.
Career timeline
1950–1955Studied law at Moscow State University
1955–1956Worked at the General Prosecutor's Office in Prague
1956–1968Researcher at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences Institute of State and Law
1967–1968Worked on political-system reform and the Action Programme
1968Central Committee secretary and Presidium member, Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
1970Expelled from the Communist Party; researched entomology at the National Museum
1977–1997After signing Charter 77, emigrated to Austria and taught political science at the University of Innsbruck
The chancellor who seized the initiative on the German question with a ten-point unification plan days before Malta
On 28 November 1989, Kohl rose in the Bundestag without having told his allies, or even his own foreign minister. President Bush received Kohl's letter summarizing the Ten-Point Plan just as the chancellor was already speaking in Bonn.
A Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician who served sixteen years as chancellor of West Germany and reunified Germany, leading both European integration and German reunification. On 28 November 1989, without consulting his allies, he presented a 'Ten-Point Plan' for German unity to the Bundestag; days later, at the Malta summit, the German question dominated the proceedings on his terms. The following year, on 3 October 1990, Germany was reunified; together with French president François Mitterrand, Kohl drove the Maastricht Treaty and the introduction of the euro. He achieved reunification by extending the West German system into the former East, and after his long tenure ended with electoral defeat in 1998, he resigned as CDU honorary chairman amid a party donations scandal.
Career timeline
1959Elected to the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate (youngest member)
1969–1976Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate
1973–1998Chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
1976–1982Leader of the CDU/CSU opposition in the Bundestag
1982–1998Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
1989.11.28Presented the Ten-Point Plan for German unity to the Bundestag
1990.10.03Presided over German reunification
1998Defeated in federal elections; resigned as CDU chairman
Ceaușescu's protégé who ordered his execution and led Romania's post-communist transition
'Quite shameful, but necessary': Iliescu's later verdict on the drumhead trial and execution of the Ceaușescus.
A Romanian Communist Party elite, Iliescu led the National Salvation Front (FSN) during the December 1989 revolution that ended the Ceaușescu regime. He authorised the drumhead trial and execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu on Christmas Day, then won Romania's first free presidential election in 1990 with 85% of the vote. His reputation was scarred by the Mineriads, in which miners were summoned to Bucharest to crush peaceful opposition protests, and he was later charged with crimes against humanity for deaths during the revolution. He served three presidential terms, steering Romania into NATO and closing EU accession negotiations, yet the unresolved question (popular revolution or coup d'état) shadowed him to the end.
Career timeline
1953Joined the Romanian Communist Party
1965–1971CC member, Propaganda chief, Youth Minister
1971Sidelined by Ceaușescu, demoted to provincial posts
1984–1989Removed from CC; director of Editura Tehnică publishing house
1989.12Co-founded FSN, became interim president
1990–1996President of Romania (first and second terms)
On 3 February 1977 he was outside the capital presenting a flag to a militia unit, which observers thought saved his life. Arrested at Derg headquarters on 11 November, he was shot the next day.
An Ethiopian officer of the founding generation of the Derg, the military committee that deposed the emperor in 1974. A major in the Fourth Division, he was elected its vice-chairman and became a lieutenant colonel after April 1975. In 1976 he directed the recruitment of tens of thousands of peasants for a militia bound for the Eritrean front, and was seen as symbolizing a conservative, nationalistic and religious outlook. He survived the 3 February 1977 shootout to become first vice-chairman, only to be executed on Mengistu's orders on 12 November 1977.
Career timeline
1974Helped organize the Derg; elected vice-chairman (Fourth Division representative)
1975Promoted to lieutenant colonel
1974–1977Deputy chairman of the Derg and second vice-chairman of the PMAC under Tafari Benti
1976Organizer of the peasants' militia (Operation Raza)
1977First vice-chairman of the Derg, February 1977
In June 1982 he joined Sihanouk and Son Sann in an anti-Vietnamese coalition government and took charge of its foreign affairs, so that Western support kept Cambodia's UN seat with the coalition.
Cambodian politician and economist. Born in Svay Rieng province, he studied law in Phnom Penh, returned in 1959 to teach at the university and served as a minister under Sihanouk. After the 1967 crackdown on the left he went into hiding, joined the Khmer Rouge and, as chairman of the State Presidium in 1976–1979, served as head of state. He succeeded Pol Pot as Khmer Rouge leader in 1985 and led the movement until 1998. Arrested in 2007, he was sentenced to life in 2014 for crimes against humanity, convicted in 2018 of genocide against the Vietnamese, and had his appeal rejected on 22 September 2022.
Career timeline
1959–1967Returned home, taught at the University of Phnom Penh and served as a minister in Sihanouk's Sangkum government
1967Went into hiding from the crackdown on the left and joined the Khmer Rouge
1973–1974Led FUNK and GRUNK delegations on tours of North Vietnam, China, Korea, Albania, Yugoslavia, Romania, Algeria and elsewhere
1976–1979Chairman of the State Presidium of Democratic Kampuchea, serving as head of state
1976Attended a Non-Aligned summit as the representative of Democratic Kampuchea
1982–1993Vice-president and foreign secretary of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, leading the effort to retain the UN seat
1985–1998Formally succeeded Pol Pot as leader of the Khmer Rouge
1997Broke with the Khmer Rouge, denouncing Pol Pot and founding the Khmer National Solidarity Party
1998Surrendered to Cambodian government forces together with Nuon Chea in December
2007Arrested after Prime Minister Hun Sen had defied international pressure and declined to prosecute him
2014Sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity on 7 August
2018Convicted on 16 November of genocide against the Vietnamese, while being cleared of involvement in the genocide of the Chams
2022His appeal was rejected on 22 September, leaving the convictions standing
Accepting power from General Ramanantsoa, he declared, "Tsy hiambaho adidy aho, mon général!" ("I will not shirk my duty, my general!").
A Malagasy officer and politician who, as interior minister after 1972, promoted reorganization through traditional fokonolona communities. He became head of state in February 1975 and was assassinated soon afterward. His proposals should be distinguished from Ratsiraka’s later state planning.
Career timeline
1959Lieutenant in the French army, posted to the 12th Marine Infantry Battalion at Fianarantsoa
1969Commander of the National Gendarmerie, the first Malagasy officer to hold the post
1972Minister of the Interior under General Ramanantsoa's military government
1975.02Head of state and government, Minister of State for National Defense and Planning
Barre's vice-president who commanded the Ogaden War
After Barre was badly injured in a 1986 car crash, Samatar served as de facto head of state for several months.
A Frunze Military Academy-trained general, he was a key figure of the Siad Barre regime and the supreme commander of the Ogaden War. Defence minister from 1970 and vice-president from 1971, he was elected to the Politburo and as deputy secretary-general at the 1976 founding congress of the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party, embodying the military's hold over the party after the Supreme Revolutionary Council's dissolution. In 1987 he became the first prime minister since the 1969 coup, but a US court later ordered him to pay $21 million over the Isaaq genocide.
Career timeline
1954–1956Trained at Italy's Casano di Roma infantry academy
1970Became minister of defence
1971Vice-president and commander-in-chief of the army
1976Politburo member and deputy secretary-general of the SRSP
1977–1978Commanded the national army in the Ogaden War
The scientist-president overthrown after the Congo's first free election
In 1977 a military tribunal sentenced him to death for complicity in Ngouabi's assassination, and only the intervention of Omar Bongo of Gabon saved him from the firing squad.
A biologist trained in agronomy and genetics who became prime minister of Massamba-Débat's government in 1963 at the age of 32. Under the People's Republic he was sentenced to death for alleged complicity in Ngouabi's assassination, then released into exile in France; at the 1991 sovereign national conference he led the early rounds for transitional prime minister before losing the fourth ballot to Milongo. In 1992 he led the social-democratic UPADS to victory over Sassou Nguesso and became the Congo's first democratically elected president, only to be driven into exile again by the 1997 civil war.
From Moncada to the presidency: the Revolution's indispensable number two for over half a century
“Fidel is irreplaceable, unless we all replace him together, each in his own place.” — speech to university students, 2006
Core commander of the Cuban Revolution: a founding member of the 26th of July Movement who fought at Moncada (1953), survived the Granma landing to reach the Sierra Maestra, and as Comandante of the Frank País Eastern Front built a guerrilla proto-state in Oriente. As minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces from 1959 to 2008 (the longest-serving defense minister of any modern state), he forged Cuba's military and security apparatus and led the institutionalization of the Communist Party. Succeeding Fidel as president in 2008 and party first secretary in 2011, he oversaw cautious market reforms while preserving one-party rule, stepping down in 2018 and 2021 after more than half a century as the Revolution's indispensable number two.
Career timeline
1953Moncada Barracks attack — 13-year sentence, 22 months served
1956Lands from the Granma — guerrilla war in the Sierra Maestra
1958Promoted to Comandante; opens the Frank País Eastern Front
1959–2008Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces — longest-serving defense minister
2006–2008Acting president during Fidel's illness
2008–2018President of the Council of State and Council of Ministers
2011–2021First Secretary, Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba
2021Steps down as first secretary — retires from politics
Hungarian foreign minister who cut the Iron Curtain, and reform prime minister
On 27 June 1989, Horn and Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock took bolt cutters to the barbed-wire fence on the Hungarian-Austrian border, cutting the first hole in the Iron Curtain before the cameras of the world.
A Hungarian reform-communist diplomat who became prime minister after democratization, Horn as foreign minister in June 1989 took bolt cutters to the barbed-wire border fence with Austria alongside Alois Mock, staging the iconic image of the Iron Curtain's demise. He drove the decision to open Hungary's border to East German refugees seeking passage to West Germany, a breach that helped trigger the fall of the Berlin Wall and German unification. Leading the Hungarian Socialist Party to a landslide in 1994, he served as prime minister and imposed the Bokros austerity package, laying the framework for Hungary's market-economy transition. His political life embodied the contradictions of 20th-century Hungarian socialism, suspended between his service in the armed militia that crushed the 1956 revolution and his historic 1989 opening of the border.
From ambassador to Moscow during perestroika to author of Afgantsy, the British diplomat who knew Russia from the inside
'On Christmas Day 1991 we were still wearing our funny hats and eating our mince pies when Mikhail Gorbachev came on television to tell the world that he had resigned as President of the Soviet Union,' recalling the end from Moscow.
British diplomat and author who served as ambassador to the Soviet Union (1988–1991) and then to the Russian Federation (1991–1992), witnessing perestroika, the August 1991 coup, the rise of Yeltsin, and the Soviet collapse from the inside. On close personal terms with Gorbachev, he later served as foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister John Major and chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. His 2011 book Afgantsy, the key revisionist account of the Soviet-Afghan War, argues that the Soviet 40th Army was never defeated on the battlefield and withdrew in good order, challenging the Western 'Soviet Vietnam' narrative and recasting the war as a failure of intelligence and political judgment, not of arms.
Career timeline
1951–1952Served in military intelligence, Vienna
1955Joined HM Diplomatic Service
1963–1966Posted to British Embassy Moscow (first tour)
1975–1978UK Permanent Representation to the EC, Brussels
1982–1984Minister for Trade, British Embassy Washington
1984–1988Deputy Under-Secretary, FCO; G7 Sherpa team
1988–1992British Ambassador to the Soviet Union, then Russia
1992–1993Foreign Policy Adviser to PM; Chairman, JIC
The Marxist revolutionary who overthrew Portuguese colonial rule and led Mozambique to independence
“The liberation of Africa is the liberation of the continent, or it is nothing.”
Mozambique's independence leader and first president. As FRELIMO chairman, he waged armed struggle to end Portuguese colonial rule and built a socialist state. A crucial ally of liberation movements against Rhodesia and South African apartheid.
Career timeline
1963Exiled to Tanzania, joins FRELIMO; guerrilla training in Algeria
1966FRELIMO Secretary for Defense
1968Commander-in-chief of the Mozambican liberation army
1970Becomes FRELIMO President; adopts Marxism-Leninism as party ideology
1974Negotiates independence with Portugal's new government — Lusaka Accord
1975–1986First President of the People's Republic of Mozambique
1984Signs the Nkomati non-aggression pact with South Africa
1986.10Killed in plane crash at Mbuzini, South Africa, returning from Zambia
Founder of Angola's People's Armed Forces and its first Defence Minister
After the October 1976 plenum, Carreira officially declared that "for the MPLA, the only socialism that exists is the socialism of Marx, Engels and Lenin, scientific socialism."
First Defence Minister of independent Angola, founder and commander-in-chief of the People's Armed Forces (FAPLA), and the MPLA's military strategist second only to Agostinho Neto. After the October 1976 Central Committee plenum he officially declared that 'for the MPLA, the only socialism that exists is the socialism of Marx, Engels and Lenin, scientific socialism,' marking the party's adoption of Marxism-Leninism. He directed the suppression of the 1977 Nitista uprising and its military tribunals, but lost power after Neto's death in 1979 and spent his last years denouncing Angola's 'savage capitalism.'
Career timeline
1957Joined the independence movement
1961Deserted the Portuguese army, joined the MPLA
1971Secretary-General of the MPLA
1975–1980First Defence Minister of the People's Republic of Angola
1982Graduated from the Voroshilov General Staff Academy, first African officer to earn a general's diploma
1983–1986Commander of the People's Air Force of Angola
The opposition leader from Pool who ended one-party rule
On 7 November 1988 and 20 November 1989 he wrote to President Sassou Nguesso proposing a national round table on the country's problems.
A Congolese politician from Mboloki in Kinkala District, Pool, who founded the Congolese Movement for Democracy and Integral Development (MCDDI) and pressed for a multiparty system while the one-party state still stood. At the 1991 sovereign national conference he opened the parties' addresses and backed André Milongo's election as transitional prime minister, making him a key opposition figure of the democratic transition. He lost the 1992 presidential runoff to Lissouba and, appointed Lissouba's prime minister of national unity during the 1997 civil war, was ousted by Sassou Nguesso's loyalists and went into exile.
Career timeline
1989Founded the Congolese Movement for Democracy and Integral Development (MCDDI); party statutes filed with the Interior Ministry
1991Opened the parties' addresses at the sovereign national conference
1992Second in the first round of the presidential election (20.32%); lost the runoff to Lissouba
1994Elected mayor of Brazzaville
1997Appointed prime minister of national unity by Lissouba; ousted into exile when Sassou Nguesso's loyalists took Brazzaville
2000Sentenced to death in absentia by a Congolese court
2005Returned under amnesty, parliament adopted the amnesty law
