People of the Revolution and the USSR

Czechoslovakia state institutions Communism 1902–1952 ✕ Executed

Slovak Communist who succeeded Jan Masaryk as foreign minister and was executed after the Slánský trial of 1952

As deputy foreign minister, he backed rejection of the Marshall Plan; after the 1948 coup he became foreign minister and organized Czechoslovak air support for Israel. Forced out and arrested in 1950, he was executed after the 1952 Slánský trial.

A lawyer from Tisovec in Slovakia, he was a left-wing intellectual who co-edited Dav, a cultural and political journal of great influence among interwar Slovak intellectuals. He sat as a Communist deputy. He became foreign minister after Jan Masaryk’s death in March 1948 and served until 1950. Accused of “Titoism” and “national deviation”, he was sentenced to death at the Slánský trial of 1952 and executed on 3 December; he was later rehabilitated.

East Germany state institutions Communism 1902–1989 ○ Natural death

East German jurist who succeeded Fechner as justice minister after the 1953 uprising and led its harsh political trials

Born into a liberal middle-class family in Bernburg, Anhalt, she was among the first women to study law in Germany. A Social Democrat, she married the physician Georg Benjamin, brother of Walter Benjamin, in 1926 and joined the KPD in 1927. Barred from practising law under the Nazis, she lost her husband in Mauthausen in 1942. After the war she worked in the justice administration of the Soviet zone, and as vice-president of the GDR Supreme Court presided over show trials of political undesirables and Jehovah’s Witnesses. On 15 July 1953 she succeeded Max Fechner, who had opposed prosecuting the striking workers, as minister of justice, and her heavy sentences against those arrested in June earned her the names “Red Hilde” and “the Red Freisler”. Ulbricht forced her to resign in 1967. She died in East Berlin in 1989.

Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Communism 1903–1959 ○ Natural causes

From Comintern Negro Bureau chief to architect of Pan-African independence, the revolutionary journalist who broke with empire

"Pan-Africanism or Communism?" — rejecting Cold War binaries, his final book insisted African liberation must chart its own course

Trinidad-born Pan-Africanist theorist and journalist. Appointed head of the Profintern's Negro Bureau in Moscow in 1929, he led organising efforts among colonial workers. But he broke with the USSR in 1934 when Soviet diplomacy prioritised alliance with the colonial powers over liberation movements. From London he chaired the International African Service Bureau and organised the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress, setting the agenda for postwar decolonisation. As Kwame Nkrumah's closest advisor, he helped shape Ghana's independence and the vision of African unity.

Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) Communism 1903–1966 ○ Natural death

Editor of Neues Deutschland who helped draft the 1953 New Course, moved against Ulbricht and was purged as a “faction”

Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Gleiwitz, he became a correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt and an agent of Soviet military intelligence (GRU). Exiled in the Soviet Union from 1939, he edited the newspaper of the National Committee for a Free Germany. Back in Berlin in 1945 he ran the Berliner Zeitung and helped found Neues Deutschland, whose editor always followed Moscow’s line. In June 1953 he and Zaisser set themselves against Ulbricht, and he helped formulate the New Course approved by the Central Committee. After the uprising he proposed a collective leadership, but in July he was removed from the Central Committee for “anti-party factionalism” and in January 1954 expelled from the SED. He worked at the Central Archives in Merseburg, died in 1966 and was rehabilitated only in 1989.

Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) Communism 1903–1977 ○ Natural death

Economist and the SED’s chief ideologue until 1958, when he was expelled from the Politburo in the Schirdewan affair

Born in Leipzig, he joined the USPD in 1919 and the KPD in 1920 and worked as an editor on party papers. From 1926 he studied in Moscow at the International Lenin School and the Institute of Red Professors. In exile from 1933 he was Ulbricht’s secretary in Paris; in Moscow he lost his teaching posts in 1936 for alleged deviations, and in the war became chief editor of Moscow Radio’s German service. Returning with the Ackermann Group in 1945, he ran the party’s propaganda and education work, joined the Politburo in 1950 and was Central Committee secretary for propaganda from 1950 to 1955, effectively the party’s chief ideologue. In June 1953 he set up the command in Halle that put down the uprising. After 1956 he opposed the complete collectivisation of agriculture, and in 1958 he was expelled from the Politburo. He then directed the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences.

Hungary state institutions Communism 1903–1983 ○ Natural causes

Rákosi-era planning chief who fell from grace and joined Imre Nagy

He joined the Hungarian Communist Party at sixteen in 1919, fought in the Soviet Republic's Red Army and spent most of the Horthy era in prison. Released with Rákosi in 1940, he went to the Soviet Union and returned as a Soviet officer in 1944. Mayor of Budapest in 1945, secretary-general of the Supreme Economic Council (1945–49) and head of the National Planning Office (1949–53), he drafted the Five-Year Plan and ranked among the party's leading 'Muscovites'. Stripped of every post in February 1953, he joined Imre Nagy's line and headed the government secretariat in 1954–55; in January 1955 the Soviet Presidium condemned him with Nagy. In November 1956 he fled with Nagy to the Yugoslav embassy, was interned in Romania, and later lived outside politics as a writer.

Hungary state institutions Communism 1904–1965 ○ Natural causes

Defence minister in Rákosi's ruling foursome

Amid Hungary's 1953 leadership change, Soviet leaders criticized him and he was dropped from the new Political Committee. Expelled from the party and convicted in 1956, he remained imprisoned until 1961.

Born to Jewish parents in Abaújszántó, he became a communist in the 1920s, fought in the Spanish Civil War and lived in the Soviet Union before returning in late 1944; from 1945 he sat on the Hungarian Communist Party's Political Committee and Secretariat. As defence minister in 1948–53 he formed the ruling "four" with Rákosi, Gerő and Révai. In June 1953 the Soviet leaders did not invite him to Moscow, and Bulganin criticized him for trying to make himself out to be a great army commander. Dropped from the new Political Committee, he was expelled from the party and convicted in 1956, released in 1961, and worked as an editor and publisher.

Czechoslovakia state institutions Communism 1904–1975 ↓ Removed 1968

The Czechoslovak leader whose Stalinist orthodoxy was swept aside by the Prague Spring reform movement

In an impromptu interview after the 1965 May Day parade, Novotný declared, "Meat will be shortly!" (Maso bude vbrzku!). Across the country, Czechs asked, "Where on the map is this 'Shortly'?" — and the nation laughed.

A locksmith and KSČ charter member from 1921, Novotný rose through the party apparatus during the Slánský purge and emerged from the succession struggle after Gottwald's death to rule Czechoslovakia for fifteen years as First Secretary (1953–1968) and President (1957–1968). His regime enforced Stalinist orthodoxy (central planning, censorship, and a refusal to reckon with the show trials of the 1950s) even as economic stagnation and Slovak resentment eroded its foundations. His forced resignation in January 1968, replaced by Alexander Dubček, removed the greatest obstacle to reform and directly precipitated the Prague Spring. Reelected to the Central Committee under normalization in 1971, he died in Prague in 1975 without recovering real influence.

Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) Communism 1905–1973 ✕ Suicide while ill with cancer

German communist who drafted the KPD’s 1945 appeal and argued for a “special German road to socialism”

The son of a hosier from Thalheim in Saxony, he joined the KPD in 1926 and attended the International Lenin School in Moscow. After underground work and exile under the Nazis he directed a political school of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, and in Moscow ran the “Free Germany” radio station. In 1945 he led the KPD group sent to Saxony and drafted the party’s appeal of 11 June 1945. In 1946 he argued that socialism could be built in Germany without a preceding dictatorship of the proletariat, a “special German road to socialism” he had to recant after Tito’s break with Stalin in 1948. He served as deputy foreign minister and first head of the GDR’s foreign intelligence service, and in 1953 was stripped of all posts for supporting Zaisser. Gravely ill with cancer, he took his own life in 1973.

Poland state institutions Communism 1905–1982 ○ Lung cancer

The national communist who returned in the Polish October of 1956 to test a 'Polish road to socialism'

To the Politburo, October 1956 — 'You can govern a nation with bayonets, but whoever realizes that possibility also realizes that he has lost everything.'

Born in 1905 in Galicia, in the Austrian Partition, into a worker's family, he was a plumber from the age of fourteen. He joined the Communist Party of Poland in 1926 and became general secretary of the underground Polish Workers' Party in 1943. In 1948 he was removed for 'rightist-nationalist deviation' and imprisoned from 1951 to 1954. After the June 1956 Poznań workers' protests were harshly suppressed, he was elected first secretary on 20 October 1956; he insisted Poland would resist advancing Soviet troops but keep the alliance, and the Soviets yielded. The 1967-68 antisemitic campaign and support for the invasion of Czechoslovakia ended the reform line, and in December 1970 he ordered the army to shoot striking shipyard workers in Gdańsk and Gdynia. Death caused by lung cancer.

Italy state institutions Marxism and communism 1905–1986 ○ Natural causes

Italian delegate at the Cominform founding who witnessed Stalin's telephone line, later turning from communist to anti-communist critic

"Stalin was its absolute master, without even condescending to put in an appearance. We were made conscious of this fact in the course of our debates by the existence of a direct telephone line between our Szklarska Poręba castle and the Kremlin." (1966 memoir)

An Italian communist politician and physician, he served as Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs in the postwar governments and as ambassador to Poland. As an Italian delegate to the 1947 Szklarska Poręba conference that founded the Cominform, his 1966 memoir became the most detailed eyewitness account of the proceedings, documenting Stalin's unseen control through a direct telephone line to the Kremlin and Zhdanov's pre-arranged attacks on the French and Italian parties for failing to seize power. He broke with the PCI in 1956 over the Soviet invasion of Hungary and spent his later decades as an anti-communist critic, founding the journal Corrispondenza Socialista.

Vietnam state institutions Communism 1905–1991 → Died in exile

Pro-Chinese veteran, North Vietnam’s first ambassador to China, who defected to China after the 1979 war

After the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, he evaded surveillance at Karachi and defected to China. He denounced Vietnam’s treatment of ethnic Chinese and accused its leaders of subservience to the Soviet Union.

A revolutionary from Nghệ An, he took part in the early communist movement with Ho Chi Minh. As North Vietnam’s first ambassador to China (1950–1957) he was a crucial link between the two countries, and he sat on the Politburo from 1956 to 1976 and was vice-chairman of the National Assembly from 1958 to 1979. His influence peaked in the early 1960s when Hanoi briefly leaned towards Beijing in the Sino-Soviet dispute, and waned as relations with China soured. In July 1979, travelling to East Germany for treatment, he slipped his escorts at Karachi, took refuge at the Chinese consulate and flew to Beijing, denouncing Vietnam’s persecution of the Hoa at a press conference in August. He died in Beijing in 1991.

Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) Communism 1906–1989 ○ Died

The transitional First Secretary of 1956 who turned Khrushchev's Secret Speech into a mass document and then yielded power to Gomułka

In October 1956, as Khrushchev threatened military intervention, Ochab placed Polish forces in defensive positions around Warsaw and told Soviet leaders that 'under the circumstances, Gomułka was the best choice to lead the country.'

A Polish communist from Kraków who joined the Communist Party of Poland in 1929 and spent six and a half years as a political prisoner under the Sanation regime. After serving as a political commissar in Berling's Polish Army in the USSR, he rose through the PPR and PZPR as Central Committee member, minister of public administration, deputy defence minister, and Politburo member. As First Secretary in March 1956 after Bierut's death, he authorized mass printing and distribution of Khrushchev's Secret Speech through party channels and public meetings, and copies were even sold at Warsaw's Różycki market, setting off the speech's worldwide leak. He approved the suppression of the Poznań uprising, stood down Soviet military intervention in October, handed power to Gomułka, and resigned all offices in 1968 in protest against the anti-Semitic campaign.