People of the Revolution and the USSR

Lao People's Revolutionary Party Communism 1914–2008 ○ old age

Lao revolutionary leader and president

On 2 December 1975 the National Congress of People's Representatives elected Nouhak Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of the new Lao People's Democratic Republic government. Sources credit Kaysone Phomvihane, not Nouhak, as the presiding official who proclaimed the republic.

A founding figure of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party and a leading Pathet Lao revolutionary. Born in Mukdahan, Siam (now Thailand) to an ethnic Lao family, he was ranked second after Kaysone in the party's Politburo at its 1955 founding congress and joined the Politburo at the 2nd Congress in 1972 with responsibility for economic affairs. He served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance after 1975, and was President from 1992 to 1998.

Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Communism 1915–1964 ○ Heart attack

The Black feminist Marxist who pioneered intersectional analysis, and created the Notting Hill Carnival

"A people's art is the genesis of their freedom" — slogan of the first Caribbean carnival, 1959

Trinidad-born Marxist-feminist theorist. Her 1949 analysis of the triple oppression of race, class and gender is recognised as a forerunner of intersectionality. Deported to Britain, she founded a major Black newspaper and organised the Caribbean carnival that gave rise to Notting Hill Carnival.

Poland state institutions Communism 1915–1987 ○ Natural causes

A legal functionary who defined order against a workers’ revolt

On 17 July 1956, he said the investigation would distinguish striking workers from “trouble-makers, criminals and provocateurs.”

Marian Rybicki was a Polish lawyer and communist politician who helped institutionalize the postwar state through senior party, legal, and administrative work. After the Poznań workers’ revolt in 1956, as Prosecutor General, he publicly advanced a “two currents” line distinguishing striking workers from “trouble-makers, criminals and provocateurs.” The distinction separated workers’ economic grievances from alleged criminal responsibility, but it also framed the investigations and trials that followed. He later served as justice minister and worked as a legal scholar concerned with law and governance in a socialist state.

Poland state institutions Communism 1915–1994 ○ Died

Deputy head of Poland’s security Department X whose 1953 defection and broadcasts exposed the ministry’s torture and purges

Born Izaak Fleischfarb into a Jewish family in Medyn in Galicia, he worked as a shoemaker in Kraków and moved from a Zionist group to the Communist Youth. Captured by the Germans in 1939, he escaped, only to be deported into the Soviet interior; in 1943 he married and took his wife’s surname. A political officer in Berling’s army, he joined the Ministry of Public Security, took part in arresting Home Army members and in falsifying the 1946 referendum, and as deputy director of its Department X arrested Gomułka and others on Bierut’s personal orders. On 5 December 1953, on official business in East Berlin, he defected to the US military mission in West Berlin. His revelations on Radio Free Europe about torture and the struggles inside the party led to the break-up of the ministry and contributed to the Polish October. He died in the United States in 1994.

Communist Party of Spain (PCE) Communism 1915–2012 ○ Natural causes

The Eurocommunist architect who lit a cigarette at gunpoint

23 February 1981: 200 Civil Guards under Lt. Col. Tejero storm the Spanish parliament, firing submachine guns. As every deputy dives for cover, 66-year-old Santiago Carrillo remains seated, takes out a cigarette, and calmly lights it.

General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain (1960–1982), Carrillo was a key architect of Eurocommunism alongside Berlinguer and Marchais. Breaking with Moscow after the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, he argued in Eurocommunism and the State (1977) for a parliamentary path to socialism and guided Spain's peaceful democratic transition after Franco's death.

Mongolian People's Party / Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party Communism 1916–1991

Mongolian planning and Soviet ties

He framed Mongolia's bond with the USSR as an 'elder brother–younger brother' (akh düü) one, and at Stalin's funeral in 1953 asked that Mongolia join the Soviet Union, a request Moscow rejected.

He became Mongolia’s head of government in 1952 after Choibalsan. Close Soviet political and economic ties supported industrialization and cooperative herding. His long rule combined modernization with exclusion of rivals and external dependence, ending with his removal in 1984.

Hungary state institutions Communism 1917–1957 ○ Died in prison

A reform communist journalist

On 4 November 1956, as Soviet forces attacked, he took refuge with his family in the Yugoslav Embassy.

Géza Losonczy was a Hungarian journalist and politician who emerged from the communist movement while challenging its repression and dogmatism. Alongside Imre Nagy’s reform circle, he became involved in the upheaval over popular mobilization and the limits of one-party rule, serving as a minister of state in the revolutionary government of 1956. Arrested after the Soviet intervention, he died in prison while on hunger strike awaiting trial, his death forming part of the state repression directed at the Imre Nagy group.

Afghanistan state institutions Communism 1917–1979 ✕ Suffocated with pillows

Afghan communist founder whose overthrow and murder by his protégé Amin triggered the Soviet invasion

Taraki: 'We ask you to render practical and technical assistance with men and armament.' Kosygin: 'This is a very complicated problem.' Taraki: 'While you are taking counsel Herat will fall.' (telephone conversation, 18 March 1979, during the Herat uprising)

Nur Muhammad Taraki was the founding General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) who became the first Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan after the Saur Revolution of April 1978. Born to a Pashtun peasant family, he encountered Marxism at night school in Bombay and later wrote the first social-realist novel in Pashto, The Journey of Bang, earning the label 'Afghanistan's Maxim Gorky.' Once in power he imposed radical land reform and secularization that ignited armed uprisings across the countryside, and his repeated pleas for Soviet military intervention were rebuffed by Kosygin and Brezhnev. In September 1979 his protégé Hafizullah Amin overthrew and suffocated him, a killing that became the proximate trigger for the Soviet invasion two months later.

Vietnam state institutions Communism 1917–2002 ○ Natural causes

Vietnamese general who led the 1975 spring offensive to Saigon and directed the 1979 invasion of Cambodia and border war with China

As commander of the April 1975 Saigon–Gia Định campaign, he directed the offensive that brought down South Vietnam's government.

Born at Từ Liêm near Hanoi, he joined the Communist Party in 1936. He fought at Điện Biên Phủ and was chief of the General Staff in 1953–1954 and 1954–1978. He commanded the 1975 spring offensive in the field that ended with the fall of Saigon, then directed the invasion of Khmer Rouge Cambodia and the 1979 border war with China. Succeeding Võ Nguyên Giáp as defence minister in 1980, he served until 1987 and sat on the Politburo from 1976 to 1986. He died in Hanoi in 2002.

Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) Communism 1917–2014 ○ Died

The party ideology secretary who signed the letter inviting Soviet tanks into his own country

Charged with treason, Biľak denied signing any invitation: "I never wrote to Brezhnev." The letter had been addressed to the CPSU Central Committee, not to Brezhnev personally. A defense that was technically true and entirely beside the point.

A neo-Stalinist of Rusyn origin who rose from tailor to the Presidium of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. In 1968 he was a core member of the conservative 'healthy forces': one of five who signed the invitation letter urging the Warsaw Pact to intervene against the Prague Spring reforms with 'all means at your disposal.' As the KSČ ideology secretary under Husák, he drafted 'Lessons from the Crisis Development' (1970), the doctrinal foundation of normalization that branded the reforms a counter-revolution and justified mass purges, remaining an unreconstructed hardliner until expelled during the Velvet Revolution.

Albania state institutions Communism 1918–1947 Manner of death unconfirmed

Albanian communist economic planner who led domestic criticism of Yugoslav economic control

On 18–19 November 1947 Xoxe accused him of 'anti-Party, nationalist activity' at the Politburo; the next day he was found shot in his State Planning Commission office. Accounts range from accident to suicide or killing, so the manner of death is unresolved.

Born Athanas Spiru in Durrës to a wealthy Orthodox family, he studied on Corfu and in Turin, joined the newly founded Communist Party of Albania in 1941 and led its Youth section. A Politburo member from 1944, he became Minister of Economy on 22 March 1946 and in 1947 Minister of Industry and chairman of the State Planning Commission, the only trained economist in the party leadership. He signed the July 1946 economic agreement with Yugoslavia reluctantly, then opposed the economic union plan with its customs union and monetary integration, using the 1947 Belgrade talks and a Moscow visit to secure a basis for refusing Yugoslav aid. This brought him into sharp conflict with Koçi Xoxe, leader of the 'Yugoslav lobby'. The Albanian institute studying communist crimes also lists him as directly responsible for repression by the party and the National Liberation Army.