People of the Revolution and the USSR

Finland state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1870–1956 ○ Natural causes

Finnish realist who faced Stalin at the 1939 Moscow negotiations and later forged the Paasikivi doctrine of Cold War neutrality

'Acknowledging reality is the beginning of all wisdom': words Paasikivi borrowed from Stalin and made the cornerstone of Finnish Cold War policy.

A political realist whose career spanned Finland's autonomy under the Russian Empire, independence, civil war, and both wars against the USSR. As prime minister in 1918 he pursued a pro-German monarchy; in 1920 he led the delegation that signed the Tartu peace treaty with Soviet Russia. Summoned from Stockholm in October 1939, he negotiated directly with Stalin and Molotov in Moscow: the talks failed, but after the Winter War broke out he served as minister without portfolio and signed the Moscow Peace Treaty of March 1940. Elected president in 1946, he anchored Finland's Cold War survival on the principle that 'acknowledging reality is the beginning of all wisdom,' a doctrine of geopolitical accommodation with the USSR that defined Finnish foreign policy for decades.

Germany state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1876–1967 ○ Natural causes

The chancellor who made provisional statehood durable

As president of the Parliamentary Council, Adenauer helped present the Basic Law as a provisional settlement rather than a final constitution for a divided Germany.

Konrad Adenauer was a Catholic conservative statesman who helped shape the Federal Republic after the collapse of Nazism and the division of Germany. As president of the Parliamentary Council, he supported a provisional Basic Law rather than a permanent constitution, leaving open the possibility of reunification while establishing democratic institutions in the western zones. As the first Federal Chancellor, he pursued Westbindung, European integration, and a socially regulated market economy, while his anti-communist policy hardened the political division of the Cold War. His career thus joined parliamentary reconstruction with the consolidation of a state whose provisional founding became durable.

Germany state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1878–1964 ○ Natural death

Weimar finance minister who founded the CDU in the Soviet zone in 1945 and was deposed for opposing the land reform

The son of a Cologne railway worker, he studied agriculture and from 1911 worked at the International Institute of Agriculture in Rome. A member of the Catholic Centre Party, he became Minister of Food in 1920 and was Minister of Finance from 1922 until the Cuno cabinet resigned in August 1923. Arrested after the Nazis took power, he later served as an economic adviser to the government of Colombia. Back in Germany he joined the resistance around Goerdeler, was arrested after 20 July 1944 and sentenced to death in January 1945, but his wife delayed the execution until the Red Army took Berlin. On 26 June 1945 he became the first chairman of the CDU of Berlin and the Soviet zone; because he refused to agree to the land reform without compensation, SMAD deposed him in December. In the West he founded the German Farmers’ Association and argued for reunification.

United States state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1882–1972 ○ Natural causes

Roosevelt's "assistant president" who, as Secretary of State, designed the Potsdam reparations compromise

After Byrnes took the oath as Secretary of State, Truman said, "Jimmy, kiss the Bible." Byrnes did so, then handed it back to the President and told him to kiss it too. Truman did, as the room laughed.

James F. Byrnes was a Democratic politician from South Carolina who, as senator, steered New Deal legislation through Congress; as director of war mobilization, earned the nickname "assistant president"; and as Truman's Secretary of State, designed the reparations framework at Potsdam. At Potsdam, Byrnes negotiated the compromise with Molotov whereby each occupying power would extract reparations from its own zone, while the USSR would receive 15% of western-zone industrial equipment in exchange for food and raw materials and an additional 10% without payment. Passed over as Roosevelt's running mate in 1944 and later sidelined by Truman as their relationship soured, Byrnes returned to elective politics as governor of South Carolina, where he championed "separate but equal" schooling against desegregation.

East Germany Conservatism and Christian democracy 1883–1957 ○ Natural death

Kaiser’s successor at the head of the East German CDU, who brought it into line with the SED as deputy prime minister

Born in Frohburg in Saxony, he worked as a journalist, moved through the left-liberal parties, helped found the German Democratic Party in 1918, and sat in the Weimar National Assembly and the Prussian Landtag. He joined the opposition after 1933 and went into hiding after the 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life. In 1945 he co-founded the CDU in the Soviet zone; when the Soviet authorities deposed Jakob Kaiser and Ernst Lemmer in 1947 he became acting chairman, and chairman in 1948. As a co-chairman of the German People’s Council he took part in drafting the GDR constitution, and in 1949 became deputy prime minister and head of the Church Office. A loyal supporter of the SED regime, he pushed out CDU members unwilling to follow the Communists. He died in 1957.

Germany state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1888–1961 ○ Natural death

Christian Democrat who led the CDU in the Soviet zone until SMAD removed him, then became West Germany’s minister for all-German affairs

A bookbinder from Hammelburg in Bavaria, he became a leader of the Catholic trade-union movement and was elected to the Reichstag for the Centre Party in 1933. He joined the resistance against the Nazis, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938, and went into hiding after the 20 July 1944 plot. After the war he co-founded the CDU in the Soviet zone and became its co-chairman with Ernst Lemmer; as a Christian Socialist he called for the nationalisation of key industries. Critical of the Communists, he and Lemmer were removed as chairmen by the Soviet Military Administration in December 1947, and he moved to West Berlin. He opposed Adenauer’s Western integration in favour of a neutral, united Germany, and was minister for all-German affairs from 1949 to 1957. He died in Berlin in 1961.

United Kingdom state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1897–1977 ○ Natural causes

A British diplomat of war and decolonisation

At the 1945 San Francisco Conference, the foreign ministers of the four sponsoring Allied powers took turns chairing the plenary sessions, with Eden among them.

Anthony Eden was a British Conservative statesman whose First World War service reinforced his commitment to the League of Nations and collective security. He served three times as foreign secretary amid the rise of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and during the Second World War acted as Winston Churchill’s principal diplomatic lieutenant in negotiations with the Soviet Union and the other Allies over the postwar order. Representing Britain at Yalta and at the 1945 San Francisco Conference, he helped shape the emerging international institutions, yet as prime minister he pursued the Suez invasion, exposing both the limits of British imperial power and Britain’s dependence on the United States.

Germany state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1897–1977 ○ Natural causes

The West German economic statesman who shaped currency reform and the social market economy

On 21 June 1948, he announced by radio the abolition of price controls and compulsory rationing for selected manufactured goods.

Ludwig Erhard was an economist and politician who conceived West Germany’s postwar order as a combination of competitive markets and social security. As director of the Bizonal Economic Administration in 1948, he helped prepare monetary reform and, alongside the introduction of the Deutsche Mark, began a staged relaxation of price and production controls that opened the institutional path to recovery. He is often mythologized as the sole architect of the economic miracle, although Allied reform, international conditions, and the recovery of production by workers and firms all mattered, while price liberalization initially raised living costs and provoked working-class resistance. As economics minister and later chancellor, he helped make that order part of West Germany’s political identity, but resigned in 1966 amid recession and the collapse of his coalition.

France state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1899–1983 ○ Stroke

From Resistance chief to architect of the Marshall Plan response, the foreign minister who told Molotov that Soviet actions divided Europe

On July 2, 1947, when Molotov denounced the Marshall Plan as a plot to divide Europe, Bidault rose and quietly replied that it was the Soviet Union, by its own actions, that was splitting the continent; the next day he and Bevin sent invitations to 16 nations.

Bidault succeeded Jean Moulin as president of the National Resistance Council in 1943, leading the French internal Resistance, and after the Liberation co-founded the Christian-democratic MRP. As foreign minister at the 1947 Paris Three-Power Conference, he answered Molotov's charge that the Marshall Plan was 'dividing Europe' with the retort that Soviet actions alone were splitting the continent; when Molotov walked out, Bidault and Bevin rallied 16 Western European nations behind the plan. He served as premier in 1946 and 1949–50, and as foreign minister during Dien Bien Phu he even asked the US for atomic bombs. An irreconcilable opponent of Algerian independence, he organized a clandestine 'second CNR' in 1962, lost his parliamentary immunity, and spent four years in Brazilian exile before the 1968 amnesty.

United States state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1913–2006 ○ Died

The unelected president who steered détente into its final phase

On the train to Vladivostok, when Ford grumbled how snarled Washington's traffic grew in snow, Brezhnev leaned over the table: "Well, that will be our first deal. We'll send you Soviet snowplows."

A Republican who spent twenty-five years in the House and served as vice president before succeeding Nixon after his resignation in 1974, Ford remains the only American president never elected to national office. He carried on Nixon's détente, meeting Brezhnev at Vladivostok in 1974 to fix the SALT II framework of 2,400 delivery vehicles and a 1,320 sub-limit on MIRVed systems, and a year later signed the Helsinki Final Act while turning the Jackson-Vanik amendment into law. His pardon of Nixon was the defining controversy of his presidency, and he lost the 1976 election to Carter.

United States state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1920–2021 ○ Natural causes

The Secretary of State who pushed Reagan toward dialogue with Gorbachev and helped end the Cold War

Over dinner with the Reagans, snowbound at the White House, Shultz listened to the president's relentless questions about Soviet leaders and realized: 'This man has never had a real conversation with a big-time communist leader, and he is dying to have one.'

George Shultz is one of only two Americans to have held four different Cabinet posts, serving as Labor Secretary, OMB Director, Treasury Secretary, and finally as Reagan's Secretary of State for six and a half years, reshaping the direction of U.S. diplomacy with the Soviet Union. Against the opposition of Defense Secretary Weinberger and CIA Director Casey, Shultz insisted that Reagan engage Gorbachev directly, laying the diplomatic groundwork for the Geneva (1985) and Reykjavik (1986) summits. The result was the 1987 INF Treaty, the first abolition of an entire class of nuclear weapons; Shultz then watched the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the unraveling of Moscow's hold on Eastern Europe, witnessing the end of the Cold War from the front row. His memoir Turmoil and Triumph remains an essential primary source for the diplomacy of the 1980s.

United States state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1924–2018 ○ Natural causes

The US president who declared the Cold War over with Gorbachev at Malta, yet whose caution nearly let history slip away

At the Malta joint press conference Bush declared: 'We can realise a lasting peace and transform the East-West relationship to one of enduring co-operation. That is the future that Chairman Gorbachev and I began right here in Malta.'

George H. W. Bush went from World War II naval aviator to oil magnate to the 41st president of the United States, bringing to the White House foreign-policy experience unmatched by any predecessor: CIA director, UN ambassador, and de facto ambassador to China. Upon taking office in 1989 he ordered a strategic review of Soviet policy, the so-called 'Bush pause,' that frustrated Gorbachev, but at the Malta summit that December the two leaders jointly confirmed the Cold War's end, and Bush's steady support for German reunification helped anchor the new European order. He built a multinational coalition to expel Iraq from Kuwait in the Gulf War, then lost his 1992 re-election bid after breaking his 'no new taxes' pledge amid a recession.

Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Conservatism and Christian democracy 1930–2017 ○ Natural causes

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.

Austria state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1934–2017 ○ Natural causes

An Austrian Europeanist who helped open the Iron Curtain

On 27 June 1989, Mock and Gyula Horn cut the fence near Sopron, making the border opening visible to the world.

Alois Mock was an Austrian People's Party politician who made European integration a central aim of Austrian foreign policy. As foreign minister, he pursued Hungary's border opening and Austria's entry into the European Communities, helping shape Central Europe's reordering at the end of the Cold War. On 27 June 1989, he and Gyula Horn symbolically cut the border fence, creating an international image of the openings that enabled East German escapes and preceded the collapse of the Eastern bloc.

Russian Federation state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1952–

A ruler who recast the loss of the Soviet Union as a narrative of state restoration

“The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

Vladimir Putin is a Russian politician and former Soviet security officer who rose to national power amid the crises of the 1990s. Alternating between the presidency and premiership, he strengthened federal and presidential authority while making the restoration of Russia’s international influence a central narrative of rule. In 2005, he called the Soviet collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” a remark that condensed his memory of dissolution as a Russian experience of loss and dislocation. His rule also narrowed political competition and independent media while expanding the state’s military interventions abroad.

Hungary Conservatism and Christian democracy 1963–

From anti-communist youth leader in 1989 to architect of 'illiberal democracy'

If we are sufficiently resolute, we can force the ruling party to submit itself to free elections. If we do not lose sight of the principles of '56, we can elect a government that will initiate immediate talks regarding the quick withdrawal of Soviet troops.

Viktor Orbán vaulted to national prominence as an anti-communist youth leader with his 1989 speech at Imre Nagy's reburial, demanding free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. Elected Hungary's youngest prime minister in 1998, he led the country into NATO; after losing power in 2002, he returned with a constitutional supermajority in 2010 and began systematically consolidating control over the judiciary, media, and electoral system, building what he openly calls an 'illiberal state.' In a landmark 2014 speech at Băile Tușnad, he publicly broke with liberal democracy and named Russia, Turkey, China, and Singapore as his models. His trajectory, from anti-Soviet resistance to author of a hybrid regime that became the longest-serving in Hungarian history, makes him a defining figure of 21st-century authoritarian populism.