The voice of Action Française, the polemicist who pushed a scandal from the page into the street day after day
Through January 1934 his columns called out the implicated deputies one by one, and on the morning of 6 February the paper urged its readers to come to the Chamber that evening. At the front of the columns that filled the square that night were the Camelots du Roi, the action squads of Action Française
The son of the novelist Alphonse Daudet, a medical student turned polemicist, who founded the daily Action Française with Maurras and set its tone. He sat as a deputy for Paris from 1919 to 1924, and his method of personal attack and denunciation left its mark on a generation of French political language. After losing a libel case brought over his claim that the police had killed his son Philippe in 1923, he fled to Belgium in 1927 and returned under an amnesty in 1930. In January 1934 he printed the names of the politicians touched by the Stavisky affair day after day, building the picture of a 'republic of thieves' that carried the paper's readers to the square on 6 February.
Career timeline
1867–1890Born in Paris, son of Alphonse Daudet; studies medicine
1900–1908Turns royalist and joins Action Française
1908–1942Co-founder and leading writer of the daily Action Française
1919–1924Deputy for Paris
1923–1927The lawsuits over his son Philippe's death; convicted of libel and flees to Belgium
1930Returns under an amnesty
1934.01–02The press offensive over the Stavisky affair that produced the demonstration of 6 February
Pastor and writer who headed Latvia's pro-German government of 1919
"Not clever speeches or treaties but force decides a nation's fate," he declared at his 1924 treason trial.
A leading Latvian novelist and Lutheran pastor, he headed the pro-German government backed by von der Goltz after the Liepāja coup of 1919. His regime fell after Cēsis, he fled to Germany and, returning in 1924, was tried for treason and expelled.
Career timeline
1890–1899Studied theology at the University of Dorpat (Tartu)
1903–1906Edited and published the journal Austrums in Cēsis
1906–1918Lutheran pastor in the Matīši, Kalsnava and Vietalva parishes
1917Co-founded the Latvian Farmers' Union, member of its board
1919.05–06Prime Minister of the pro-German provisional government
1924Convicted of treason, then expelled by presidential pardon
1926–1930Pastor of a German congregation in Altstadt, East Prussia
Ukrainian Social Democratic writer who led the Rada's General Secretariat and the Directory
Just as you created the dictatorship of workers and peasants in Russia, we must create a dictatorship of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine.
A Ukrainian Social Democratic writer, he led the Central Rada's General Secretariat in 1917 and retook Kyiv as first chairman of the Directory in 1918. Arguing for talks with the Soviets he broke with Petliura and resigned in 1919, dying in France in 1951.
Career timeline
1905Co-founder of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' Party
1917Vice-president of the Central Rada and first head of its General Secretariat
1918.01Premier of the Ukrainian People's Republic, soon resigned
1918.12Retook Kyiv as chairman of the Directory
1919–1920Wrote the memoir Rebirth of a Nation
1920Deputy head of the Ukrainian SSR Sovnarkom; soon re-emigrated
The American journalist who chronicled the Russian and Chinese revolutions from the inside, founder of Moscow News
"We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by labor in this country, a move which will lead — NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!" — editorial on the eve of the Seattle General Strike, 1919
American left-wing journalist and communist. After earning a Chicago PhD, she covered the Seattle General Strike (1919), moved to the USSR in 1921, and co-founded Moscow News (1930). In 1946 she interviewed Mao Zedong in Yan'an, drawing the famous 'paper tigers' declaration. Expelled from the USSR as a spy in 1949, she was rehabilitated in 1955 and settled in China as an honoured 'foreign friend,' chronicling Mao's China through the Cultural Revolution. With over 30 books, she was an unmatched eyewitness to the century's great communist revolutions.
Career timeline
1885Born in Friend, Nebraska, daughter of a progressive Congregationalist minister
1908PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago — dissertation: The Social Psychology of Prayer
1916–1918Elected to Seattle School Board; recalled for supporting the IWW and opposing WWI
1919Editor, Seattle Union Record; covered the Seattle General Strike from the inside
1921Travelled to USSR with AFSC famine relief; settled as Moscow correspondent for International News Service
1930Co-founded and edited Moscow News, the USSR's first English-language newspaper
1931Married Soviet agronomist Joel Shubin (d. 1942)
1937–1938War reporting from the Spanish Civil War and China's anti-Japanese base areas
1946Interviewed Mao Zedong in Yan'an; recorded the famous 'paper tigers' remark
1949Arrested by Soviet authorities, expelled as an 'American spy'; rehabilitated in 1955
1958–1970Settled permanently in China; honoured as a 'foreign friend' of Mao and Zhou Enlai
1970Died of a heart attack in Beijing; memorial attended by Zhou Enlai and Guo Moruo
From eyewitness of the Bolshevik Revolution to founder of the Communist Labor Party of America: an American buried at the Kremlin Wall
At the mass funeral for revolutionary martyrs in Red Square, Reed suddenly understood: the devout Russian people no longer needed priests to pray them into heaven. On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer.
American journalist and communist. He witnessed the 1917 October Revolution and wrote Ten Days That Shook the World. He co-founded the Communist Labor Party of America and served on the Comintern Executive Committee. One of the very few Americans buried at the Kremlin Wall.
Career timeline
1910Graduated Harvard, began journalism career in New York
1913Joined The Masses; first arrest covering Paterson silk strike
1913–1914War correspondent in Mexico — 4 months with Pancho Villa's army; published Insurgent Mexico
1917Witnessed the October Revolution in Petrograd; worked with the Bolshevik Foreign Commissariat
1919Published Ten Days That Shook the World; co-founded the Communist Labor Party of America
1919–1920Comintern Executive Committee member; U.S. delegate to 2nd Comintern Congress; attended Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East
Socialist writer and Népszava journalist murdered with Béla Somogyi in 1920 for writing against the White Terror
Born in Kassa (Košice), he began as a journalist on the local Kassai Napló and published the novel A Sefcsik ház in 1918. In 1919 he joined Népszava, writing about proletarians, the peasants’ hunger for land and migration, and against the White Terror associated with the names of Iván Héjjas, Pál Prónay and Gyula Ostenburg-Moravek. For this the Ostenburg detachment abducted him and his editor Béla Somogyi on 17 February 1920 and shot them, throwing the bodies into the Danube.
German Jewish Expressionist playwright who took part in the Bavarian revolution
After volunteering for the German army in World War I and being wounded at Verdun, Toller was discharged in 1917; his wartime experience turned him toward pacifism, and he joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. In April 1919 he served six days as president of the Bavarian Soviet Republic and took part in its armed resistance; sentenced to five years for high treason, he wrote several major plays in prison. Exiled after the Nazis came to power, he continued warning against Nazism and died by suicide in New York in 1939.
Career timeline
1914Volunteered for the German army and served in World War I.
1917Discharged from military service after wartime injury and ill health.
1919As a member of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, joined the leadership of the Bavarian Soviet Republic and served as its president, April 6–12.
1919Sentenced to five years in prison for high treason over his role in the republic's armed resistance.
1925Released, expelled from Bavaria, and went to Berlin.
1933After the Nazi seizure of power, left Germany and went into exile, moving through Switzerland, France, and England before the United States.
Marxist playwright who weaponized theatre for class struggle through epic theatre and the Verfremdungseffekt
When I read Marx's Capital, I understood my plays — Marx was the only spectator for my plays I'd ever come across.
Bertolt Brecht was the 20th century's most important Marxist playwright and the founder of epic theatre, a poet and director who transformed the stage into a forum for class consciousness and anti-capitalist critique. After embracing Marxism under Karl Korsch in the late 1920s, he developed the Verfremdungseffekt — a defamiliarization technique that broke emotional immersion to provoke critical reflection — and with works like The Threepenny Opera, Mother Courage and Her Children, and The Good Person of Szechwan, he fused avant-garde form with popular idiom to anatomize capitalism and war. Driven out by the Nazis in 1933, he lived in exile in Scandinavia and the US—where HUAC investigated him in 1947—before returning to found the Berliner Ensemble with Helene Weigel in East Berlin in 1949, defining postwar theatre worldwide until his death in 1956.
Career timeline
1922Wins Kleist Prize for Drums in the Night
1924Moves to Berlin; assistant dramaturg at Deutsches Theater
1928The Threepenny Opera premieres, biggest Berlin hit of the 1920s
1933Flees Nazi Germany; begins 15-year exile through Scandinavia and the US
1947Testifies before HUAC in Hollywood; leaves the US the next day
1949Founds Berliner Ensemble in East Berlin with Helene Weigel
The artist who turned 'Ol' Man River' into a hymn of struggle
In 1937, moved by the Spanish Civil War, he permanently changed the lyrics of 'Ol' Man River': 'But I keep laughin' / Instead of cryin' / I must keep fightin' / Until I'm dyin'. In Wales he declared: 'The artist must take sides. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.'
A world-renowned bass-baritone and actor whose 'Ol' Man River' and Othello carried him to the summit of his art even as he devoted that art to the Black freedom struggle and global anti-colonialism. After backing the Spanish Republicans and the 1949 Paris Peace Congress, he refused to renounce the Soviet Union and endured passport revocation and blacklisting through the McCarthy years, regaining his passport by Supreme Court ruling in 1958.
Career timeline
1915–1919Rutgers College: twice All-American, class valedictorian
1919–1923Columbia Law School (LL.B.) while playing in the NFL
1924–1928Starred in The Emperor Jones; became Harlem Renaissance star
1928–1939Global fame with Show Boat; first Black Othello in Britain (1930)
1934First USSR visit: 'Here I am not a Negro but a human being'
1937–1939Supported Spanish Republicans; visited International Brigades; Council on African Affairs
1943–1945Broadway Othello: first Black actor with white cast; record 296 shows
1949Paris Peace Congress speech; Peekskill riots; blacklisting began
1950–1958Passport revoked; HUAC; founded Freedom; Stalin Peace Prize (1952)
1958Passport restored (Kent v. Dulles); published Here I Stand
1958–1960Comeback tours: Europe, USSR, Australia, NZ; Othello at Stratford
1961–1963Health breakdown; recovered at Buch Clinic, East Berlin
1963–1976Seclusion in U.S.; died of stroke complications in Philadelphia
The Turkish revolutionary poet who survived a 28-year sentence with verse: giant of 20th-century letters who fused modernism and communism
“Bury me under a plane tree in any village cemetery in Anatolia” — his last wish, Moscow, 1963
Born in Ottoman Salonica, Nâzım Hikmet encountered Mayakovsky and Lenin in 1921 and became a lifelong communist, returning to Turkey to pioneer free verse and transform its poetry. From "835 Lines" to the 16,000-line epic "Human Landscapes from My Country," his vast body of work sang the lives of ordinary people and the War of Independence. A military court sentenced him to 28 years; he served 12, his imprisonment sparking a global campaign by Picasso, Sartre, and Robeson. After escaping to the USSR in 1951 he spent 13 years in the peace movement and anti-colonial solidarity. His poetry is translated into over 50 languages; UNESCO declared 2002 the 'Year of Nâzım Hikmet.'
Career timeline
1913Publishes first poem, "Feryad-ı Vatan" (The Cry of the Homeland)
1918Graduates from the Ottoman Naval Academy; serves as naval officer
1921Travels to Anatolia to join the War of Independence; meets Mustafa Kemal
1922–1924Studies at KUTV, Moscow; joins the Bolshevik Party
1924–1925Returns to Turkey; edits Aydınlık, organ of the illegal Turkish Communist Party
1929Publishes "835 Lines" — revolutionises Turkish poetry with free verse
1933–1935First imprisonment for "Gece Gelen Telgraf"; writes "The Epic of Sheikh Bedreddin" in Bursa Prison
1938–1950Sentenced to 28 years for inciting mutiny; serves 12 years across four prisons
1939–1960Writes 16,000-line epic "Human Landscapes from My Country" in prison
1950Amnestied after international campaign and hunger strike; awarded International Peace Prize
1951–1963Exiled in the USSR; Bureau member of World Peace Council, anti-colonial and anti-war activism
1963.06.03Dies of a heart attack at his dacha in Peredelkino; buried at Novodevichy Cemetery
The democratic socialist who came back wounded from the POUM militia and dissected the language of totalitarianism
Homage to Catalonia, on reaching Barcelona in December 1936: “It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle.”
Born Eric Arthur Blair. Five years in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma and his reportage on destitution in Paris and London made him a writer; in December 1936 he went to Spain, joined the POUM militia through the Independent Labour Party, spent four months on the Aragon front and was shot through the throat at Huesca. The street fighting he witnessed in Barcelona while convalescing in May 1937, and the outlawing of the POUM that followed, broke him with Soviet communism for good, and he crossed the border with his wife with a warrant out for him as a Trotskyist. Homage to Catalonia, his account of it, sold 683 copies in its first six months. Orwell called himself a democratic socialist to the end, and Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four anatomize the hardening of a revolution into a new rule, and the language that holds it up.
Career timeline
1903Born Eric Arthur Blair in Motihari, British India, son of an official of the colonial opium department
1917–1921King's Scholar at Eton College
1922–1927Served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma and resigned, disillusioned with imperial rule
1928–1932Down and out in Paris and London: dishwasher, schoolteacher, bookshop assistant
1933Published Down and Out in Paris and London under the pen name George Orwell
1936Wrote The Road to Wigan Pier from the northern coalfields; married Eileen O'Shaughnessy
1936.12Reached Barcelona and enlisted in the POUM militia through the Independent Labour Party
1937.01–05Served on the Aragon front at Alcubierre and Huesca; shot through the throat at Huesca in May
1937.05Caught in the Barcelona May Days while on leave, standing guard on a POUM building
1937.06Wanted after the POUM was outlawed; escaped with his wife into France
1938Published Homage to Catalonia, which sold 683 copies in six months
1941–1943Produced broadcasts to India in the BBC Eastern Service
1945Published Animal Farm
1949Published Nineteen Eighty-Four
1950.01.21Died of tuberculosis in a London hospital
