Comintern
Communism
1883–1936
✕ Executed by shooting
He opposed October, vouched for Stalin, and was shot by him
In May 1924 Lenin's testament was read to a plenum of the Central Committee. Kamenev read the document; Zinoviev then spoke for Stalin and moved to re-elect him General Secretary by show of hands, which carried with only Trotsky's small group against. The testament was not reported to the congress.
One of Lenin's long-standing companions in exile and the first chairman of the Comintern's executive committee, he was an early face of international communism. Born Ovsei-Gershon Radomyshelsky to a Jewish dairy-farming family in Yelizavetgrad, today Kropyvnytskyi in Ukraine, he opposed the October 1917 rising publicly alongside Kamenev, yet as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet he controlled the party's northern base and became a full Politburo member in March 1921. After Lenin's death he formed a triumvirate with Stalin and Kamenev to isolate Trotsky, but was defeated at the XIV Party Congress in December 1925 and lost the Leningrad Soviet and Comintern posts in 1926. He then joined Trotsky in the United Opposition; in August 1936 the first Moscow trial sentenced him to death and he was shot, and he was rehabilitated in 1988.
Career timeline
1907–1917Lenin’s closest companion of the exile years
1917.10With Kamenev, opposes the rising; the leak scandal
1919–1926First chairman of the Comintern
1923–1925The triumvirate against Trotsky
1926–1927The United Opposition; expulsions and recantations
ECCI secretary who carried out the Stalinist purges (1928–1943)
In 1939 Stalin told Dimitrov: "Manuilsky is a toady! He was a Trotskyite! We criticised him for keeping quiet and not speaking out when the purges of Trotskyite bandits were going on, and now he has started toadying!" Almost every Old Bolshevik with a Trotsky link was killed or jailed except him.
A Bolshevik from Volhynia, born in the village of Sviatets to a priest's family (English sources say peasants) and a law graduate of the Sorbonne, he was a member of the Vpered group, joined the Mezhraiontsy in 1917, and held Ukrainian and Comintern posts. As ECCI secretary in the 1920s and 1930s he directed the Stalinist purges in the Comintern apparatus and foreign communist parties, and in 1945–46 he led the campaign against 'Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism'. In 1945 he headed Ukraine's delegation at San Francisco, chaired the committee that drafted the Preamble and Chapter 1 of the UN Charter, and from 1944 to 1952 was Ukrainian foreign minister.
Career timeline
1903Joins RSDLP while studying at St. Petersburg University; aligns with Bolsheviks
1905–1906Agitator for Petersburg Committee; organizes Kronstadt and Sveaborg mutinies
1906Arrested, sentenced to 5 years exile in Yakutia; escapes, emigrates to Paris
1907–1912Paris exile; intermittent illegal returns to Russia for underground work
1912–1913Underground work in St. Petersburg and Moscow; re-emigrates
1914–1917Anti-war position; edits Golos and Nashe Slovo with Trotsky
1917.05Returns to Russia, joins the Mezhraiontsy
1917.08VI Congress: Mezhraiontsy merge into the Bolshevik Party
1921–1922First Secretary of CP(B)U; People's Commissar for Agriculture during the famine
Soviet Union
Soviet communism
1915–2003
○ Natural causes
Soviet ambassador for 24 years across the Sino-Soviet split, Prague Spring, and détente
On 21 August 1968, Chervonenko called on President Svoboda two hours early and secured the telegram ordering the Czechoslovak army not to resist. Marshal Grechko recounted: "Someone in the leadership said, 'For these actions the ambassador should be given two Orders of Lenin at once.'"
A Soviet diplomat who served as ambassador to China (1959–1965) during the Sino-Soviet split, to Czechoslovakia (1965–1973) through the Prague Spring, and to France (1973–1982). On 21 August 1968, acting two hours ahead of Moscow's order, he secured President Svoboda's non-resistance directive to the Czechoslovak army, averting bloodshed. The Soviet leadership remarked he deserved two Orders of Lenin for it. He served on the CPSU Central Committee from 1961 to 1989 and received five Orders of Lenin.
Career timeline
1937–1941Teacher and school director, Kiev/Sumy Oblast
1941–1944Red Army service, Great Patriotic War
1944–1949Head of Marxism-Leninism dept., deputy director, Cherkasy Pedagogical Institute
1949–1951Head of lecturers' group, CC CP Ukraine
1951–1956Head of Science and Higher Education Dept., CC CP Ukraine
1956–1959Secretary for Ideology, CC CP Ukraine
1959–1965Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the PRC
1965–1973Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Czechoslovakia
1973–1982Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to France (concurrently to Madagascar, 1973–1974)
1982–1988Head, Cadres Abroad Dept., CPSU Central Committee
1989–1993Adviser, USSR/Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Gromyko's point man on America who ran arms-control talks, opposed the Afghan invasion, and demanded truth over KAL 007
In the fall of 1979, Korniyenko instructed subordinates to draft a memo arguing against sending troops into Afghanistan. Gromyko refused to sign it and never forwarded it to the Central Committee.
Georgy Korniyenko was the Soviet Foreign Ministry's operational architect of American policy for over four decades, serving as First Deputy Minister (1977–1986) under Andrei Gromyko and designing the agenda for US-Soviet arms-control negotiations across the 1970s and 1980s. As attaché in Washington during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he stood on the Cold War's front line, later heading the ministry's USA desk and preparing every Soviet-American summit from Nixon through Reagan. He internally opposed the 1979 decision to invade Afghanistan and, after the 1983 KAL 007 shootdown, argued that releasing the truth would cost less than the official cover-up: both positions were overruled. After the Cold War, his memoir The Cold War: Testimony of a Participant documented the inner workings of Soviet foreign-policy decision-making.
Career timeline
1949Began diplomatic career in the Committee of Information under the Soviet MFA
1960–1964Counselor, then Minister-Counselor, Soviet Embassy in Washington
1965–1975Head of the USA Department, Soviet MFA
1975–1977Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR
1977–1986First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR
1981–1989Member of the CPSU Central Committee
1986–1988First Deputy Head, International Department, CC CPSU
