People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1875–1946 ○ Natural causes

The long-serving formal head of state

On 1 March 1921, before the Kronstadt uprising, Kalinin entered the fortress unarmed with his wife, was met with applause at Anchor Square, but the sailors derailed his speech with jeers and catcalls.

A peasant-born Bolshevik metalworker who became the Soviet Union's formal head of state from 1919 until his death in 1946, serving 27 years as the country's nominal president. He signed the key laws of the mass-repression period, including the 7 August 1932 decree on state property, the 1 December 1934 decree on simplified terror cases, and the 7 April 1935 decree lowering criminal responsibility to 12. He also approved a cipher from the Belarusian first secretary proposing to shoot 3,000 and expel 9,800 people, and in March 1940 signed the order to execute 25,700 Polish officers and prisoners. Yet on 4 May 1932 he voted against the expulsion of 38,000 peasant families as unfounded, and the reversal halted the operation.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1877–1937 ✕ Executed

Stalin's close friend and the 17-year organizational backbone of the Soviet state, the first fall that opened the Great Purge

"Coco, they are old Bolsheviks like me, like you. You won't shed the blood of old Bolsheviks!" Yenukidze tried to dissuade Stalin from putting Kamenev and Zinoviev on trial and executing them. Stalin replied: "Remember, Avel — whoever is not with me is against me."

An Old Bolshevik (party member since 1898), co-founder of the Baku Social-Democratic organization and the underground 'Nina' press in the Caucasus. As Secretary of VTsIK (1918–1922) and then the TsIK of the USSR (1922–1935), he managed the apparatus of the Soviet state's highest formal body for 17 years, across the formation and consolidation of the Union. A close member of Stalin's inner circle and godfather to Nadezhda Alliluyeva, he was the first individual recipient of the Order of Lenin (No. 3). His expulsion in 1935, the first member of the XVII Congress Central Committee to fall, was a significant prelude to the Great Purge.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1888–1970 ○ Natural causes

Formal head of state in late Stalinism

On 9 January 1905, 16-year-old factory worker Nikolai Shvernik witnessed the 'Bloody Sunday' shootings before the Winter Palace. That autumn he joined the Bolsheviks.

A Petersburg worker who joined the Bolsheviks at 17, he built the Soviet trade-union system as First Secretary of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions for 14 years. He succeeded Kalinin as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet Presidium in 1946, though real power lay with Stalin and the Politburo. During the war he directed industrial evacuation and the Nazi atrocities investigation commission; after Stalin's death he worked with Khrushchev as head of the Party Control Committee, overseeing the rehabilitation of victims of political repression.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1906–1991 ○ Natural causes

The 20-year formal head of state of the Russian republic under Brezhnev

"He had the firm administrative hand of an authoritative man and knew construction better than anyone." — Contemporary assessment

Mikhail Yasnov rose from leather worker and courier to the formal head of state of the Russian SFSR for nearly two decades. As Moscow City Executive Committee chairman (1950–1956), he directed the second reconstruction of the capital: completing the Stalinist high-rises, launching mass housing in the southwest, opening the metro ring line, and doubling residential construction. He served briefly as RSFSR premier (1956–1957), then spent nineteen years as Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet Presidium (1966–1985), the republic's ceremonial head of state throughout the Brezhnev era. A construction engineer who had directed Moscow's defensive fortifications during the Battle of Moscow, he was remembered by contemporaries as harsh but effective.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1937–2010 ↓ Arrested · amnestied 1994

First and only Vice President of the USSR and the face of the August 1991 coup

To KGB chairman Kryuchkov during the August 1991 coup: 'Understand my character—if even one person dies, I won't be able to live.'

After serving as First Secretary of the Gorky Oblast Komsomol and chairman of the USSR Committee of Youth Organizations (1968–1980), Yanayev became VTsSPS chairman, a Politburo member and CC Secretary in 1990. That December Gorbachev forced through his election as the USSR's first vice president. In August 1991, as the face of the GKChP, he declared himself acting president citing Gorbachev's 'illness'. The coup failed within three days and he was arrested. Amnestied in 1994, he published the memoir Last Battle for the USSR and spent his remaining years in academia.