Higher SS and Police Leader who directed the mass shootings at Kamianets-Podilskyi, Babi Yar and Rumbula
The son of a textile factory owner in Hornberg in the Black Forest, he fought as an officer in the First World War. He joined the Nazi Party in 1929 and the SS in 1930, and from 1933 was police president and head of the political police in Brunswick. Chosen by Himmler in June 1941 as Higher SS and Police Leader for southern Russia and Ukraine, he controlled all Einsatzgruppen killings in his area and used his method in the mass shootings at Kamianets-Podilskyi (23,600 killed) and Babi Yar (33,771 killed). Moved to Ostland in November with orders to complete the extermination of Riga’s Jews, he watched over two days as 25,000 people were killed at Rumbula. Taken prisoner fighting the Red Army in April 1945, he was sentenced to death at the Riga trial and hanged in Riga on 3 February 1946.
Career timeline
1914–1918German army officer and pilot
1929–1930Joined the Nazi Party and the SS
1932–1945Reichstag deputy
1933–1938Police president and head of political police, Brunswick
1941Higher SS and Police Leader, southern Russia and Ukraine
SPD leader who survived ten years in Nazi camps and, after the war, refused the merger with the Communists
Born in Kulm in West Prussia, he lost his right arm in the First World War and joined the SPD in 1918. As a member of the Württemberg Landtag and the Reichstag he fought the Nazis. Arrested in July 1933, he refused to sign a renunciation of political activity and spent ten years in concentration camps. In 1945 he rebuilt the party from Hanover, rejected the merger with the Communists urged by Otto Grotewohl in the Soviet zone, and called the KPD “red-painted Nazis”. Elected SPD chairman in 1946 and the Bundestag’s first leader of the opposition in 1949, he called for the nationalisation of heavy industry and a united Germany and opposed Adenauer’s integration with the West. He died in Bonn in 1952.
Career timeline
1918Joined the SPD
1930–1933Reichstag deputy
1933–1943Held in Nazi concentration camps
1946–1952SPD chairman
1949–1952Leader of the opposition in the Bundestag
Hungarian minority leader in Czechoslovakia who, as interior minister in Sztójay’s cabinet in 1944, organised the deportation of Jews
Born in Komáromcsehi, Komárom County (now Čechy, Slovakia), he entered the politics of the Hungarian minority in Upper Hungary, cut off by Trianon, in the early 1920s. He became chairman of the Hungarian National Party in 1933 and a deputy in Prague in 1935, and was general secretary of the United Hungarian Party. From 1938 to 1940 he was Hungary’s minister without portfolio for Upper Hungary, and in 1940 he co-founded the far-right Party of Hungarian Renewal with Béla Imrédy. As interior minister in Sztójay’s cabinet after the German occupation of 1944, he organised the deportation of the Jews with his state secretaries László Baky and László Endre. He resigned under Horthy’s pressure on 17 August. After the war he fled west, was captured by the Americans, handed over to Hungary, sentenced to death by the People’s Tribunal and shot in 1946.
Career timeline
1925–1933Vice-chairman, Hungarian National Party
1933Chairman, Hungarian National Party
1935–1938Member of the Czechoslovak Chamber of Deputies
1938–1940Minister without portfolio for Upper Hungary
1940Co-founded the Party of Hungarian Renewal
1944Interior minister
1946Sentenced by the People’s Tribunal and executed
Gendarmerie officer turned National Socialist who as state secretary for the interior in 1944 ran the deportation of Jews with László Endre
Born in Budapest, a military academy graduate and First World War officer, he made his name in Szeged in 1919 with violent counter-revolutionary work and rose to be one of the Gendarmerie’s leading figures. Retiring in 1938 as a major-general, he joined the Hungarian National Socialist Party, entered parliament in 1939 and edited the German-funded Magyarság. After the German occupation in 1944 he became political state secretary for the interior and, with László Endre, took charge of deporting the Jews; on 4 April he chaired a meeting with Eichmann’s officers that agreed to seize Jews’ possessions and move them into urban ghettos before deportation to Germany. Removed in the summer and arrested for plotting a coup against Horthy, he headed the National Security Office under the Arrow Cross. Arrested in Austria in 1945 and returned, he was hanged in 1946.
Career timeline
1914–1918Officer in the First World War
1919–1938Gendarmerie officer, retired as major-general
1939–1944Member of parliament; editor of Magyarság
1944Political state secretary, Interior Ministry
1944–1945Head of the National Security Office
1946Sentenced by the People’s Tribunal and executed
Communist who ran an anti-fascist sabotage network before the war and headed the Stasi from 1953 to 1957
Born in Münden in the Province of Hanover, he took part in the sailors’ revolt of 1918, joined the KPD in 1919 and led party military wings; he sat in the Reichstag in 1932–1933. In exile he organised the “Wollweber League” in 1936–1940, which carried out 21 known acts of sabotage against ships of fascist nations, and supplied arms to the Spanish Republicans. Back in Germany in 1946 he ran shipping administration. In July 1953, when Zaisser was removed and the Ministry for State Security was downgraded to a State Secretariat, he became its head, and in November 1955 Minister of State Security again. He clashed with Ulbricht and Honecker and sided with Schirdewan, resigned in 1957, and in 1958 was removed from the Central Committee for “factional activity”. He died in East Berlin in 1967.
Career timeline
1918Took part in the sailors’ revolt
1932–1933KPD Reichstag deputy
1936–1940Organised the Wollweber League sabotage network
In June 1953, Soviet leaders included Dobi, who held little real power, in Hungary’s delegation. János Rainer suggests the invitation may have reflected a misunderstanding of his office or Smallholder past, or a wish to give the talks an official, interstate character.
Born to a poor peasant family in Szőny, he finished only six years of primary school and worked as a day labourer. He supported the 1919 Soviet Republic and was active in the agricultural workers' movement. A left-wing Smallholder leader who sided with the communists, he was prime minister in 1948–52 and, as chairman of the Presidential Council in 1952–67, titular head of state. He was invited to the Kremlin talks of June 1953, which Rainer attributes to a Soviet misreading of his real power or his standing among the peasantry. When Molotov raised the dissolution of forcibly organized cooperatives, Dobi objected.
Career timeline
1948–1952Served as prime minister of Hungary.
1952–1967Served as head of state as chairman of the Presidential Council of the Hungarian People's Republic.
East German heavy-industry minister who faced the striking workers outside the House of Ministries on 16 June 1953
The son of a coppersmith from Lauterbach in Hesse, he was working underground at seventeen, served in the First World War and in 1918 sat on a soldiers’ council. He joined the USPD in 1920 and the KPD in 1922, becoming the party’s political secretary in Saxony and a Reichstag deputy. Arrested in 1933, he survived the Nazi years in prisons and in concentration camps including Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg. After the war he was Saxony’s minister for economics and planning, then deputy chairman of the German Economic Commission, and in the GDR minister of industry and of heavy industry. On 16 June 1953 he walked into the crowd outside the House of Ministries and tried to address it from a desk, but was whistled down. In 1958 Ulbricht pushed him out of his offices for a “deviant attitude”, and he turned to writing. He died in East Berlin in 1975.
Career timeline
1922Joined the KPD
1932–1933Reichstag deputy
1933–1945Imprisoned; held in Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg
1948–1949Deputy chairman of the German Economic Commission
1949–1955Minister of Industry, then of Heavy Industry
Soviet Union
Soviet communism
1899–1980
○ Natural causes
A face of Soviet Lithuania
At the October 1939 Vilnius celebrations, Paleckis publicly demanded President Smetona's resignation — and was arrested and sent to a forced-labor camp. Eight months later, under Soviet auspices, he returned as Lithuania's new head of state.
He became a leader during Lithuania’s Sovietization and later chaired the Soviet of Nationalities. He is a symbolic figure of Baltic republic representation.
Career timeline
1920s–1930sWorks as a Lithuanian left-wing journalist and politician
1940Becomes head of the people’s government during Soviet annexation of Lithuania
1940–1967Chairman of the Lithuanian SSR Presidium, the official face of the republic
1966–1970Chairman of the Soviet of Nationalities, symbolizing Baltic republic representation
after 1970Retires into honorary posts and memoir work
Exiled SPD functionary who succeeded Schumacher as SPD leader and leader of the West German opposition
Born in Magdeburg, the son of a bricklayer, he joined the SPD in 1918 and led the Socialist Workers’ Youth. In May 1933 he went into exile in Prague with the party executive, helped form the exiled SPD (Sopade), and by way of Paris and Lisbon spent the war in London. Returning in February 1946, he worked in Kurt Schumacher’s office in Hanover and that year became his deputy, running the party organisation and its international contacts. After Schumacher’s death in 1952 he became party chairman, parliamentary leader and leader of the opposition. He lost to Adenauer as candidate for chancellor in 1953 and 1957, and backed the 1959 Godesberg Programme, with which the SPD broke with Marxism. He died in Bonn in 1963.
Career timeline
1918Joined the SPD
1928Chairman of the Socialist Workers’ Youth
1933Exile in Prague; member of the exiled SPD executive
1946SPD deputy chairman
1952–1963SPD chairman and leader of the opposition
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.
Career timeline
1918–1922Courier, People's Commissariat of Health RSFSR
1922–1928Leather factory worker
1925Graduated workers' faculty, Moscow State University; joined CPSU
1928–1930Military service, Red Army
1930–1938Managerial posts in Moscow construction trusts
1938–1949Deputy/First Deputy Chairman, Moscow City Executive Committee; directed defensive construction during Battle of Moscow
1949–1950Deputy Minister of Urban Construction, USSR
1950–1956Chairman, Moscow City Executive Committee; simultaneously Chairman of the Soviet of the Union (1950–1954)
1956–1957Chairman, Council of Ministers of the RSFSR
1957–1966First Deputy Chairman, Council of Ministers of the RSFSR
1966–1985Chairman, Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (republican head of state)
The prince who in 1949 told a U.S. diplomat that Laos was a 'classless, Buddhist country in which communist theories had no basis' later became the 'Red Prince' and first president of communist Laos.
A Lao royal and revolutionary leader associated with the Pathet Lao. He participated in coalition and national reconciliation institutions and became the Lao PDR’s first president in 1975. His role differed from Kaysone Phomvihane’s leadership of party and government.
Career timeline
1945Foreign minister of the Lao Issara government and commander-in-chief of the Lao liberation army
1950Founded and chaired the Lao Freedom Front (Pathet Lao)
1956Chairman of the Lao Patriotic Front (Neo Lao Hak Sat)
1957–1958Minister for Planning, Reconstruction and Urban Development
1962–1963Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Planning
1974Presided over the National Political Consultative Council
1975–1991First president of the Lao PDR (Phoumi Vongvichit acting from 1986)
East German chemist who survived a Nazi death sentence and later, expelled from the SED, became a dissident under house arrest
Born in Munich, he studied chemistry in Munich and Berlin and took a doctorate in physical chemistry at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. A founder of the resistance group European Union, he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and sentenced to death, but his execution was repeatedly postponed on the grounds that his research was needed, and he survived. After the war he headed Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes until the Americans dismissed him; in 1950 he became professor of physical chemistry at the Humboldt University, a member of the Volkskammer and of the German Peace Committee. On 16 June 1953 he faced the crowd outside the House of Ministries with Fritz Selbmann. His 1963–64 lectures, published as “Dialectics without Dogma”, cost him his party membership and his chair. After protesting Wolf Biermann’s expatriation in 1976 he was put under house arrest. He died in Grünheide in 1982.
Career timeline
1932Joined the KPD
1943Arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to death
1950Professor of physical chemistry at the Humboldt University
Soviet Union
Soviet communism
1914–1994
○ Natural causes
The Latvian who chaired the Soviet of Nationalities for a decade under Brezhnev
On December 8, 1983, at a Human Rights Day press conference, Rubenis described the exiled Andrei Sakharov as "a talented but sick man" whose banishment to Gorky "was necessary above all for himself, to preserve his peace of mind."
A Moscow-born Latvian Soviet politician who served as Chairman of the Latvian SSR Council of Ministers and Chairman of its Supreme Soviet Presidium before chairing the Soviet of Nationalities (1974–1984) for a decade under Brezhnev. His decade-long tenure was a rare case of a non-Russian republican cadre stably occupying a key federal parliamentary post, and he exemplified the loyal technocrats Arvīds Pelše elevated after the 1959 purge of Latvian national communists.
Career timeline
1934–1941Worked as agronomist after graduating from technical school
1942–1943Editor, Stakhanovsky Trud district newspaper, Rybinsk
1947–1948Second Secretary, Daugavpils Uyezd Committee, CP Latvia
1958–1960Head of Agriculture & Procurement Dept, Gosplan of Latvian SSR
1960–1961Head of Agricultural Dept, CC CP Latvia
1962–1970Chairman, Council of Ministers of the Latvian SSR
1970–1974Chairman, Presidium of Supreme Soviet of Latvian SSR; Deputy Chairman, Presidium of USSR Supreme Soviet
1974–1984Chairman, Soviet of Nationalities of the USSR Supreme Soviet
Soviet Union
Soviet communism
1920–2006
↓ Left office 1974
Uzbek SSR figure who chaired the Soviet of Nationalities
In a meeting with Crimean Tatar civil rights activists, she openly opposed their return to Crimea, bluntly stating that Uzbekistan needed their labor.
Rising from the Uzbek republic leadership, she chaired the Soviet of Nationalities. Her career shows the link between central power and republic elites under Brezhnev.
Career timeline
1940s–1950sRises through Uzbek Komsomol, party and state administration
1959–1970Chairwoman of the Uzbek SSR Supreme Soviet Presidium
1970–1974Chairwoman of the Soviet of Nationalities, reaching a high post in central federal representation
1974Leaves office amid Uzbek leadership changes and political pressure
after 1974Moves away from the center of official politics
The agronomist who pushed a sovereignty declaration through the Soviet system and led Estonia out of the empire
Lukyanov warned him of a ten-year sentence for 'anti-constitutional activity.' Rüütel stood his ground: 'We will convene the Supreme Council and put the Declaration of Independence to a vote,' inadvertently saying 'Independence' instead of 'Sovereignty,' as he later recalled.
An agricultural economist from the Estonian island of Saaremaa, Rüütel rose through the Soviet system: rector of the Estonian Agricultural Academy, Communist Party functionary, and finally chairman of the Presidium of the Estonian SSR Supreme Soviet in 1983. On 16 November 1988, defying Moscow's threat of imprisonment, he pushed the Estonian sovereignty declaration through the legislature, opening the first crack in the Soviet edifice; in 1990, as chairman of the Supreme Council, he declared Soviet rule illegal and initiated the transition to restored independence. After independence he was elected president in 2001 and served until 2006, steering Estonia into NATO and the European Union.
Career timeline
1949–1950Senior agronomist, Saaremaa Executive Committee agricultural department
1955–1957Teacher, Tartu School of Agricultural Mechanization
1957–1963Senior zootechnician and director, experimental farm of the Veterinary and Animal Husbandry Research Institute
1963–1969Director, Tartu Reference State Farm
1969–1977Rector, Estonian Academy of Agriculture
1977–1979Secretary for agriculture, Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia
1979–1983First Deputy Chairman, Council of Ministers of the Estonian SSR
1983–1990Chairman, Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR
1990–1992Chairman, Supreme Council of the Republic of Estonia
Soviet Union
Soviet communism
1934–1993
○ Natural causes
A Soviet republican leader who asserted institutional authority in crisis
“A state of emergency was declared and troops were sent in without the republic’s consent.”
Elmira Kafarova was an Azerbaijani Soviet politician and diplomat who moved through education and foreign-affairs administration before leading the republic’s Supreme Soviet. In January 1990, she publicly protested the declaration of emergency in Baku and the entry of Soviet troops, stating that the decision had been taken while she was in Moscow and without her knowledge. Her institutional dissent, unusual within the Soviet republican leadership, illuminates how the nationalities crisis became a collision among republican institutions, a mass movement, and Union power.
Career timeline
1958Graduated from Azerbaijan State University; pursued philological research
1966–1970First Secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee of the Azerbaijan SSR
1971Ideology secretary of the Baku City Party Committee
1980–1983Minister of Education of the Azerbaijan SSR
1983–1987Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Azerbaijan SSR
1987–1989Deputy Chair of the Council of Ministers of the Azerbaijan SSR
1989–1990Chair of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Azerbaijan SSR
1990–1992Chair of the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan
The communist propagandist who became Ukraine's first president and signed the Soviet Union out of existence
It was a long road we walked to Belavezha. It was not by accident; it was our deliberate choice because we had no other option.
A party man who spent three decades climbing the propaganda and ideology apparatus of the Ukrainian Communist Party, Kravchuk pivoted to 'national communism' after becoming chairman of the Supreme Soviet in 1990. At the Novo-Ogaryovo negotiations he insisted on a confederation, not a federation, and delayed the signing of the new Union Treaty until September; after the August 1991 coup collapsed, he presided over Ukraine's Declaration of Independence on 24 August. Elected Ukraine's first president on 1 December 1991, he signed the Belavezha Accords with Yeltsin and Shushkevich a week later, formally ending the Soviet Union. His presidency saw the surrender of Ukraine's nuclear arsenal and a deep economic slump, but he stepped down after a peaceful electoral defeat and remained active in politics as a deputy.
Career timeline
1958–1970From political-economy teacher to head of agitation and propaganda, Chernivtsi region
1970–1980Rose through CC CPU agitation and propaganda department
1980–1988Head of CC CPU agitation and propaganda department
1988–1989Head of CC CPU ideology department
1989–1990.06CC CPU secretary, Politburo member, second secretary
1990.07–1991.08Chairman of Supreme Soviet of Ukraine; presided over independence declaration
1991.12–1994.07First President of Ukraine; signed Belavezha Accords; lost to Kuchma
1994–2006People's Deputy, parliamentary leader of SDPU(o)
The nuclear physicist who demanded Chernobyl truth, hosted the meeting that dissolved the USSR, and called Gorbachev to tell him
Gorbachev asked, 'Have you thought about the international reaction?' I answered, 'Yeltsin is on the phone with Bush right now. Bush seems to be in favor!'
A nuclear physicist from Minsk, he was a professor at Belarusian State University and a specialist in radio electronics. In 1986, as a member of the Chernobyl investigation commission, he demanded the truth be made public against the Soviet cover-up and was removed, an experience that propelled him into politics. As chairman of the Belarusian Supreme Soviet in 1991, he hosted Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk at the Viskuli hunting lodge for what was billed as a discussion of oil and gas supplies; when the conversation turned to dissolving the USSR, he was the first to say he would sign, and he was the one who telephoned Gorbachev to inform him the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The first head of state of independent Belarus, he was ousted in 1994 by Alexander Lukashenko's corruption allegations and spent his final decades in Minsk as an unyielding opposition elder.
Career timeline
1956Graduated, Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, BSU
1963–1965Associate Professor, Nuclear Physics, BSU
1966–1970Vice-Rector for Research, Minsk Radio Engineering Institute
Ukrainian SSR head of state during Chernobyl who pushed the evacuation of 526,000 children from Kyiv against Moscow's resistance
Recalling the interior deputy minister's report on the morning of 26 April 1986: 'The fire was put out, everything is fine. The people? Some are having a wedding, some are gardening, some are fishing in the Pripyat River.'
As Chairwoman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR during the Chernobyl disaster, she defied Moscow's directives and oversaw the evacuation of 526,000 children from Kyiv and contaminated zones in just five days. Born the daughter of a miner in Kryvyi Rih, she rose through Komsomol and the deputy ministry of education to become the republic's formal head of state in 1985, spending her tenure navigating between central information control and the realities on the ground. In 1989 she refused to sign the resolution banning the People's Movement of Ukraine (Rukh), and after retirement led children's and women's welfare foundations while maintaining a sympathetic view of the Soviet system and a critical stance toward independent Ukraine.
Career timeline
1954–1957Pioneer leader, geography teacher, school Komsomol secretary in Kryvyi Rih
1957–1962Secretary of Kryvyi Rih city Komsomol, then Dzerzhinsky district party committee
1962–1969Secretary and department head, Komsomol Central Committee of Ukraine
1969–1972Deputy Minister of Education, Ukrainian SSR
1975–1985Deputy Chair, Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Ukrainian SSR
1985–1990Chair of the Presidium, Supreme Soviet, Ukrainian SSR (head of state)
1985–1989Deputy Chair, Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, USSR
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.
Career timeline
1959–1963Mechanised-agriculture detachment chief → Selkhoztekhnika branch manager, Gorky Oblast
1966–1968First Secretary, Gorky Oblast Komsomol
1968–1980Chairman, USSR Committee of Youth Organizations
The Communist Party secretary who led Latvia's Supreme Council through the restoration of independence
On 14 January 1991, General Kuzmin's ultimatum to the chairman of the Supreme Council was simple: repeal the laws Latvia had adopted, or the army would act. Gorbunovs did not repeal them, and a week later flew to Moscow to face Gorbachev.
A farmer's son from Pilda in eastern Latvia, he graduated from construction college, Riga Polytechnical Institute, and the Moscow Academy of Social Sciences, then rose through the Latvian Communist Party apparatus to become Central Committee secretary for ideology. He broke with the party's hard line in 1988 by backing the Latvian Popular Front, and as Chairman of the Supreme Council presided over the 4 May 1990 session that declared the Soviet Union an occupying power and began the transition to restored independence. During the January 1991 Barricades he stood firm against General Kuzmin's ultimatum, then flew to Moscow on 21 January to confront Gorbachev directly.
Career timeline
1959–1965Technician at Nīkrāce state farm, employee at Riga Agricultural Engineering Institute, Soviet Army service
1970–1974Senior lecturer at Riga Polytechnical Institute, Kirov district Komsomol first secretary
1974–1988Various posts in the Latvian Communist Party Central Committee, rising to secretary for ideology
1988–1990Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR
1990–1993Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Latvia, acting head of state after independence
1993–1995Speaker of the 5th Saeima
1995–2002Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Environmental Protection and Regional Development, Minister for Transport
The Supreme Soviet chairman who stood with Yeltsin against the coup, then fell to Yeltsin's tanks
During the October 1993 siege of the White House, when Yeltsin offered safety guarantees, Khasbulatov replied: 'I need no guarantees, I can offer guarantees to Yeltsin myself.'
Ruslan Khasbulatov was a Chechen-born Soviet economist and Russian politician who became the last chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet. On the day of the August 1991 coup, he was Yeltsin's closest ally: he personally drafted the appeal 'To the Citizens of Russia' and helped organize the defense of the White House. After the Soviet collapse, however, he turned the parliament into the center of opposition to Yeltsin's economic reforms and concentration of power, leading to the 1993 constitutional crisis in which he and Vice-President Rutskoy commanded the parliamentary resistance until tanks shelled the building and they were arrested. Amnestied in 1994, he left politics and returned to academia, teaching world economics at his alma mater.
Career timeline
1965Graduated from the Faculty of Law, Moscow State University
1970–1990Professor and head of the Department of International Economic Relations, Moscow Institute of National Economy (Plekhanov)
1990.03Elected RSFSR People's Deputy from the Grozny constituency
1990.06–1991.10First Deputy Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet
1991.07–10Acting Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet
1991.10–1993.10Chairman of the RSFSR/Russian Federation Supreme Soviet
1994–2023Head of the Department of World Economics, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics
