People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1891–1940 ○ Died

Bolshevik chairman of the Turkestan Sovnarkom in 1917–1918 who crushed the Kokand Autonomy and attacked Bukhara

Born in Uralsk in 1891, he worked as a railway clerk in Orenburg and Tashkent. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1917, sat on the executive committee of the Tashkent Soviet, was elected to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee at the Second Congress of Soviets and helped organise the armed rising in Tashkent in November. As chairman of the Turkestan Sovnarkom from November 1917 to November 1918 he rejected a coalition, declaring that Muslims could not be admitted to the supreme organ of power, and put down by force the bids for autonomy in Ashgabat and Kokand. In March 1918 he tried with the Young Bukharans to overthrow the Emir of Bukhara and had to retreat. He chaired the Far Eastern Council of the National Economy in 1923–1928, later worked as an architect and died in Moscow in 1940.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1891–1973 ○ Natural causes

The army general who survived Kolyma, took Berlin, and testified to Stalin-era repression

Told of the wartime case in which he had timber shipped out in defiance of a ban to supply pit props for the Donbas mines, Stalin is reported to have said 'Only the grave will correct Gorbatov' and then closed the matter because no personal gain was involved.

Born in 1891 into a peasant family in Pakhotino, Vladimir Governorate, he entered the Imperial Russian Army in 1912 and in World War I won two Crosses of St. George, rising to senior non-commissioned officer. He joined the Red Army in 1919 and in the Civil War commanded a cavalry regiment and a Bashkir cavalry brigade; removed from his post in 1937 and arrested in 1938, he was tortured yet refused to admit guilt. Convicted in May 1939 and sentenced to 15 years at the Kolyma camp, he was released in March 1941, then led the 3rd Army from 1943 to the war's end and became commandant of Berlin in 1945. He later commanded the Airborne Forces and the Baltic Military District and became General of the Army in 1955; his 1964 Novy Mir memoir made him one of the first Soviet state figures to describe the Great Terror in detail.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1892–1925 ✕ Suspicious drowning

Trotsky's Carnot: the Red Army's administrative brain, erased by Stalinism

Trotsky wrote in his memoirs: 'I chose Sklyansky as my deputy. I never had any occasion to regret it afterwards. If anyone could be compared with Lazare Carnot of the French Revolution, it is Sklyansky.'

One of the de facto founders of the Red Army and Trotsky's most trusted deputy. A Kiev University medical graduate and Bolshevik since 1913, at just 26 he became Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council and Deputy War Commissar, running the Red Army's entire administrative and operational machinery from Moscow while Trotsky roamed the Civil War fronts. Trotsky ranked him with Lazare Carnot, the military organizer of the French Revolution. Dismissed in 1924 during Stalin's rise and demoted to a textile trust, he drowned under suspicious circumstances in Long Lake, New York, the following year. His name was systematically erased from Soviet military history under Stalin.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1892–1933 ✕ Air crash

Principal architect of the Soviet Air Force and aviation industry

On 2 August 1930 at Voronezh airfield, Baranov ordered the first combat drop of armed paratroopers — "demonstrate the drop of a group of armed parachutists for sabotage actions on 'enemy' territory" — the day considered the birth of the Soviet Airborne Forces (VDV).

One of the main creators of the Soviet Air Force, Baranov commanded the VVS from 1924 to 1931, building its organizational and industrial foundations. From 1932, as Deputy People's Commissar for Heavy Industry and head of the aviation industry under Ordzhonikidze, he drove the expansion of aircraft and engine production that would sustain Soviet air power through World War II. On 2 August 1930 he initiated the first combat paratrooper drop near Voronezh, the founding event of the Soviet Airborne Forces (VDV). He also signed the agreement establishing the secret Lipetsk German aviation school and backed early rocket research through GIRD as well as stratospheric balloon flights. He and his wife died in a plane crash in 1933; his ashes are interred in the Kremlin Wall.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1892–1941 ✕ Killed in action

Southwestern Front commander who fell in the Kiev encirclement

On 26 June 1941, German Chief of Staff Halder noted: 'The enemy facing Army Group South displays firm and energetic leadership.' Amid the chaos of the Brody tank battle, Kirponos's Southwestern Front held.

Born to a poor Ukrainian peasant family, he was conscripted in 1915 and joined the Bolsheviks in 1918, fighting the Civil War with Shchors's division. After the Frunze Academy he served as commandant of the Kazan Infantry School, then commanded the 70th Rifle Division in the Winter War: outflanking Vyborg across the frozen Gulf of Finland and earning the Hero of the Soviet Union. Appointed commander of the Kiev Special Military District in January 1941, he led the Southwestern Front from the first day of Barbarossa, directing the tank battle at Brody and the defence of Kiev. On 20 September 1941 he was killed by mortar shrapnel trying to break out of the Kiev encirclement, the highest-ranking Soviet commander to die in the catastrophe.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1892–1962 ○ Natural causes

The invisible commander who moved the war, the only supply general Stalin toasted as architect of victory

Kremlin victory banquet, May 1945. After all the toasts to the marshals, Stalin refilled his glass and said: 'Now a toast to the true commander and great toiler of the war, without whom there would have been no great victory. To Comrade Khrulev.'

A blacksmith's son who rose from a Petersburg goldsmith's apprentice to General of the Army and founder of the modern Soviet rear services. He created the Red Army's unified logistics system, the Rear (Тыл), on 1 August 1941 and directed it for the entire war, simultaneously serving as People's Commissar of Railways in 1942–43. He visited Stalin's Kremlin office 113 times during the war to coordinate supply directly with the Supreme Commander, and at the victory banquet Stalin raised a toast to 'the true commander and great toiler of the war, without whom there would have been no great victory.' After his death, Nikita Khrushchev opposed a Kremlin wall burial, but the military prevailed and his ashes were placed in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1892–1970 ○ Natural causes

The cavalryman who closed Stalingrad's southern pincer

In August 1941, taking command of the Bryansk Front, Yeryomenko promised Stalin personally: "I will smash that scoundrel Guderian." The promise failed; Guderian encircled Kiev instead.

Born to a poor Ukrainian peasant family, Yeryomenko rose from a conscript in the First World War to Marshal of the Soviet Union. He fought the Civil War in Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army and survived the purges as a cavalry officer. At Stalingrad he commanded the Southeastern (later Stalingrad) Front, planning the city's defence with Khrushchev and closing the southern pincer of Operation Uranus to trap Paulus's 6th Army. He led no fewer than eight fronts during the war, ending it at the head of the 4th Ukrainian Front liberating Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Made a Marshal in 1955, his battlefield record far outran his political weight. He was also a diarist: despite a ban on wartime journals, he kept one throughout.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1892–1978 ○ Natural causes

The cavalry general who bolted the Caucasus gate, witness to three wars

In the summer of 1942, German mountain troops planted the Nazi flag on Mount Elbrus. Tyulenev did not retreat. The Terek–Grozny line he had insisted on building held firm, and the Wehrmacht never reached the oil.

Born a peasant's son in Simbirsk, he became a Full Cavalier of the St. George Cross, all four classes, in the First World War. During the Civil War he served in Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army as intelligence chief and brigade commander. In 1940, alongside Zhukov and Meretskov, he was one of the first three men promoted to General of the Army. His Southern Front command in 1941 ended in disaster and a severe wound; but appointed commander of the Transcaucasian Front in February 1942, he built the Terek–Grozny defence line that held. His most consequential achievement was stopping the German drive to the Baku oilfields in the 1942–43 Battle of the Caucasus. Postwar he commanded military districts and served as cavalry inspector, wrote the memoir Through Three Wars, and received the Hero of the Soviet Union title just months before his death in 1978.