A lawyer-statesman who held White Siberia together through compromise
He told Kolchak that the government’s authority, and Kolchak’s own, was falling with every passing hour.
Pyotr Vologodsky was a lawyer and statesman shaped by Siberian regionalism and the Socialist Revolutionary movement, advocating local self-government and legal reform before 1917. In 1918 he led Siberia’s anti-Bolshevik government and managed compromises among right-wing, socialist, and regionalist forces. He remained head of government after Kolchak’s seizure of power, criticized the crisis produced by military arbitrariness and administrative weakness, and resigned in 1919 before emigrating to China.
Career timeline
1887–1897Clerk, judge, and assistant prosecutor in Siberian judicial institutions
1897–1917Tomsk attorney and member of the city duma
1902–1907Leader in Tomsk Socialist Revolutionary organization and Siberian regionalism
1917Tomsk provincial commissar and senior chairman of the Omsk court chamber
1918.01–06Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia
1918.06–11Chairman of the Provisional Siberian Government
1918.11–1919.11Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Government
1920–1925Exile in China, working in legal and émigré affairs
German Social Democratic and Independent Social Democratic politician who headed Berlin police in 1918
“I got my job from the Revolution, and I shall give it up only to the Revolution.”
A trained mechanic, Eichhorn worked for the Social Democratic Party before joining the Independent Social Democratic Party in 1917. After the November Revolution of 1918, he became Berlin police president and pursued a policing policy favorable to left-wing political groups. On 4 January 1919, the Prussian cabinet tried to dismiss him and replace him with Social Democrat Eugen Ernst. Mass demonstrations and a general strike opposed the move, followed by occupations and armed clashes that became the January uprising.
Career timeline
1893Became a full-time Social Democratic Party official and worked as an editor in Dresden
1903–1911Member of the Reichstag for Baden's 9th constituency
1908–1917Head of the Berlin Social Democratic press office
1917Joined the Independent Social Democratic Party
1918–1919Served as Berlin police president
1919–1920Member of the Weimar National Assembly for Berlin
1920–1925Joined the Communist Party of Germany and served in the Reichstag
The Don Cossack's son who gave the revolution its epic
“We learned victory in bitter agony, squeezing blood from our bodies.” — The Iron Flood
A Soviet writer of Don Cossack origin who joined the Bolsheviks in 1918. His The Iron Flood (1924), an epic of the Taman Army's legendary Civil War march, became a monument of Soviet prose. As editor of Oktyabr he discovered Sholokhov's Quiet Flows the Don.
Career timeline
1889Publishes first story 'On the Ice' from exile under new pseudonym
1902–1917Moscow: Gorky's Sreda group; Tolstoy praises story 'Sands'
1918Joins Bolsheviks, literary editor of Izvestia
1924The Iron Flood — Civil War epic of the Taman Army march
1926–1929Oktyabr editor-in-chief, discovers Sholokhov's Quiet Flows the Don
1934Founding presidium member, Union of Soviet Writers
1943Stalin Prize 1st class; donates to Defence Fund
Creator of the Japhetic theory who, as the sole Imperial academician to join the Communist Party, dominated Soviet linguistics for decades
'The formulation of the study of language on a worldwide scale' — that was Marr's favourite phrase for his own theory. To him, all languages descended from four primordial elements, and language itself was a class superstructure.
Born in Kutaisi, Georgia to a Scottish father and Georgian mother, Marr made his name in Caucasian linguistics and archaeology at St. Petersburg University, becoming a full member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1912 and conducting landmark excavations at the ancient Armenian capital of Ani. After the Revolution, he propounded the 'Japhetic theory,' the New Doctrine of Language, which treated language as a class-bound superstructure and traced all words to four primordial elements (sal, ber, yon, rosh); joining the Party in 1930 as the Academy's only Imperial-era member to do so, he became vice-president and dominated Soviet linguistics until 1934. His pseudo-scientific doctrine was officially repudiated by Stalin's 'Marxism and Problems of Linguistics' in 1950, yet his career epitomizes the collision of science, ideology, and state power in the early Soviet period.
Career timeline
1888Graduated St. Petersburg University Oriental Faculty, appointed lecturer
1912Full member, Imperial Academy of Sciences
1921Founded Japhetic Institute (later Institute of Language and Thought)
1926–1930Director, Leningrad Public Library
1930Joined Communist Party (first and only Imperial-era academician)
Lenin's elder brother: a gold-medal zoologist who turned from studying worms to building bombs for the assassination of Alexander III
To his mother, who urged him to petition for clemency: "Imagine, Mama, two men standing in a duel. One has already fired at his opponent, the other has not. The one who has already fired cannot ask his opponent not to use his weapon."
Elder brother of Vladimir Lenin. A brilliant zoology student who won a gold medal at St. Petersburg University for his dissertation on segmented worms, Ulyanov abruptly turned to revolutionary politics in 1886, becoming the main ideologue and bomb-maker of the 'Terrorist Faction' of Narodnaya Volya. He masterminded the attempted assassination of Tsar Alexander III on 1 March 1887, the 'Second First of March', and was arrested, tried, and hanged at Shlisselburg Fortress on 8 May 1887, aged 21. His execution shattered his family and drove his 17-year-old brother Vladimir onto the revolutionary path that would lead to 1917.
Career timeline
1883Graduated Simbirsk Classical Gymnasium with gold medal
1883–1886Studied natural sciences at St. Petersburg University; won gold medal for zoology dissertation on Annelida
1886Joined Narodnaya Volya; organized the 'Terrorist Faction' as its main ideologue and bomb-maker
1887.02Wrote the Terrorist Faction program; prepared bombs for assassination of Alexander III
1887.03–05Arrested 1 March; tried 15–19 April; hanged at Shlisselburg Fortress on 8 May
A Pole who passed through the German and Russian revolutions and tried to bring revolution home
As the Red Army prepared to march on Warsaw in 1920, he joined Radek in repeatedly urging Lenin to halt — warning him not to overestimate the revolutionary consciousness of the Polish worker.
Co-founder of Polish communism, he established the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKPiL) in 1893 together with Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches. Active in the German SPD's left wing, he helped build the Spartacus League and the German Communist Party, and after the Russian Revolution joined the Bolsheviks, becoming one of Lenin's close advisers on agrarian policy. During the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 he served as chairman of the Polish Provisional Revolutionary Committee, and later became the first chairman of International Red Aid (MOPR) and first rector of the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West.
Career timeline
1889Co-founded Polish Workers' Union
1893Co-founded SDKPiL with Luxemburg and Jogiches
1896Doctorate from Zurich University
1906–1907SDKPiL delegate to RSDLP London Congress; candidate CC member
1914–1918Spartacus League; imprisoned in Germany for anti-war activity
The revolutionary naval officer who raised the red flag over the Black Sea Fleet and demanded a constitution from the Tsar
Schmidt's telegram to Nicholas II: "...demands Your Majesty to immediately call a meeting of the Constituent Assembly, and no longer obeys orders of Your ministers. Commander of the Fleet P. Schmidt."
Born into a family of Imperial Russian Navy officers, he emerged in the tide of the 1905 Revolution as the leader of the Sevastopol naval mutiny. He raised the red flag on the cruiser Ochakov, proclaimed himself Commander of the Black Sea Fleet, and sent a telegram to Nicholas II demanding the convening of a Constituent Assembly. The mutiny was crushed in ninety minutes and he was shot on Berezan Island, but his name was immortalized as "Lieutenant Schmidt" in streets, ships, and monuments across the Soviet Union, and in Boris Pasternak's poem.
Journalist who overthrew the Bavarian monarchy in Munich in November 1918, proclaimed the People’s State and was assassinated the next year
He organized the November 1918 Bavarian Revolution, overthrew the monarchy and proclaimed the People’s State; he was assassinated in February 1919 while on his way to resign.
Born to a Jewish merchant family in Berlin, he was a theatre critic and editor of the SPD’s Vorwärts before moving to Munich. He joined the USPD against the war and was jailed for leading the munitions strike of January 1918. On 7 November he led demonstrators from a rally on the Theresienwiese round the barracks, and the next day proclaimed the People’s State of Bavaria and became premier. His publication of documents on German war guilt earned him the right’s hatred. Heavily defeated in the January 1919 election, he was assassinated by Count Arco-Valley on 21 February on his way to resign.
Career timeline
1890–1895Contributing editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung.
1898Joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
1900–1905Edited Vorwärts.
1907–1910Chief editor of the Fränkische Tagespost in Nuremberg.
1917Joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD).
1918Convicted of treason for inciting a munitions workers’ strike, he was imprisoned at Stadelheim and released in October under a general amnesty.
1918–1919Served as the first republican premier of the People’s State of Bavaria.
One of Russia's first Marxists, from Narodnaya Volya to leader of the 1905 Chita Republic
Old Tiflis workers recalled: 'On any argument or discussion, all the comrades turned to Kurnatovsky. His conclusions and judgments were always accepted without argument.'
A Narodnaya Volya activist who turned to Marxism, Kurnatovsky worked with Plekhanov's Emancipation of Labour group in Geneva and met Lenin in Minusinsk exile, where he co-signed the 'Protest of Russian Social Democrats.' In 1900 he became Iskra's representative in the Caucasus, founded the Tiflis Committee of the RSDLP, and served as young Stalin's 'party teacher.' During the 1905 revolution he organized the Soviet of Workers', Soldiers' and Cossacks' Deputies in Chita and led the armed uprising known as the 'Chita Republic.' Sentenced to death, then commuted to life at hard labor, he escaped via Japan and died in Parisian exile at 44.
Career timeline
1887–1889Narodnaya Volya activist; expelled from St. Petersburg and Moscow universities and exiled
1892–1897Zurich Polytechnic graduate (chemical engineering); joins Plekhanov's Emancipation of Labour
1898–1900Minusinsk exile; meets Lenin, co-signs 'Protest of Russian Social Democrats'
1900–1901Iskra representative in Caucasus; founds Tiflis RSDLP Committee
1904Leads armed protest of Yakutsk political exiles; imprisoned at Akatuy katorga
He raised the workers' flag and the republic's on a single staff
Too wounded to stand, he was shot tied to a chair — Kilmainham Gaol, 12 May 1916
A socialist revolutionary who fused Marxism with Irish national liberation. He founded the Irish Citizen Army, commanded the Dublin Brigade in the 1916 Easter Rising, and was executed by the British after its suppression.
Career timeline
1896Founds the Irish Socialist Republican Party
1903–1910IWW organizer in America
1910–1914Leads the ITGWU through the 1913 Dublin Lockout
1910Published Labour in Irish History
1913Founds the Irish Citizen Army
1915Published The Re-Conquest of Ireland
1916.04Easter Rising — Dublin commandant, signatory of the Proclamation
Anarchists
1868–1921
○ Natural death after illness
An anarchist spark in the crisis of 1917
“The street will organise us.”
Iosif Bleikhman was an anarchist communist revolutionary who came from the artisan world and carried his politics into workers’ organisations and soldiers’ assemblies. After the February Revolution, he became a leading Petrograd anarchist and argued for socialising industry, expropriating landlord property and building communes outside the Provisional Government. On 3 July 1917 he urged the First Machine Gun Regiment to take up arms and march, helping turn a broader crisis into the armed July Days, although the Bolshevik leadership had not initiated the movement. After October he supported the revolution against the old order while criticising the Bolshevik state, which brought repeated arrests, penal labour and illness before his death in 1921.
Career timeline
1897Joined the revolutionary movement
1904Adopted anarchist communism in the United States
1906Organised an anarchist group in Dvinsk
1913–1914Agitator in Petersburg trade unions
1917Secretary of the Petrograd Federation of Anarchist-Communists and editor of Kommuna
1917Agitator of the First Machine Gun Regiment during the July Days
1917–1919Secretary of the Petrograd Federation of Anarchist Groups
1920–1921Moscow trade-union council worker; arrested and sent to penal labour
Actress turned Bolshevik financial agent whom Lenin called 'Comrade Phenomenon'
In 1903, passing as the wife of a senior railway official, she hid a wanted underground activist in her first-class compartment while delivering a suitcase of May Day leaflets to Gorky.
Maria Andreyeva was a leading actress of the Moscow Art Theatre and stage partner of Konstantin Stanislavski who, after joining the Bolsheviks in 1904, became one of the party's most effective financial agents. Her fundraising prowess (channeling fortunes from industrialists like Savva Morozov into Lenin's coffers) earned her the party alias 'Comrade Phenomenon,' and during her eighteen years as Maxim Gorky's common-law wife she was the material and practical backbone of his literary work and propaganda tours abroad. After the October Revolution she served as Commissar of Theaters and Public Shows in Petrograd, co-founded the Bolshoi Drama Theatre, and later directed the Moscow House of Scientists for eighteen years, dedicating her final decades to building Soviet cultural institutions.
Career timeline
1894–1898Actress, Russian Society of Art and Literature
"Capitalism cannot reform itself": father of the modern Negro liberation movement who joined the Communist Party at 93
"Communism will triumph. I want to help bring that day." — from his 1961 application to join the Communist Party USA, submitted at age 93
American sociologist, historian, Pan-Africanist, and the single most important African American intellectual of the 20th century. A co-founder of the NAACP, he edited its magazine The Crisis for 24 years, shaping the direction of the black civil rights movement, while his books The Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction in America transformed American sociology and historiography. He viewed capitalism as the root cause of racism and pursued a synthesis of Marxism and Pan-Africanism. In 1961, at age 93, he joined the Communist Party USA; invited by Kwame Nkrumah, he settled in Ghana to begin work on the Encyclopedia Africana, and died there in 1963.
Career timeline
1895–1897Wilberforce University; University of Pennsylvania researcher, published The Philadelphia Negro (1899)
1897–1910Atlanta University professor; published The Souls of Black Folk (1903); founded Niagara Movement (1905)
1910–1934NAACP co-founder, editor of The Crisis; organized Pan-African Congresses
1934–1944Atlanta University professor; published Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
1944–1948NAACP Director of Special Research; attended UN founding conference
1950–1951Peace Information Center chair; indicted under FARA, acquitted
1961–1963Joined CPUSA; emigrated to Ghana, began Encyclopedia Africana
The Okhrana's paid informant who led the revolution's terrorist vanguard
In June 1902, Azef reported to the Okhrana that he had donated 500 rubles to terrorist operations, writing that it was 'necessary to strengthen my position in the party.' He was keeping books for both sides at once.
As head of the Socialist Revolutionary Party's Combat Organization, he orchestrated the assassinations of Interior Minister Plehve (1904) and Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich (1905), reaching the apex of revolutionary terror, while simultaneously working as a paid informant for the Okhrana from 1893 onward, delivering dozens of comrades to arrest and execution. He succeeded Gershuni and commanded Boris Savinkov as his deputy, reshaping the Combat Organization into a centralized, disciplined elite unit; the trust he earned through successful assassinations became the currency of his betrayals. Exposed by Vladimir Burtsev in 1908, he fled to Germany, leaving the SR Party devastated, and remains the darkest point of contact between the revolutionary movement and the Tsarist secret police.
Career timeline
1893–1899Studied electrical engineering in Germany; began informing for the Okhrana
1899Returned to Russia, joined Socialist Revolutionary circles
1901–1902Co-founded the unified SR Party; joined Combat Organization as Gershuni's deputy
1903–1908Head of the SR Combat Organization
1904Organized assassination of Interior Minister Plehve
1905Organized assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich
1906Ordered the assassination of Father Gapon
1908Exposed by Burtsev; fled to Germany
1909–1918Lived in Berlin under the alias Alexander Neumayr
She built the Soviet school and library system from the shadow of her husband
Trotsky described her Iskra room: it always smelled of burned paper, because she warmed the secret letters over a flame to read them, and she kept the aliases and addresses of hundreds of underground agents in her head.
Lenin's wife and closest comrade, but an organizer in her own right. Born in Saint Petersburg into an impoverished noble family, she joined Marxist circles and taught and propagandized among workers before marrying Lenin in Shushenskoye exile in 1898. As Iskra's secretary in emigration she ran the network of codes, aliases and addresses through which the party held together, and after 1917 she built Soviet education: the likbez literacy campaign, the unified labor school and a nationwide library network. In 1925 she briefly backed the New Opposition, then publicly recanted, and in 1928 her attack on Chukovsky's fairy tales effectively barred him from children's literature. She also ran the purging of 'harmful' library stock, yet intervened for intended victims of the terror. She died of peritonitis on 27 February 1939, the day after her 70th birthday; her ashes rest in the Kremlin Wall.
Career timeline
1887Graduated Obolenskaya Gymnasium with a gold medal
1889–1890Attended Bestuzhev Courses; joined a Marxist student circle
1891–1896Taught at an evening school for workers beyond the Neva Gate; propaganda work
1898Married Lenin in Shushenskoye exile; joined the RSDLP
1901–1905Exile in Munich and London; secretary of the newspaper Iskra
1905–1907Returned to Russia; secretary of the Bolshevik Central Committee
1911Taught at the Party school in Longjumeau; co-founded the women's journal Rabotnitsa
1917–1920Participated in the October Revolution; designed Komsomol and Pioneer movements; chair of Glavpolitprosvet
1924–1927Member of the Central Control Commission; briefly supported the New Opposition at the 14th Congress (1925), then recanted
1927–1939Member of the Central Committee of the VKP(b)
1929–1939Deputy People's Commissar for Enlightenment of the RSFSR; led Soviet education, library and censorship policy
1931Elected honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences; awarded doctorate in pedagogy
1937Elected deputy of the USSR Supreme Soviet (1st convocation); member of its Presidium
Soviet Union
Soviet communism
1869–1944
○ Natural causes
The Bolshevik physician who built the USSR Supreme Court and led it for fourteen years
On 30 August 1918, when Lenin was carried into the Kremlin bleeding from an assassin's bullets, it was Vinokurov — a trained physician — who gave him first aid. Nobody imagined that six years later the doctor would sit at the apex of Soviet justice.
A Bolshevik jurist trained as a physician, Vinokurov served as the first Chairman of the USSR Supreme Court (1924–1938) and built the institutional foundations of the Soviet judiciary. A revolutionary of the first generation, he co-founded the Moscow Social Democratic organisation in 1893, joined the Bolsheviks in 1903, and chaired the first Bolshevik Petrograd City Duma in October 1917. He treated Lenin's wounds after the 1918 assassination attempt and, as People's Commissar of Social Security (1918–1921), laid the groundwork for Soviet welfare administration. Throughout his Supreme Court tenure he rivalled Vyshinsky and Krylenko for control of the justice apparatus, holding a comparatively legalistic line while remaining institutionally implicated in the Great Terror. Dismissed in 1938 and relegated to a health-education post, he died of natural causes in 1944.
Career timeline
1893–1902Co-founded Moscow and Yekaterinoslav Social Democratic organisations; arrested, solitary confinement, exile
1903–1917Bolshevik party work in Yekaterinoslav and St. Petersburg; editor of 'Insurance Questions' journal
1917.10Chairman of the first Bolshevik Petrograd City Duma; collegium member, People's Commissariat of Labour
1918–1921People's Commissar of Social Security of the RSFSR
1921–1924Member of the Famine Relief Commission and Commission to Combat the Effects of Famine
1924–1938Chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR
1938–1944Head of Health Education, People's Commissariat of Health; later at Medgiz
Leader who took the SFIO majority into the Comintern at Tours in 1920, founding the French Communist Party, and ran L’Humanité
At the 1920 Tours Congress, he backed SFIO affiliation with the Comintern, led the majority split, and helped found the French Communist Party. Arrested in 1923 for opposing France’s Ruhr occupation, he was cleared by the Senate sitting as a High Court.
Born in Paimpol in Brittany, he joined Guesde’s French Workers’ Party in 1891 and the unified SFIO in 1905, and from 1918 ran L’Humanité for the rest of his life. As his supporters swung towards the October Revolution after the war, he led the vote to join the Comintern at the Tours congress of 1920 and became a founder of the French Communist Party. He was jailed in 1923 for denouncing the French occupation of the Ruhr. A deputy and senator, he remained the party’s elder statesman until his death in 1958.
Career timeline
1892Joined the Gironde section of the French Workers’ Party, founded by Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue.
1905Took part in the founding congress of the unified Socialist Party (SFIO) and became its propaganda delegate.
1918Elected director of L’Humanité, which he led until his death in 1958.
1920At the Tours Congress, supported SFIO affiliation with the Comintern and helped found the French Section of the Communist International (SFIC), predecessor of the French Communist Party.
1923Arrested for opposing France’s Ruhr occupation and brought before the Senate sitting as a High Court; it ruled there was no case to answer.
1936Elected senator for the Seine, becoming the first senator from the French Communist Party.
The priest who led the march, and ended a double agent
After Bloody Sunday, Gapon wrote: "We no longer have a tsar. Today a river of blood divides him from the Russian people. It is time for the Russian workers to begin the struggle for the people's freedom without him."
On January 9, 1905, he led 150,000 workers in a petition march to the Winter Palace, where troops opened fire. He survived to write "We no longer have a Tsar," but when his double game with the police came to light, SR combatants hanged him the next year.
Career timeline
1902–1904Organizes the police-sponsored Assembly of Factory Workers
1905.01.09Leads the Winter Palace petition march, Bloody Sunday
1905–1906Exile; contacts with the revolutionary parties
1906His police ties exposed; hanged by SR combatants
German anarchist thinker who served in Bavaria’s revolutionary government and was killed by counterrevolutionary troops in 1919.
The state is a social relationship. Create new communities, and it can be replaced by a different social relationship.
Landauer argued that the state was not merely an apparatus to overthrow but a social relationship that could be replaced by creating voluntary communities. In 1908 he founded the Socialist Bund to pursue socialism through cooperatives and communal association. He opposed the First World War and came to Munich at Kurt Eisner’s request in 1918 to support the revolution. In April 1919 he joined the Bavarian Soviet Republic as Commissioner for Enlightenment and Public Instruction. After government forces crushed the republic, he was arrested and killed at Stadelheim Prison on 2 May.
Career timeline
1908Founded the Socialist Bund
1918Came to Munich at Kurt Eisner’s request to support the revolutionary government
1919Commissioner for Enlightenment and Public Instruction in the Bavarian Soviet Republic
French socialist and teachers’ union activist who led the Committee for the Third International
He organised internationalist socialists against the war and served as secretary of the Committee for the Third International during the founding of the French Communist Party.
A teacher, Loriot joined the Socialist Party in 1901 and became active in the teachers’ union. During the First World War he opposed support for the war and backed the Zimmerwald position, serving as secretary of the Committee for the Resumption of International Relations and later the Committee for the Third International. At the Tours Congress in 1920 he joined the leadership of the newly formed French Communist Party.
Career timeline
1901Joined the Socialist Party
1917Became secretary of the Committee for the Resumption of International Relations
1919Secretary of the Committee for the Third International
1920Elected to the Executive Committee of the newly formed Communist Party and as international secretary at the Tours Congress
1925Active in opposition to the party’s Bolshevisation
1926Left the party and joined the revolutionary syndicalist movement
Anarchist writer who served 14 years for the Frick assassination attempt, then broke with the Soviet state
At his farewell banquet in Chicago, told of Frick's death, Berkman remarked: 'Frick had been deported by God.'
Russian-born anarchist revolutionary and writer who emigrated to the United States in 1888. Outraged by the repression of striking Homestead steelworkers, he attempted to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick in 1892, served 14 years in prison, and chronicled the experience in Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1912). After his release he became editor of Emma Goldman's Mother Earth and a central figure in the American anarchist movement; in 1919 he was deported to Soviet Russia for anti-war activism. Initially enthusiastic about the Bolshevik Revolution, he became disillusioned after witnessing the Kronstadt rebellion's suppression and documented the early Soviet state's authoritarianism in The Bolshevik Myth (1925); in French exile he wrote the anarcho-communist primer Now and After (1929).
Career timeline
1888Immigrates to US, joins anarchist movement as typesetter for Johann Most's Freiheit
1892Attempts to assassinate Henry Clay Frick during Homestead strike; serves 14 of 22 years
1907–1915Editor of Mother Earth, builds it into the leading US anarchist journal
1916Launches his own journal The Blast in San Francisco
1917Imprisoned for anti-draft organizing; deported to Soviet Russia in 1919
1921Witnesses Kronstadt suppression, breaks with Bolsheviks, leaves Russia
1925Publishes The Bolshevik Myth, a diary-based critique of early Soviet rule
1929Publishes Now and After, classic introduction to anarcho-communism
Founder of the Marx-Engels Institute and independent Marxist who never stopped disagreeing
«Stop it, Koba, don't make a fool of yourself. Everybody knows theory is not exactly your field.» — to Stalin at a party meeting.
A Jewish-Russian Marxist from Odessa who joined the revolutionary movement at 17. In 1921 he founded the Marx-Engels Institute (IME), assembling the world's finest collection of Marxist documents and personally recovering, editing and first publishing Marx and Engels' unpublished manuscripts, including the first chapter of The German Ideology and Dialectics of Nature. A full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1929) and the foremost Marx scholar of his generation, his independence (public opposition to the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the Brest peace, and the suppression of dissent within the party) led to his arrest in 1931 and execution in Saratov in 1938.
Career timeline
1887–1889Organised workers' circles in Odessa as an early Marxist; first Paris sojourn, met Plekhanov and Lavrov
1891–1899Arrested, held 18 months then 4 years' hard labour; exiled to Kishinev; spent 5 years in Kresty Prison
1901–1905Led the Borba group and attended the 2nd RSDLP Congress; openly criticised Lenin's party centralism and factionalism
1905–1907Returned to Russia; helped organise the first trade unions in Petersburg; worked in the SD faction of the 2nd Duma
1907–1917Exile abroad; researched in the German SPD archives, served as Kautsky's academic secretary; recovered and published many unpublished Marx-Engels manuscripts
1917–1918Returned, joined the Mezhraiontsy and merged with Bolsheviks; elected to Constituent Assembly; opposed armed uprising, dissolution of the Assembly and press suppression
1918–1920Briefly left the party over Brest peace, then reinstated; headed Glavarkhiv (Main Archive Administration) and the Science Directorate
1921–1931Founded and directed the Marx-Engels Institute (IME); first published The German Ideology ch. 1 (1924) and Dialectics of Nature (1925)
1929Elected full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (history, 27 of 30 votes); awarded Order of the Red Banner of Labour
1931–1938Arrested on charges of Menshevik ties, expelled from Academy and party, exiled to Saratov; re-arrested 1937, shot 21 January 1938
Social Democratic chancellor whose government accepted the Treaty of Versailles under an Allied ultimatum
Born in Darkehmen in the Province of Prussia, he worked as a lawyer’s clerk, co-founded the office employees’ union and was second chairman of the General Commission of Trade Unions from 1908 to 1918. Elected to the Reichstag for the SPD in 1912, he became labour secretary in Max von Baden’s cabinet in October 1918. When Scheidemann resigned in protest at the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, Bauer, until then a vocal critic of the treaty, succeeded him and got it through the National Assembly. His government carried out tax reform and extended social insurance, but was forced out in March 1920 over the negotiations conducted with the Kapp putschists. He was later vice-chancellor and treasury minister, and the Barmat corruption scandal cost him his seat in 1925. He died in Berlin in 1944.
Career timeline
1908–1918Second chairman of the General Commission of Trade Unions
Russian revolutionary who organized the first Marxist circles in the Volga region
"Fedoseev enjoyed the extraordinary sympathy of all who knew him, as the model of an old-time revolutionary, wholly devoted to his cause" — Lenin, 1922
Nikolai Fedoseev was a pioneer of Russian Marxism who organized the first Marxist study circle in Kazan in 1888, introducing young Lenin and Maxim Gorky to Marxist theory. From prison, he corresponded with Lenin on questions of Marxist worldview, and wrote a major study analyzing the economic causes of the fall of serfdom in Russia, as well as a draft program for a proletarian party. His polemic against the Narodnik theorist Nikolai Mikhailovsky opened the early Marxist-Narodnik debate, and Lenin later called his party program draft 'the only correct one'. But in 1898, hounded by a fellow exile's slander in Siberia, he took his own life at 27.
Career timeline
1888Organized the first Marxist circles in Kazan
1889.07Arrested for organizing an illegal printing press
1890–1892Imprisoned in Kazan and St. Petersburg's 'Kresty' prison
1892.09Organized workers during the Morozov factory strike — arrested again
