On 22 June 1982 in Kuala Lumpur he joined Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge in forming the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, became its prime minister, and helped it retain Cambodia's UN seat.
Cambodian politician and anti-communist resistance leader. Born at Phnom Penh in 1911 into a Khmer Krom family, he studied in Paris and entered the civil service in 1935. He held the vice-premiership and finance posts in 1946–48, was foreign minister in 1950–51, president of the National Bank of Cambodia in 1955–68, and prime minister of Cambodia in 1967–68. Placed under house arrest after the 1970 coup, he later left for France, formed the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF) in 1978–79 and became prime minister of the 1982 Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea. He founded the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party in 1992, was elected in 1993, served as President of the National Assembly that year, and left for Paris in 1997, dying there of heart failure on 19 December 2000.
Career timeline
1946–1948Vice-premier and finance minister
1950–1951Foreign minister
1955–1968President of the National Bank of Cambodia
1967–1968Prime Minister of Cambodia
1978–1979Founded and led the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF)
1982–1993Prime Minister of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea
The Cold War's last American president, who genuinely believed in nuclear abolition but would not yield on SDI
On the afternoon of October 12, 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to eliminate every nuclear weapon on earth by the year 2000. Forty minutes later, the talks collapsed when Reagan refused Gorbachev's condition that SDI research be confined to the laboratory.
Ronald Reagan went from Hollywood actor to governor of California to the 40th president of the United States, inaugurating the 1980s with Reaganomics and the largest peacetime military buildup in American history. Early in his first term he denounced the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire,' yet he also held a genuine, long-standing conviction that nuclear weapons should be abolished, a conviction he brought to four summit meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev. At Reykjavik in October 1986 the two leaders came within reach of eliminating all nuclear weapons, only for the talks to collapse when Reagan refused to confine his Strategic Defense Initiative to the laboratory. A year later they signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the first abolition of an entire class of nuclear weapons, and the Cold War ended months after he left office.
Career timeline
1911Born into an Irish-American family in Tampico, Illinois
1937–1964Hollywood actor in 53 films; served twice as Screen Actors Guild president
1967–1975Governor of California; crackdown on campus protests, welfare reform
1981–198940th president: Reaganomics, military buildup, 'evil empire' speech
1986.10Reykjavik summit: near-total nuclear abolition collapsed over SDI
1987.06'Tear down this wall' speech at the Brandenburg Gate
1987.12Signed the INF Treaty abolishing all intermediate-range nuclear missiles
1994–2004Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease; died in Los Angeles, 2004
A hawkish Democratic senator who tied Soviet trade status to Jewish emigration
"The American people, above all, are committed to a human détente… to the free movement of men and ideas," he said, "on which a stable and more lasting peace must be based."
The son of Norwegian immigrants, born in Washington state, he served in Congress for over four decades as a Cold War liberal. A champion of civil rights and environmental legislation yet skeptical of détente, he drove the Jackson-Vanik amendment tying Soviet trade status to Jewish emigration. When the informal 1974 bargain with Kissinger and Dobrynin collapsed under Soviet rejection, Jackson effectively sank the 1972 trade agreement. His hawkish aides later formed the core of neoconservatism.
A communist leader who negotiated republican interests within federal socialism
In Moscow in February 1948, he was among the delegates who heard Stalin denounce Yugoslavia directly.
Vladimir Bakarić was a leading Croatian communist and a central broker of republican interests in federal Yugoslav politics. He helped organize the Partisan movement and the institutions of liberated Croatia during the Second World War, then directed Croatia’s state and party apparatus after the war. In February 1948 he was sent to Moscow with Edvard Kardelj and faced Stalin’s pressure directly, later supporting Tito’s independent course. Bakarić advocated stronger republican powers and self-management socialism, while exercising influence as a cautious leader whose authority remained tied to Tito and the Party’s power structure.
Career timeline
1932–1935Joined the revolutionary workers’ movement at Zagreb University and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1933
1941–1943Political commissar in the Croatian Partisan liberation movement
1944–1969Top leader of the Communist Party and League of Communists of Croatia
1945–1953President of the Executive Council of the People’s Republic of Croatia
1948Sent to the Moscow meeting with Edvard Kardelj
1953–1963Speaker of the Croatian Parliament
1974–1983Member of the Presidency of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
February 1985: the first General Secretary to receive a ballot in his hospital bed — a campaign won without a single speech
A Brezhnev aide who became General Secretary after Andropov, but whose failing health sharply limited his rule. His short tenure became the interlude before Gorbachev.
Career timeline
1984–1985General Secretary
1984–1985Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
Architect of 'goulash communism', enforcer of the 1956 reprisals
"Whoever is not against us is with us" (1961)
Born illegitimate in Fiume (now Rijeka), registered in Italian as Giovanni Giuseppe Czermanek, and took his mother Borbála Csermanek's surname. He began a typewriter-mechanic apprenticeship in 1927 and qualified as a journeyman in 1929. Joining the illegal KIMSZ and party in 1931, he did underground work and served prison terms. As Interior Minister (1948–50) he backed the Stalinist line and was involved in László Rajk's purge; arrested in 1951, sentenced to life in 1952 and released in 1954. First Secretary from 25 October 1956, he crossed to the Soviet side on 1 November, accepted the intervention, proclaimed a new government at Szolnok on the 4th and approved Imre Nagy's execution; hundreds were executed and tens of thousands imprisoned. In 1961 he launched 'whoever is not against us is with us', opening amnesty and reform. He resigned in 1988 and died in Budapest in 1989.
Career timeline
1931Joined illegal KPV and Communist youth league; underground work
1933–1934Arrested, two-year term; met Rákosi in Szeged maximum-security prison
1942–1944KPV CC member and secretary; co-founded antifascist Hungarian Front
1948–1950Interior Minister — involved in Rajk's arrest; later demoted
1951–1954Arrested as 'Titoist,' life sentence; freed July 1954
1956.10–11Minister in Nagy cabinet → negotiated with USSR, formed new government
1956–1988MSZMP General Secretary — de facto leader of Hungary for 32 years
1956–1958Prime Minister
1961–1965Prime Minister — reform, amnesty, 'goulash communism'
From Khabarovsk party boss to Chairman of the Soviet of the Union: the institutional face of federal legislation in the Brezhnev era
When Khabarovsk Krai was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1965, Shitikov declared: 'We regard this as an expression of the great attention the Central Committee and the Soviet government have shown to us, the people of the Far East.'
A Soviet party and state leader born into a peasant family in Kostroma who began his career as a livestock specialist. Over 25 years in the Khabarovsk Krai party apparatus (including postings as secretary in Kamchatka and first secretary of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast) he became First Secretary of the Khabarovsk Krai Committee in 1957 and drove urban infrastructure and industrial development for 13 years. Elected Chairman of the Soviet of the Union in 1970, he served an unprecedented 14 years as the institutional anchor of federal legislation in the Brezhnev era, while also chairing the Soviet Committee for European Security and Cooperation during the Helsinki process.
Career timeline
1936–1939Livestock specialist → First Secretary, Ardatov District Komsomol Committee
1941–1945Red Army service (major)
1945–1952Khabarovsk Krai Committee apparatus → Secretary, Kamchatka Oblast Committee
1952–1955First Secretary, Jewish Autonomous Oblast Committee
1955–1957Secretary → Second Secretary, Khabarovsk Krai Committee
1957–1970First Secretary, Khabarovsk Krai Committee of the CPSU
1970–1984Chairman of the Soviet of the Union, Supreme Soviet of the USSR
1984–1991Chairman, Presidium of the Soviet Society for Cultural Relations with Compatriots Abroad
The republic-builder who led Kazakhstan for 24 years as Brezhnev's partner, whose dismissal sparked the Zheltoksan uprising
In February 1986, after Nazarbayev's critical report, Kunaev went to Gorbachev and asked him to remove Nazarbayev. But when Gorbachev instead relayed complaints about Kunaev himself, the old leader who had steered Kazakhstan for 24 years replied calmly: "There's no need. I'll go myself."
A mining engineer by training, he served nearly 24 years as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan — longer than any other Soviet republican leader. Through his close friendship with Brezhnev, he built Kazakhstan into one of the three largest economies in the USSR and resisted Khrushchev's plan to transfer southern territories to Uzbekistan, preserving the republic's territorial integrity. He rose to full membership in the all-Union Politburo (1971–1987), but Gorbachev's abrupt removal of him in December 1986 triggered mass street protests in Almaty — the Zheltoksan (December) events.
Career timeline
1936–1939Chief engineer, Pribalkhashstroi mine
1942–1952Deputy Chairman, Council of People's Commissars/Council of Ministers, Kazakh SSR
1952–1955President, Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR
1955–1960Chairman, Council of Ministers, Kazakh SSR (first term)
1960–1962First Secretary, CP of Kazakhstan (first term)
1962–1964Chairman, Council of Ministers, Kazakh SSR (second term)
1964–1986First Secretary, CP of Kazakhstan (second term, 22 years)
The long-serving East German leader of the walled republic
His removal in October 1989 showed that the GDR's collapse could no longer be contained even within its leadership.
A German communist trained at Moscow's International Lenin School, he rose through East Germany's youth organization and party leadership. He led the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 to 1989 as the GDR's long-serving ruler.
Career timeline
1930–1931Studies at Moscow's International Lenin School
The founder of North Korea returned from the Soviet Far East
On 14 October 1945, more than 100,000 gathered at Pyongyang's sports ground for a rally honouring the liberating Soviet army. A Soviet general introduced 'the national hero and famous partisan leader, comrade Kim Il Sung.' Onto the podium stepped a 33-year-old — the crowd stared in disbelief, having expected a legendary guerrilla in his fifties.
After guerrilla activity against Japanese rule, he served with the Soviet Far East’s 88th Separate Rifle Brigade in the 1940s and rose to the center of power in northern Korea under Soviet occupation authorities after 1945. Having founded the DPRK in 1948, he concentrated party, state, and military power over decades.
Career timeline
1930sAnti-Japanese guerrilla activity in Manchuria
1942–1945Served with the Soviet 88th Separate Rifle Brigade
1945–1948Built a power base in northern Korea under Soviet occupation
1948–1972Premier and Workers’ Party leader
1961Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance with the USSR
The Soviet-Korean general who signed the Korean Armistice at Panmunjom
At Panmunjom on 27 July 1953, General Nam Il and Lieutenant General Harrison barely acknowledged each other as they signed eighteen copies of the armistice. In those ten minutes that stopped three years of war, he was the face of North Korea.
A Koryo-saram born in the Russian Far East, he was deported with his family to Central Asia in 1937 and served as a Soviet Army officer at Stalingrad and the Battle of Berlin. Dispatched to northern Korea in 1946, he became a close aide to Kim Il Sung, and when the Korean War broke out he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Korean People's Army. From 1951 he led the communist delegation at the Panmunjom armistice talks for two years and on 27 July 1953 signed the Korean Armistice Agreement as the KPA's senior delegate, becoming the face of North Korea to the world. After the war he served as Foreign Minister and Deputy Premier, surviving the purges that eliminated most of his Soviet-Korean colleagues, but died in a suspicious car crash in 1976.
Career timeline
1939–1946Teacher and education official in USSR; served as Soviet Army captain in the German-Soviet War
1946–1950Dispatched to northern Korea, rose to Deputy Minister of Education
1950–1953KPA Chief of Staff; chief communist delegate at armistice talks
1953Signed the Korean Armistice Agreement for the KPA, 27 July
1953–1959Minister of Foreign Affairs
1957–1976Deputy Premier of the DPRK Cabinet
1966–1972Minister of Railways; Chairman of the State Construction Committee
1972–1976State Administrative Council Vice Premier; Chairman of the State Light Industry Committee
Agronomist who led Tajikistan for 21 years, a communist of ascetic modesty and incorruptibility
When Rasulov's safe was opened after his death, it held a savings book with 4,200 rubles and a thick stack of personal-expense receipts. 'Not even enough for a Zhiguli,' a colleague recalled — the savings of a man who ran a republic for 21 years.
Trained as an agronomist in Tashkent, Rasulov rose from the Vakhsh Valley cotton fields to become Tajikistan's People's Commissar of Agriculture (1941–1945) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (1946–1955), directing postwar reconstruction. After serving as First Deputy Minister of Agriculture of the USSR and the Soviet Union's first ambassador to Togo, he became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan in April 1961 and led the republic for 21 years. Under his tenure, the Nurek hydropower station, an aluminum smelter, and some 400 industrial enterprises were built, transforming a largely agrarian republic. A nine-time Order of Lenin recipient, he was remembered for ascetic modesty: two suits, home-packed meals on official trips, and just 4,200 rubles in savings after two decades in power.
Career timeline
1934–1938Agronomist, cotton-growing station, Vakhsh Valley, Tajik SSR
1938–1940Head, Grain Administration, People's Commissariat of Agriculture, Tajik SSR
1940–1941Deputy People's Commissar of Agriculture, Tajik SSR
1941–1945People's Commissar of Agriculture, Tajik SSR
1946People's Commissar of Industrial Crops, Tajik SSR
1946–1955Chairman, Council of Ministers, Tajik SSR; simultaneously Minister of Foreign Affairs
1955–1958First Deputy Minister of Agriculture, USSR
1958–1960Secretary, Central Committee, CP of Tajikistan
1960–1961Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR to Togo
1961–1982First Secretary, Central Committee, CP of Tajikistan
Czechoslovakia's longest-serving leader, who crushed the Prague Spring and built 'normalization'
On 10 December 1989, Husák swore in the first non-communist majority government in 41 years — and resigned the presidency hours later, personally witnessing the formal end of the regime he had built.
A Slovak communist lawyer, he served in the leadership of the 1944 Slovak National Uprising against the Nazis. After the war he consolidated communist rule in Slovakia, but was purged in 1950 for 'bourgeois nationalism' and imprisoned for a decade. Rehabilitated in 1963, he became vice-premier during Dubček's Prague Spring, then reversed after the Soviet invasion to lead the purge of reformers. As KSČ general secretary (1969–1987) and president (1975–1989), he presided over 'normalization': combining relative material stability with secret-police suppression of dissent. He resigned during the 1989 Velvet Revolution, handing power to the first non-communist government in 41 years.
Career timeline
1933Joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
1944Led Slovak National Uprising; vice-chairman, Slovak National Council
1946–1950Chairman, Board of Commissioners for Slovakia; led suppression of Democratic Party
1954–1960Sentenced to life for 'bourgeois nationalism'; imprisoned at Leopoldov
1968Vice-premier during Prague Spring; switched to anti-reform after Soviet invasion
1969–1987First Secretary, then General Secretary of the KSČ; architect of normalization
A social democrat who made reconciliation a politics of divided cities
After the Wall was built, he said: “The Wall must go, but until it goes, the city must live.”
Willy Brandt was a German social-democratic politician shaped by exile and resistance to the Nazi dictatorship. As Governing Mayor of West Berlin, he defended the city’s morale after the Wall was built and pressed the West to honor its responsibilities, helping popularize the name “Wall of Shame.” As chancellor, he pursued Ostpolitik and “change through rapprochement,” easing Cold War confrontation and earning the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize.
Career timeline
1933–1945Exile and resistance activist against the Nazi dictatorship
1948–1953SPD representative in Berlin
1957–1966Governing Mayor of West Berlin
1964–1987Chairman of the SPD
1966–1969Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor
1969–1974Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
First Secretary who led a decade of Western-credit modernisation: only for debt and Solidarity to bring the curtain down
To workers at a January 1971 rally — 'So, comrades, will you help?' (the hall answered with feeble applause)
A coal miner in France and Belgium, he became PZPR First Secretary after the 1970 workers' revolt and pursued a 'socialist consumer society' fuelled by Western credit. Living standards rose visibly — but the debt crisis and the 1980 strikes forced him out.
Career timeline
1931Joins French Communist Party in the Lens coalfield
1934Leads occupation strike at Leforest mine; deported to Poland
1937–1946Moves to Belgium; joins Belgian CP and Witte Brigade resistance
1948–1954Returns to Poland; Katowice party secretary, then head of Heavy Industry Dept, CC
1957–1970First Secretary, Katowice Voivodeship — his pragmatic 'duchy'
1970–1980First Secretary, PZPR — the 'Gierek decade'
1976–1980Concurrently member of the Council of State
1981Expelled from PZPR; interned under martial law (Dec 1981–Dec 1982)
Brezhnev-era industrial technocrat who ran the Russian republic for 12 years
Brezhnev, appointing Solomentsev as RSFSR premier: 'We have no separate Communist Party of Russia — I lead the Russian party organizations as General Secretary, and I ask you to be my deputy for the Russian Federation.'
A mechanical engineer from the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute who rose from defense-plant floors to chair the RSFSR Council of Ministers for an unprecedented 12 years (1971–1983), managing the economy of the largest Soviet republic as Brezhnev's unofficial 'deputy for the Russian Federation.' Elevated to the Politburo and chairmanship of the Party Control Committee in 1983, he led the 1987–1988 commission to rehabilitate victims of Stalin-era repression but was abruptly purged by Gorbachev at the September 1988 CC plenum.
Career timeline
1940Graduated Leningrad Polytechnical Institute; assigned to defense plant
1941–1948Party organizer at evacuated defense plants in the Urals
1948–1954Chief engineer then director of plants in Zlatoust and Chelyabinsk
1955–1959Secretary, Second Secretary of Chelyabinsk Oblast, then Sovnarkhoz chairman
1959–1962First Secretary, Karaganda Oblast Committee, Kazakhstan
1962–1964Second Secretary, CC of Communist Party of Kazakhstan
1964–1966First Secretary, Rostov Oblast Committee
1966–1971CC Secretary and Head of Heavy Industry Department
1971–1983Chairman, RSFSR Council of Ministers
1983–1988Chairman, Party Control Committee; full Politburo member
1987–1988Chaired Politburo Commission for rehabilitation of victims of 1930s–1950s repression
1988Dismissed from all posts at September CC plenum; retired
Budapest, 1956: from his embassy he watched Hungarian state-security officers strung up from lampposts, and urged military intervention. The sight haunted him for life; in Prague, Kabul and Warsaw, armed force was the only answer he saw.
Andropov was born 15 June [O.S. 2 June] 1914 in Stavropol province according to official data, though sources conflict on his birthplace and ancestry. Trained at Rybinsk water-transport college (1936), he rose through Komsomol work in Karelia, served as ambassador to Hungary (1954–57), headed the Central Committee department for socialist countries (1957–67) and chaired the KGB (1967–82). He directed the repression of dissidents: the Fifth Directorate was created on his proposal in 1967, and Sakharov was exiled to Gorky in 1980. He backed the 1968 intervention in Czechoslovakia and was among the initiators of the 1979 entry into Afghanistan. General Secretary from November 1982, he purged corrupt cadres and set reform planning in motion before his death on 9 February 1984.
Career timeline
1954–1957Ambassador in Budapest through 1956
1957–1967Heads the CC department for socialist countries
1967–1982KGB chairman: the dissident crackdown, the Fifth Directorate
Belarusian partisan leader who rose to Brezhnev's Politburo and served as USSR First Deputy Premier for thirteen years
If I were asked today to lead such an operation, I would not accept. I ask the Czechs to forgive us.
A Belarusian partisan leader who became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Belarus in 1956, then served as a full Politburo member and First Deputy Premier of the USSR for thirteen years from 1965, overseeing economic policy and acting as Brezhnev's political supervisor during the 1968 Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia.
Career timeline
1933–1936Technician, Parichi district road department; graduate of Gomel Highway Technical School
1936–1938Red Army service; then political department of Belarusian Railways
1940–1941Secretary, Gomel City Komsomol → First Secretary, Brest Regional Komsomol
1942–1943Representative of Central Partisan Staff in Belarus; secretary of underground Komsomol CC (Lt. Colonel → Colonel)
1943–1947Second Secretary → First Secretary, CC of Komsomol of Belarus
1949–1950Second → First Secretary, Minsk City Committee, CP(b) of Belarus
1950–1953First Secretary, Minsk Regional Committee, CP of Belarus
1953–1956Chairman, Council of Ministers of the Byelorussian SSR
1956–1965First Secretary, CC of the Communist Party of Byelorussia
1957–1965Candidate member, CPSU Presidium
1965–1978Full Politburo member & First Deputy Chairman, USSR Council of Ministers; on-site political supervisor for 1968 Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia
1986–1989First Chairman, All-Union Council of War and Labour Veterans
From the Shanghai stage to the pinnacle of the Cultural Revolution: Mao's wife who led the Gang of Four and remade Chinese revolutionary art
At her 1980 trial, Jiang Qing defied the court: 'I was Chairman Mao's dog — I bit whomever he asked me to bite.' Dragged from the courtroom, she shouted revolutionary slogans.
A central leader of China's Cultural Revolution and head of the Gang of Four, Jiang Qing was, as Mao Zedong's wife, the most powerful woman in the Chinese Communist Party. After working as a left-wing stage and film actress in 1930s Shanghai, she went to Yan'an in 1937 and married Mao; barred from politics for twenty years, she returned to the public stage in 1963 through a campaign to revolutionize Peking opera. Appointed deputy director of the Central Cultural Revolution Group in 1966, she opened the Cultural Revolution with the attack on the play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, established eight revolutionary model operas (yangbanxi), and was elected to the Politburo in 1969. Arrested in October 1976 after Mao's death, she was sentenced to death for 'counter-revolutionary crimes,' saw her sentence commuted, and died by suicide in a Beijing hospital in May 1991.
Career timeline
1933Joined the Chinese Communist Party
1935–1937Left-wing film and stage actress, Shanghai (stage name: Lan Ping)
1938Married Mao Zedong; drama instructor, Lu Xun Art Academy, Yan'an
1949–1951Deputy Director, Film Guidance Committee
1966–1969Deputy Director, Central Cultural Revolution Group
1969–1976Politburo member, CCP
1976Arrested with the Gang of Four
1980–1991Death sentence → life imprisonment → medical parole → suicide
On 2 December 1975 the National Congress of People's Representatives elected Nouhak Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of the new Lao People's Democratic Republic government. Sources credit Kaysone Phomvihane, not Nouhak, as the presiding official who proclaimed the republic.
A founding figure of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party and a leading Pathet Lao revolutionary. Born in Mukdahan, Siam (now Thailand) to an ethnic Lao family, he was ranked second after Kaysone in the party's Politburo at its 1955 founding congress and joined the Politburo at the 2nd Congress in 1972 with responsibility for economic affairs. He served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance after 1975, and was President from 1992 to 1998.
Career timeline
1945Founding member of the Lao revolutionary movement
1949Chairman of the Lao Resistance Committee for the Eastern Region
1950Minister of Finance in the Lao Resistance Government
1954Represented the Pathet Lao at the Geneva Conference
1955Ranked second after Kaysone in the party Politburo at the founding congress
1972Joined the Politburo at the 2nd Congress, assigned economic affairs
1975Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance
1989President of the second Supreme People's Assembly
The poet of 'Wait for Me': six-time Stalin Prize-winning war correspondent and literary bureaucrat
"I was not a soldier, only a correspondent. But I have a piece of earth I will never forget — the field near Mogilev where, in July 1941, I saw for the first time how our men knocked out and burned 39 German tanks in a single day."
Poet of 'Wait for Me' (1941), the most beloved Soviet wartime lyric. A six-time Stalin Prize-winning war correspondent who turned his frontline experience into The Living and the Dead trilogy. As a literary bureaucrat he joined the Pasternak persecution, yet pushed through Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.
Career timeline
1934–1938First poems; graduated Gorky Literary Institute; joined Writers' Union
1939War correspondent at Khalkhin Gol
1941–1945Krasnaya Zvezda war correspondent; witnessed Berlin surrender
1942'Wait for Me' published — a nationwide phenomenon
1946–1950Editor-in-chief of Novy Mir
1954–1958Editor-in-chief of Novy Mir
1950–1953Editor-in-chief of Literaturnaya Gazeta
1959–1971Completed The Living and the Dead trilogy
The reformist general secretary who rehabilitated the Cultural Revolution’s victims and freed thought; his death sparked the 1989 protests
He died on 15 April 1989, days after a heart attack; a day later unofficial mourners demanded the state reassess him, and within a week about 100,000 students marched on Tiananmen Square.
From Hunan, he joined the Red Army at fourteen, marched on the Long March and led the Communist Youth League after 1949. Persecuted in the Cultural Revolution, as head of the Organisation Department from 1977 he reviewed and reversed millions of unjust cases and in 1978 organised the “criterion of truth” debate that underpinned Deng Xiaoping’s return. Party chairman in 1981 and general secretary from 1982, he drove reform and opening, but after the student protests of late 1986 he was forced to resign in January 1987 for laxity toward “bourgeois liberalisation”. He died of a heart attack on 15 April 1989, and the mourning gatherings grew into the Tiananmen protests.
Career timeline
1977–1978Head of the Central Organisation Department
1981–1982Chairman of the Central Committee
1982–1987General Secretary of the Central Committee
The Eurocommunist architect who lit a cigarette at gunpoint
23 February 1981: 200 Civil Guards under Lt. Col. Tejero storm the Spanish parliament, firing submachine guns. As every deputy dives for cover, 66-year-old Santiago Carrillo remains seated, takes out a cigarette, and calmly lights it.
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain (1960–1982), Carrillo was a key architect of Eurocommunism alongside Berlinguer and Marchais. Breaking with Moscow after the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, he argued in Eurocommunism and the State (1977) for a parliamentary path to socialism and guided Spain's peaceful democratic transition after Franco's death.
Career timeline
1930Begins at the Socialist Youth newspaper Renovación
1934Elected General Secretary of the Socialist Youth of Spain
1934–1936Imprisoned for participation in the 1934 revolutionary uprising
1936.11Joins the PCE; Councillor for Public Order, Madrid Defence Council
1937Candidate member of the PCE Political Bureau
1939–197638-year exile during the Franco dictatorship
1946–1947Minister without portfolio, Republican government-in-exile
1960Succeeds Dolores Ibárruri as PCE General Secretary
1968Opposes Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia; breaks with Moscow
1976Returns secretly disguised in a wig; arrested and released
1977.03Launches Eurocommunism with Berlinguer and Marchais in Madrid
1977–1986Member of Congress of Deputies for Madrid
1981.02.2323-F coup — remains seated, lights cigarette as gunmen fire
1982Resigns as PCE General Secretary after electoral defeat
1985Expelled from PCE; forms splinter left party
1991Disbands splinter party; declines merger into ruling PSOE
He framed Mongolia's bond with the USSR as an 'elder brother–younger brother' (akh düü) one, and at Stalin's funeral in 1953 asked that Mongolia join the Soviet Union, a request Moscow rejected.
He became Mongolia’s head of government in 1952 after Choibalsan. Close Soviet political and economic ties supported industrialization and cooperative herding. His long rule combined modernization with exclusion of rivals and external dependence, ending with his removal in 1984.
Career timeline
1939Joined the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party and became deputy finance minister.
1940Elected general secretary of the party Central Committee; the country's number two leader.
1941–1945Head of the Political Directorate and deputy commander-in-chief of the People's Army.
1945Chairman of the State Planning Commission.
1952–1974Chairman of the Council of Ministers (head of government).
1958–1984Regained party leadership as first secretary; general secretary title from 1981.
1974–1984Chairman of the Presidium of the People's Great Khural (head of state) and commander-in-chief.
1979Awarded the rank of Marshal of the Mongolian People's Republic.
