Liberal prime minister who led Britain in the later war and argued for moderation towards Germany at the peace conference
Born in Manchester to Welsh parents, he made his name as a radical Liberal orator. As chancellor of the exchequer he introduced the 1909 People’s Budget and the National Insurance Act, laying foundations of the welfare state. After serving as minister of munitions and secretary for war he became prime minister in December 1916. At the Paris Peace Conference he opposed reparations that would wreck the German economy and sought to check French dominance. In 1921 he concluded the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement and negotiated the creation of the Irish Free State, but resigned in 1922 when the Conservatives left the coalition. In 1936 he met Hitler and praised him. He died in 1945.
Career timeline
1890MP for Caernarvon Boroughs
1908–1915Chancellor of the Exchequer
1915–1916Minister of Munitions
1916Secretary of State for War
1916–1922Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1919British representative at the Paris Peace Conference
Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet in the dual-power era, face of revolutionary defencism
"Deprived of direct contact with his people, he lost his power of resistance. Even a mighty oak, overturned by a storm and torn from the soil that fed it, withers. So it was with Chkheidze." — Irakli Tsereteli at his funeral, 1926
A Georgian nobleman and Menshevik who produced the first Georgian translation of the Communist Manifesto. In 1917 he chaired the Petrograd Soviet during dual power but opposed the October Revolution; he went on to lead Georgia's independence and its government-in-exile in Paris.
Career timeline
1890sJoined Mesame-dasi; first Georgian translation of the Communist Manifesto
1898–1907Batumi city duma deputy, municipal hospital inspector; joined RSDLP (1898), Menshevik from 1903
1907–1917Deputy, Third and Fourth State Dumas (Tiflis); head of the Menshevik faction
1917.02–09Chairman, Petrograd Soviet; Chairman, All-Russian Central Executive Committee (from June)
1918–1921Chairman, Transcaucasian Seim and Georgian Constituent Assembly; signed independence declaration
1919Georgian delegate to the Paris Peace Conference
1921–1926Exile in France; head of the Georgian government-in-exile
The Kadet minister named special plenipotentiary to save Petrograd on the day of the October Revolution
At 4 pm on 25 October, the cabinet granted Kishkin plenipotentiary authority over all military and civil authorities in the capital. He at once dismissed Colonel Polkovnikov "for inaction" and appointed General Bagratuni commander of the Petrograd Military District.
A Moscow physician who rose to the Central Committee of the left-Kadet faction and served as deputy chief representative of the All-Russian Union of Cities during World War I. After the February Revolution he became commissar of the Provisional Government in Moscow, and in September 1917 joined its last cabinet as Minister of Public Charities. On the afternoon of 25 October he was granted special plenipotentiary powers to restore order in Petrograd, and immediately dismissed Colonel Polkovnikov as district commander, appointing General Bagratuni in his place; that night he was arrested with the rest of the cabinet in the Winter Palace by Antonov-Ovseenko. After the Civil War he returned to medicine, co-founded the All-Russian Famine Relief Committee with Prokopovich and Kuskova in 1921, and suffered repeated arrests and exile before his death in 1930.
Career timeline
1905–1917.02Kadet Central Committee member, Moscow City Duma deputy, deputy chief of All-Russian Union of Cities
1917.03–09Commissar of the Provisional Government in Moscow
1917.09–10Minister of Public Charities, Provisional Government
1917.10.25Special plenipotentiary for order in Petrograd; dismisses Polkovnikov, appoints Bagratuni; arrested at Winter Palace
1918–1921Released, returns to medicine; arrested in Tactical Centre case 1919, released
From Warsaw boy patriot to Comintern old revolutionary: the Pole who returned in the sealed train
“As a six-year-old boy I dreamed of becoming a rebel leader and freeing Poland from the 'Muscovites' and 'Swabians'.” — from his memoirs Za 50 Let
A Polish revolutionary who endured twenty years of tsarist prisons and Siberian exile, emerging as a gold-medal ethnographer of Siberia's indigenous peoples. He led the anti-Piłsudski split of the Polish Socialist Party into its internationalist left wing, then joined the Bolsheviks on Lenin's sealed train. He helped found the International Red Aid (MOPR), built the Soviet radio broadcasting system, and spent nearly sixty years on the front lines of revolutionary struggle, outliving the Great Purge to die of natural causes at 77.
Career timeline
1882Joins 'Proletariat', the first Polish socialist party
1884–1891Arrested, sentenced to 10 years; serves at Kara penal colony; initiates mass poisoning protest (1889)
1891–1904Exiled to Yakutia, Irkutsk, Minusinsk — ethnographic research awarded gold medal; meets Lenin and Krupskaya
1904–1907Returns to Warsaw, leads PPS left wing; pushes Piłsudski out and splits the party (1906)
1907–1914Exile in Austrian Galicia — directs workers' health fund in Drohobych, PPS-Left abroad organiser
1914–1917Swiss exile — attends Zimmerwald Conference, internationalist left activist
1917Returns to Russia with Lenin in the sealed train; commissar for Polish affairs in Kharkov
1918Joins RKP(b) with seniority backdated to 1906; serves in Ukrainian NKID and Polish Bureau
1920Member of Polrevkom — attempt to establish a Polish Soviet government in Białystok
1921Responsible Secretary of the CP(b)U Central Committee (March–December)
1922–1923Secretary of the Comintern Executive Committee (ICCI)
1925–1928Editor-in-chief of Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star)
1928–1930Editor-in-chief of Rabochaya Gazeta and children's magazine Murzilka
1931–1933First chairman of the All-Union Radio Committee — creates Soviet radio broadcasting system
1933–1937Head of museum department, RSFSR Narkompros; editor of Sovetsky Muzey
1937–1941Editor of Nasha Strana; directs Polish-language Radio Moscow broadcasts after German invasion
German socialist and a leading figure in the workers’ council movement.
A social-democratic journalist, Däumig joined the Independent Social Democratic Party during the First World War and became influential among Berlin radicals and the revolutionary shop stewards. As a leading member of the Berlin workers’ council executive in November 1918, he sought to make the council system the basis of the constitution, but lost to supporters of a national assembly. In 1920 he led the USPD left into the Communist International and became co-chair of the United Communist Party of Germany. He resigned as co-chair with Paul Levi in February 1921, left the party after the March Action and Levi’s expulsion, and helped found the Communist Working Group; in 1922 he rejoined the USPD.
Career timeline
1901Began working for Social Democratic newspapers in Gera, Halle and Erfurt.
1911Joined the Berlin Social Democratic newspaper Vorwärts to cover military affairs and workers’ education.
1916After leaving Vorwärts, campaigned for the Independent Social Democratic Party.
1918Became a leader of the revolutionary shop stewards and a leading member of the Berlin workers’ council executive.
1920Entered the Reichstag as an Independent Social Democrat, backed acceptance of the Bolsheviks’ 21 conditions and affiliation with the Communist International, and became co-chair of the United Communist Party of Germany in December.
1921Resigned as co-chair of the United Communist Party of Germany with Paul Levi in February. After the March Action, he left the party and helped found the Communist Working Group.
1922Rejoined the Independent Social Democratic Party with the Communist Working Group.
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
Founding father of the Republic of China who framed the Three Principles of the People and the first united front
Credited with leading the 1911 revolution that toppled the Qing and founded the Republic of China. In a deathbed testament he dictated himself, he reaffirmed friendship with the Soviet Union.
Born in Guangdong and educated in Hawaii and Hong Kong, he trained as a physician. He founded the Revive China Society in 1894 and the Tongmenghui in Tokyo in 1905 to overthrow the Qing and build a republic; after the 1911 revolution he became provisional president but soon yielded to Yuan Shikai. He formulated the Three Principles of the People (nationalism, democracy, people’s livelihood) and in 1923, after a joint statement with the Soviet envoy Joffe, accepted Soviet aid and Communist members joining the Kuomintang as individuals, opening the first united front. He died of liver cancer in Beijing in 1925; both Nationalists and Communists claimed his legacy.
Career timeline
1905–1912Leader of the Tongmenghui
1912.01–03Provisional President of the Republic of China
Kazakh politician who founded the Alash party and led the Alash Orda government in 1917–1920
Born in Semipalatinsk Oblast in 1866 (some sources say 1870), he graduated from the Omsk Technical School and the Saint Petersburg Forestry Institute and wrote the first biography of Abay Kunanbayev. He joined the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) in 1905, entered the State Duma in 1906 and, after signing the Vyborg Manifesto, was imprisoned and then lived in exile in Samara until 1917. Appointed the Provisional Government’s commissioner for Turgay Oblast in 1917, he broke with the Kadets over Kazakh autonomy, founded the Alash party and that year was elected head of the Alash Orda government. He sided with the White governments of Siberia until late 1919, then came to terms with Soviet power, worked in publishing in Moscow and was shot in 1937. He was rehabilitated in 1989.
Career timeline
1895–1897Mathematics teacher at the Omsk school for Kazakh children
1906Member of the First State Duma
1908–1917Exile in Samara
1917Provisional Government commissioner for Turgay Oblast
1917–1920Head of the Alash Orda government
1922–1927Literary staff member of the Kazakh section of the Central Publishing House of the Peoples of the USSR
Politician who gave up the Labour chairmanship in 1914 over war credits and later became Britain’s first Labour prime minister
He resigned as Labour chairman in 1914 over Britain’s entry into the war and war spending; in 1931 he led a national government and lost Labour’s support.
Born into poverty in Lossiemouth, Scotland, he became an organiser of the Independent Labour Party and Labour and was chairman of the party from 1911. When Labour backed the government’s war credits in August 1914 he resigned the chairmanship and was fiercely attacked for his opposition to the war. In 1924 he became Britain’s first Labour prime minister and recognised the Soviet Union, returning as prime minister in 1929. Forming a National Government with the Conservatives in the crisis of 1931, he was expelled from Labour. He died at sea in 1937.
Career timeline
1893Joined the Independent Labour Party and worked as a journalist in London.
1906Elected MP for Leicester.
1911Became chairman of the parliamentary Labour group.
1924Became Britain’s first Labour prime minister.
1929Led a second minority Labour government and included opposition leaders in a national government amid rising unemployment.
Chairman of the International Socialist Bureau who led the Second International and joined Belgium’s wartime government in 1914
At the 1919–20 Paris Peace Conference, he secured treaty clauses favouring labour, including an eight-hour day. As Belgium’s foreign minister, he helped negotiate the 1925 Pact of Locarno.
A leader of the Belgian Labour Party and a jurist, he chaired the International Socialist Bureau from 1900 and became the face of the Second International. When Germany invaded neutral Belgium in August 1914 he entered the government as minister of state and backed national defence, trying to hold the Bureau together against the Zimmerwald movement. After the war he served as justice and foreign minister, signing the Locarno treaties in 1925, and chaired the Labour and Socialist International from 1923.
Career timeline
1889Joined the Belgian Workers’ Party and became a party leader.
1894Entered parliament as a Socialist.
1914Named minister of state and served in the wartime cabinet.
1919–1920At the Paris Peace Conference treaty negotiations, secured labour clauses, including one advocating an eight-hour day.
1919As minister of justice, sponsored penal reforms.
1925–1927As foreign minister, helped negotiate the Pact of Locarno.
The revolution's underground organizer, always behind the scenes, until he had to lead
On 10 March 1919, still investigating the killings of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, Jogiches was arrested and shot in the back of the head in Berlin's Moabit prison within hours. His last words to an interrogator: 'You will never find these murderers.'
Polish-Jewish Marxist revolutionary. Co-founded the SDKPiL with Rosa Luxemburg in 1893, the main forerunner of the Communist Party of Poland. During the First World War he was the key behind-the-scenes organizer of the underground Spartacus League in Germany. For decades Luxemburg's closest political comrade and personal companion, a brilliant organizer who struggled to write for himself. After Luxemburg and Liebknecht were murdered in January 1919, Jogiches took over KPD leadership and investigated their killings, only to be assassinated by the same Freikorps milieu two months later.
Career timeline
1885Founded one of Vilnius's first underground socialist study circles
1890Fled conscription to Zürich; met Rosa Luxemburg
1892Founded the Social-Democratic Library publishing house
1893Co-founded the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP, later SDKPiL) with Luxemburg
1905–1906Led SDKPiL Central Committee in Warsaw; arrested, sentenced to 8 years' hard labor, escaped
1907Elected candidate member of the RSDLP Central Committee at the London Congress
1916–1918Directed the underground Spartacus League; oversaw the Spartacus newsletter
1919.01–03Took over KPD leadership; led the investigation into the murders of Luxemburg and Liebknecht
The soldier-politician who began as a socialist, became Head of State of reborn Poland, broke the Red Army's westward drive at Warsaw in 1920, and later ruled through a coup-built authoritarian regime
To be defeated and not to yield, that is victory; to be victorious and to rest on one's laurels, that is defeat.
Born 5 December 1867 at Zułowo manor (now Zalavas, Lithuania, then Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire), second son of a noble szlachta family that sources characterize either as Polish or as Polonized Lithuanians. Arrested in March 1887 over the plot against Alexander III and sent to five years of Siberian exile, he joined the Polish Socialist Party in 1893, led it, and edited its underground organ Robotnik from 1894. In the First World War he raised the Polish Legions on Austria's side, was imprisoned at Magdeburg after the 1917 Oath crisis, became Chief of State of reborn Poland in November 1918, and broke the Red Army's drive at Warsaw in 1920. He ruled as the strongman of the Sanacja regime after the May 1926 coup, jailed opponents in the Brest trials and Bereza Kartuska, signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR in 1932, and died of liver cancer in Warsaw on 12 May 1935.
Career timeline
1887–1892Siberian exile for implication in the plot against Alexander III
1892–1908Leader of the Polish Socialist Party; publisher of its organ Robotnik
1908–1914Organized the Combat Organization and Riflemen's unions; trained military cadres in Galicia
1914–1917Commander, 1st Brigade of the Polish Legions under Austria-Hungary
1917–1918Imprisoned in the Magdeburg fortress for refusing the oath of loyalty to Germany
1918.11–1922.12Head of State (Naczelnik Panstwa)
1919–1921Commander-in-chief of the Polish army in the Soviet-Polish War
1926.05Returned to power in the May coup
1926–1935Strongman of the Sanacja regime; War Minister and twice premier
1932Concluded the Soviet-Polish non-aggression pact
First prime minister of the Mongolian People's Republic, diplomat of the old regime
On 23 September 1924 a constitution-drafting commission chaired by Prime Minister Tserendorj was set up, and on 26 November 1924 the first Great Hural unanimously adopted its 6-chapter, 50-article constitution declaring Mongolia's first republican order.
Born in 1868 at Kherlen Bayan Ulaan as a subject of the Jebtsundamba Khutuktu's Great Shabi, he learned Mongolian, Manchu, Chinese and Russian and worked as a scribe and translator in the Manchu administration in Khüree from 1885 to 1911. After the 1911 independence he entered the Foreign Ministry, serving as deputy foreign minister in 1913-1915 and first-ranked minister in 1915-1919. He signed the 1919 renunciation document under Chinese occupation and became deputy foreign minister in the revolutionary government of 1921. Appointed prime minister in 1923, he headed the 1924 constitution-drafting commission and became the republic's first prime minister. After 1926, as Moscow tightened control, he resisted the abolition of private property and the persecution of the Buddhist Church, and he died of illness in office in 1928; sources give his death as 13 February or 13 November 1928.
Career timeline
1885–1890Scribe in the Manchu administration in Khüree
1890–1904Teacher at the Russian consulate's translator school
1904–1911Chinese-language translator in the Manchu ministry in Khüree (6th rank)
1913–1915Deputy foreign minister of Autonomous Mongolia
1915–1919First-ranked minister of foreign affairs
1923–1928Prime minister of Mongolia, from 1924 of the Mongolian People's Republic
The Bolshevik elder removed by Stalin for trying to Sovietize Georgia gently
"The establishment of Soviet power in Georgia had the outward appearance of a foreign occupation, because in the country itself there was nobody ready to take part in a rebellion": report to the Central Committee, December 1921
Born in Guria to a priest's family, Makharadze studied at Tbilisi Theological Seminary and the Warsaw Veterinary Institute before joining the Social Democratic movement in 1891. He became one of the few Bolshevik leaders in Menshevik-dominated Georgia, and as chairman of the Georgian Revolutionary Committee in February 1921 proclaimed the Soviet republic, only to be removed by Stalin in July for his moderate treatment of the Menshevik opposition and insistence on Georgian sovereignty, replaced by Mdivani. This ousting was the direct prelude to the 1922 Georgian Affair; Makharadze later held the chairmanships of Gosplan, Sovnarkom, and the Supreme Soviet Presidium in Georgia, and was one of the few Old Bolsheviks to survive the Great Purge, dying a natural death in 1941.
Career timeline
1891Joined the Social Democratic movement
1903Member of the Caucasian Union Committee of the RSDLP; active in the 1905 Revolution
1907–1915Led Bolshevik underground groups in Transcaucasia
1917Editor of Kavkazsky Rabochy; member of the Caucasian Regional Committee of the RSDLP(b)
1918–1920Underground work in Menshevik-ruled Georgia
1921.02–07Chairman of the Georgian Revolutionary Committee; removed by Stalin for moderation
1922–1938Chairman of CEC Georgia, Sovnarkom Georgia, Gosplan ZSFSR, CEC ZSFSR
1938–1941Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Georgia; Deputy Chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet
The brain of Action Française, the royalist theorist who denied the republic itself in the name of integral nationalism
'It is the revenge of Dreyfus!', on hearing his life sentence in the court at Lyon, 27 January 1945
A poet and polemicist from Martigues in Provence, deaf from his youth, who led Action Française for half a century after the movement formed out of the Dreyfus affair. His 'integral nationalism' called for the restoration of the monarchy and the abolition of the parliamentary republic, and named Jews, Protestants, Freemasons and foreigners as the 'four confederate states' eating France from within. The movement survived the Vatican's condemnation of 1926, and in 1938 he was elected to the Académie Française. Through January 1934 his paper named 'the thieves' day after day, and on the morning of 6 February it called on its readers to come to the Chamber that evening. He welcomed Pétain's accession in 1940 as a 'divine surprise', backed Vichy, and denounced resisters and Jews in print throughout the occupation. In January 1945 he was sentenced to life imprisonment and national degradation for collusion with the enemy.
Career timeline
1868–1890Born at Martigues; loses his hearing; begins writing in Paris
1899–1908Joins Action Française out of the Dreyfus affair; the daily is founded in 1908
1908–1939Theorist of integral nationalism, shaping the whole of the French far right
1926The Vatican condemns Action Française
1934.01–02Press offensive over the Stavisky affair; calls for the demonstration of 6 February
1938Elected to the Académie Française
1940–1944Backs Vichy; denounces resisters and Jews in print
1945.01Sentenced to life and national degradation for collusion with the enemy
1952Released in ill health and dies at Tours the same year
Estonian prime minister who concluded the Treaty of Tartu, publisher of Postimees
As Soviet forces occupied Estonia in June 1940, he urged President Päts to offer at least symbolic armed resistance.
Leader of Estonia's liberal national movement through the newspaper Postimees, he was prime minister in 1919 and 1920 and concluded the Treaty of Tartu. Pushed out for opposing Päts's authoritarian regime in 1934, he was arrested after the Soviet occupation of 1940 and disappeared.
Career timeline
1896Editor and publisher of Postimees, turning it into the organ of the national movement
1906Member of the First Russian State Duma; signed the Vyborg Appeal
1917Member of the Estonian Provincial Assembly (Maapäev)
1919–1920Prime Minister; concluded the Treaty of Tartu
Leader of the Georgian Mensheviks who headed the government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia in 1918–1921
Born in Guria, western Georgia, in 1868, he took up Marxism at the Warsaw Veterinary Institute and in the 1890s led Mesame Dasi, Georgia’s first legal Marxist organization. He sided with the Mensheviks in 1903 and sat in the First State Duma in 1906. In 1917 he chaired the Tbilisi Soviet and the National Council of Georgia; in May 1918 he headed the session that declared independence, and from July he led the government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, carrying out land reform and social legislation. After the Red Army invasion of 1921 he went into exile in France, led the government-in-exile and died near Paris in 1953.
Career timeline
1890sLeader of Mesame Dasi
1906Member of the First State Duma
1917Chairman of the Tbilisi Soviet and of the National Council of Georgia
1918–1921Head of the government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia
1921–1953Head of the government-in-exile in France
The Siberian “holy man” who reached the imperial bedchamber
November 1, 1905. Nicholas II wrote in his diary: "At 4 o'clock we went to Sergiyevka. We drank tea with Militsa and Stana. We made the acquaintance of a man of God — Grigori from Tobolsk province."
A Siberian peasant mystic. His ability to calm the heir's haemophilia won the Empress's absolute trust, and during the war he swayed ministerial appointments. Murdered in December 1916 by aristocrats hoping to save the monarchy. The dynasty collapsed two months later.
Career timeline
1900sFrom Siberian pilgrim to the Petersburg salons
1905–1907Introduced at court; calms the heir’s attacks
1911–1916Patronage scandals; the wartime “ministerial leapfrog”
One of the six who built Iskra: the Menshevik theorist who parted with Lenin
Witnessing the October Revolution, Potresov called it "the murder of democracy" and the Bolshevik regime that followed "the socialism of fools."
One of the six original editors of Iskra (1900) and a founding figure of the RSDLP. At the 1903 party congress he sided with Martov and became a leading Menshevik theorist, arguing for a mass party against Lenin's vanguard model. During WWI he led the defensist wing of Menshevism; he rejected the October Revolution and was briefly imprisoned by the Cheka in 1919. He left the USSR in 1925 and continued writing against the Soviet regime from Berlin and Paris until his death.
Career timeline
1892–1896Active in Struve's and Martov's SD circles; contacts with Emancipation of Labour group
1896Co-founds the Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class
1897–1899Arrested and exiled to Vyatka province
1900–1903One of six founding editors of Iskra; joins Menshevik leadership after the II Congress
1905–1907Returns to Russia; edits Menshevik papers Nachalo and Nevsky Golos
1910–1914Edits the Liquidator journal Nasha Zarya; co-edits the 4-volume The Social Movement in Russia
1914–1917Leads the Menshevik defensists; publishes Nashe Delo
1925–1934Exiled in Berlin and Paris; publishes Notes of a Social Democrat and the book In the Grip of Illusions
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
The appeasement architect whose bid to avoid war helped open the way to it
Returning from Munich in 1938, he declared the agreement to mean “peace for our time.”
Neville Chamberlain was a British Conservative politician whose career combined domestic administrative reform with finance before he became prime minister. Seeking to avoid another European war and gain time for rearmament, he pursued appeasement, but the strategy failed to restrain Nazi Germany's expansion. His government's acceptance of the Munich settlement in 1938, and its limited response to Soviet proposals for collective security, formed part of the international conditions surrounding the 1939 crisis and the Nazi-Soviet Pact. After declaring war on Germany following the invasion of Poland, he resigned in 1940 amid criticism of the Norway campaign.
Career timeline
1911–1915Birmingham city councillor; chair of the Town Planning Committee
1915Lord Mayor of Birmingham
1916–1917Director of National Service
1923–1924Minister of Health; Chancellor of the Exchequer
1924–1929Minister of Health
1931–1937Chancellor of the Exchequer
1937–1940Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1938–1939Led the Munich settlement and appeasement policy toward Germany
The UGT worker-leader they called the Spanish Lenin, a prime minister broken between revolution and war
In November 1936 Largo Caballero appointed four CNT leaders to his cabinet: anarchists whose programme was the abolition of the state took ministerial office in one. One of them, the health minister Federica Montseny, was the first woman to hold a ministry in Spanish history.
A man who left school at seven, worked as a stucco plasterer and became a union leader. At the head of the UGT he was sentenced to life for the general strike of August 1917, and under the Primo de Rivera dictatorship he took a seat on the Council of State to keep the organization alive, a choice argued over for the rest of his life. As labour minister of the Second Republic he pushed through the eight-hour day in the countryside, and around the Asturias rising of 1934 he moved so far left that his supporters called him the Spanish Lenin. In September 1936 he became prime minister and war minister, and in November brought four CNT leaders into the cabinet, seating anarchists in a government for the first time; but he clashed continuously with the communists and the Soviet advisers over rebuilding a regular army and over the pace of the revolution. After the May Days of 1937 he refused to outlaw the POUM, lost his ministers and fell. In exile in France he was seized by the Gestapo and held in Sachsenhausen until the liberation of 1945.
Career timeline
1869Born to a poor family in Madrid; left school at seven and became a stucco plasterer
1890–1894Drawn into the UGT by a builders' strike; joined the PSOE in 1894
1917Sentenced to life for leading the August general strike; released the next year on election to parliament
1924–1930Councillor of State for labour under the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, keeping the UGT alive at the cost of a lasting controversy
1925Became the leading figure of both the PSOE and the UGT after the death of Pablo Iglesias
1931–1933Labour minister of the Second Republic; pushed through the eight-hour day in the countryside and other labour laws
1934–1935Moved far left, called the Spanish Lenin; jailed after the failed Asturias rising of October and then acquitted
1936.09.04Took office as prime minister and minister of war
1936.11Brought four CNT ministers into the cabinet and moved the government to Valencia
1937.05.17Refused to outlaw the POUM after the May Days and was forced out of office
1937–1938Pushed out of the UGT leadership as well
1939Went into exile in France with the defeat of the Republic
1943–1945Seized by the Gestapo and held in Sachsenhausen concentration camp until the liberation
1946.03.23Died in Paris; his remains were returned to Madrid in 1978
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 'Tiger of the Revolution' who founded the SR Combat Organization
Arrested in Kiev in May 1903, Gershuni did not resist — instead he kissed his handcuffs and leg irons before the watching gendarmes, a gesture that entered revolutionary legend.
A co-founder of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the founder and first leader of its Combat Organization, he masterminded the political assassinations that shook the Russian Empire in 1902–1903, beginning with Interior Minister Sipyagin. Born to a Jewish family, he was a pharmacist and bacteriologist who ran cultural-enlightenment schools in Minsk before the limits of legal methods drove him to become a full-time revolutionary; as the 'Tiger of the Revolution' he became the Empire's most wanted man. Arrested in 1903 and sentenced to death, commuted to life at hard labor, he escaped the Akatuy katorga in 1906 hidden in a barrel of sauerkraut, traveling through China, Japan, and the United States to return to Europe, where he died before learning that his deputy and successor Yevno Azef was an Okhrana spy.
Career timeline
1895–1897Pharmacy studies at Kiev University; first arrest for student activism
1898–1900Opened bacteriological lab in Minsk; founded schools and cultural programs; joined and led the Workers' Party
1901–1902United dispersed SR circles into a single Socialist Revolutionary Party; founded the Combat Organization
1902–1903As first head of the Combat Organization, organized assassinations of Sipyagin and Bogdanovich, and the attempt on Obolensky
1903–1904Arrested in Kiev; held at Peter and Paul Fortress; death sentence commuted to life imprisonment
1904–1906Imprisoned at Shlisselburg Fortress, then transferred to Akatuy katorga
1906Escaped Akatuy hidden in a sauerkraut barrel; traveled via China, Japan, and US to Europe
1907–1908Elected to SR Central Committee; chaired Tammerfors party congress; died in Zurich
