Head of Finland's 1918 Red revolutionary government, who later led the exiled Communist Party and served the Comintern
In July 1917, as Manner cried 'To free Finland!', the Eduskunta passed the Supreme Power Act and the gallery answered with the Finnish national anthem.
Finnish socialist revolutionary who led Finland's 1918 Red government as chairman of the People's Delegation. After the civil war's defeat, he fled to Soviet Russia, co-founded the Finnish Communist Party, and led it for fourteen years while serving on the Comintern executive committee.
Career timeline
1900Graduated from Helsinki University; journalist at Porvoo newspaper
1906Joined SDP; founded and edited the workers' paper Työläinen
1910–1914Member of Parliament for Uusimaa
1917Member of Parliament for Uusimaa
1917Speaker of Parliament and chairman of the SDP
1918.01–04Chairman of the Finnish People's Delegation (head of the Red government); also Commander-in-Chief of the Red Guards from April
1918.08Co-founded the Finnish Communist Party (SKP) in Moscow
1920–1934Chairman of the SKP; member of the ECCI (elected 1920, 1928)
1934–1935Reassigned as Comintern rapporteur for Latin American affairs
1935–1939Arrested, sentenced to 10 years; died in the Ukhta-Pechora camp
A Socialist Revolutionary who defended democratic socialism through exile and testimony
Arriving at his place of exile, Russkoye Ustye, Zenzinov wrote in his diary: 'This is, of course, Russia, but Russia of the 17th, perhaps 16th century.'
Vladimir Zenzinov was a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party's Central Committee and a journalist who turned three Siberian exiles into pioneering ethnographic and ornithological study of the Arctic. In 1918 he backed the democratic alternative of the Samara Constituent Assembly committee and the Ufa Directory between Bolshevik power and Kolchak's military rule, before the Omsk coup banished him, and he spent his last decades recording the revolution and civil war in Paris and New York.
Career timeline
1903Joined the Socialist-Revolutionary Party
1905–1906Worked on the SR Central Committee; took part in the Moscow uprising
1917Member of the Petrograd Soviet executive and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee
1917–1918Deputy to the Constituent Assembly; member of its Samara committee
1918Member of the Ufa Directory
1918–1919Arrested after the Omsk coup and exiled to China
1919–1939Worked in émigré socialist journalism in Europe
1940–1953Worked as an émigré journalist and memoirist in New York
Lenin's trusted Bolshevik publicist and a 68-year party veteran
January 1917, Zurich: Karpinsky read Lenin's furious draft letter to Olga Ravich and called it "abusive." Lenin later told Inessa Armand: "Karpinsky called my letter abusive — I'll have to write an apology."
One of the oldest Bolsheviks (joined 1898), he edited party organs under Lenin in Geneva exile. After the revolution, as editor of Bednota and head of VTsIK's agitation department, he built the institutional framework for Bolshevik peasant and mass propaganda.
Career timeline
1896–1898Organized Marxist circles among secondary-school students in Penza
1898Joined the RSDLP at age 17
1899–1902Co-organized the Union of Struggle in Kharkov; arrested and exiled to Vologda
1904–1917Exiled in Geneva; edited Vperyod, Proletary, and Sotsial-Demokrat under Lenin
1917–1918Returned to Russia; edited Derevenskaya Pravda, headed VTsIK agitation-instruction department
1918–1922Editor of Bednota; published Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper on the agitational steamer Red Star
1918–1927Pravda editorial board member; member of VTsIK, 1st through 7th convocations
1936–1937Worked in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the VKP(b)
1937–1965Devoted to scholarly and literary work on Lenin and party history; Doctor of Economics; Hero of Socialist Labor (1962)
First woman to lead the Ukrainian Bolshevik party; delegate to all seven Comintern congresses
February 1917, Ekaterinoslav. The revolution, Gopner recalled, arrived in the city 'by telegraph.' Barely a year back from exile, she rushed straight to the Bolshevik committee and the editorial office of Zvezda.
The first woman to lead the Ukrainian Bolshevik party. From 1903 onward she moved across underground work, civil war, and the Comintern stage, serving as a delegate to all seven congresses. She survived the Great Terror and spent her later years as a historian.
Career timeline
1901Began work in illegal Social Democratic circles in Odessa
1903Joined the RSDLP; sided with the Bolshevik faction
1905Member, then secretary, of the Ekaterinoslav Party Committee
1910–1916Exile in France: Paris Bolshevik group, French Socialist Party, Bern women's socialist conference
1916–1917Returned to Russia; underground work in Irkutsk, Ekaterinoslav, Bryansk; edited Zvezda
1918Secretary of the CC of the CP(b)U — first woman to lead the party
1919–1920Deputy Commissar of Education of Ukraine; head of instructor courses, 12th Army Political Directorate
1920–1925Head of Agitprop for Ekaterinoslav, Moscow, Donetsk, and Kharkov gubernia committees
1925–1927Head of the press subsection, Women's Department of the CC of the AUCP(b)
1927–1938Member of the CC of the CP(b)U; editor of Vseukrainsky Proletary, deputy editor of Kommunist
1928–1943Candidate member of the ECCI; delegate to all seven Comintern congresses
1938–1945Deputy editor of Istorichesky Zhurnal
1945–1966Senior researcher at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism; Doctor of Historical Sciences
Stripped of his commissar post in 1927, Smirnov, penniless, went to the labor exchange to register as an unemployed precision mechanic. When he wrote 'People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs' in the box marked 'last position held,' the petty clerk at the window stared dumbfounded at the tall, greying man with lively eyes standing before him.
A Bolshevik who joined the RSDLP in 1899, he endured seven arrests and years of prison and exile in service of the revolutionary movement. A Civil War-era party organizer in the Urals and Siberia and chairman of Sibrevkom, he played a decisive role in defeating Kolchak's White forces. In the 1920s, he became a leading figure of the Left Opposition. Even after his 1927 expulsion, he led a clandestine opposition group from 1931, reestablishing contact with Trotsky via Berlin, and was arrested in 1933, sentenced to death at the first Moscow Trial in 1936, and executed.
Career timeline
1903–1917Bolshevik underground work and exile
1918–1921Civil War party organizer in Siberia and the Urals
1923–1927People’s Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs; Left Opposition leader
1927–1930Expelled from the party and exiled
1933–1936Rearrested; first Moscow Trial and execution
Finnish socialist who was Red Finland’s commissar of finance and later headed the government of Soviet Karelia
Born in Kuopio in 1881, the statistician and economist took his doctorate in 1909 with a thesis on crofting and became the Social Democrats’ agrarian expert. He sat in the Diet for the party from 1908 to 1917, was its vice chairman, and in November 1917 co-wrote “We demand” with Kuusinen. In the civil war he was Commissar of Finance of the People’s Delegation, led the talks for the 1 March treaty with Soviet Russia and signed it, and organised the defence of Viipuri at the end. Escaping to Sweden, he headed the Stockholm bureau of the Communist Party of Finland and in 1920 reported to Lenin on Karelian autonomy. As chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Soviet Karelia in 1923–1935 he pursued Finnicisation, was condemned for “nationalist chauvinism” and removed, and was shot in Moscow in 1938.
Career timeline
1905Editor-in-chief of the Marxist journal Sosialistinen aikakausilehti
1908–1917Social Democratic member of the Diet; party vice chairman
1918Commissar of Finance, Finnish People’s Delegation
1918–1920Head of the Stockholm bureau of the Communist Party of Finland
1920–1923Leading the Karelian Workers’ Commune
1923–1935Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Karelian ASSR
Gallipoli commander who led the national movement and founded the Republic of Turkey as its first president
Born in Salonica, he joined the Young Turk movement and made his name defending Gallipoli in the First World War. After the defeat he landed at Samsun in May 1919 to organise the national movement against occupation, and in 1920 convened the Grand National Assembly in Ankara. With gold and arms from the Bolshevik government he defeated the Greek army, and the Treaty of Lausanne recognised the victory. In these years the ethnic cleansing of Anatolia’s Armenians and Greeks was completed through massacres, deportations and population exchange. He abolished the sultanate in 1922 and in 1923 became the first president of the republic, pursuing secularising reforms and Turkification under one-party rule. He died in 1938.
Career timeline
1915Commander of the 19th Division at Gallipoli
1919Landed at Samsun and organised the national movement
1920Speaker of the Grand National Assembly in Ankara
1921–1922Victories at the Sakarya and Dumlupınar
1923–1938First president of the Republic of Turkey
Proletkult theorist who became architect of Stalin-era arts censorship
From his front-page Pravda article 'Time Builds Airplanes,' 18 July 1923: 'We lost 7,000 working hours today waiting for a meeting to begin. With that expenditure of labor power, we could have built one or even two airplanes. We waited another half-airplane's worth of time before the meeting finally started.' The article sparked the founding of the Time League.
Joined the Bolsheviks in 1904. As a Proletkult theorist he led the 'Time' League and pioneered Soviet scientific labour organization (NOT). First chairman of the State Committee on the Arts (1936–38), he built the institutional framework for Stalin-era cultural control and later completed his History of the Paris Commune.
Career timeline
1904Joined Bolsheviks, expelled from Moscow University, imprisoned in Taganka
1905–1912Underground work in Nizhny Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Kyiv; Bolshevik press
1912–1917Exile in London, Paris, New York; Pravda correspondent, covered Irish independence
1918–1920Proletkult theorist, Izvestia deputy editor, director of ROSTA
1921–1926Plenipotentiary to Sweden, led NOT research, plenipotentiary to Italy
1928–1930Deputy head Agitprop CC, director of Communist Academy literature institute
1930–1936Administrator of Affairs of Sovnarkom, chairman of All-Union Radio Committee
1936–1938First chairman State Committee on the Arts — suppressed Bulgakov/Meyerhold, purged formalist art
1938–1940Editor-in-chief Small Soviet Encyclopedia; wrote History of the Paris Commune
Menshevik politician who chaired the Transcaucasian Commissariat and became foreign minister of the Democratic Republic of Georgia
Born to a noble family in Martvili in 1881, he joined the Social Democratic movement as a student at Moscow University, became a Menshevik and sat in the Third State Duma from 1907 to 1912. From November 1917 to March 1918 he chaired the Transcaucasian Commissariat, then served as minister of war under the Transcaucasian Sejm. He signed the Georgian declaration of independence in May 1918 and was foreign minister, justice minister and deputy head of government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. He left for France in March 1921 and from 1953 until his death in Paris in 1954 headed the government in exile.
Career timeline
1907–1912Member of the Third State Duma
1917Russian Provisional Government commissar for western Georgia
1917–1918Chairman of the Transcaucasian Commissariat
1918–1921Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Republic of Georgia
Architect of Revolutionary Defencism and the man to whom Lenin replied, 'There is such a party!'
At the First Congress of Soviets on 4 June 1917, Tsereteli declared that 'there is no party in Russia that says: give us power.' Lenin rose from his seat and answered: 'There is such a party!'
A Georgian Menshevik leader who championed Revolutionary Defencism in 1917 and served as Interior Minister in the Provisional Government. He is remembered for drawing Lenin's famous retort, 'There is such a party!' After the October Revolution he helped found an independent Georgia.
Career timeline
1900–1902Entered Moscow University law faculty; arrested as student-movement leader, exiled to Siberia
1903–1906Joined RSDLP, aligned with Mensheviks; editor of Kvali weekly. Studied in Berlin, returned 1906
1907Deputy, Second Duma (Kutaisi); head of SD faction. After dissolution, 5 years' hard labour, Siberian exile
1915–1917.02Led Siberian Zimmerwaldism; edited Siberian Journal. Joined Irkutsk Revolutionary Committee
1917.03–09Petrograd Soviet Executive Committee; leading voice of Revolutionary Defencism
1917.05–08Minister of Post and Telegraph (May–July), concurrently Minister of Interior (July–August)
1918–1921Co-signed Georgian independence declaration; Constituent Assembly deputy; Paris Peace Conference delegate
1921–1959Exile in France; executive member of the Second International. Moved to USA 1940; died in New York, 1959
From leading the Great Steel Strike of 1919 to longest-serving leader of American communism
“The only party that genuinely represents the interests of the workers is the revolutionary party.” — Pages from a Worker's Life, 1939
From leading the Great Steel Strike of 1919 to becoming the CPUSA's longest-serving leader. He rebuilt the party after Browder dissolved it in 1944 and authored major Marxist histories including History of the Communist Party of the United States.
Career timeline
1901Joins Socialist Party of America
1909Joins the IWW; Spokane free-speech fight
1912Founds the Syndicalist League of North America
1917–1918Organizes Chicago packinghouse workers; wins 8-hour day
1919Leads the Great Steel Strike of 250,000 workers
1920Founds the Trade Union Educational League
1921Joins Communist Party after 3rd Comintern Congress
1924First presidential campaign on Communist ticket
1929Becomes CPUSA Chairman; founds the TUUL
1935Elected to ECCI Presidium
1944–1945Fights Browder's dissolution; rebuilds CPUSA as General Secretary
The Social Democratic realist who faced Stalin as Finland's Winter War foreign minister, rising from the cooperative movement
At the final meeting on 9 November 1939, when Finland refused even the reduced demands, 'the eyes of our opposite numbers opened wide.' Stalin asked: 'You don't even offer Ino?'
The politician who rebuilt Finland's Social Democratic Party from the ashes of the 1918 civil war into a parliamentary-democratic force. He became prime minister of Finland's first leftist government in 1926, and during the Moscow negotiations on the eve of the Winter War he joined Paasikivi at the table, urging Helsinki to accept a territorial exchange. It was Tanner who later recorded that when Finland rejected even the reduced Soviet demands at the final meeting of 9 November 1939, Stalin's and Molotov's 'eyes opened wide.' After the war he served a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence under Soviet pressure, but returned to parliament and led the party into the early 1960s.
Career timeline
1907Member of Parliament, SDP
1917Senator for Finance
1926–1927Prime Minister
1927–1945President, International Co-operative Alliance
KPD chairman who called off a revolution; co-founder of the International Right Opposition
At the Chemnitz conference on 21 October 1923, Brandler saw the left-wing Social Democrats walk out and abruptly called off the planned insurrection. Word never reached Hamburg in time — workers there rose in isolation and were crushed within 24 hours.
Chairman of the German Communist Party (KPD) who led the party through the 1921 March Action and the 1923 'German October' uprising plan, which he ultimately called off, judging that revolutionary conditions were not ripe. Held responsible by the Comintern, he was summoned to Moscow and sidelined. After opposing Ernst Thälmann's leadership, he was expelled from the KPD in 1929 and co-founded the Communist Party Opposition (KPO) with August Thalheimer, becoming a central figure of the International Right Opposition. Following the Nazi seizure of power he lived in exile in France and Cuba, returning to West Germany in 1949 where he led the Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik, maintaining an independent communist line to the end of his life.
Career timeline
1897–1901Began trade union activity as a bricklayer; joined the SPD
1914–1916Anti-war agitation; founding member of the Spartacus League; arrested and deported
1918.12Founding member of the KPD; elected to the Central Committee
1921–1924KPD Chairman; led March Action and 1923 'German October,' summoned to Moscow after failure
1924–1928Comintern and Profintern work; exiled to Kazakhstan; worked at VSNKh in Moscow
1929Expelled from KPD; co-founded KPO with Thalheimer; built the International Right Opposition
1933–1948Exile in France and Cuba; advocated an anti-fascist united front
1949–1956Returned to West Germany; founded and led Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik
The orator ground away between revolution and counter-revolution
In March 1917, taking the rostrum of the Petrograd Soviet to announce his acceptance of the Justice Ministry, he cried: "I cannot live without the people. In the moment you begin to doubt me, then kill me!" The workers and soldiers filling the hall erupted in wild applause.
The face of the Provisional Government and its last premier. In August 1917 he armed even the jailed Bolsheviks to stop Kornilov; in October, no army anywhere would come to save him. The story of his escaping in a dress is a Soviet fabrication. He spent half a century in exile lecturing on what had gone wrong, and died in New York.
Career timeline
1912–1917Duma deputy (Trudovik); famed defence lawyer in political trials
1917.03Justice Minister: amnesty, abolition of the death penalty
1917.05War Minister: the failed June offensive
1917.07–10Premier: the Kornilov affair; overthrown in October
1918–1970Exile in Paris and New York: writing and lecturing
Combat commander of the Moscow uprising and founding leader of the Maximalist SRs
His last words on the way to the gallows in Taganka Prison: "Tell mother that I died calmly."
One of the founding leaders of the Union of Socialists-Revolutionaries-Maximalists (SSRM), the radical left faction that split from the PSR in 1906. During the December 1905 Moscow armed uprising he commanded a combat druzhina on the Kazan Railway and fought at Chistye Prudy and Presnya, leading the spectacular expropriation of 875,000 rubles from the Moscow Mutual Credit Society in March 1906. A Moscow University natural-sciences student arrested in 1904, he was freed by the October Manifesto amnesty and immediately returned to armed struggle; rejecting the PSR's two-stage revolution, he demanded immediate full socialization and a 'Toilers' Republic'. Wounded resisting arrest in August 1906, he was tried by field court martial and hanged at Taganka Prison at the age of 24.
Career timeline
1903–1904Entered Moscow University natural sciences faculty; joined the PSR
1904Arrested for agitation in Moscow; sentenced to 7 years
1905.10Freed under the October Manifesto amnesty
1905.12Moscow uprising — commanded Kazan Railway druzhina; fought at Chistye Prudy and Presnya
1906.03Led Moscow Mutual Credit Society expropriation (875,000 rubles)
1906Co-founded Union of Socialists-Revolutionaries-Maximalists (SSRM)
1906.08–09Wounded resisting arrest near Aquarium Garden; court-martialed and hanged at Taganka Prison
SR Combat Organization veteran who chaired the first-convocation VTsIK in 1917
Arrested in 1907 and sentenced to eight years of katorga, he was settled in Usolye, Irkutsk province, where he joined the anti-war internationalist 'Siberian Zimmerwaldists.'
Born in Moscow into a Jewish tea-merchant family, he followed his elder brother Mikhail Gots into the Socialist Revolutionary Party and joined its Combat Organization in 1906. Arrested in 1907 and sentenced to eight years of katorga, he was settled in Usolye, Irkutsk province, in 1915. Back in Petrograd in 1917, he led the SR faction in the Petrograd Soviet and was elected chairman of the VTsIK at the First Congress of Soviets. Opposing the October Revolution, he led the Committee for Salvation of the Homeland and Revolution; at the 1922 SR trial he was the main defendant and received a death sentence, commuted in 1924, followed by exile to Ulyanovsk in 1925. Rearrested in 1937, he was sentenced to 25 years in 1939 and died in 1940 in a Krasnoyarsk labour camp.
Career timeline
1906Joined the SR Combat Organization; participated in terror planning
1907Arrested; sentenced to 8 years hard labour (katorga)
1915–1917Settlement in Usolye, Irkutsk; joined the Siberian Zimmerwaldist group
1917.03–06SR faction leader in the Petrograd Soviet; Executive Committee member
1917.06–10Chairman of the VTsIK (1st All-Russian Congress of Soviets)
1917.10–1918Chairman, Committee for Salvation of Homeland and Revolution; led the junker uprising
1918–1920Organized SR armed detachments; fought on two fronts against Bolsheviks and Whites
1922Main defendant at the SR show trial; sentenced to death, commuted
1925–1937Exiled to Simbirsk (Ulyanovsk); economic planning work
1937–1940Rearrested during the Great Purge; sentenced to 25 years on 20 June 1939; died in 1940 in a Krasnoyarsk labour camp
Interior commissar of Soviet Lithuania, a Lithuanian communist leader killed in the Great Terror
He urged that Lithuania remain an independent state, yet imagined that independence as socialist.
A Lithuanian communist leader, he was commissar for internal affairs of Soviet Lithuania and Litbel in 1918 and 1919. In exile he worked in the Comintern and wrote the history of the Lithuanian labour movement; arrested in 1938, he was shot in 1940.
Career timeline
1906Joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (Central Committee member from 1907)
1909Arrested and sentenced to four years' katorga, later exiled to the Yenisei province
1917Deputy commissar for Lithuanian affairs in Petrograd, editor of Tiesa
1918–1919Commissar for internal affairs of the first Soviet Lithuanian government
1920Secretary of the Lithuanian CP's Foreign Bureau (Comintern executive representative from 1921)
1926–1935Chairman of the Comintern International Control Commission
Eastern Front commander of the Turkish War of Independence who invaded Armenia in 1920 and imposed the Treaty of Alexandropol
Born in Istanbul in 1882, he graduated at the top of his class from the Ottoman Military College and fought at Gallipoli, at Kut and on the Caucasus front in the First World War. Joining Mustafa Kemal’s national movement, he commanded the Eastern Front in the War of Independence. He invaded Armenia in September 1920 and took Kars and Alexandropol; during the campaign his army displaced and massacred tens of thousands of Armenian civilians. He signed the Treaty of Alexandropol in December and the Treaty of Kars in 1921. In 1924 he founded the Progressive Republican Party, the first opposition party, which was closed; elected speaker of the Grand National Assembly in 1946, he died in office in 1948.
Career timeline
1915Commander of the 14th Division at Gallipoli
1918Commander of the 15th Army Corps, Erzurum
1920Invasion of Armenia; signed the Treaty of Alexandropol
1921Signed the Treaty of Kars
1924–1925Founder and leader of the Progressive Republican Party
Comintern
Communism
1882–1949
○ Natural causes; some details unconfirmed
From Leipzig defendant to Comintern General Secretary
"I am defending myself, an accused Communist. I am defending my political honor, my honor as a revolutionary. I am defending my Communist ideology, my ideals." Spoken in the Leipzig courtroom in 1933, the words were meant to defend the content and significance of his whole life.
A printer and trade unionist who led the failed 1923 uprising, he became an international symbol by defying the Nazis at the Leipzig Reichstag fire trial. Elected Comintern General Secretary in 1935, after the 7th World Congress, he headed the CPSU Central Committee's International Information Department after the Comintern was dissolved in 1943. During the Great Purge he took part in the destruction of the Polish Communist Party's leadership and in reprisals against old Bulgarian comrades, while also intervening to save some. He returned to Bulgaria in 1945 and became Prime Minister the next year; his Bulgarian-Yugoslav federation plans were undone by the Stalin-Tito split. He died near Moscow in 1949.
Left SR People's Commissar in the first Soviet coalition: 'the core of the party'
'Proshyan succeeded in doing more to strengthen the Soviet power before July 1918 than he did after July 1918 to undermine it.' — Lenin, 'In Memory of Comrade Proshyan,' December 1918
Core leader of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party and People's Commissar for Posts and Telegraphs in the first Soviet coalition government, serving alongside Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin on the Provisional Executive Committee of the Council of People's Commissars (February 1918). As commissar (December 1917–March 1918) he broke the postal-telegraph sabotage and normalized communications, while also serving as political commissar to the Supreme Military Council and member of the VTsIK Presidium. He resigned in protest against the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and became one of the leaders of the July 1918 Left SR uprising; he died of typhus while underground. Maria Spiridonova called him 'the internal builder, the main spring, the core of the Left SR party.'
Career timeline
1903Joined SR Party at Odessa University; student organizer
1905Arrested for attempting to free political prisoners from Odessa prison; 6 years katorga
1910–1913Escaped settlement, recaptured, 3 more years hard labor; exiled to Siberia, fled abroad
1917Returned after February Revolution; Left SR leader in Helsingfors, editor of Socialist-Revolutionary; elected to VTsIK at Second Congress of Soviets
1917.12Appointed People's Commissar for Posts and Telegraphs
1918.02–03Member of Provisional Executive Committee of Sovnarkom; Political Commissar to Supreme Military Council
1918.03Resigned from Sovnarkom in protest against Brest-Litovsk Treaty
1918.07Participated in Left SR uprising leadership; went underground after suppression, sentenced to 3 years in absentia
Communist who led the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 and was shot after its fall
On 13 April 1919, Leviné became chair of Munich’s Executive Board, calling for a Red Army and the overcoming of capitalism. After the Soviet Republic was suppressed, he was executed in June.
Born to a Jewish merchant family in St Petersburg, he moved to Germany with his mother after his father’s death and studied at Heidelberg. He returned to Russia to take part in the revolution of 1905 and was imprisoned. In Germany he worked in the USPD and the Spartacus League, and in 1919 the KPD sent him to Munich. When the KPD replaced Toller’s council government on 13 April he became its leader, raising a Red Army and putting factories under workers’ control. Captured after Munich fell in May, he was sentenced to death by a court martial and shot in Stadelheim prison on 5 June.
Career timeline
1905Returned to Russia to take part in the revolution and was exiled to Siberia.
1918–1919Helped found the Spartacus League in Berlin and worked in the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).
1919Sent by the KPD to Munich to organize its local branch and help establish the council republic, he became chair of its Executive Board on 13 April and led the republic.
1919Captured after the republic’s suppression, he was sentenced to death and shot at Stadelheim Prison on 5 June.
Revolutionary organizer who led the Moscow party and pioneered early Soviet diplomacy
When the bomb fell, he rushed toward it, calling out: "Calm down, nothing special, we'll sort out what this is right away."
A Bolshevik organizer who served as first secretary of Soviet Russia's earliest diplomatic mission, the Plenipotentiary Representation in Germany, before leading the Moscow party through the Civil War as secretary of the Moscow Committee from July 1918. He co-chaired the City Defence Committee with Felix Dzerzhinsky and was killed in September 1919 when anarchists threw a bomb into a party meeting at Leontievsky Lane.
Career timeline
1901Joined the RSDLP (Bolsheviks)
1902Arrested, exiled to Siberia
1904Escaped to Geneva, met Lenin
1905Participated in Moscow December Uprising
1918First Secretary, RSFSR Plenipotentiary Representation in Germany
1918–1919Secretary, Moscow City Party Committee
1919Co-chaired City Defence Committee with Dzerzhinsky
From Rosa Luxemburg's lawyer to KPD leader, his 'anti-putschism' took on Comintern adventurism
Right after the March Action of 1921 he wrote: 'When I conceived this pamphlet, the Communist Party had 500,000 members in Germany. Eight days later when I wrote it, the party was shaken to its foundations and its very existence called into question. The fallen, sacrificed to this Bakuninist madness, cry out: Never again!'
A socialist who rose from Rosa Luxemburg's lawyer to chairman of the German Communist Party (KPD). Expelled for his pamphlet Unser Weg, which condemned the 1921 March Action as 'Bakuninist putschism,' he returned via the USPD to lead the SPD left. Trotsky called him 'the only man in Germany who had a head to lose.'
Career timeline
1906Joined the SPD; began law practice in Frankfurt
1913Defended Rosa Luxemburg in court on charges of inciting soldiers to disobedience
1915–1918Co-founded the Spartacus League; Zimmerwald Left bureau; edited Spartakusbriefe
1918.12Introduced the 'National Assembly' debate at the KPD founding congress
1919.03–1921.02KPD chairman — rebuilt the party after the murders of Luxemburg, Liebknecht, and Jogiches
1920Led unification with the USPD left, turning the KPD into a mass party; championed the 'Open Letter' tactic
1921Expelled from the KPD for Unser Weg: Wider den Putschismus, his critique of the March Action
1922Returned to the SPD via the USPD; published Luxemburg's suppressed manuscript The Russian Revolution
1924–1930SPD Reichstag deputy; fought to expose the Liebknecht–Luxemburg murders and opposed the rising Nazi movement
Comintern
Communism
1883–1936
✕ Executed by shooting
He opposed October, vouched for Stalin, and was shot by him
In May 1924 Lenin's testament was read to a plenum of the Central Committee. Kamenev read the document; Zinoviev then spoke for Stalin and moved to re-elect him General Secretary by show of hands, which carried with only Trotsky's small group against. The testament was not reported to the congress.
One of Lenin's long-standing companions in exile and the first chairman of the Comintern's executive committee, he was an early face of international communism. Born Ovsei-Gershon Radomyshelsky to a Jewish dairy-farming family in Yelizavetgrad, today Kropyvnytskyi in Ukraine, he opposed the October 1917 rising publicly alongside Kamenev, yet as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet he controlled the party's northern base and became a full Politburo member in March 1921. After Lenin's death he formed a triumvirate with Stalin and Kamenev to isolate Trotsky, but was defeated at the XIV Party Congress in December 1925 and lost the Leningrad Soviet and Comintern posts in 1926. He then joined Trotsky in the United Opposition; in August 1936 the first Moscow trial sentenced him to death and he was shot, and he was rehabilitated in 1988.
Career timeline
1907–1917Lenin’s closest companion of the exile years
1917.10With Kamenev, opposes the rising; the leak scandal
1919–1926First chairman of the Comintern
1923–1925The triumvirate against Trotsky
1926–1927The United Opposition; expulsions and recantations
