First head of the Crimean People’s Republic, the first elected mufti of Crimea and the poet of the Crimean Tatar anthem
Born in 1885 in the village of Büyük Sonaq near Dzhankoy, the son of an imam, he went to Istanbul in 1908 to study law and theology, founded the Young Tatar Writers’ Association and the secret organisation Vatan (Homeland), and returned to Crimea in 1912. In March 1917 he became chairman of the Crimean Muslim Executive Committee and the first mufti of Crimea elected by delegates rather than appointed by the Minister of the Interior. Arrested in June for anti-government agitation, he was freed after a protest bearing 5,000 signatures. He prepared the Qurultay and in December became chairman and director of justice of the Directory of the Crimean People’s Republic, but was arrested by the Bolsheviks in January 1918 and killed without trial by sailors in Sevastopol on 23 February. His poem “Ant etkenmen” became the Crimean Tatar national anthem.
Career timeline
1908–1912Studied law and theology in Istanbul; co-founded Vatan
1913Law faculty of the Psychoneurological Institute, St Petersburg
1917Chairman of the Crimean Muslim Executive Committee; mufti of Crimea
1917–1918Chairman and director of justice of the Directory of the Crimean People’s Republic
Founding member and first party chairman, shot as a 'bourgeois'
Arrested at the third party congress in August 1924, he was tried, sentenced and shot within twenty-four hours while the congress went on meeting.
A founding member of the Mongolian People's Party in 1919, he led the party's first Central Committee after the 1921 revolution and served as finance minister in the early people's government. He directed the purge and execution of Prime Minister Bodoo in 1922, an early sign of the revolution's inner violence. Wanting less Soviet control and limited capitalism, he clashed with Comintern leftists and was denounced as a 'bourgeois' at the third party congress in August 1924, then arrested and shot within a day. The purge sealed the party's turn toward the non-capitalist path and the republic.
Career timeline
1919Founded the East Khüree group and helped found the Mongolian People's Party
1920Member of the party delegation to Moscow that met Lenin
1921Elected Central Committee chairman at the 1st congress in Kiakhta (March–September)
1921–1922Minister of finance
1922Directed the purge and execution of Prime Minister Bodoo
1923Member of the Central Committee Presidium
1924Denounced as a 'bourgeois' and executed at the 3rd party congress
Petrograd Finnish Bolshevik who helped Lenin escape to Finland in 1917 and sat on the Red Guards’ three-man command in 1918
Born in Kronstadt in 1885 to a Petersburg Finnish working family, he worked in St Petersburg as a turner among other jobs and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, siding with the Bolsheviks. He organised Lenin’s escape to Finland in the summer of 1917 and guarded him around the October Revolution. Over the winter of 1917–1918 he and his brother Jukka procured arms for the Finnish Red Guards; when Haapalainen was dismissed on 20 March 1918 he formed a three-man command with Evert Eloranta and Adolf Taimi, then took over the Lempäälä front. After the defeat he rose to corps commander in the Red Army and quarrelled with Kuusinen and Manner in the Communist Party of Finland, which dropped him from its Central Committee in 1927. Expelled from the army for alcoholism in 1935 and sentenced to death, he died of tuberculosis in 1936 before the sentence was carried out.
Career timeline
1903Joined the RSDLP (Bolshevik)
1917Organised Lenin’s escape to Finland; Lenin’s bodyguard
1918Three-man command of the Red Guards; commander of the Lempäälä front
1919–1922Commissar and inspector of the Red Army’s Finnish units
1918–1927Leadership of the Communist Party of Finland
Leader of the Workers' Opposition, defeated by Lenin, devoured by the Purge
At his closed Military Collegium trial on 2 September 1937 he pleaded not guilty, refusing to confess to the terrorist conspiracy or to implicate others. He maintained that the programme of the Workers' Opposition had been right.
A skilled metal turner born into a poor Old Believer family in Murom, he joined the RSDLP in 1901 and sided with the Bolsheviks after the 1903 split. Working in French, German and British factories, he absorbed the European labor movement firsthand and ran the party's clandestine Scandinavian courier network during the war. In February 1917 he was the most senior Bolshevik in the capital, active in the Russian Bureau of the CC and the Petrograd Soviet's executive committee. After October he became the first People's Commissar of Labor, laying the foundations of the eight-hour day; at the end of the Civil War he and Kollontai led the Workers' Opposition, which Lenin defeated at the Tenth Congress in 1921. Sidelined into diplomacy, expelled in 1933 and imprisoned in 1935, he was executed on 2 September 1937 on fabricated charges. Rehabilitated in 1963 and restored to the party in 1988.
Career timeline
1901Joined the RSDLP; aligned with the Bolsheviks after the 1903 split
Co-founder and chief theoretician of the Left SR Party: from coalition with the Bolsheviks to the July 1918 uprising
"We, as political actors, at a moment when an event of immense historical significance is taking place, could least of all occupy ourselves with moral characterization. It was clear to us that our place was with the revolution." — First PLSR Congress, November 1917
Co-founder and chief theoretician of the Left SR Party. Entered coalition with the Bolsheviks, then led the July 1918 uprising against the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. After its suppression he endured repeated exile and was executed in 1938.
Career timeline
1904Joined SR combat organization; arrested and exiled to Turukhansk
1907Escaped abroad, émigré activity in Geneva and Paris; graduated Heidelberg law faculty (1911)
1915Attended Zimmerwald Conference; active as anti-war internationalist
1917.04–11Returned to Russia, co-founded PLSR; VTsIK Presidium member, head of International Department
1917.11Elected to Constituent Assembly (Petrograd capital district, SR list no. 9)
1918.04Elected Chairman of the PLSR Central Committee Presidium
1918.07Led opposition to Brest-Litovsk and the July uprising; went underground after suppression
1920–1937Repeated arrests and exile (Chelyabinsk, Tver, Voronezh, Arkhangelsk); worked as an economist
1938Sentenced to death by VKVS; executed 29 August at Kommunarka; posthumously rehabilitated 1992
The Menshevik Labour Minister sent to calm the crowds during the April Crisis
On 20 April 1917, as 15,000 armed soldiers and sailors gathered before the Mariinsky Palace outraged by Milyukov's note, Skobelev and Gots were sent to address them: their speeches were unavailing.
A son of Baku's wealthy Molokan merchant class, he studied at the Vienna Polytechnic and helped edit Trotsky's Vienna Pravda. After the February Revolution he became deputy chairman of the Petrograd Soviet; during the April Crisis he was sent with Abram Gots to calm the armed crowds outside the Mariinsky Palace, and on 5 May 1917 he entered the first coalition government as Minister of Labour. He opposed the October Revolution but later reconciled, joining the Bolshevik Party in 1922 and working in the Soviet foreign trade system until his execution during the Great Purge in 1938.
Career timeline
1903Joined RSDLP; led Baku oil workers' strike
1906–1912Exile in Vienna; edited Trotsky's Pravda; graduated Vienna Polytechnic (1912)
1912–1917Deputy, Fourth Duma (Russian population of Transcaucasia); Menshevik faction
The colonel of the Croix-de-Feu who turned his columns away from the Chamber
That night his columns reached the rear of the Chamber and he ordered them to disperse rather than storm it. The left saw a dress rehearsal for fascism in the same night; the far right called him a traitor. Both verdicts followed him for the rest of his life
The son of a general, trained at Saint-Cyr, who served in Morocco and the First World War and retired as a lieutenant-colonel. From 1931 he led the veterans' association Croix-de-Feu and built it into a mass movement of several hundred thousand, whose discipline and motorised rallies looked to the French left like the face of fascism. On the night of 6 February 1934 his columns reached the rear of the Chamber and he ordered them to disperse rather than storm it, a caution for which the far right called him a traitor. When the Popular Front government dissolved the leagues in 1936 he founded the Parti Social Français and turned toward electoral politics, building what became the largest party of the French right by the late 1930s. He backed Pétain and sat on Vichy's National Council while running an intelligence network that passed information to the British, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and interned in Germany, and after the liberation was detained again by the French authorities as a Vichy man before dying of illness in 1946. Whether he was a fascist or the French form of authoritarian conservatism has been the central argument in the study of the French right from Sternhell onward.
Career timeline
1885Born at Lorient, the son of a general
1907–1918Saint-Cyr, service in Morocco and the First World War
1919–1928Staff service; retires as a lieutenant-colonel
1929–1931Joins the Croix-de-Feu and becomes its president
1931–1936Expands the Croix-de-Feu into a mass movement of hundreds of thousands
1934.02.06Disperses his columns at the Chamber
1936.06Founds the Parti Social Français after the leagues are dissolved
1936–1939Builds the PSF into the largest party of the French right
1940–1942Backs Pétain; sits on Vichy's National Council
1942–1943Runs an intelligence network for the British; arrested by the Gestapo in March 1943
1943–1945Deported to Germany and interned
1945–1946Detained by the French authorities after the liberation; dies the next year
1961Posthumously recognised as a deported member of the Resistance
From civil-rights lawyer of the March 1st Movement to first Chairman of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly: a progressive nationalist
When he submitted a motion of non-prosecution during the March 1st Movement trial, the Japanese courtroom erupted in protest — and the scene, reported nationwide, made Ho Hon the symbol of the anti-colonial lawyer.
One of colonial Korea's 'three great civil-rights lawyers,' he defended the 47 national representatives of the March 1st Movement and handled pro bono cases for workers and independence activists. Elected chairman of Singanhoe's Central Executive Committee in 1927, he led the united-front anti-Japanese struggle, and after liberation served as Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Korea and chairman of the South Korean Workers' Party before crossing north, becoming the bridge by which Korea's independence movement passed into socialism.
Career timeline
1907Passed the first Korean Empire bar examination
1919Defended March 1st Movement leaders; President, Korean Bar Association
1927Chairman, Central Executive Committee of Singanhoe
1945Vice Chairman, Preparatory Committee; Prime Minister, People's Republic of Korea
1946Chairman, South Korean Workers' Party
1948Chairman, Supreme People's Assembly; President, Kim Il Sung University
Lenin's periphery-builder who brought Soviet power to Belarus and Armenia
When news of the October Revolution reached Minsk, Myasnikov immediately formed and led a Military Revolutionary Committee, and Soviet power was established there without bloodshed.
An Armenian Bolshevik born to a merchant family in Nakhichevan-on-Don. He joined the RSDLP in 1906 and was administratively exiled to Baku for illegal literature, where Shaumyan influenced him. In 1917 he led the Western Front Bolsheviks in Minsk and played the leading role in establishing Soviet power there. He chaired the Byelorussian SSR Central Executive Committee in February 1919, then from May 1921 headed the Armenian SSR Council of People's Commissars, building Soviet Armenia's state institutions and economy. From 1922 he chaired the Transcaucasian SFSR Union Council and served as first secretary of the Transcaucasian Kraikom. He wrote on Marxist-Leninist theory and Armenian literature. On 22 March 1925 his aircraft caught fire and crashed near Tiflis, killing him alongside Atarbekov and Mogilevsky; the cause of the fire was never established.
Career timeline
1906Joined the RSDLP; exiled to Baku for illegal literature — met Shaumyan
1911–1914Graduated Moscow University law faculty (1911); army service, then assistant barrister writing for Bolshevik press
1914–1917Served on the Western Front in WWI, revolutionary propaganda among soldiers
1917.09–1918.05Chairman of North-Western Regional Party Committee, Minsk VRK chairman, Western Front Commander
1919.01–02First Chairman of the Central Executive Committee and Military Commissar of the Byelorussian SSR
1919–1920Military organiser then secretary of Moscow Party Committee; head of Political Directorate, Western Front
1921–1922Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and Military Commissar of the Armenian SSR; deputy chairman of ZSFSR
1922–1925Chairman of the Transcaucasian Union Council, first secretary of the Transcaucasian Kraikom — USSR CEC Presidium, Revolutionary Military Council, candidate CC member
1925.03.22Died in a plane fire near Tiflis alongside Atarbekov and Mogilevsky
Right-radical officer who organised the Szeged National Army and as prime minister in 1932–1936 steered Hungary towards Italy and Germany
Born in Murga, Tolna County, the son of the village schoolmaster, he served as an Austro-Hungarian officer in the First World War. In Szeged in 1919 he founded the paramilitary MOVE and played a leading role in organising Horthy’s National Army, and in 1921 he led the armed opposition to King Charles’s return. He became defence minister in Bethlen’s government in 1929 and prime minister in 1932. He aligned with Mussolini, signing the Rome Protocols in 1934, and as the first foreign head of government to visit Hitler concluded a trade agreement with Germany. He died of illness in Munich in 1936.
Commander of the industrial front: he pulled the trigger himself
Around his fiftieth birthday in October 1936, shaken by news of his brother Papulia's arrest, he refused to attend the celebration held in his honour at Pyatigorsk; his wife Zinaida went alone.
An Old Bolshevik who joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, he was elected to the Central Committee at the Prague conference of 1912 and became a full Politburo member in 1930. He directed the Sovietization of the Caucasus and the creation of the Transcaucasian Federation, headed the Central Control Commission and Rabkrin in 1926–30 and the Supreme Economic Council in 1930–32, then led the First and Second Five-Year Plans as People's Commissar of Heavy Industry from 1932. At the commissariat he opposed mass repression in his own branch and shielded his cadres; he died in Moscow on 18 February 1937, with the official announcement giving heart failure as the cause. The purge of his deputies and relatives, and the circumstances of his death, are recorded alongside competing accounts of how he died.
Career timeline
1912Elected to the CC at the Prague conference
1921Sovietizes the Caucasus; the Georgian affair
1926–1930Chairs the Central Control Commission
1930–1932Chairs the Supreme Economic Council
1932–1937Commissar of Heavy Industry through the Five-Year Plans
1924–1926First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Territorial Committee
1926First Secretary of the North Caucasus Territorial Committee
1926–1930People's Commissar of Rabkrin and deputy chairman of the USSR Sovnarkom
1930–1937Full member of the Politburo
1935Turns the Stakhanovite record into a nationwide campaign
Victor Serge recalled: "He had driven himself so hard that during meetings it seemed he might at any moment drop off to sleep; but his brain was still fresh, and crammed with statistics."
A Bolshevik economic theorist and co-author, with Bukharin, of The ABC of Communism (1919), the foundational textbook of early communist parties worldwide, he served as a Central Committee Secretary during state-building. As an initiator of the Declaration of 46 (1923) and the Left Opposition's chief polemicist, he formalized the theory of 'primitive socialist accumulation' in The New Economics (1926), arguing that surplus must be transferred from the peasant sector to fund industrialization, framing the NEP debate. He returned to the Stalin line in 1929 but soon broke over collectivization violence, joined an underground opposition group, and was executed in 1937.
Career timeline
1917–1920Central party work and economic theory
1923–1927Left Opposition and the Declaration of 46
133 days of the second Soviet state in Europe, and the execution cellar 19 years later
“The Hungarian proletariat betrayed not their leaders but itself.” — last speech before the Republic's fall, 1 August 1919
A Transylvanian-born Jewish journalist turned revolutionary, Béla Kun founded and led the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, Europe's second proletarian dictatorship. In 133 days he nationalised industry, but his refusal to distribute confiscated land to peasants, turning estates into state farms, lost the countryside; Entente-backed armies crushed the Republic. In Soviet exile he became a key Comintern figure, ECCI Presidium member and head of Agitprop, backing the ultra-left "Third Period" and resisting the 1935 Popular Front turn, clashing with Dimitrov. Swept up in the Great Purge in 1937, tortured, shot in 1938, and posthumously rehabilitated in 1955.
Career timeline
1902Joins the Hungarian Social Democratic Party; organises Transylvanian branch
1916Taken prisoner by the Russian Army in WWI; exposed to Bolshevism in the Urals camp
1917Joins the RSDLP(b); works in the Tomsk party committee and Bolshevik press
1918.03Co-founds the Hungarian Group of the Russian Communist Party in Moscow — precursor to the KMP
1918.11Returns to Budapest; founds the Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP) and becomes CC chair
1919.03–08People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and de facto leader of the Hungarian Soviet Republic
1920Chairman of the Crimean Revolutionary Committee
1921Directs the March Action in Germany — uprising fails
1921–1936Member of the ECCI and its Presidium
1924–Head of the ECCI Agitprop Department
1937Arrested on charges of leading a counter-revolutionary terrorist organisation
1938.08.29Sentenced to death and shot — Kommunarka, Moscow
Gömbös’s successor as prime minister in 1936–1938, who announced the Győr programme and introduced the First Jewish Law
Born in Budapest, he began his civil-service career in Pest County in 1909 and after the revolutions was head of Győr and Komárom counties. He entered parliament in 1927 and became Gömbös’s minister of agriculture in 1935. Succeeding Gömbös as prime minister in October 1936, he promised a return to Bethlen’s constitutional course and in 1937 banned the Party of National Will and had Szálasi imprisoned. In March 1938 he announced the Győr programme, but after the Anschluss he brought pro-German politicians into the cabinet and negotiated with the extreme right, and resigned in May. The First Jewish Law his government introduced passed under Imrédy, and from December 1938 until his death he was Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Hitler's personal prisoner, unbroken by eleven years in solitary
“A vote for Hindenburg is a vote for Hitler; a vote for Hitler is a vote for war.” — presidential campaign, 1932
KPD chairman. A Hamburg dock worker, he built the party into a Weimar mass force. Arrested after the Nazi takeover, he spent eleven years in solitary and was shot at Buchenwald in 1944.
Career timeline
1903–1920Hamburg docker; from the SPD via the USPD to the KPD
1925–1933KPD chairman; leads the Red Front-Fighters' League
1925Runs for Reich President
1932Runs for Reich President
1933Arrested by the Gestapo; eleven years in solitary
1944.08Shot at Buchenwald on Hitler's direct order
The naval engineer who led the Black Sea mutiny and rose to the Comintern Secretariat
On 19 April 1919, the red flag rose above the battleship Jean Bart in the Black Sea. André Marty, ringleader of the sailors who refused to fight the Bolsheviks, was arrested and sentenced to twenty years at hard labour by a Constantinople court-martial.
A French naval mechanic who in 1919 led the mutiny aboard the battleship Jean Bart in the Black Sea, refusing intervention against the Bolsheviks. He was sentenced to 20 years' hard labour. Pardoned in 1923, he joined the PCF as a deputy and Central Committee member, rising to Comintern Secretary and Presidium member in 1935. As political commissar of the International Brigades in Spain, he organized the Albacete base and earned the epithet 'Butcher of Albacete' for his harsh discipline. Expelled from the PCF in 1952, he remained a central figure in French communism and Comintern work for three decades.
Career timeline
1908Enlists in the French Navy as a mechanic
1919Leads the Black Sea mutiny aboard the Jean Bart; court-martialed, 20 years' hard labour
1923Pardoned after international campaign; joins the PCF
1924–1955National Assembly deputy for Seine-et-Oise; PCF Central Committee member
1931–1935Active in the Comintern Executive Committee (ECCI)
1935–1943Comintern Secretary and Presidium member
1936–1938Political Commissar of the International Brigades; organizes from Albacete
1939–1943Works for Comintern in Moscow; 1943 liaison with de Gaulle in Algiers
1944Returns after Liberation; attempts revolution — vetoed by Stalin
1952Marty-Tillon affair: accused as police spy; expelled from the PCF
Co-founder of Western Marxism, the German philosopher who challenged Marxist orthodoxy with Marxism and Philosophy
“If we get a few more of these Professors spinning out their theories, we shall be lost.” — Zinoviev at the 5th Comintern Congress, 1924, attacking Korsch and Lukács
German Marxist philosopher and revolutionary who, alongside Lukács, laid the foundations of Western Marxism. In Marxism and Philosophy (1923) he applied the materialist conception of history to Marxism itself, arguing for the revolutionary recovery of the Hegelian dialectic, a move that drew fierce denunciation from the Comintern. Served as Justice Minister in the 1923 Thuringian workers' government and as a KPD Reichstag deputy before his expulsion as a left-oppositionist. Fled the Nazis for American exile, where his scholarship left a deep imprint on Brecht, Benjamin, and the Frankfurt School.
Career timeline
1906–1910Studies law and philosophy at Munich, Geneva, Berlin; doctorate in law, University of Jena
1912–1914Legal research in London; joins the Fabian Society
1914–1918German Army service — refuses to carry weapons; awarded the Iron Cross twice for bravery
1917Joins USPD; elected delegate to soldiers' soviet
1920Joins KPD with the USPD left wing; lecturer at University of Jena
1923.03Publishes Marxism and Philosophy; becomes target of fierce Comintern criticism
1923.10–11Justice Minister, Thuringian workers' government — collapses after 27 days under Reichswehr intervention
1924–1928KPD Reichstag deputy; delegate to 5th Comintern Congress
1926.04Expelled from KPD; forms the Resolute Lefts (Entschiedene Linke) opposition faction
1933Flees Germany the night of the Reichstag fire; passes through Denmark and England
1936–1961US exile — Tulane University, Institute for Social Research; teaches Marxism to Brecht
1938Publishes Karl Marx; deeply influences Benjamin's Arcades Project
1950Ten Theses on Marxism Today — declares break with orthodox Marxism
Hungarian communist who backed Soviet intervention with Kádár in 1956 and became prime minister after the revolution was crushed
Born into a German Catholic family in Seregélyes, he studied law and was taken prisoner on the Eastern Front in 1915 and sent to Tomsk. There he joined the Bolsheviks and commanded an international POW unit; back in Hungary in 1918 he helped found the Hungarian Communist Party and was war commissar of the Slovak Soviet Republic. He lived in the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1936 and, under the name Otto Flatter, commanded the XI International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. After the war he was Budapest’s chief of police and then a diplomat. In the 1956 revolution he was interior minister under Imre Nagy, but in November he went to Moscow with János Kádár and openly backed Soviet armed intervention. As minister of the armed forces and public security in Kádár’s government he helped organise the security regiments and the Workers’ Militia, and he was prime minister from 1958 to 1961.
Career timeline
1915Captured by the Russians; held in Tomsk
1918Co-founder of the Hungarian Communist Party
1919War commissar of the Slovak Soviet Republic
1936–1939Commander of the XI International Brigade in Spain
1946–1949Budapest chief of police
1956Interior minister under Nagy; minister of the armed forces and public security under Kádár
Founder of the Chinese Red Army and the PLA, first among the Ten Marshals
Cornered by assassins, he told them "Don't shoot me — I'm only the cook," and survived; his men called him "Chief of the Cooks" ever after.
Commander-in-chief whose military leadership secured the Chinese Communist revolution. He joined Mao Zedong at Jinggangshan in 1928 to form the legendary Zhu-Mao Army, then elevated guerrilla warfare to a strategic art across the Long March, the war against Japan, and the Civil War. After the founding of the PRC he served as vice-chairman and chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, and was named first among the Ten Marshals in 1955. His journey from warlord general to communist, breaking an opium addiction and starting again, traces the arc of the Chinese Revolution more completely than almost any other life.
Career timeline
1911Yunnan Military Academy; joined the 1911 Revolution
1922Joined the CCP in Berlin under Zhou Enlai's sponsorship
1927Co-led the Nanchang Uprising, origin of the PLA
1928Joined Mao at Jinggangshan; the Zhu-Mao Fourth Red Army
1930Red Army commander-in-chief; defeated four encirclement campaigns
1934–1935Red Army commander-in-chief through the Long March
1937–1945Eighth Route Army commander; led Hundred Regiments Offensive
1955Marshal of the PRC, first among the Ten Marshals
From eyewitness of the Bolshevik Revolution to founder of the Communist Labor Party of America: an American buried at the Kremlin Wall
At the mass funeral for revolutionary martyrs in Red Square, Reed suddenly understood: the devout Russian people no longer needed priests to pray them into heaven. On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer.
American journalist and communist. He witnessed the 1917 October Revolution and wrote Ten Days That Shook the World. He co-founded the Communist Labor Party of America and served on the Comintern Executive Committee. One of the very few Americans buried at the Kremlin Wall.
Career timeline
1910Graduated Harvard, began journalism career in New York
1913Joined The Masses; first arrest covering Paterson silk strike
1913–1914War correspondent in Mexico — 4 months with Pancho Villa's army; published Insurgent Mexico
1917Witnessed the October Revolution in Petrograd; worked with the Bolshevik Foreign Commissariat
1919Published Ten Days That Shook the World; co-founded the Communist Labor Party of America
1919–1920Comintern Executive Committee member; U.S. delegate to 2nd Comintern Congress; attended Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East
Leader of the 'Democratic Centralists' who demanded inner-party workers' democracy
'To call such an economy socialist means committing a crime before the working class and discrediting the ideas of communism.' From 'The Agony of Petty-Bourgeois Dictatorship', written December 1931, published 1932
Born into a Russian peasant family in the village of Mostaushka, Tula Governorate, he worked as a house painter from the age of 15, joined the revolutionary movement in 1905 and became a Bolshevik in 1912. After the October Revolution he served as chairman of the Moscow Provincial Executive Committee and of the Kharkov provincial revkom, deputy chairman of VSNKh, secretary of VTsIK and chairman of the Small Sovnarkom. In the early 1920s he led the 'Democratic Centralists' demanding inner-party democracy, was expelled at the 15th Party Congress in 1927 and exiled, and later became a key theoretician of the Left Opposition. In December 1931 he wrote 'The Agony of Petty-Bourgeois Dictatorship', analysing the Soviet system as a 'deformed state capitalism'; he was executed in Moscow on 28 September 1937.
Career timeline
1905–1916Organized construction workers in Moscow; founded a builders' union
1917–1919Chairman of the Moscow Provincial Executive Committee
1920Chairman of Kharkov Provincial Revkom and Executive Committee
1920–1921Leader of the 'Democratic Centralists'; fought for inner-party democratization
1921–1923Deputy Chairman of VSNKh; Secretary of VTsIK
1923–1925Chairman of the Small Sovnarkom; Chairman of VTsSPS
1926–1927Led the Group of 15; advanced the 'state capitalism' thesis
1927–1937Expelled from the party, exiled, wrote 'The Agony of Petty-Bourgeois Dictatorship', arrested and shot
From Moscow uprising artillery commander to Left Communist and Democratic Centralist
Building socialism in pre-industrial Russia alone was 'a side turning off the main highway of European socialism' — foredoomed to failure.
A Moscow law student and Bolshevik from 1907, he formed a Marxist theorists' trio with Nikolai Bukharin and Valerian Osinsky. In October 1917 he commanded the heavy artillery that secured Bolshevik victory in Moscow, and served as People's Commissar of Trade and Industry in early 1918. A Left Communist opponent of Brest-Litovsk, he spent the next decade in successive oppositions (Democratic Centralist, signatory of the Declaration of 46, and United Opposition ally of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev) consistently pressing for party democracy. From 1921–1927 he sat on the Gosplan Presidium, chaired the Vesenkha financial commission, served on the Council of Labor and Defense, and edited Pravda. He regarded Russian socialism in isolation as 'a side turning off the main highway of European socialism, foredoomed to failure,' and after expulsion declared the revolution dead under Stalin.
Career timeline
1907Joined the Bolsheviks
1909–1914Law student at Moscow University, agitator for Moscow Committee
1914–1917Warrant officer, artillery, Russian Imperial Army, Western Front
1917Editor of Sotsial-Demokrat, member of Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee, commanded heavy artillery
1918.02–04People's Commissar of Trade and Industry, RSFSR
1918–1921Left Communist, leader of the Military Opposition, worked in Vesenkha (VSNKh)
1920–1923Leader of the Democratic Centralists ('Decists')
1921–1927Presidium of Gosplan, board of Council of Labor and Defense, chair of Vesenkha financial commission, board of Central Statistical Administration
1923Signed the Declaration of 46
1924–1926Editorial board member of Pravda and Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn
1926–1927Formed the 'Group of 15' with Sapronov, joined the United Opposition
1927.12Expelled at 15th Party Congress, sentenced to 3 years exile in the Urals
1930–1937Repeated imprisonment and exile, transferred to Moscow from Suzdal special prison
1937.05.26Sentenced to death by Military Collegium, shot same day
Latvian Bolshevik who denounced NKVD case fabrication in court
In the trial record cited by Khrushchev in 1956, Rudzutak asked to report NKVD fabrication and coerced confessions to the Central Committee.
Latvian Bolshevik and trade-union leader. Born to peasant farmhands, he joined the party in 1905 and was sentenced to hard labour in 1909, released in 1917. He served as People's Commissar of Railways, a full Politburo member and head of the Central Control Commission; arrested in May 1937, he denied guilt in court and denounced NKVD case fabrication. Shot on 29 July 1938, he was rehabilitated when the 1955 review established the case was falsified.
Career timeline
1905–1909Underground Bolshevik organiser in Riga and Vindava; arrested, 10 years' hard labour
1917Secretary of All-Russian Textile Workers' Union; Moscow Trade Union Council presidium
1918–1920Chairman of Moscow Sovnarkhoz; member of VSNKh Presidium
1920–1921Chairman of Turkestan SNK; member of Turkestan Front RVS
1924–1930People's Commissar for Railways USSR
1926–1932Full member of Politburo CC VKP(b)
1931–1934Chairman of CCC + People's Commissar of RKI USSR
1937.05.25Arrested as 'Latvian nationalist anti-Soviet' conspirator; denounced NKVD fabrications in court
1938.07.29Sentenced to death by Military Collegium; shot same day
German Communist who abstained on the Comintern’s founding at its first congress and was later shot in the Great Purge
At the 1919 Comintern founding congress, Eberlein conveyed Luxemburg and Jogiches’s mandate against immediate foundation. Lenin persuaded him personally, but he followed the mandate and abstained rather than vote against.
A draughtsman from Saalfeld, he joined the SPD and during the war co-founded the Spartacus League with Luxemburg. As the KPD’s delegate to the Comintern’s founding congress in March 1919 he abstained on the founding vote, as Luxemburg and Jogiches had advised, believing a premature International would be dominated by the Bolsheviks. Afterwards he did organisational and financial work for the Comintern and the German party and sat in the Prussian Landtag. He fled to the Soviet Union in 1933, was arrested in 1937 and was shot in Moscow in October 1941.
Career timeline
1916Helped organize the Spartacus League as an underground political organization.
1918Helped found the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).
1919Attended the Comintern’s founding congress as the KPD delegate and abstained on its founding vote.
