People of the Revolution and the USSR

Nationalism 1822–1885 ○ Heart failure

Pan-Slavist philosopher who theorized cultural-historical types to argue for Russia's civilizational distinctiveness

Dostoevsky declared Russia and Europe 'the indispensible book of every Russian.'

Founder of Russian civilizational philosophy of history. His major work Russia and Europe (1869) rejected the idea of a single linear world history, theorizing instead a cycle of distinct cultural-historical types and defining the Slavic type as a self-standing civilization. Arrested in 1849 for studying Fourier's socialism in the Petrashevsky Circle — alongside Dostoevsky — he spent 100 days in the Peter and Paul Fortress, then turned conservative and spent his career systematizing pan-Slavism, forming, with Pobedonostsev and Katkov, the ideological architecture of the old regime. Dostoevsky called it 'the indispensible book of every Russian'; it anticipated the civilizational theories of Spengler and Toynbee and remains a core intellectual legacy of Russian conservative thought.

Nationalism 1878–1957 → Died in exile

Tatar lawyer and Duma deputy who headed the national administration of Idel-Ural

Born in 1878 in the village of Tashsu near Kazan, he studied law at the University of Paris in 1901–1906 on Ismail Gasprinsky’s advice. In 1906 he joined the Central Committee of Ittifaq al-Muslimin, and he sat for Kazan province in the Second and Third State Dumas. In 1917 he was on the executive committee of the All-Russian Muslim Council, and on 5 January 1918 he was elected chairman of the Milli Idare, the body of national-cultural autonomy of the Muslims of Inner Russia and Siberia, becoming head of the Idel-Ural State. When the Bolsheviks took Kazan and Ufa provinces he fled to Finland; at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 he pleaded for the peoples of Idel-Ural, without result. He moved to Turkey in 1925, became a professor of legal history and a member of parliament, and died in Istanbul in 1957.

Belarus state institutions Nationalism 1883–1938 ✕ Executed by shooting

Historian who headed the government of the Belarusian People’s Republic in exile, moved to Soviet Byelorussia and was executed

Born into a landless noble family in the Disna district of the Vilna Governorate in 1883, he had almost no formal schooling. He was active in the Hramada in 1906–1908, was editorial secretary of Nasha Niva and from 1915 openly advocated independence from both Russia and Poland. In 1918 he joined the Rada as a delegate of the Belarusian Council of Vilnius, and in 1919 he led the Belarusian Socialist Revolutionaries. Appointed prime minister in December 1919, he was soon arrested by the Polish authorities; released the following year, he went to Riga and toured European capitals seeking recognition until he stepped down in 1923. In 1927 he moved to Soviet Byelorussia, where he became director of the State Museum and a member of the Academy of Sciences, but he was arrested in 1930, exiled to Saratov and shot in 1938.

Nationalism 1883–1954 ○ Natural causes

Hegelian legal philosopher who deemed October a 'national catastrophe' and became a White émigré ideologue

In On Resistance to Evil by Force (1925), he summoned the courage to 'arrest, condemn, and shoot' — what Maxim Gorky called a 'gospel of revenge.'

A Russian legal philosopher who earned both graduate degrees at Moscow University with a landmark Hegel commentary and became a professor there. Starting as a radical in 1905, he came to regard the October Revolution as a 'national catastrophe,' turned into an anti-Bolshevik theorist, and was expelled on the 'Philosophers' Ship' in 1922. In exile he advocated forceful resistance in On Resistance to Evil by Force (1925) and defended fascism as a 'healthy phenomenon' against Bolshevism. His posthumously published writings became a bedrock of Russian nationalist and authoritarian discourse, influencing figures from Solzhenitsyn to Putin.

Estonia state institutions Nationalism 1890–1945 ○ Died of cancer in exile in Sweden

Law professor and Estonia’s last constitutional prime minister who, acting as president, formed the Tief government in 1944

Born in Kirbla Parish in the Governorate of Estonia, he studied law at St Petersburg University and taught Roman and Estonian law at the University of Tartu until 1944. Editor-in-chief of Postimees and speaker of the lower chamber, he was prime minister from 1939 until Soviet troops entered Estonia in June 1940; after President Konstantin Päts was arrested by the Soviets he became, under the constitution, prime minister in the duties of the president. On 29 July 1941 he asked the Germans to let him form an independent government and was refused, and he declined to head the Self-Administration. On 7 February 1944 he appealed by radio for men to answer the call-up, and 38,000 registered. In June he appointed Otto Tief deputy prime minister, and in September, as the Germans withdrew, formed the Tief government. He then reached Sweden, where he died of gastric cancer in January 1945.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Nationalism 1890–1970 → Died in exile

Leader of the Bashkir national movement who proclaimed Bashkir autonomy, commanded the Bashkir Army and took it over to the Soviet side

Born in 1890 in Kuzyanovo, Ufa province, he taught Turkic history at the Qasimiya madrasa in Kazan. In 1917 he joined the Socialist Revolutionaries and was elected to the Constituent Assembly; with Sharif Manatov he organised the Bashkir Central Shuro, proclaimed Bashkir autonomy and became commander of the Bashkir Army. Arrested by the Bolsheviks in February 1918 and freed in April, he fought alongside Dutov and Kolchak, but in February 1919 took his troops over to the Soviet side. He became chairman of the Bashrevkom in 1920, resigned in June in protest at the curtailing of autonomy and led the Basmachi movement in Turkestan. He emigrated in 1923, became a Turkish citizen in 1925, a professor at Istanbul University and a doctor of the University of Vienna, and died in Istanbul in 1970.