Red Army division commander who raised the "Red Army of Truth" against grain requisitioning in 1920
From a peasant family of Novouzensk district, Samara province, he fought in the First World War and returned to Novouzensk in 1917 as a second lieutenant, becoming the first chairman of the district soviet. A Left Socialist Revolutionary, after the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion he called himself a communist without joining the party. As commander of the Red Army's 22nd Division he held Uralsk through an 80-day siege in 1919, but was removed from the front "for inept command and a corrupting policy". In 1920, while forming the 9th Cavalry Division, he learned of his dismissal and on 14 July renamed the division the "1st Red Army of Truth" and rose in revolt. He was killed by a pursuing detachment near the aul of Koim on 6 September 1920.
Career timeline
1917First chairman of the Novouzensk district soviet
1918Member of the Samara provincial revolutionary committee; organised Red Guard units
1919Commander of the Red Army 22nd Division; 80-day defence of Uralsk
1920Formed the 9th Cavalry Division; in July led the "1st Red Army of Truth" revolt
Cold War historian who analyzed the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan as a 'long goodbye'
"A truly international history of the war... is at this point very far away," he conceded in the opening of A Long Goodbye.
A historian of Soviet and Russian foreign policy and Central Asia. His 2011 book A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan, drawing on archives and interviews, demonstrated that the Soviet decision to withdraw was a 'long goodbye' shaped as much by domestic politics as by the battlefield. After a BA at George Washington University and a PhD at the LSE, he taught for a decade at the University of Amsterdam and is now Professor at Temple University; his second book, Laboratory of Socialist Development (2018), won the Davis and Hewett prizes.
Career timeline
c. 2000BA, George Washington University
2009PhD in International History, LSE
c. 2010–2020Senior Lecturer in East European Studies, University of Amsterdam
2011A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Harvard University Press)
2018Laboratory of Socialist Development (Cornell UP); won Davis and Hewett prizes
c. 2020–Professor of Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet Studies, Temple University
The chief designer of the Volga inflatable airlock that made Leonov's spacewalk possible
On 18 March 1965, Alexei Leonov opened the hatch of the Volga airlock after it had inflated in orbit and stepped into space.
Boris Mikhailov was the chief designer at Engineering Plant 918 (later NPO Zvezda) in Tomilino near Moscow, where in mid-1964 he led the team that designed, built, and tested the Volga inflatable airlock in just nine months. A metal airlock would not fit the Voskhod spacecraft, so his flexible structure, folded for launch and inflated on orbit, was the only solution. On 18 March 1965, Alexei Leonov walked into space through this airlock in humanity's first spacewalk.
Career timeline
1964–1965Chief Designer of the Volga inflatable airlock, Engineering Plant 918 (Zvezda), Tomilino
The Left Opposition secretary whom Lenin called a 'brilliant worker'
According to his daughter Zorya's recollection, Lenin called him a "brilliant worker."
Born in Samara to a working-class family, he began working at nine and became a metal fitter and turner at the Hartmann locomotive works in Lugansk at fourteen. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1905, worked on the Lugansk committee, and as a delegate to the 1912 Prague Conference met Lenin before being arrested and exiled to Narym. During the February Revolution of 1917 he led his regiment out in Kostroma, then served as secretary of the Moscow Party Committee, a Central Committee member (1919–1921) and CC secretary (1920–1921). One of the leaders of the Left Opposition who signed the Declaration of the 46, he was expelled in 1927 and exiled to Semipalatinsk, reinstated in 1930, and shot in 1937 as a main defendant in the Second Moscow Show Trial.
Career timeline
1905Joined Bolsheviks at 15, agitation work in Lugansk
1908–1916Repeated arrests and exiles (Vologda, Narym), escapes and rearrests
1912Delegate to the Prague Party Conference
1917Led February mutiny in Kostroma, Secretary of Moscow Party Committee
1919–1921CC Secretary, Orgburo member, Southern Front Revvoensovet member
1922–1924Head of Political Administration RVSR, Deputy People's Commissar for Transport
1923–1927Signed Declaration of 46, Left Opposition leadership — expelled
1928–1937Exiled to Semipalatinsk, reinstated, head of Central Highway Administration, tried and executed in Second Moscow Show Trial
The economist who blueprinted Stalin's accelerated industrialization, standard-bearer of the 'socialist city' Urbanists
At the March 1929 Gosplan Congress: 'The socialist way of life must be more economical, cheaper than the capitalist one — and therefore it must win.'
Soviet economist and Urbanist theorist. His The USSR in 15 Years (1929) provided the blueprint for Stalin's accelerated industrialization, and he proposed replacing all cities and villages with collective socialist cities. Censured by name in a 1930 Central Committee resolution, he perished in the purges.
Career timeline
c. 1924Head, Ferrous Metallurgy Dept., Planning-Economic Directorate, VSNKh
1928.11Published '25-30 Years After October' — first general-plan hypothesis
1929.03The USSR in 15 Years — coincided with 5th Gosplan Congress; three editions in one year
1929.03Defended Stalin's maximal Five-Year Plan at 5th Gosplan Congress for VSNKh
1929.07'The Problem of the City' in Planned Economy — sparked Urbanist-Disurbanist debate
1929–1930Cities of the Future (1929), USSR in 10 Years (1930), Socialist Cities (1930)
1930.05.16CC resolution: 'semi-fantastical leap' — named and silenced; vanished from discourse
1938Perished in the purges; exact date and place unknown
On the night of June 13, 1938, Lyushkov arrived at Border Detachment 59 in field uniform with decorations, told the outpost commander that he was meeting an agent alone on the other side, then crossed the border and surrendered to the Japanese.
Born in Odessa, he served in the Soviet state security organs and from the 1920s held senior Cheka, OGPU and NKVD posts in Ukraine, Moscow and the Far East. In 1930 he carried out an industrial espionage mission against the Junkers company in Germany, and in 1936-1937 he headed the Azov-Black Sea and then the Far East NKVD, directing mass arrests and executions of the Great Purge. While Far East NKVD chief in 1937 he took part in the forced deportation of 171,781 Soviet Koreans to Central Asia, the USSR's first mass ethnic deportation, with estimates of deaths ranging from about 16,500 to 50,000. In June 1938 he realised he was about to be arrested, crossed into Manchukuo and surrendered to the Japanese with a mass of Soviet military intelligence, and in August 1945 he was shot by his Japanese handlers as Soviet troops closed on Dalian.
Career timeline
1919Political commissar, 14th Red Army
1920Odessa Cheka operative
c. 1930Industrial espionage at Junkers, Germany
1937–1938NKVD chief, Far East; Commissar 3rd Class
KGB security officer who commanded border troops under Andropov
After the 1969 Sino-Soviet border clashes, Soviet border troop strength nearly doubled within three years — an expansion Kozlovsky oversaw.
A Soviet KGB official who supervised the Chief Directorate of Border Troops (GUPV) under Yuri Andropov, playing a key role in tightening border enforcement and internal control during the Brezhnev era. His career embodies the institutionalised security function of the KGB in the late Soviet period.
Career timeline
1968–1979Deputy Chairman of the KGB, Head of the Chief Directorate of Border Troops (GUPV)
A historian of the institutional limits of Soviet industrial reform
In his 2025 study, Pivovarov showed that restoring the ministries centralized management in name while leaving them without effective power over enterprises.
Nikita Pivovarov is a Russian historian who studies Soviet economic history and changes in industrial-management institutions. As a senior researcher at RANEPA's Research Center for Applied History, he examines late-Soviet reforms through documents and institutional design. In a 2025 study, he traced the restoration of sectoral ministries during the Kosygin reform and argued that, amid the Brezhnev-Kosygin conflict, centralization was compromised from the outset and the ministries lacked effective authority over enterprises.
Career timeline
2012Earned a Candidate of Historical Sciences degree
2025Published a study of the Kosygin reform and changes in industrial management
presentSenior researcher, Research Center for Applied History, RANEPA
presentResearches Soviet economic history and industrial-management institutions
The carpenter-revolutionary who bombed the Winter Palace and founded Russia's first political workers' organization
"From this path there is no return," he once told workers, with tears in his eyes, begging them to reject terror — then he himself packed the Winter Palace cellar with dynamite.
A carpenter from Vyatka, Khalturin co-founded the Northern Union of Russian Workers in 1878, Russia's first political workers' organization. In 1880 he infiltrated the Winter Palace as a joiner and detonated dynamite beneath the imperial dining room; Alexander II survived only because his guest was late. Elected to the Narodnaya Volya Executive Committee after March 1881, he was captured and hanged in Odessa in 1882 for the assassination of Prosecutor Strelnikov; Lenin kept Khalturin's haut-relief alongside Marx in his Kremlin office.
Career timeline
1874–1875Entered Vyatka teachers' seminary; expelled for poor grades; trained as a cabinetmaker
1875–1877Moved to St. Petersburg, worked as carpenter in factories; joined revolutionary circles; went underground after the Kazan demonstration (1876)
1878Co-founded the Northern Union of Russian Workers with Viktor Obnorsky, drafting its program — Russia's first political workers' organization
1879.09Hired as a joiner at the Winter Palace under the alias Stepan Batyshkov; smuggled dynamite in daily under his bedding
1880.02.05Detonated a mine beneath the Winter Palace dining room; the tsar escaped due to a delayed dinner, but 11 guards died and 56 were wounded
1880–1881Escaped to Moscow; continued propaganda work among workers
1881.03Elected to the Narodnaya Volya Executive Committee
1882.03.18Participated in the assassination of Prosecutor Strelnikov in Odessa with Nikolai Zhelvakov; disguised as a cabman, both were captured
1882.03.22Court-martialed and hanged in Odessa under a false name, unidentified as the Winter Palace bomber
Peasant-born officer who commanded the United Partisan Army of Tambov and chaired the Union of Working Peasantry
Born in the village of Inokovka in Kirsanov district, Tambov province, he was conscripted in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War and stayed on for extended service in St Petersburg. In the First World War he fought in Galicia, winning the full set of four St George Crosses and four St George Medals; he was commissioned in 1915 and made lieutenant in 1917. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk he returned home, worked in the local militia and in 1918 formed a partisan detachment. In June 1920 he took command of the 2nd Insurgent Army and in November of the United Partisan Army of the Tambov region, while also chairing the Union of Working Peasantry. The Russian-language source says he was killed in a clash near the village of Bogoslovka on 28 February 1921; the English-language source places his death around June 1921.
Career timeline
1904Conscripted during the Russo-Japanese War; extended service
1915Commissioned as an officer
1917Lieutenant
1918Formed a partisan detachment at Inokovka
1920Commander of the 2nd Insurgent Army (June); commander of the United Partisan Army of Tambov and chairman of the Union of Working Peasantry (November)
Marshal who helped plan the liberation of the Balkans, then commanded the Strategic Rocket Forces
On 19 October 1964 an Il-18 of the Soviet Air Force carrying Biryuzov's delegation to the 20th anniversary of Belgrade's liberation strayed from its landing course and struck Mount Avala, killing 18 people, 11 crew and 7 delegation members; his ashes were placed in the Kremlin wall.
Biryuzov was born in Skopin, in Ryazan Governorate; the official Russian biography records a merchant's family, while other accounts describe a working-class family of Russian ethnicity. He enlisted in the Red Army on 15 September 1922, graduated from the VTsIK Combined Military School in 1926 and the Frunze Academy in 1937, then commanded the 132nd Rifle Division from 1939. Wounded five times in the first year of the German invasion, he was later chief of staff of the 2nd Guards Army and of the Southern, 4th Ukrainian, and 3rd Ukrainian fronts, helping plan the liberation of the Donbass and Crimea and the Jassy-Kishinev and Belgrade offensives. He commanded the Air Defence Forces and then the Strategic Rocket Forces and became Chief of the General Staff in March 1963, dying in a plane crash on Mount Avala on 19 October 1964.
Career timeline
1922Volunteered for the Red Army; infantry and machine-gun courses
1926Graduated VTsIK Combined Military School; platoon commander
1937Graduated Frunze Academy; chief of staff, 30th Rifle Division
1939–1942CO, 132nd Rifle Division — wounded 5 times in a year; Smolensk and Moscow
1942–1943Chief of Staff, 2nd Guards Army — Operation Saturn after Stalingrad
1943–1944Chief of Staff, Southern/4th Ukrainian Front — Donbass and Crimea liberation
1944Chief of Staff, 3rd Ukrainian Front — Jassy-Kishinev and Belgrade offensives
1944–1946CO, 37th Army; head of Soviet military mission to Bulgaria
1955–1962C-in-C, Soviet Air Defence Forces; Marshal of the Soviet Union (1955)
1962–1963C-in-C, Strategic Rocket Forces
1963–1964Chief of the General Staff and First Deputy Minister of Defence
