People of the Revolution and the USSR

Germany state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1897–1977 ○ Natural causes

The West German economic statesman who shaped currency reform and the social market economy

On 21 June 1948, he announced by radio the abolition of price controls and compulsory rationing for selected manufactured goods.

Ludwig Erhard was an economist and politician who conceived West Germany’s postwar order as a combination of competitive markets and social security. As director of the Bizonal Economic Administration in 1948, he helped prepare monetary reform and, alongside the introduction of the Deutsche Mark, began a staged relaxation of price and production controls that opened the institutional path to recovery. He is often mythologized as the sole architect of the economic miracle, although Allied reform, international conditions, and the recovery of production by workers and firms all mattered, while price liberalization initially raised living costs and provoked working-class resistance. As economics minister and later chancellor, he helped make that order part of West Germany’s political identity, but resigned in 1966 amid recession and the collapse of his coalition.

France state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1899–1983 ○ Stroke

From Resistance chief to architect of the Marshall Plan response, the foreign minister who told Molotov that Soviet actions divided Europe

On July 2, 1947, when Molotov denounced the Marshall Plan as a plot to divide Europe, Bidault rose and quietly replied that it was the Soviet Union, by its own actions, that was splitting the continent; the next day he and Bevin sent invitations to 16 nations.

Bidault succeeded Jean Moulin as president of the National Resistance Council in 1943, leading the French internal Resistance, and after the Liberation co-founded the Christian-democratic MRP. As foreign minister at the 1947 Paris Three-Power Conference, he answered Molotov's charge that the Marshall Plan was 'dividing Europe' with the retort that Soviet actions alone were splitting the continent; when Molotov walked out, Bidault and Bevin rallied 16 Western European nations behind the plan. He served as premier in 1946 and 1949–50, and as foreign minister during Dien Bien Phu he even asked the US for atomic bombs. An irreconcilable opponent of Algerian independence, he organized a clandestine 'second CNR' in 1962, lost his parliamentary immunity, and spent four years in Brazilian exile before the 1968 amnesty.

United States state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1913–2006 ○ Died

The unelected president who steered détente into its final phase

On the train to Vladivostok, when Ford grumbled how snarled Washington's traffic grew in snow, Brezhnev leaned over the table: "Well, that will be our first deal. We'll send you Soviet snowplows."

A Republican who spent twenty-five years in the House and served as vice president before succeeding Nixon after his resignation in 1974, Ford remains the only American president never elected to national office. He carried on Nixon's détente, meeting Brezhnev at Vladivostok in 1974 to fix the SALT II framework of 2,400 delivery vehicles and a 1,320 sub-limit on MIRVed systems, and a year later signed the Helsinki Final Act while turning the Jackson-Vanik amendment into law. His pardon of Nixon was the defining controversy of his presidency, and he lost the 1976 election to Carter.

United Kingdom state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1917–2001 ○ Natural causes

A Greece expert at the boundary of resistance and empire

After the 1942 Gorgopotamos operation, he stayed in Greece rather than evacuating, building the mission that linked the resistance to Cairo.

Christopher Montague Woodhouse was a British army officer, SOE and MI6 operative, and historian of Greek politics. In occupied Greece he helped establish and later led the British Military Mission, maintaining contact with ELAS and EDES while linking the resistance to Allied strategy. His work also reveals the tension between military cooperation with a broad resistance and Britain's effort to restore the monarchy and preserve its influence after liberation. He later served as an MP and wrote extensively on modern Greece.

United States state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1920–2021 ○ Natural causes

The Secretary of State who pushed Reagan toward dialogue with Gorbachev and helped end the Cold War

Over dinner with the Reagans, snowbound at the White House, Shultz listened to the president's relentless questions about Soviet leaders and realized: 'This man has never had a real conversation with a big-time communist leader, and he is dying to have one.'

George Shultz is one of only two Americans to have held four different Cabinet posts, serving as Labor Secretary, OMB Director, Treasury Secretary, and finally as Reagan's Secretary of State for six and a half years, reshaping the direction of U.S. diplomacy with the Soviet Union. Against the opposition of Defense Secretary Weinberger and CIA Director Casey, Shultz insisted that Reagan engage Gorbachev directly, laying the diplomatic groundwork for the Geneva (1985) and Reykjavik (1986) summits. The result was the 1987 INF Treaty, the first abolition of an entire class of nuclear weapons; Shultz then watched the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the unraveling of Moscow's hold on Eastern Europe, witnessing the end of the Cold War from the front row. His memoir Turmoil and Triumph remains an essential primary source for the diplomacy of the 1980s.

United States state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1924–2018 ○ Natural causes

The US president who declared the Cold War over with Gorbachev at Malta, yet whose caution nearly let history slip away

At the Malta joint press conference Bush declared: 'We can realise a lasting peace and transform the East-West relationship to one of enduring co-operation. That is the future that Chairman Gorbachev and I began right here in Malta.'

George H. W. Bush went from World War II naval aviator to oil magnate to the 41st president of the United States, bringing to the White House foreign-policy experience unmatched by any predecessor: CIA director, UN ambassador, and de facto ambassador to China. Upon taking office in 1989 he ordered a strategic review of Soviet policy, the so-called 'Bush pause,' that frustrated Gorbachev, but at the Malta summit that December the two leaders jointly confirmed the Cold War's end, and Bush's steady support for German reunification helped anchor the new European order. He built a multinational coalition to expel Iraq from Kuwait in the Gulf War, then lost his 1992 re-election bid after breaking his 'no new taxes' pledge amid a recession.

Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Conservatism and Christian democracy 1930–2017 ○ Natural causes

The chancellor who seized the initiative on the German question with a ten-point unification plan days before Malta

On 28 November 1989, Kohl rose in the Bundestag without having told his allies, or even his own foreign minister. President Bush received Kohl's letter summarizing the Ten-Point Plan just as the chancellor was already speaking in Bonn.

A Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician who served sixteen years as chancellor of West Germany and reunified Germany, leading both European integration and German reunification. On 28 November 1989, without consulting his allies, he presented a 'Ten-Point Plan' for German unity to the Bundestag; days later, at the Malta summit, the German question dominated the proceedings on his terms. The following year, on 3 October 1990, Germany was reunified; together with French president François Mitterrand, Kohl drove the Maastricht Treaty and the introduction of the euro. He achieved reunification by extending the West German system into the former East, and after his long tenure ended with electoral defeat in 1998, he resigned as CDU honorary chairman amid a party donations scandal.

Austria state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1934–2017 ○ Natural causes

An Austrian Europeanist who helped open the Iron Curtain

On 27 June 1989, Mock and Gyula Horn cut the fence near Sopron, making the border opening visible to the world.

Alois Mock was an Austrian People's Party politician who made European integration a central aim of Austrian foreign policy. As foreign minister, he pursued Hungary's border opening and Austria's entry into the European Communities, helping shape Central Europe's reordering at the end of the Cold War. On 27 June 1989, he and Gyula Horn symbolically cut the border fence, creating an international image of the openings that enabled East German escapes and preceded the collapse of the Eastern bloc.

Conservatism and Christian democracy 1937–

A historian whose break with communism led to conservative anti-communism

Declassified Moscow archives prompted a new examination of the Soviet role in the Spanish Civil War.

Ronald Radosh is an American historian and writer who grew up in a Communist family and passed through the Communist Party USA and the New Left. Reexamining the Rosenberg case led him to revise his earlier belief in their innocence and consolidated his turn toward anti-communist conservatism. With Mary Habeck and Grigory Sevostianov, he edited Spain Betrayed, using Moscow archives to present a critical interpretation of Soviet policy and Comintern influence in the Spanish Civil War.

Lithuania state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1950–

Economist-statesman of restored independence, Lithuania's shortest-serving premier

On the night of 12–13 January 1991, hearing that buildings in Vilnius were being assaulted, he withdrew with his family to Druskininkai to hide; when he returned to Vilnius on 13 January, Gediminas Vagnorius had already been put in charge of the government.

Albertas Šimėnas was born on 17 February 1950 in Papilių village, Anykščiai district. He studied economics and mathematics at Vilnius University, took a candidate's degree in economics in 1981, worked at a research institute under the State Planning Committee, and lectured afterwards. Elected to the Supreme Council in 1990, he signed the 11 March Act, led the government from 10 to 13 January 1991, and later served as economy minister, as a Seimas member in 1996–2000, and as an executive of Lithuanian Railways.

Russian Federation state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1952–

A ruler who recast the loss of the Soviet Union as a narrative of state restoration

“The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

Vladimir Putin is a Russian politician and former Soviet security officer who rose to national power amid the crises of the 1990s. Alternating between the presidency and premiership, he strengthened federal and presidential authority while making the restoration of Russia’s international influence a central narrative of rule. In 2005, he called the Soviet collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” a remark that condensed his memory of dissolution as a Russian experience of loss and dislocation. His rule also narrowed political competition and independent media while expanding the state’s military interventions abroad.

Hungary Conservatism and Christian democracy 1963–

From anti-communist youth leader in 1989 to architect of 'illiberal democracy'

If we are sufficiently resolute, we can force the ruling party to submit itself to free elections. If we do not lose sight of the principles of '56, we can elect a government that will initiate immediate talks regarding the quick withdrawal of Soviet troops.

Viktor Orbán vaulted to national prominence as an anti-communist youth leader with his 1989 speech at Imre Nagy's reburial, demanding free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. Elected Hungary's youngest prime minister in 1998, he led the country into NATO; after losing power in 2002, he returned with a constitutional supermajority in 2010 and began systematically consolidating control over the judiciary, media, and electoral system, building what he openly calls an 'illiberal state.' In a landmark 2014 speech at Băile Tușnad, he publicly broke with liberal democracy and named Russia, Turkey, China, and Singapore as his models. His trajectory, from anti-Soviet resistance to author of a hybrid regime that became the longest-serving in Hungarian history, makes him a defining figure of 21st-century authoritarian populism.