People of the Revolution and the USSR

Nationalism 1889–1960 → Died in exile

Crimean Tatar politician who ran the military and foreign affairs of the Crimean People’s Republic and led the national movement in exile

Born in 1889 into a family of wealthy peasants in Kizil-Tash in the Yalta district, he met Noman Çelebicihan at the law faculty of Istanbul University. After publishing The Oppressed Crimean Tatar Nation in the 20th Century in 1911 he escaped arrest by studying in Paris, and on his return in 1914 he went through cadet school and became an ensign. In 1917 he briefly edited Millet and became director of military and foreign affairs in the Directory set up by the Qurultay. Driven out by the Bolsheviks in January 1918, he fled to Kyiv; under the German occupation he became foreign minister of Sulkiewicz’s Crimean Regional Government and sought recognition of its independence in Berlin. After the German withdrawal he went to Istanbul, founded the newspaper Emel and supported Prometheism. He took the surname Kırımer in 1934 and died in Istanbul in 1960.

Nationalism 1890–1941 ○ Suspicious death

Kazakh nationalist who led the Kokand Autonomy and dreamed of an independent Turkestan

"I cannot accept the offer to lead the Turkestan Legion and refuse further cooperation. All the consequences of my decision, I realize." — Letter to Ribbentrop, 1941

Mustafa Shokay was a Kazakh nationalist political leader who headed the Kokand (Turkestan) Autonomy, the first modern autonomous government in Central Asia after the collapse of the Russian Empire. A graduate of Petrograd University's law faculty, he served as secretary of the Muslim faction in the State Duma and opposed the Tsarist colonial administration's policies in Central Asia. When the Bolsheviks crushed Kokand by force in 1918, he fled to France and spent two decades in exile, propagating the idea of Turkestan independence internationally through journals such as Yash Turkestan. In 1941, the Nazis offered him leadership of the Turkestan Legion, but after witnessing the conditions of Soviet POWs, he refused, and died in Berlin shortly afterward under suspicious circumstances.

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.

France state institutions Nationalism 1890–1970 ○ Natural causes

A statesman who declared that France would continue the war amid defeat

“Must hope disappear? Is the defeat final? No!”

Charles de Gaulle was a French soldier, resistance leader, and statesman who claimed to represent France’s continued war effort after the defeat of 1940. From London he organized Free France and challenged Vichy’s claim to legitimacy, then led the provisional government after liberation while confronting disputes over the shape of reconstruction. He prized a strong executive and national autonomy, founding the Fifth Republic, but his rule also left enduring tensions over personal power and the colonial wars.

Independent activity Nationalism 1894–1918 ○ Died of tuberculosis in prison

Young Bosnia member who shot dead Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo in 1914

Born to a poor Serb farming family in western Bosnia, he studied in Sarajevo and in 1911 joined Young Bosnia, a secret society seeking to free Bosnia from Austrian rule and unite the South Slavs. Expelled from school after anti-Austrian demonstrations, he went to Belgrade. Armed and trained through the Serbian secret society the Black Hand, on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo he shot dead the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie. The assassination set off the July Crisis and the First World War. At his trial he declared himself a Yugoslav nationalist; too young for the death penalty, he received twenty years. He died of tuberculosis in the prison of the Theresienstadt fortress in 1918.

Lithuania state institutions Nationalism 1895–1979 ○ Died in exile

Lithuanian officer and envoy in Berlin who founded the Lithuanian Activist Front behind the June Uprising of 1941

Mobilised into the Imperial Russian Army in the First World War, he was the first to enlist in the Lithuanian armed forces after independence in 1918, and on 1 January 1919 his men raised the Lithuanian flag over Gediminas’ Tower in Vilnius. He became Chief of the General Staff in 1925 but had to resign after opposing the 1926 coup. He was envoy to Germany in 1927–1930 and 1938–1941. After the Soviet occupation of 1940 he founded in Berlin the Lithuanian Activist Front, which sought to restore independence by working with the Nazis; named prime minister of the provisional government in 1941, he was held under house arrest by the Germans. In 1944 he was arrested for a memorandum demanding a Lithuanian government. After the war he settled in the United States, working at the Library of Congress. His antisemitic writings have made dedications in his honour controversial.

Beiyang government and warlords Nationalism 1901–2001 ↓ Arrested 1936 · natural causes

The “Young Marshal” who detained Chiang Kai-shek at Xi’an and opened the way to the second united front

In December 1936 he detained Chiang Kai-shek at Xi'an, forcing the Second United Front against Japan, and paid for it with more than fifty years under house arrest.

Son of the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin, he inherited the Northeast when the Japanese killed his father in 1928 and pledged allegiance to Nanjing that year. Driven from Manchuria in 1931, he was sent against the Communists, but in December 1936 he and Yang Hucheng seized Chiang Kai-shek at Xi’an to demand an end to civil war and resistance to Japan. Zhou Enlai brokered the release; Zhang flew back with Chiang and spent more than fifty years under house arrest. Freed in the 1990s, he died in Hawaii at 100.

Nationalism 1909–1954 ✕ Executed

Officer who founded the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters in 1949 and led the partisan resistance as its chairman

Born in Palanga, he graduated from the War School of Kaunas in 1929 as an artillery officer and studied at the School of Applied Artillery in Fontainebleau, France, in 1936–1938. In the deportations of June 1941 his sister’s whole family was sent to Siberia; under the German occupation he retired rather than serve the Nazis. In 1944 he joined the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, and when the Red Army returned he joined the Lithuanian Liberty Army and the partisans, rising to the leadership. In February 1949 he founded the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters and became its chairman, working to unify the partisan units and give their struggle a legal framework. Paralysed by a cerebral haemorrhage in December 1951, he was arrested on 30 May 1953, interrogated in Moscow by Beria and executed in Butyrka prison in 1954. In 2009 he was officially named the fourth President of Lithuania.

Nationalism 1909–1959 ✕ Poisoned

Ukrainian nationalist politician and leader of the OUN-B.

Bandera led Ukrainian nationalist underground activity in eastern Galicia, then part of Poland. A leader in the OUN, he was sentenced to death for organizing the 1934 assassination of Polish interior minister Bronisław Pieracki; the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. After the OUN split in 1940, he led its radical OUN-B faction, which proclaimed a Ukrainian state in Lviv shortly after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and pledged cooperation with Nazi Germany. German authorities detained him and sent him to Sachsenhausen concentration camp; after the war he led the OUN-B émigré organization in West Germany.

Nationalism 1918–1957 ✕ Executed

Partisan commander “Vanagas” who led the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters from 1952, the last commander to be captured

Born to a Lithuanian immigrant family in New Britain, Connecticut, he came to Lithuania at the age of three. He graduated from the War School of Kaunas in 1940 and worked as a teacher, and after the NKVD pressured him to spy on his students he joined the partisans in early 1945 under the nom de guerre Vanagas (“Hawk”). He commanded the Dainava military district and the Southern Lithuania Region, published underground newspapers, and in 1949 became first deputy chairman of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters. Succeeding Jonas Žemaitis as its leader in 1952, he ordered an end to armed struggle in favour of passive resistance. Betrayed by a former classmate, he was arrested in October 1956, tortured and executed in November 1957. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has alleged that a unit he commanded in the June 1941 uprising took part in killing Jews; the Lithuanian government denies this.

Nationalism 1921–1951 ✕ Killed by the MGB

Lithuanian partisan leader who crossed the Iron Curtain in 1947 to seek Western support and was killed by the MGB after returning

Born to a farming family in the village of Juodbūdis near Kaunas, he joined the Catholic youth organisation Ateitis and the far-right, antisemitic and anti-Soviet Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) at secondary school, and was imprisoned by the NKVD during the Soviet occupation of 1940–1941. After the Red Army returned in 1944 he worked in the Kaunas underground, joined the armed resistance in 1946 and commanded the Birutė brigade of the Tauras military district. At the end of 1947 he crossed the Iron Curtain with partisan documentation for the West, was trained by French intelligence and the CIA, and wrote Fighters for Freedom. Parachuted back by the CIA in 1949–1950, he was killed by the MGB near Pabartupis in the autumn of 1951. According to several witnesses he took part in the Lietūkis garage massacre in Kaunas in 1941; the Lithuanian government denies this.