People of the Revolution and the USSR

Mensheviks (RSDLP) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1873–1923 → Died

Lenin’s oldest friend and most principled adversary

In 1918 Martov published an exposé revealing that Stalin had been expelled from the party in 1907. Stalin sued him for libel, and the revolutionary tribunal sentenced Martov to 'public censure.'

He built Iskra alongside Lenin, then split with him in 1903 over a single clause on party membership and led the Mensheviks. After October he stayed, fighting to keep a legal opposition alive, and in 1920 was permitted to leave. He died of tuberculosis in Berlin. It is told that the dying Lenin asked after him.

Italy state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1873–1951 ○ Natural causes

A reformist politician who organized compromises between fascism's fall and the monarchy

In June 1943, he secretly urged the king to dismiss Mussolini, appoint Badoglio, and break Italy's alliance with Germany.

Ivanoe Bonomi was a politician who moved from reformist socialism into the center of Italian liberal parliamentary politics. His record during fascism's rise included insufficient resistance and support for Mussolini's government, a compromise that later shaped criticism of his leadership. From 1942 he reconnected anti-Fascist forces, secretly urging King Victor Emmanuel III in 1943 to dismiss Mussolini and appoint Pietro Badoglio, then chairing the six-party Committee of National Liberation. He subsequently managed the difficult transition among the monarchy, the resistance, and the Allies, helping carry Italy toward postwar parliamentary institutions.

Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1873–1952 → Exile

Founder and chief theoretician of the Socialist Revolutionary Party

18 January 1918, Tauride Palace. Elected Chairman, Chernov opened Russia's first — and last — democratically elected parliament. After Bolshevik deputies walked out, the Assembly passed the land socialization law. At 4:40 a.m., the armed guard approached: 'The guard is tired. Please close the session.' Chernov scheduled the next meeting and gavelled the session closed. It never reconvened.

He fused narodnik agrarianism with Marxism to make land socialization the PSR's core program, serving as its chief theoretician. Elected chairman of the Constituent Assembly in 1917; after the Bolsheviks dissolved it, he spent 32 years in exile answering with his pen.

Finland state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1873–1963 ○ Natural causes

Finnish labour leader who became the world’s first Social Democratic head of government and then joined the Red government

Born in Kannus in Central Ostrobothnia in 1873, he emigrated to America at 17, worked in the mines and joined the radical Western Federation of Miners. Back in Finland from 1900, he entered Parliament for the Social Democrats in 1907, chaired the Finnish Trade Union Federation in 1912–1917 and was Speaker in 1913. In 1917 he became vice-chairman of the Senate’s economic department, the world’s first social democratic prime minister. In the civil war he was commissar for supply in the People’s Delegation, signed the 1 March treaty with Soviet Russia and fled to Russia after the defeat. In 1919–1920 he advised the British-organised Murmansk Legion, for which the Communist Party of Finland sentenced him to death. From 1922 to 1949 he edited the social democratic paper Raivaaja in the United States, and the 1944 Lex Tokoi cleared him of the civil war charges.

Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1875–1946 ○ Natural causes

German social-democratic politician and co-chair of the Independent Social Democratic Party.

A painter and journalist, Crispien opposed the Social Democratic Party's support for the war and helped found the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) in 1917. He served as interior minister in Württemberg's provisional government in 1918–19 and became a USPD co-chair in 1919. He attended the Communist International's Second Congress in 1920 as a USPD delegate but opposed its admission conditions and merger with the Communist Party of Germany. After most of the USPD reunited with the Social Democratic Party in 1922, he joined its leadership; he went into exile after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933.

Germany state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1876–1931 ○ Natural causes

A Social Democratic politician of the Weimar Republic who served twice as chancellor.

Müller joined the Social Democratic Party in 1893 and rose to its leadership. As foreign minister from 1919 to 1920, he signed the Treaty of Versailles for Germany. His first chancellorship in 1920 combined the suppression of left-wing uprisings with reforms expanding disability employment, primary education, unemployment benefits and workers’ social protection. He returned as chancellor in 1928 to lead a grand coalition, which collapsed amid the Great Depression and disputes over financing unemployment insurance; he resigned in 1930.

Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1877–1905 ✕ Executed

The poet-bomber who stayed his hand seeing the Grand Duchess and children: the 'ethical terrorist' behind Camus' Les Justes

At his trial: "I am not a defendant, I am your prisoner. We are two warring camps. Learn to look the advancing revolution right in the face."

A Socialist-Revolutionary Combat Organization member and poet, who assassinated Tsar Nicholas II's uncle Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich with a bomb in the Moscow Kremlin on 4 February 1905. Two days earlier, seeing the Grand Duke's wife and young nephews in the carriage, he had refused his throw: an act that earned him the name 'ethical terrorist' and later inspired Albert Camus' play Les Justes. He had cut his teeth in the Petersburg Union of Struggle, broken with the Social Democrats over their rejection of direct action, and joined the SR Combat Organization under Evno Azef, taking part in the surveillance for the Plehve assassination. At his trial he told the court to 'learn to look the advancing revolution right in the face'; he was hanged at Schlisselburg at twenty-seven.

Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1878–1943 ○ Died

SR Party founder who chaired the last unified anti-Bolshevik government, overthrown by Kolchak

Trotsky called him 'the complete caricature of a statesman. A really charming teacher of language in a ladies' seminary in Oryol — that is really all you can say about him.'

A founder and right-wing leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, he led the SR faction in the 1905 St. Petersburg Soviet and served as Minister of the Interior and chairman of the Pre-Parliament in Kerensky's Provisional Government. During the Civil War, as the culmination of efforts to unite the anti-Bolshevik camp, he was elected chairman of the Provisional All-Russian Government (Ufa Directory) at the Ufa State Conference. Arrested and expelled by Kolchak's coup in November 1918, he continued émigré journalistic work in Paris and New York. His political trajectory encapsulates the collapse of democratic socialism in the Russian Revolution, crushed between armed extremes.

Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1879–1925 ✕ Executed/Suspicious death

Terrorist, Counter-Revolutionary: the Black Horse of the Revolution

At his 1924 trial: 'I am Savinkov, of the Plehve and Grand Duke Sergei assassinations. All my life I worked for the people, yet now I am charged with bearing arms against the workers' and peasants' power.'

Revolutionary and novelist who led the SR Combat Organization, directing assassinations of high-ranking tsarist officials. His The Pale Horse (1909) novelized the psychology of terrorism. After the October Revolution he led anti-Bolshevik armed struggle, was arrested in an OGPU trap, and died at Lubyanka.

Belarus state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1879–1943 이후 Fate unknown

Veterinarian who chaired the First All-Belarusian Congress and, as chairman of the Rada, presided over the declaration of independence

Born in Zadzvieja in the Minsk Governorate in 1879, he graduated from the veterinary school in Warsaw in 1903 and worked as a veterinarian and as a teacher at the agricultural college in Marjina Horka. He served in the Russo-Japanese War and was active in the Belarusian Socialist Hramada. Elected chairman of the First All-Belarusian Congress in December 1917, he was arrested when it was dispersed. In February 1918 he was a Belarusian delegate at the Brest-Litovsk peace talks; as chairman of the Rada from March he presided over the session of 24–25 March that proclaimed independence, and from July to November he headed the People’s Secretariat. In the 1920s he worked in agriculture in Soviet Byelorussia; arrested in 1930 in the case of the “Union of Liberation of Belarus”, he passed through exile and the Gulag, and his fate after his release in 1943 is unknown.

General Confederation of Labour (CGT, France) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1879–1954 ○ Illness

The syndicalist who led the CGT for 31 years, signed the Matignon Agreements and won the Nobel Peace Prize

'The labour movement has never won a greater victory', radio address just after the conclusion of the Matignon Agreements, June 1936

A match-factory worker who became secretary-general of the CGT at thirty in 1909 and led it until 1940, the public face of French trade unionism. Starting as a revolutionary syndicalist, he moved to reformism when he accepted the union sacrée in 1914, helped draft the labour clauses of the Versailles Treaty and co-found the International Labour Organization. He led the reunified CGT into the Matignon Agreements in 1936, was interned under Vichy and deported to Germany, and after the war became founding president of Force Ouvrière, the 1948 breakaway from the communist-led CGT, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1951.

General Jewish Labour Bund Non-Bolshevik socialists 1880–1937 ✕ Executed

A Menshevik who defended the revolution against its Bolshevik direction

After the June 1917 crisis, he called for firm measures against the Bolsheviks in the name of defending the revolution.

Born Mikhail Goldman, Mikhail Liber was a revolutionary who rose through the Bund, the Jewish workers’ movement, to become a leading Menshevik. At the 1903 RSDLP Congress he defended the Bund’s organisational autonomy, while in 1917 he tried to combine revolutionary democracy with a policy of revolutionary defensism. In the Petrograd Soviet and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee he supported coalition with the Provisional Government, and after the June 10 demonstration crisis he became a leading advocate of firm measures against the Bolsheviks. His opposition to the October uprising and to negotiations with the Bolsheviks was followed by repeated arrests and exile; executed in 1937, he was rehabilitated posthumously.

Ukrainian People's Republic state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1880–1951 ○ Died

Ukrainian Social Democratic writer who led the Rada's General Secretariat and the Directory

Just as you created the dictatorship of workers and peasants in Russia, we must create a dictatorship of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine.

A Ukrainian Social Democratic writer, he led the Central Rada's General Secretariat in 1917 and retook Kyiv as first chairman of the Directory in 1918. Arguing for talks with the Soviets he broke with Petliura and resigned in 1919, dying in France in 1951.

Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1880–1953 ○ Natural causes

A Socialist Revolutionary who defended democratic socialism through exile and testimony

Arriving at his place of exile, Russkoye Ustye, Zenzinov wrote in his diary: 'This is, of course, Russia, but Russia of the 17th, perhaps 16th century.'

Vladimir Zenzinov was a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party's Central Committee and a journalist who turned three Siberian exiles into pioneering ethnographic and ornithological study of the Arctic. In 1918 he backed the democratic alternative of the Samara Constituent Assembly committee and the Ufa Directory between Bolshevik power and Kolchak's military rule, before the Omsk coup banished him, and he spent his last decades recording the revolution and civil war in Paris and New York.

Labour Party (United Kingdom) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1881–1951 ○ Natural causes

A pragmatic statesman who carried trade-union power into postwar diplomacy

At the 1946 Moscow conference, after Molotov’s repeated attacks, Bevin rose and shouted, “I've had enough of this I 'ave!”

Ernest Bevin was a Labour politician and trade-union organizer who rose from poverty to lead Britain’s largest union. His wartime management of labour shaped a postwar diplomacy that treated reconstruction as a question of organized work and state capacity. As Foreign Secretary, he and Georges Bidault organized the European response to Marshall’s Harvard speech, linking British security and western European cooperation to American aid and an Atlantic alliance. His firm anti-communism and defence of imperial interests also show how the postwar international order combined reconstruction with continuing forms of power.

Georgia state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1881–1954 → Died in exile

Menshevik politician who chaired the Transcaucasian Commissariat and became foreign minister of the Democratic Republic of Georgia

Born to a noble family in Martvili in 1881, he joined the Social Democratic movement as a student at Moscow University, became a Menshevik and sat in the Third State Duma from 1907 to 1912. From November 1917 to March 1918 he chaired the Transcaucasian Commissariat, then served as minister of war under the Transcaucasian Sejm. He signed the Georgian declaration of independence in May 1918 and was foreign minister, justice minister and deputy head of government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. He left for France in March 1921 and from 1953 until his death in Paris in 1954 headed the government in exile.

Hungary state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1881–1956 ○ Heart attack

Hungarian Social Democratic and trade-union leader who won legal status for his party in the Bethlen–Peyer Pact of 1921

A machinist from Városlőd in Veszprém County, he led the metalworkers’ and miners’ unions. He ran the mining sector under the Soviet Republic in 1919 and after its fall was interior minister in the Peidl government and minister of labour and welfare under Huszár. When the Social Democrats boycotted the election because of the terror, he resigned in January 1920 and fled to Austria. Back in 1921, he concluded the pact with Bethlen’s government; he was a deputy from 1922 to 1944 and from 1927 general secretary of the Trade Union Council. In 1944 he was held in Mauthausen. Opposing the post-war merger with the Communists, he was expelled in 1947, emigrated to the United States and died in New York in 1956.

Non-Bolshevik socialists 1881–1958 ○ Natural causes

Swiss socialist who organised the Zimmerwald anti-war conference of 1915 and chaired the International Socialist Commission

In 1918 he founded and chaired the Olten Action Committee and led the general strike. A military tribunal sentenced him to six months in prison for urging soldiers to refuse orders to fire on strikers.

A printer who became a young leader of the Swiss Social Democratic left, he opposed the war. With the Italian Socialist Party he prepared an anti-war conference independent of the International Socialist Bureau, organised the Zimmerwald conference of September 1915 and chaired the movement’s International Socialist Commission from 1915 to 1917. He had to step down in 1917 over the Grimm–Hoffmann affair, an attempt to broker a German–Russian peace with the Swiss foreign minister. He led the Swiss general strike of November 1918, was jailed, and later served in the Bern cantonal government and the federal parliament.

Mensheviks (RSDLP) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1881–1959 ○ Natural causes

Architect of Revolutionary Defencism and the man to whom Lenin replied, 'There is such a party!'

At the First Congress of Soviets on 4 June 1917, Tsereteli declared that 'there is no party in Russia that says: give us power.' Lenin rose from his seat and answered: 'There is such a party!'

A Georgian Menshevik leader who championed Revolutionary Defencism in 1917 and served as Interior Minister in the Provisional Government. He is remembered for drawing Lenin's famous retort, 'There is such a party!' After the October Revolution he helped found an independent Georgia.