Name: Samed Aga Agamaly-Ogly
Lived: 1867 – 1930
Notes: Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Azerbaidzhan SSR from 1922-1929, best known for his support for adoption of the new Turkish (Latin-based) alphabet.
Name: Abel Gezevich Aganbegyan
Lived: 1932 –
Title: Academician
Notes: Economist, academician from 1974, specialist in productivity, standard of living and mathematical models of economic planning. Leading reformer of centralized planning, advisor to Soviet leaders, including Mikhail Gorbachev.
Name: Iakov Samuilovich Agranov
Lived: 1893 – 1938
Notes: Member of the Politburo and head of the Leningrad regional party. Secretary of the Azerbaijan Central Committee 1921-26, moved to Leningrad and rose through the Party ranks. Politbiuro member from 1930, and of the Party secretariat from 1934. Murdered by an alleged terrorist in 1934, an event that triggered the first wave of terror.
Name: Zhanna Aguzarova
Lived: 1967 –
Notes: Born in a small town in Siberia, lead of singer of the rock group BRAVO, first female star of Russian rock.
Name: Najib Ahmadzai
Lived: –
Alias: Najibullah
Notes: Known as Najibullah, Ahmadzai was General Secretary of the Afghan Communist Party, replacing Babrak Karmal when he could not muster support among the military or populace.
Name: Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovskii
Lived: 1817 – 1900
Notes: Artist renowned for his magnificent seascapes and Crimean landscapes.
Name: Viktor Akhlomov
Lived: 1938 –
Notes: Soviet news photographer for the newspaper Izvestiia from the 1960s on.
Name: Bella Akhatovna Akhmadulina
Lived: 1937 –
Notes: Poet prominent in the 1960s, associated with the younger generation of thaw artists.
Name: Anna Andreevna Akhmatova
Lived: 1889 – 1966
Notes: One of the pleiade of great Silver Age Russian poets, member of the Acmeist movement, wife of poet Nikolai Gumilev and mother of Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev whose testimonies about the purge years are among the most courageous works of Russian literature.
Name: Sergei Fedorovich Akhromeev
Lived: 1923 – 1991
Notes: Marshal of the Soviet Union (1983), chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces 1984-1988, advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev in the final years of the Soviet Union.
Name: Rukhulla Ali Akhundov Lived: 1897 – 1938 Notes: Secretary of the Azerbaidzhan Communist Party, 1924-30
Name: Vasilii Pavlovich Aksenov
Lived: 1932 –
Notes: Modernist novelist, author of TICKET TO THE STARS (1961), BURN (1980) and many other novels written in a language characterized by urban and youth slang.
Name: Maksim Vladimirovich (Maks) Al’pert
Lived: 1899 – 1980
Notes: Photographer, one of the founders of Russian photojournalism. Best known for his work for USSR IN CONSTRUCTION and PRAVDA.
Name: Aleksandr Vasilievich Aleksandrov
Lived: 1883 – 1946
Title: General
Notes: Conductor of the famous Red Army Chorus, original composer of the Bolshevik Anthem (1937) which melody became the Soviet National Anthem in 1944.
Name: Vasilii Dmitrievich Aleksandrovskii
Lived: 1897 – 1934
Notes: Poet, a founder of the SMITHY (Kuznitsa) literary circle that gave birth to the proletarian movement in Soviet verse.
Name: Mikhail Vasil’evich Alekseev
Lived: 1857 – 1918
Title: General
Notes: Commander of Russian troops on the Western Front during the First World War, from 1915 chief of the General Staff Headquarters, Commander in Chief from March to May 1917. Later participated in the formation of a “Volunteer Army” to oppose the Bolshevik coup.
Name: Aleksii
Lived: 1877 – 1970
Title: Patriarch
Notes: Born Sergei Vladimirovich Simanskii. Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia from 1945. Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod 1943-45.
Name: Vera Valentinovna Alentova
Lived: 1942 –
Notes: Actress, Honored Artist of the Russian Federation (1982).
Name: Samuil Iosifovich Aleshin
Lived: 1913 –
Notes: Born Samuil Kotliar. Soviet Russian playwright, author of DIRECTOR (1950), EVERYTHING LEFT TO PEOPLE (1959), THE EIGHTEENTH CAMEL (1983).
Name: Vladimir Aleksandrovich Algasov
Lived: 1887 – 1938
Alias: Born Burdakov
Notes: Former Left-SR who worked with the Bolsheviks in he Miitary-Revolutionary Committee. Joined the Red Army during the Civil War.
Name: Geidar Alievich Aliev
Lived: 1923 – 2003
Notes: President of Azerbaidzhan from 1993 till his death in 2003. 1967-69 chief of Azerbaidzhan KGB, from 1969 first secretary of the republic Communist Party. 1982-87 deputy chairman of the USSR Soviet of Ministers.
Name: Andrei Alekseevich Amalrik
Lived: 1936 – 1980
Notes: Writer and essayist exiled in 1965, and placed in the labor camps in 1970. Emigrated in 1976, most famous for his WILL THE SOVIET UNION SURVIVE UNTIL 1984?
Name: Hafizullah Amin
Lived: 1929 – 1979
Notes: Marxist president of Afghanistan, 1978-79. He occupied his post for 104 days, until killed by Soviet special forces, placing Babrak Karmal in power and unleashing the Soviet invasion.
Name: Shalva Alekseevich Amonashvili
Lived: 1931 –
Notes: Georgian child psychologist, joint creator of a pedagogical system for early school-age children.
Name: Amori
Lived: 1860 – 1918
Title: Count
Notes: See Rapgof
Name: Roald Amundsen
Lived: 1872 – 1928
Notes: Norwegian polar explorer; first person to reach the South Pole.
Name: Wladyslaw Anders
Lived: 1892 – 1970
Title: Lt. General
Notes: Polish general at the time of the German invasion of 1939, Anders was eventually captured by the Red Army, and imprisoned in Lubianka. The Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941 made him a valuable Soviet ally, and he was made commander of all Polish soldiers once imprisoned in the Soviet Union. His troops were eventually sent west, fighting in valiantly in the Battle of Monte Cassino (Italy). Anders spent the rest of his life after the war in Great Britain.
Name: Andrei Andreevich Andreev
Lived: 1895 – 1971
Notes: People’s Commissar of Transportation, 1931-35, and Politburo member, 1932-52.
Name: Nikolai Platonovich Andreev
Lived: 1882 – 1947
Notes: Soviet photographer and artist.
Name: Nina Aleksandrova Andreeva
Lived: 1938 –
Notes: Leningrad chemistry teacher, author of anti-perestroika article of 1988.
Name: Iurii Vladimirovich Andropov
Lived: 1914 – 1984
Notes: Head of KGB under Brezhnev during a period of repression of the so-called dissidents, General Secretary of CPSU, 1982-84. He died in office without accomplishing the reforms that many had anticipated from ascendance.
Name: Praskoviia (Pasha) Angelina
Lived: 1913 – 1959
Notes: Tractor driver and famous female Stakhanovite, of Greek ethnicity.
Name: Iurii Pavlovich Annenkov
Lived: 1889 – 1974
Notes: Painter and creator of fine ink sketches, illustrator of Blok’s TWELVE (1918).
Name: Antonii
Lived: 1863 – 1936
Title: Metropolitan
Notes: Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia, first head of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Born Aleksei Pavlovich Khrapovitskii.
Name: Antonin
Lived: –
Title: Metropolitan
Notes: See Antonin-Krutitskii
Name: Antonin-Krutitskii
Lived: 1865 – 1927
Title: Bishop
Alias: Antonin
Notes: Bishop of Vladikavkaz and Mozdok. On of the first leaders of the “Living Church.” Cooperated with Soviet officials on many matters, including the removal of valuables from churches.
Name: Oleg Konstantinovich Antonov
Lived: 1906 – 1984
Notes: Aircraft designer, lead designer of the ANT line of Soviet aircraft.
Name: Vladimir Aleksandrovich Antonov-Ovseenko
Lived: 1884 – 1938
Notes: Joined the RSDRP in 1902. He was active in the 1905 revolution and was arrested. During the First World War he was founder of and collaborator in the periodicals Golos and Nashe Slovo On his return to Russia he Joined the Bolsheviks and took part in the capture of the Winter Palace. Was commander-in-chief in the Ukraine from December 1918 to June 1919. Held government posts 1920-2.
Name: Aleksandr Petrovich Apsit
Lived: 1880 – 1944
Notes: Latvian Soviet propaganda artist.
Name: Louis Aragon
Lived: 1897 – 1982
Notes: French writer and member of the French Communist Party from 1927. One of the founders of surrealism in literature, Aragon wrote a warm tribute to Soviet socialist after a trip to the USSR in 1931.
Name: Aleksei Andreevich Arakcheev
Lived: 1769 – 1834
Title: Count
Notes: Artillery general who became Russian Minister of War, 1808-10, effectively reorganizing the artillery for the soon-to-be war with Napoleon. Most trusted advisor of Aleksandr I from 1815-1825, during which he created a system of military colonies designed to reform army life, but which were unnecessarily harsh and spartan.
Name: Georgii Arkad’evich Arbatov
Lived: 1923 –
Notes: Journalist, historian and economist, academician since 1974, polemicist in support of Gorbachev during his reforms.
Name: Leo Oskarovich Arnshtam
Lived: 1905 – 1979
Notes: Director of such films as GIRL FRIENDS (1936), ZOYA (1944), and HISTORY LESSONS (1957)
Name: Naum Aronson
Lived: 1872 – 1943
Notes: Born at Kieslavka, Ukraine. Russian-Jewish sculptor whose most famous work is the Beethoven monument at Bonn. Awarded gold medal at Liege, 1906. His bust of Lenin was exhibited at the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 World Fair in Paris.
Name: Pavel Aleksandrovich Arskii
Lived: 1886 – 1967
Alias: Born Pavel Afanasiev
Notes: One of the original stormers of the Winter Palace, proletarian poet and dramatist, early leader of the Proletkult movement. His poetry collections include “Songs of Struggle” (1918) and “Hammer and Sickle” (1925).
Name: Aleksandra Vasil’evna Artiukhina
Lived: 1889 – 1969
Notes: Leader of the Zhenotdel movement during the 1920s. Rumored to be a favorite of Iosif Stalin.
Name: Mikhail Petrovich Artsybashev
Lived: 1878 – 1927
Notes: Writer whose tremendously popular SANIN (1907) helped spread a form of Nietzsche®s thought that seemed to emphasize hedonism and amorality.
Name: Iurii Vartanovich Arutiunian
Lived: 1929 –
Notes: Russian sociologist, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, specialist in ethnosociology.
Name: Aleksandr Iakovlevich Askoldov
Lived: –
Notes: Director of the film COMMISSAR, shot in 1967 but not released until 1987.
Name: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Lived: 1881 – 1938
Title: President
Alias: Kemal
Notes: Founding father of modern Turkey, as president of the Turkish Republic following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Atatürk instituted reforms that transformed the Ottoman Empire into a modern secular, nation-state.
Name: Clement Attlee
Lived: 1883 – 1967
Notes: British Labor Party politician, elected Prime Minister in 1945.
Name: Varlaam Aleksandrovich Avanesov
Lived: 1884 – 1930
Alias: Born Suren Karpovich Martirosov
Notes: Social Democrat from 1903, Bolshevik from 1914. Member of the Military Revolutionary Committee in October 1917, Secretary of the Central Executive Committee (1917-19), 1920-24 Cheka Presidium.
Name: Aleksandr Ostapovich Avdeenko
Lived: 1908 – 1996
Notes: Writer, most famous for his autobiographical novel, I LOVE (1933), about an orphan and thief who becomes a shock-worker in Magnitogorsk.
Name: Leopold Leonidovich Averbakh
Lived: 1903 – 1939
Notes: Literary critic, head of Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) in late 1920s.
Name: Nikolai Pavlovich Avilov
Lived: 1887 – 1942
Alias: Glebov
Notes: Revolutionary, participant in the October Revolution. Narkom of Post Office and Telegraph in 1917, chief commissar of the Black Sea Fleet in 1918. Occupied high posts in industry until he perished in the purges.
Name: Nikolai Dmitrievich Avksentiev
Lived: 1878 – 1943
Notes: SR leader. In 1917, chairman of the Soviet of Peasant Deputies and the pre-parliament, Minister of Internal Affairs under the Provisional Government. Fought the Bolsheviks during the Civil War, in emigration thereafter.
Name: Pavel Borisovich Axelrod
Lived: 1850 – 1928
Notes: Pseudonym of Pinkhas Boruch Axelrod. Early Marxist theoretician. One of the founders of the ‘Liberation of Labour’ group, 1883. Became Menshevik after 1903 Party split.
Name: Vasilii Nikolaevich Azhaev
Lived: 1915 – 1968
Notes: Soviet novelist, author of FAR FROM MOSCOW (1948, State Prize 1949).
Name: Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel
Lived: 1894 – 1941
Notes: Writer, author of Red Cavalry and other short stories, died in the purges.
Name: Francois Noel Babeuf
Lived: 1760 – 1797
Notes: French revolutionary, organizer of an uprising against the Directory by a secret society called the Conspiracy of Equals.
Name: Boris Andreevich Babochkin
Lived: 1904 – 1975
Notes: Fine stage actor whose career was overshadowed by his one great film role, Chapaev in the film of that name (1934)
Name: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski
Lived: 1899 – 1972
Title: General Notes: SS Obergruppenfhrer and General of the Waffen-SS. Nazi officer in charge of finding and exterminating Soviet partisans. Testified in Nuremburg Trials.
Name: Kyamran Mamed ogly Bagirov
Lived: 1933 –
Notes: First secretary of the Azerbaidzhan Communist Party during the Gorbachev era, relieved of his post after the outbreak of conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Name: Petr Ivanovich Bagration
Lived: 1765 – 1812
Title: Prince
Notes: Infantry general, participant in Suvorov’s Italian and Swiss campaigns. During the Great Patriotric War (War of 1812) he was commander-in-chief of the Second Army, fatally wounded in the Battle of Borodino.
Name: Georgii Fillipovich Baidukov
Lived: 1907 – 1994
Notes: Air Force general, Hero of the Soviet Union (1936), completed famous polar flights with Valerii Chkalov and Aleksandr Beliakov. Air Corps commander during the Second World War.
Name: Vadim Viktorovich Bakatin
Lived: 1932 –
Notes: Minister of State Security under Gorbachev.
Name: Oleg Dmitrievich Baklanov
Lived: 1932 –
Notes: Deputy chief in Gorbachev’s Security Council and ex-secretary of the Central Committee who was a leading member of the 1991 putsch committee.
Name: Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin
Lived: 1814 – 1876
Notes: Anarchist and revolutionary, deep influence on Russian populism and revolutionary thought who worked in exile with Aleksandr Herzen.
Name: Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont
Lived: 1867 – 1942
Notes: Symbolist poet, author of musical verse celebrating the sensory world (“We Will Be Like the Sun,” 1903)
Name: Dmitrii Baltermants
Lived: 1912 – 1990
Notes: Soviet news photographer for Izvestiia, and later Ogonyok, most famous for his coverage of Operation Barbarossa and the defense of Russia’s major cities. His most famous images were made at Kerch where the German Army killed more than 176,000 men.
Name: Viktor Pavlovich Barannikov
Lived: 1941 – 1995
Notes: Interior Minister of the Russian Federation, later promoted to Interior Minister of the USSR, who became minister of defense in the post-Soviet Russian government.
Name: Aleksei Vladimirovich Batalov
Lived: 1928 –
Notes: Film actor and director, star of films ranging from CRANES ARE FLYING (1957) to MOSCOW DOESN’T BELIEVE IN TEARS, son of actor Nikolai Petrovich Batalov.
Name: Batur
Lived: 1208 – 1255
Notes: Also Batyi or Batu, grandson of Chingiz Khan, chief of the Mongol Horde in eastern and central Europe (1236-1243) and then the Golden Horde from 1243.
Name: Nikolai Ernestovich Bauman
Lived: 1867 – 1905
Alias: Grach
Notes: Veterinarian, revolutionary since the 1890s. Leader of the Moscow Party Central Committee from 1904. Murdered by reactionaries on October 18, 1905, his funeral gave cause to massdemonstrations.
Name: Bessie Beatty
Lived: 1886 – 1947
Notes: Employed by the San Francisco Bulletin, Beatty visited Russia in 1917 with John Reed and Louise Bryant. Her book on the Russian Revolution, The Red Heart of Russia, was published in 1919.
Name: Demian Bednyi
Lived: 1883 – 1945
Notes: Friend of Lenin and poet whose folksy verse castigated the White Army and other opponents of the Bolsheviks during the Revolution and Civil War.
Name: Ludwig van Beethoven
Lived: 1770 – 1827
Notes: German composer during the period between classicism and romanticism, most famous for the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, and his Moolight and Path€tique Sonatas.
Name: Ekaterina Fedorovna Belashova
Lived: 1906 – 1971
Notes: Sculptor, Secretary of the Board of the USSR Artists’ Union, awarded several state prizes for such works as Untamed (1957), Aleksandr Pushkin, 1837 (1964)
Name: Vasilii Ivanovich Belavin
Lived: 1865 – 1925
Title: Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Notes: Patriarch of Russian Orthodox Church from 1917, opponent of bloodshed caused by Revolution who pronounced anathema on Bolsheviks in 1918, accused and imprisoned by Bolsheviks for anti-Soviet activity in 1922.
Name: Aleksandr Romanovich Beliaev
Lived: 1884 – 1942
Notes: Early Russian science fiction, author of PROFESSOR DOWELL’S HEAD (1925) and AMPHIBIAN MAN (1928).
Name: Aleksandr Vasil’evich Beliakov
Lived: 1897 – 1982
Notes: Air Force general, Hero of the Soviet Union (1936), navigator of famous polar flights with Valerii Chkalov and Georgii Baidukov.
Name: Vissarion Belinsky
Lived: 1811 – 1848
Notes: Russian literary critic and critical intellectual, role model of future westernizers and revolutionaries. His essays appeared in the thick journal Sovremennik.
Name: Edward Bellamy
Lived: 1850 – 1898
Notes: Author of the classic utopia Looking Backward (1888), which had a profound influence on economic idealism in America.
Name: Aleksandr Georgievich Beloborodov
Lived: 1891 – 1938
Notes: Chairman of the Ural Region TsIK in 1918, signed the order to execute Aleksandr II and the royal family. People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, 1923-27. Victim of the purges.
Name: Vasilii Ivanovich Belov
Lived: 1932 –
Notes: Writer concerned with Russian rural life and its vanishing traditions.
Name: Andrei Belyi
Lived: 1880 – 1934
Notes: Symobolist poet, peer and friend of Aleksandr Blok, and author of the first modernist novel in Russia, PETERSBURG.
Name: Edvard Benes
Lived: 1884 – 1948
Notes: Minister of Foreign Affairs (1918-1935) and President of Czechoslovakia (1935-1938), president in wartime exile and once again from 1946-48 until a Soviet-influenced socialist government was installed.
Name: Leontii Leont’evich Bennigsen
Lived: 1745 – 1826
Title: Count
Alias: Born Levin August Theophil Bennigsen
Notes: Russian cavalry general, participant in the plot to kill Tsar Pavel I. Unsuccessful army commander in the war with France in 1807, he began the War of 1812 as army chief-of-staff, but was relieved of his duties when Kutuzov became supreme commander.
Name: Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdiaev
Lived: 1874 – 1948
Notes: Lapsed Marxist philosopher who became one of the great Russian religious philosophers of the twentieth century. Participant in the VEKHI collection (1909), he was exiled to France in 1922, where his most famous work was likely THE RUSSIAN IDEA (1948).
Name: Olga Fedorovna Berggolts
Lived: 1910 – 1975
Notes: Poetess, author of moving verse during the months of the blockade.
Name: Lavrentii Pavlovich Beria
Lived: 1899 – 1953
Notes: Rose to prominence in the Transcaucasian Cheka and GPU. From 1931-38 secretary of the Georgian Party, and Narkom of Internal Affairs from 1938. High positions in the Sovnarkom and Soviet Communist Party, and in the Defense Council during the war. Arrested in 1953, sentenced by a special court and shot.
Name: Alexander Berkman
Lived: 1870 – 1936
Notes: American anarchist born in Vilnius. Closely associated with Emma Goldman, both were arrested in 1917 for opposing the draft, and deported to Russia in 1919, where they were bitterly disappointed in their hopes of finding freedom.
Name: Mark Naumovich Bernes
Lived: 1911 – 1969
Notes: Singer and actor immensely popular for many decades, star of such films as FIGHTER PILOTS (1939) and TWO SOLDIERS (1942)
Name: Fritz Berolzheimer
Lived: 1869 – 1920
Notes: Legal philosopher and historian, author of System der Rechts-und Wirtschaftsphilosophie (Munich, 1907)
Name: Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Bessmertnykh
Lived: 1933 –
Notes: Diplomat, ambassador to the United States, who succeeded Eduard Shevardnadze to become the last Soviet Foreign Minister.
Name: Ernest Bevin
Lived: 1881 – 1951
Notes: British labor leader and statesman. Born an orphan, trade union leader for many years, entered the parliament as part of Churchill’s wartime coalition government, and became foreign minister from 1945 to 1951, when he laid the foundations for close cooperation with the United States and Western Europe.
Name: Aleksandr Il’ich Bezymenskii
Lived: 1898 – 1973
Notes: Komsomol poet, author of “Komsomolia” (1924), the song “Young Guard” and the satirical verse play SHOT (1929)
Name: Aleksandr Il’ich Bibikov
Lived: 1729 – 1774
Title: General
Notes: Infantry officer who first distinguished himself during the Seven Year War, and who commanded military operations against the Pugachev Rebellion
Name: Georges Bidault
Lived: 1899 – 1983
Notes: French political leader. Imprisoned (1940 41) in World War II, then joined the French underground, becoming its leader. Imprisoned (1940-41) in World War II and then joined the French underground, becoming its leader. Opposed to Algerian independence, he formed the underground National Council of Resistance within the terrorist Secret Army Organization (OAS), and lived in exile from 1962.
Name: Vasilii Konstantinovich Bliukher
Lived: 1890 – 1938
Notes: Commander of Far East Military District, 1929-1938, leading proponent of tank warfare, one of the highest ranking officer killed in the military purges of 1938.
Name: Hans Blix
Lived: 1928 –
Notes: Swedish diplomat and politician. Minister for Foreign Affairs (1978 – 1979); head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission from 2000 to 2003.
Name: Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok
Lived: 1880 – 1921
Notes: Symbolist poet. See 1921: The Death of a Poet, on this website
Name: Leon Blum
Lived: 1872 – 1950
Notes: French socialist, head of Popular Front government in the late 1930s
Name: Konstantin Fedorovich Bogaevskii
Lived: 1872 – 1943
Notes: Painter, Honored Artist of Russia (1933), gained fame for “heroic” landscapes in the classical spirit, in Soviet times for decorative industrial landscapes.
Name: Petr Grigor’evich Bogatyrev
Lived: 1893 – 1971
Notes: Folklorist
Name: Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Bogdanov
Lived: 1873 – 1928
Notes: See Malinovskii, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich. Leading Bolshevik and Marxist philosopher, active in Proletkul’t movement after October Revolution.
Name: Vladimir Dmitrievich Bonch-Bruevich
Lived: 1873 – 1955
Notes: Bolshevik and friend of Lenin, organizer of several Bolshevik newspapers and publishers during the underground years. 1917-20 business manager of the Soviet of People’s Commissars. Learned historian and author of works about the revolution and religious sectarians.
Name: Sergei Fedorovich Bondarchuk
Lived: 1920 – 1994
Notes: Film director and actor, director and star of FATE OF MAN (1959), WAR AND PEACE (1966-67), and THEY FOUGHT FOR THE MOTHERLAND (1975).
Name: Elena Georgievna Bonner
Lived: 1923 –
Notes: Human rights activist, wife of Andrei Sakharov
Name: Aleksandr Porfir’evich Borodin
Lived: 1833 – 1887
Notes: Russian composer and chemist. Member of the so-called Mighty Five, the generation of composer that established the unique values of Russian classical music. Composed opera PRINCE IGOR, completed later by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov (1890), and the symphonic picture “Central Asia” (1880). Highly accomplished as a chemist as well.
Name: Leonid Ivanovich Borodin
Lived: 1939 –
Notes: Dissident and author, imprisoned in the labor camps from 1967-73 and 1982-87.
Name: Mikhail Borodin
Lived: 1884 – 1953
Notes: Comintern envoy to the Chinese revolutionary government headed by Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, which he helped organize into a national force. His intriguing was blamed for the Kuomintang split with the Communists and subsequent failure of Soviet policy. Later served as editor of the English-language Moscow News. Arrested and shot as an “enemy of the people” in 1949.
Name: Artem Genrikhovich Borovik
Lived: 1960 – 1999
Notes: Talented journalist for Ogonek whose reporting from Afghanistan was the first indication Soviet readers had of the hardships of that campaign.
Name: Semen Iakovlevich Braude
Lived: 1911 –
Notes: Physicist specializing in radio waves, laureate of the State Prize of the Soviet Union.
Name: Ekaterina Konstantinovna Breshko-Breshkovskaia
Lived: 1844 – 1934
Notes: Dubbed the “grandmother of the Russian Revolution,” took part in the populist “going to the people” of the 1870s, imprisoned and in exile from 1874-96. A leader of the SRs and their “Combat Organization”. Participant in the revolution of 1905-07, imprisoned again from 1907-17. Released by the February Revolution, she was active among right SRs, and was hostile to the October Revolution. After participating in armed resistance to the Bolsheviks, she emigrated in 1919.
Name: Nikolai Nikolaevich Breshko-Breshkovskii
Lived: 1874 – 1943
Notes: Son of the “grandmother of the Russian Revolution,” with whom he had minimal contact after her exile. Writer of popular and somewhat scandalous novels, his specialty was the lives of athletes, especially professional wrestlers.
Name: Leonid Ilich Brezhnev
Lived: 1906 – 1982
Notes: General Secretary of the CPSU, 1964-1982
Name: Benjamin Britten
Lived: 1913 – 1976
Notes: British composer, conductor, violist, and pianist; close friend of Dmitri Shostakovich and Mstislav Rostropovich.
Name: Iosif Aleksandovich Brodskii
Lived: 1940 – 1996
Notes: Poet in both Russian and English, forced emigre to the US in 1972. Writer of elegant essays, stories and translations. Tried as a “parasite” in 1966 for having no legally recognized profession, Brodskii was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1987.
Name: Lev Davydovich Bronstein
Lived: 1879 – 1940
Alias: Trotsky
Notes: See Trotsky
Name: Josif Broz-Tito
Lived: 1892 – 1980
Alias: Tito
Notes: See Tito
Name: Aleksei Alekseevich Brusilov
Lived: 1853 – 1926
Title: General
Notes: Cavalry general, commander in several important battles of the First World War, commander in chief from May to July 1917, as the Russian Army disintegrated. One of the first “specialists” to work with the Red Army, which he served during the Civil War and after.
Name: Louise Bryant
Lived: 1885 – 1936
Notes: Journalist, companion of John Reed, with whom she journeyed to Russia during the Revolution. Upon her return she published her memoirs of that time, Six Red Months in Russia.
Name: Andrei Sergeevich Bubnov
Lived: 1883 – 1940
Notes: A Bolshevik from 1903. A professional revolutionary. A member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee during the October Revolution and after it a member of the Collegium. of the Commissariat of Transport. In 1918 he went to the Ukraine and became a member of the Ukrainian CC and of the Ukrainian government of January 1919.
Name: Semen Mikhailovich Budennyi
Lived: 1883 – 1973
Notes: Civil War commander of the Bolshevik cavalry and led the Southern Front in World War II, a close crony of Stalin.
Name: Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin
Lived: 1888 – 1938
Notes: Joined the Bolsheviks in 1906 and became a member of their Moscow Committee in 1908. Played active part in October Revolution and was editor of Moscow Izvestiia Was editor of Pravda from December 1917 to 1929. A Left Communist at the time of the Brest negotiations and a co-editor of their journal, Kommunist. Bukharin’s moderate views were eventually eclipsed by the radical policies of Stalin, and Bukharin gradually lost influence until he perished in the purge trials of 1938.
Name: Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovskii
Lived: 1942 –
Notes: Dissident and defender of human rights, organized a demonstration in defense of Siniavskii and Daniel in 1965. Subject to a variety of repressive measures, including psychiatric hospitals, in the 1960s, Bukovsky presented the 1971 World Congress of Psychiatrists evidence of abuse in Soviet psychiatric hospitals. Exiled in 1976.
Name: Mikhail Afanas’evich Bulgakov
Lived: 1891 – 1940
Notes: Writer best known for his novel, The Master and Margarita
Name: Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bulganin
Lived: 1895 – 1975
Notes: Politician prominent in the late Stalin and early post-Stalin eras, chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, 1955-1958.
Name: William Bullitt
Lived: 1891 – 1967
Notes: US Ambassador to the Soviet Union in the 1930s
Name: Pavel Grigor’evich Bunich
Lived: 1929 –
Notes: Economist active in post-Soviet politics
Name: Luther Burbank
Lived: 1849 – 1926
Notes: American botanist and horticulturist who developed more than 800 strains and varieties of fruits, flowers, grains, and vegetables over his long career.
Name: Gennadii Eduardovich Burbulis
Lived: 1945 –
Notes: Politician. From June 1991, state secretary of the Russian Federation, and simaltaneously deputy chief of the Russian government.
Name: Fedor Mikhailovich Burlatskii
Lived: 1927 –
Notes: Speechwriter for Khrushchev, politically active again under Gorbachev
Name: Aleksandr Kharitonovich Busygin
Lived: 1907 – 1985
Notes: Stakhanovite blacksmith, later to become a member of the Supreme Soviet.
Name: Fidel Castro
Lived: 1926 –
Notes: Cuban revolutionary, leader of the successful revolution that toppled dictator Batista in 1959, premier of Cuba (1959-1976), president of the Council of State and Council of Ministers (1976-)
Name: Nicolae Ceaucescu
Lived: 1918 – 1989
Notes: Secretary-general of the Romanian Communist Party (1965-89) and the first president of the Socialist Republic of Romania (1974-89). Schemes for the the total socialization of society led to economic failure and the impoverishment of the countryside. His repressive and totalitarian regime ended with his execution following the revolution of 1989.
Name: Petr Il’ich Chaikovskii
Lived: 1840 – 1893
Notes: Sometimes spelled Tchaikovsky. Towering figure in Russian music, one of the most popular composers in history. Wrote 11 operas (EUGENE ONEGIN, QUEEN OF SPADES), four concertos, six symphonies, three ballets (NUTCRACKER, SWAN LAKE), and other works.
Name: Aleksandr Borisovich Chakovskii
Lived: 1913 – 1994
Notes: Writer, author of the wartime trilogy IT HAPPENED IN LENINGRAD (1944), BLOCKADE (1968-1975) and VICTORY (1978-1981).
Name: Neville Chamberlain
Lived: 1869 – 1940
Notes: British Prime Minister in late 1930s, most famous for his attempts to appease Nazi Germany at then Munich Conference in 1938, when Hitler’s aggressive designs against Czechoslovakia became apparent. His guarantee of “peace in our time” would soon ring hollow.
Name: Vasilii Ivanovich Chapaev
Lived: 1887 – 1919
Notes: Son of a peasant, decorated non-commissioned officer during the First World War, Chapaev joined the Bolsheviks in 1917 and was made a division commander during the Civil War. Chapaev’s unfettered spirit and courage were memorialized in a novel by his commissar, Dmitry Furmanov, and made into a hugely popular film in 1934.
Name: Sergei Alekseevich Chaplygin
Lived: 1869 – 1942
Notes: Academician from 1929, one of the founders of aerodynamics, with N. E. Zhukovskii founded the Central Aerodynamics Institute in Moscow.
Name: Evgenii Ivanovich Chazov
Lived: 1929 –
Title: Dr.
Notes: Prominent cardiologist and Soviet Minister of Health from 1987-1990, physician to many Kremlin leaders.
Name: Viktor Mikhailovich Chebrikov
Lived: 1923 – 1999
Notes: Soviet spymaster who, as deputy chairman (1968 82) and chairman (1982 88) of the KGB, presided over the agency during a period of great success against the U.S., only to lose power when his ideological opponent Mikhail Gorbachev became ascendant.
Name: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Lived: 1860 – 1904
Notes: Russian short-story writer, dramatist, and physician. Author of world famous plays such as Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904), which in the performance of Stanislavsky’s Moscow Art Theater were founding events of twentieth-century realist theater, in Russian he is at least as beloved for his short stories.
Name: Leontii G. Cheremisov
Lived: 1893 – 1967
Title: Lieutenant-General Notes: Commander at the Northern Front during the final months of the Russian effort in the First World War.
Name: Mikhail Mikhailovich Cheremnykh Lived: 1890 – 1962 Notes: Graphic artist, one of the creators of the ROSTA Windows and the satiric journal KROKODIL.
Name: Nikolai Konstantinovich Cherkasov
Lived: 1903 – 1966
Notes: Actor, member of the Pushkin Drama Theater in Leningrad from 1933, film actor best known for his starring roles in PETER the GREAT, BALTIC DEPUTY, ALEKSANDR NEVSKY, IVAN the TERRIBLE, DON QUIXOTE.
Name: Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko
Lived: 1911 – 1985
Notes: General Secretary of the CPSU, 1984-85
Name: Viktor Mikhailovich Chernov
Lived: 1876 – 1952
Notes: An SR leader and theorist. Took part in the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences. Became Minister of Agriculture in the Provisional Government and in January 1918, Chairman of the Constituent Assembly. Emigrated in 1921.
Name: Ho Chi-Minh
Lived: 1890 – 1969
Notes: Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman, who later became Prime Minister and President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Famous for leading the Viet Minh independence movement from 1941 onward, establishing the communist-governed Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 and defeating the French Union in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu. Lived in the Soviet Union 1933-1938.
Name: Georgii Vasilevich Chicherin
Lived: 1872 – 1936
Notes: Employed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1896 onwards. Returned to Russia in January 1918 and was soon appointed deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs. joined the Bolshevik party. Served as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs from 30 May 1918 to 1930.
Name: Boris Petrovich Chirkov
Lived: 1901 – 1982
Notes: Soviet stage and film actor, four time State Prize Laureate, including in 1952 for his role in DONETSK MINERS, People’s Artist of the Soviet Union (1950).
Name: Valerii Pavlovich Chkalov
Lived: 1904 – 1938
Notes: Test pilot, pilot of famous non-stop flights in 1936-1937: Moscow-Udd Island (Soviet Far East), Moscow-North Pole-Vancouver (Washington). Died testing a new fighter plane.
Name: Nikolai Semenovich Chkheidze
Lived: 1864 – 1926
Notes: Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet in 1917, and one of the Menshevik leaders of Georgia before it fell under Soviet power in 1921.
Name: Anatolii Borisovich Chubais
Lived: 1955 –
Notes: Chairman of the State Privatiztion Fund of the Russian Federation, 1991-94, often implicated in the massive accumulation of wealth by tycoons during that period.
Name: Vlas Iakovlevich Chubar
Lived: 1891 – 1939
Notes: High Soviet Ukrainian official, specialist in economic and administrative questions, who was shot in the purges
Name: Semen Afanasievich Chuikov
Lived: 1902 – 1980
Notes: Russian painter, genre paintings and landscapes devoted to Soviet Kirghiziia and India.
Name: Vasilii Ivanovich Chuikov
Lived: 1900 – 1982
Title: General
Notes: Soviet general, commander of the 62nd Army during the Battle of Stalingrad. Later commanded the 8th Guards and led its advance through Poland. Directed the Soviet offensive which captured Berlin in April 1945.
Name: Grigorii Naumovich Chukhrai
Lived: 1921 – 2001
Notes: Film director (“Ballad of a Soldier”)
Name: Kornei Ivanovich Chukovskii
Lived: 1882 – 1969
Notes: Writer and critic best known for his children’s verse (“Moidodyr,” “Doctor Aibolit”), and FROM TWO TO FIVE, on the idiosyncracies of children’s language.
Name: Iurii Churbanov
Lived: 1936 – 2013
Title: General
Notes: Brezhnev son-in-law who rose to become first deputy minister of the interior, a position he used to protect numerous corrupt practices. After his father-in-law’s death in 1982, Churbanov was arrested and sentenced to 12 years for taking bribes. Coming in the early years of economic and political reform under former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the case sent an important signal that no one was above the law. Churbanov was released from prison in 1993.
Name: Georges Clemenceau
Lived: 1841 – 1929
Notes: French statesman, twice premier (1906-9, 1917-20)
Name: Fedor Dan
Lived: 1871 – 1947
Notes: Menshevik leader, married to the sister of Martov. Joined Social Democratic party in 1894. Became Menshevik in 1903. Shared with Martov the leadership of the Menshevik faction until after October 1917. Later exiled to New York in 1922.
Name: Mohammed Daud
Lived: 1909 – 1978
Title: General
Notes: General Mohammed Daud overthrew the Afghan king in 1973 and established friendly relations with the Soviet Union. He ruled Afghanistan from 1973 to 1978.
Name: Mariia Sofronovna Demchenko
Lived: 1912 –
Notes: Outstanding Stakhanovite sugarbeet worker
Name: Petr Nilovich Demichev
Lived: 1918 –
Notes: Politbiuro member from 1966 to 1988, Minister of Culture under Brezhnev.
Name: Anton Ivanovich Denikin
Lived: 1872 – 1947
Notes: Tsarist military leader who commanded the anti-Bolshevik forces in the South, 1918-1919
Name: Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev
Lived: 1872 – 1929
Notes: Founder with Aleksandr Benois of the WORLD OF ART movement, Impressario of the “Ballet russe” from 1907.
Name: Denis Diderot
Lived: 1713 – 1784
Notes: French philosopher and writer; prominent figure in the Enlightenment, and editor-in-chief of the famous Encyclopédie.
Name: Milovan Djilas
Lived: 1911 – 1995
Notes: Yugoslav Communist politician, theorist and author, key figure in the partisan movement and post-war government who later became an incisive critic of the Tito regime.
Name: Nikolai Aleksandrovich Dobroliubov
Lived: 1836 – 1861
Notes: Russian literary critic, publicist, and revolutionary democrat.
Name: Anatolii Fedorovich Dobrynin
Lived: 1919 –
Notes: Diplomat, many years the Soviet Ambassador to the United States and leading foreign policy advisor to the Kremlin.
Name: Vasilii Vasil’evich Dokuchaev
Lived: 1846 – 1903
Notes: Natural scientist, professor at Petersburg University. In his classic RUSSIAN BLACK EARTH (1883), laid the foundation of genetic soil studies
Name: Phil Donahue
Lived: 1935 –
Notes: American media personality best known as star of The Phil Donahue Show.
Name: Dmitrii Donskoi
Lived: 1350 – 1389
Notes: Grand Prince of Muscovy and Vladimir. The first stone churches of the Moscow Kremlin were built in his reign. Commander of Russian forces in their greatest victories of over the Mongols, including the Battle of Kulikovo (1380). Made Moscow most powerful of Russian cities.
Name: Ivan Vasil’evich Doronin
Lived: 1903 – 1951
Notes: Pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union (1934). Participant in polar flights from 1930, and in the expedition to save the Cheliuskin in 1934.
Name: Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevskii
Lived: 1821 – 1881
Notes: Russian novelist whose works include Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.
Name: Aleksandr Petrovich Dovzhenko
Lived: 1894 – 1956
Notes: Director of ARSENAL (1929), EARTH (1930), and other films.
Name: Sergei Ivanovich (Iakov Davydovich) Drabkin
Lived: 1874 – 1933
Alias: Gusev
Notes: Became a Bolshevik in 1903. A professional revolutionary. He was secretary of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee. During the Civil War he was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of, successively, the Fifth Army, the Second Army, the Eastern Front, the Southeastern Front and the Southern Front. Appointed head of the Army Political Administration in the spring of 1921.
Name: Alexander Dubcek
Lived: 1921 – 1992
Notes: Reformist president of Czechoslovakia, ousted after Soviet-led invasion of 1968
Name: Nikolai Petrovich Dubinin
Lived: 1907 –
Notes: Geneticist, member of the Academy of Sciences from 1966. Discovered technique for splitting genes.
Name: Samuel Martinovich Dudin
Lived: 1863 – 1929
Notes: Photographer who collected vast photographic and ethnographic collections in Central Asia between 1893 and 1914.
Name: Vladimir Dmitrievich Dudintsev
Lived: 1918 – 1998
Notes: Writer, author of novel, Not By Bread Alone (1956)
Name: Dmitrii Sergeevich Dudko
Lived: 1922 – 2004
Notes: Orthodox priest, arrested in 1980 for his writings and sermons.
Name: Nikolai Nikolaevich Dukhonin
Lived: 1876 – 1917
Title: Commander-in-Chief
Notes: Last commander-in-chief of the Russian Army before the October Revolution. He was killed by Red Guards for refusing to follow the Bolshevik order to cease fire against the German Army in 1917.
Name: Isaak Osipovich Dunaevskii
Lived: 1900 – 1955
Notes: Composer of immensely popular songs, including SONG OF THE MOTHERLAND (1936), MARCH OF ENTHUSIASTS (1940), and music to such films as HAPPY-GO-LUCKY FELLOWS (1934) and VOLGA-VOLGA (1938)
Name: Walter Duranty
Lived: 1884 – 1946
Notes: New York Times correspondent in Moscow during the 1920s and 1930s, criticized much then and now for his blindness to many of the Stalin regimes worst sins.
Name: Aleksandr Il’ich Dutov
Lived: 1879 – 1921
Notes: White military leader who led a Cossack revolt in the Orenburg region in Nov-Dec 1917
Name: Pavel Efimovich Dybenko
Lived: 1889 – 1938
Notes: Joined Bolsheviks in 1912. A naval rating in the Baltic Fleet from 1911. Elected head of the CC of the Baltic Fleet after the February Revolution. Played a prominent role in the October Revolution and was a member of the military collegium of the first Sovnarkom in November 1917. During the Civil War held various commands, including that of the first Ukrainian army in January 1919.
Name: Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinskii
Lived: 1877 – 1926
Notes: Elected to the Party CC at its VI Congress. Head of Cheka from its foundation on 20 December 1917 until his death (except for a short time in August 1918) Chairman first of the Cheka, then of OGPU. From 1921 People’s Commissar for Transport.
Name: Prokofii Aprasionovich Dzhaparidze
Lived: 1880 – 1918
Alias: Alesha
Notes: 1917-18 deputy and then chairman of the Baku Soviet, a leader of the Baku Commune. One of the famous executed “Baku Commissars.”
Name: Mustafa Dzhemilev
Lived: 1943 –
Alias: Mustafa Abdlcemil Qirimglu (in Tatar) Notes: Crimean Tatar deported as a one-year during the exile of his people to Uzbekistan. Human rights activist in the 1960s, supporting both Tatar and other causes. Active now in Ukrainian politics.
Name: Iosef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili
Lived: 1879 – 1953
Alias: Stalin
Notes: See Stalin
Name: Ivan Mikhailovich Dziuba
Lived: 1931 –
Notes: Literary critic, critic of Soviet nationality policies.
Name: Charles de Gaulle
Lived: 1890 – 1970
Notes: French general and statesman, first president (1959 69) of the Fifth Republic.
Name: Anthony Eden
Lived: 1897 – 1977
Notes: Conservative statesmen, British Foreign Secretary during WW II, and under the conservatives during the 1950s.
Name: Boris Efimovich Efimov
Notes: Political cartoonist and propagandist known for his political caricatures of Adolf Hitler and other Nazis, and for his anti-Trotskyist cartoons of the mid-1930s, featured in KROKODIL and OGONEK. Brother of Mikhail Kol’tsov.
Name: Sergei Efron
Lived: 1893 – 1940
Notes: Journalist, husband of poet Marina Tsvetaeva, former White Guard officer later suspected of collaboration with Soviet security officials.
Name: Anatolii Vasil’evich Efros
Lived: 1925 – 1987
Notes: Stage director at the Theater of Leninist Komsomol and the Dramatic Theater on Malaia Bronnaia in Moscow. Later head director of the Taganka Theater.
Name: Aleksandr Il’ich Egorov
Lived: 1883 – 1939
Title: Marshal
Notes: Army commander during the Civil War, led the rout of Denikin on the Southern Front and fought in the Polish War of 1920. Chief of the General Staff in 1935-37, commander in the Caucasus in 1938 before perishing in the purges.
Name: Nikolai Grigor’evich Egorychev
Lived: 1920 –
Notes: Party official under Khrushchev and Brezhnev who began a successful diplomatic career when designated ambassador to Denmark in 1970, and to Afghanistan in 1988.
Name: Robert Indrikovich Eikhe
Lived: 1890 – 1940
Notes: A founder of the Latvian Communist Party, victim of the purge trials.
Name: Dwight D. Eisenhower
Lived: 1890 – 1969
Notes: Supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe during the Second World War, later thirty-fourth president of the U.S. (1953-1961).
Name: Sergei Eizenshtein
Lived: 1898 – 1948
Notes: Great film director, most notably of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN and OCTOBER, master editor whose daring cross-cut techniques (montage) laid the foundation of modern film.
Name: Garold El-Registan
Lived: 1899 – 1945
Notes: Soviet-Armenian poet, journalist, adventure story writer, and co-author of words to Soviet National Anthem (1944).
Name: Boris Nikolaevich Eltsin
Lived: 1931 – 2007
Notes: Communist Party boss in Sverdlovsk oblast, then Moscow; his activities as President of the RSFSR put him into conflict with then USSR President Gorbachev, eventually leading to the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. First President of post-Soviet Russian Federation.
Name: Paul Eluard
Lived: 1895 – 1952
Notes: Pen name of Eug„ne ˆmile Paul Grindel, French poet and surrealist until joining the Communist Party in 1942.
Name: Friedrich Engels
Lived: 1820 – 1895
Notes: German socialist thinker, co-author of Karl Marx in many of the fundamental texts of the world socialist movement.
Name: Avel Sefronovich Enukidze
Lived: 1877 – 1937
Notes: Secretary of Central Executive Committee, 1918-1935, Party Presidium from 1927, victim of the purge trials.
Name: Il’ia Grigor’evich Erenburg
Lived: 1891 – 1967
Notes: Novelist and journalist based in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Master at treading on the fine line between critique and loyalism. Author of JULIO JURENITO (1922), THAW (1956) and many other novels, and sharp essays during the wartime and after.
Name: Ermak
Lived: 1532 – 1585
Notes: Also Ermak Timofeevich. Cossack explorer of Siberia, beginning Russian colonization of the region.
Name: Vladimir Vladimirovich Ermilov
Lived: 1904 – 1965
Notes: Literary critic of orthodox Soviet bent.
Name: Gustav Ernesaks
Lived: 1908 – 1993
Notes: Estonian composer and choral director, chief director of Estonian Song Festivals from 1947.
Name: Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin
Lived: 1895 – 1925
Notes: Russian poet of immense lyric talent whose verse (TAVERN MOSCOW, 1924) animated young people and aggravated Soviet critics. Died a suicide.
Name: Aleksandr Sergeevich Esenin-Volpin
Lived: 1924 –
Notes: Mathematician and son of the famous poet Sergei Esenin, had spent varying periods in mental hospitals since 1949. In 1959 he had sent to the West a philosophical treatise and collection of poems, published as A Leaf of Spring, and in 1965 he had founded the “Constitution Day demonstrations,” which later became an annual event. He became a prolific contributor to samizdat on legal problems, and in February 1968 was forcibly committed to the Kashchenko Mental Hospital for protesting against the “Trial of the Four” (Ginzburg, Galanskov, Dobrovolsky, and Lashkova). He was released again in May. He then became the chief legal adviser to the Moscow Human Rights Committee, led by Andrei Sakharov, until his emigration to the U.S. in 1972.
Name: Efim Georgievich Evdokimov
Lived: 1891 – 1940
Notes: High ranking officer of the Cheka, OGPU and NKVD shot in the purges of 1940.
Name: Evgenii Aleksandrovich Evtushenko
Lived: 1933 –
Notes: Poet, member of the young generation of the 1960s.
Name: Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov
Lived: 1895 – 1939
Notes: People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, 1936-38; carried out Great Purges, often called Ezhovshchina for his leading role. Died a victim of those purges.
Name: Konstantin Fedin
Lived: 1892 – 1977
Notes: Member of the Serapion Brothers literary grouping best known for his novel, Cities and Years, who supported the Revolution and creative freedom for writers.
Name: Vitalii Vasilievich Fedorchuk
Lived: 1918 –
Notes: Chairman of the Ukrainian KGB from 1970, Fedorchuk became chairman of the Soviet KGB and Minister of Internal Affairs in 1982. He was transferred to a minor inspectoral post under Gorbachev.
Name: Evgenii L’vovich Feinberg
Lived: 1912 – 2005
Notes: Theoretical physicist in the field of radio waves, acoustics and nuclear physics.
Name: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli
Lived: 1926 – 1972
Notes: Italian publisher and left-wing activist known for publishing the first edition of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, for which he was expelled from the Italian Communist Party.
Name: Leon Feuchtwanger
Lived: 1884 – 1958
Notes: German novelist who wrote laudatory book on the USSR after his 1937 visit.
Name: Vera Nikolaevna Figner
Lived: 1852 – 1942
Notes: A leader of Narodnaya Volya who participated in assasination of Alexander II in 1881
Name: Anatoly N. Filatov
Lived: –
Notes: Soviet Foreign Ministry aide entrapped by the CIA, whose espionage work was quickly detected by the KGB, resulting in a quick trial and international scandal.
Name: Fritz Flatten
Lived: 1883 – 1942
Notes: Swiss socialist and friend of Lenin who helped negotiate his passage back to Russia in 1917 with the Germans. Later saved Lenin from an assassination attempt. Died in the Soviet labor camps.
Name: Ol’ga Dmitrievna Forsh
Lived: 1873 – 1961
Notes: Historical novelist who made the successful transition from pre-revolutionary author to Soviet memoirist, satirist, novelist and children’s writer.
Name: Charles Fourier
Lived: 1772 – 1832
Notes: French utopian socialist most influential in Russia for his idea of cooperative communities called phalanges.
Name: Francisco Franco Lived: 1892 – 1975
Title: General
Notes: Leader of anti-Republic forces during Spanish Civil War, dictator of Spain from 1939 to his death.
Name: Moisei Il’ich Frumkin
Lived: 1878 – 1938
Notes: Old Bolshevik who held responsible office in the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade. Joined RSDRP in 1898. In 1906 a member of Bolshevik Military Organisation in Petrograd. After the February Revolution he was a member of the Regional Party Committee and the Executive Committee in Krasnoyarsk and later in Omsk Member of Collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Food, 1918-22. Later in the 1920s, he proposed a milder policy towards the peasantry and more moderate plans for economic growth.
Name: Mikhail Vasilevich Frunze
Lived: 1885 – 1925
Notes: A Bolshevik from 1904. Took part in the October Revolution in Moscow. In 1918 he was appointed Military Commissar of the Yaroslavl Military District and in December 1918 given command of the Fourth Army In April 1919 he became commander of the Southern Army Group of the Eastern Front, in July 1919 Commander of the Eastern Front and in September 1920 of the Southern Front. At the end of 1920 he became commander-in-chief of the newly created Southern Front against Wrangel and a member of the Ukrainian CC.
Name: Dmitrii Andreevich Furmanov
Lived: 1891 – 1926
Notes: Comissar during the Civil War, novelist and author of the hugely popular CHAPAEV.
Name: Ekaterina Alekseevna Furtseva
Lived: 1910 – 1974
Notes: First female member of the Politburo, Minister of Culture under Khrushchev.
Name: Iurii Timofeevich Galanskov
Lived: 1939 – 1972
Notes: Poet, member of the human rights movement in the USSR, sentenced to seven years prison in 1972, where he died.
Name: Konstanty Ildefons Galczynski
Lived: 1905 – 1953
Notes: Whimsical and graceful Polish poet; wrote politically correct work for the post-war Polish socialist state.
Name: Valerii Albertovich Gende-Rote
Lived: 1926 – 2000
Notes: Photographer for magazine “Soviet Photo” and for the international department of “Photochronika TASS” (1957-1968), one of the leaders of the Russian “young photography” movement in the sixties, most famous for his photos Gagarin’s report to the Soviet Government.
Name: Mikhail Porfirevich Georgadze
Lived: 1912 – 1982
Notes: Secretary of Presidium of Supreme Soviet, 1957-1984, who began as a tractor driver and official in his native Georgia before being brought to Moscow by Khrushchev.
Name: Sergei Apollinarevich Gerasimov
Lived: 1906 – 1985
Notes: Film director, much decorated by the Soviet state. Best known for THE DARING SEVEN (1936), MASQUERADE (1941), YOUNG GUARD (1948), QUIET FLOWS THE DON (1957-58)
Name: Edward Gibbon
Lived: 1737 – 1794
Notes: English historian, author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Name: Aleksandr Il’ich Ginzburg
Lived: 1936 – 2002
Notes: Poet, dissident and samizdat editor of the poetry almanac “Sintaksis, who compiled the “White Book.”
Name: Vladimir Mikhailovich Gittis
Lived: 1881 – 1938
Notes: Commanded armies on the northern and southern fronts of the Civil War, and promoted subsequently until reaching the rank of corps commander in 1935. Victim of the military purge of 1938.
Name: Il’ia Sergeevich Glazunov
Lived: 1930 –
Title: People’s Artist of the USSR Notes: Painter and graphic artist, best known for his large canvases that trace his personal conception of the unique path of Russian history and culture.
Name: Glebov
Lived: –
Notes: See Avilov, Nikolai Viktorovich
Name: Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka
Lived: 1804 – 1857
Notes: Composer, patriarch of Russian classical music. His IVAN SUSANIN (Life for the Tsar, 1836) and RUSLAN AND LIUDMILA (1842) established the two most important prototypes for Russian operas, the national drama and the fairy tale opera.
Name: Boris Fedorovich Godunov
Lived: 1551 – 1605
Notes: Regent of Russia from 1584 to 1598, tsar from 1598 to 1605. Under his rule Russia received its Orthodox Patriarchate, and saw many necessary reforms, but eventually it descended into the chaos known as the Time of Troubles.
Name: Joseph Goebbels
Lived: 1897 – 1945
Notes: Nazi propaganda minister and fierce anti-Semite.
Name: Moisei Markovich Golshtein
Lived: 1891 – 1918
Alias: V. Volodarskii
Notes: Revolutionary at the age of 14 under the influence of the 1905 revolution.1913 departure to America. Returned to Russia after the February revolution, soon becoming a Bolshevik. Member of the Petrograd Party Committee, one of the finest propagandists. Member of the Petrograd Soviet, later of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Editor of the newspaper Krasnaia Gazeta, Petrograd. Commissar for the Press, Propaganda and Agitation of the Petrograd Commune. Murdered on June 20, 1918.
Name: Samuel Gompers
Lived: 1850 – 1924
Notes: American labor leader and union organizer
Name: Natalia Gorbanevskaia
Lived: 1936 – 2013
Notes: Poet; translator; member of the Action Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR; first editor of The Chronicle of Current Events; participant in the demonstration in Red Square against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Arrested in 1969 and held in Kazan Special Psychiatric Hospital until 1972. Emigrated in 1975. Lived in Paris till her death, working as a journalist and publishing her poetry.
Name: Maksim Gorky
Lived: 1868 – 1936
Notes: See Peshkov, Maksim. Writer, author of celebrated novels, essays and poems, progressive essayist and sometimes associate of the Bolsheviks. Gorkii spent much of the Bolsheviks time in power in voluntary exile. He was invited back to the Soviet Union by Stalin in 1932, when he was feted and served as a leader of the Soviet literary world. His name is most associated with the birth of socialist realism.
Name: Abram Rafailovich Gotz
Lived: 1882 – 1940
Notes: Socialist Revolutionary, a member of the secret “Combat Organization” that arranged political assassinations after the failed 1905 Revolution, exiled from 1907-17. Participated in Soviet organizations in 1917, but opponent of the Bolsheviks after the October takeover. Frequently jailed and repressed under their rule.
Name: Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov
Lived: 1897 – 1955
Notes: Marshal of the Soviet Union from 1944, one of the leading commanders of the Red Army during the Second World War. Commanded an army during the Battle of Moscow, and important commander during the Leningrad Blockade.
Name: Stanislav Govorukhin
Lived: 1936 –
Notes: Director, actor, script writer; after 1991 Deputy of the State Duma known for his conservative politics. Director “We Can’t Live Like This” and “The Russia That We Lost”, and “The Great Criminal Revolution”.
Name: Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar
Lived: 1871 – 1960
Notes: Russian-Soviet artist and art critic first associated with the World of Art movement, whose art, critical and museum activities were increasingly in line with official policies under Stalin.
Name: Grach
Lived: –
Notes: See Bauman, Nikolai
Name: Aleksandr Sergeevich Griboedov
Lived: 1790 – 1829
Notes: Writer and diplomat, most famous for his witty play WOE FROM WIT (1822), in which social conservatives were mercilessly satirized. Investigated for connections to the Decembrists, he was sent as Russian emissary to Persia, where he was torn to pieces by an angry mob.
Name: Petr Grigor’evich Grigorenko
Lived: 1907 – 1987
Title: Major General
Notes: After a successful military career, including action at Khalkhin-Gor (1939), the Second World War, and a post-war teaching post at the Frunze Military Academy, Grigorenko became a defender of human rights and critic of Khrushchev, for which he was transferred to the Far East in 1961. After creating the Union to Resurrect Leninism in 1963, he was deprived of his rank, medals and pension. Stints in prison and a psychiatric hospital preceded his emigration to the USA in 1977.
Name: Aleksandr Dmitrievich Grigorev
Lived: 1874 – 1940
Notes: Ethnographer
Name: Grigorii Fedorovich Grinko
Lived: 1890 – 1938
Notes: Chairman of Gosplan, People’s Commissar of Finance (1930-1937) and other high posts in financial planning. Victim of the purges
Name: Iosif Grigor’evich Grishashvili
Lived: 1889 – 1965
Notes: Real name: Mamulaishvili. Georgian poet, member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences since 1947, People’s Poet of Georgia (1959), concerned with social and political themes.
Name: Ul’iana Matveeva Gromova
Lived: 1924 – 1943
Notes: One of the leaders of the Komsomol underground in the city of Krasnodon, immortalized in Fadeev’s post-war novel YOUNG GUARD, executed by the Germans.
Name: Andrei Andreevich Gromyko
Lived: 1909 – 1989
Notes: Ambassdor to the United States during the war and then delegate to the United Nations. Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1957-1985.
Name: Vasilii Semenovich Grossman
Lived: 1905 – 1964
Notes: Soviet Jewish writer and war correspondent, author of Forever Flowing and Life and Fate, epic novels about the Great Patriotic War that were published only many years after their writing, to great critical acclaim.
Name: Georg Grosz
Lived: 1893 – 1959
Notes: German artist famous for his anti-capitalist caricatures in years following the First World War.
Name: Nikolai Nikolaevich Gubenko
Lived: 1941 –
Notes: Actor, director, People’s Artist of Russia (1985). Minister of Culture of the USSR, 1989-91.
Name: Aleksandr Ivanovich Guchkov
Lived: 1862 – 1936
Notes: Factory owner, leader of the Octobrist faction in the Duma. Member of the State Council, 1907-1915. Chairman of the Central Military Industrial Committee, 1915-17, and Minister of War under the Provisional Government.
Name: Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Lived: 1928 – 1967
Notes: Cuban revolutionary and political leader born in Argentina and trained as a physician. Close comrade of Castro, he was more comfortable as a revolutionary than a state administrator. Left Cuba in 1965 to foster revolutionary activity in the Congo and other countries. In 1967, directing an ineffective guerrilla movement in Bolivia, he was wounded, captured, and executed by government troops.
Name: Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev
Lived: 1886 – 1921
Notes: Acmeist organizer and poet, once husband of Anna Akhmatova, executed as counter-revolutionary in 1921.
Name: Fedor Il’ich Gurvich
Lived: 1871 – 1947
Alias: Dan
Notes: See Fedor Dan. Menshevik leader, married to the sister of Martov. Joined Social Democratic party in 1894. Became Menshevik in 1903. Shared with Martov the leadership of the Menshevik faction until after October 1917. Later exiled to New York in 1922.
Name: Gusev
Lived: –
Notes: See Drabkin, Sergei Ivanovich
Name: George Frideric Handel
Lived: 1685 – 1759
Notes: English composer born in Germany, great master of baroque music, most celebrated for his oratorio The Messiah.
Name: William Averell Harriman
Lived: 1891 – 1986
Notes: Heir to the Harriman railroad fortune, filled various high governmental posts in commerce before the war. Adminstered the Land Lease program from 1941, and was American ambassador to the Soviet Union 1943-46. Played many important roles in American foreign policy until the late 1960s.
Name: Eric Heiden
Lived: 1958 –
Notes: American long track speed skater who won an unprecedented five gold medals, and set four Olympic records and one world record at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid.
Name: Cordell Hull
Lived: 1871 – 1955
Notes: American statesman, named Secretary of State by FDR in 1933. Placed great emphasis on international economic relations and fostered the “good neighbor” policy toward Latin American countries. After World War II broke out, pushed for aid to the Allies and recommended revision of the Neutrality Act. After U.S. entry into the war, he worked to improve cooperation among the Allies, visiting Moscow in 1943. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945.
Name: Anatolii Aleksandrovich Iakobson
Lived: 1935 – 1978
Notes: Poet, school teacher, editor of The Chronicle of Current Events. Involved in human rights defense after the Siniavsky-Daniel trial. Emigrated from the USSR in 1973, lived in Jerusalem. Died by his own hand.
Name: Gleb Pavlovich Iakunin
Lived: 1934 –
Notes: Orthodox priest, banished to a strict regime camp in 1979 for his criticism of Soviet state manipulation of the Orthodox Church.
Name: Gennadii Ivanovich Ianaev
Lived: 1937 –
Notes: Vice President under Gorbachev, involved in failed putsch of August 1991 when he assumed the constitutional duties of president.
Name: Aleksandr L’vovich Ianov
Lived: 1934 –
Notes: Historian, expert in the origins of Russian autocracy and nationalism.
Name: Emelian Mikhailovich Iaroslavskii
Lived: 1878 – 1943
Notes: Secretary of the Central Committee, 1921-22, later chairman of League of Militant Atheists.
Name: Grigorii Alekseevich Iavlinskii
Lived: 1952 –
Notes: Economist, leading proponent of economic reforms in the final years of Soviet power and in the new Russian Federation.
Name: Semen Denisovich Ignatiev
Lived: 1904 – 1983
Notes: Joined the Cheka at age sixteen in 1920, and worked his way up through the party and industrial apparatus under Stalin. Ignatiev served as minister of state security from 1951-1953, during Stalin’s final years.
Name: Vera Mikhailovna Inber
Lived: 1890 – 1972
Notes: Leningrad lyric poet, children’s author, writer of powerful verse about the Leningrad under the blockade (Pulkovo Meridian, 1943)
Name: Boris Mikhailovich Iofan
Lived: 1891 – 1970
Notes: Architect, chiefly known for his design for the Palace of Soviets and other monumental buildings
Name: Adolf Abramovich Ioffe
Lived: 1883 – 1927
Notes: Joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917. He served on the Brest-Litovsk peace delegation and opposed signing the peace treaty. Appointed ambassador to Berlin on 6 April 1918.
Name: Boris Vladimirovich Ioganson
Lived: 1893 – 1973
Notes: Painter of socialist realist canvases (Rabfak is Coming, 1928; Interrogation of the Communists, 1933; Old Urals Factory, 1937); later President of the USSR Academy of Arts.
Name: Nikolai Nikolaevich Iudenich
Lived: 1862 – 1933
Notes: Tsarist military leader who led anti-Bolshevik forces in Estonia and on the northern front, 1918-1920
Name: V. N. Ivanov
Notes: Secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol in the late Stalin years.
Name: Vsevolod Ivanov
Lived: 1895 – 1963
Notes: Novelist, author of stories PARTISANS (1921), ARMORED TRAIN 14-69 (1922), ADVENTURES OF A FAKIR (1934)
Name: Georg Jellinek
Lived: 1851 – 1911
Notes: Author of Verfassungsd derung und Verfassungswandlung (n.p., n.d.), promoter of the study of law and philosophy.
Name: Alfred Jodl
Lived: 1890 – 1946
Notes: German General and commander-in-chief, who signed the surrender in 1945.
Name: John Paul II
Lived: 1920 – 2005
Title: Pope
Notes: See Wojtyla, Karol
Lived: 1869 – 1953
Notes: Georgian journalist and Menshevik politician. Leader in the socialist revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire, and later head of the Democratic Republic of Georgia from July 24, 1918 until March 18, 1921, when he was deposed and exiled by the Red Army invasion of Georgia.
Name: Leon Jouhaux
Lived: 1879 – 1954
Notes: French trade union leader, Resistance fighter, and Nobel Prize Laureate.
Name: Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich
Lived: 1893 – 1991
Notes: Close associate of Stalin who was ousted from leadership in 1957. Party leader of Ukraine from 1925-28 and 1947; Central Committee Secretary from 1928-39, and also of the Moscow Party Committee (1930-1935). Held other important posts as well until he was removed from power as part of the so-called “Anti-Party Group.” Ironically, this henchman and collaborator in some of the bloodiest campaigns of Soviet history lived until the ripe old age of 98, almost outliving the Soviet Union itself.
Name: Mikhail Moiseevich Kaganovich
Lived: 1888 – 1941
Notes: Brother of Lazar. From 1932, Deputy People’s Commissar of Heavy Industry; from 1937, People’s Commissar of Defense Industry. Committed suicide during a period of mass repressions.
Name: Chiang Kai-shek
Lived: 1887 – 1975
Notes: Chinese military and political figure who led the Nationalists against the rising Communist forces and was driven from the mainland to Taiwan (1949), where he served as president of Nationalist China until his death.
Name: Mikhail Konstantinovich Kalatozov
Lived: 1903 – 1973
Notes: Soviet film director, whose work ranged from SALT FOR SVANETIIA (1930) to VALERY CHKALOV (1941) and CRANES ARE FLYING (1957).
Name: Aleksei Maksimovich Kaledin
Lived: 1861 – 1918
Title: General
Notes: Cavalry general and Cossack leader. Appointed ataman of the Don Cossack Army in 1917, and from November of that year to January 1918, leading a resistance effort to Soviet power.
Name: Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin
Lived: 1875 – 1946
Notes: Worker. Member of the SD party from 1898 Active in both revolutions in 1917. After the October Revolution was head of the City of Petrograd. In March 1919 succeeded Sverdlov as Chairman of the CEC. Travelled widely in a propaganda train during the Civil War. Chairman of the TsIK from 1922, and a close colleague of Stalin.
Name: Lev Borisovich Kamenev
Lived: 1883 – 1936
Notes: See Rozenfeld, Lev Borisovich. Joined the Social Democratic party in 1901; a Bolshevik in 1903. Close associate of Lenin. Arrested and exiled to Siberia in November 1914. Released February 1917. Chairman, Central Executive Committee of Soviets. Supported Trotsky in the anti-Stalin opposition. 1926-27 Soviet Ambassador to Italy. Condemned and executed in the first major ‘purge’ trial, 1936.
Name: Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa
Lived: 1894 – 1984
Notes: Physicist, Nobel Prize winner (1978), organizer and first director of the Academy of Science Institute of Physical Problems
Name: Edvard Kardelj
Lived: 1910 – 1979
Notes: Slovene-Yugoslav partisan, communist political leader, and economist. Architect of the post-war state ideology, and Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1948 to 1953. Kardelj was instrumental in the split with the Soviet Union, his influence in the government later waned.
Name: Khurshed Khilovich Karimov
Lived: 1935 –
Notes: Tajik physiologist and biochemist.
Name: Babrak Karmal
Lived: 1929 – 1996
Notes: Afghan Commuunist leader who succeeded Hafizullah Amin in 1979, and ruled until 1986.
Name: Valentin Petrovich Kataev
Lived: 1897 – 1986
Notes: Dramatist (Squaring the Circle, 1928), novelist (TIME, FORWARD!, 1932), and memoirist.
Name: Evgenii Katsman
Lived: 1890 – 1976
Notes: Painter and co-founder of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR) from 1921-1928
Name: Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin
Lived: 1902 – 1989
Notes: Prose writer who subscribed to formalist literary theories but who also composed successful socialist realist works in the 1930s and 1940s such as the Two Captains (1939).
Name: Iurii Pavlovich Kazakov
Lived: 1927 – 1982
Notes: Short story writer who published between 1957 and 1977 and who was influential in reviving the style of Chekhov and Bunin.
Name: Aleksandr Fedorovich Kerenskii
Lived: 1881 – 1971
Notes: Lawyer. An SR member of the Duma from 1912. Became Minister of Justice in first Provisional Government. Later Prime Minister. After the Kornilov revolt he took over as commander-in-chief as well. Kerenskii was deposed from power by the Bolsheviks, for whom he was a figure of particular contempt, and all of whom he outlived.
Name: Aram Khachaturian
Lived: 1903 – 1978
Notes: Composer, conductor and professor at Moscow Conservatory
Name: Artashes (Artemii) Bagratovich Khalatov
Lived: 1896 – 1938
Notes: Food supply official in Moscow during the Revolution, later part of the Commissariat of Railroads, and chairman of Gosizdat (1927-32). Fell victim to the purges
Name: Boris Osipovich Khariton
Lived: 1875 – 1942
Notes: One of the founders of Dom Literatorov in Petrograd, 1918-1921 who emigrated to Latvia and was deported after its occupation by the Soviet military.
Name: Ruslan Khasbulatov
Lived: 1942 –
Notes: Scholar, Chechen state official and People’s Deputy of the RSFSR, 1990, who supported economic reforms but whose independent leadership of the Duma led to sharp confrontations with the Eltsin government in 1993.
Name: Bogdan Khmelnitskii
Lived: 1595 – 1657
Notes: See Bohdan Khmelnytsky (Ukrainian name)
Name: Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Lived: 1595 – 1657
Notes: Hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. He led the uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth magnates (1648-1654) with the goal of creating an independent Cossack state. In 1654 he concluded the Treaty of Pereyaslav with Russia, which led to the eventual loss of Ukrainian independence in the Russian Empire and later in the Soviet Union.
Name: Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich
Lived: 1886 – 1939
Notes: Poet and essayist.
Name: Faizulla Khodzhaev
Lived: 1898 – 1938
Notes: Former Jadadist who served as Chairman of the Uzbek Council of People’s Commissars, and the First Secretary of the Uzbek party organization in the mid 1930s. Khodzhaev was removed from office in 1937, and was convicted in the last of the great show trials.
Name: Sergei Alekseevich Khristianovich
Lived: 1908 – 2000
Notes: Highly decorated scientist who served at the Hydrological Institute in Leningrad.
Name: Sergei Mironovich Kirov
Lived: 1886 – 1934
Notes: Member of the Politburo and head of the Leningrad regional party. Secretary of the Azerbaijan Central Committee 1921-26, moved to Leningrad and rose through the Party ranks. Politbiuro member from 1930, and of the Party secretariat from 1934. Murdered by an alleged terrorist in 1934, an event that triggered the first wave of terror.
Name: Vasilii Osipovich Kliuchevskii
Lived: 1841 – 1911
Notes: Prominent historian
Name: Lev Konstantinovich Knipper
Lived: 1898 – 1978
Notes: Composer and conductor who led the Red Army Orchestra.
Name: Konstantin Ivanovich Kobets
Lived: 1932 –
Title: General Notes: Army officer who chaired the Committee for Preparing and Carry Out Military Reform Under the USSR State Council, Sept.-Dec. 1991.
Name: Vsevolod Anisimovich Kochetov
Lived: 1912 – 1973
Notes: Author who epitomized the Socialist Realist school of writing who served as secretary of the Leningrad branch of Writers’ Union, 1953-1955.
Name: Mikhail Efimovich Kol’tsov
Lived: 1898 – 1942
Notes: Journalist and writer, PRAVDA correspodent, author of sharp-witted essays and feuilletons and the SPANISH DIARY (1938), a first-person account of the Spanish Civil War. Victim of the purges
Name: Aleksandr Vasilevich Kolchak
Lived: 1873 – 1920
Notes: At Naval Academy 1888-94. Afterwards served in the Baltic and Pacific Fleets. Taken prisoner during the Russo-Japanese war. Served in the Baltic Fleet during the First World War. Appointed Commander of the Black Sea Fleet in 1916 with the rank of Rear Admiral. Resigned his command in July 1917. Appointed Minister of Defense by Ufa Directorate. Staged military coup in November 1918 and assumed title of Supreme Ruler Detained by Czechs in Irkutsk and handed over to the local Revolutionary Committee which tried him and had him shot.
Name: Aleksandra Mikhailovna Kollontai
Lived: 1872 – 1952
Notes: Soviet political leader and activist for women whose leadership of the Zhenotdel ended because of her continued involvement in the Workers’ Opposition.
Name: Eduard Savelevich Kolmanovskii
Lived: 1923 – 1994
Notes: Composer of musical comedies, choral works and symphonies.
Name: Petr Petrovich Konchalovskii
Lived: 1876 – 1956
Notes: Painter who accepted socialist realism in the 1930s but who still retained his own unique style.
Name: Ivan Stepanovich Konev
Lived: 1897 – 1973
Title: General
Notes: Served as a prominent Soviet military commander during and after World War II.
Name: Aleksandr Evdokimovich Korneichuk
Lived: 1905 – 1972
Notes: Russian-Ukrainian drmatist, director of the Writers’ Union, and President of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR.
Name: Lavr Geogievich Kornilov
Lived: 1870 – 1918
Title: General
Notes: Commander in Chief of the Russian forces under the Provisional Government who led the revolt against Kerensky in August 1917.
Name: Aleksandr Vasil’evich Kosarev
Lived: 1903 – 1939
Notes: Komsomol leader who advanced quickly through Party ranks in the early 30s to become a member of the Central Committee and Orgbiuro by 1934. A willing participant of the purges and Terror, he himself was victim of a false denunciation, and was fired and General Secretary of the Komsomol in 1938, and was executed in 1939.
Name: Aleksei Nikolaevich Kosygin
Lived: 1904 – 1980
Notes: Served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers after the fall of Khrushchev, 1964-1980, tried to implement economic reform in 1956 but met with great opposition.
Name: Petr Ivanovich Kotov
Lived: 1889 – 1953
Notes: Painter of portraits and battle scenes, professor at Moscow Art Institute (1948-1951), originally opposed the Bolshevik takeover.
Name: Leonid Borisovich Krasin
Lived: 1870 – 1926
Notes: A Marxist since the end of the 1880s On SD work since the 1890s. A first class engineer, he worked as such during emigration from 1908 to 1917. After the October Revolution he was engaged on diplomatic work. In August 1918 he became head of a commission providing the Red Army with supplies. In November 1918 he became People’s Commissar of Trade and Industry. Later he was People’s Commissar for Transport. From 1919 he was mainly engaged in diplomatic work. Played important part in arranging Anglo-Soviet trade agreement in 1921.
Name: Ivan Adamovich Kraval
Lived: 1897 – 1938
Notes: Head of the Central Directorate of the National Economic Account Attached to USSR Gosplan, 1935-1937, blamed and put to death when the census of 1937 yielded data unflattering to the Soviet government.
Name: Leonid Makarovich Kravchuk
Lived: 1934 –
Notes: Chair of the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine, July 1990 and president of Ukraine, Dec 1991.
Name: Nikolai Nikolaevich Krestinskii
Lived: 1883 – 1938
Notes: Joined RSDRP in 1903. People’s Commissar for Finance from August 1918 to 1921 as well as being a CC secretary, 1919-21. Lost secretaryship at Tenth Party Congress. From 1921 Soviet diplomatic representative in Berlin. Caught up in the purge trials, and sentenced to death on March 13, 1938, along with Bukharin and Rykov.
Name: Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kriuchkov
Lived: 1924 –
Notes: Trained as a diplomat, Kriuchkov began his career serving in embassies around the world before joining the security organs in 1967. Chairman of the KGB from 1988-1991, Kriuchkov was implicated in the failed putsch of August 1991.
Name: Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaia
Lived: 1869 – 1939
Notes: Lenin’s wife and fellow revolutionary who held educational offices after 1921. Member of the Party Central Committee from 1927.
Name: Nikolai Vasilevich Krylenko
Lived: 1885 – 1940
Notes: Joined the RSDRP in 1904. Together with Antonov-Ovseenko and P. E Dybenko he was made a member of the Collegium for Military and Naval Affairs of the Sovnarkom on 8 November. Made Supreme Commander-in-Chief on 22 November when Dukhonin refused to negotiate
Name: Gleb Maksimilianovich Krzhizhanovskii
Lived: 1872 – 1959
Notes: Became Marxist in 1891. Graduated from St Petersburg as an engineer 1894. Early Bolshevik. In 1895 arrested and exiled to Siberia. Emigrated to Munich in 1901, collaborated on Iskra. Elected to Central Committee of SD Party at 2nd Congress, 1903. An organizer of the railway strike in the 1905 revolution. Member of Moscow Soviet during 1917. Originated the plan for the electrification of Russia. Founded and ran Gosplan (State Planning Commission) from 1921 to 1930. Vice-president, Academy of Sciences.
Name: Richard von Kuhlmann
Lived: 1873 – 1948
Notes: Minister of Foreign Affairs, Germany, from August 1917, led the delegation that negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Soviet Russia.
Name: Valerian Vladimirovich Kuibyshev
Lived: 1888 – 1935
Notes: Prominent economic planning official.
Name: Kukryniksy
Lived: –
Notes: Composite names for the most succesful Soviet caricaturists who worked for Pravda and Krokodil: Mikhail Kuprivanov (1903), Proforoi Krylov (1902) and Nikolai Sokolov (1903). Pictured here with satirist Boris Efimov
Name: Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov
Lived: 1899 – 1970
Notes: Innovative film director (Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, 1924; By the Law, 1926), teacher and theorist of film, inventor of basic techniques of film montage.
Name: Bela Kun
Lived: 1886 – 1937
Notes: Hungarian Communist leader who led the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. Embraced Communism as a prisoner-of-war in Russia, sent back to Hungary as propagandist after the October Revolution. After the Hungarian Revolution was deposed, he eventually was allowed to return to Moscow, where he lived in exile, participating in the Komintern, until he died in the purges.
Name: Dinamukhammed Akhmedovich Kunaev
Lived: 1912 – 1993
Notes: First Secretary of the Kazakh Party, 1964-1986, whose replacement with an ethnic Russian in 1987 precipitated rioting in Alma-Atta.
Name: Igor Vasil’evich Kurchatov
Lived: 1903 – 1960
Notes: Physicist and director of the Soviet nuclear weapons program from 1943
Name: Dmitrii Ivanovich Kurskii
Lived: 1874 – 1932
Notes: People’s Commissar of Justice, 1918-1928, from 1928 Soviet ambassador (polpred) in Italy.
Name: Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov
Lived: 1745 – 1813
Title: Count
Notes: Russian Field Marshal, pupil of Suvorov, victor over Napoleon in the French invasion of Russia, 1812. Participant in the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-12, and commander in the Austrian War of 1805.
Name: Eduard Kuznetsov
Lived: 1939 –
Notes: Jewish Soviet dissident and human rights activist. Sentenced in 1962 to seven years in the labor camps for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. In 1970 he was one of the chief participants in the celebrated attempted hijacking in Leningrad, for which he was first sentenced to death and then to fifteen years in special-regime labor camps. His Prison Diaries (1975) is one of the most powerful books to describe the experience of dissidents.
Name: Vasilii Vasil’evich Kuznetsov
Lived: 1901 – 1990
Notes: First Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, 1977-1986, relieved of his duties upon the rise of Gorbachev to power.
Name: Pavel Aleksandrovich Lamm
Lived: 1882 – 1951
Notes: Musicologist, famed for his work on the academic texts of the operas of Mussorgsky with Asafiev) and Borodin. Lamm wrote the orchestrations for many important works of Prokofiev, including The Betrothal in the Convent and War and Peace, as well as the music for the films Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible.
Name: Vytautas Landsbergis
Lived: 1932 –
Notes: Professor of Musicology who helped organize the Sajudis national movement, and served as first President of independent Lithuania
Name: Iurii Larin
Lived: 1882 – 1932
Notes: Economic theorist, chief of the Bureau of Legislation of the Sovnarkom, proponent of the unification of the single state economy.
Name: Anna Mikhailovna Larina
Lived: 1914 – 1996
Notes: Wife of Nikolai Bukharin, adopted daughter of Iurii Larin, who wrote memoirs of her life with Bukharin on the eve of the purges.
Name: Martin Ivanovich Latsis
Lived: 1888 – 1938
Alias: Born Jan Sudrabs
Notes: Prominent member of the Cheka, 1918-21, in charge of the secret section of that institution. Director of the Plekhanov Institute of Economics from 1932, victim of the purges.
Name: Mikhail Alekseevich Lavrentiev
Lived: 1900 – 1980
Title: Academician
Notes: Prominent physicist and mathematician, founder of Akademgorodok, Siberian haven for Soviet scientists.
Name: Vasilii Ivanovich Lebedev-Kumach
Lived: 1898 – 1949
Notes: Poet who was involved in Communist propaganda efforts during the Civil War and thereafter wrote highly-popular songs for films.
Name: Vladimir Il’ich Lenin
Lived: 1870 – 1924
Notes: See Ul’ianov. Bolshevik leader before October Revolution; architect of Soviet Communism. Leader of Bolsheviks from II Congress in 1903, and dominant influence in the party until his death. After October Revolution appointed Chairman of Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom.)
Name: Leonid Nikolaevich Lentsman
Lived: 1915 – 1996
Notes: Russian Estonian who served as Second Secretary of the Estonian Communist Party from 1953-1964, and as Secretary from 1964-1971. Lentsman was the party’s ideological watchdog in Estonia.
Name: Leonid Maksimovich Leonov
Lived: 1899 – 1994
Notes: Author whose novels (THIEF, 1927) were praised by Gorky and Lunacharskii.
Name: Nikolai Semionovich Leskov
Lived: 1831 – 1895
Notes: Russian realist writer whose deeply Russian narrative language (e.g. The Left-Handed Blacksmith) established the model for “skaz” writers thereafter
Name: Boris Nikolaevich Liatoshinskii
Lived: 1895 – 1968
Notes: Ukrainian composer who received the Stalin Prize in 1952 for his various operas (SHCHORS, 1938) and symphonies.
Name: Iurii Nikolaevich Libedinskii
Lived: 1898 – 1959
Notes: Activist in the literary groups October and RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, 1925-1932)
Name: Evsei Grigor’evich Liberman
Lived: 1897 – 1983
Notes: Economist whose 1962 essay in PRAVDA laid the groundwork for the econmic reform of 1965.
Name: Vladimir Germanovich Lidin
Lived: 1894 – 1979
Notes: Novelist who taught at Gorky Institute for twenty-five years.
Name: Egor Kuzmich Ligachev
Lived: 1920 –
Notes: Informal leader of conservatives in the Politburo during the Gorbachev administration.
Name: Pavel Gerasimovich Lisitsyn
Lived: 1911 –
Notes: Baritone singer who was named People’s Artist of the USSR in 1956
Name: Lazar Mark Lissitzsky
Lived: 1890 – 1941
Alias: El Lissitsky
Notes: Artist, designer, and photographer, teacher, typographer, and architect. Better known as El Lissitzky, he helped develop suprematism with his friend Kazimir Malevich, and designed numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the former Soviet Union. His experimentation anticipated many of the devices that would characterize avant-garde graphic art.
Name: Maksim Maksimovich Litvinov
Lived: 1876 – 1951
Notes: People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs, 1930-39; spokesman for collective security
Name: David Lloyd-George
Lived: 1863 – 1945
Notes: British Minister of War and then Prime Minister, 1916-1922, pursued interventionist policies against the young Soviet state.
Name: Mikhail Vasilievich Lomonosov
Lived: 1711 – 1765
Notes: Russian scientist, writer and polymath who made important contributions to literature, education, and science. His poetry and tractates on poetic language were the foundation of modern Russian verse.
Name: Iurii Mikhailovich Lotman
Lived: 1922 – 1994
Notes: Semiotician, founder of Tartu school
Name: Solomon Abramovich Lozovskii
Lived: 1878 – 1952
Notes: Head of Trade Union International (1921-1937) and People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs during WW II
Name: Anatolii Ivanovich Lukianov
Lived: 1930 –
Notes: Elevated to the Secretariat of the Central Committee, 1987. 1990-91, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, candidate member of the Politbiuro until participant in the aborted coup of August 1991.
Name: Patrice Emergy Lumumba
Lived: 1925 – 1960
Notes: First prime minister of independent Republic of Congo, assassinated.
Name: Anatolii Vasilievich Lunacharskii
Lived: 1875 – 1933
Notes: Old Bolshevik, widely read essayist and critic, first Soviet Commissar for Enlightenment (or Education)
Name: Arkadii L’vovich L’vov
Lived: 1927 –
Notes: Author who in 1970 was accused of corresponding with International Zionism. Emigrated in 1976.
Name: Georgii Evgen’evich L’vov
Lived: 1861 – 1925
Title: Prince
Notes: Large landowner, deputy of the First State Duma, chairman of the All-Russian Land Union. First Prime Minister of the Provisional Government (March – June 1917). Emigrated to Paris after the October Revolution
Name: Vladimir Nikolaevich L’vov
Lived: 1872 – 1934
Title: Prince
Notes: Member of the Provisional Government from February, 1917. Served as Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod.
Name: Trofim Denisovich Lysenko
Lived: 1898 – 1976
Title: Academician
Notes: Academician and agro-biologist who rejected the chromosome theory of heredity purported by modern genetics, and ruled Soviet biology under Stalin and then Khrushchev.
Name: Vladimir Vladimirovich Maiakovskii
Lived: 1893 – 1930
Notes: Referred to as the “poet of the Russian Revolution”, a Futurist who dedicated his talent to the Bolshevik cause. His pithy agitational verses were featured on posters and newsreels during the Civil War. Ever an advocate of the new Soviet path, Maiakovskii eventually became disillusioned, and committed suicide in 1930.
Name: Anton Semenovich Makarenko
Lived: 1888 – 1939
Notes: Educator who organized rehabilitation colonies for juvenile delinquents.
Name: Nestor Ivanovich Makhno
Lived: 1888 – 1934
Notes: Anarchist commander of the peasant Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine (the Greens) during the Civil War, who fought with and against the Bolsheviks, and was forced into exile in 1921.
Name: Georgii Maksimilianovich Malenkov
Lived: 1902 – 1988
Notes: Close associate of Stalin who after Stalin’s death became Soviet Party leader and subsequently Premier until 1957
Name: Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii
Lived: 1873 – 1928
Alias: Bogdanov
Notes: Philosopher, sociologist, economist and surgeon. Joined the Social Democratic party in 1890s, became a Bolshevik at the Party split in 1903. Became leader of the left-wing Bolshevik ‘Forward’ group. Served in the First World War as an army doctor.
Name: Nelson Mandela
Lived: 1918 –
Notes: South African president (1994-1999) and alack political leader imprisoned for nearly 30 years for his anti-apartheid activities
Name: Osip Emil’evich Mandelshtam
Lived: 1891 – 1938
Notes: Acmeist poet and close associate of Anna Akhmatova, author of TRISTIA and other collections of verse, who was emprisoned twice in the 1930s and eventually died in transit camp.
Name: Edouard Manet
Lived: 1832 – 1883
Notes: French painter, forerunner of impressionism whose works, including Dejeuner sur l’herbe (1862), sparked great controversy in their time.
Name: Aleksandr Apollonovich Manuilov
Lived: 1861 – 1929
Notes: Economist, liberal populist, later member of the Cadets. Rector of Moscow State University in 1908-11, who resigned in protest against repression of students. Minister of Education under the Provisional Government
Name: Dmitrii Zakharovich Manuilskii
Lived: 1883 – 1959
Notes: Ukrainian political leader, commissar of the Petrograd MRC in 1917, chairman of the 1928-42, deputy chair of the Sovnarkom 1944-53, simaltaneously Ukrainian Foreign Minister. Central Committee member, 1923-52.
Name: Jean Paul Marat
Lived: 1743 – 1793
Notes: French revolutionary who founded L’Ami du peuple (1789) in support of the Revolution. He was elected to the National Convention in 1792 but was assassinated.
Name: Nikolai Grigor’evich Markin
Lived: 1893 – 1918
Notes: Sailor of the Baltic Fleet during the Revolution, member of the Central Executive Committee of the Second Congress of Soviets, and secretary who helped organize the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. Died in battle.
Name: Mark Markov-Grinberg
Lived: 1907 – 2006
Notes: Photojournalist who started as a stringer for Ogonek in southern Russia in 1926, and then moved to Moscow to work for SMENA. Joined the TASS photo pool in 1930, for which he travelled the country and chronicled the changes of the industrial revolution, collectivization, and photographed leading Soviet personalities.
Name: George Catlett Marshall
Lived: 1880 – 1959
Title: General
Notes: American general and cabinet member, who in the years after the Second World War initiated the Marshall Plan, or European Recovery Program (1947) to foster economic recovery in western European countries.
Name: Iulii Osipovich Martov
Lived: 1873 – 1923
Notes: See Tsederbaum. Russian revolutionary, Menshevik leader exiled in 1921. Editorial board of ISKRA from 1900, Menshevik from 1903. Participated in Pre-Parliment of mid-1917, but saw October Revolution as a catastrophe. Strong critic of dictatorial tendencies of Bolsheviks. Emigrated 1920.
Name: Jan Garrigue Masaryk
Lived: 1886 – 1948
Notes: Czechoslovak minister to Great Britain (1925-38), foreign minister for the Czechoslovak government in exile during the war, and foreign minister after the war. During the Communist infiltration of the state in 1948, killed in a fall from his office window; reported as suicide.
Name: Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev
Lived: 1925 –
Notes: Soviet historianand dissident expelled from the Communist Party under Brezhnev. Deputy of the Supreme Soviet 1989-91.
Name: Anton Menger
Lived: 1841 – 1906
Notes: Author of Neue Staatslehre (Jena, 1903).
Name: Viacheslav Rudol’fovich Menzhinskii
Lived: 1874 – 1934
Notes: Participant of revolutions of 1905 and 1917, member of the Military-Revolutionay Committee. From 1918 People’s Commissar of Finance. Joined the Cheka Presidium in 1919, and led the OGPU, 1926-1934.
Name: Vsevolod Nikolaevich Merkulov
Lived: 1895 – 1946
Notes: Merkulov worked his way up through the security organs during the purges of the late 1930s, and became deputy commissar and commissar of state security during the Great Patriotic War.
Name: Sergei Dmitrievich Merkurev Lived: 1881 – 1952 Notes: Realist sculptor whose most famous work is that of Dostoevsky in Moscow.
Name: Vsevolod Emil’evich Meyerhold
Lived: 1874 – 1934
Notes: Actor and avant-garde direct prominent in twentieth century Russian and world theater. Declared an “October in the Theater” in 1918, demanding changes in the theater analogous to the revolution in politics. Most fruitful collaborations with Mayakovsky (Mystery-Bouffe (1918), BEDBUG and BATH HOUSE.
Name: Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin
Lived: 1855 – 1935
Notes: Practical agronomist who received much praise from Lenin for his work and who was hailed in the press during collectivization for his achievements. Claimed as a direct antecedent by Lysenko and other Stalin-era biologists, who rejected “bourgeois” genetics on the basis of Michurin’s work in selective breeding.
Name: Anastas Ivanovich Mikoian
Lived: 1895 – 1978
Notes: Member of the Politburo, 1935-1966, close colleague of Stalin during the 1930s, filled various posts on the People’s Commissar level in trade and food supply; foreign policy counselor to Khrushchev.
Name: Stanislaw Mikolajczyk
Lived: 1901 – 1966
Notes: Polish Peasant Party leader, in Polish post-war government, 1945-1947.
Name: Pavel Nikolaevich Miliukov
Lived: 1859 – 1943
Notes: Leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party and historian who emigrated in 1920. Served the Provisional Government as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Name: Wilhelm von Mirbach
Lived: 1871 – 1918
Title: Count
Notes: German ambassador to Soviet Russia from April 1918, assassinated by SRs as a signal to begin their rebellion against the Bolsheviks.
Name: Viacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov
Lived: 1890 – 1986
Notes: Stalin’s right-hand man; chairman of the Sovnarkom from 1930-41; People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs from 1939-49, 1953-56. From 1957, demoted to Ambassador to Mongolia in connection with the “Anti-Party” affair.
Name: Pavlik (Pavel Trofimovich) Morozov
Lived: 1918 – 1932
Notes: Russian farm boy who denounced his father for collaborating with kulaks and was himself murdered by villagers.
Name: Vera Ignat’evna Mukhina
Lived: 1889 – 1953
Notes: Soviet sculptor most famous for her statue of the Worker and Collective Farm Girl, 1937.
Name: Vasilii Pavlovich Mzhavanadze
Lived: 1902 – 1988
Notes: Georgian professional soldier from 1924 who served during the Second World War as on the command staff of several armies; and as Deputy Commander for Political Affairs of Kiev and Carpathian Districts from 1946 to 1953. First Secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia, 1953-1972. After moving into civilian life, joined the Politbiuro as candidate member, 1957-72. Dismissed after a corruption scandal, and replaced by Eduard Shevardnadze.
Name: Imre Nagy
Lived: 1896 – 1958
Notes: Hungarian Communist leader. Nagy was a symbol of the 1956 Hungarian revolt after he was deposed in a Soviet-led invasion.
Name: Mohammad Najibullah
Lived: 1947 – 1996
Notes: See Ahmadzai, Najib. Najibullahi was General Secretary of the Afghan Communist Party, replacing Babrak Karmal when he could not muster support among the military or populace. Fourth and last president of the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
Name: Dmitrii Arkad’evich Nalbandyan
Lived: 1906 – 1993
Notes: Armenian painter, Kremlin “court painter” for Stalin and Brezhnev alike. People’s Artist of the Soviet Union (1969), Lenin Prize winner (1982), most famous for his historical-revolutionary canvases (“All Power to the Soviets, Peace to the World,” 1950). Self-portrait from 1932.
Name: Eduard Frantsevich Napravnik
Lived: 1839 – 1916
Notes: Composer and director of Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, first director of many of Chaikovskii’s Russian operas.
Name: Gamal Abdal Nasser
Lived: 1918 – 1970
Notes: Egyptian army officer and political leader, first president of the republic of Egypt.
Name: Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev
Lived: 1847 – 1882
Notes: Russian anarchist and revolutionary.
Name: Ernst Iosifovich Neizvestnyi
Lived: 1926 –
Notes: Sculptor, painter, writer who was expelled from Artists’ Union in 1954 for his rejection of Socialist Realism. He later designed the gravestone for Nikita Khrushchev, and eventually emigrated to the West.
Name: Viktor Platonovich Nekrasov
Lived: 1911 – 1987
Notes: Soviet writer, author of vivid war stories (In the Trenches of Stalingrad, 1946) who left the Soviet Union in 1974.
Name: Aleksandr Nikolaevich Nesmeianov
Lived: 1899 – 1980
Title: Academician
Notes: Organic chemist, president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1951-61).
Name: Leonid Vasilievich Nikolaev
Lived: 1904 – 1934
Notes: Murderer of Sergei Kirov in 1934, executed one month after the event. His wife and many family members were also persecuted during the Kirov investigation.
Name: Rafik Nishanovich Nishanov
Lived: 1926 –
Notes: Secretary for Ideology of the Communist Party, 1963-1970; Chairman of Presidium of Supreme Soviet, 1986-1988, First Secretary of the Uzbek Communist Party, 1988-1989, chairman of the Council of Nationalities, 1989-91.
Name: Umberto Nobile
Lived: 1885 – 1978
Notes: Italian aeronautical engineer and Arctic explorer. His dirigible “Italia” crashed in 1928 on his second expedition to the Pole; part of his crew perished, and the remainder were rescued by an international mission.
Name: Georgii Stepanovich Nosar-Khrustalev
Lived: 1879 – 1919
Notes: (Sometimes referred to as ‘Khrustalev-Nosar’.) First chairman of the St Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies during the 1905 revolution. Became a Menshevik in 1907. Gave up politics, became a journalist in the right-wing Press. Headed the ephemeral ‘Khrustalev Republic’ in the Ukraine during the Civil War. Shot by the Bolsheviks.
Name: V. Obolenskii-Osinskii
Lived: 1887 – 1938
Alias: Also Osinskii.
Notes: See Obolenskii, Valerian Valerianovich
Name: David Fedorovich Oistrakh
Lived: 1908 – 1974
Notes: Soviet violinist
Name: Iurii Karlovich Olesha
Lived: 1899 – 1960
Notes: Prose writer whose most famous short novel Envy (1927) was the subject of much controversy because of its ambiguous meaning.
Name: Leon Abgarovich Orbeli
Lived: 1882 – 1958
Title: Academician
Notes: Russian-Armenian physiologist, one of the creators of evolutionary physiology. Secretary of the Academy of Sciences Division of Biological Sciences who fell in the struggle with Lysenko.
Name: Sergo (Grigorii Konstantinovich) Ordzhonikidze
Lived: 1886 – 1937
Notes: Joined the RSDRP in 1903, took part in the October Revolution. In January 1918 made plenipotentiary for the Ukraine. In April sent to the Caucasus as an extraordinary Commissar with the Southern Front. After the reverse there he worked on other fronts. From 1921 a member of the Party Central Committee, posted to the Caucasus. From 1930 chairman of the VSNKh, from 1932 People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry. Committed suicide during period of mass repressions.
Name: Liubov Petrovna Orlova
Lived: 1902 – 1972
Notes: Popular film actress known especially The Circus (1936) and Volga-Volga (1938).
Name: Josô Ortega y Gasset
Lived: 1883 – 1955
Notes: Spanish philosopher, best known for the idea that life is both fate and freedom, and that freedom “is being free inside of a given fate.”
Name: Lev Ivanovich Oshanin
Lived: 1912 – 1996
Notes: Author of popular song lyrics, lyrical and patriotic.
Name: Osinskii
Lived: 1887 – 1938
Alias: Also Obolenskii-Osinskii
Notes: See Obolenskii, Valerian Valerianovich
Name: Vladimir Nikolaevich Osipov
Lived: 1938 –
Notes: Russian nationalist and samizdat writer and editor.
Name: Nikolai Alekseevich Ostrovskii
Lived: 1904 – 1936
Notes: Writer most famous for his semi-autobiographical novel HOW THE STEEL WAS FORGED (1934). Participant of the Civil War.
Name: Ovseenko
Notes: See Antonov-Ovseenko.
Name: Ivan Dmitrievich Papanin
Lived: 1894 – 1986
Notes: Polar explorer, geographer and admiral. Commander of the first floating ice station. Twice Hero of the Soviet Union.
Name: Enver Pasha
Lived: 1881 – 1922
Notes: Former Young Turk officer and minister of war who led Basmachi revolt in Soviet Turkestan, killed in a clash with Red Army troops.
Name: Evgenii Bronislavovich Pashukanis
Lived: 1891 – 1937
Notes: Marxist-Leninist legal philosopher of international renown. From 1936 until his death in the purges, Deputy Commissar of Justice.
Name: Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
Lived: 1890 – 1960
Notes: Poet and novelist who was a 1958 Nobel laureate for DOCTOR ZHIVAGO.
Name: Konstantin Georgevich Paustovskii
Lived: 1892 – 1968
Notes: Prose writer who played an integral role in rehabilitating and publishing purged writers.
Name: Georgii Vasilievich Perov
Lived: 1905 – 1979
Notes: Soviet economic planning official.
Name: Maksim Peshkov
Lived: 1868 – 1936
Alias: Maksim Gorkii (“the Bitter”)
Notes: See Gorkii, Maksim. Writer, author of celebrated novels, essays and poems, progressive and sometimes associate of the Bolsheviks who spent much of their time in power in voluntary exile
Name: Stanislav Pestkovskii
Lived: 1882 – 1937
Notes: Born Stanislaw Pestkowski in Poland. Telegraph Commissar during the days of revolution, later Commissar for Commissar for the State Bank in November 1917. Later Stalin’s deputy in the Commissariat of Nationalities; died in the purges.
Name: Iakov Khristoforovich Peters
Lived: 1886 – 1938
Notes: Born the son of a day laborer in provincial Russia, Peters joined the Bolsheviks in 1904. He became a member of the board of the dreaded Cheka in December 1917, chairman of the Revolutionary Tribunal in 1918, and was head of the Cheka for a period in 1918. After the Civil War, GPU Eastern Director. Peters died in the purges of 1938.
Name: Simon Vasilevich Petliura
Lived: 1879 – 1926
Notes: A right-wing S.D. and active as such before the revolution. In June 1917 he became Secretary General for Military Affairs in the Rada Government and was at that time a member of the Directorate. He acquired notoriety for the pogroms carried out by his troops. In the summer of 1919 he captured Kiev. When he failed to come to an understanding with Denikin he allied himself with Poland and took part in the Polish-Soviet war of 1920.
Name: Lev Iosifovich Petrazhitskii
Lived: 1867 – 1931
Title: Professor
Notes: Legal scholar, author THEORY OF LAW AND STATE IN CONNECTION WITH THE THEORY OF MORALITY. Emigrated to Poland in 1918.
Name: Vladimir Mikhailovich Petrov
Lived: 1896 – 1966
Notes: Film director who most prominent films include KUTUZOV (1944) and BATTLE OF STALINGRAD (1947)
Name: Georgii Leonidovich Piatakov
Lived: 1890 – 1937
Notes: Left Oppositionist who became Deputy Commissar of Heavy Industry until arrest in 1937.
Name: Boris Andreevich Pilniak
Lived: 1894 – 1937
Notes: Modernist novelist, author of NAKED YEAR (1921), MAHOGANY (1929), THE VOLGA FALLS INTO THE CASPIAN SEA (1930). Accused of distorting revolutionary events, and died in the purges.
Name: Pimen
Lived: –
Notes: A well-known character in Russian literature, Pimen (a monk) appears in Pushkin’s BORIS GODUNOV.
Name: Andrei Andreevich Piontkovskii
Lived: 1898 – 1973
Notes: Jurist, expert in the theory and philosophy of law, and criminal law.
Name: Andrei Platonovich Platonov
Lived: 1899 – 1951
Notes: Writer best known for his novels FOUNDATION PIT, and CHEVENGUR.
Name: Georgii Valentinovich Plekhanov
Lived: 1857 – 1918
Notes: Marxist philosopher and historian, Menshevik leader who opposed Bolsheviks’ 1917 coup.
Name: Viacheslav Konstantinovich Pleve
Lived: 1846 – 1904
Notes: Minister of the Interior from 1902, persecutor of revolutionary and working class movements, assassinated by the SRs.
Name: Nikolai Viktorovich Podgornyi
Lived: 1903 – 1983
Notes: Soviet head of state from 1965-1977, part of the triumvirate that deposed Khrushchev and brought Brezhnev to power.
Name: Nikolai Il’ich Podvoiskii
Lived: 1880 – 1948
Notes: Joined the RSDRP in 1901. Served in the Petrograd Military Organisation in 1917. During the October Revolution he was Chair man of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee. He was the first People’s Commissar for Military Affairs, replaced by Trotsky in March 1918. People’s Commissar for Military Affairs of the Ukraine, 1919.
Name: Nikolai Fedorovich Pogodin
Lived: 1900 – 1962
Notes: Soviet playwright whose plays dealt with with Lenin and the White Sea Canal.
Name: Mikhail Nikolaevich Pokrovskii
Lived: 1868 – 1932
Notes: Founder of Soviet Marxist historical scholarship.
Name: Boris Nikolaevich Polevoi
Lived: 1908 – 1981
Notes: Writer best known for socialist realist classic STORY OF A REAL MAN (1946)
Name: Gavriil Kharitonovich Popov
Lived: 1936 –
Title: Professor
Notes: Profesor of economics. Radical economic and political reformer who under Brezhnev established management studies at Moscow University. First mayor of Moscow in post-Soviet times.
Name: Aleksandr Nikolaevich Poskrebyshev
Lived: 1891 – 1965
Notes: Stalin’s right-hand man and head of his secretariat from 1928-1953. His relationship with Stalin continued despite the arrest and execution of his second wife in 1939.
Name: Petr Nikolaevich Pospelov
Lived: 1898 – 1979
Notes: Russian historian and ideologist who was a staunch defender of Khrushchev.
Name: Aleksandr Nikolaevich Potresov
Lived: 1869 – 1934
Notes: Early Russian socialist, collaborated with Lenin in early days of Party journal The Spark (Iskra). Became right wing Menshevik after 1905 revolution, but broke with Mensheviks after 1917 as being insufficiently vigorous in their opposition to Bolsheviks.
Name: Evgenii Aleksandrovich Preobrazhenskii
Lived: 1886 – 1937
Notes: Member of Trotskyite opposition who spoke out against erosion of internal democracy.
Name: Evgenii Maksimovich Primakov
Lived: 1929 –
Notes: Full member of the Central Committee who spent most of his career Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies. Chairman of the Union Council, 1989-1990, and from November 1991 of Russian intelligence services. Became Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1996.
Name: Prishibeev
Lived: –
Title: Sergeant
Notes: A character in a Chekhov story of the same name (1885).
Name: Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev
Lived: 1891 – 1953
Notes: Innovative modernist composer. Lived abroad from 1918-1933. Composer of seven symphonies, opera LOVE FOR THREE ORANGES (1919), ballet ROMEO AND JULIET (1936), music for the film ALEKSANDR NEVSKY (1938). Despite being named People’s Artist of RSFSR in 1947, Prokofiev was severely constrained by Soviet cultural policies.
Name: Sergei Nikolaevich Prokopovich
Lived: 1871 – 1955
Notes: Minister of Supplies under the Provisional Government. Exiled in 1922.
Name: Kazimiera Daunte Prunskiene
Lived: 1943 –
Notes: Lithuanian economist elected Premier-Minister of the Lithuanian Republic in March 1990.
Name: Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin
Lived: 1893 – 1953
Notes: One of the most prominent Soviet film directors, director of MOTHER (1926), END OF ST. PETERSBURG (1927)
Name: Alla Borisovna Pugacheva
Lived: 1949 –
Notes: Pop diva, best-selling most singer in Russia from the mid-1970s the present. Her outrageous behavior and contempt for political orthodoxy during the Soviet era did not impede her success.
Name: Boris Karlovich Pugo
Lived: 1937 – 1991
Notes: Latvian who served as the First Secretary of the Latvian Communist Party, 1984-1989. Rose through the ranks in the KGB, candidate member of the Politbiuro, 1989-90, and Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs, 1990-91, from which position he participated in coup of August 1991. Committed suicide upon its failure.
Name: Ivan Aleksandrovich Pyriev
Lived: 1901 – 1968
Notes: Initially a Proletkult actor turned film director, director of successful if orthodox musicals TRACTOR DRIVERS (1939), SWINEHERD AND THE SHEPHERD (1941), COSSACKS OF THE KUBAN (1948).
Name: Grigorii Evseevich Radomyslskii
Lived: 1883 – 1936
Alias: Zinoviev
Notes: Bolshevik from 1903. Returned to Russia with Lenin. Opposed him on April Theses at first; also opposed to taking power in October. Appointed Chairman of the Northern Commune when government moved to Moscow. Chairman of the Comintern from its foundation until 1926. Joined Stalin and Kamenev in struggle with Trotsky in 1926, but soon fell out of Stalin’s favor. Arrested in 1934, executed in 1936.
Name: Arkadii Isaakovich Raikin
Lived: 1911 – 1987
Notes: Satirical comedian who effectively criticized Soviet leaders prior to glasnost.
Name: Iulii Iakovlevich Raizman
Lived: 1903 – 1994
Notes: Successful film director known for honest depiction of Soviet experience, including YOUR CONTEMPORARY (1968), PRIVATE LIFE (1982).
Name: Khristian Georgevich Rakovskii
Lived: 1873 – 1941
Notes: Served in the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs after the October Revolution. Headed commission on Russo-Rumanian affairs, 1918. Leader of Soviet peace delegation in Kiev, May-September 1918. Head of Ukrainian Soviet government in 1919. Served abroad 1923-27. Victim of purges.
Name: Ippolit Pavlovich Rapgof
Lived: 1860 – 1918
Alias: Count Amori Notes: Music teacher and critic who found fame as a writer of salacious popular tales. Scandalized the literary world by publishing second parts to Aleksandr Kuprin’s THE PIT and Anastasiia Verbitskaia’s KEYS TO HAPPINESS before their authors could complete continuations. Rumored to have been shot when the Bolsheviks overcame an anarchist government he had established in Rostov-on-the-Don.
Name: Sharaf Rashidovich Rashidov
Lived: 1917 – 1983
Notes: Uzbek political leader very close with Brezhnev during the 1970s.
Name: Fedor Fedorovich Raskolnikov
Lived: 1892 – 1939
Notes: Commander of the Red Navy on the Baltic and Caspian Seas during the Civil War. Served as a diplomat after the war, and in 1939 refused to return to the Soviet Union, when he published his “Open Letter to Stalin.” He died soon after under suspicious circumstances, and was rehabilitated after Stalin’s death.
Name: Valentin Grigor’evich Rasputin
Lived: 1937 –
Notes: Conservative prose writer and staunch advocate of environmentalist causes in such novels as LIVE AND REMEMBER (1974), FAREWELL TO MATYORA (1976).
Name: Larisa Mikhailovna Reisner
Lived: 1895 – 1926
Notes: Civil War participant and journalist, best known for her reports from the war front, and later Afghanistan and Germany.
Name: Mikhail Denisovich Rezunov
Lived: 1905 – 1937
Notes: Member of the Institute of Soviet Construction and Law, professor at Leningrad State University, shot during the purges of 1937.
Name: Eldar Riazanov
Lived: 1927 –
Notes: Much-beloved director whose many hit movies, beginning with CARNIVAL NIGHT (1956), and including THE IRONY OF FATE (1975) and GARAGE (1979) revealed the contradictions of Soviet life with a gentle irony.
Name: Aleksandr Mikhailovich Rodchenko
Lived: 1891 – 1956
Notes: Avant-garde painter and designer who devoted most of his later work to photography.
Name: Semen Abramovich Rodov
Lived: 1893 – 1968
Notes: A proletarian poet literary theoretician and critic who became a member of the Party in 1918.
Name: Mikhail Vladimirovich Rodzianko
Lived: 1859 – 1924
Notes: Octobrist Duma deputy and President of the Fourth Duma
Name: Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovskii
Lived: 1896 – 1968
Notes: Soviet military commander during the Second World War, Defense Minister of Poland in post-war years.
Name: Lev Borisovich Rozenfeld
Lived: 1883 – 1936
Alias: Kamenev
Notes: See Kamenev. Joined the Social Democratic party in 1901; a Bolshevik in 1903. Close associate of Lenin. Arrested and exiled to Siberia in November 1914. Released February 1917. Chairman, Central Executive Committee of Soviets. Supported Trotsky in the anti-Stalin opposition. 1926-27 Soviet Ambassador to Italy. Condemned and executed in the first major ‘purge’ trial, 1936.
Name: Ian Evnestovich Rudzutak
Lived: 1887 – 1938
Notes: Full member of the Politburo, 1926-1927 arrested in 1937.
Name: Aleksandr Vladimirovich Rutskoi
Lived: 1945 –
Notes: Air Force general, fought in the Afghan War, later Vice President of the Russian Federation under Eltsin and leader of the Duma rebellion against Yeltsin in 1993.
Name: Anatolii Naumovich Rybakov
Lived: 1911 – 1998
Notes: Novelist, successful writer in the final years of Stalin, most famous for the cycle of novels dealing with Moscow life in the 1930s, which began with CHILDREN OF ARBAT (1987)
Name: Aleksei Ivanovich Rykov
Lived: 1881 – 1938
Notes: Elected to the Bolshevik Central Committee at the III Party Congress. After October Revolution appointed first People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs but left that pos. Chairman of VSNKh in February 1918. Replaced Lenin as Chairman of Sovnarkom in 1921 and after Lenin’s death appointed to succeed him permanently in this post. Died in the purges.
Name: Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov
Lived: 1929 –
Notes: Chairman of Council of Minister of USSR since 1985-91, Politbiuro member 1985-90. Dissolution of the Soviet Union and Communist Party left him out of politics, but he returned as a deputy in the Russian Duma in 1995.
Name: Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov
Lived: 1921 – 1989
Notes: Nuclear physicist who became a major dissident during the Brezhnev era.
Name: Sarkis Artem’evich Sarkisov
Lived: 1898 – 1938
Notes: Party member from 1917, once a member of the party opposition but later Ukrainian Central Committee member 1933-37, arrested in 1937 and shot.
Name: Ivan Vasilievich Sautin
Lived: 1903 – 1975
Notes: Chief, Central Administration of Economic Accounting, Gosplan USSR, in 1938-1940.
Name: Philipp Scheidemann
Lived: 1865 – 1939
Notes: German Chanceller who denounced the Versailles Treaty in the Reichstag, 1919.
Name: Grigorii Iakovlevich Sedov
Lived: 1877 – 1914
Notes: Russian hydrographer and polar explore. Organized a 1912 expedition to the North Pole by dog sled, during which he perished.
Name: Nikolai Aleksandrovich Semashko
Lived: 1874 – 1949
Notes: Doctor, founder of the Commissariat of Health from 1918-30, party member since 1893.
Name: Vladimir Efimovich Semichastnyi
Lived: 1924 – 2001
Notes: Chairman of the KGB from 1961-1967, during which Soviet security organs began the systematic repression of social dissidents.
Name: Aleksandr Serafimovich Serafimovich
Lived: 1863 – 1949
Notes: Writer best known for his civil war novel IRON FLOOD (1924).
Name: Ivan Dmitrevich Serbin
Lived: 1910 – 1981
Notes: Led the Defense Industry Department of the Central Committee from 1958-1981.
Name: Leonid Petrovich Serebriakov
Lived: 1890 – 1937
Notes: A worker. After the October Revolution was a member of the Presidium of the Moscow Soviet and later of the Presidium of the TsIK. In military work in 1919-20. Appointed deputy Commissar for Transport in 1922. Victim of the purges
Name: Vladimir Aleksandrovich Serov
Lived: 1910 – 1968
Notes: Major representative of socialist realism and one of Stalin’s favored painters. President of the Soviet Academy of Arts from 1962.
Name: Marietta Sergeevna Shaginian
Lived: 1888 – 1982
Notes: Author of the socialist adventure novel MESS-MEND (1922), and then more politically orthodox novels such as HYDROCENTRAL (1930-31). Later wrote two novels about Lenin’s life for which she was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1972.
Name: Fedor Ivanovich Shaliapin
Lived: 1873 – 1938
Notes: Russian operatic bass. Powerful and supple voice, a tremendous physique, and superb acting ability made him one of the greatest performers in the history of opera. Left Russia in 1922.
Name: Stanislav Sergeevich Shatalin
Lived: 1934 – 1997
Notes: Radical economist who emphasized the country’s need to introduce market relations, and was a principle author of the 500 Days Plan of 1990, a last gasp effort at economic reform before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Name: Mikhail Filippovich Shatrov
Lived: 1932 –
Notes: Playwright best known for his eight plays about Lenin that often managed to include a note of unorthodoxy.
Name: Olga Grigorievna Shatunovskaia
Lived: 1901 – 1991
Notes: Leading Party worker in Moscow arrested in 1938 on charges of Trotskyite activity. She was rehabilitated in 1954, and her account of conversations with prisoners involved with the Kirov trials were an important part of Khrushchev’s charges that Stalin was behind the murder.
Name: Shchedrin
Notes: Saltykov-Shchedrin
Name: Nikolai Anisimovich Shchelokov
Lived: 1910 – 1984
Notes: Soviet official close to both Brezhnev and Chernenko and who gained notoriety for corruption.
Name: Vladimir Vasilievich Shcherbitskii
Lived: 1918 – 1990
Notes: Ukrainian Party leader, chairman of the Ukrainian Soviet of Ministers 1965-72, last Brezhnevite to hold a seat in Gorbachev’s Politburo.
Name: Stepan Petrovich Shchipachev
Lived: 1899 – 1980
Notes: Born into a poor peasant family, joined the Red Army in 1917. Part of an army literary unit in 1930.
Name: Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors
Lived: 1895 – 1919
Notes: Ukrainian hero of the Civil War, who fought German and Polish invaders, and the White Forces of Petliura, before his death in battle.
Name: Anatolii Shchukin
Lived: –
Notes: A poet, appeared in the samizdat publications Phoenix 1961 and Phoenix 1966.
Name: Vissarion Iakovlevich Shebalin
Lived: 1902 – 1963
Notes: Composer who became director of the Moscow Conservatory, 1942-1948.
Name: Aleksandr Nikolaevich Shelepin
Lived: 1918 – 1994
Notes: Chairman of the KGB from 1958-1961. Once heir apparent to Khrushchev who became a full member of the Politburo in 1964, but lost power gradually after Brezhnev’s rise to power. Demoted from the Politburo in 1975.
Name: Petro Iukhymovych Shelest
Lived: 1908 – 1996
Notes: First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist party, and member of the Politburo, forced into retirement by Brezhnev in 1973 for alleged Ukrainian national tendencies.
Name: Eduard Amvrosievich Shevardnadze
Lived: 1928 – 2014
Notes: Georgian politician rose as head of the Georgian NKVD, 1965-72, and Georgian party chief, 1972-85, then served as Gorbachev’s Foreign Minister and close supporter, and later as president of independent Georgia, from 1995 until removed from power in the Rose Revolution of 2003.
Name: Viktor Borisovich Shklovskii
Lived: 1893 – 1984
Notes: Russian writer, literary scholar, one of the founders of Russian formalism.
Name: Aleksandr Gavrilovich Shliapnikov
Lived: 1885 – 1937
Notes: Industrial worker active in the 1905 revolution, subsequently in emigration. In April 1917 became Chairman of the Metal Workers’ Trade Union, and served in that post until 1921. After the October Revolution was appointed the first People’s Commissar of Labor. He served in the army during the Civil War. In 1919-21 he was a leader of the ‘Workers’ Opposition” and afterwards was often under fire for his oppositional views. Under exile and arrest from 1934, he was shot in 1937.
Name: Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov
Lived: 1905 – 1985
Notes: Don Cossack novelist best known for QUIET FLOWS THE DON (1928-1940) and other novels and stories. Loyal but not orthodox member of the Soviet literary establishment, awarded Nobel Prize in 1965.
Name: Dmitrii Dmitrievich Shostakovich
Lived: 1906 – 1975
Notes: Composer of fifteen symphonies, chamber music, and the opera, LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK
Name: Efraim Markovich Sklianskii
Lived: 1892 – 1925
Notes: Doctor, joined RSDRP in 1913. After the October Revolution became chairman of the committee of the Fifth Army in Dvinsk. Appointed Supreme Commissar on 25 November, two days after being appointed deputy People’s Commissar for Military Affairs. Elected to the Constituent Assembly on 28 November as a delegate for the Northern Front. Throughout the Civil War Trotsky’s most trusted supporter and deputy.
Name: Viacheslav Mikhailovich Skriabin
Lived: 1890 – 1986
Alias: Molotov
Notes: See Molotov
Name: Ivar Tenisovich Smilga
Lived: 1892 – 1937
Notes: Bolshevik revolutionary, later member of the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union. Born in modern Latvia), chairman of the Baltic Fleet Committee in 1917-1918. Later vice-chairman of the Vesenkha (1921-1928), and of the Gosplan from 1924 to 1936. Arrested, tried, and executed as a terrorist in the first Moscow Trial (1937).
Name: Nikolai Vasilievich Smolich
Lived: 1888 – 1968
Notes: Opera director, avant-gardist, who directed the premieres of Shostakovich’s operas NOSE The Nose and LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK
Name: Grigorii Iakovlevich Sokolnikov
Lived: 1888 – 1939
Notes: Lawyer and economist. Bolshevik from 1905 when he took part in the Moscow uprising. Member of the Moscow Party Committee in April 1917. After the October revolution organized nationalization of banks Signed Brest-Litovsk Treaty in 1918. Between 1918 and 1920 served on the Revolutionary Military Councils of Second, Ninth, Thirteenth and Eighth Armies. From August 1920 in charge of the Turkestan committee of the TsIK and organized Bolshevik takeover in Bukhara. Occupied high positions in finance and industry until fell victim in the purges.
Name: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Lived: 1918 –
Notes: Novelist, author of the multi-volume GULAG-ARCHIPELAGO, trenchant critic of Soviet ideology and government who was exiled in 1974
Name: Mariia Aleksandrovna Spiridonova
Lived: 1889 – 1941
Notes: Member of the SR party. In 1906 assassinated the Vice Governor of Tambov in retaliation for his persecution of peasants. Sent to Siberia for forced labor; remained until February Revolution. Became a left SR and a member of their Central Committee. Disagreed with the Bolsheviks over the Brest Treaty and helped to organize the left SR uprising in July 1918. Arrested and exiled, subject to frequent repressions until shot in 1941.
Name: Aleksei Stakhanov
Lived: 1905 – 1976
Notes: Coalminer whose production record of August 1935 inaugurated the Stakhanovite movement
Name: Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin
Lived: 1879 – 1953
Notes: General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party from 1922 until his death in 1953. Stalin’s increasing control of the Party from 1928 onwards led to his becoming the de facto party leader and the dictator of his country. He initiated a series of gruesome purges in the 1930s that eliminated his opponents and consolidated his power. Under Stalin’s leadership, the Soviet Union played a decisive role in the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War and went on to achieve the status of superpower. His crash programs of industrialization and collectivization in the 1930s, World War II casualties, along with his ongoing campaigns of political repression, are estimated to have cost the lives of up to 20 million people.
Name: Fritz Stiedry
Lived: 1883 – 1968
Notes: Conductor, Mahler’s assistant in the Vienna Opera. In 1933 he emigrated to the USSR, where he was conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic. He led the premiere of Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto. After the war one of the principal conductors of the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Name: Petr Berngardovich Struve
Lived: 1870 – 1944
Notes: One of the earliest Russian Marxist theorists. Although he drafted the first manifesto of the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1898, Struve changed his politics in 1902 and joined the liberal Kadet party. During Civil War, foreign minister of Wrangel’s ‘White’ government in the Crimea. Died in Paris. Became a Bolshevik in 1903. Member of the Bolshevik Central Committee since 1913. Played leading role in the October Revolution and became Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets and was one of the most able Bolshevik administrators.
Name: Petr Ivanovich Stuchka
Lived: 1865 – 1932
Notes: Born Pēteris Stučka in Latvia, was head of the Bolshevik government in Latvia during its war of independence (1918-1920). During the 1920s, a leading legal theoretician promoting the “revolutionary” or “proletarian” model of socialist legality.
Name: Sudrabs
Notes: See Latsis, Martin Ivanovich
Name: Nikolai Nikolaevich Sukhanov
Lived: 1882 – 1940
Alias: Originally Gimmer
Notes: Economist, Left Menshevik from 1917, worked in Soviet economic organizations after Revolution. Wrote memoir, NOTES ABOUT THE REVOLUTION (1922-23)
Name: Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov
Lived: 1885 – 1919
Notes: Became a Bolshevik in 1903. Member of the Bolshevik Central Committee since 1913. Played leading role in the October Revolution and became Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets and was one of the most able Bolshevik administrators.
Name: U Thant
Lived: 1909 – 1974
Notes: Burmese diplomat and third Secretary General of the United Nations, 1961-1971.
Name: Kliment Arkadievich Timiriazev
Lived: 1843 – 1920
Notes: Botanist, physiologist who established a vegetable physiology laboratory at the Petrov Academy. His enthusiasm for the young Soviet regime was rewarded when it was renamed the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy.
Name: Josif Tito
Lived: 1892 – 1980
Notes: See Broz, Josif. Yugoslav war-time guerilla leader and post-WW II head of Communist government whose independent stance in the face of Stalin®s orders helped split the international communist movement.
Name: Aleksandr Ivanovich Todorovskii
Lived: 1894 – 1965
Notes: Soviet military leader, commissar of the Air Force Academy 1933-36, purged and arrested in 1938, rehabilitated in 1953.
Name: Mikhail Pavlovich Tomskii
Lived: 1880 – 1937
Notes: Joined the RSDRP in 1904. Member of the Petrograd Executive Committee after the February Revolution. Chairman of the Central Council of Trade Unions, 1919-28.
Name: Aleksandr Vasil’evich Topchiev
Lived: 1907 – 1962
Notes: Chemist, Chief Academic Secretary of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the Khrushchev years
Name: Z. N. Toporova
Lived: –
Notes: defense attorney (for Brodsky?)
Name: Sergei Pavlovich Trapeznikov
Lived: 1912 – 1984
Notes: Specialist in the history of Soviet agricultural policies, head of the Science and Education Department of the Party Secretariat, 1965-83, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences
Name: Sergei Tretiakov
Lived: 1892 – 1939
Notes: Avant-garde playwright, who worked with Meyerhold, Eisenstein, and Mayakovsky. Bertolt Brecht considered Tretyakov one of his teachers in the field of Marxism. He was shot during the Great Terror.
Name: Leon Trotsky
Lived: 1879 – 1940
Alias: Born Lev Davydovich Bronstein
Notes: Social Democrat from 1896, exiled to Siberia in 1901, escaped to London in 1902. Sided with Mensheviks at II Congress in 1903. Played leading role in St Petersburg Soviet in 1905. Arrested and deported to Siberia for life in 1906. Escaped en route. Returned to Petrograd in May 1917 and joined the Bolsheviks in July 1917. Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet and of its Military Revolutionary Committee in September 1917. Played important role in October Revolution. People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, November 1917-February 1918. Founder of the Red Army. People’s Commissar for Military Affairs, February 1918-December 1922, leader of the Civil War victory. Central Committee, 1917-27, Politbiuro, 1919-26. Bitter struggle with Stalin for power led to his eventual dismissal from posts, exclusion from the Party in 1927, exile to Alma-Ata and then abroad in 1929. Long career in exile as bitter critic of Stalin, ended when murdered by NKVD agent in Mexico.
Name: Iulii Osipovich Tsederbaum
Lived: 1873 – 1923
Alias: Martov
Notes: See Martov. Russian revolutionary, Menshevik leader exiled in 1921. Editorial board of ISKRA from 1900, Menshevik from 1903. Participated in Pre-Parliment of mid-1917, but saw October Revolution as a catastrophe. Strong critic of dictatorial tendencies of Bolsheviks. Emigrated 1920.
Name: Iraklii Georgievich Tseretelli
Lived: 1881 – 1959
Notes: A Menshevik leader during the Russian Revolution of 1917, and one of the Menshevik leaders of Georgia before it fell under Soviet power in 1921.
Name: Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovskii
Lived: 1857 – 1935
Notes: Imperial Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of astronautic theory, lionized by Soviet patriots as the father of heavier-than-air flight and space travel.
Name: Aleksandr Dmitrevich Tsiurupa
Lived: 1870 – 1928
Notes: Social Democrat from 1898. During the October Revolution was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee in Ufa. Appointed deputy People’s Commissar for Food in December 1917. Later became Commissar and held post until 1921
Name: Chang Tso-lin
Lived: 1873 – 1928
Alias: Zhang Zuolin in Pinyin transliteration
Notes: Chinese warlord and military leader under the Kuomintang government, who ruled Manchuria from 1920 until his assassination by Japanese militarists.
Name: Viktor Robertovich Tsoi
Lived: 1962 – 1990
Notes: Soviet rock star, lead singer of the group KINO, who died in a motorcycle crash and was memorialized in graffiti and informal memorials throughout the country.
Name: Ch’en Tu-hsiu
Lived: 1879 – 1942
Alias: Chen Duxiu in Pinyin transliteration
Notes: Chinese educator and Communist party leader. One of the founders of the Chinese party, he was dismissed and withdrew from the party in 1927 over his opposition to the Comintern-sponsored armed insurrection.
Name: Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovskii
Lived: 1865 – 1919
Notes: Economics professor at St Petersburg University. ‘Legal’ Marxist. In 1918 Minister of Finance in short-lived Ukrainian government of Hetman Skoropadsky.
Name: Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevskii
Lived: 1893 – 1937
Notes: Officer in 1914 and taken prisoner in 1915. Escaped and returned in October 1917. Joined Party in August 1918 and became a commissar of the Moscow Military District. In 1921 he organized and directed military operations against the Kronstadt mutineers. Brilliant strategist who rose through party and military, became Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935, two years before he fell victim in the military purges.
Name: Tulin
Lived: –
Notes: ‘K. Tulin’ was Lenin’s first pseudonym, which he used between 1895 and 1900.
Name: Iurii Nikolaevich Tynianov
Lived: 1894 – 1943
Notes: Writer and literary scholar.
Name: Vasilii Vasilievich Ulrikh
Lived: 1889 – 1951
Notes: Military jurist who served in the Cheka during the Civil War. Later a senior judge during most of Stalin’s regime. Ulrikh served as the presiding judge at many of the major show trials.
Name: Moiseei Uritskii
Lived: 1873 – 1918
Notes: First leader of the Cheka, assassinated by SRs in 1918.
Name: Robert Robertovich Val’k
Lived: –
Notes: See Falk, Robert
Name: Eugene Varga
Lived: 1879 – 1964
Notes: People’s Commissar of Finance in Bela Kun’s Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919); later a distinguished Soviet economist.
Name: Aleksandr Vertinskii
Lived: 1889 – 1957
Notes: Popular singer, poet, composer and actor, a founder of the genre of guitar poetry, Vertinskii’s songs of the high life and decadence endeared him to generations of Russians and Soviets.
Name: A. N. Vinogradova
Lived: –
Notes: Weaver, Bolshaia Dmitrovskaia Factory, Ivanovo, and model production leader who was celebrated as a Stakhanovite worker, along with her sister Dusya.
Name: Evdokiia Viktorovna (Dusya) Vinogradova
Lived: 1914 – 1962
Notes: Celebrated Stakhanovite weaver and sister of A.N. Vinogradova.
Name: Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaia
Lived: 1926 – 2012
Notes: Soprano. Shostakovich’s vocal cycle Satires and his instrumentation of Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death are dedicated to her. She sang the premieres of these works and sang in the first performance of the Fourteenth Symphony. In 1978 she and her husband, cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, were stripped of Soviet citizenship for “systematic acts that bring harm to the prestige of the Soviet Union.” Thereafter, Vishnevskaia’s name was removed from all Soviet reference works.
Name: Vsevolod Vitalievich Vishnevskii
Lived: 1900 – 1951
Notes: Playwright. Took part in the Petrograd rebellion in 1917, and fought in the Civil War as a machine gunner and political agitator in the Red Fleet. Later he was a frontline correspondent for Pravda during WWII, and was in Leningrad during the blockade. His greatest success in the theater came in the 1930s, when he produced WE ARE FROM KRONSHTADT, LAST DECISIVE MAN, and OPTIMISTIC TRAGEDY.
Name: Aleksandr Vladimirovich Vlasov
Lived: 1932 –
Notes: Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR 1986-1988, during the initial period of loosening civil society.
Name: Andrei Andreevich Vlasov
Lived: 1901 – 1946
Notes: Joined the Red Army in 1920, commanded an army corps in Second World War. Upon capture by Germans, formed the anti-Soviet Russian Liberation Army from prisoners-of-war. Sentenced to death after capture at end of war
Name: Dmitrii Antonovich Volkogonov
Lived: 1928 – 1995
Notes: Historian and army general whose biographies of Lenin and Trotsky received accolades in the 1990s.
Name: V. Volodarskii
Lived: 1891 – 1918
Notes: Real name: Golshtein. Revolutionary at the age of 14 under the influence of the 1905 revolution.1913 departure to America. Returned to Russia after the February revolution, soon becoming a Bolshevik. Member of the Petrograd Party Committee, one of the finest propagandists. Member of the Petrograd Soviet, later of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Editor of the newspaper Krasnaia Gazeta, Petrograd. Commissar for the Press, Propaganda and Agitation of the Petrograd Commune. Murdered on June 20, 1918.
Name: Volpin
Notes: See Esenin-Volpin
Name: Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov
Lived: 1881 – 1969
Notes: Bolshevik and an active revolutionary from 1903. Outstanding Red Army commander in the civil war. Commissar for military and naval affairs, later defense (1925-1940), Voroshilov helped reorganize the Red Army. Commander of the northwestern front in World War II. Member of the Politburo from 1926 and of the Supreme Soviet from 1937. Close associate of Stalin, he was implicated by Khrushchev in the 1957 “antiparty faction”, and was forced to resign and dropped from the Central Committee in 1961.
Name: Andrei Ianuar’evich Vyshinskii
Lived: 1883 – 1954
Notes: Prosecutor of Judicial Collegia of Supreme Tribunal of the RSFSR, 1933-1939, during which time he conducted the most vicious purge trials. Also occupied various other high posts in the Soviet government, including foreign minister, until his death.
Name: William of Occam Lived: 1285 – 1349
Notes: English scholastic philosopher. Namesake of Occam’s Razor, the principle that “It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.”
Name: Karol Wojtyla
Lived: 1920 – 2005
Title: Pope
Alias: John Paul II
Notes: Native of Poland, 264th Pope of the Catholic Church. He was the first non-Italian pope since the sixteenth century. His early reign was marked by his opposition to communism, and he is often credited as one of the forces which contributed to its collapse in Eastern Europe. His 1979 journey to Poland electrified his compatriots and was a major impetus for the founding of the Solidarity movement.
Name: Feng Yu-Siang
Lived: 1882 – 1948
Notes: Also Feng Yu-hsiang. Warlord in Republican China, nicknamed the ‘Christian General’. Feng at controlled most of north-central China by 1929, but was soon defeated by forces loyal to Chiang Kai-shek.
Name: Vera Ivanovna Zasulich
Lived: 1851 – 1919
Notes: Began her political career as a Narodnik. She attempted, aged seventeen, to assassinate Trepov, military governor of St Petersburg. Was tried but acquitted and allowed to escape abroad. Became a Marxist in the early 1800s and was one of the first members of the Russian Social Democratic party.
Name: Iurii Andreevich Zhdanov
Lived: 1919 – 2006
Notes: Russian chemist, rector of Rostov State University from 1957 to 1988; son of Andrei Zhdanov and former husband of Svetlana Alliluyeva.
Name: Grigorii Evseevich Zinoviev
Lived: 1883 – 1936
Notes: Bolshevik from 1903. Returned to Russia with Lenin. Opposed him on April Theses at first; also opposed to taking power in October. Appointed Chairman of the Northern Commune when government moved to Moscow. Chairman of the Comintern from its foundation until 1926. Joined Stalin and Kamenev in struggle with Trotsky in 1926, but soon fell out of Stalin’s favor. Arrested in 1934, executed in 1936.