- Joseph Stalin
Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili ("Ioseb Besarionis Dze Jughashvili";, "Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili") (March 5 1953), better known by his adopted name, Joseph Stalin (alternatively transliterated Josef Stalin), was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. Despite his formal position being originally without significant influence, … - Leon Trotsky
"' (– August 21 1940), born Leon Davidovich Bronstein"', was a Ukrainian-born Jewish Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was an influential politician in the early days of the Soviet Union, first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army and People's Commissar of War. He was also among the first members of the Politburo. - Robert Conquest
Dr. George Robert Ackworth Conquest (born July 15 1917), British historian, became one of the best-known writers on the Soviet Union with the publication, in 1968, of his account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s, "The Great Terror". - Nikolai Yezhov
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was a senior figure in the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) during the period of the Great Purge. His reign is sometimes known as the "Yezhovschina" (or "Yezhovshchina",, the "Yezhov era"). - Mikhail Tukhachevsky
Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (June 12, 1937), was a Soviet military commander, chief of the Red Army (1925-1928), was one of the most prominent victims of Stalin's Great Purge of the late 1930s. - Genrikh Yagoda
Genrikh Grigor'evich Yagoda (born Yenokh (Enoch) Gershonovich Ieguda ; ; 1891 - March 15 1938) was the head of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, from 1934 to 1936. Yagoda was born in Rybinsk in a Jewish family, and joined the Bolsheviks in 1907. After the October Revolution of 1917, he rose through the ranks of the "Cheka" (the NKVD's predecessor), becoming Felix Dzerzhinsky's second deputy in September 1923. - Mikhail Kalinin
Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (June 3, 1946) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician - Nikolai Bulganin
Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin was a prominent Soviet politician, who served as Minister of Defense (1953-55) and Prime Minister (1955-58). Bulganin was born in Nizhny Novgorod, the son of an office worker. He joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917, and in 1918 he was recruited into the Cheka, the Bolshevik regime's political police, where he served until 1922. After the Russian Civil War he became an industrial manager, working in the electricity administration until 1927, … - Georgy Malenkov
Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov was a Soviet politician, Communist Party leader and close collaborator of Joseph Stalin. He briefly became leader of the Soviet Union (from March to September 1953) after Stalin's death and was Premier of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1955. Named as candidate for the Politburo, Malenkov joined in 1946. Although Malenkov fell out of favour in place of his rivals Andrei Zhdanov and Lavrentiy Beria, he soon came back into Stalin's favour, … - Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler (September 5, 1905, Budapest - March 3, 1983, London) was a Hungarian polymath who became a naturalized British subject. He wrote journalism, novels, social philosophy, and books on scientific subjects. In 1931, he joined the Communist Party of Germany, but left the party seven years later, after emigrating to the United Kingdom. By the late 1940s, he was one of the most recognized and outspoken British anti-communists, … - Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (Georgian: ლავრენტი ბერია, Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria; Russian: Лаврентий Павлович Берия; 29 March, 1899 – 23 December, 1953) was a Soviet politician and chief of the Soviet security and police apparatus. Beria is now remembered chiefly as the executor of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s and 1940's, … - Ivan Konev
Ivan Stepanovich Konev, was a Soviet military commander, who led Red Army forces on the Eastern Front during World War II, liberated much of Eastern Europe from occupation by the Axis Powers, and helped in the capture of Germany's capital, Berlin. Later, as the Commander of Warsaw Pact forces, Konev led the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 by Soviet armed divisions. - Ludo Martens
Ludo Martens (born 12 March, 1946) is a Belgian historian noted for his work on francophone Africa and the Soviet Union. He is also the chairman of the Workers' Party of Belgium. In 1968 he founded the Maoist group "Alle macht aan de arbeiders" (All Power to the Workers), which in 1979 became the Workers' Party of Belgium. Martens wrote on the political history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he has lived and travelled extensively. - Andrey Vyshinsky
Andrey Januaryevich Vyshinskiy (November 22, 1954), also spelt Vishinsky, Vyshinskii, was a Russian and Soviet jurist and later diplomat. He served as the Soviet Foreign Minister from 1949 to 1953. Vyshinsky was of Polish descent and spoke some English and excellent French. He became a Menshevik in 1903 and in 1917 he undersigned an order to arrest Lenin according the decision of the Russian Provisional Government. - Boris Shaposhnikov
Boris Mikhailovitch Shaposhnikov (March 26 1945), Soviet military commander, was born at Zlatoust, near Chelyabinsk in the Urals. He joined the army of the Russian Empire in 1901 and graduated from the Nicholas General Staff Academy in 1910, reaching the rank of colonel in the Caucasus Grenadiers division during World War I. In 1917, unusually for an officer of his rank, he supported the Russian Revolution and in 1918 joined the Red Army. - Aleksandr Vasilevsky
Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Vasilevsky (September 30 1895 - December 5 1977) was a Soviet military commander, promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1943. He was the Soviet Chief of the General Staff and Deputy Minister of Defense during World War II, as well as Minister of Defense from 1949 to 1953. As the Chief of the General Staff, Vasilevsky was responsible for the planning and coordination of almost all decisive Soviet offensives, … - Grigory Sokolnikov
Grigory Yakovlevich Sokolnikov (May 21, 1939), born Girsh Yankelevich Brilliant, was an Old Bolshevik and a Soviet politician. He was born to a Jewish railway doctor in present-day Poltava Oblast but eventually moved to Moscow. After the Russian October Revolution he held various government positions. He was People's Commissar of Finance, as well as Soviet ambassador to England. He was a member of the delegation for peace negotiations with Germany, … - Grigory Kulik
Grigory Ivanovich Kulik, Soviet military commander, was born into a peasant family near Poltava in Ukraine. A soldier in the army of the Russian Empire in World War I, he joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and the Red Army in 1918. During the Russian Civil War he become a commander in the Soviet artillery, seeing action at Kharkov and other battles. In 1937 Kulik became head of the Red Army's Main Artillery Directorate, … - Alexandra Kollontai
Alexandra Mikhaylovna Kollontai (March 9, 1952) was a Russian Communist revolutionary, first as a member of the Mensheviks, then from 1914 on as a Bolshevik. She was effectively exiled by Stalin, who sent her to Mexico, Sweden and Norway as a diplomat, and was thus one of the very few "Old Bolsheviks" to escape death during the Great Purges of the 1930s. Kollontai was born in St. Petersburg to Mikhail Domontovich, … - Vasily Blyukher
Vasily Konstantinovich Blyukher (also spelled Blücher, Blukher, Bliukher etc, Russian: Василий Константинович Блюхер) (November 9, 1938), Soviet military commander, was among the prominent victims of Stalin's Great Purge of the late 1930s. Blyukher was born into a peasant family in village Barschinka, now in Yaroslavl Oblast. - Sergey Korolyov
Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov, (Zhytomyr – January 14, 1966, Moscow), was the head Soviet rocket engineer and designer during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. Although trained as an aircraft designer, Korolyov's greatest strengths proved to be in design integration, organization and strategic planning. A victim of Stalin's 1938 Great Purge, he was confined for almost six years, including some months in a Siberian gulag. - Leonid Govorov
Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov, Soviet military commander, was born in the village of Butyrki in central Russia (now in Kirov Oblast). His father was a sailor. He attended a technical high school in Yelabuga and enrolled in the ship-building department of Petrograd Polytechnical Institute. In December 1916, however, he transferred to the Konstantinovskye Artillery School and in 1917 became an artillery officer. - Yevgenia Ginzburg
Yevgenia Ginzburg (Russian language: Евгения Семёновна Гинзбург) was a Russian historian and writer. Her latinized name Eugenia is frequently used in the West. Soon after Yevgenia Ginzburg was born into the family of a Jewish pharmacist in Moscow, her family moved to Kazan. In 1920 she entered the social sciences department of Kazan State University, later switching to pedagogy. - Boris Bazarov
Boris Jakovlevich Bazarov (1893-1939) was a Soviet spy. He was born in 1893 in Kovno gubernia of the Russian Empire (modern Lithuania). In addition to Russian, he spoke German, Bulgarian, French and Serbo-Croatian. Bazarov joined the Soviet secret police (OGPU) in 1921 and began working in "illegal" operations in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in 1924. From 1924 to 1927, he worked in the Soviet embassy in Vienna, simultaneously supervising Austrian, Bulgarian, … - Bolesław Bierut
Bolesław Bierut was a Polish-born Communist leader, a Stalinist who became President of Poland after the Soviet occupation of the country in the aftermath of World War II. Bierut was born near Lublin, the son of a village teacher and his wife (nee Rutkowska — hence his later adopted name "Bie(r)-rut"). In 1925 he went to Moscow to be trained at the school of the Communist International. When the Communist Party of Poland was dissolved by Joseph Stalin in 1938, … - Mikhail Frinovsky
Mikhail Petrovich Frinovsky (January of 1898 - February 4, 1940 served as a deputy head of the NKVD in the years of the Great Purge and, along with Nikolai Yezhov was responsible for setting in motion Stalin's mass-represions. Mikhail Petrovich Frinovsky was born in 1898 into the family of a teacher in the village of Narovchat, Penza Guberniya. Prior to the First World War he studied in a religious school. In January of 1916, Frinovsky volunteered for the army. - Vagarshak Arutyunovich Ter-Vaganyan
Vagarshak Arutyunovich Ter-Vaganyan (1893-1936) was an Armenian communist party leader who was one of the first victims of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. Ter-Vaganyan was one of sixteen Soviet intellectuals who stood as defendants during the Moscow Show Trials. He was accused of being part of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite centre which allegedly prepared terrorist acts against Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov, Andrei Zhdanov, Lazar Kaganovich, Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze, Stanislav Kosior, … - Chabua Amirejibi
Chabua (Mzechabuk) Amirejibi (born November 18, 1921) is a Georgian novelist notable for his magnum opus, "Data Tutashkhia", and a lengthy experience in Soviet prisons. Born in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, in 1921, his family was heavily repressed during Stalin's Great Purge: his father was shot in 1938 and mother sent to a Gulag camp. During the World War II, he was recruited into the Red Army, but was soon sacked due to his family history. - Polikarp Mdivani
Polikarp "Budu" Mdivani (1877 – July 19, 1937) was a veteran Georgian Bolshevik and Soviet government official energetically involved in the Russian revolutions and the Civil War. In the 1920s, he played an important role in Sovietization of the Caucasus, but later led Georgian Communist opposition to Joseph Stalin's centralizing policy during the Georgian Affair of 1922. - Polina Zhemchuzhina
Polina Semyonovna Zhemchuzhina ; 1897 - 1970) was the wife of Vyacheslav Molotov. Born Pearl Karpovskaya (the word "pearl" in Russian is "жемчужина") to the family of a Jewish tailor in the village of Pologi, in the Yekaterinoslav region (today Dnepropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine), she joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party of Bolsheviks in 1918 and served as a propaganda commissar in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. - Nestor Lakoba
Nestor Apollonovich Lakoba was an Abkhaz Communist leader and a victim of the Great Purge. Nestor Lakoba was born in the village of Lykhny in Abkhazia and like many Caucasian Bolsheviks, began as an honourable bandit persecuted by the Tsarist police, and he became a personal friend of Stalin's during their time together in the revolutionary underground. - Mirza Davud Huseynov
Mirza Davud Bagir oglu Huseynov, also spelled Husseynov or Guseynov, was an Azerbaijani revolutionary and statesman. After the establishment of Azerbaijan SSR, Huseynov became the Chairman of the Provisional Military-Revolutionary Committee from April 28, 1920, to May 16 of the same year. Then he was deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Committee, National Commissar of Finance and National Commissar of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan. - Otto Ville Kuusinen
Otto Ville (Wilhelm) Kuusinen (Laukaa, Finland, 1881 - 17 May, 1964, Moscow) was a Finnish and Soviet politician, literature historian, and poet, who after the defeat in the Finnish Civil War fled to Bolshevist Russia, where he worked until his death. After having overthrown the more moderate party chairman J. K. Kari in 1906, Kuusinen came to dominate Finland's Social Democratic Party. - Yrjö Sirola
Yrjö Elias Sirola was a Finnish writer and socialist politician, originally a primary school teacher. He worked as an editor of the Kansan Lehti ("Newspaper of the people") from 1904 to 1906 and as an editor of the Työmies ("Workman") from 1906. Sirola also wrote several books, primarily about society and politics. He also translated works by August Strindberg and Karl Kautsky to Finnish. - Alexander Yegorov
Alexander Ilyich Yegorov, Soviet military commander, was a prominent victim of Stalin's Great Purge of the late 1930s. Yegorov (sometimes spelled Egorov) was born into a peasant family near Samara in central Russia. He joined the army of the Russian Empire in 1901 and qualified as an officer in 1905. During World War I he rose to the rank of Lt-Colonel and was wounded five times. In 1904 he had joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, … - Nikolai Kondratiev
Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kondratiev, Russian: Николай Дмитриевич Кондратьев (1892-1938) was a Russian economist, who was a proponent of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the Soviet Union. He was executed at the height of Stalin's Great Purge and "rehabilitated" fifty years later. He proposed a theory that Western capitalist economies have long term (50 to 60 years) cycles of boom followed by depression. - Gaioz Devdariani
Gaioz Devdariani (October 2, 1901–1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary, intellectual, Soviet politician and a victim of the Great Purge. Devdariani was born in the village of Kharagauli, Western Georgia into a large middle class family. In 1919, Devdariani was arrested by the Menshevik Government of Georgia for alleged plotting and masterminding an insurrection against the government. He was imprisoned in Metekhi and managed to escape from the prison in 1920. - Jaan Anvelt
Jaan Anvelt, Eessaare Aadu, Jaan Holm, Jaan Hulmu, Kaarel Maatamees, Onkel Kaak or Н. Альтъ. Prisoned during Great Purge in 1937. Killed by examiner named Langfang. - Gustav Klinger
Gustav Klinger was a Russian Bolshevik politician. Klinger joined the Party in 1917 in time for the revolution and was leader of the Volga German Soviet government 1918. He became business manager for the newly founded Communist International in 1919, and was elected to the Comintern Executive Committee in 1920. Klinger held various governmental posts in the Soviet Union during the 1920s. He was eventually killed during the Stalinist purges, probably in 1937. - Alexander Barmine
Alexander Gregory Barmine (1899-1987) was a general in the Soviet Army who fled the purges of the Stalin era and escaped to the United States where he served in the Army during World War II and became a government official. Barmine participated as a young man in the Russian Civil War that followed the Russian Revolution. At 21, he rose to the rank of brigadier general was later detailed by the Soviet army to service as a diplomat, …
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