Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, Soviet politician and diplomat, was a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to the 1950s, when he was dismissed from office by Nikita Khrushchev. He was the principal Soviet signatory of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939 (also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) and the Molotov cocktail was named after him.

Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski (pronounced: Media:Jaruzelski.oggborn July 6, 1923) is a former Communist Polish political and military leader, Prime Minister from 1981 to 1985, head of the Polish Council of State from 1985 to 1989 and President from 1989 to 1990.

Fedor von Bock (December 3, 1880 - May 4, 1945) was an officer in the German military from 1898 to 1942, attaining the rank of "Generalfeldmarschall" during World War 2. He served as the commander of Army Group North during the Invasion of Poland in 1939, commander of Army Group B during the Invasion of France in 1940, and later as the commander of Army Group Center during the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941; his final command was that of Army Group South in 1942.

Władysław Eugeniusz Sikorski was a Polish military and political leader. He was born in the southern Polish town of Tuszów Narodowy, which at the time was part of Austria-Hungary, one of Poland's three partitioners. Before World War I, he became a founder and member of several underground organizations that promoted the cause of Polish independence. He fought with distinction in the Polish Legions during the First World War, …

Leo Penn was an American actor and director. Leo Penn's parents were Russian and Lithuanian Jews. Claims of their Sephardic extraction (the original surname was reportedly Piñon and was allegedly altered by officials at Ellis Island; see) are highly improbable: there were no known Sephardic Jews in Russia, where Penn is a relatively common Ashkenazic surname. He was married to actress Eileen Ryan, and the father of singer Michael Penn and actors Sean Penn and Chris Penn.

Jacques Duclos (October 2, 1896 in Louey, Hautes-Pyrénées-April 25, 1975 in Montreuil) was a French Communist politician who played a key role in French politics from 1926, when he entered the French National Assembly after defeating Paul Reynaud, until 1969, when he achieved a substantial proportion of the vote in the Presidential Elections. During World War I, Duclos fought in the Battle of Verdun, where he was wounded.

Andrei Ivanovich Yeremenko (October 14, 1892 - November 19, 1970) Soviet general during World War II, Marshal of the Soviet Union, born in Markovka in the province of Kharkov in Ukraine to a peasant family. Drafted into the Imperial Army in 1913, served on the Southwest and Romanian Fronts during World War I. Joined the Red Army in 1918, where he served in the legendary “Budyonny Cavalry”. Attended the Leningrad Cavalry School and then the Frunze Military Academy, …

Charles Eustis “Chip” Bohlen was a United States diplomat from 1929 to 1969 and Soviet expert, serving in Moscow before and during World War II, succeeding George F. Kennan as United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1953–1957), then moving to the Philippines (1957–1959), and to France (1962–1968). Graduate of Harvard College Class of 1927. He joined the State Department, learned Russian and became a Soviet specialist, working first in Riga, Latvia.

Paul Nizan was a French philosopher and writer. He was born in Tours and studied in Paris where he befriended fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre at the Lycée Henri IV. He became a member of the French Communist Party, and much of his writing reflects his political beliefs, although he resigned from the party upon hearing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939. He died in the Battle of Dunkirk, fighting against the German army in World War II.

Theodore H. Draper was an American historian and political writer. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the Herbert Feis Award for Nonacademically Affiliated Historians in 1990 from the American Historical Association. Draper was a long-time contributor first to "Commentary Magazine" and later to the "New York Review of Books". His works include "A Very Thin Line", a history of the Iran-Contra Affair, …

Vladimír Clementis was a Slovak politician. A Communist MP, his criticism in 1939 of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact forced him to spend the war in London, where he broadcast radio speeches calling for all Slovaks to fight the Nazis. Returning in 1945, he became Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs under the first post-war government. As a representative of Czechoslovakia, he signed UN Charter June 26th in San Francisco 1945. After the 1948 coup, which he helped organize, …

Michał Waszyński (born Michał Waks) was first a film director in his native Poland, then in Italy, and later (as Michael Waszynski) a producer of the major American movies, mainly in Spain. Known for his elegance and impeccable manners he was called by people who knew him "the prince". Waszyński was born into a Polish-Jewish family as Michał Waks in 1904 in Kowle, a small Jewish town in Volhynia (now in Ukraine), …

Russell R. Crowell (April 23, 1919 - September 11, 2004) was a labor organizer and trade union reformer in the United States. The 18th of 19 children, Crowell grew up during the Great Depression in rural Nebraska, where his widowed mother supported the family by taking in washing. Hitchhiking to California as a teenager, he found work in a dry-cleaning plant, married, and started a family. As a young man he had leftist political sympathies, …

Henry Richard Krygier, was an Australian anti-Communist publisher and journalist, and a founder of " Quadrant" magazine. He was born in 1917 in Warsaw, of Jewish parents, and as a law student was active in student politics at the Józef Piłsudski (Warsaw) University. His early sympathies with Communism were shattered by events such as the Soviet purges of the 1930s and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and he remained a vigorous life-long anti-Communist.