- 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.
- 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, …
- Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (better known by the alias 'Lenin', was a Russian revolutionary, a communist politician, the main leader of the October Revolution, the first head of the Soviet Union, and the primary theorist of Leninism, a variant of Marxism.
- James P. Cannon
James Patrick Cannon (1890-1974) was an American Communist and Trotskyist leader. Cannon was the founding leader of the Socialist Workers Party. Born in Rosedale, Kansas, James P. Cannon was first a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and then of the Socialist Party of America. He was personally trained by Bill Haywood, a prominent IWW leader. Cannon opposed World War I from an internationalist position and rallied to the Russian Revolution of 1917.
- Georgi Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov Mikhailov, also known as Georgiy Mikhailovich Dimitrov, (June 18, 1882 - July 2, 1949) was a Bulgarian Communist leader.
- Karl Radek
Karl Berngardovich Radek was a Bolshevik and an international Communist leader. He was born in then Lemberg (now L'viv in Ukraine, then in Austro-Hungary), as Karol Sobelsohn, to a Jewish family. He took the name "Radek" from a favourite character in a book (perhaps "Syzyfowe prace" by Stefan Żeromski). A member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) since 1898, he participated in the 1905 Revolution in Warsaw.
- John Reed
John "Jack" Silas Reed (October 22, 1887 - October 19, 1920) was an American journalist, poet, and communist activist, famous for his first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution, "Ten Days that Shook the World". He was the husband of the writer and feminist Louise Bryant. Reed and Bryant were the subjects of the film "Reds" (1981), directed by Warren Beatty.
- Victor Serge
Victor Lvovich Kibalchich (1890-1947) better known as Victor Serge was a Russian revolutionary. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Russian Communist Party on arriving in Petrograd in February 1919 and worked for the newly founded Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator. He was openly critical of the Soviet regime, but remained loyal to the Bolsheviks.
- Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, (March 15, 1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and intellectual, and later a Soviet politician.
- Palmiro Togliatti
Palmiro Togliatti (March 26, 1893-August 21, 1964) was an Italian Communist leader.
- William Z. Foster
William Zebulon Foster (February 25, 1881 - September 1, 1961), born in Taunton, Massachusetts, was the long-time General Secretary of the Communist Party USA and trade union leader. He passed through the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, as well as leading the drive to organize the packinghouse industry during World War I and leading the steel strike of 1919 before joining the Communist Party in 1921.
- Clara Zetkin
Clara Zetkin, maiden name Eissner (5 July 1857 - 20 June 1933) was an influential socialist German politician and a fighter for women's rights. Until 1917 she was active in the Social Democratic Party of Germany, then she joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and its far-left wing, the Spartacist League; this later became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), …
- Amadeo Bordiga
Amadeo Bordiga (June 13, 1889 - July 23, 1970) was an Italian Marxist, a contributor to Communist theory, the founder of the Communist Party of Italy, a leader of the Communist International and, after World War II, leading figure of the International Communist Party.
- Wang Ming
Wang Ming was a senior leader of the early Communist Party of China (CPC) as well as the mastermind of the famous 28 Bolsheviks group. Wang was also a major political rival of Mao Zedong during the 1930s, opposing Mao's nationalist deviation from the Comintern and orthodox Marxism and Leninism line. Wang epitomized the intellectualism and foreign dogmatism Mao criticized in his essays "On Practice" and "On Contradiction".
- Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev (Григо́рий Евс́еевич Зин́овьев, alternative transliteration Grigorii Ovseyevish Zinoviev, born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky ("Радомысльский"), also known as Hirsch Apfelbaum, (August 25, 1936) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician.
- Pierre Broué
Pierre Broué was a French historian and Trotskyist. His work covers various topics including the history of the Bolshevik Party, the Spanish Revolution and biographical works on Leon Trotsky. The recent republication of Trotsky's Autobiography, "My Life", has a foreword written by Broué. In his youth during the Second World War, as a young member of the French Communist Party Broué fought in the French resistance against the Nazi occupiers.
- Béla Kun
Béla Kun, born Béla Kohn, was a Hungarian Communist politician, who ruled Hungary as the Hungarian Soviet Republic for a brief period in 1919.
- Li Dazhao
Li Dazhao (October 29, 1888 - April 28, 1927) was a Chinese intellectual who co-founded the Communist Party of China with Chen Duxiu in 1921. Li was born in Leting (a county of Tangshan), Hebei province to a peasant family. From 1913 to 1917 Li studied political economy at Waseda University in Japan before returning to China in 1918. As head librarian at the Peking University Library, …
- Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy was a Hungarian politician, appointed Prime Minister of Hungary on two occasions. Nagy's second term ended when his non-Soviet-backed government was brought down by Soviet invasion in the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956, resulting in Nagy's execution on charges of treason two years later.
- Mikhail Borodin
Mikhail Markovich Borodin (July 9 1884, Yanovich, modern Belarus-May 29 1951, somewhere in Siberia) was the alias of Mikhail Gruzenberg; he was a Comintern agent. Borodin joined the Bolshevik party in Imperial Russia in 1903. In 1907, he was arrested and chose to depart for the United States in 1908. While there, he attended classes at Valparaiso University. After the October Revolution, he returned to his motherland in 1918, …
- Harry Haywood
Harry Haywood (February 6, 1898 - January 1985) was born in South Omaha, Nebraska to former slaves, Harriet and Haywood Hall. He was the youngest of three children. Named after his father at birth, Haywood Hall, "Harry Haywood" is a pseudonym adopted in 1925. Radicalized by the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, he was a leading African American member of both the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
- Willi Münzenberg
Willi Münzenberg was a leading propagandist for the KPD ("Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands", Communist Party of Germany) in the Weimar Era. General secretary of the Communist Youth International. Born in Erfurt, Germany the son of a tavern keeper, Münzenberg grew up in poverty. As a young man, he became involved in trade unions and in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
- Paul Levi
Paul Levi was a German Communist politician. Paul Levi, born in Hechingen into a Jewish middle-class family joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1906. There he became part of the party’s left wing together with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Levi was also Luxemburg's lawyer in political cases. During World War I, Levi became one of the leaders of the Spartacist League which soon became the Communist Party of Germany.
- Boris Souvarine
Boris Souvarine was an Imperial Russian-born French socialist and communist activist, essayist, and journalist.
- Christian Rakovsky
Christian Rakovsky was a Bulgarian-born socialist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and Soviet diplomat; he was also noted as a journalist, physician, and essayist. Rakovsky's political career took him throughout the Balkans and into France and Imperial Russia; for part of his life, he was also a Romanian citizen. A lifelong collaborator of Leon Trotsky, he was a prominent activist of the Second International, …
- Henk Sneevliet
Hendricus Josephus Franciscus Marie Sneevliet, known as Henk Sneevliet or the "pseudonym" Maring (May 13, 1883 - April 13, 1942), was a Dutch Communist, who was active in both the Netherlands and the Dutch East-Indies. He took part in the Communist resistance against the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II and was executed by the Germans in 1942.
- Andrés Nin
Andreu Nin Pérez, (Spanish: Andrés Nin; February 4 1892, El Vendrell, Tarragona-June 20 1937, near Madrid) was a Spanish Communist revolutionary.
- Jacques Duclos
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.
- André Marty
André Marty was born in Perpignan, France, on 6 November 1886 and died of lung cancer in Toulouse, France, on 23 November 1956. He was a leading figure in the French Communist Party, the "PCF", for nearly thirty years. He was also: a member of the National Assembly, with some interruptions, from 1924 to 1955; Secretary of Comintern from 1935 to 1944; and Political Commissar of the International Brigades in Spain from 1936 to 1938.
- George Padmore
George Padmore (1902-1959), born Malcolm Nurse, was a Trinidadian communist and later a leading Pan-Africanist with anti-communist sympathies. Through his work with communism and decolonisation Padmore was one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. He was born in Arouca, Trinidad. In 1924 he travelled to Fisk University in Tennessee where he studied medicine.
- Robert Minor
Robert Minor (1884 - 1952) was cartoonist and a leading member of the American Communist Party.
- Ian Birchall
Ian Birchall (born 1939) is a British Marxist historian, a member of the Socialist Workers Party and author of numerous articles and books, particularly relating to the French Left. Formerly Senior Lecturer in French at Middlesex University, his research interests include the Comintern, the International Working Class, Communism and Trotskyism, France and Syndicalism, Babeuf, Sartre, Victor Serge and Alfred Rosmer.
- Zhang Wentian
Zhang Wentian (1900-July 1, 1976), also known as Luo Fu, was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) from 1935 to March 20, 1943. A native of Pudong Shanghai, Zhang joined the CPC in 1925 and was sent to study at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow, which was set up under Kuomintang's founder Sun Yat-sen's policy of alliance between the Soviet Union and CPC to train Chinese revolutionaries and named after him.
- John Pepper
John Pepper, real name József Pogány, also known as Joseph was a Hungarian-born Communist active in the United States. Pogány participated in the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 with Béla Kun, and, after its failure, he fled to Austria and later to Soviet Russia. He was accused in taking part on October 31, 1918 in the murder of former Hungarian Prime Minister Count István Tisza. In the trial of 1921 he was convicted of murder, …
- José Díaz
José Díaz was a Spanish trade unionist and communist politician.
- Ana Pauker
Ana Pauker (born Hannah Rabinsohn; Yiddish: חנה רבינסון; February 13, 1893 – June 14, 1960) was a Romanian communist leader and served as the country's foreign minister in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She was the unofficial leader of the Romanian Communist Party after World War II.
- Harry Wicks
Harry Wicks (16 August 1905 - 26 March 1989) was a British socialist activist. Born in Battersea, London, he went to work on the railways and joined the National Union of Railwaymen in 1919. He joined the Labour Party, but after Black Friday moved to the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). After studying with A. E. E. Reade, he came to support Leon Trotsky and the International Left Opposition. Elected to the executive of the Young Communist League in 1926, …
- Eugene Dennis
Eugene Dennis (August 10 1905 - January 31 1961) was a long-time leader of the Communist Party USA and union organizer. He was born Francis Xavier Waldron in Seattle but adopted the pseudonym of Eugene Dennis in the 1930s. He worked in various jobs and was active in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) prior to joining the Communist Party in 1926 and was active in California as a union organizer.
- Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi was a Hungarian dictator and the leader of Hungary from 1945 to 1956 through his post as General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party. Rákosi was born in Ada, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Serbia). The sixth son of a Jewish grocer, he later repudiated religion. He served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War and was captured on the Eastern Front.
- Vittorio Vidali
Vittorio Vidali (1900 - 1983), also known as "Vittorio Vidale", "Enea Sormenti", "Jacobo Hurwitz Zender", "Carlos Contreras", "Comandante Carlos") was an Italian-born Stalinist assassin and what is commonly called a "communist agent". He was born in Trieste. Outside of Spain (where Vidali is said to have killed 400 people), …