Key Profiles in Russia

Tsar Nicholas II

Nikoloi Aleksandrovich Romanov never wanted to be Tsar, but was determined to fulfill his divine callong & uphold autocracy.
Found escape in his family life.
Defeat in a war against Japan in 1904-1905 brought strikes. this led to a 'revolution' as events spiralled out of control after the Tsarist army shot at a crowd demanding reform in St Petersburg.
Tsar Nicholas II was forced to establish a state Duma, but restricted its power & continued to use his Okhrana to crush opposition.
Handling of First World War led to popular demonstration in 1917, forced the Tsar to abdicate.
Executed by Bolsheviks in January 1918.

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Tsarina Alexandra 1872-1918

Her mother was the youngest child of Queen Victoria of England.
Proved a great comfort for Nicholas but her lack of political understanding & her devotion to Rasputin weakened his position.
Distraught by Rasputin's murder in 1916 but vontinued to urge Nicholas to stand up to the revolutionaries in February 1917.
She was shot, along with her family, in March 1918

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Vladimir Lenin 1870-1924

Came from a well-to-do professional family & trained as a lawyer.
Attracted by Marxism & his activities brought him to the attention of the secret police.
Wrote a programe for the new Socail Democrat Party in 1898 despite being in exile in Siberia.
Went into exile in Switzerland.
In 1902 he produced the pamphlet 'What is to be done?', in which he argued the Party needed to redirect workers towards a revolution that would destroy the Tsarist autocracy.
Founded the Iskra, new revolutionary newspaper, & helped develop a stromg underground Party network.
Harsh & uncompromising attitude led Social Democrats to split into Bolsheviks & Mensheviks in 1903.
Remained in exile until 1917.

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Aleksandr Kerensky 1881-1970

Was a lawyer who became involved in radical politics.
In 1912 he was elected to the State Duma & in 1917 he joined the Social Revolutionaries.
Became an SR representative in the Petrograd Soviet & Minister of Justice in the Provisional Government after the February revolution.
Became Minister of War in May & Prime Minister in July.
Deposed by Bolsheviks & fled to France.
Finally moved to the USA & wrote extensively on the Russian Revolution.

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Aleksandr Guchkov 1862-1936

Became leader of the Octoberist Party.
Became Minister of War & of the Navy in the Provisional Government of 1917.
Resigned when his policy of continuing war until victory was rejected by the Soviet in May.
He supported the Whites in the Civil War & emigrated to Berlin.

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Pavel Milyukov 1859-1943

Founded the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party.
Became Foreign Minister in the 1917 Provisinal Government.
Forced out in May over his support for 'war to victory'.
Also supported the Whites in the Civil War & emigrated to Paris when they were defeated.

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Leon Trotsky 1879-1940

Exiled to Siberia in 1898 for his involvement in radical groups & studied the work of Marx & Lenin there.
In 1902, he escaped (using the passport in the name of a prison guard-Trotsky).
He went to London, met Lenin & returned to founf the St Petersburg Soviet in 1905
Escaped prison in 1907, travelled & was in the USA in 1917 at the time of the first revolution.
Returned to Russia in May, became a Bolshevik, chaired the Petrograd Soviet & organised the Military Revolutionary Committee which he used to plan the Bolshevik takeover in October.
Became Commissar for Foreign Affairs.
Expelled from the Party in 1929 & murdered by a Stalinist agent in Mexico in 1940.

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Lev Kamenev 1883-1936

Was the son of a Jewish railway engineer, who joined the Social Democrats in 1901.
Arrested many times & deprted to Siberia where he met Stalin.
He returned in April 1917 & edited Pravda opposing Lenin's April Theses.
He voted against an armed uprising in 1917, preferring a coalition with the Socialists.
Nevertheless he was made a Commissar in Lenin's government & joined Trotsky at the Brest-Litovsk negotiations.
He was forced from power by Stalin.
Expelled from the Party in 1932 & executed in 1936.

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Josef Stalin 1879=1953

Was the son of a Georgian cobbler.
One of the few leading Bolsheviks who could claim peasant roots.
He had trained as a priest but was attracted by Social Democracy.
He was repeatedly arrested & exiled to Siberia , but he escaped several times, taking the name Stalin (Man of Steel)
He became a Bolshevik & helped raise money by robbing banks.
He played only a minor role in the October revolution byt was made Commissar for Nationalities because of his background.
He eventually took the leadership of Russia after Lenin's death.

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Grigorii Zinoviev 1883-1936

Was of Jewish origin.
He joined the Social Democratic Party in 1901 & was a member of the Central Committee from 1907 -1927.
He was close to Lenin on exile & returned with him in 1917 in the sealed train.
He supported Kamenev against the October revolution, favourig cooperation with other Socialist groups.
He became the head f the Party's Petrograd organisation.
He was expelled from the Party by Stalin & executed in 1936.

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Felix Dzerzhininsky 1877-1926

Had joined the Social Democrats in 1895 & had spent much time in exile before 1917.
His loyalty to Lenin & reputation for toughness led to his involvement with the Revolutionary Military Committee.
In December 1917 he was made the head of the Cheka-a new secret police force set up by Lenin.
In this position he was to be responsible for the 'Red Terror' of the 1920s.

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Mikhail Tukhachevsky 1893-1937

Had served in the Imperial Army in the First World War & was an officer in the Red Army from 1918.
He led the defence of Moscow, commanded forces that recaptured Siberia from Kolchak & led Cossack troops against Denikin in 1920.
He also took part in the Russian war with Poland (1920-1921) & the suppression of the Kronstadt Rebellion (1921).
He led the modernisation of the Red Army prior to the Second World War & served as Chief of Staff (1925-1928) & Deputy Commissar for Defence from 1931.
He was convicted & executed by Stalin during the purges of 1937.

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Karl Radek 1885-1939

Was a revolutionary socialist active in Poland & Germany before 1914.
He joined the Bolsheviks & rose to become Vice Commissar for Foreign Affairs under Trotsky.
He firmly beileved in the world revolution & became secretary to the Comintern.
He joined the Left Opposition in support of Trotsky in 1923.
He was removed from the Central Committee in 1924, expelled from the Party in 1927 & deported to Siberia in 1928.

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Nikolai Bukharin 1888-1938

Opposed making peace with Germany in 1918.
During the Civil War he backed war communism but later supported the NEP.
In the mid 1920s Bukharin & Stalin were virtually joint rulers of the USSR.
Bukharin opposed Trotsky & supported Socialism in One Country, but later split with Stalin & became part of the Right Opposition, with Tomsky & Rykov.
From 1928 he was outmanouvered by Stalin & his influence declined.
In 1937, he was expeeled from the Central Committee; in 1938 he was executed after a show trial.

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Mikhail Tomsky 1880-1936

Was from a working-class background.
He was in charge of the trade unions from 1920 but fell out with Lenin over the role of the unions under the NEP.
He was elected to the Politburo in 1922; he was one of the pall bearers at Lenin's funeral.
Tomsky was hostile to the left & allied himself with Bukharin.
He was expelled from the Politburo in 1930.
He committed suicide in 1936 to avoid being killed in Stalin's Great Terror.

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Alexei Rykov 1881-1938

Was a moderate Bolshevik who supported the idea of a coalition with other socialists in 1917.
He was Commissar of the Interior in 1917-1918 & a member of the Politburo.
Was Lenin's successor as Head of Government (the Council of People's Commissars) between 1924 & 1930.
He was briefly Stalin's ally against Trotsky, but then joined Bukharin's right-wing group & supported the NEP.
Rykov was sacked from the Politburo & all other posts after Bukharin's downfall.
He was executed in 1938 after a show trial.

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Vyacheslav Molotov 1890-1986

The son of a shop assisstant.
He joined the Bolsheviks in 1906, was twice exiled to Siberia & was involved in the Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd in 1917.
A loyal ally of Stalin, he was Second Secretary from 1922.
Played a key role in Stalin's rise to power.
He replaced Rykov as as Party Chairman in 1930 & was then Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939-1949.
He was ousted by Krushchev in 1956.

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Sergei Kirov 1886-1934

Ws active in the revolutions of 1905 & 1917.
Was a flamboyant military commander in the North Caucausus in the Civil War.
He became prominent in the party organisation in Azerbaijan; in 1926 he was handpicked by Stalin to replace Zinoviev as Party boss in Leningrad.
He was popular with the Party membership & seen as a rising star, possibly why he was assassinated, on Stalin's secret orders, in 1934.

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Maksim Litvinov 1876-1951

Was from a wealthy family of Lituanian Jews.
Ge was active in revolutionary politics fom 1898 & joned the Bolsheviks in 1903.
He was exile from 1906 mostly in Britain.
In 1918 Lenin appointed him Soviet envoy to Britain.
He was Chicherin's deputy & replaced Chichrin as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in 1930.

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Martemyan Ryutin 1890-1937

Had become a member of the Central Committee in 1927 & was a supporter of moderate agrarian policies.
He was expelled from the Party imn 1930 for criticising collectiviastion.
On realease from gaol he circulated documents which blamed Stalin for the USSR's economic problems.
He was arrested in 1932 & given a ten-year prison sentence.
Ryutin was ultimately executed in January 1937 as part of the Yezhovshchina.

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Genrikh Yagoda 1891-1938

Had joined the Chek at the end of the Civil War.
Became head of the secret police (NKVD) in 1934.
He was responsible for preparing th efirst major show trial in 1936, but was accused of being insufficiently thorough, arrested, tried & executed in 1938.

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Nikolai Yezhov 1895-1939

Had been a political Commissar during the Civil War & afterwards worked for the Party & Komsomol.
He joined the OGPU & in 1936 replaced Yagoda as the head of the NKVD.
During his time in this role, from September 1936-December 1938, he was responsible for the Yezhovshchina-a period of purges & terror.
He was one of Stalin's proteges-intelligent, hard-working & loyal.
However, he had a more sinister side as a tension-riddled, alcoholic, drug-addicted deviant who persoanlly supervised torture.
In 1939, when Stalin wished to end the terror, Yezhov was quietly removed from office & shot, being made a scapegoat for the excesses of the purges.

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Lavrentii Beria 1899-1953

Was, like Stalin, from Georgia.
From 1953 he became part of the Moscow Party elite: he replaced Yezhov as NKVD chief in 1938 & played a key role in Stalin's purges.
During the war he organised mass deportations of 'suspect' nationalities including the Crimean Tatars in 1944.
He also organised the use of workers in the gulags for war production.
In 1945 , he was put in charge of developing the Soviet atomic bomb.
He was also central to 'High Stalinism' & renewed purges.
In 1953, he was overthrown & killed in a coup led by Krushchev & Zhukov, after Stalin's death.

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Trofim Lysenko 1898-1976

Was a Soviet biologist & agronomist who exercised considerable influence over Soviet policies.
His genetic theories influenced agricultural practices in the 1930s & were extended to account for the evolution of Soviet man.
Lysenko received unconditional backing from Stalin: those who opposed his views were silenced.
His doctrines were not discredited until after 1964.

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Maxim Gorky 1868-1936

Already a renowned author in tsarist Russia, Gorky had becme disillusioned by the Civil War & lived abroad between 1921 & 1928.
Stalin persuaded him to return to Russia because of his reputation & he helped in the development of socialist realism.
He received many honours & had a major street in Moscow named after him, as well as the town where he had been born.
He died while undergoing medical treatment. It is possible that he was murdered on Stalin's orders.

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Boris Paternak 1890-1960

Was a leading Russian poet who had initially welcomed the revolution, but by the 1930s, was considered 'bourgeois' for his failure to embrace socialist realism.
Pasternak found it impossible to write in the atmosphere of the 1930s.
Stalin is sid to have had Pastenak's name removed from a list of intellectuals to be purged because he admired his translations of Georgian classics.
Although he became internationally famous for his semi-autobiographical Doctor Zhivago, written in the war years, he continued to be persecuted in the USSR during Stalin's later years.

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Dmitri Shostakovich 1906-1975

Was a world famous composer of symphonies, chamber music & choral works.
He was ofen in disgrace with the Soviet regime, particularly during the Zhandov cultural purge after 1946.
During the war he was treated as a hero for his 'Leningrad' symphony, composed during the siege of Leningrad, but he never felt safe until after Stalin's death in 1953.

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Georgy Zhukov 1896-1974

Was a career soldier in the Red Army.
He won medals in the First World War & in the Russian Civil War.
He was promoted to senior positions in 1937 & 1938, during the army purges.
In 1939 he was given command on the Mongolia front; his victory at Khalkhin Gol led to him being made a Hero of the Soviet Union.
He was probably the most important of all Stalin's generals in the Great Patriortic War from 1941-1945, though the two men often crashed.
He was demoted in 1948 but was restored to favour by Krushchev after Stalin's death.

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Andrei Tupolev

Was a talented engineer who had a prominent role in the design & development of Soviet military aircraft, especially bombers.
From 1929 he was chief designer, basing his work on the Junkers factory near Moscow that was part of Soviet-German military cooperation after Rapallo.
In 1935, Tupolev designed the biggest-ever aircraft the Maxim Gorky,.
In 1937he was arrested during the urges but released in 1941 to work in war production.
He was not fully rehabilitated until 1956.

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