Lev Borisovich Kamenev was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. He was born in Moscow to parents who had both been involved in revolutionary politics in the 1870s. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1901 and was active in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Kamenev participated in the failed Russian Revolution of 1905. Relocating abroad in 1908, he became an early member of the Bolsheviks and a close associate of the exiled Vladimir Lenin. In 1914, he was arrested upon returning to Saint Petersburg and exiled to Siberia. Kamenev was able to return after the February Revolution of 1917, which overthrew the Tsarist monarchy. In 1917, he served briefly as the equivalent of the first head of state of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. He disagreed with Lenin's strategy of armed uprising during the October Revolution but nevertheless remained in a position of power after the fall of the Provisional Government. In 1919, Kamenev was elected a full member of the first Politburo.

The Old Bolsheviks, also called the Old Bolshevik Guard or Old Party Guard, were members of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Many Old Bolsheviks became leading politicians and bureaucrats in the Soviet Union and the ruling Communist Party. While some died over the years from natural causes, many were removed from power, imprisoned in gulags or executed in the late 1930s, as a result of the Great Purge by Joseph Stalin.