1.
Lev Lvovich Kamenev
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Lev Lvovich Kamenev, was a Russian landscape painter. A passion for painting with Lev Kamenev saw grandfather of Konstantin Korovin, traveling to Germany and Switzerland, he carried out together with Ivan Shishkin. The real blooming of Kamenev creative came in 1860-70s, when his painting Winter Road took its place in the Tretyakov collection, between the 1871-1884 Kamenev took part at the exhibitions of the Association. In 1886 Kamenev died in poverty and solitude
Lev Lvovich Kamenev
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Old Oak, 1859.
Lev Lvovich Kamenev
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Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery near Zvenigorod, 1860s.
Lev Lvovich Kamenev
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By the Dam, 1864.
Lev Lvovich Kamenev
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Winter Road, 1866.
2.
Vladimir Lenin
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Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by the alias Lenin, was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of the Russian Republic from 1917 to 1918, of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 to 1924, under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party socialist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism, born to a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brothers execution in 1887. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empires Tsarist regime and he moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye for three years, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, after his exile, he moved to Western Europe, where he became a prominent party theorist through his publications. In 1903, he took a key role in a RSDLP ideological split, Lenins government was led by the Bolsheviks—now renamed the Communist Party—with some powers initially also held by elected soviets. It redistributed land among the peasantry and nationalised banks and large-scale industry, opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror, a violent campaign orchestrated by the state security services, tens of thousands were killed and others interned in concentration camps. Anti-Bolshevik armies, established by both right and left-wing groups, were defeated in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, responding to wartime devastation, famine, and popular uprisings, in 1921 Lenin promoted economic growth through a mixed economic system. Seeking to promote world revolution, Lenins government created the Communist International, waged the Polish–Soviet War, in increasingly poor health, Lenin expressed opposition to the growing power of his successor, Joseph Stalin, before dying at his Gorki mansion. He became a figurehead behind Marxism-Leninism and thus a prominent influence over the international communist movement. Lenins father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, was from a family of serfs, his origins remain unclear, with suggestions being made that he was Russian, Chuvash, Mordvin. Despite this lower-class background he had risen to middle-class status, studying physics and mathematics at Kazan Imperial University before teaching at the Penza Institute for the Nobility, Ilya married Maria Alexandrovna Blank in mid-1863. Well educated and from a prosperous background, she was the daughter of a German–Swedish woman. Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained a job in Nizhny Novgorod, five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the governments plans for modernisation. His dedication to education earned him the Order of St. Vladimir, the couple had two children, Anna and Alexander, before Lenin—who would gain the childhood nickname of Volodya—was born in Simbirsk on 10 April 1870, and baptised several days later. They were followed by three children, Olga, Dmitry, and Maria. Two later siblings died in infancy, Ilya was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it, although Maria – a Lutheran – was largely indifferent to Christianity, a view that influenced her children. Every summer they holidayed at a manor in Kokushkino
Vladimir Lenin
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Lenin in 1920
Vladimir Lenin
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"Volodya", aged four.
Vladimir Lenin
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Lenin, c. 1887.
Vladimir Lenin
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Lenin (left) in December 1895 and his wife Nadezhda.
3.
Alexey Rykov
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Alexei Ivanovich Rykov was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician most prominent as Premier of Russia and the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1929 and 1924 to 1930 respectively. Rykov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898, and after it split into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions in 1903 and he played an active part in the 1905 Russian Revolution. During the Russian Civil War, Rykov oversaw the implementation of the War Communism economic policy, after Lenin was incapacitated by his third stroke in March 1923 Rykov—along with Lev Kamenev—was elected by the Sovnarkom to serve as Deputy Chairman to Lenin. While both Rykov and Kamenev were Lenins deputies, Kamenev was the acting Premier of the Soviet Union, on 21 December 1930 he was removed from the Politburo. From 1931-37 Rykov served as Peoples Commissar of Communications on the Council he formerly chaired, on 17 February 1937—at a meeting of the Central Committee—he was arrested with Nikolai Bukharin. In March 1938 both were found guilty of treason and executed, Alexei Ivanovich Rykov was born on 25 February 1881 in Saratov, Russia. His parents were peasants from the village of Kukarka, alexeis father, Ivan Illych Rykov, a farmer whose work had led the family to settle in Saratov died in 1889 from cholera while working in Merv. His widowed stepmother could not care for him, so he was cared for by his sister, Klavdiya Ivanovna Rykova. In 1892 he began his first year of school in Saratov. An outstanding student, he started school at age 13. He excelled in mathematics, physics and the natural sciences, at 15 Rykov stopped attending church and confession, and renounced his faith. He graduated from school in 1900 and enrolled at the University of Kazan to study law. Rykov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898 and supported its Bolshevik faction when the party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at its Second Congress in 1903. He worked as a Bolshevik agent in Moscow and Saint Petersburg and he was elected a member of the Partys Central Committee at its 3rd Congress in London in 1905 and its 4th Congress in Copenhagen in 1906. He was elected member of the Central Committee at the 5th Congress in London. He spent 1910-11 exiled in France, and in 1912 expressed reproach towards Lenins proposal that the Bolsheviks become an independent party, the dispute was interrupted by Rykovs exile to Siberia for revolutionary activity. Rykov returned from Siberia after the February Revolution of 1917 and re-joined the Bolsheviks and he became a member of the Petrograd Soviet and the Moscow Soviet. At the 6th Congress of the Bolshevik Party in July–August 1917 he was elected to the Central Committee, during the October Revolution of 1917, he was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee in Moscow
Alexey Rykov
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Alexei Rykov Алексей Рыков
Alexey Rykov
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Alexei Ivanovich Rykov
Alexey Rykov
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Rykov on the cover of
Time in 1924
Alexey Rykov
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Rykov as Soviet Premier, mid-1920s
4.
Lenin Institute
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The Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, launched in Moscow in 1919 as the Marx-Engels Institute, was a Soviet library and archive attached to the Communist Academy. The Marx-Engels Institute gathered unpublished manuscripts by Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Lenin, and other leading Marxist theoreticians as well as collecting books, pamphlets, and periodicals related to the socialist and organized labor movements. In February 1931 director of the Marx-Engels Institute David Riazanov and others on the staff were purged for ideological reasons, in November of that same year the Marx-Engels Institute was merged with the larger and less scholarly Lenin Institute to form the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute. The institute was the authority for the systematic organization of documents released in the multi-volume works Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe. Stalin Sochineniia, and numerous other official publications, the institute was officially terminated in November 1991, with the bulk of its archival holdings now residing with a successor organization, the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History. First director of the facility, located in Moscow, was David Riazanov, among these were 55,000 manuscripts by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels alone — far and away the single most important accumulation of such material. The Institute included a staff which engaged in research on historical and topical themes of interest to the regime. Also included were sections working in philosophy, economics, political science, the main research orientation of the facility was towards history rather than other social sciences. By 1930 of the 109 employed by the Marx-Engels Institute, fully 87 were historians, the institute also published two regular academic journals, Arkhiv Karla Marksa i Friderikha Engelsa and Letopis marksizma. This work was accomplished through the publication of a periodical called Leninskii sbornik. In 1928 Istpart was dissolved, its functions absorbed by the Lenin Institute. The Lenin Institute was initially headed by Lev Kamenev, followed by Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov and, after his death in 1928, although modern scholars consider the accusation in the February show trial to have been extremely dubious, Riazanov was nevertheless arrested and sent into exile outside of Moscow. A purge of Marx-Engels Institute staff deemed to be ideologically suspicious followed, in November 1931 in the wake of the ideological purges of the Marx-Engels Institute that entity was merged with the larger Lenin Institute to form the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute. The Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute was subsequently renamed multiple times, in 1952 the facilitys formal attachment to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was formally noted with the expanded moniker Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute of the CC CPSU. The name of deceased Soviet leader I. V, stalin was added in 1956, with the institute formally becoming the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Institute of the CC CPSU. This remained in place until the onset of destalinization following the so-called Secret Speech of Nikita Khrushchev in 1956, at this point the name changed to Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU. This name remained unaltered for nearly 35 years, when turmoil in the USSR brought about a change to Institute of the Theory and History of Socialism of the CC CPSU. The Central Party Archive of the IML was placed under the control of the Russian Ministry of Culture, Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History Institute of Marxism-Leninism
Lenin Institute
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The Lenin Institute building in Moscow as it appeared in 1931.
Lenin Institute
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David Riazanov (1870-1938), head of the Marx-Engels Institute from its formation in 1919 until his arrest in February 1931.
5.
Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov
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Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov-Stepanov was a prominent Russian Bolshevik. Skvortsov-Stepanov was one of the oldest participants in the Russian revolutionary movement, Ivan was the son of a Moscow factory clerical worker based in Bogorodsk. He joined the movement in 1892 and became a Bolshevik in the winter of 1904. When Borba was published in November 1905, Skvortsov-Stepanov was a member of the editorial board, in 1906 he was a delegate to the Fourth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, where he supported Lenin. During the period 1907–10, he favoured the Mezhraiontsy faction, and he was repeatedly arrested and exiled for his revolutionary activities. Following the Revolution of 1917 he became the Peoples Commissar for Finance of the RSFSR, upon his death in October 1928, Stepanov was commemorated by Stalin as a staunch and steadfast Leninist. Izbrannye ateisticheskie proizvedeniia Letter from Lenin to Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov,2 December 1909
Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov
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Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov Ива́н Скворцо́в-Степа́нов
6.
All-Russian Central Executive Committee
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The All-Russian Central Executive Committee, was the highest legislative, administrative, and revising body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1917 until 1937. Although the All-Russian Congress of Soviets had supreme authority, in periods between its sessions its powers were passed to VTsIK, by the Russian Constitution VTsIK was obligated to convene the All-Russian Congress of Soviets not fewer than two times a year. Extraordinary Congresses could be called whether from the initiative of VTsIK or on the request of local Soviets, the VTsIK was elected by the full Congress, with no more than 200 individuals. It was completely responsible to the Congress, the functions of the Collegiate or the Presidium were not declared in the Constitution but presumably they were supposed to be purely supervisory or revisionary bodies. VTsIK gave a direction for the policies of the Workers-Peasant government. VTsIK convoked the All-Russian Congress of Soviets to which it presented the reports on its activity, general policy, members of VTsIK worked in the departments or executed special assignments of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Equally with the All-Russian Congress of Soviets VTsIK defined the State budget as well as budgets in different regions, All-Russian Central Executive Committee was first elected at the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd, June 3–24,1917. The first Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets was not a governing body and this changed at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets during the October Revolution. The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets met in, and elected the second Central Executive Committee and this then became the executive body of the RSFSR. It was composed of 62 Bolsheviks 29 Social Revolutionaries 10 Mensheviks The first chairman of the CEC was Lev Kamenev and he only cast a vote if there was an even split in the committee. The full name at a one time was All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Workers, Peasants, Red Army, from the formation of the Soviet Union, it downgraded from first level to second level of governing body. Following the adoption of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, this organ was replaced with the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR, Lev Kamenev Yakov Sverdlov Mikhail Vladimirsky Mikhail Kalinin On December 30,1922 the Soviet Union was formed. It comprised the Russian SFSR and other communist-controlled Soviet republics, both positions were mostly ceremonial, increasingly so in later years. Supreme Soviet Text of the Russian Constitution of 1918
All-Russian Central Executive Committee
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Soviet Union
7.
All-Russian Congress of Soviets
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The All-Russian Congress of Soviets was the supreme governing body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1917 until 1936, effectively. The October Revolution ousted the government, making the Congress of Soviets the sole. It is important to note that this Congress was not the same as the Congress of Soviets of the Soviet Union which governed the whole Soviet Union after its creation in 1922, for the earlier portion of its life, the Congress was a democratic body. Over Russia there were hundreds of soviets, democratic local governing bodies in which the population could participate. The soviets elected the delegates to the Congress, and then in turn the Congress held the national authority, there were several political parties represented in the various sessions of the Congress, each of which fought for increasing their own influence in the soviets. The Congress was formed of representatives of city councils and the congresses of the provincial, on the other issues, the Congress and the Central Executive Committee had the same authority. The First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies was convened by the National Conference of the Soviets and it was dominated by pro-government parties and confirmed the supremacy of the Russian Provisional Government. There were 1090 delegates,822 with a right to vote, representing 305 workers, soldiers and peasant soviets, the breakdown of delegates by party was thus,285 Socialist-Revolutionaries,248 Mensheviks,105 Bolsheviks,32 Menshevik Internationalists, and others. The right to vote was given to these soviets containing at least 25,000 persons, on the first day of the Congress, the Socialist Revolutionaries split into two groups - the Left Social Revolutionaries and the Right Social Revolutionaries. Also on the first day, the Menshevik delegation and Right Socialist Revolutionary deputies walked out in protest,505 delegates voted in favour of the transfer of power to the Soviets. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee and Council of Peoples Commissars was elected by the Congress, naming Lenin the Chairman, uttering what are sometimes called the Land Decree and Decree on Peace. The Bolsheviks comprised 441 of the 707 delegates, on the fourth day January 13, more delegates who had been at the Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Peasants Deputies arrived. By the end there were 1,587 delegates, the Congress had a Praesidium composed of ten Bolsheviks and three Left Socialist-Revolutionaries with a further delegate from each other group. The Swiss, Rumanian, Swedish and Norwegian Social-Democratic parties, the British Socialist Party, the Congress received, Yakov Sverdlovs report on the activity of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Vladimir Lenins report on the activity of the Council of Peoples Commissars, joseph Stalins report from the Peoples Commissariat of Nationalities on the principles of federation and the nationalities policy for the emerging Soviet state. The Mensheviks, Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Menshevik internationalists used the Congress to indicate their opposition to the domestic, the Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People was passed and this went on to become the basis of the Soviet Constitution. It was also agreed to establish the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic on the basis of a union of the peoples of Russia. The Congress also approved the Decree on Land which provided the provisions of the redistribution and nationalization of land
All-Russian Congress of Soviets
All-Russian Congress of Soviets
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All-Russian Congress of Soviets Всероссийский Съезд Советов
8.
Nikolai Chkheidze
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Nikoloz Chkheidze commonly known as Karlo Chkheidze or Nicolas Cheidze was a Georgian Social Democrat politician. In the 1890s, he promoted Marxism in Georgia, Chkheidze was born to an aristocratic family in Poti, Shorapansky Uyezd, Kutaisi Governorate. He married and had a daughter, in 1892, Chkheidze, together with Egnate Ninoshvili, Silibistro Jibladze, Noe Zhordania and Kalenike Chkheidze, became a founder of the first Georgian Social-Democratic group, Mesame Dasi. From 1907 to 1916, Chkheidze was a member of Tiflis Gubernyia in the Russian State Duma, in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, Chkheidze became Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. He failed to prevent the rise of radical Bolshevism and refused a post in the Russian Provisional Government, however, he did support its policies and advocated revolutionary oboronchestvo. He also voted to continue the war against the German Empire, in October 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. At the time, Chkheidze was in Georgia and he remained in Georgia and on 23 February 1918, became leader of the Transcaucasian Federation in Tiflis. Some months later the federation was dissolved, on 26 May 1918, Chkheidze was elected chairman of the National Council of Georgia in Tiflis. He was then elected chairman of the Georgian Provisional Assembly when the council adopted an Act of Independence, in February 1919, as a member of the Social Democratic Party of Georgia, he was elected president of the Constituent Assembly. In 1919, Chkheidze chaired the Georgian delegation to the Versailles Conference where he tried to gain the Ententes support for a Democratic Republic of Georgia. He also proposed to Georges Clémenceau and to David Lloyd George a French or British protectorate for Georgian foreign affairs and defense, Chkheidze was one of the authors of the constitution of 1921 of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. In March 1921, when the Red Army invaded Georgia, Chkheidze fled with his family to France via Constantinople, in 1923 and 1924, as part of the Social Democratic Labour Party of Georgia in exile, Chkheidze opposed a national uprising in Georgia. Chkheidze, Irakly Tsereteli, Datiko Sharashidze, and Kale Kavtaradze formed a group called Oppozitsia, in their mind, the Red Army and Cheka were too strong, and the unarmed Georgian people too weak. After the August Uprising of 1924, more than 10,000 Georgians were executed, on 13 June 1926, Chkheidze committed suicide, in his official residence in Leuville-sur-Orge, France
Nikolai Chkheidze
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Nikolay Chkheidze, Russian, Transcaucasian and Georgian parliamentary president
9.
Yakov Sverdlov
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Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov was a Bolshevik party administrator and chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Sverdlov was born in Nizhny Novgorod as Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov to Jewish parents Mikhail Izrailevich Sverdlov and his father was a politically active engraver who produced forged documents and stored arms for the revolutionary underground. The Sverdlov family had six children, two daughters and four sons, after his wifes death in 1900, Mikhail converted with his family to the Russian Orthodox Church, married Maria Aleksandrovna Kormiltseva, and had two more sons, Herman and Alexander. Yakovs eldest brother Zinovy was adopted by Maxim Gorky, who was a frequent guest at the house, Yakov Sverdlov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1902, and then the Bolshevik faction, supporting Vladimir Lenin. He was involved in the 1905 revolution while living in the Ural Mountains, after four years of high school, he became a major activist and speaker in Nizhny Novgorod. For most of the time from his arrest in June 1906 until 1917 he was imprisoned or exiled. During the period 1914–1916 he was in exile in Turukhansk, Siberia. Both had been betrayed by the Okhrana agent Roman Malinovsky, like Stalin, he was co-opted in absentia to the 1912 Prague Conference. After the 1917 February Revolution Sverdlov returned to Petrograd from exile and was re-elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party and he played an important role in planning the October Revolution. He first met Lenin in April 1917 and was trusted as the chairman of the Central Committee Secretariat. Sverdlov was elected chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in November and he played an important role in the controversial decision to end the Russian Constituent Assembly and the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Sverdlov had a memory and was able to retain the names. His organizational capability was well-regarded and during his chairmanship thousands of party committees were initiated. Sverdlov is sometimes regarded as the first head of state of the Soviet Union, although the Soviet Union wasnt established until 1922, a number of sources claim that Sverdlov played a major role in the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. A book written in 1990 by the Moscow playwright Edvard Radzinsky claims that Sverdlov ordered their execution on 16 July 1918 and this book as well as other Radzinskys books were characterized as folk history by journalists and academic historians. However Yuri Slezkine in his book The Jewish Century expressed the opinion, Early in the Civil War, in June 1918, Lenin ordered the killing of Nicholas II. Among the men entrusted with carrying out the orders were Sverdlov, Filipp Goloshchekin and it referred to Sverdlov by his Jewish nickname Yankel and to Goloshchekin as Isaac. According to Leon Trotskys diaries, after returning from the front he had the following dialogue with Sverdlov, -By the way, -And the family, together with him
Yakov Sverdlov
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Yakov Sverdlov Я́ков Свердло́в
Yakov Sverdlov
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Snow-covered statue of Sverdlov in
Yekaterinburg, formerly Sverdlovsk.
10.
Moscow
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Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits and 17.8 million within the urban area. Moscow has the status of a Russian federal city, Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the largest city entirely on the European continent. Moscow is the northernmost and coldest megacity and metropolis on Earth and it is home to the Ostankino Tower, the tallest free standing structure in Europe, the Federation Tower, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and the Moscow International Business Center. Moscow is situated on the Moskva River in the Central Federal District of European Russia, the city is well known for its architecture, particularly its historic buildings such as Saint Basils Cathedral with its brightly colored domes. Moscow is the seat of power of the Government of Russia, being the site of the Moscow Kremlin, the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square are also one of several World Heritage Sites in the city. Both chambers of the Russian parliament also sit in the city and it is recognized as one of the citys landmarks due to the rich architecture of its 200 stations. In old Russian the word also meant a church administrative district. The demonym for a Moscow resident is москвич for male or москвичка for female, the name of the city is thought to be derived from the name of the Moskva River. There have been proposed several theories of the origin of the name of the river and its cognates include Russian, музга, muzga pool, puddle, Lithuanian, mazgoti and Latvian, mazgāt to wash, Sanskrit, majjati to drown, Latin, mergō to dip, immerse. There exist as well similar place names in Poland like Mozgawa, the original Old Russian form of the name is reconstructed as *Москы, *Mosky, hence it was one of a few Slavic ū-stem nouns. From the latter forms came the modern Russian name Москва, Moskva, in a similar manner the Latin name Moscovia has been formed, later it became a colloquial name for Russia used in Western Europe in the 16th–17th centuries. From it as well came English Muscovy, various other theories, having little or no scientific ground, are now largely rejected by contemporary linguists. The surface similarity of the name Russia with Rosh, an obscure biblical tribe or country, the oldest evidence of humans on the territory of Moscow dates from the Neolithic. Within the modern bounds of the city other late evidence was discovered, on the territory of the Kremlin, Sparrow Hills, Setun River and Kuntsevskiy forest park, etc. The earliest East Slavic tribes recorded as having expanded to the upper Volga in the 9th to 10th centuries are the Vyatichi and Krivichi, the Moskva River was incorporated as part of Rostov-Suzdal into the Kievan Rus in the 11th century. By AD1100, a settlement had appeared on the mouth of the Neglinnaya River. The first known reference to Moscow dates from 1147 as a place of Yuri Dolgoruky. At the time it was a town on the western border of Vladimir-Suzdal Principality
Moscow
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Left to right, top to bottom:
Moscow State University,
Spasskaya Clocktower,
Cathedral of Christ the Saviour;
Bolshoi Theatre,
Moscow International Business Center;
Red Square
Moscow
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Tatar raid upon Moscow
Moscow
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Map of Moscow, 1784
Moscow
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Red Square, painting by
Fedor Alekseev, 1801
11.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
Russian Empire
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Peter the Great officially renamed the Tsardom of Russia the Russian Empire in 1721, and himself its first emperor. He instituted the
sweeping reforms and oversaw the transformation of Russia into a major European power.
Russian Empire
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Flag
Russian Empire
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Empress
Catherine the Great, who reigned from 1762 to 1796, continued the empire's expansion and modernization. Considering herself an
enlightened absolutist, she played a key role in the
Russian Enlightenment.
Russian Empire
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Catherine II Sestroretsk Rouble (1771) is made of solid copper measuring 77 millimetres (3 3 ⁄ 100 in) (diameter), 26 millimetres (1 1 ⁄ 50 in) (thickness), and weighs 1.022 kg (2.25 lb). It is the largest copper coin ever issued.
12.
Russian SFSR
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The Republic comprised sixteen autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais, and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group, the capital of the Russian SFSR was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. The Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed on November 7,1917 as a sovereign state, the first Constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922 the Russian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, the economy of Russia became heavily industrialized, accounting for about two-thirds of the electricity produced in the USSR. It was, by 1961, the third largest producer of petroleum due to new discoveries in the Volga-Urals region and Siberia, trailing only the United States and Saudi Arabia. In 1974, there were 475 institutes of education in the republic providing education in 47 languages to some 23,941,000 students. A network of territorially organized public-health services provided health care, the effects of market policies led to the failure of many enterprises and total instability by 1990. On June 12,1990, the Congress of Peoples Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty, on June 12,1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected the first President. On December 8,1991, heads of Russia, Ukraine, the agreement declared dissolution of the USSR by its founder states and established the Commonwealth of Independent States. On December 12, the agreement was ratified by the Russian Parliament, therefore Russian SFSR denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and de facto declared Russias independence from the USSR. On December 25,1991, following the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev as president of the Soviet Union, on December 26,1991, the USSR was self-dissolved by the Soviet of Nationalities, which by that time was the only functioning house of the Supreme Soviet. After dissolution of the USSR, Russia declared that it assumed the rights and obligations of the dissolved central Soviet government, the new Russian constitution, adopted on December 12,1993 after a constitutional crisis, abolished the Soviet system of government in its entirety. Initially, the state did not have a name and wasnt recognized by neighboring countries for five months. Meanwhile, anti-Bolsheviks coined the mocking label Sovdepia for the nascent state of the Soviets of Workers, on January 25,1918 the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets renamed the unrecognized state the Soviet Russian Republic. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3,1918, on July 10,1918, the Russian Constitution of 1918 renamed the country the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. By 1918, during the Russian Civil War, several states within the former Russian Empire seceded, internationally, in 1920, the RSFSR was recognized as an independent state only by Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania in the Treaty of Tartu and by the short-lived Irish Republic. On December 30,1922, with the creation of the Soviet Union, the final Soviet name for the republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, was adopted in the Soviet Constitution of 1936. By that time, Soviet Russia had gained roughly the same borders of the old Tsardom of Russia before the Great Northern War of 1700
Russian SFSR
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Flag (1954–1991)
13.
Soviet Union
–
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
Soviet Union
–
Vladimir Lenin addressing a crowd with Trotsky, 1920
Soviet Union
–
Flag
Soviet Union
–
Stalin and
Nikolai Yezhov, head of the
NKVD. After Yezhov was executed, he was
edited out of the image.
Soviet Union
14.
Soviet people
–
Soviet people or Citizens of the USSR was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union. Initially used as a reference to the Soviet population, it was eventually declared to be a new historical, social and international unity of people. Through the history of the Soviet Union, both doctrine and practice regarding ethnic distinctions within the Soviet population varied over time, minority national cultures were not completely abolished in the Soviet Union. By Soviet definition, national cultures were to be socialist by content and national by form, to be used to promote the official aims, the fifth record was the section of the obligatory internal passport document which stated the citizens ethnicity. The 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union finalized this definition, according to the 2010 Russian Census 27,000 Russians identified themselves as members of the Soviet people. Homo Sovieticus Melting pot New Soviet man Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality Rootless cosmopolitan Russification Zhonghua minzu, the equivalent notion in the Peoples Republic of China Yugoslavs
Soviet people
–
Pomerki child sanatory in
Kharkov. Summer 1950
15.
Russian people
–
Russians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. The majority of Russians inhabit the state of Russia, while notable minorities exist in Ukraine, Kazakhstan. A large Russian diaspora exists all over the world, with numbers in the United States, Germany, Israel. Russians are the most numerous group in Europe. They are predominantly Orthodox Christians by religion, the Russian language is official in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and also spoken as a secondary language in many former Soviet states. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians. One is русские, which most often means ethnic Russians, another is россияне, which means citizens of Russia. The former word refers to ethnic Russians, regardless of what country they live in, under certain circumstances this term may or may not extend to denote members of other Russian-speaking ethnic groups from Russia, or from the former Soviet Union. The latter word refers to all people holding citizenship of Russia, regardless of their ethnicity, translations into other languages often do not distinguish these two groups. The name of the Russians derives from the Rus people, the name Rus would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden, Ruotsi and Rootsi. According to other theories the name Rus is derived from Proto-Slavic *roud-s-ь, the modern Russians formed from two groups of East Slavic tribes, Northern and Southern. The tribes involved included the Krivichs, Ilmen Slavs, Radimichs, Vyatiches, genetic studies show that modern Russians do not differ significantly from Belarusians and Ukrainians. Some ethnographers, like Zelenin, affirm that Russians are more similar to Belarusians, such Uralic peoples included the Merya and the Muromians. Outside archaeological remains, little is known about the predecessors to Russians in general prior to 859 AD when the Primary Chronicle starts its records and it is thought that by 600 AD, the Slavs had split linguistically into southern, western, and eastern branches. Later, both Belarusians and South Russians formed on this ethnic linguistic ground, the same Slavic ethnic population also settled the present-day Tver Oblast and the region of Beloozero. With the Uralic substratum, they formed the tribes of the Krivichs, in 2010, the worlds Russian population was 129 million people of which 86% were in Russia,11. 5% in the CIS and Baltic countries, with a further 2. 5% living in other countries. Roughly 111 million ethnic Russians live in Russia, 80% of whom live in the European part of Russia, ethnic Russians historically migrated throughout the area of former Russian Empire and Soviet Union, sometimes encouraged to re-settle in borderlands by the Tsarist and later Soviet government. On some occasions ethnic Russian communities, such as Lipovans who settled in the Danube delta or Doukhobors in Canada, after the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War starting in 1917, many Russians were forced to leave their homeland fleeing the Bolshevik regime, and millions became refugees
Russian people
–
Three generations of a Russian family, ca. 1910
Russian people
–
East Slavic tribes and peoples, 8th-9th century
Russian people
–
Russia's Arctic coastline from the
White Sea to the
Bering Strait had been explored and settled by
Pomors, Russian settlers from
Novgorod
Russian people
–
Terek Cossacks of the north
Caucasus guarded the southern frontier
16.
All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)
–
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks, a group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 on Soviet territory soon after a failed coup détat and was abolished on 6 November 1991 on Russian territory. The highest body within the CPSU was the party Congress, which convened every five years, when the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Orgburo. The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary, Premier or head of state, or some of the three offices concurrently—but never all three at the same time. The CPSU, according to its party statute, adhered to Marxism–Leninism, a based on the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized, a number of causes contributed to CPSUs loss of control and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Some historians have written that Gorbachevs policy of glasnost was the root cause, Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first constitutionally socialist state, was established by the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the October Revolution. Immediately after the Revolution, the new, Lenin-led government implemented socialist reforms, including the transfer of estates, in this context, in 1918, RSDLP became Russian Communist Party and remained so until 1997. Lenin supported world revolution he sought peace with the Central Powers. The treaty was voided after the Allied victory in World War I, in 1921, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialization and recovery from the Civil War. On 30 December 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire in the Soviet Union, on 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered a stroke, which incapacitated him and effectively ended his role in government. He died on 21 January 1924 and was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, after emerging victorious from a power struggle with Trotsky, Stalin obtained full control of the party and Stalinism was installed as the only ideology of the party. The partys official name was All-Union Communist Party in 1925, Stalins political purge greatly affected the partys configuration, as many party members were executed or sentenced for slave labour. Happening during the timespan of the Great Purge, fascism had ascened to power in Italy, seeing this as a potential threat, the Party actively sought to form collective security alliances with Anti-fascist western powers such as France and Britain
All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)
–
Khrushchev succeeded Stalin as the Soviet leader. His rule is best known for his liberalization of political and social life, and the end of terror as a means of social control
All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)
–
The Brezhnev era is commonly referred to by historians as the
Era of Stagnation, a term coined by CPSU General Secretary Gorbachev
All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)
–
Gorbachev, the last leader of the CPSU and the Soviet Union, as seen in 1986
All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)
–
A Politburo resolution to execute 346 "enemies of the CPSU and Soviet Power" who led "counter-revolutionary, right-trotskyite, plotting and spying activities". Signed by Stalin
17.
Olga Kameneva
–
Olga Davidovna Kameneva was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician. She was the sister of Leon Trotsky and the first wife of Lev Kamenev, Olga Bronstein was born in Yanovka, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire, a small village 15 miles from the nearest post office. She was one of two daughters of a wealthy but illiterate farmer, David Leontyevich Bronstein, a Jewish colonist, although the family was of Jewish extraction, they were not religious and the languages spoken at home were Russian and Ukrainian, not Yiddish. Olga Bronstein joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1902 and soon married Lev Kamenev, in 1908, after Lev Kamenevs release from prison, the Kamenevs left Russia for Geneva and then Paris, where Lev Kamenev became one of Vladimir Lenins two deputies. The couple helped Lenin edit the main Bolshevik magazine Proletariy, in January 1914 the Kamenevs moved to St. Petersburg so that Lev could be in immediate control of the Bolsheviks legal newspaper Pravda and their Duma faction. In early 1918, after the October Revolution of 1917, Kameneva was put in charge of the Theater Division of the Peoples Commissariat for Education, working with theatrical director and theorist Vsevolod Meyerhold, she tried to radicalize Russian theaters, effectively nationalizing them under Bolshevik control. However, Meyerhold came down with tuberculosis in May 1919 and had to leave for the south, in his absence, the head of the Commissariat, Anatoly Lunacharsky, secured Lenins permission to revise government policy in favor of more traditional theaters and dismissed Kameneva in June. From the time it was organized in October 1919, Kameneva was a member of the board of directors of the Soviet Communist Partys Womens Section, in 1920 she supported Peoples Commissar of Public Health Nikolai Semashkos opinion that contraception was unquestionably harmful and should not be advocated. In 1923-1925 she was the head of the short-lived Commission for Foreign Relief, throughout the 1920s she also ran a leading literary salon in Moscow. In the early 1920s Kamenevas family life began to disintegrate starting with Lev Kamenevs reputed affair with the British sculptor Clare Sheridan in 1920, in the late 1920s he left Olga Kameneva for Tatiana Glebova, with whom he had a son, Vladimir Glebov. Kameneva quickly lost her influence after Kamenev and Trotskys fall from power in 1927, on 27 July 1935 the NKVD Special Board banned her from Moscow and Leningrad for 5 years in connection with the Kremlin Case. After Lev Kamenevs show trial and execution on 25 August 1936 and her younger son, Yuri Lvovich Kamenev, was executed on 30 January 1938 at the age of 17. Her older son, Air Force officer Alexander Lvovich Kamenev, was executed on 15 July 1939 at the age of 33, in 1941, she was in Oryol Prison. This execution was one of the many NKVD massacres of prisoners committed in 1941
Olga Kameneva
–
Olga Kameneva
Olga Kameneva
18.
Bolshevik
–
The RSDLP was a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898 in Minsk in Belarus to unite the various revolutionary organisations of the Russian Empire into one party. In the Second Party Congress vote, the Bolsheviks won on the majority of important issues and they ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks or Reds came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, with the Reds defeating the Whites, and others during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, the RSFSR became the chief constituent of the Soviet Union in December 1922. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism, in the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, held in Brussels and London during August 1903, Lenin and Julius Martov disagreed over the membership rules. Lenin wanted members who recognise the Party Programme and support it by material means, Julius Martov suggested by regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the partys organisations. Lenin advocated limiting party membership to a core of active members. A main source of the factions could be attributed to Lenin’s steadfast opinion. It was obvious at early stages in Lenin’s revolutionary practices that he would not be willing to concede on any party policy that conflicted with his own predetermined ideas and it was the loyalty that he had to his own self-envisioned utopia that caused the party split. He was seen even by fellow party members as being so narrow minded that he believed there were only two types of people, Friend and enemy—those who followed him, and all the rest. Leon Trotsky, one of Lenins fellow revolutionaries, compared Lenin in 1904 to the French revolutionary Robespierre, Lenins view of politics as verbal and ideological warfare and his inability to accept criticism even if it came from his own dedicated followers was the reason behind this accusation. The root of the split was a book titled What is to be Done. that Lenin wrote while serving a sentence of exile, in Germany, the book was published in 1902, in Russia, strict censorship outlawed its publication and distribution. One of the points of Lenin’s writing was that a revolution can only be achieved by the strong leadership of one person over the masses. After the proposed revolution had overthrown the government, this individual leader must release power. Lenin also wrote that revolutionary leaders must dedicate their lives to the cause in order for it to be successful. Lenins view of a socialist intelligentsia showed that he was not a supporter of Marxist theory. For example, Lenin agreed with the Marxist idea of eliminating social classes, most party members considered unequal treatment of workers immoral, and were loyal to the idea of a completely classless society, so Lenin’s variations caused the party internal dissonance. Although the party split of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would not become official until 1903, as discussed in What is to be Done. Lenin firmly believed that a political structure was needed to effectively initiate a formal revolution
Bolshevik
–
Bolshevik Party meeting. Sitting (from left):
Avel Enukidze,
Mikhail Kalinin,
Nikolai Bukharin,
Mikhail Tomsky,
Mikhail Lashevich,
Lev Kamenev,
Yevgeni Preobrazhensky,
Leonid Serebryakov,
Vladimir Lenin and
Alexei Rykov.
Bolshevik
–
Boris Kustodiev ’s 1920 painting " Bolshevik "
Bolshevik
–
Left to right:
Leon Trotsky,
Vladimir Lenin, and
Lev Kamenev
Bolshevik
–
"Down with Bolshevism. Bolshevism brings war and destruction, hunger and death", anti-Bolshevik propaganda, Germany, 1919.
19.
Grigory Zinoviev
–
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev, born Hirsch Apfelbaum, known also under the name Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician. Zinoviev was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov. Zinoviev is best remembered as the head of the Communist International. He was in competition against Joseph Stalin who eliminated him from the Soviet political leadership in 1926, Zinoviev was the alleged author of the Zinoviev letter to British communists, urging revolution, and published just before the 1924 general election, apparently to provoke a right-wing reaction. The letter is widely dismissed as a forgery, gregory Zinoviev was born in Yelizavetgrad, Russian Empire, to Jewish dairy farmers, who educated him at home. Between 1923 and 1935 the city was known as Zinovyevsk and he studied philosophy, literature and history. He became interested in politics, and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1901 and he was a member of its Bolshevik faction from the time of its creation in 1903. He was elected to the RSDLPs Central Committee in 1907 and sided with Lenin in 1908 when the Bolshevik faction split into Lenins supporters, Zinoviev remained Lenins constant aide-de-camp and representative in various socialist organizations until 1917. Zinoviev spent the first three years of World War I in Switzerland, after the Russian monarchy was overthrown during the February Revolution, he returned to Russia in April 1917 in a sealed train with Lenin and other revolutionaries opposed to the war. He remained a part of the Bolshevik leadership throughout most of that year, however, Zinoviev and Lenin soon had a falling out over Zinovievs opposition to Lenins call for an open insurrection against the Provisional Government. On October 10,1917, he and Lev Kamenev were the only two Central Committee members to vote against an armed revolt and their publication of an open letter opposed to the use of force enraged Lenin, who demanded their expulsion from the party. In response, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Alexei Rykov, Vladimir Milyutin, the following day, Lenin wrote a proclamation calling Zinoviev and Kamenev deserters. He never forgot their behavior, eventually making a reference to their October episode in his Testament. Zinoviev soon returned to the fold and was again elected to the Central Committee at the VII Party Congress on March 8,1918. He was put in charge of the Petrograd city and regional government, sometime in 1918, while Ukraine was under German occupation, the rabbis of Odessa ceremonially anathematized Trotsky, Zinoviev, and other Jewish Bolshevik leaders in the synagogue. He became a member of the ruling Politburo when it was created after the VIII Congress on March 25,1919. He also became the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Comintern when it was created in March 1919, Zinoviev was responsible for Petrograds defense during two periods of intense clashes with White forces in 1919. Trotsky, who was in charge of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, thought little of Zinovievs leadership
Grigory Zinoviev
–
Grigory Zinoviev Григо́рий Евсе́евич Зино́вьев
Grigory Zinoviev
–
Zinoviev in 1908
Grigory Zinoviev
–
Zinoviev, speaking at an engagement with
Maxim Gorky
Grigory Zinoviev
–
Zinoviev speaks
20.
Leon Trotsky
–
Trotsky initially supported the Menshevik Internationalists faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He joined the Bolsheviks just before the 1917 October Revolution, and he was, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov, one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution. He was a figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War. As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union from exile, on Stalins orders, he was assassinated in Mexico in August 1940 by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born Soviet agent. Trotskys ideas formed the basis of Trotskyism, a school of Marxist thought that opposes the theories of Stalinism. He was written out of the books under Stalin, and was one of the few Soviet political figures who was not rehabilitated by the government under Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s. It was not until the late 1980s that his books were released for publication in the Soviet Union and his parents were David Leontyevich Bronstein and his wife Anna Lvovna. The family was of Jewish origin, the language they spoke at home was Surzhyk, a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian. Trotskys younger sister, Olga, who grew up to be a Bolshevik. Many anti-Communists, anti-semites, and anti-Trotskyists have noted Trotskys original surname, some authors, notably Robert Service, have also claimed that Trotskys childhood first name was the Yiddish Leiba. The American Trotskyist David North said that this was an apparent attempt to emphasize Trotskys Jewish origins but, contrary to Services claims and he says that it is highly improbable that the family was Jewish, as they did not speak Yiddish, the common language among eastern European Jews. Both North and Walter Laqueur in their books say that Trotskys childhood name was Lyova, when Trotsky was nine, his father sent him to Odessa to be educated in a Jewish school. He was enrolled in a German-language school, which became Russified during his years in Odessa as a result of the Imperial governments policy of Russification. As Isaac Deutscher notes in his biography of Trotsky, Odessa was then a cosmopolitan port city. This environment contributed to the development of the young mans international outlook, although Trotsky said in his autobiography My Life that he was never perfectly fluent in any language but Russian and Ukrainian, Raymond Molinier wrote that Trotsky spoke French fluently. Trotsky became involved in activities in 1896 after moving to the harbor town of Nikolayev on the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea. At first a narodnik, he initially opposed Marxism but was won over to Marxism later that year by his future first wife, instead of pursuing a mathematics degree, Trotsky helped organize the South Russian Workers Union in Nikolayev in early 1897. Using the name Lvov, he wrote and printed leaflets and proclamations, distributed revolutionary pamphlets, in January 1898, more than 200 members of the union, including Trotsky, were arrested
Leon Trotsky
–
Trotsky in 1921
Leon Trotsky
–
8-year-old Lyova Bronshtein, 1888
Leon Trotsky
–
Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, 1897
Leon Trotsky
–
Leon Trotsky with his daughter Nina in 1915
21.
Joseph Stalin
–
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state. Stalin was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov, and Bubnov. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and he managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin by suppressing Lenins criticisms and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. He remained General Secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of millions of people in Gulag labour camps. The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–33, major figures in the Communist Party and government, and many Red Army high commanders, were arrested and shot after being convicted of treason in show trials. Stalins invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact, as it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence agreed with the Axis, Germany ended the pact when Hitler launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive Battles of Moscow, after defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies. The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States, Communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union were established in most countries freed from German occupation by the Red Army, which later constituted the Eastern Bloc. Stalin also had relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North Korea. On February 9,1946, Stalin delivered a public speech in which he explained the fundamental incompatibility of communism and capitalism. He stressed that the system needed war for raw materials. The Second World War was but the latest in a chain of conflicts which could be broken only when the economy made the transformation into communism. Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the Western world that would later be known as the Cold War, Stalin remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant. However, popular opinion within the Russian Federation is mixed, the exact number of deaths caused by Stalins regime is still a subject of debate, but it is widely agreed to be in the order of millions. Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, the Russian-language version of his birth name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Ioseb was born on 18 December 1878 in the town of Gori, Georgia and his father was Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, while his mother was Ekaterine Keke Geladze, a housemaid. As a child, Ioseb was plagued with health issues
Joseph Stalin
–
Stalin at the
Tehran Conference in 1943.
Joseph Stalin
–
Prior to the revolution of 1917, Stalin played an active role in fighting the Russian government. Here he is shown on a 1911 information card from the files of the Russian police in Saint Petersburg.
Joseph Stalin
–
A group of participants in the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, 1919. In the middle are Stalin,
Vladimir Lenin, and
Mikhail Kalinin.
22.
Grigori Sokolnikov
–
Grigori Yakovlevich Sokolnikov was a Russian old Bolshevik revolutionary, economist, and Soviet politician. Grigori Sokolnikov was born Girsh Yankelevich Brilliant to a doctor in Romny on 15 August 1888. He moved to Moscow as a teenager and joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1905 and he served time in prison and studied economics whilst at the Sorbonne. He returned to Russia in April 1917 along with Vladimir Lenin in the sealed train, grigori Sokolnikov was a member of the first Politburo, with seven members, Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov. After the October Revolution, he held government positions. He was a member of the Joffe led delegation for peace negotiations with Germany, later, alongside Rosalia Zemlyachka, he became commissar of the Eighth army, using this position to order mass shootings during the Russian Civil War. He was appointed Peoples Commissar of Finance following the introduction of the New Economic Policy, bajanov also notes that despite Sokolnikovs past in the Red Army, he was not ruthless in his personality. Privately, Sokolnikov lost faith in the Soviet Union under Stalin, Sokolnikov was appointed instead as vice-chairman of Gosplan, the new economic planning agency and later as head of an oil company. He was the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1929 to 1932, during the Great Purge, Sokolnikov was arrested in 1937 and tried at the Trial of the Seventeen. He was sentenced to ten years of imprisonment, reportedly, he was killed in a prison by other convicts on 21 May 1939. A post-Stalin investigation during the Khrushchev Thaw revealed that the murder was orchestrated by the NKVD, in 1988, during perestroika, he was rehabilitated along with many other victims of the Great Purge. Soviet Policy in Public Finance, 1917–1928, by Gregory Y, Sokolnikov & Associates, translated by Elena Varneck, edited by Lincoln Hutchinson & Carl C. Grigory Sokolnikov Archive, part of Marxists Internet Archive, grigorii Yakovlevich Sokolnikov and the development of the Soviet state, 1921–1929
Grigori Sokolnikov
–
Grigori Sokolnikov (1888-1939)
23.
Andrei Bubnov
–
Andrei Sergeyevich Bubnov was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader in Russia, and member of the Left Opposition. Bubnov was born in Ivanovo-Voznesensk in Vladimir Governorate on 23 March 1883 into a local Russian merchants family and he was expelled from Moscow University for revolutionary activities. He studied at the Moscow Agricultural Institute and while a student joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903. He was a supporter of the Bolshevik faction of the party and attended the 4th and 5th Party Conferences in Stockholm and London, in 1909 Bubnov was made an agent of the Central Committee in Moscow and later sent to organize workers in Nizhny Novgorod. He was arrested a total of thirteen times by the czarist government, on the outbreak of the First World War Bubnov became involved in the anti-war movement. He was arrested in October 1916 and exiled to Siberia, Bubnov returned to Moscow in 1917 after the February Revolution. He joined the Moscow Soviet and, at the 6th Party Conference in July 1917, just before the October Revolution, he was elected as one of the seven members of the first Bolshevik Politburo alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, and Sokolnikov. As a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee he helped organize the October Revolution, during the Russian Civil War Bubnov joined the Red Army and fought on the Ukrainian Front and in the Caucasus. After the war he joined the Moscow Party Committee and became a member of the Left Opposition. He was not always orthodox, The Party noted that he was with the left-wing in 1918, the Democratic-Centralists in 1920–1, and the Trotskyites in 1923, when he signed their Declaration of 46. In January 1924, however, he switched to supporting Joseph Stalin and was rewarded by being appointed as Head of Political Control of the Red Army, from the 13th to 17th Party Conferences, he was elected to the central committee. Under the pseudonym Kisanko, he traveled to Guangzhou, China, to lead a team of Soviet advisors to the Nationalists, following the Canton Coup on 20 March 1926, he worked out an agreement with the new Nationalist strongman Chiang Kai-shek. He was recalled at Chiangs request the next month and he then worked with Grigori Voitinsky and Fedor Raskolnikov on the Preliminary Theses on the Situation in China, which was presented to the ECCI in November and December of that year. In 1929, he replaced Lunacharsky as Peoples Commissar for Education, as Commissar for Education, he ended the period of progressive, experimental educational practices and switched the emphasis to training in practical industrial skills. He was arrested by the NKVD during the Great Purge on 17 October 1937, records from the time, which were not made public until the 1980s and 1990s, show that he was sentenced to death on 1 August 1938 and shot the same day. It encouraged their families and the public to believe that they were probably still alive in a camp or hospital somewhere. Bubnov was posthumously rehabilitated in February 1956 during the de-Stalinization of the Khrushchev thaw, however, even at the time, the Soviet government did not make public the lists of the purged persons who had already long been executed. Thus, their relatives were still searching for them in various psychiatric hospitals in the 1970s
Andrei Bubnov
–
Andrei Bubnov Андрей Бубнов
24.
Head of state
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A head of state is the public persona that officially represents the national unity and legitimacy of a sovereign state. In some countries, the head of state is a figurehead with limited or no executive power, while in others. Former French president Charles de Gaulle, while developing the current Constitution of France, some academic writers discuss states and governments in terms of models. An independent nation state normally has a head of state, the non-executive model, in which the head of state has either none or very limited executive powers, and mainly has a ceremonial and symbolic role. In parliamentary systems the head of state may be merely the chief executive officer, heading the executive branch of the state. This accountability and legitimacy requires that someone be chosen who has a majority support in the legislature and it also gives the legislature the right to vote down the head of government and their cabinet, forcing it either to resign or seek a parliamentary dissolution. In parliamentary constitutional monarchies, the legitimacy of the head of state typically derives from the tacit approval of the people via the elected representatives. In reality, numerous variants exist to the position of a head of state within a parliamentary system, usually, the king had the power of declaring war without previous consent of the parliament. For example, under the 1848 constitution of the Kingdom of Italy, the Statuto Albertino—the parliamentary approval to the government appointed by the king—was customary, so, Italy had a de facto parliamentarian system, but a de jure presidential system. These officials are excluded completely from the executive, they do not possess even theoretical executive powers or any role, even formal, hence their states governments are not referred to by the traditional parliamentary model head of state styles of His/Her Majestys Government or His/Her Excellencys Government. Within this general category, variants in terms of powers and functions may exist, the constitution explicitly vests all executive power in the Cabinet, who is chaired by the prime minister and responsible to the Diet. The emperor is defined in the constitution as the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people and he is a ceremonial figurehead with no independent discretionary powers related to the governance of Japan. Today, the Speaker of the Riksdag appoints the prime minister, Cabinet members are appointed and dismissed at the sole discretion of the prime minister. In contrast, the contact the President of Ireland has with the Irish government is through a formal briefing session given by the taoiseach to the president. However, he or she has no access to documentation and all access to ministers goes through the Department of the Taoiseach. The president does, however, hold limited reserve powers, such as referring a bill to the court to test its constitutionality. The most extreme non-executive republican Head of State is the President of Israel, semi-presidential systems combine features of presidential and parliamentary systems, notably a requirement that the government be answerable to both the president and the legislature. The constitution of the Fifth French Republic provides for a minister who is chosen by the president
Head of state
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Sixteen heads of state meeting at a
UNASUR -
BRICS summit in July 2014.
Head of state
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President
Pranab Mukherjee, head of state of
the Republic of India from July 2012
Head of state
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Two contemporary heads of state who are
constitutional monarchs, but with no political power: Emperor
Akihito of Japan (left), and King
Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden (right.)
Head of state
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Charles de Gaulle, President and head of state of the
French Fifth Republic June 1958 – January 1959
25.
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
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The Republic comprised sixteen autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais, and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group, the capital of the Russian SFSR was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. The Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed on November 7,1917 as a sovereign state, the first Constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922 the Russian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, the economy of Russia became heavily industrialized, accounting for about two-thirds of the electricity produced in the USSR. It was, by 1961, the third largest producer of petroleum due to new discoveries in the Volga-Urals region and Siberia, trailing only the United States and Saudi Arabia. In 1974, there were 475 institutes of education in the republic providing education in 47 languages to some 23,941,000 students. A network of territorially organized public-health services provided health care, the effects of market policies led to the failure of many enterprises and total instability by 1990. On June 12,1990, the Congress of Peoples Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty, on June 12,1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected the first President. On December 8,1991, heads of Russia, Ukraine, the agreement declared dissolution of the USSR by its founder states and established the Commonwealth of Independent States. On December 12, the agreement was ratified by the Russian Parliament, therefore Russian SFSR denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and de facto declared Russias independence from the USSR. On December 25,1991, following the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev as president of the Soviet Union, on December 26,1991, the USSR was self-dissolved by the Soviet of Nationalities, which by that time was the only functioning house of the Supreme Soviet. After dissolution of the USSR, Russia declared that it assumed the rights and obligations of the dissolved central Soviet government, the new Russian constitution, adopted on December 12,1993 after a constitutional crisis, abolished the Soviet system of government in its entirety. Initially, the state did not have a name and wasnt recognized by neighboring countries for five months. Meanwhile, anti-Bolsheviks coined the mocking label Sovdepia for the nascent state of the Soviets of Workers, on January 25,1918 the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets renamed the unrecognized state the Soviet Russian Republic. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3,1918, on July 10,1918, the Russian Constitution of 1918 renamed the country the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. By 1918, during the Russian Civil War, several states within the former Russian Empire seceded, internationally, in 1920, the RSFSR was recognized as an independent state only by Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania in the Treaty of Tartu and by the short-lived Irish Republic. On December 30,1922, with the creation of the Soviet Union, the final Soviet name for the republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, was adopted in the Soviet Constitution of 1936. By that time, Soviet Russia had gained roughly the same borders of the old Tsardom of Russia before the Great Northern War of 1700
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
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Flag (1954–1991)
26.
Premier of Russia
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The official residence of the prime minister is Gorki-9 in Odintsovsky District, Moscow Oblast, but his working residence is in Moscow. Under Article 24 of the Federal Constitutional Law On the Government of the Russian Federation, the Russian Prime Minister is considered the second highest position in the government, after the President. Due to the role of the President of Russia in the political system. The use of the term Prime Minister is strictly informal and is never used by the Russian Constitution, Federal Laws, the current prime minister is Dmitry Medvedev of United Russia, who was appointed on May 8,2012. Since the office evolved rather than being created, it may not be totally clear-cut who was the first Prime Minister. However, these bodies had been only Advisory functions, and had no independence, the office of Chairman of those bodies were more decorative and do not bear any responsibility, besides, simultaneously the position of Chairman could hold several people. For example, from 1726 to 1727, the government headed by six people simultaneously, Alexander Menshikov, Fyodor Apraksin, Gavriil Golovkin, Andrey Osterman, Dmitry Golitsyn and Pyotr Tolstoy. From 1905 to 1917, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, the modern post of Prime Minister appeared in 1905, after the transformation of the Committee of Ministers to the Council of Ministers. 6 November 1905, Sergei Witte was appointed the first Prime Minister of Russia, the position of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire, lasted 12 years, during this time,7 people took this post. The position was abolished after the Russian revolution, the abdication of Nicholas II from the throne, during the Russian Provisional Government in 1917, the official title of the prime minister was Minister-Chairman of the Russian Provisional Government. This position was held by two people, Georgy Lvov and Alexander Kerensky. The position lasted about six months, and after the October Revolution, was replaced by Chairman of the Council of peoples Commissars of the Russian SFSR. In the era of the Soviet Union, the head of government was the Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars, people who held those positions are sometimes referred to as the prime ministers. They may have also referred to as Premier of Ministers. Currently, the title is the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation. After the election of Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia, the head of the government was personally Yeltsin and he headed the Russian SFSR Council of Ministers about six months. In fact, Yeltsin was the first Head of Government of Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, after Yeltsin, Acting Prime Minister became Yegor Gaidar, but the Russian Supreme Soviet refused to approve him as Prime Minister. 14 December 1992, the Prime Minister was appointed Viktor Chernomyrdin, in general, the Prime Minister serves more of an administrative role, nominating members of the Cabinet and implementing domestic policy
Premier of Russia
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Incumbent
Dmitry Medvedev since 8 May 2012
Premier of Russia
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Coat of arms of the Russian Federation
