Vladimir Mikhailovich Smirnov was a Russian Communist revolutionary, member of the Bolshevik Party and Soviet politician, where he advocated a militant and doctrinally pure line. He was a persistent critic of successive party leaders, including Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, for which he spent years in prison and exile before being executed.

Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and Marxist theorist. A prominent Bolshevik and prolific author on economic theory, Bukharin was active in the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1917 until his purge in the 1930s.