Portal:Soviet Union/Selected biography
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Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (April 15 [O.S. April 3] 1894 – September 11, 1971) led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964. Khrushchev was responsible for the partial de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program, and for several relatively liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy. Khrushchev's party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.
Khrushchev was born in the Russian village of Kalinovka in 1894, close to the present-day border between Russia and Ukraine. He was employed as a metalworker in his youth, and during the Russian Civil War was a political commissar. With the help of Lazar Kaganovich, he worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. He supported Joseph Stalin's purges, and approved thousands of arrests. In 1939, Stalin sent him to govern the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and he continued the purges there. During what was known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War (Eastern Front of World War II), Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. Khrushchev was present at the bloody defense of Stalingrad, and he took great pride of this fact throughout his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers.
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Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (Georgian: ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია, Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria; Russian: Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия; 29 March 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Soviet politician and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years (1946–1953).
Beria was the longest lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after World War II. He simultaneously administered vast sections of the Soviet state and served as de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of the NKVD field units, responsible for anti-partisan operations against anti-Soviet ethnic groups and Nazi collaborators, and the apprehension and summary execution of thousands of "turncoats, deserters, cowards and suspected malingerers". Beria administered the vast expansion of the Gulag slave labor camps, and was primarily responsible for the Katyn massacre. He also played the decisive role in coordinating the Soviet partisans, developing an impressive intelligence and sabotage network behind German lines, thus contributing mightily to the ultimate Soviet victory. He attended the Yalta Conference with Stalin, who introduced him to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "my Himmler". After the war, he organized the communist takeover of the countries of Central Europe and Eastern Europe, usually through coup d'etat. Beria's uncompromising ruthlessness in his duties and skill at producing results by intimidating his subordinates culminated in his success in overseeing the Soviet atomic bomb project. (more...)
George Abramovich Koval (Russian: Жорж (Георгий) Абрамович Коваль, Zhorzh Abramovich Koval; December 25, 1913 – January 31, 2006) was an American who acted as a Soviet intelligence officer. According to Russian sources, Koval's infiltration of the Manhattan Project as a Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye (GRU) agent "drastically reduced the amount of time it took for Russia to develop nuclear weapons."
Koval was born to Jewish immigrants in Sioux City, Iowa, United States. Shortly after reaching adulthood he traveled with his parents to the Soviet Union to settle in the Jewish Autonomous Region near the Chinese border. Koval was recruited by the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate, trained, and assigned the code name DELMAR. He returned to the United States in 1940 and was drafted into the US Army in early 1943. Koval worked at atomic research laboratories and, according to the Russian government, relayed back to the Soviet Union information about the production processes and volumes of the polonium, plutonium, and uranium used in American atomic weaponry, and descriptions of the weapon production sites. After the war, Koval left on a European vacation but never returned to the United States. In 2007 Russian president Vladimir Putin posthumously awarded Koval the Hero of the Russian Federation decoration for "his courage and heroism while carrying out special missions". (More…)
(Russian: Ла́зарь Ма́ркович Лиси́цкий) (November 23 [O.S. November 11] 1890 – December 30, 1941), better known as El Lissitzky (Russian: Эль Лиси́цкий, Yiddish: על ליסיצקי), was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the former Soviet Union. His work greatly influenced the Bauhaus and constructivist movements, and he experimented with production techniques and stylistic devices that would go on to dominate 20th-century graphic design.(more...)
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich Russian pronunciation: [dmʲitrij ˌdmʲitrɪjevʲiʨ ʂɨstɐˈkɔvʲɪʨ] (Russian: Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович;[1] 25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century.
Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Leon Trotsky's chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the government. Nevertheless, he also received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947–1962) and the USSR (from 1962 until death).
After a period influenced by Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky, Shostakovich developed a hybrid style, as exemplified by Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1934). This single work juxtaposed a wide variety of trends, including the neo-classical style (showing the influence of Stravinsky) and post-Romanticism (after Gustav Mahler). Sharp contrasts and elements of the grotesque characterize much of his music. (more...)
Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin (Russian: Алексе́й Никола́евич Косы́гин, Aleksej Nikolajevič Kosygin; (21 February [O.S. 5 March] 1904 – 18 December 1980) was a Soviet-Russian statesman during the Cold War. Kosygin was born in the city of St. Petersburg in 1904 to a Russian working class family. He was conscripted into the labor army during the Russian Civil War, and after the Red Army's demobilisation in 1921, he worked in Siberia as an industrial manager. Kosygin returned to Leningrad in the early 1930s and worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. During the Great Patriotic War (World War II), Kosygin was a member of the State Defence Committee and was tasked with moving Soviet industry out of territories soon to be overrun by the German military. He served as Minister of Finance for a year before becoming Minister of Light Industry and later, the Minister of Light and Food Industry. One year before his death in 1953, Stalin removed Kosygin from the Politburo, intentionally weakening his position within the Soviet hierarchy. (more...)
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov (Russian: Михаи́л Андре́евич Су́слов; 21 November 1902 – 25 January 1982) was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, and as unofficial Chief Ideologue of the Party until his death in 1982. Suslov was responsible for party democracy and the separation of power within the Communist Party. His conservative attitude toward change made him one of the foremost anti-reformist Soviet leaders.
Born in rural Russia in 1902, Suslov became a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1921 and studied economics for much of the 1920s. He left his job as a teacher in 1931 to pursue politics full-time, becoming one of the many Soviet politicians who took part in the mass repression begun by Joseph Stalin's regime. Suslov impressed the Soviet leadership to such an extent in the pre-Eastern Front Soviet Union that he was made First Secretary of Stavropol Krai administrative area. During the war, Suslov headed the local Stavropol guerilla movement. He became a member of the Organisational Bureau (Orgburo) of the Central Committee in 1946 and, four years later, was elected to the Presidium (Politburo) of the All-Union Communist Party. (more...)
Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine (October 31 [O.S. October 19] 1892 – March 24, 1946) (Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Але́хин, pronounced [ɐlʲɪkˈsandr ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvʲɪtɕ ɐˈlʲexʲɪn]) was the fourth World Chess Champion. He is often considered one of the greatest chess players ever.
By the age of twenty-two, he was already among the strongest chess players in the world. During the 1920s, he won most of the tournaments in which he played. In 1927, he became the fourth World Chess Champion by defeating Capablanca, widely considered invincible, in what would stand as the longest chess championship match held until 1985.
In the early 1930s, Alekhine dominated tournament play and won two top-class tournaments by large margins. He also played first board for France in five Chess Olympiads, winning individual prizes in each (four medals and a brilliancy prize). Alekhine offered Capablanca a rematch on the same demanding terms that Capablanca had set for him, and negotiations dragged on for years without making much progress. Meanwhile, Alekhine defended his title with ease against Bogoljubov in 1929 and 1934. He was defeated by Euwe in 1935, but regained his crown in the 1937 rematch. His tournament record, however, remained uneven, and rising young stars like Keres, Fine, and Botvinnik threatened his title. Negotiations for a title match with Keres or Botvinnik were halted by the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939. Negotiations with Botvinnik for a world title match were proceeding in 1946 when Alekhine died in Portugal, in unclear circumstances. (more...)
Pavel Vladimirovich Bure (Russian: Па́вел Влади́мирович Буре́; IPA: [ˈpavʲɪl buˈre]; born March 31, 1971) is a retired Russian professional ice hockey right winger. Nicknamed "the Russian Rocket" for his speed, Bure played for 12 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) with the Vancouver Canucks, Florida Panthers and New York Rangers. Trained in the Soviet Union, where he was known as "Pasha", he played three seasons with the Central Red Army team before his NHL career.
Selected 113th overall in the 1989 NHL Entry Draft by Vancouver, he began his NHL career in 1991–92 and won the Calder Memorial Trophy as the league's best rookie, then helped the Canucks to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1994. After seven seasons with the Canucks, Bure was dealt to the Panthers, where he won back-to-back Rocket Richard Trophies as the league's leading goal-scorer (he also led the league in goal scoring with Vancouver in 1993–94, before the trophy's inauguration). Bure struggled with knee injuries throughout his career, resulting in his retirement in 2005 as a member of the Rangers, although he had not played since 2003. He averaged better than a point per game in his NHL career (779 points with 437 goals in 702 NHL games).
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Gennady Ivanovich Yanayev (Russian: Генна́дий Ива́нович Яна́ев; 26 August 1937 – 24 September 2010) was a Soviet Russian politician and statesman whose career spanned the rules of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, and culminated during the Gorbachev years. Yanayev was born in Perevoz, Gorky Oblast. After years in local politics, he rose to prominence as Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, but he also held other lesser posts such as deputy of the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.
Due to his chairmanship of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions he gained a seat in the Politburo. During the 1990 July plenum he was elected to the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee. Later that year, with the help of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yanayev was elected the first, and only, Vice President of the Soviet Union. Having growing doubts about where Gorbachev's reforms were leading, Yanayev started working with, and eventually leading, the Gang of Eight, the group which deposed Gorbachev during the August coup of 1991. After three days the coup collapsed due to the popularity of Boris Yeltsin, but during its brief grip of power Yanayev was made Acting President of the Soviet Union. He was then arrested for his role in the coup, but in 1994 he was pardoned by the State Duma. He spent the rest of his life working in the Russian tourism administration until his death on 24 September 2010. (more...)
Andrei Pavlovich Kirilenko (Russian: Андрей Павлович Кириленко) (8 November [O.S. 26 August] 1906 – 12 May 1990) was a Soviet statesman from the start to the end of the Cold War. In 1906, Kirilenko was born in Alexeyevka, Belgorod Oblast, Russian Empire, to a Russian working class family. He graduated in the 1920s from a local vocational school, and again in the mid-to-late 1930s from the Rybinsk Aviation Technology Institute. He became a member of the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) in 1930. As many like him, Kirilenko climbed up the Soviet hierarchy through the "industrial ladder"; by the 1960s, he was Vice-Chairman of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). After Nikita Khrushchev's forced resignation, Kirilenko became Leonid Brezhnev's "chief lieutenant" within the Central Committee. (More…)
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov (Russian: Павел Дмитриевич Турчанинов) (died September 21, 1921), known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi (Лев Чёрный), was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty. In 1917, Chernyi was released from his political imprisonment by the Imperial Russian regime, and swiftly became one of the leading figures in Russian anarchism. After strongly denouncing the new Bolshevik government in various anarchist publications and joining several underground resistance movements, Chernyi was arrested by the Cheka on a charge of counterfeiting and in 1921 was executed without trial. (more...)
Eduard Anatolyevich Streltsov (Russian: Эдуа́рд Анато́льевич Стрельцо́в, IPA: [ɨdʊˈart ɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲitɕ strʲɪlʲˈtsof] ; 21 July 1937 – 22 July 1990) was a Soviet footballer who played as a forward for Torpedo Moscow and the Soviet national team during the 1950s and 1960s. A powerful and skilful attacking player, he scored the fourth-highest number of goals for the Soviet Union and has been called "the greatest outfield player Russia has ever produced". He is sometimes dubbed "the Russian Pelé".
Born and raised in east Moscow, Streltsov joined Torpedo at the age of 16 in 1953 and made his international debut two years later. He was part of the squad that won the gold medal at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, and came seventh in the 1957 Ballon d'Or. The following year, his promising career was interrupted by allegations of sexual assault shortly before the 1958 World Cup. Soviet authorities pledged he could still play if he admitted his guilt, after which he confessed, but was instead prosecuted and sentenced to twelve years of forced labour under the Gulag system (abolished in 1960 and replaced by prisons). The conviction was highly controversial, with many pointing to conflicts between Streltsov and government officials. (Full article...)
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (Russian: Вячесла́в Миха́йлович Мо́лотов; 9 March, [O.S. 25 February] 1890 – 8 November 1986) was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the government of the Soviet Union from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium (Politburo) of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev. He served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars from 1930 to 1941, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1956. Molotov served for several years as First Deputy Premier in Joseph Stalin's cabinet. He retired in 1961 after several years of obscurity. (More…)
Valentin Sergeyevich Pavlov (Russian: Валентин Серге́евич Павлов; 27 September 1937 – 30 March 2003) was a Soviet official who became a Russian banker following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Born in the city of Moscow, then part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Pavlov began his political career in the Ministry of Finance in 1959. Later, during the Brezhnev Era, he became head of the Financial Department of the State Planning Committee. Pavlov was appointed to the post of Chairman of the State Committee on Prices during the Gorbachev Era, and later became Minister of Finance in Nikolai Ryzhkov's Second Government. He went on to succeed Ryzhkov as head of government in the newly established post of Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, and became de facto Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers. (more...)
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