Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary who, along with Lenin, played an important role in the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. His original name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein. He was born on November 7, 1879, in a small village in Ukraine. His father, David Bronstein, who was a farmer, sent him to a [...]

Grigori Efimovich Rasputin (1869-1916) was a peasant monk from Siberia. He was very influential at the court of Czar Nicholas II and became Czarina Alexandra Fedorovna’s personal adviser after he had purportedly healed their son Alexis of hemophilia. Although he was a religious and mystic figure, he led a dissipated life, with bouts of vodka [...]

Alexander Kerensky was a lawyer, politician, and prime minister of the Russian provisional government after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917, during the Russian Revolution. He was born in Simbirsk, Russia, on April 22, 1881, to Fyodor Kerensky, who was the headmaster of a high school, and Nadezhda Adler, a woman of noble [...]

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, commonly known as Lenin, (1870-1924) was a Marxist Russian revolutionary and the first head of state of the Soviet Union. He and Alexandr Kerensky actively participated in the violent social upheaval of 1917, which overthrew emperor Nicholas II and led to the establishment of a communist regime in Russia. Lenin was born [...]

Executed during the Bolshevik Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II (1868-1918) was the last Tsar of Russia, reigning from 1894 to 1917. He was born in Saint Petersburg, on May 18, 1868, to Tsar Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna. With him the Romanov ruling dynasty became extinct. Educated by private tutors, Nicholas had received little training [...]

Saloth Sar, known as Pol Pot, (1925-1998) was a dictator of Cambodia as leader of the Khmer Rouge, from 1975 to 1979, and organizer of one of the major genocides in the history of the 20th century. When he got to power after a violent civil war against Lon Nol’s government, he established a pure [...]