Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (Russian: Михаи́л Никола́евич Тухаче́вский; February 16 [O.S. February 4] 1893 – June 12, 1937) was a Marshal of the Soviet Union, commander in chief of the Red Army (1925–1928), and one of the most prominent victims of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.

Tukhachevsky was born at Alexandrovskoye, Safonovsky District, into a family of hereditary nobles. He graduated from the Aleksandrovskoye Military School in 1914, joining the Semyenovsky Guards Regiment. Upon the outbreak of World War I, the twenty-one-year-old Lieutenant Tukhachevsky declared,

"I am convinced that all that is needed in order to achieve what I want is bravery and self-confidence. I certainly have enough self-confidence... I told myself that I shall either be a general at thirty, or that I shall not be alive by then."

After being taken prisoner by the Imperial German Army in February 1915, Tukhachevsky escaped four times from POW camps and was finally held as an incorrigible escapee in Ingolstadt fortress.

Karl Bernhardovic Radek (Russian: Карл Бернга́рдович Ра́дек) (31 October 1885 – 19 May 1939) was a socialist active in the Polish and German movements before World War I and an international Communist leader after the Russian Revolution.

He was born in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary (now L'vov in Ukraine), as Karol Sobelsohn, to a Jewish family, his father, Bernhard, worked in the post office and died whilst Karl was young. He took the name Radek from a favourite character, Andrej Radek, in Syzyfowe prace (The Labor of Sisyphus) by Stefan Żeromski.

He joined the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) in 1904 and participated in the 1905 Revolution in Warsaw where he was responsible for the party's newspaper Czerwony Sztandar.

In 1907, after being arrested in Poland and escaping, he moved to Leipzig, Germany and joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany(SPD) working on the Party's Leipziger Volkszeitung. He moved to Bremen, where he worked for Bremer Bürgerzeitung, in 1911 and was one of several who attacked Karl Kautsky's analysis of imperialism in Die Neue Zeit in May 1912.

Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny   (help·info), sometimes transliterated as Budennyj, Budyonnyy, Budennii, Budenny, Budyoni, Budyenny, or Budenny, Russian: Семён Миха́йлович Будённый (April 25 [O.S. April 13] 1883 – October 26, 1973) was a Soviet cavalryman, military commander, politician and a close ally of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

Budyonny was born into a poor peasant family on the Kozyurin farmstead near the town of Bolshaya Orlovka in the Don Cossack region of the southern Russian Empire (now Rostov Oblast). Although he grew up in a Cossack region, Budyonny was not a Cossack—his family actually came from Voronezh province. He worked as a farm laborer until 1903, when he was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army, becoming a cavalryman and serving in a dragoon regiment during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. In 1907, he was selected as one of the best riders in the regiment for admission to the Cavalry Officers' School in St. Petersburg, from which he graduated in 1908. He returned to the Maritime Cavalry Regiment until 1914.

Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (Russian: Михаи́л Ива́нович Кали́нин; 19 November [O.S. 7 November] 1875 – June 3, 1946), known familiarly by Soviet citizens as "Kalinych," was a Bolshevik revolutionary and the nominal head of state of Russia and later of the Soviet Union, from 1919 to 1946. From 1926 he was a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, where he was one of the inner circle of party leaders around Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin was born 19 November [O.S. 7 November] 1875 to a peasant family of ethnic Russian origin in the village of Verkhnyaya Troitsa (Верхняя Троица), Tverskaya Gubernia, Russia.^{[citation needed]} He was the elder brother of Fedor Kalinin

Kalinin finished his education at a local school in 1889 and worked for a time on a farm following the completion of his formal education. He later moved to Saint Petersburg, where he gained employment as a metal worker in 1895. He also worked as a butler, then a railway worker in Tbilisi depot where he met Sergei Alliluyev, father of Stalin's second wife.

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich Russian pronunciation: [ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ˈdmʲitrʲɪɪvʲɪt͡ɕ ʂəstɐˈkovʲɪt͡ɕ] (Russian: Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович; 25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet Russian composer and pianist and was 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 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.