Lenin died in 1924, failing to see his communist dream turn into reality. (And what a fail that was!) Dzerzhinsky, who founded what would become the KGB, perished in 1926.

Kirov was mysteriously assassinated in 1934. Zinoviev and Kamenev died in 1936, killed by Stalin. Bukharin followed in 1938. Radek in 1939. Trotsky got an icepick in 1940.

Even Stalin himself died in 1953. One by one, the Old Bolsheviks dropped. And yet, Lazar Kaganovich, a contemporary of them all, somehow lived until 1991.

Among Kaganovich's "accomplishments" was helping Stalin seize power. He also played a major role in the Ukrainian famine of 1932. He then held various high party positions, until Stalin's death and the subsequent coup against Khrushchev that followed.

The coup failed, and Kaganovich was kicked out of the party and was sent to the mountains to run a small mining plant. Perhaps being away from it all helped: he didn't die until the ripe age of 97... just a month before another coup, the one that ended the Soviet Union.

Too bad he didn't last that extra month.