To fight for the rights of the people to want a change in the generalized societal norms, the revolutionaries from the expanse of history have inspired us to hold our ground and protest whenever the time calls for it. Having two sides to a coin, these revolutionaries may be loved by the people of your nation for common interests but hated by another for the conflict in their ideas or to have led some uprising – but that is for your own opinions to judge. Here are some of the world-renowned revolutionaries who brought an impact to their times and generations after:

1. Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara

We all know of his image from his face on t-shirts, the face that stayed as a hallmark for revolution and is the expression of democratic, radical dissent into the 21st century. He was born to a middle-class Argentinian family in 1928. On his motorcycle, he explored Latin America’s poverty and trained to be a doctor, to change the world he lived in. His vision of liberation was at once romantic, ruthless, personal, poetic and compassionate. He was the mastermind behind the Cuban revolution as a vision to for the world.

2. Rosa Luxemburg

The co-founder of the Spartacus League, which later became the German Communist party, Rosa Luxemburg was a naturalized German or Polish-Jewish origin who opposed the First World War. She took a stance against the Bolshevik authoritarianism and failed reformism. Her voice was silenced with her arrest after she criticized the violence of the second uprising in 1919.

3. Toussaint L’Ouverture

Toussaint was the leader of the revolt against slavery in 1791 since Spartacus in the French colony of Saint Dominique. His revolt, as himself being a black man, led to France’s abolition of slavery in 1794. He even framed a new constitution for the colony but was stopped and arrested when Napolean Bonaparte sent troops to re-establish French control. 

4. Frantz Fanon

The psychiatrist and philosopher, Fanon had descended from slaves but revolutionized humanism through his experience of French colonialism in Algeria. His books ‘Black Skin’, ‘White Masks’ and later ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ are seminal texts which expose the colonial violence. They inspired the struggle for Algerian independence which led to the anti-colonial liberation movements. 

5. Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was a South African who led to the anti-apartheid revolution. He, along with F.W. de Klerk jointly gave enormous efforts to dismantle the country’s apartheid system that institutionalized racism for so long, and they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. He went on to become the first black President of South Africa.

6. Emiliano Zapata

This Mexican revolutionist was influenced by the anarchist communist writings of Prince Peter Kropotkin and was a warrior for peasant land rights. His Liberation Army of the South struggled against the landowners even after the revolution had installed its political leaders in power. His Plan de Ayala is the historical template for democratic land ownership.

7. Leon Trotsky

The leader of the Bolshevik Russian revolution and its symbol for transformation into Stalinism was the work of Leon Trotsky. He took charge of the Red Army, but with Stalin’s coming into power he became a part of the Left Opposition. His conflicts were with Stalin’s view of socialism in one country, and these conflicts increased to such a level that he was murdered by Stalin’s agents.