Kolesov, Fedor Ivanovich

Born May 20 (June 1), 1891, in Ural’sk; died July 29, 1940, in Moscow. Soviet state and party figure, one of the organizers of the struggle for Soviet power in Turkestan. Member of the Communist Party from 1917. Son of an office worker.

Kolesov was a railroad clerk in Orenburg and from 1916 in Tashkent. He was a member of the executive committee of the Tashkent soviet from September 1917; he was one of the leaders of a general strike (September 1917). He was a delegate to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets (October 1917) and was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. From November 1917 to November 1918, Kolesov was chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Turkestan ASSR and a member of the Turkestan krai committee of the party. He participated as a political commissar in the Civil War of 1918–20. Kolesov was a delegate to the Eighth Congress of the RCP (Bolshevik), held in 1919. In 1923–28 he was chairman of the Supreme Council on the National Economy of the Far East, a member of the Far Eastern Revolutionary Committee, and a member of the Gomel’ province executive committee. From 1929 to 1933 he studied at the Moscow Architectural Institute and was a graduate student at the Academy of Architecture; later he worked as an architect.