Nikolai Paskutskii

Born Nov. 9 (21), 1894, in Kamenets-Podol’skii; died Aug. 27, 1945. Soviet statesman, one of the organizers of the victory of Soviet power and the building of socialism in Middle Asia. Member of the Communist Party from 1919. Son of a railroad foreman.

Paskutskii graduated from a railroad school in Ashkhabad. He was drafted into the army in 1915. After the February Revolution of 1917, he became a member of the soldiers’ committee of the Twelfth Army of the Northwestern Front. In 1917–18, Paskutskii was a member and then chairman of the Tedzhen soviet (former Transcaspian Oblast), and in 1919–20 chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Transcaspian Front. He was chairman of the Middle Asian Economic Council from 1920 to 1925. Paskutskii served as vice-chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and chairman of the Gosplan (State Planning Commission) of the Turkmen SSR from 1925 to 1928 and as deputy people’s commissar of agriculture of the USSR from 1928. He was a delegate to the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Congresses of the ACP (Bolshevik). He was elected a member of the Commission of Soviet Control at the Seventeenth Congress. He was awarded two orders.