Shchelokov, Nikolai

Born Nov. 13 (26), 1910, in the stanitsa (large cossack village) of Almaznaia, now within the city limits of Kadievka, Voroshilovgrad Oblast, Ukrainian SSR. Soviet state and party figure. General of the army (1976). Doctor of economic sciences (1978). Hero of Socialist Labor (1980). Member of the CPSU since 1931.

The son of a metallurgical worker, Shchelokov graduated from the Dnepropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute in 1933. For most of the period between 1933 and 1938, he worked as an engineer and shop head at metallurgical plants in the Ukraine. In 1938 and 1939 he was first secretary of the Krasnogvardeiskoe raion committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine (Bolshevik) in Dnepropetrovsk, and from 1939 to 1941 he was chairman of the Dnepropetrovsk city executive committee. Shchelokov served in the Soviet Army from 1941 to 1946 and fought in the Great Patriotic War.

In 1946 and 1947, Shchelokov was deputy minister of local industry of the Ukrainian SSR, and from 1947 to 1951 he was in the administrative apparatus of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine. From 1951 to 1962 and again in 1965 he served as first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Moldavian SSR; in 1957 and 1958 and from 1962 to 1965 he was chairman of the Council of the National Economy of the Moldavian SSR. In 1965 and 1966, Shchelokov was second secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldavia. In 1966 he became minister of internal affairs of the USSR and a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Shchelokov became a member of the Central Committee in April 1968. He served as a deputy to the fourth through tenth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

Shchelokov has been awarded three Orders of Lenin, two Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of Bogdan Khmel’nitskii Second Class, the Order of the Patriotic War First Class, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, the Order of the Red Star, and various medals.