Ivan Pavlunovskii

Born Aug. 4 (16), 1888, in the village of Rzhava, now in Fatezh Raion, Kursk Oblast. Died Feb. 10, 1940. Participant in the Russian revolutionary movement and Soviet state figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1905.

Pavlunovskii was the son of a low-level office worker. During the Revolution of 1905–07, he helped form the military organization of the Kursk committee of the RSDLP. In 1907 he was arrested and exiled to Vologda Province. Beginning in 1911 he was involved in party work in St. Petersburg, and in 1913 and 1914 he was secretary of the hospital fund of the Putilov Works. During World War I (1914–18), Pavlunovskii was in the army, where he carried on revolutionary propaganda. After the February Revolution of 1917 he was chairman of the Petergof soviet, a member of the presidium of the Tsarskoe Selo soviet, and a member of the Petrograd soviet. As commander of a Red Guard detachment, he helped crush the Kornilov revolt. During the October Revolution of 1917 he was a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee and helped defeat the attempt by Kerensky and Krasnov to suppress the Revolution. In late 1917 and early 1918 he commanded Red Guard detachments in the Ukraine and Byelorussia.

In August 1918, Pavlunovskii became head of the Special Section of the Fifth Army of the Eastern Front. He also served as chairman of the Ufa Extraordinary Commission (Cheka). In 1919 and 1920 he was deputy chief of the Special Section of the All-Russian Cheka, and in 1920 he became Cheka plenipotentiary for Siberia and a member of the Siberian Bureau of the Central Committee (CC) of the RCP(B). The representative of the People’s Commissariat of Railroads for Siberia from 1922, Pavlunovskii was plenipotentiary of the Unified State Political Directorate (OGPU) in Transcaucasia from 1926 to 1928. Between 1928 and 1930 he worked in the People’s Commissariat of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, serving as deputy people’s commissar. From 1930 he was engaged in responsible work in the People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry.

From 1928 to 1934, Pavlunovskii was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. He was elected to the Central Control Commission at the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Party Congresses and a candidate member of the CC of the ACP(B) at the Seventeenth Congress. Pavlunovskii was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and the Red Star.