Turar Ryskulovich Ryskulov

Born Dec. 14 (26), 1894, in East Talgar Volost, Vernyi District, now Alma-Ata Oblast; died Feb. 10, 1938. Soviet state and party figure. Member of the Communist Party from September 1917. Son of a nomadic stock raiser. Ryskulov took part in the Middle Asian uprising of 1916 and was arrested. He also took part in the October Revolution of 1917 in Turkestan and Kirghizia.

In 1919 and 1920, Ryskulov was people’s commissar for public health of the Turkestan ASSR and chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Turkestan ASSR. At the same time, he was chairman of the krai bureau of the Muslim communist organizations and a member of the presidium of the Turkestan Krai Committee of the RCP(B). In 1920, Ryskulov was a delegate to the First Congress of the Peoples of the East and a member of the congress’s bureau. In 1921 and 1922 he was deputy people’s commissar of nationalities of the RSFSR, from 1922 to 1924 he was chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Turkestan ASSR and a member of the Middle Asian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(B), and in 1924 and 1925 he was deputy chief of the Eastern Department of the Comintern and the Comintern’s representative in Mongolia. In his work, Ryskulov committed errors of national deviationism.

In the period 1926–37, Ryskulov was deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR. He was a delegate to the Twelfth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Party Congresses; at the Twelfth Congress, he was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee. Ryskulov was a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.