Nikolai Gorbunov

Nikolai Gorbunov Николай Горбунов
Executive Officer of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union
In office 17 July 1923 – 29 December 1930
Premier	Vladimir Lenin Alexey Rykov Vyacheslav Molotov
Preceded by	None—post established
Succeeded by	Platon Kerzhentsev
Personal details
Born	9 July 1892(1892-07-09) Krasnoye Selo, St. Petersburg Oblast, Russian Empire
Died	7 September 1938(1938-09-07) (aged 46) Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Nationality	Soviet
Political party	All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)
Profession	Civil servant

Nikolai Petrovich Gorbunov (Russian: Николай Петрович Горбунов) (1892–1938), was at one time personal secretary to Vladimir Lenin.

His parents were Pyotr Mikhailovich Gorbunov and Sofia Vasilievna Gorbunova. Pyotr was an honoured citizen who worked as an engineer and later as a director of a paper factory not far from Saint Petersburg. Sofia Vasilievna descended from Pechatkins' family^[who?] and was a joint owner of the factory, of which her husband was a director. Both Gorbunovs' parents owned a number of middle-sized houses. In 1911, they bought an estate of about 1,650 acres (6.7 km²) in Yamburg. Pyotr Mikhailovich was a liberal who founded a school for the children of workers at his factory. His brother was the naturalist Grigoriy Petrovich Gorbunov.^[1]

Gorbunov was secretary of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and wrote of the period immediately following the Bolshevik seizure of power:

"In spite of the government's decrees and its demands that funds should be made available, the State Bank brazenly sabotaged. The People's Commissar of Finance, Menzhinsky, could do nothing to make the bank place at the government's disposal the funds that were necessary for the revolution. Not even the arrest of Shipov, the Director of the State Bank, helped. Shipov was brought to Smolny and kept there for a time under arrest. He slept in the same room with Menzhinsky and me. In the daytime this room was used as an office (of the Commissariat of Finance, I believe). I was obliged, as a mark of special courtesy and greatly to my annoyance, to let him have my bed while I slept on chairs."^[2]

In 1937 he was CEO of the Russian Academy of Sciences.^[3]

Gorbunov was sentenced to death and executed in 1938.

References

1. ^ Gregory Petrovich Gorbunov – one of the last Russian naturalists
2. ^ Reminiscences of Lenin by Nadezhda Krupskaya, accessed 2 November 2008
3. ^ National States and International Science: A Comparative History of International Science Congresses in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Cold War United States by Ronald E. Doel, Dieter Hoffmann, and Nikolai Krementsov accessed 2 November 2008

Persondata
Name	Gorbunov, Nikolai
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1892
Place of birth	Krasnoye Selo, St. Petersburg Oblast, Russian Empire
Date of death	1938
Place of death	Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union