Stanislav Stanislavovich Pestkovsky

Станислав Станиславович Пестковский

1882–1937 ✕ Executed ; rehabilitated 1955

The Polish nobleman turned internationalist who became the first Soviet leader of Kazakhstan

In November 1917, at Smolny, he mentioned to Menzhinsky that he had studied finance at the University of London. Menzhinsky sat up and declared: 'In that case we'll make you manager of the State Bank.' Thus he became the first People's Commissar of the Soviet State Bank.

A Polish nobleman turned Bolshevik who joined the SDKPiL under Rosa Luxemburg's influence and served on its main board during the 1905 Revolution. Appointed the first People's Commissar of the State Bank after the October Revolution, he later became Stalin's deputy at Narkomnats, helping institutionalize Soviet nationality policy. In 1919 he was named first chairman of the Kirghiz (Kazakh) Revolutionary Committee, de facto the first Soviet leader of Kazakhstan, and went on to serve as the USSR's first plenipotentiary to Mexico and as a Comintern and Profintern activist. Executed in the Great Purge of 1937 and posthumously rehabilitated in 1955.