Valery Ivanovich Mezhlauk (7 February 1893-29 July 1938) was a CPSU party official in the Soviet Union who served as Chairman of the State Planning Committee from 1934 to 1937. Valery and his brother Ivan Mezhlauk were both executed during the Great Purge.
Biography[]
Valery Ivanovich Mezhlauk was born in Kharkov, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire on 7 February 1893 to a family of Latvian descent. He was the brother of Ivan Mezhlauk, and he became a member of the RSDLP in 1907 and the CPSU in 1917. After the Russian Revolution, he became a member of the Kharkov Committee of the CPSU, and he served as a provincial military commissar in Kazan from 1918 to 1920 during the Russian Civil War. In 1924, he was placed in charge of the Supreme Council of National Economy, and he enlisted the help of the Ford Motor Company in building the first Soviet automobile plant (GAZ) near Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky). In 1937, he was arrested during the Great Purge, and Valery and his brother Ivan were both executed by firing squad in 1938.