Muhammetnazar Gapurow

Muhammetnazar Gapurow
Мухамедназар Гапуров
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Turkmenistan
In office 24 December 1969 – 21 December 1985
Preceded by	Balysh Ovezov
Succeeded by	Saparmurat Niyazov
Personal details
Born	Muhammetnazar Gapurovich Gapurov 15 February 1922 Türkmenabat, Turkmen SSR, USSR
Died	13 July 1999 (age 77) , Ashgabat, Turkmenistan
Military service
Branch/service	Red Army
Years of service	1941–1944
Rank	Staff sergeant
Battles/wars	Great Patriotic War

Muhammetnazar Gapurovich Gapurov, or Muhammetnazar Gapurowiç Gapurow (Russian: Мухамедназар Гапурович Гапуров; commonly written as Mukhamednazar; 15 February 1922 – 13 July 1999), was a Turkmen politician who has served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Turkmen SSR from 1969 until 1985. He spent his entire career in the Komsomol and Communist Party apparatus, becoming one of the republic's most influential politicians for almost two decades in the Brezhnev era.

Gapurov was born in a small village close to Chardzhou (now Türkmenabat) in Chardzhou oblast (now Lebap Province). From 1941 to 1944 he was on active duty in the Red Army during World War II. In 1948 Gapurov joined the Communist Party nomenklatura as head of the Propaganda Department at the district level in Chardzhou oblast and gradually climbed the party ladder. He graduated from the Pedagogical Institute in Ashgabat in 1954. From 1951 to 1955 he worked as first secretary of the Komsomol organisation, and later he held various party posts before assuming the republic's leadership.

In 1969 he was appointed first secretary of the Communist Party of the Turkmen SSR. During his time in office, the republic received considerable investment in its modernisation of the gas and oil sectors, and living standards rose significantly for the general population. However, excessive centralised control over economic development and macroeconomic mismanagement led to a stagnation of economic growth in most sectors of the republic's economy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Gapurov's era also witnessed further growth in nepotism, regional rivalries and corruption.

In 1985, incoming General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev removed Gapurov from his post due to a cotton-related corruption scandal and sent him into retirement. He never returned to the political arena and held several minor positions in the late 1980s. He authored several books and articles during the Soviet era, mainly on Communist Party and Turkmenistan development issues. In the 1990s he began writing his memoirs but left them unfinished when he died in 1999.^[1]

References[]

• Abazov, Rafis. Historical Dictionary of Turkmenistan, p. 64-5. Scarecrow Press, 2005, ISBN 0-8108-5362-0.

External links[]

• Rulers of Soviet Republics
• Russian biographies project