Ivan Ivanovich Mezhlauk (Russian: Ива́н Ива́нович Межла́ук; Latvian: Jānis Mežlauks) (30 September 1891 – 25 April 1938) was a Soviet politician and statesman who was the first first secretary of the Communist Party of the Turkmen SSR as well as its first president.

Ivan Mezhlauk was born in Kharkiv (modern Ukraine), in the Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire on 30 September 1891.

[1] He joined the Bolshevik Party in 1918 and served in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.

From 1930 to 1933, Mezhlauk worked in the Soviet economic planning apparatus, for a time as the secretary of the Council of Labor and Defense.

Ivan Mezhlauk was arrested on 3 December 1937, sentenced to death on 25 April 1938 and shot the same day.