Nikolay Yefimovich Kruchina (Russian: Николай Ефимович Кручина; 14 May 1928 – 26 August 1991), was a top Soviet communist official, the administrator of affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) since 1983 and until his death, effectively the party's chief treasurer, responsible for its enormous assets (popularly dubbed as the party's gold, Russian: золото Партии) estimated to be worth nearly $9 billion, which have never been located since.

In 1978-1983 served as a first deputy chairman of the Agricultural Department of the CPSU then headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, became its chairman after Gorbachev in 1983 and in the same year, after Yuri Andropov's assumption of power, finally replaced Georgy Pavlov as the party's administrator of affairs (upravlyayushchiy delami).

For the last time Kruchina visited his office on August 19, the day the abortive Soviet coup attempt of 1991 started.

Kruchina died as a result of falling out of the window of his apartment in Moscow in the early morning of August 26, five days after the coup attempt.

[2] He apparently left near his desk on the armchair a thick file of recent Communist Party's illegal commercial operations.