Sanjar Dzhafarovich Asfendiyarov (Russian: Санджар Джафарович Асфендиаров) (20 October 1889 – 25 February 1938) was a Kazakh scholar and politician, killed during the Great Purge.
Asfendiyarov, a descendant of Abul Khair Khan, was born in Tashkent, where his father worked as a military translator.
Serving as a medical doctor early in the war with Germany, he was taken prisoner in East Prussia in December 1914, and held in various concentration camps until December 1915, when he was able to return to St Petersburg via Sweden, during a prisoner exchange organised by the International Red Cross.
[1] In 1919–1925, Asfendiyarov worked in the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, as People's Commissar for Health, 1919–20, and 1923–24; and for Agriculture, 1921–22,[2] and as a secretary of the Central Committee of the Turkestan Communist Party, and a member of the Central Asian bureau of the All-Russian Communist Party.
[3] Asfendiyarov was arrested in Moscow on August 22, 1937 and was expelled from the Communist Party on September 27, as a "counter-revolutionary nationalist".