Yakov Popok

Yakov Abramovich Popok (1894–1938) served as the fifth first secretary of the Communist Party of the Turkmen SSR.

Popov was born in Khislavichi, Mstislavl district, Mogilev province (now Smolensk region) into a bourgeois family.

He was arrested twice, was in exile from 1911 to 1914, then werved in the Imperial Russian Army from 1915 to 1917, during which he conducted revolutionary agitation among his fellow soldiers.

Popok held a number of posts across Russia during the next fourteen years, from Zlatoust in the south to Amur and Chita in the east.

From 1930 to 1937 he was First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Turkmenistan, then briefly First Secretary of the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic for part of 1937 and 1938.