Nikolai Gorbunov

Nikolai Petrovich Gorbunov (Russian: Николай Петрович Горбунов) (21 June 1892 – 7 September 1938) was a Soviet politician; at one time personal secretary to leader Vladimir Lenin.

Born in Krasnoye Selo, in Saint Petersburg, his parents were Pyotr Mikhailovich Gorbunov and Sofia Vasilievna Gorbunova. Pyotr was an honoured citizen who worked as an engineer and later as a director of a paper factory not far from Saint Petersburg. Sofia Vasilievna descended from the Pechatkin family and was a joint owner of the factory, of which her husband was a director. Both Gorbunov's parents owned a number of middle-sized houses. In 1911, they bought an estate of about 1,650 acres (6.7 km²) in Yamburg. Pyotr Mikhailovich was a liberal who founded a school for the children of workers at his factory. His brother was the naturalist Grigoriy Petrovich Gorbunov.

Gorbunov was secretary of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and wrote of the period immediately following the Bolshevik seizure of power:

In spite of the government's decrees and its demands that funds should be made available, the State Bank brazenly sabotaged. The People's Commissar of Finance, Menzhinsky, could do nothing to make the bank place at the government's disposal the funds that were necessary for the revolution. Not even the arrest of Shipov, the Director of the State Bank, helped. Shipov was brought to Smolny and kept there for a time under arrest. He slept in the same room with Menzhinsky and me. In the daytime this room was used as an office (of the Commissariat of Finance, I believe). I was obliged, as a mark of special courtesy and greatly to my annoyance, to let him have my bed while I slept on chairs.

In 1937 he was CEO of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Gorbunov was indicted for espionage, sentenced to death and executed in 1938. He was rehabilitated in 1954.