Sergey Zhuk

Sergey Yakovlevich Zhuk (Russian: Сергей Яковлевич Жук; April 4, 1892 – March 1, 1957) was a Soviet hydraulic engineer, technician and state official. Hero of Socialist Labour.

Biography

Early life Zhuk was born in to a middle class Ukrainian family in Kyiv. He attended the 2nd Kyiv high school and after the death of his father he was enrolled in the Orlovsk Cadet Corps. In 1914 he enrolled in the Petrograd Institute for Civil Engineers, a year later he moved to the State University of Transportation in St. Petersburg. Due to the great losses that the Russian army suffered in fighting with German troops, Zhuk was forcibly drafted and transferred to the Alekseevsk School for Pioneers in Kyiv, whose training he completed in November 1916. He then did military service in a pioneer battalion in Siberia.

During the Russian Civil War he took the side of the White Army and fought for the forces under Alexander Kolchak. At the end of 1919, during the defeat of the army Kolchak, second lieutenant Zhuk was taken prisoner but was later released. In 1921–1922 he worked in Sevzapvod, then was enrolled in the Red Army and taught engineering at the Kamenev United military school, in the Sumy artillery and in the Poltava infantry schools.

State engineer On January 10, 1931, he was arrested by the organs of the OGPU in the "Vesna" case and was accused of involvement in a counter-revolutionary officer organization and was convicted by the judicial board of the OGPU. He was sent to the construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal and showed himself there as an engineer and on July 14, 1932, was released on parole "for more efficient use in construction."

In October 1932 he was enrolled in the staff of the OGPU and was appointed to the post of deputy chief engineer of Belomorstroy. From 1933 he was Deputy Chief Engineer and Chief Engineer for the construction of the Moscow Canal. In the position of Deputy Chief Engineer of Belomorostroi, he carried out scientific and technical leadership in the design of the largest hydraulic structures. In August 1933 he was awarded the Order of Lenin. People were not spared on construction, the main thing for the leadership was the fulfillment of the plan. In the book The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn named Zhuk among the main culprits of the mass death of Gulag prisoners during the construction of the canal.

From September 1935 he was the Chief Construction Engineer of the Uglich, Rybinsk and Ivankovskaya Hydroelectric Power Plants. From June 1939 he was First Deputy Head of the Construction Directorate of the Kuibyshev hydroelectric complex. From September 1939 Zhuk became chief engineer and first deputy chief of the Glavgidrostroy of the NKVD of the USSR.

After his death on March 1, 1957, he was cremated, the ashes were placed in an urn in the Kremlin Wall on Red Square in Moscow.

Awards and honors

Hero of Socialist Labour (9/19/1952) – for particularly outstanding services in the construction of the Lenin Volga–Don Canal Three Orders of Lenin – for ensuring high-quality design work on the construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal Order of the Red Banner (01/30/1951) Order of the Red Banner of Labour (07/14/1944) Two Orders of the Red Star (07/14/1937; 12/10/1945) Medal "For Battle Merit" Medal "For Labour Valour" (04/26/1940) Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945." (1945) Stalin Prize of the second degree (1950) – for the development of the Volga–Don Canal project. Stalin Prize of the first degree (1951) – for the development of the design assignment for the Kuibyshev hydroelectric power station on the Volga. Honored Worker of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (11/2/1948)