Sergey Zhuk

Sergey Zhuk (1892 to 1957) was a Soviet hydraulic engineer and state official, born in Kyiv, who led the design and construction of large Soviet hydraulic works. From September 1935 he was chief construction engineer of the Uglich, Rybinsk and Ivankovo hydroelectric power plants, and from 1939 first deputy head of the construction directorate of the Kuibyshev hydroelectric complex. From 1942 until his death he headed the design and survey department for hydraulic works, Gidroproekt, and from 1948 he was chief engineer of Volgodonstroy, responsible for the Volga-Don Canal and the Tsimlyanskaya Hydroelectric Power Station. He was elected an academician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1953 and received Stalin Prizes in 1950 and 1951, the second for the design assignment of the Kuibyshev hydroelectric power station on the Volga. His earlier canal work was carried out within the Gulag system, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn named him in The Gulag Archipelago among the main culprits of the mass death of prisoners during construction.