The coal minister who led the Soviet mining industry for twenty years across the Brezhnev era
"I love the coal industry. I have devoted my entire conscious life to it, and I cannot conceive of any other path for myself." — Bratchenko, in his final interview, 2004.
Born to a Kuban Cossack family, Bratchenko graduated from the Moscow Mining Institute as a mining engineer-economist and rose from the shafts of the Kizel and Rostov coalfields to chief engineer of the Karaganda combine, chairman of the Kazakh SSR Gosplan, and finally USSR Minister of the Coal Industry in 1965. Over twenty years he drove through major projects — the Raspadskaya and Vorgashorskaya deep mines, the Bogatyr open-pit, and the Kansk-Achinsk, Ekibastuz and South Yakutsk fuel-energy complexes — lifting Soviet coal output to 718 million tonnes. He won the Stalin Prize in 1949 for powerful coal-cutting machines, was made a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1982, and served on the CPSU Central Committee from 1971 to 1986.
Career Timeline
- 1935–1942Mine engineer, section chief, chief engineer in Kizel and Rostov coalfields
- 1942–1943Served in the Coal Industry Commissariat and Sovnarkom Secretariat
- 1943–1949Director of Komsomolskaya Pravda mine, chief engineer of Shakhtantratsit trust
- 1949–1953Chief engineer of the Karagandaugol combine
- 1953–1957Deputy Minister of the Coal Industry of the USSR
- 1957–1959Chairman of Kamensk and Rostov Sovnarkhozes, head of Gosplan coal department
- 1959–1961Chairman of the Karaganda Sovnarkhoz
- 1961–1965Deputy Chairman of the Kazakh SSR Council of Ministers and Chairman of Gosplan
- 1965–1985Minister of the Coal Industry of the USSR