The NKVD construction general who built the Mayak plutonium complex
At Tomsk-7 the first thing he got under way was not the reactor but the bread factory. 'I'll find you a mason,' he told the construction chief, and personally brought back a bricklayer from among the prisoners.
A Cheka cavalryman turned NKVD construction general, he commanded the building of Chelyabinsk-40 (Mayak), the plutonium production complex at the heart of the Soviet atomic project. From 1947 he integrated ITL No. 859 prison camp and military engineer units under a single command, and by 1948 the construction workforce reached 45,000: the industrial reactor and radiochemical plant were brought into operation within three years, delivering the plutonium for the first Soviet bomb test of 1949. He went on to build key nuclear sites at Krasnoyarsk-26, Tomsk-7, Dubna, and Protvino, and was awarded Hero of Socialist Labor (1949) and the Stalin Prize (1951).
Career Timeline
- 1915–1924Imperial cavalry medic → Bolshevik (1917) → Cheka cavalry in Civil War, special cavalry battalion commander
- 1925–1936Balakhna paper mill → Gorky Auto Plant → Nizhny Tagil auto plant construction chief, Tagilstroy trust head
- 1937–1941NKVD: Kolstroy trust head, Monchegorsk nickel combine, Severnikel ITL chief
- 1941–1943Northern Front defensive works → 2nd Sapper Army commander → Aktyubinsk ferroalloy plant construction chief
- 1943–1946Tagilstroy-Tagillag NKVD chief, Major General (Feb 1943)
- 1946–1950Combine No. 7 (Estonia) → Combine No. 817 Mayak (Chelyabinsk-40) construction chief & ITL No. 859 head
- 1950–19621st Deputy Chief of Glavpromstroy → directed construction at Krasnoyarsk-26, Tomsk-7, Dubna, Protvino