From ammunition to space: first head of the rocket ministry behind a deliberately vague name
When the Ministry of General Machine Building was created in April 1955, its deliberately vague name was chosen to conceal its real purpose — rockets and space — and Pyotr Goremykin became its first minister.
A Soviet industrial manager and state figure of peasant origin, Goremykin graduated from the Bauman Moscow State Technical University and rose through defense-plant engineering posts. Appointed People's Commissar of Ammunition on the eve of the German invasion, he directed munitions production through the critical first year of the war. In 1955 he became the first Minister of General Machine Building, a deliberately bland name chosen to conceal the ministry's true mission of developing ballistic missiles and space rockets. Convicted in 1951 on charges of 'concealing metal remnants' and expelled from the party, he was rehabilitated immediately after Stalin's death and returned to high industrial posts, spending his later years chairing the scientific-technical council of the machine-tool ministry.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1917–1920Apprentice mechanic at Borisoglebsk railway workshop, party school and rabfak student
- 1931Graduated Bauman MVTU; engineer and deputy director, Mosgipromash
- 1936–1938Chief engineer, Factory No. 92 (Gorky); technical dept. head, Factory No. 8 (Moscow)
- 1939–1940Deputy People's Commissar of Armament
- 1941–1942People's Commissar of Ammunition — first wartime year
- 1946–1951Minister of Agricultural Machine Building (arrested and expelled 1951, rehabilitated 1953)
- 1955–1957First Minister of General Machine Building — secret administrative head of rocket and space industry
Related historical events
Organizing ammunition production in the war’s first year
Appointed People’s Commissar of Ammunition in March 1941, Goremykin sought to expand output before the German invasion. A historical study reports that ammunition production from January to June 1941 rose by 66 percent over 1940, and that a mobilization plan for the second half of 1941 and 1942 was activated on 23 June. The invasion, loss of territory and industrial resources, and evacuation of western factories eastward then severely disrupted production. In November and December 1941, evacuated plants had not yet resumed output at their new locations, and 303 factories under the People’s Commissariat of Ammunition had gone out of operation. To address the labor shortage, Goremykin transferred construction workers at a plant under construction to ammunition production and maintained their previous average wages during retraining. The study notes that despite such measures, evacuation to the rear, and the restart of production, ammunition output in December 1941 reached only 50 to 60 percent of the plan. In February 1942 Goremykin left the post; Boris Vannikov succeeded him. The episode illustrates both his organizational responses and the material constraints confronting wartime production.