Ammunition and atomic administrator under Beria
"Comrade Stalin, you were imprisoned by enemies, but I was imprisoned by our own."
Born to a Jewish oil worker's family in Baku, he rose from engineer to People's Commissar of Armaments in 1939. Arrested and tortured just before the war, he was summoned by Stalin after the German invasion and appointed Commissar of Ammunition, quadrupling shell production by war's end. After the war, he led the First Main Directorate alongside Kurchatov, building the administrative and industrial foundation of the Soviet atomic bomb project, and later oversaw hydrogen bomb development. He was one of the very few awarded the Hero of Socialist Labor three times.
Career Timeline
- 1930sRises through defense-industry and armaments production administration
- 1941Arrested, then released after the war begins to return to ammunition production
- 1941–1945Ammunition commissar directing mass production of shells and munitions
- 1945–1953Handles atomic-bomb project administration in the First Main Directorate
- 1953 이후Survives after Beria’s fall because of atomic-production expertise
Related historical events
Arrest and Release, 1941
On June 7, 1941, Commissar of Armaments Vannikov was suddenly arrested. Stalin initially sent Malenkov and Beria to offer him a deal: confess everything and be forgiven and kept in his post. Vannikov said he had met foreign representatives only on government instructions, but Stalin did not believe him. During interrogations lasting until July 17, he was beaten and tortured, and under duress denounced his immediate superior Mikhail Kaganovich. Summoned to the Kremlin for a confrontation, Kaganovich excused himself to the restroom and shot himself.
A month into the war, the front faced severe ammunition shortages. Stalin asked Beria about Vannikov's whereabouts, and he was urgently brought from the Lubyanka internal prison. In a long conversation, Stalin offered him the post of Commissar of Ammunition and asked him 'not to hold a grudge for what happened,' adding that he himself had been in prison. Vannikov is said to have replied, 'Comrade Stalin, you were imprisoned by enemies, but I was imprisoned by our own.' Officially released on August 14, 1941, he returned at once as deputy commissar of armaments, and in February 1942 was appointed Commissar of Ammunition, directing all Soviet munitions production through the end of the war.