Longest-serving geology minister who presided over the 'golden age' of Soviet mineral exploration
Asked why he sent his son to remote Aldan while other officials' children were placed in embassies — 'So that after seven years of field school, he returns a real geologist.'
Yevgeny Kozlovsky was the longest-serving Minister of Geology of the USSR (1975–1989), presiding over what contemporaries called the 'golden age' of Soviet geology. He doubled the country's mineral-resource base and drove major oil and gas development in Western Siberia, the Caspian Depression, and Central Asia. Starting as an assistant drill master in the Far East, he earned the Lenin Prize for accelerated exploration of the Solnechnoye tin deposit before rising to minister. Under his watch, the Kola Superdeep Borehole reached 12,620 metres, a Guinness record, and the USSR built a fleet of 400 geological research vessels. After the Soviet collapse, he remained a prolific theorist of Russia's mineral-resource policy, arguing that geology was inseparable from national security.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1953–1965Far East Geological Directorate: assistant drill master → chief engineer → head of Komsomolsk Expedition
- 1965–1973Head of Technical Directorate, RSFSR Ministry of Geology
- 1973–1974Director, All-Union Research Institute of Economics of Mineral Resources (VIEMS)
- 1974–1975Deputy Minister of Geology of the USSR
- 1975–1989Minister of Geology of the USSR
- 1990–2009Professor and department head, Moscow State Geological Prospecting Academy (MGRI)
- 1992–2022President, International Joint-Stock Geological Company (MAKGO)
Scientific management and technology in geological exploration
After graduating from the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute in 1953, Kozlovsky worked as an assistant drilling foreman in the Far East, then led a geological survey party and larger groups of geologists. From 1965 he headed the technical administration of the Ministry of Geology of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, promoting a program that combined scientific research, the adoption of new equipment and technologies, and the organization of fieldwork. Appointed USSR minister of geology in 1975, he oversaw expanded exploration for resources including Western Siberian oil, diamonds near Arkhangelsk, and tin in the Far East. He was also associated with organizing the Kola Superdeep Borehole and a prospecting system linking space, air, the Earth's surface, and boreholes. His 1985 book applied cybernetic systems to exploratory drilling; a 1989 monograph treated geological-economic modeling as a basis for new principles of exploration and work organization. A memorial published by the State Commission on Mineral Reserves credits his ministerial tenure with a tenfold increase in mineral-reserve stocks. An introduction to a 2012 interview in the Communist Party's newspaper gives a different measure, saying the country's mineral-resource potential doubled over those years. The sources do not define these measures in comparable terms, so the figures should remain distinct. The memorial also records more than 40 discoveries and inventions; a 2012 profile describes him as the author of over 600 publications and 25 monographs.