Alexander Pavlovich Serebrovsky
Александр Павлович Серебровский
1884–1938
✕ Executed · Rehabilitated 1956
The "Soviet Rockefeller" who rebuilt Baku oil and organized the Soviet gold rush
In 1924 he met the 90-year-old John D. Rockefeller in New York to secure credit for Soviet oil. "Rockefeller thought for a long time, looked at me attentively, and unexpectedly agreed. After tea he took me on a brisk half-hour walk through his forest park — I could hardly keep up."
A mechanical engineer turned revolutionary, Serebrovsky rebuilt the war-ravaged Baku oil fields with American drilling technology, laying the foundation for Soviet petroleum production. From 1928 he headed Glavzoloto, the state gold-mining trust, where he imported Alaskan techniques and personally recruited American engineers like John Littlepage to dramatically expand gold output: the bullion that financed machinery imports for Stalin's industrialization. As deputy People's Commissar of Heavy Industry under Sergo Ordzhonikidze, he oversaw the broader construction of Soviet heavy industry until his arrest in the Great Purge, execution in 1938, and posthumous rehabilitation in 1956.
Career Timeline
- 1903Joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP)
- 1905Member of the Petersburg Soviet Executive Committee (Putilov Factory delegate)
- 1908–1911Emigrated to Belgium; graduated from the Higher Technical School in Brussels (mechanical engineering)
- 1917–1918Collegium member, People's Commissariat of Trade
- 1919Head of military supply for the Ukrainian Front; Chairman of the Central Board of Artillery Factories
- 1920Deputy People's Commissar of Transport
- 1920–1926Chairman of the Board, Azneft (Azerbaijan Oil Trust)
- 1926Chairman of the Board, USSR Oil Syndicate (Nefte-syndikat)
- 1927–1930Deputy Chairman, Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh) of the USSR
- 1928–1937Head of Glavzoloto (Main Administration for Non-Ferrous Metals, Gold and Platinum)
- 1932–1937Deputy People's Commissar of Heavy Industry
- 1925–1937Candidate member, Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Related historical events
- 1905–1907The Revolution of 1905Petersburg Soviet executive committee member
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign Interventionmilitary supply chief
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeIndustrialization official targetedThe deputy heavy-industry commissar who built the oil and gold industries was arrested in 1937 and executed the next year.
"On the Gold Front" — Rebuilding the Soviet Gold Industry
In the late summer of 1927, Stalin summoned Serebrovsky and instructed him to "raise up the gold industry, which is in a completely disorganized state." Quoting Bret Harte's California Gold Rush literature at length, Stalin expounded on the historical precedent of gold mining kickstarting a chain of regional development (agriculture, transport, heavy industry) and Serebrovsky later recalled being astonished at the General Secretary's erudition on the subject. Appointed head of the newly created Glavzoloto (Main Administration for Gold, Platinum, and Non-Ferrous Metals) in 1928 on Stalin's personal directive, Serebrovsky immediately departed for Alaska, posing as a simple "professor of mining" to study the latest American extraction techniques.
The most precious resource he found in Alaska was a 33-year-old mining engineer named John Littlepage. Littlepage initially refused the offer, stating that "the Bolsheviks seem to have the habit of shooting people, especially engineers," but Serebrovsky's patient persuasion over two months convinced him to emigrate with his family to the USSR. Littlepage served for nine years as deputy head of Glavzoloto, transplanting Alaskan prospecting and drilling methods to the Siberian goldfields, while Serebrovsky recruited hundreds of additional American engineers during the Great Depression. Soviet gold production surged from tens of tonnes in 1927 to roughly 130 tonnes annually by the mid-1930s; this bullion became the critical hard-currency source financing machinery imports for Stalin's First and Second Five-Year Plans.
Serebrovsky documented this experience in monumental publications: a two-volume study, The Gold Industry (Volume I: USA, 337 pages; Volume II: USSR, 617 pages), appeared in 1935, followed in 1936 by his memoir On the Gold Front. But the memoir was withdrawn from circulation almost immediately as those named in its pages were successively unmasked as "enemies of the people"; Serebrovsky himself was arrested in 1937. Glavzoloto outlived its founder, producing over 1,116 tonnes of gold between 1931 and 1950 and remaining the decisive source of Soviet foreign-exchange earnings.