The "Soviet Rockefeller" who rebuilt Baku oil and organized the Soviet gold rush
In 1924, on an Azneft trip authorized by Krasin, he mixed equipment purchases with a personal appeal: at 90, John D. Rockefeller listened, then unexpectedly agreed to a guarantee letter. After tea he took Serebrovsky on a brisk half-hour walk through his forest park.
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 recruited American engineers like John Littlepage to expand gold output: bullion that financed machinery imports for industrialization. As deputy People's Commissar of Heavy Industry he oversaw Soviet heavy industry until his arrest on 23 September 1937, execution on 10 February 1938 after conviction by the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court, and posthumous rehabilitation on 19 May 1956.
Activities and affiliations
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
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationOfficial overseeing gold and heavy industryHe led Glavzoloto to expand gold output, which financed machinery imports for industrialization.
- 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, Stalin explained the historical precedent of gold mining setting off a chain of regional development in agriculture, transport and heavy industry; Serebrovsky later recalled being struck by his erudition.
The body he took over was not yet Glavzoloto. It was Soiuzzoloto, the all-union state gold joint-stock company established by a decree of the Central Executive Committee and Council of People's Commissars of 4 June 1927, with the Supreme Council of the National Economy, the People's Commissariat of Finance and Gosbank as shareholders, and Serebrovsky as its head. It was reorganized into Tsvetmetzoloto on 17 November 1929, and only in 1934 was a Glavzoloto proper created within the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry.
Serebrovsky sailed for Alaska on his second American trip, in 1927–28. Because the USSR then had no diplomatic relations with the United States, he obtained his visa in Paris, and he travelled posing as a professor of mining to study the latest extraction techniques. The most valuable resource he found there was a 33-year-old mining engineer, John Littlepage. Littlepage at first refused, saying the Bolsheviks "have the habit of shooting people, especially engineers"; Serebrovsky's persuasion over two months (one account says three) convinced him to move with his family to the USSR. Littlepage served roughly nine years as deputy head (some accounts say nearly ten), transplanting Alaskan prospecting and drilling methods to the Siberian goldfields. Through him 175 American mining engineers arrived in the USSR in 1929, and by 1934 Soviet gold production was reported as overtaking that of the United States.
Output figures need dating. Soviet gold production reached 139 tonnes in 1938, made up of 77.1 tonnes from Glavzoloto and 61.9 tonnes from Dalstroy, more than double the pre-revolutionary level of 62 tonnes. Serebrovsky left a two-volume study, The Gold Industry (Volume I: USA, 337 pp.; Volume II: USSR, 617 pp., 1935) and a 1936 memoir, On the Gold Front, withdrawn from circulation almost immediately because men named in it were successively denounced as "enemies of the people." He himself was arrested on 23 September 1937, removed from candidate membership of the VKP(b) Central Committee at the October plenum, and shot on 10 February 1938. That gold was a decisive hard-currency source for paying for imported machinery defines the purpose of the whole undertaking.