Last Soviet Minister of Aviation Industry: from the Buran shuttle to the privatisation of a military-industrial empire
During the Buran shuttle programme, the operational meetings Systsov chaired were nicknamed sysovniki by the design bureaus — a grudging tribute to a minister whose blunt, shop-floor instincts they feared and respected in equal measure.
Born the son of a schoolteacher in Melekess, Systsov began as a motor assembler at the Tashkent Aviation Plant and rose over two decades to become its chief engineer. In 1975 he became the first general director of the Ulyanovsk Aviation Industrial Complex, building a vast aircraft manufacturing base from the ground up. Appointed First Deputy Minister in 1981, he directly supervised the Buran space shuttle airframe programme. Succeeding Ivan Silayev as minister in 1985, he oversaw production of the MiG-29, Su-27, Tu-160, and An-124 (the cutting edge of late-Soviet aviation) while driving the ministry's conversion into a state corporation during perestroika. A CPSU Central Committee member (1986–1990) and Supreme Soviet deputy, he saw his ministry abolished with the USSR itself and continued privatisation of Russian aviation into the 1990s.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1948–1969Tashkent Aviation Plant: motor assembler → engineer → assembly shop head
- 1969–1975Chief Engineer, Tashkent Aviation Plant
- 1975–1981First General Director, Ulyanovsk Aviation Industrial Complex (UAPK)
- 1981–1985First Deputy Minister of Aviation Industry, USSR
- 1985–1991Minister of Aviation Industry, USSR
- 1991–1995Vice President, OJSC Aviaprom
Related historical events
From Ministry to Joint-Stock Company: Dismantling and Privatising the Aviation Ministry
Systsov was appointed First Deputy Minister of Aviation Industry in 1981, and it was in that post, not as minister, that he supervised the development and construction of the Buran orbital spacecraft and convened the regular operational meetings on its design and operation that designers nicknamed sysovniki. He was appointed minister of the aviation industry on 1 November 1985. By then the ministry was a central pillar of the Soviet defence economy, and his tenure as minister became the period in which Soviet aviation turned from expansion toward dissolution.
During perestroika Systsov came out as an advocate of introducing a market economy, and he personally drove the denationalisation and privatisation of the ministry's assets, converting it from a ministry into a state corporation. He continued that work after the USSR broke up, attempting to conclude contracts for the sale of Soviet aircraft and to set up joint ventures with partners in Israel, the United States, and South Africa. From 1991 to 1995 he served as vice president, and later deputy general director, of OJSC Aviaprom, the aviation-industry association.
The outcome ran against his intentions. By the late 1980s the Ulyanovsk Aviation Industrial Complex employed 36,000 people and a programme for 60 serial An-124 "Ruslan" transports was planned, but as army funding was cut shortly before the USSR's collapse the Defence Ministry stopped buying new An-124s. A conversion programme was announced under which the complex was to master series production of the Tu-204 medium-range airliner, yet that could not be set up quickly, and the plant's workforce was left with almost no work. What privatisation left behind was a set of divided enterprises with neither the ministry's integrated management replaced by a market nor the workers' livelihoods secured.