Apollon Sergeyevich Systsov

Аполлон Сергеевич Сысцов

1929–2005 ○ Natural causes

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.