Leonid Arkadyevich Kostandov

If one project defines Kostandov's entire career, it is chemicalization (khimizatsiya). In May 1958, the CPSU Central Committee held a landmark plenum, informally christened 'Great Chemistry' (Bolshaya khimiya), that mandated a full-scale expansion of the chemical and petrochemical industries. Kostandov, then Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for Chemistry, together with V. M. Bushuyev, head of the Central Committee's Chemical Industry Department, drove the program's design and launch. In its first seven years (1959–1965) alone, 9 billion rubles poured into chemicals, nearly two and a half times the total invested over the previous forty years. Once appointed Minister of the Chemical Industry in October 1965, Kostandov spent fifteen years on the front line of this vast industrial expansion.

The core logic of chemicalization was simple but radical: replace traditional materials (metals, timber, natural fibres) with synthetic alternatives that were lighter, cheaper, and far less energy-intensive to produce. 'Expanding plastics production costs 100 to 150 times less than expanding metallurgy.' It was a Kostandov refrain that became his trademark throughout the Brezhnev era. Between 1961 and 1980, the chemical and petrochemical sector absorbed roughly 58 billion rubles in capital investment; over the same period, gross chemical output rose tenfold and plastics production more than fourteen-fold. In 1973 the USSR overtook the United States in mineral fertilizer output to become the world's largest producer, and by the early 1980s it was the second-largest chemical power globally, manufacturing 80,000 petroleum-based chemical products.

None of this growth would have been possible without Western technology. Kostandov solved the hard-currency bottleneck through 'compensation agreements': Western firms supplied plant and technology, and the USSR repaid them with product from the very facilities they had built. The emblematic deal was the 1973 ammonia agreement with Armand Hammer's Occidental Petroleum, which committed the USSR to exporting 3–4 million tonnes of ammonia annually. To move it, the world's longest ammonia pipeline was laid from Tolyatti to Odessa (2,400 km), and dedicated port terminals were built at Ventspils and Odessa. Between 1960 and 1986, compensation deals and technology imports brought roughly 1,200 large-scale chemical and petrochemical facilities on line across the USSR, at a total cost of about 15 billion dollars. By the 1970s–80s, 50% of Soviet chemical-plant equipment was imported, and these units produced 90% of the country's polyethylene, 100% of its polypropylene, and 78% of its ammonia.

Kostandov simultaneously orchestrated an elaborate division of labour within Comecon: energy-intensive basic chemicals stayed in the USSR, while fine chemicals went to East Germany, Hungary, and other Eastern Bloc partners. With East Germany he co-developed the 'Polymir-50' high-pressure polyethylene unit, installed at Novopolotsk, Sumgait, Tomsk, and the GDR's Leuna Works, and even exported the licence to West Germany's Salzgitter. Fittingly, the last deal he negotiated (at the Leipzig Trade Fair in 1984) was for chemical-plant equipment with East German officials, before the heart attack that killed him.

After his death the chemicalization drive lost momentum rapidly. Russian chemical-industry veterans still argue that 'had the pace Kostandov set been sustained, Russia's chemical industry would now rival that of the United States.' Many facilities were idled or dismantled after 1991, yet even today 90 percent of Russia's chemical exports come from plants built during the Kostandov era.