Production boss from tanks to atomic industry
In 1939, summoned by Stalin, his truck blew two tires and he arrived an hour and a half late. 'Did you come via Tver?' Stalin asked. 'Technology betrays when you don't master it,' replied the 37-year-old factory director. When he tried to decline the commissar post, Voroshilov grabbed his arm: 'Where's the bottle for the anvil?'
A key technocrat of Stalin-era Soviet armaments industry, Malyshev directed the mass-production system for the T-34 tank as People's Commissar of the Tank Industry during World War II, and after the war became the first Minister of Medium Machine-Building, overseeing the entire Soviet nuclear industry. Starting as a locomotive designer and rising through tanks, shipbuilding, nuclear weapons, and missiles, he epitomized the 'Stalin's commissars' generation that built Soviet military-technical power.
Career Timeline
- 1930sRises through machine-building and tank-industry administration
- 1941–1945Tank Industry commissar, overseeing wartime tank production including the T-34 system
- 1945–1953Transport and medium machine-building leader at the junction of armaments and atomic administration
- 1953–1957Minister of Medium Machine-Building, involved in atomic and missile-industry administration
- 1957Dies as a key figure of the wartime production-administrator generation
Related historical events
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationTank Industry commissarAs commissar of the newly created Tank Industry from September 1941, he directed the relocation and restart of T-34 factories eastward, building the world's largest tank factory, Tankograd, at Chelyabinsk.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarTank industry commissarAs tank industry commissar he organized the mass production of the T-34 at Tankograd in the Urals.
- 1943–1949The Soviet Atomic ProjectMedium Machine BuildingHe organized the atomic industry into a ministry, building the production system that followed the test.
The Atomic Project and Radiation Sickness
On 30 November 1945, Malyshev joined the Engineering-Technical Council of the Special Committee overseeing the Soviet atomic bomb project. He led the second section, which supervised construction of Plant No. 813 (now the Ural Electrochemical Combine) for uranium enrichment, a critical facility for producing the highly enriched uranium needed for nuclear weapons. Together with Pervukhin, Vannikov, and Zavenyagin, he was also tasked with recruiting scientific and engineering personnel for the council's sections. In 1951, he received the Stalin Prize, First Class, for organizing the production of diffusion machines for uranium enrichment. In June 1953, Malyshev was appointed the first Minister of Medium Machine-Building, the cover ministry that administered the entire Soviet nuclear industry, placing him in charge of nuclear weapons development and atomic infrastructure. In August of that same year, he personally inspected the test site at Semipalatinsk where the Soviet Union's first thermonuclear bomb, RDS-6s, was detonated. Four years later, on 20 February 1957, Malyshev died of acute radiation syndrome. His ashes were interred in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.