The GKO science plenipotentiary who pressed Stalin to restart atomic bomb research
At the meeting many agencies were opposed, but Stalin paced his office and said: 'We must do it.' (Kaftanov's memoir.)
A Soviet administrator of higher education and science, he served as the State Defense Committee (GKO) plenipotentiary for science and, together with Abram Ioffe, urged Stalin to resume atomic bomb research, producing the GKO resolution of 28 September 1942 that launched the Soviet atomic project. Before the war he chaired the All-Union Committee for Higher Education, overseeing the entire Soviet higher education system, and after the war became the first Minister of Higher Education of the USSR. In the 1950s he served as first deputy minister of culture and chairman of the State Committee for Radio and Television, before returning to academia as rector of his alma mater, the Mendeleev Institute of Chemical Technology.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1919–1926Worker at Donsoda plant, Komsomol organizer
- 1931–1937Researcher and lecturer, Mendeleev Institute; party secretary, Karpov Institute
- 1937–1946Chairman, All-Union Committee for Higher Education (VKVSh)
- 1941–1945GKO plenipotentiary for science
- 1946–1951Minister of Higher Education of the USSR
- 1953–1959First Deputy Minister of Culture of the USSR
- 1959–1962Chairman, State Committee for Radio and Television
- 1962–1973Rector, Mendeleev Institute of Chemical Technology
Expanding higher education and workers’ access before the war
From 1937 to 1946 Kaftanov chaired the All-Union Committee for Higher Education under the Soviet Council of People’s Commissars; from 1938 to 1954 he also chaired the Higher Attestation Commission. In an account published in English in 1939, he reported that the Soviet Union had 716 higher-education institutions and 601,000 students in 1938. He listed four institutions in Kirghizia, which had none before the Revolution, five each in Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, and 19 in Kazakhstan. The figures convey the scale and regional reach of the system overseen by his committee, as well as how the state officially presented higher education’s expansion at the time.
His account emphasized routes linking higher education to workers and experienced practitioners. Academies attached to industrial, agricultural, transport, and other people’s commissariats enrolled factory managers, skilled workers, and Stakhanovite workers, who remained connected to their workplaces and returned for practical assignments. Factory colleges offered after-hours study inside enterprises, while correspondence courses also served workers. Kaftanov reported that more than 200,000 people were taking higher-education correspondence courses. Because this was an account by a senior state official, its figures on educational provision and achievement should be read as official claims.