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.
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