Longest-serving geology minister who presided over the 'golden age' of Soviet mineral exploration
Asked why he sent his son to remote Aldan while other officials' children were placed in embassies — 'So that after seven years of field school, he returns a real geologist.'
Yevgeny Kozlovsky was the longest-serving Minister of Geology of the USSR (1975–1989), presiding over what contemporaries called the 'golden age' of Soviet geology. He doubled the country's mineral-resource base and drove major oil and gas development in Western Siberia, the Caspian Depression, and Central Asia. Starting as an assistant drill master in the Far East, he earned the Lenin Prize for accelerated exploration of the Solnechnoye tin deposit before rising to minister. Under his watch, the Kola Superdeep Borehole reached 12,620 metres, a Guinness record, and the USSR built a fleet of 400 geological research vessels. After the Soviet collapse, he remained a prolific theorist of Russia's mineral-resource policy, arguing that geology was inseparable from national security.
Career Timeline
- 1953–1965Far East Geological Directorate: assistant drill master → chief engineer → head of Komsomolsk Expedition
- 1965–1973Head of Technical Directorate, RSFSR Ministry of Geology
- 1973–1974Director, All-Union Research Institute of Economics of Mineral Resources (VIEMS)
- 1974–1975Deputy Minister of Geology of the USSR
- 1975–1989Minister of Geology of the USSR
- 1990–2009Professor and department head, Moscow State Geological Prospecting Academy (MGRI)
- 1992–2022President, International Joint-Stock Geological Company (MAKGO)