The perestroika-era construction chief who built the West Siberian oil and gas complex and the Chernobyl sarcophagus
When Boris Yeltsin was sacked as Moscow party chief in 1986, the post to which he was demoted was — ironically — Batalin's first deputy at Gosstroy.
A civil engineer from the Urals Polytechnic, Batalin began his career on construction sites in Bashkiria's coal and oil fields. In Tyumen he led the building of the USSR's largest project, the West Siberian oil and gas complex, earning the Lenin Prize in 1980. Appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers in 1985 and Chairman of Gosstroy in 1986, he oversaw Soviet construction policy during perestroika, personally directing the Chernobyl sarcophagus project and the 1988 Armenian earthquake recovery. After leaving government in 1989, he served as vice-president of the Russian Engineering Academy and president of the Union of Oil and Gas Builders.
Career Timeline
- 1950–1965Bashkir coal and oil construction trusts, rising from foreman to trust manager
- 1965–1970Chief Engineer and First Deputy Head, Glavtyumenneftegazstroy
- 1970–1983Deputy then First Deputy Minister of Construction for Oil and Gas Industry
- 1983–1985Chairman, State Committee for Labor and Social Affairs
- 1985–1989Deputy Chairman, USSR Council of Ministers
- 1986–1989Chairman, Gosstroy USSR (concurrent)
Related historical events
Reforming Gosstroy and Soviet Construction Policy (1985–1989)
When Batalin was appointed chairman of Gosstroy in August 1986, the State Construction Committee was primarily a standards-setting and design-coordination body. Batalin transformed it into an operational headquarters overseeing the entire construction sector. Leveraging his concurrent post as Deputy Premier, he created three new main directorates within Gosstroy and replaced the old leadership with seasoned field managers, most of them from the Yamal-based Sevgazstroy trust, forming what became known as the "Batalin staff." Gosstroy now exercised direct control over all major construction projects in the national economic plan.
Batalin actively pursued experimental economic reforms in construction. He introduced commodity-money relations between construction trusts and clients, permitted the first construction cooperatives, and launched large-scale economic experiments in selected regions and enterprises. A signature discipline he instilled was that meetings must report "results at the exit" rather than plans and intentions. In 1986, the "Housing-2000" program was approved, aiming to provide every Soviet family with a separate apartment by the year 2000, and Batalin promised Gorbachev over 600 million square meters of housing within a single five-year plan period. He justified the target by pointing to expanded production of cellular concrete (ячеистый бетон) wall materials, which he was personally championing. He simultaneously pushed the introduction of cast-in-place (monolithic) housing construction, increased cement and brick output, and sought non-state innovation funds.
Batalin's reforms, however, met resistance. The Union of Architects accused builders of a "technological dictatorship" that suppressed architectural expressiveness. Jurisdictional clashes with Gosplan and other ministries were frequent: the 600-million-square-meter figure he inserted into Gorbachev's plenum speech without prior agreement with Gosplan chairman Yuri Maslyukov caused particular friction. In June 1989, at a Central Committee plenum, party functionaries attacked Batalin for his abrasive management style and alleged voluntarism. He was forced to resign from all his posts. His departure marked the collapse of a coherent construction-policy alternative within perestroika, caught between party conservatives and radical reformers.