People of the Revolution and the USSR

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Any Industry and production 1
Affiliation(set)

Most people

Any Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks 12 Soviet Union state institutions 12 Azerbaijan state institutions 2 Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR) 1 Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) 1

All 5 affiliations

Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan state institutions 2

Russia

Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR) 1 Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) 1

Soviet Union

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks 12 Soviet Union state institutions 12
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Any Russia 29 Moldova 5 Belarus 3 Azerbaijan 1 Latvia 1 Lithuania 1 Ukraine 1
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People of the Soviet Union

People of the Stalin era1929–1953 1
Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR) Background: Azerbaijan Clear all
GlossarySocialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR)

Boris Lvovich Vannikov

Борис Львович Ванников
Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism Soviet Union Azerbaijan 1897–1962 ○ Natural causes

Ammunition and atomic administrator under Beria

"Comrade Stalin, you were imprisoned by enemies, but I was imprisoned by our own."

Born to a Jewish oil worker's family in Baku, he rose from engineer to People's Commissar of Armaments in 1939. Arrested and tortured just before the war, he was summoned by Stalin after the German invasion and appointed Commissar of Ammunition, quadrupling shell production by war's end. After the war, he led the First Main Directorate alongside Kurchatov, building the administrative and industrial foundation of the Soviet atomic bomb project, and later oversaw hydrogen bomb development. He was one of the very few awarded the Hero of Socialist Labor three times.

Career timeline
  • 1930sRises through defense-industry and armaments production administration
  • 1941Arrested, then released after the war begins to return to ammunition production
  • 1941–1945Ammunition commissar directing mass production of shells and munitions
  • 1945–1953Handles atomic-bomb project administration in the First Main Directorate
  • after 1953Survives after Beria’s fall because of atomic-production expertise