Alexey Ladygo
General director,
VO Zarubezhtsvetmet JSC

H

e went down in history as a Soviet minister from the Guinness Book of Records: Petr Fadeevich Lomako was the people’s commissar (the former title of ministers) and minister of the USSR non-ferrous metallurgy from 1940 to 1986 with a short interval. Those, who compile the British book, are just delighted by his “political longevity” in spite of difficult years of WWII, Stalin’s regime, Khrushchev’s experiments, ‘the epoch of stagnation’. It is understandable: they are required just to state facts but not to explain them.
Petr Lomako not simply occupied these posts. He worked professionally, constructively, selflessly, exactingly with respect to both himself and others. As it turned out, the country needed him very much precisely because of these qualities, this character, this special mold of born leader of the state scale.
Being 36 years old Lomako was taking over the industry as the youngest people commissar. The annual volume of non-ferrous metal production amounted then to 280,000 tons. But when he retired after reaching 82 years of age (for the last ten years he was the oldest in the ministry being called its patriarch), the volume equaled 8.5 million tons a year. This unprecedented growth is the chief record in his outstanding biography that is saturated with events.
Lomako was born in 1904 in a farm laborer’s family. That is according to official documents. But Petr Fadeevich considered himself a born Temruk Cossack and, when excoriating negligent workers was due, he threatened "to chop them with a saber". He started his labor biography as a messenger at a district committee of the Communist Party. Was a private in the Special Assignment Unit and First Cavalry Army. Joined the Communist Party, when he was 21 years old. In 1932 graduated from the Moscow Institute of Non-Ferrous Metals and Gold. Was a foreman, supervisor, senior supervisor, chief engineer at the Krasny Vyborgets Plant in Leningrad. In 1937 became director of the Kolchugin Plant (the Vladimir region) that processed non-ferrous metals. From 1939 to 1957 was deputy people commissar, commissar, minister of the USSR non-ferrous metallurgy. From 1961 to 1962 served as deputy chairman of the CPSU Central Committee Bureau for the Russian Federation, chairman of the State Economic Council. From 1962 to 1965 was deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee. From 1965 to 1986 worked as minister of the USSR non-ferrous metallurgy. Among numerous government awards are six Orders of Lenin. If it was not a record, then, that was very close to it.
So, there were a civil war, professional training and party activities in the 1920s. The 1930s were marked by efforts to consolidate the industry, to combine small mines, concentrating mills and metallurgical plants into a single efficient complex. In the 1940s plants were evacuated to the East, The industry experienced the steep rise of production volumes and it became one of the major ‘smithies of war’: without non-ferrous metals for making engines, aircraft fuselages, tank armor the victory over the Wehrmacht, which was "put into irons", would have been just impossible. Then came the hardest period of restoring the nearly destroyed country. In the interests of power-consuming production facilities Lomako put in operation so many electric power stations that it would be appropriate for today’s RAO UES of Russia to allocate at least a little sum to create a good monument.
As of today, a lot of Soviet archives have been declassified but so far the public, however, have barely realized that the so-called SredMash (the ministry of the medium-size machinery), which focused on creating a military potential of the new - atomic and missile - kind, came into existence from that same ministry of non-ferrous metallurgy, from under the hand and with enormous support (especially by providing labor force) of Petr Lomako. For some unknown reason books of records as well as academic publications keep silent that Lomako was closely connected with the first Soviet uranium, first pure graphite, Europe’s first nuclear reactor (1946), first atomic bomb (1949), first thermonuclear bomb (1953), first atomic submarine and first nuclear power plant (1954). He put so many organizational efforts and non-ferrous metals into the rocket development, space exploration that it is impossible to count.
By the highest standards Petr Lomako created Russia’s modern non-ferrous metallurgy as well. Norilsk Nickel, the industry’s leader, which was experiencing then an acute financial and raw material crisis, owes Lomako for its revival. Precisely Lomako managed to convince specialists and personally Khrushchev that this industrial giant had a promising future. The discovery of the new Talnahskie copper-and-nickel deposits proved that he was right.
Practically all aluminum industry reached the high development level thanks to Lomako’s initiatives and guidance. Its structure turned out to be so strong that even in the hardest period of the Russian "spurt to the market" at the beginning of the 1990s the industry not only stood fast. It happened to be highly profitable. It was Lomako, who insisted that the country’s aluminum should correspond by its quality to world standards. That is why, when the domestic market collapsed, our metal encountered no problem on the way to world market and it even won key positions there. The Novokuznetsky, Bratsky, Krasnoyarsky, Sayansky aluminum mills as well as tens and hundreds of smaller enterprises, which are not so well-known, are his heritage generously given to the homeland.
During those years his homeland was big and that is why Lomako will be kindly remembered for a long time in Ukraine, in Caucasian republics, in Central Asia. Kirgizia’s semiconductor industry and major gold-extracting plant were started practically from zero. Much efforts, energy as well as many new technologies were given to developing the Almalyksky integrated mill in Uzbekistan, the Dzhezkazgansky and Balhashsky integrated mills in Kazakhstan.
Petr Lomako respected science and tried hard to contribute to its development. The reliance on scientific research institutes was one of the ‘secrets’ of his management as it is called nowadays. Precisely in his time there emerged and developed Norilskproekt, Yakutalmaz, the whole complex of institutes and scientific centers in Moscow, Novosibirsk, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Alma-Ata, Tashkent, Erevan and other cities.
And, besides, his cause lives on thanks to the large family of highly skilled specialists of different specializations, who were trained and nurtured by Lomako personally and by his ministerial staff workers.
By contrast with the decrepit Politburo, other administrative power structures suffering from gerontological problems Lomako was boiling with indomitable energy, had a phenomenal memory and was extraordinarily self-disciplined after he was 70 and 80 years old. Being always accurate and elegant he often directly called persons old men because of their foot-dragging style of walking, untidiness, unforgivable work blunders, although they were 20 to 30 years younger than he was. Lomako retired not because he failed to do his duty properly but because he got hit by Gorbachev’s perestroika, just another turn of the history’s ruthless wheel.
Petr Lomako’s is a rare surprising case, when a human life absorbed almost a century as well as its turbulent and active component. He assisted with the birth and formation of the Soviet power and the Soviet State. And he left together with them.
The newly fledged Russian oligarchs pretend that their billions have been made by their own financial genius but not by such people as Lomako and those, who worked by his side. But sooner or later the history will put everything in a proper place and people will honor merits of true creators.
July 12, 2004, will mark 100 years since the birth of Petr Fadeevich Lomako. A modest monument to him has been erected at the Novodevichie cemetery. There are "workers", i.e. without any peculiarities, monuments at a number of large plants, which owe Lomako for their birth and maturing. But the most precious thing is the memory of comrades-in-arms, who keep respecting, honoring and loving the one, who was a genuine master of enormous industrial capacities, which go on working today for the good of Russia.