Secret Efim the Great

I happened to see him in Navoi. In this city there is a powerful mining and smelting combine where I, at that time an employee of the Party Life magazine, was assigned to study the work of the party office. Judging by the size and equipment, this party office was the most ambitious in all of Uzbekistan. At the same time, his museum sterility testified that people were rarely here.
It was there that I sat, finishing the article, when a group of “leading comrades” entered the office. Among them, an elderly man with three golden stars of the Hero of Socialist Labor, at the sight of which I jumped reflexively, towered a full head. He nodded in my direction and asked abruptly: “Who?” The general director of the plant, Zarapetyan, just as monotonously replied: “Correspondent,” and this big boss lost all interest in me.
Naturally, I soon found out that three times the Hero was the Minister of Medium Machine Building Slavsky. The term “average engineering” was interpreted by the initiates as “the nuclear industry”, to which the plant in Navoi belonged. As for the minister, besides the last name, only the initials were known: E.P. Nevertheless, I managed to find out the name and some information about this significant person. The name of Slavsky Efim Pavlovich.
Most recently, I learned that this secret minister was Jewish, and I considered it my duty to write about the life of an outstanding leader of the Soviet Union.
Yefim was born in the village of Makeyevka, Taganrog District of the Cossack Don Cossack Army in October 1898. His father, Faivel Slavsky, a former Nicholas soldier, was a real hero. Vigorous growth, energetic and hardworking, he had a small allotment, which he processed. While the father was alive, the family was not in trouble. He died at the age of seventy, and Efim, who was then 8 years old, became a shepherd. For nearly seven years he worked as a laborer, then went to the mine, worked as a horseman, he cut coal. Growth and silushkoy went to his father, so that he earned bread for himself and his mother. However, about her, as well as about brothers and sisters, there is no information.
In 1918, Efim became a Red Guard, then fought with the Petliurists in one of the parts of the so-called “Ukrainian curtain”. Standing out with remarkable strength and riding skills, he first becomes a fighter of the 1 Horse Corps, and at the end of the course in December 1919, becomes a platoon commander of the 1 Cavalry Army. With Konarmia I went from Donbass to Poland. After its disbandment in 1923, he was sent to political courses, after which he became regiment commissar, and then a cavalry brigade. Retired in 1928 year.
In memory of his military service, Yefim was left with a cavaliergun broadsword donated by Semyon Budyonny with a personalized engraving. At the end of the Civil War, he was able to save a young aristocratic woman who became his wife from violence. In his memoirs, Andrei Sakharov wrote: “... In the past, Slavsky was one of the commanders of the 1 Horse; in my presence, he liked to recall episodes from this period of his life ... To match the character of Slavsky, his appearance is a high powerful figure, strong arms and broad sloping shoulders, large features of a bronze-red face, a loud, confident voice. Once I saw his wife and was struck by the contrast of their faces - she looked like an intelligent, already elderly, quiet woman, in some old-fashioned hat. He treated her with emphatic attention and extraordinary gentleness ... ”I did not find any information about Slavsky’s children.
In the 1928 year, Efim Slavsky entered the Moscow Institute of Nonferrous Metals, from which he graduated in the 1933 year and was sent to Ordzhonikidze to the Electrozink plant. In this factory in six years he has gone from an engineer to a director. Before the war, Slavsky was appointed to a much more solid post - director of the Dnepropetrovsk aluminum plant. At the beginning of the war, he evacuated the plant to the Urals. In wartime, this plant turns into the Ural Aluminum Plant (UAZ) - the only company in the Soviet Union that produces aluminum and its alloys, which are so necessary for the needs of the war. Director of UAZ Slavsky worked almost to Victory. Three orders of Lenin received during this time testify to the effectiveness of his work.
In those years, the characteristic inherent to Efim was manifested - the desire for universal leadership, covering all aspects of the life of the enterprise. Uazov's old-timers recall the case in the fall of 1941, when, during the day, he resolved the issue of nutrition for the children of plant workers. The situation was awful: the war, food was catastrophically lacking, violating the instructions of the State Defense Committee and redistributing the work ration for children was almost a matter of jurisdiction. Then Slavsky decided to produce food himself in order to feed not only the workers, but also their children. By his order three subsidiary farms were organized. They also provided additional food to the factory workers, and were engaged in state deliveries. In the meantime, these Uazov economy did not gain strength, Yefim managed to agree on the receipt of non-stock food products at the plant. This manifested another feature of this leader - perseverance, even pressure, overcoming or sweeping obstacles in the way of his plan.
Slavsky’s outstanding organizational skills were noticed in the Kremlin and at the beginning of 1945, he was appointed Deputy Commissar for the color industry. However, Efim stayed in this position for only two months and in April of the same year he became Deputy Head of the 1 General Directorate under the USSR Council of Ministers. This department was organized by order of Stalin to lead the creation of the atomic bomb. He was headed by Boris Vannikov. Immediately after the appointment of Slavsky, he laid upon him the responsibility for the construction of the uranium-graphite reactor, on which weapons-grade plutonium was to be produced. At the same time, the production of weapons-grade uranium was created on gas diffusion centrifuges. There was a kind of competition in the primacy of producing nuclear stuffing for a bomb. Efim Slavsky won it. As early as December 1946, a nuclear reaction was carried out at a reactor built in four months.
A whole plant with dozens of atomic reactors was built around Kyshtym around this reactor under the direction of Slavsky. It was here that the plutonium was obtained, which was used to equip the first charge exploded at the Semipalatinsk test site in August 1949. Among the outstanding scientists and organizers of industry, awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor, was Slavsky.
The merits of Yefim Slavsky in the creation of the atomic bomb served as a powerful impetus in his official career. In 1953, he replaced Vannikov as head of the 1 General Directorate at the USSR Council of Ministers. After the first thermonuclear explosion, he becomes twice the Hero of Socialist Labor. And in 1957, he was Minister of Medium Machine Building. Efim Slavsky stood at the origins of the creation of this department, and then until 1986, for nearly thirty years, he headed an industrial empire called Sredmash, which included hundreds of settlements, mining enterprises, processing plants, factories, nuclear power plants, research centers, research and development institutes, design bureaus, so-called “closed cities”, educational institutions, training grounds and military units.
The carriers of all classes, starting with artillery shells and up to intercontinental ballistic missiles with separable warheads, were equipped with nuclear warheads created at the enterprises of Minsredmash. On it lay the task of extracting and processing uranium ore, not only in the USSR, but also in the GDR, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
At the disposal of Slavsky was a specialized train with two locomotives. This train was located on the siding. Various communications were very quickly connected to it. The operational headquarters was located in one of the cars, where Slavsky heard the reports of the heads of mines, geological parties and enterprises. Much depended on it - whether to open a new mine or transfer finances for exploration and mining of uranium ore to other regions of the country. Slavsky was one of those few people who knew about the state of the uranium mining and processing industries of the USSR literally everything, it was he who determined the strategy for its development.
To be continued