Amo Sergeyevich Yelyan (1903–1965) was a Soviet industrial manager, director of Machine-Building Plant No. 92 in Gorky (1940–1951), and one of the leaders of the Soviet military-industrial complex during the Great Patriotic War and the implementation of the atomic project.[2]

Early Years and Career Before Gorky

He was born on January 10, 1903, in the town of Goris (then Geryusy in the Zangezur Uyezd of the Elisavetpol Governorate) into a peasant family.[1][2] In 1915 he lived through the pogroms in Shusha, surviving only because that night he was visiting a neighboring village.[1] At 16 he joined the Bolshevik party and worked in Komsomol and party bodies.[2] From 1923 to 1926 he studied at the Azerbaijan Polytechnic Institute, and in 1929 he completed a three-year course in cold metalworking at Aznefit and qualified as a technologist.[2]

In 1931, at the age of 28, he became director of the Kirov Plant in Baku, and then manager of the Neftoochistka trust in Baku. After transferring to Moscow, he served as technical director and deputy manager of the All-Union trust Burneftemash.[2] From October 1935 to April 1936, on a personal assignment from Ordzhonikidze, he did a work placement in the United States at the Ford plant.[2] On his return he worked as deputy technical director of Aircraft Plant No. 32 in Moscow, and from 1937 to 1940 he was director of the Volodarsky Plant in Ulyanovsk.[2]

Plant No. 92 in Gorky: The War Years

In the summer of 1940, Yelyan took over Machine-Building Plant No. 92 in Gorky, one of the leading enterprises of the country's defense industry. He ran it for more than 11 years.[2] With the new director's arrival, the rights and duties of staff and the working procedures of the management were clearly regulated; Yelyan widely practiced promoting young specialists to leadership positions.[2]

As early as 1940, the plant was simultaneously mastering the F-22 USV anti-tank gun and the 122-millimeter M-30 howitzer. During the Great Patriotic War, under the leadership of Yelyan, M. Z. Olevsky, and V. G. Grabin, production was reorganized on a massive scale: mass flow-line production of guns was introduced, and plant buildings were erected in winter conditions within a matter of months and put into service before the roofs were finished.[2] During the war, Plant No. 92 produced more than 100,000 guns, a volume comparable to the combined output of medium-caliber and heavier artillery systems by Germany and all of its European allies.[2]

The enterprise's workforce was awarded the challenge Red Banner of the State Defense Committee 33 times; in May 1946 it was handed over to the plant for permanent safekeeping. The plant itself was awarded the Order of Lenin (1939), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1942), the Order of the Red Banner (1944), and the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st Class (1945).[2]

The Atomic Project

From the end of 1944, Plant No. 92, under the direction of Elyan, joined in carrying out the Soviet atomic project. The enterprise became the leading developer and manufacturer of equipment for the first industrial atomic reactors, and from the early 1950s, of reactors for other purposes as well.[2]

Sources

  1. russia-armenia.info — "Amo Sergeyevich Elyan Lived on Our Latitude" — Center for the Support of Russian-Armenian Strategic and Public Initiatives
  2. arm-nn.ru — Amo Sergeyevich Elyan — Nizhny Novgorod Armenian Community (archive)