Dyakonov Sergey Sergeyevich (November 24, 1898, Serpukhov — September 7, 1938, Moscow) was a Soviet industrial manager, the first director of the Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ), and one of the first recipients of the Order of Lenin. He ran the plant from July 1932 to April 1938, was repressed and shot, and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956. A street in the Avtozavodsky District of Nizhny Novgorod is named after him.[3]

Biography and education

He was born into a family of Serpukhov textile workers.[1] In 1916 he graduated with a gold medal from the Serpukhov Boys' Gymnasium and entered the mechanical department of the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute.[3] On the eve of the The February Revolution he was drafted into the army and sent to courses at the Mikhailovsky Artillery School; he took part in the Civil War and commanded an artillery brigade.[3] After demobilization he returned to his studies and in 1924 graduated from the Petrograd (by then Leningrad) Polytechnic Institute.[3]

From 1921 he was in managerial work: deputy head of a step-down substation at Volkhovstroy, engineer in the design department of the Svirstroy administration, and director of the boiler-turbine institute. He then successively held the posts of deputy chairman of the board, first deputy manager, and acting manager of the All-Union Automotive and Tractor Association (VATO).[3]

Director of the Gorky Automobile Plant

In July 1932 Dyakonov took charge of the Nizhny Novgorod Automobile Plant, then under construction, which at the end of that same year was renamed the V. M. Molotov Gorky Automobile Plant.[3] By December 1932 production had reached 1,560 trucks a month, compared with the previous few dozen.[1] During the six years under his leadership, the plant mastered more than 17 models and modifications of vehicles; by the end of the 1930s GAZ had become the country's leading automobile plant and had produced a total of 450,000 vehicles.[1]

Dyakonov consistently drew the best specialists to the plant from the USSR, Western Europe, and America, building a highly professional engineering school.[4] His contemporaries described his management style as an engineer's: in nonstandard situations he acted quickly and effectively, for which his subordinates called him "a man of creative dreams."[2] There is a well-known episode in which, after a fire at the ZIS plant in Moscow, Dyakonov ordered people and materials to be sent there immediately, regardless of his own production plan.[4]

In 1934, Dyakonov was a delegate to the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), as well as a delegate to the 6th and 7th All-Union and the 15th and 16th All-Russian Congresses of Soviets, and was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the USSR.[3] On March 27, 1934, he was awarded the Order of Lenin for the successful mastery of the production of several automobile models.[3]

One of Dyakonov's main undertakings was the design and start of construction of the plant's second phase, but he was not allowed to complete it.[1] In April 1938 he was removed from the leadership of the enterprise, and in July 1938 he was arrested. The Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR convicted him of sabotage and participation in an anti-Soviet terrorist organization. On September 7, 1938, Dyakonov was shot in Moscow; his remains were buried in a mass grave at the Butovo firing range.[3] On August 4, 1956, he was posthumously rehabilitated.[3]

Legacy

A street in the Avtozavodsky District of Nizhny Novgorod, running through the Severny Settlement, bears Dyakonov's name.[4] His memory is preserved in the GAZ museum; among the plant's veterans, the highest praise for many years was to say that a person had gone through "Dyakonov's school."[1] A biographical sketch of him is included in the collection "The Streets Remember Their Names" (Nizhny Novgorod, 2010), devoted to the people after whom the city's streets are named.[1]

Sources

  1. lib-avt.ru — Dyakonov Sergey Sergeyevich — Centralized Library System of the Avtozavodsky District of the City of Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
  2. auto.vercity.ru — Dyakonov Sergey Sergeyevich (1898—1938, Russia) (archive)
  3. names52.ru — Dyakonov Sergey Sergeyevich (archive)
  4. gallery.ddt-chkalov.ru — The Tragic Fate of a Noble Man (about S. S. Dyakonov) — Internet Project "WE ARE TOGETHER" (archive)