Tsarevsky Mikhail Mikhailovich (March 19, 1898, Łowicz, Warsaw Governorate — July 23, 1963, Moscow) — Soviet organizer of industrial and atomic construction, head of construction of the Gorky Automobile Plant, Hero of Socialist Labor. Born into a military family, he spent his childhood in the selo of Nikolayevka, Voronezh Governorate, where the family moved after his father's demobilization.[1]

Early Years and Military Service

In 1915, having graduated from the Moscow Military Paramedic School, Tsarevsky went to the Western Front with the Life Guards Hussar Pavlovsky Regiment. In March 1917 he joined the Bolshevik Party. From 1918 he served as a volunteer in the Red Army, in the forces of the Cheka and the OGPU.[1]

Construction of the Balakhna Combine and the Gorky Automobile Plant

From 1925 onward, the rest of Tsarevsky's life was bound up with construction. Between 1925 and 1928 he worked as deputy head of construction, and between 1928 and 1930 as head of construction of the Balakhna Paper Combine.[1]

In 1930 the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Committee of the VKP(b) sent him to work on the construction of the Gorky Automobile Plant. To centralize management of the construction, a unified directorate was established to which all construction contractors were subordinated; Tsarevsky was appointed head of this directorate — the 13th State Construction Trust — and simultaneously became deputy head of the Avtostroy management.[1] Workers remembered him as a manager who was personally present on the construction site at any hour of the day or night: according to the recollections of foreman V. Sorokin, Tsarevsky would drive out in the middle of the night to bring canned food and bread to workers clearing an emergency blockage at the concrete plant.[1]

Subsequent Construction Projects and the Great Patriotic War

After the completion of the automobile plant's industrial building at the end of 1931, the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the USSR sent Tsarevsky to oversee construction of the Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant. The Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant was built under Tsarevsky's direction in a record-short time of 1 year and 8 months; simultaneously, from December 1931, he headed the Tagilstroy trust, which united all construction projects in Tagil. In 1935, under Tsarevsky's direction at Tagilstroy, a fundamentally new method of organizing large-scale construction was implemented: supplying worksites with ready-made concrete, mortar, reinforcement bars, and formwork panels from centralized workshops and plants; the method became widely adopted on construction sites across the country.[3][3] He received his first Order of Lenin in 1934 for this project, and his second in 1939 for the construction of the Severonikel combine. In March 1936, Tsarevsky took charge of the construction of the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute named after N. E. Zhukovsky (TsAGI) in Moscow and completed it a year and a half later.[3][1]

During the Great Patriotic War, Tsarevsky commanded the 2nd Sapper Army. In 1943 he was awarded the military rank of Major General of the Engineering and Technical Service.[3] For his combined services in the industrialization of the country and during the war, he was awarded four orders, including three Orders of Lenin. Beginning in 1946, Tsarevsky's work was tied to the atomic project: he was appointed head of construction of Combine No. 7 of the NKVD in the Estonian SSR, and then head of construction of Combine No. 817 (the future Mayak Production Association) in Chelyabinsk-40, where the country's first industrial atomic reactor and radiochemical plant were being built.[3][1]

Recognition and Legacy

In 1949, Tsarevsky was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. In 1951, Tsarevsky received the USSR State Prize for work connected with the atomic project.[3] He died on July 23, 1963, and is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.[1] The Centralized Library System of Avtozavodsky District of Nizhny Novgorod lists him among the prominent figures in the history of GAZ, as a "prominent organizer of industrial and atomic construction in the USSR" and as the head of construction of the Gorky Automobile Plant.[2]

Sources

  1. biblioatom.ru — In 1943, Tsarevsky was awarded the military rank of Major General of the Engineering and Technical Service. (archive)
  1. lib-avt.ru — Tsarevsky Mikhail Mikhailovich (1898–1963) — Centralized Library System of Avtozavodsky District of the City of Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
  2. lib-avt.ru — The History of GAZ in Portraits — Centralized Library System of Avtozavodsky District of the City of Nizhny Novgorod (archive)