Every third shell and the armor of every second tank were made of the steel of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works during the Great Patriotic War. Today its products are used to manufacture construction, quarry and other special equipment, equipment for shaft sinking and rock processing. It is also used for all coins in Russia from 50 kopecks to 10 rubles. However, a tragic fate awaited the initiator and designer of the country's largest metallurgical production...
The iron ore reserves of Magnitnaya Mountain, estimated at hundreds of millions of tons, were known in the 18th century, but for 150 years the production was haphazard and primitive. Until at the beginning of the 20th century, the industry of the young Soviet state, which was recovering from the war, was in desperate need of metal.
Then, in 1922, within the walls of the Urals Planning Commission, work on the drafting of a prospective five-year program for the development of all industry in the Urals was in full swing. It was headed by Vitaly Hasselblat, a mining engineer with Swedish roots. He developed a fundamental project of radical reconstruction of the industry through the construction of three giant plants: The Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Works based on the iron ore deposits of Magnitnaya Mountain, the Ural Machine-Building Works, and the Ural Car-Building Works in Nizhny Tagil to provide large shipments of coke, ore, and metal. A little later he also presented projects for the Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant, the Krasnouralsky Metallurgical Plant and the Ufaleisky Nickel Plant. The bold proposal, supported by the technical and raw material justification of the plans for the construction of the new plants, was supported by the government, and a long work on preparations for its implementation began. It was MMK that was to become the dominant part of the program.
Vitaly Sergeevich was born in 1879 into the family of Axel Hasselblatt. The Swede, born in Finland, had an excellent career in the Russian Empire - at different times he managed the Beloretsk mining district, Tirlian, Zigazin, Lemezin and Arkhangelsk plants. This largely explains the deep interest of his son Vitaly in metallurgy and optimization of production.
In 1900 the young man entered St. Petersburg University, but was expelled and exiled to Ufa for participating in a student anti-government demonstration near the Kazan Cathedral. There he was involved in the construction of power plants and participated in the compilation of the Biographical Dictionary of Technical Workers. In 1906 Vitaly Alexeevich returned to St. Petersburg and entered the Mining Institute, from which he successfully graduated in 1909.
As historians today write, the political position and participation in revolutionary activities played into the hands of the young man - "the new government referred him to the category of "elder specialists" whom it trusted, transferred him to the "red directors" and began to appoint him to responsible positions. One way or another, one of his first places of work was the Satka Metallurgical Works, which Hasselblat completely modernized from 1912 to 1916, and built a unique blast furnace using charcoal, which produced a rare high-quality "flowing" pig-iron. It can be said that it was a diploma work, with the help of which the little-known Ural plant set a world record for steel smelting.
Since January 1918, a real kaleidoscope of positions began in the life of the engineer. All of them, without exception, required high competence from a technical specialist and manager. He was a member of the Metal Department of the All-Urals National Economic Commission, a member of the Presidium of the Industrial Bureau of the All-Urals National Economic Commission, member of the Planning Commission of the Urals Federal District, member of the Board of Glavmet in Moscow, chief engineer of the Urals Design Bureau. In 1924 Hasselblat organized the first pilot forging on Siberian coke. Not without reason, Vladimir Lenin left a very telling assessment in history - he called Hasselblat "a formal bigwig in the Urals" and "a de facto bigwig in the prombyuro". The joke is on him, but it was Vitaly Alekseyevich who supervised all the key issues of the development of the Urals industry.
Having assessed the necessity of masterly use of such a generous natural gift as Magnitnaya Mountain, Hasselblat entirely concentrated on the construction of the plant, which even according to initial data promised to become the most significant in the country. At a meeting under the Uralplan it was stated that the conditions were sufficient for the production of 50 million poods of iron per year.
In 1927, a branch of the Leningrad Gipromez was created on the basis of Uralproject, the institute for the design of metallurgical plants, Uralgipromez. Under Hasselblat's guidance, it continued targeted work on the design of a metallurgical plant.
Being a professional mining engineer, Vitaly Alekseevich not only coordinated projects in various councils, committees and state structures, but also personally participated in geological expeditions. He specified the reserves of iron ore and importantly, together with geodesists he surveyed the area: where and how to locate the workshops of the future metallurgical giant. At the same time issues with the railway connection, electrification of the region, selection and delivery of building materials were solved.
In 1926-1928 59 boreholes with the total meterage of 5100 meters were drilled. As a result of exploratory drilling, ore reserves at Magnitnaya Mountain were determined to be 275 million tons, with an average iron content of 60%. Later this figure was adjusted to 400 million tons.
In December 1928, the final project of the combine, drawn up by Uralgipromez, was approved by the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy. In early 1929, the Magnitostroi department was created, and Hasselblat was appointed chief engineer. The position, as they say figuratively now, "firing squad", as he was responsible for the entire technological process, construction and preparation for the start-up of the enterprise and the necessary iron mines and pits. Almost all responsible positions at the new production facility were literally life-threatening at that time. However, the engineers themselves could only guess about this...
Swedish pedantic Vitaly Alekseevich had a negative perception of any distortions in the timing and scheme of construction. He was aware of the real scale of what was planned and, therefore, he lost his temper at the sight of a negligent and petty approach to the matter.
"Socialism builds metallurgical plants, and next to them appear dirty shanghai, dugouts and slaughterhouses," Hasselblat sarcastically commented on the temporary camp for workers that appeared at the foot of the mountain.
He was right: every year more and more foreign and Russian specialists arrived at the "construction site of the century". The shabby village became the city of Magnitogorsk, barracks were replaced by high-rise buildings, which became home to almost half a million people.
Throughout the first year there were discussions at the highest level about the development of MMK's future. Conservatives said that the domestic economy, exhausted by endless wars, would not be able to bear the enormous costs, and suggested building a network of small plants. At the same time the advocates of a revolutionary leap in industrial growth insisted on the need to build powerful modern enterprises, which would become a reliable base for the rapid reform of all other sectors of the economy. "We are stuck technically in the Stone Age. We should adopt the experience of the Americans," said Vadim Smolyaninov, head of Magnitostroy. The latter defended their point of view and it was decided to buy technology from developed capitalist countries. And at the end of 1929 Hasselblat was sent to the United States to sign contracts for designs and equipment.
The plant was forced to remain without actual management for seven months, which ultimately affected the success of the famous construction site. The Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) sent a commission headed by the deputy manager of the Novostal association, Yakov Schmidt, to check it out. He declared about the lack of centralized management of works and dissipation of funds. It was the auditor who was later appointed as the manager of Magnitostroi, so there was talk about personal greed. The fate of Vitaly Alexeevich was decided. The only thing they were afraid of was "scaring him in America," so they wanted to inform him about the verdict upon his arrival home.
After the U.S., Hasselblat was shocked to see how things were going at Magnitnaya Mountain.
"Who came up with the idea to start construction at the coke plant with the eighth coke oven battery? Where is the first blast furnace and where is the eighth battery? There is more than a kilometer's distance between them. How are you going to transfer coke from this battery to the first blast furnace? Will you build a conveyor gallery? Have you thought about how much it's going to cost? What will it do to the cost of pig iron?"
He went to Moscow for answers. But he didn't get there in time. He was arrested right on the train "as an active saboteur of Magnitogorsk who headed a counterrevolutionary group". In 1931 he was sentenced to capital punishment which was replaced by 10 years' imprisonment in the Chibiu concentration camp. In his last note, secretly given to his wife, he wrote: "My dear, know that I have never knowingly sabotaged, have never been in any organizations, have never taken money... All my testimony is the result of psychosis, which you will understand."
The man under whose leadership the entire industry of the Urals was modernized and systematically rebuilt after the Civil War, the head of the design team for the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, died of exhaustion in 1932. At that time he was only 51.
Many of the first managers of MMK suffered a similar fate. For example, the first head of Magnitostroi, Vadim Smolyaninov, got 10 years in a camp, and in 1937 the same supervisor Yakov Shmidt was found guilty of conducting "harmful acts in the peat industry" and was shot on the same day. A month later another head of Magnitostroi, Nikolai Myshkov, was shot.
Vitaly Hasselblat was fully rehabilitated in 1989 for lack of evidence of a crime. The scientist's project was fully implemented, moreover, surpassed even the boldest expectations.
If you can't help it, you'll remember the words of the famous song "Magnitka" by Alexandra Pakhmutova and Nikolai Dobronravov, sung by Lev Leshchenko:
Everything will pass - fatigue, cinders and sorrow.
All will pass - steel will remain forever.
Steel of hearts and cities,
The steel of our soft words
And rockets flying to a starry distance...