"The patriarch of the diamond industry of the Republic of Sakha and the non-ferrous metallurgy of the USSR", "the man-epoch" is how Taras Desyatkin has been called for decades. This is not just a figure of speech or high-flown compliments. It is not a joke because during a quarter of the century under his direct supervision, the teams of enterprises, pits, mines and artisanal teams of the region produced 760 tons of gold.
What did it mean for the industry and the whole national economy? You can assess the scale of it by looking at the current figures: in 2021 Yakutia was among the top three gold mining regions in Russia, with a record 40.6 tons. And this is taking into account the most advanced mining and extraction technologies, which were not even close to 50 years ago, at the time of Desyatkin.
The reserves of gold in the republic are about 20% of all the Russian ones. Meanwhile our country traditionally occupies the 1st-3rd places in the world (5-7.5 thousand tons or 9-12%) depending on the estimation method.
How did a boy from a large peasant family, born in 1928 in the village of Tyungulyu, Yakut ASSR, in the permafrost zone, manage to achieve such successes in the industrial development of his native land?
His father had a tremendous influence on him. Gavril Romanovich Desyatkin was in every sense an outstanding man: the first absolute champion in mass wrestling at the First Spartakiade of the peoples of the Yakut ASSR in 1931 and a well-known law enforcement officer in Yakutsk. He won fame among his countrymen when he was able to lift a boulder weighing 387 kilograms and carry it several meters. No one else even managed to move the boulder, and it is still kept as a memory in the local gymnasium. In spite of his harsh daily routine, the policeman has not lost his sentimental feelings. For example, he named his sons, whom after the death of his wife he had to bring up himself, after his favorite heroes: Taras Bulba, the leader of the Roman slave revolt Spartacus and Felix Dzerzhinsky.
Immediately after graduation, Taras Gavrilovich's father arranged for the boy to go to a watchmaker's apprentice. Of course, the parent wanted his son to get a higher education, but because of his severe stuttering, he had little faith that it was feasible. Chance intervened in the fate: a classmate of Desyatkin learned about the recruitment of students to the Magadan Mining Technical School for the training of future geologists and mining technicians to develop placer deposits and offered to participate in the contest. The young man was inspired by the idea because it was a chance to prove to everyone, and most importantly to himself, that he can do much more than fix someone's watch. He passed his entrance exams with flying colors, and in 1948 he graduated from the technical college with honors - first in his class.
Taras Gavrilovich was sent to the Leningrad Mining Institute to continue his studies.
"The Leningrad Mining Institute was famous all over the country... It took me a total of twenty-six days to get to the place of study, but I was in a fighting, joyful mood. I was admitted without examination, on privileges for those who finished school with a gold medal and a mining college with honors. I was lucky because at the time the competition for one place amounted to twenty people. In those years mining, construction and transportation universities were very prestigious and it was very hard to get in," Taras Desyatkin wrote in his memoirs "Gold, Diamonds, and My Life."
During his internship the young man managed to work in the Irkutsk region at the Cheremkhovo coal mine that was quite technological for those days. When he later saw the Kangalassky coal mine, where he had to work by assignment after graduation from the institute, he became despondent and decided to strive by all means to transfer to modern highly mechanized mines of the Donbass, Urals and Kuzbass. Only there could he gain the experience necessary for the subsequent development of mining in his native Yakutia, where a horse-drawn wagon was considered the height of mechanization.
The State Appointment Commission went along with the newly minted specialist and sent him to the Kapitalnaya Mine in the Urals. Starting as a mining foreman, he quickly rose to the position of head of the underground site. And although he was invited to stay, one year later Taras Gavrilovich returned home.
The year was 1956. In the post-war years, the Kangalassky coal mine was the only one that provided heat for the capital of the Sakha Republic - Yakutsk, as well as for the nearby settlements. The mine itself was a steep promontory, where coal seams were visible to the naked eye. They used to dig holes in them and launch horses and workers, who extracted the precious "black gold" with a pick and crowbar. Only with the appearance of Desyatkin as chief engineer did mechanical mining with pneumatics appear, electric locomotives were launched, a coal combine and coal-loading machines were installed, and piers were built. The mine was completely reconstructed, and the productivity of the mine increased by an order of magnitude.
In 1961, the miner, who had just turned 30, was transferred as a talented manager to the diamond mining industry, which was still at the very beginning of its development. He was appointed chief engineer of the Mirny mine of the Yakutalmaz trust. Although the Mir kimberlite pipe was the second primary diamond deposit discovered in Yakutia in 1955, the company focused primarily on it and started to develop its first field. But for some reason the development process was slow during the first years.
Taras Gavrilovich carried out technical re-equipment of the enterprise, which allowed to increase the production of precious stones. A new technology was mastered: high-speed drilling rigs - 8-cubic-meter excavators - 40-cubic-meter dumpers.
This combination made Mirny the center of the Soviet diamond mining industry, and the quarry became the best in the country in terms of mechanization. It became widely known among ordinary citizens when the largest diamond discovered in Russia, weighing 342.5 carats (over 68 g), was found there. Desyatkin won the State Prize for the development of the Mir pipe deposit.
There was more to come. In 1969 Taras Gavrilovich was appointed deputy director of the production association Yakutalmaz, and in January 1972, by order of the USSR Minister of Non-Ferrous Metals Industry he was appointed head of the republic's largest gold producer - Yakutzoloto Association. Desyatkin was expected to be able to lift the Republic's main industry, which was in a backward condition - half the metal was mined by artisanal prospectors, there was no new equipment for overburden, they just started to get close to ore gold, and almost all placers were exhausted.
In a short period of time Taras Gavrilovich completely reconstructed the industry and the enterprise, where the artisanal method of mining had been predominant for many years. It was possible to eradicate the low technical level, low mining volumes and barbaric attitude to nature by obtaining and introducing new machinery, attracting specialists, developing new deposits, and building production complexes.
Of course, it is easier to say "get the equipment" than to do it. According to Desyatkin's recollections, during Alexei Kosygin's visit to Yakutsk in 1974, in order to convince the country's prime minister to buy powerful equipment for overburden operations, he had to promise over-plan gold production. The head of the USSR government trusted the experience of the legendary mining engineer and purchased such machines as Caterpillar, Fiat-Allis, and Komatsu. Desyatkin kept his word and revolutionized gold mining, having lifted gold production from 20 tons to 36.5 tons per year (including 7.4 tons from ore deposits)! The industry had never known such a rate of production growth in its rich history.
For more than a quarter of a century he led the gold mining industry in the Republic of Sakha and brought it to the second place in the country after the Magadan Region. In addition, his name is associated with the establishment of the tin and antimony industry.
Under Desyatkin's leadership the Deputatsky tin ore plant and the Sarylakh mining and processing complex were built and put into operation. Yakutia became the main supplier of tin in the country and reached the main positions in production of antimony in the USSR. Reconstruction of the Nizhne-Kuranakh gold extracting plant allowed to increase the volume of ore processing 5 times, and the attraction of new technologies made the Nezhdaninskoye mine a model enterprise in the development of gold deposits.
In 1976 "for outstanding success in fulfilling obligations to increase production and increase labor productivity" Desyatkin Taras Gavrilovich was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. He received two Orders of Lenin (1971, 1976), Miner's Glory badges of all degrees, the title of Honored Metallurgist of the RSFSR (1988) and many other awards. In 2018 the outstanding industrialist passed away, and in October 2022 a monument was erected to him in the capital of Yakutia.
