Russia did not learn about sanctions in 2014. Back in the 1930s, during the implementation of the first five-year plans, the USSR waged an active struggle for independence from the global capitalist market. In its attempts to subjugate our country's economy to its control, the West tried all sorts of tricks: from the credit and "gold" blockade (refusing to accept Soviet gold in 1920) to the anti-dumping campaign and special treatment for Soviet exports. The only possible path to development remained the policy of import substitution. In particular, this applied to strategically important for the industry non-ferrous metals, which had long been imported from abroad.
When major geologists and mineralogists got involved in prospecting and exploration, the results were not long in coming. While non-ferrous metal imports from 1928 to 1931 remained at 121 thousand tons, the output of the USSR almost doubled. Production of copper, zinc, lead increased. The matter was left for tin, which was widely used in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Without tin was unthinkable, for example, the most important parts of engines and the most reliable bearings. Sergey Smirnov was the man who discovered industrial tin deposits and laid the domestic raw material base for this most important resource.
He was born in 1895 in Ivano-Voznesensk in the family of a textile factory engraver. In 1913, the young man entered the St. Petersburg Mining Institute, where, at that time, the geology that interested him was taught by such leaders of science as Yevgraf Fyodorov, Karl Bogdanovich, and Vasily Nikitin. After graduation, the graduate stayed at his alma mater as an assistant, then became an associate professor, and, in 1930, a professor, head of the mineralogy department.
He was never a desk scientist. Out of the 52 years of his life Sergeevich devoted 28 years to scientific research and during this period he did not miss a single field season. Simultaneously with teaching he worked in Geolkom (later VseGEI), where he rose from researcher to full member, responsible for extensive geological research in poorly explored and hard-to-reach areas of the country. This explains why students were so interested to attend Smirnov's lectures, in which he gave a lot of information from his rich personal experience.
His knowledge of mineralogy was legendary. Even during his first business trips, the scientist showed great ability in diagnosing minerals, finding in samples of ores and rocks even the smallest inclusions and precisely defining them. For example, he was the first in the country to discover menginite in the Darasunskoye field, sellaite in the Klichkinskoye field, bronyartite in the Bezymyanskoye field, ludwigite in the Doninskoye field, and adaminite in the Novo-Pochekuevskoye field. Working in the South Pribaikalye, of the 49 minerals in the area of the Slyudyanka deposit described by him, only 4 were determined under a microscope, the rest were determined visually in the field. Not without reason, at the age of 29, the scientist became a member of the All-Russian Mineralogical Society, and at the end of his life he was its head, and at the same time he was elected an honorary member of the French Mineralogical Society.
In 1925 Sergey Smirnov began to study a new field - ore polymetallic deposits on the example of the vast province of Eastern Transbaikalia. It is safe to say that this period was a turning point in the career of the geologist, which marked the beginning of many years of research in the field of ore formation and metallogeny as a whole.
As a result of his research he identified types of polymetallic deposits typical of the Eastern Transbaikalia. But most importantly, Smirnov divided the entire area into three ore-bearing belts: eastern - polymetallic, central - tin-tungsten and western - molybdenum-gold. This scheme has remained relevant in all subsequent geological searches. The tin-tungsten belt was of particular importance: dozens of new mineralization occurrences were discovered within its boundaries during the following years. The analytical material presented by the scientist at the subsequent meetings, congresses and conferences of various geological organizations aroused great interest in the scientific community with the depth and importance of the research and practical conclusions.
Perhaps, the interests of Sergey Sergeevich would have been limited to Transbaikalia, if not for one moment, which played a decisive role in the further activities of the scientist and the expansion of the tin ore base of the USSR. At the end of 1926, he discovered tiny grains of cassiterite in the Transbaikal lead-zinc ores of the Smirnov deposit. (Today it is common knowledge that the only type of raw material from which tin is obtained on an industrial scale is cassiterite ore. SnO2 cassiterite contains up to 78.8% tin).
The following year, the geologist again established the content of cassiterite in samples collected in ore dumps along the Khapcheranginskiy Pad, which leads to the discovery of the famous Khapcheranginskiy tin deposit. These findings strengthened the academician's confidence in the possible expansion of the tin ore base through deposits of this type. Smirnov decided to go beyond the limits of the Transbaikal Province. He transferred his research to even more distant, geologically very poorly explored areas - Kolyma, Chukotka, Chaun Bay, and Primorye - where he supervised prospecting and exploration on a vast unexplored territory. It was the sulfide-cassiterite type of mineralization that drew the attention of prospectors, and this yielded immediate results.
The first mention of the natural riches of the Ust-Yanya land dates back to 1648, when the legendary traveler Semyon Dezhnev went on an expedition to Kolyma. However, systematic scientific study of the region developed only with the beginning of Stalin's industrialization. In 1933 on the basis of the geological data and the samples collected in the Verkhoyanskiy ridge by the first advanced groups of prospectors, Smirnov gave a bold forecast about high probability of opening deposits of tin, tungsten, molybdenum, gold, lead and zinc in this area. In the summer of the same year he personally went to Verkhoyan' - headed the first scientific expedition and discovered there Imtanginskoye deposit of tin!
From that moment Smirnov practically settled in the east and north-east of the country, where the same sulfide-cassiterite type of mineralization turned out to be widespread. Annual expeditions, during which Sergey Sergeevich collected new data, analyzed metallogeny, and gave instructions on the further direction o
f work, were of great importance for the identification of ore deposits in Siberia.
In 1937 he presented the work in which he outlined the geological structure of the area he studied and outlined the areas of possible optimal ore bearing capacity in connection with the metallogenic epochs, outlining the tin ore belt on the territory of the whole Northeast Asia. In the course of subsequent works, this prediction was brilliantly confirmed. So, already 10 years later huge deposits of tin were discovered in Ust-Yansk district of the Deputatskoye deposit, which became the largest in the whole USSR, which helped to bring the Soviet Union among the leaders in the world tin market.
The colossal work of Sergei Sergeevich on the study and development of mineral wealth of Siberia allowed him to develop the basic provisions of a new branch of geological science - regional metallogeny, which aims to identify patterns of distribution in time and space of deposits of certain metals within a given territory in connection with its geological structure. Not without reason today the geologist is known primarily as the founder of a new metallogenic direction in the study of minerals.
By the end of the 30-s, Smirnov earned himself the reputation of an outstanding scientist - the main expert on the tin ore problem and tin-bearing areas. In 1939 he became a corresponding member, and in 1943 - a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
Thanks to the new deposits, the country was no longer dependent on imports. The news of the Soviet Union's refusal to import tin from abroad became a sensation, which the foreign press of the time called "The Tin Miracle!" But this fact gained particular significance during World War II. An alloy of non-ferrous metals with the lowest shrinkage of castings called lead tin bronze was used not only for the production of wear-resistant parts, bearings, cables and engines, but also for the production of bullets, shells and weapon parts.
After a brief stint as deputy chairman of the Geology Committee in 1945, the scientist became head of the ore department of the Institute of Geological Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and chairman of the All-Russian Mineralogical Society. In 1946 Sergei Smirnov received the Stalin Prize of the first degree - for the discovery and study of tin ore deposits in the East and Southeast of the USSR.
After the war, the scientist deepened his work on such important theoretical issues as the formation of ores, systematics of magmatic ore deposits and patterns in the spatial distribution of deposits of various metals within the limits of the giant Pacific "ore belt" - Meso-Cenozoic folded zone covering almost all sides of the Pacific Ocean and including huge areas of the entire eastern edge of Asia, the island arcs of Australia, Andes and Cordilleras. On the territory of our country Kamchatka, Sakhalin, Eastern Transbaikalia, Priamurie, Primorye, and the entire so-called north-east of Siberia fall within the belt.
However, in 1947, the fruitful research work of Sergey Sergeevich cut short due to the sudden death of the scientist...
After Smirnov's departure, the mineral Smirnovskite, mountains in Transbaikalia and on the Taimyr Peninsula, a pass and a glacier in Yakutia, glaciers in the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, a deposit and a settlement in Primorsky Krai were named after him. The USSR Academy of Sciences decided to establish a prize named after him for the best scientific work on the study of mineral deposits and metallogeny, which since 1949 is awarded once every three years.
And just last year, another new mineral was named after the geologist - sergeysmirnovite, discovered at the Kester cassiterite deposit in the Verkhoyanskiy district of the Sakha Republic.
At present, tin remains a strategically important metal for our country. It is used to solder many electronic systems and boards for computer equipment and video equipment.
