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Boris Lisochkin: Scientist and “Japanese Spy”

металлургический комбинат
© Фото; Новокузнецкий краеведческий музей

In the essay "A Collector's Item" by Joseph Brodsky, the author vividly describes the execution of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, a GRU officer and Anglo-American spy exposed in 1962. Penkovsky's name became a household term across the Soviet Union due to his high-profile trial. Official accounts state that he was executed by a firing squad, but Brodsky asserts that the spy was burned alive in a crematorium furnace.

A similar account appears in the autobiographical book "Aquarium" by Viktor Suvorov (the pseudonym of Vladimir Rezun, a former GRU officer who defected to the United Kingdom in 1978). Suvorov claims that a video of Penkovsky's execution was shown to incoming KGB recruits as a grim warning of the consequences of betraying one's country.

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© Скриншот транслации судебного процесса над Олегом Пеньковским, 1963 год

It is worth noting that most historians assert that Rezun fabricated this legend and later passed it off as a factual account. Such myths about extreme methods of dealing with "defectors" had already circulated in the West and merely needed to be framed in a palatable literary style.

The more intriguing question is whether these stories had any basis in reality. For instance, in 1937, the remains of the talented engineer Boris Lisochkin were allegedly incinerated in an open-hearth furnace at the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant—a furnace he had himself designed and built.

Lisochkin was born in 1904 in the small village of Yedrovo in the Novgorod region. In 1921, he enrolled, along with his brother, at the Leningrad Mining Institute. At the time, the institute offered three specialized faculties—Mining, Geological Exploration, and Mining and Metallurgical Engineering—each designed to meet the needs of the rapidly developing Soviet economy by training geologists, surveyors, metallurgists, and mining engineers. Boris Fyodorovich chose to specialize in "Ferrous Metals.".

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© Свидетельство Лисочкина Бориса Фёдоровича об окончании Горного института (фото: архив Горного музея)

Even as a student, Boris Lisochkin gained practical experience at various enterprises in Leningrad and Ukraine. In early 1925, he contributed to the design of a rolling mill for the "Krasny Gvozdilshchik" factory. Later, he interned at the Kramatorsk Metallurgical Plant "Donuglya" and, in 1926, at the Makeevka Metallurgical Plant "Yugostal," where he worked as an engineer in the Foundry Department for five months and even acted as department head during leaves and business trips.

After graduating from the Mining Institute, Lisochkin honed his design skills at the Dnepropetrovsk Metallurgical Plant, one of Ukraine's largest industrial enterprises, renowned for its advanced equipment. As a newly minted designer in the capital construction department, he worked there for a year before feeling ready and confident to take the next step in his career. This step led him to the flagship project of Siberia's industrial development—the Novokuznetsk Metallurgical Plant, whose construction began in December 1929.

The creation of a powerful coal and metallurgical hub in the Asian part of the USSR, operating on Ural iron ore and Siberian coking coal, required thousands of workers. They came from all corners of the country, digging trenches in frozen ground, laying foundations for metallurgical furnaces, and erecting enormous workshops. Winter temperatures rarely rose above minus 30 degrees Celsius, and bonfires burned day and night on the construction site to thaw the permafrost.

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© Труд землекопов на Кузнецкстрое (фото: Новокузнецкий краеведческий музей)

The enthusiasm of the workers building the metallurgical plant impressed the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, who dedicated his famous poem "Khrenov's Story About Kuznetskstroi and the People of Kuznetsk" ("In Four Years, Here Will Stand a Garden City") to this monumental construction. The poem became part of the standard school curriculum:

«Here explosions will scatter
to disperse the bear bands,
and mines will gouge the depths
with the hundred-shaft 'Giant.'
Here walls will rise in lines.
With whistles, steam, and chugs.
We'll ignite Siberia
with a hundred suns of open-hearth furnaces».

Alongside the workers, the site welcomed a team of engineers and technical personnel. Ivan Bardin, a metallurgist, was appointed chief engineer. By that time, Bardin had already received two Stalin Prizes and the title of "Hero of Socialist Labor" for his outstanding contributions to designing, constructing, and commissioning large metallurgical plants, as well as for his scientific achievements in metallurgy. He would later become the vice president of the Academy of Sciences and the deputy commissar of ferrous metallurgy.

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© И.П. Бардин среди геологов на площадке Кузнецкстроя,1929-1930 гг. (из фондов Государственного архива Кемеровской области)

Bardin worked tirelessly, often overseeing operations under the bright lights of hundreds of floodlights, and he demanded no less dedication from his subordinates:

«The construction requires disciplined, selfless people, persistent in achieving their set goals», — he often said.

Ivan Petrovich saw such qualities in Boris Lisochkin. In a short time, the young designer rose from being the deputy head of the Open-Hearth Shop to becoming the assistant to the chief engineer of the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant—Bardin himself.

Lisochkin was involved in all the projects for the plant's Open-Hearth Shop, which at that time was considered the pride of the Soviet steelmaking industry. His designs were revolutionary and exemplary. For instance, Boris Fedorovich proposed a fundamental revision of the "Gipromez" project. Originally, the plan called for the construction of 12 open-hearth furnaces with a capacity of 110 tons each, divided into two phases: 7 furnaces in the first phase and 5 in the second. Lisochkin advocated for an increase in their capacity instead.

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© Строительство доменной печи Кузнецкого комбината (Из фондов Государственного архива Кемеровской области)

The "Freyn" company, following Lisochkin's vision, developed a new structural design for the building, including column foundations, to accommodate 15 150-ton open-hearth furnaces.

Lisochkin himself designed an innovative layout for the Open-Hearth Shop: two mixers with ample separation to allow for increased capacity and additional furnaces. To address changes in operational load, 200-ton ladle cranes in the casting bay were upgraded to 220-ton models, and the 5-ton charging machines were replaced with 7-ton versions. Furthermore, Lisochkin altered the scrap yard's location relative to the main building, relocating it toward the Upper Colony to ensure that the hot slag train routes from the blast furnaces to the dump would not intersect with the primary freight traffic flow.

Even before the construction of Europe's and Asia's largest shop housing the 150-ton furnaces was completed, Lisochkin had already carried out calculations for a future transition to 300-ton furnaces. His projections showed that six such furnaces could save the plant 6.5 million rubles annually. All these ideas were implemented, making the Kuznetsk plant's open-hearth furnaces operational well into the 21st century, long after most similar facilities had been deemed obsolete.

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© Мартеновский цех (фото: Научно-технический музей имени И. П. Бардина)
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© Выпуск первой стали (фото: Научно-технический музей имени И. П. Бардина)

On April 1, 1932, the first blast furnace of the Kuznetsk plant was ignited, and two days later, the first cast iron was produced. Shortly after, the second furnace followed, and soon the open-hearth furnace began producing steel. The rolling mill, blooming mill, and rail rolling mill were also put into operation. The plant, built in just 1,000 days, was now fully functional.

Newspapers like Izvestia and Bolshevik Steel were filled with headlines celebrating the "long-awaited Kuznetsk cast iron" and praised Lisochkin as a "technically competent leader of the design and engineering team." In November 1933, during a plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Sergo Ordzhonikidze, the People’s Commissar for Heavy Industry, described Boris Fyodorovich as a "talented young engineer responsible for a construction project unparalleled not only in our country but also in Europe." In January 1934, he was appointed head of the technical department for the second plant (later the West Siberian Metallurgical Plant in Novokuznetsk, Kemerovo Region). For the 29-year-old engineer, this was a brilliant career start. However, subsequent events took a completely unexpected turn.

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© "Большевистская сталь" от 4 апреля 1932 года

In the spring of 1934, Boris Lisochkin passed away from pneumonia and was buried in a brick crypt near the walls of Open Hearth Furnace No. 1, which he had designed, built, and launched. At his funeral, standing vigil at the head of his coffin were Chief Engineer Ivan Bardin, First Secretary of the Kuznetsk District Committee of the Communist Party Rafael Khitarov, and Kuznetskstroi’s first Party organizer Andrei Kulakov.

In 1937, three years after his death, Lisochkin was posthumously accused of collaborating with leaders of the counter-revolutionary "Russian Party of National Revival" and with Japanese intelligence. Even in death, repression found a way: his grave was opened, his remains were exhumed, and they were burned in the very open-hearth furnace he had helped create.

Later, historians explained these events. By the late 1920s, when Soviet power was firmly established, it adopted a policy of aggressively excluding representatives of the old educated elite from intellectual labor, particularly those who had served in the pre-revolutionary government or in strategically important industries. Political trials, mass repressions, and persecution of intellectuals and specialists ensued. Cases like the "Shakhty Trial," the "Industrial Party Trial," and the "Academics' Case" set the template for subsequent prosecutions.

So-called "sabotage organizations" were alleged to exist across all sectors of the economy: metallurgy, coal and machine-building industries, energy, construction, and agriculture. In 1931 alone, nine such organizations were "uncovered" in the Urals, followed by two in 1932, eleven in 1933, and four in 1934.

The formula for accusations followed a pattern: real incidents such as accidents or equipment failures were woven into fabricated claims of conspiracy, sabotage, and espionage to lend credibility to the false narratives.

«Members of counter-revolutionary organizations often included individuals unrelated to the cases—former factory owners abroad, foreign specialists who had returned home after installing imported equipment, or even people who had passed away long before the case was fabricated. This was how the deceased Boris Lisochkin became part of a 'counter-revolutionary group of engineers' 'exposed' by the OGPU at the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant», - writes Raisa Moskvinа, Associate Professor at the Ural State Law University, in her academic article "OGPU Investigative Files on the Intelligentsia as a Historical Source.".

Eventually, Boris Lisochkin's name was cleared. Perhaps one day, justice will be fully served, and his name will appear in the titles of streets and avenues, and on memorial plaques at the industrial sites he helped create in Novokuznetsk.

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© Фото: Новокузнецкий краеведческий музей, Б.Ф. Лисочкин третий слева