Avraami Zavenyagin
Авраамий Завенягин
Zavenyagin in 1938
Minister of Medium Machine Building
In office
28 February 1955 – 31 December 1956
PremierNikolai Bulganin
Preceded byVyacheslav Malyshev
Succeeded byMikhail Pervukhin

Lieutenant-General Avraami Pavlovich Zavenyagin (1 May 1901 – 31 December 1956; his first name is also sometimes given as Avram or Abraham) was a leading figure in the Soviet nuclear projects of the 1940s and 1950s.[1][2][3] [4]

Zavenyagin was made plant director of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works in August 1933 and served in that capacity until 1936 when he was appointed the assistant to the People's Commissar of Heavy Industry.[4]

During April 1938 - March 1941 he was in charge of the construction works at Norillag.

A protégé of Lavrenti Beria,[2] Zavenyagin survived the purge after the death of Joseph Stalin because of a long friendship with Nikita Khrushchev, which dated back to the 1920s. During the Khrushchev era, he headed the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, responsible for nuclear weapons production, for two years. He died of a heart attack in 1956.

Icebreaker Avraamiy Zavenyagin (Russian: Авраамий Завенягин) was named after him.[5]

References

  1. ^ Antony Beevor, The fall of Berlin, 1945, 2002
  2. ^ a b Richard Lee Miller, Under the cloud: the decades of nuclear testing, 1986
  3. ^ George A. Lopez and Nancy J. Myers, Peace and security: the next generation, 1997
  4. ^ a b John Scott, Behind the Urals: an American worker in Russia's City of Steel, 1942
  5. ^ Авраамий Завенягин
Categories