G. SMIRNOV
Ivan Fedorovich
When in 1940 the question arose in the government about who to appoint as the people's commissar of ferrous metallurgy, it was difficult to find a more suitable candidate for this responsible and important post than Ivan Fedorovich Tevosyan. Indeed, he, a thirty-eight-year-old engineer and party leader, was characterized by colossal life and production experience and a solid, truly communist ideological and spiritual tempering.
Probably, Tevadros Tevosyan, a tailor from the town of Shusha in Azerbaijan, who somehow made ends meet, would have been surprised a lot if someone had told him that his son Hovhannes, who was born in early January 1902, would become a world famous person, become a minister and even moreover - the deputy head of the government. The boy's Baku peers would also have been surprised (trying to escape from bitter poverty, the family moved to Baku a few years later). In this international city, Hovhannes turned into Ivan, and his patronymic in Russian pronunciation turned into "Fedorovich" and remained so for the rest of his life. Sixteen-year-old Vanya Tevosyan made the final choice of the main thing in his life path - he joined the Bolshevik Party. And already in the next, 1919, he became the secretary of the underground city party committee in the capital of the oil region. Later, Tevosyan was elected secretary of one of the Baku district committees, and in 1921 he was sent as a delegate to the 10th party congress in Moscow. Together with other delegates to the congress, he takes part in the suppression of the counter-revolutionary Kronstadt rebellion. And then, on a party ticket, he goes to study at the metallurgical faculty of the Moscow Mining Academy. In 1927 Tevosyan came to the Elektrostal plant near Moscow. Here he successively goes through the first stages of production: a worker, a foreman's assistant, then a shop foreman. And in 1929, after a brilliant defense of the diploma project on open-hearth and electric steel production, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks sent Tevosyan, among two hundred other young specialists, to Germany for advanced training. During his year abroad, he worked in an electric steel foundry at the Krupp plant in Essen, traveled to all major German specialty steel plants, and also visited and inspected quality steel factories in Czechoslovakia and Italy.
After returning from an overseas business trip in November 1930, Tevosyan was appointed head of the electric steel workshops of the Elektrostal plant, and then the chief engineer of this plant. In August 1931, Tevosyan became the manager of the Spetsstal association.
He headed this association for five years, after which he was entrusted with a number of high-ranking positions in the system of the People's Commissariat of the Defense Industry, where he was the head of the central board, and the deputy people's commissar, and the first deputy commissar. In 1940, Tevosyan was appointed People's Commissar of Ferrous Metallurgy and remained in this post until 1953 ...
In modern war, metal, its quantity and quality will play a decisive role, - said I. F. Tevosyan to the workers of the People's Commissariat on June 22, 1941. - We need metal, both ground and air, and naval forces! This is our task, and we are all responsible for its solution to the Motherland!
Titanic efforts to relocate metallurgical enterprises from the western regions of the country to the Urals, to organize production in new places, to develop new grades of steel, to produce armor and shells were crowned with convincing success at the Kursk Bulge. Here in the summer of 1943, in the words of the poet N. Glazkov, "The Urals broke the Ruhr": the Ural armor and Ural shells crushed the armored armada of the Reich in oncoming tank battles. And it is symbolic that it was after Kursk Bulge Tevosyan was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor "for special services in organizing the production of high-quality and high-quality metal for all types of weapons, tanks, aviation and ammunition in difficult wartime conditions."
Under Tevosyan's leadership, even before the end of hostilities, the restoration of metallurgical enterprises began in the territories liberated from the enemy. In the victorious 1945, the Soviet metallurgical industry produced 67 percent of the pre-war steel output of 1940. And already in 1950, the pre-war level was exceeded one and a half times! And it was not only the quantity, but also the quality. With the support, or even with the personal participation of the minister, in the Soviet metallurgical industry, they mastered in the first post-war years such important innovations as oxygen blast, production of large-diameter welded pipes, creation of domestic heat-resistant alloys for aircraft jet engines ...
That is why the name of Ivan Fedorovich Tevosyan in the history of our country has remained forever associated with the development of the Soviet metallurgical industry and especially with the establishment of domestic production of special steels. But in Tevosyan's development as a major organizer and leader of the industry, shipbuilding played a large, and maybe even a decisive role ...
Until 1937, the Soviet shipbuilding industry was managed by the Sudprom trust, which was later renamed Glavsudprom, and then Glavmorprom. This trust was mainly engaged in the planning of the shipbuilding industry and inter-plant cooperation, but did not pursue a technical policy, and, in addition to plant directors and managers design organizations, few shipbuilders encountered workers and technical services of Glavmorprom. But then came 1937 - the most crucial year in the history of the Soviet fleet, for the construction of numerous warships, laid down in previous years, entered the final phase - the phase of testing and delivery of ships to the Navy. During 1937 alone, the shipbuilders had to hand over to the naval sailors the light cruiser Kirov, several leaders of the Leningrad class and destroyers of the Gnevny class, as well as minesweepers, patrol boats, submarines and other ships.
In order to identify and eliminate the design and technological shortcomings of the new ships as quickly as possible, which should have been revealed during the tests, and in order to take measures to prevent them in the future, an experienced, authoritative and energetic leader was required to be placed at the head of the shipbuilding industry. And the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) found such a person in the person of Ivan Fedorovich Tevosyan.
“Since December 1936,” wrote Ivan Fedorovich in his autobiography, “by decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), he went to work in the People's Commissariat of the Defense Industry as the head of one of the Main Directorates. Since June 1937, having transferred to another administration, he became Deputy People's Commissar of the USSR Defense Industry. In October, he was appointed First Deputy People's Commissar of the Defense Industry ... ”And less than two years later, when the People's Commissariat of the Defense Industry was divided into four People's Commissariats - weapons, ammunition, aviation and shipbuilding industries - Tevosyan became the first People's Commissar of Soviet shipbuilding.
At different times, Soviet shipbuilding was headed by three major leaders and organizers - I. Tevosyan, A. Goreglyad and V. Malyshev, who, although they were not shipbuilders by profession, nevertheless had a tremendous impact on the development of the shipbuilding industry. With the main task common to all ministers - the timely delivery of ships - each of them also pursued its own special goal. Thus, V. Malyshev strove to dramatically increase the production of ships with minimal capital expenditures for the construction and expansion of factories. His predecessor A. Goreglyad focused on the implementation of new technology, the deepening of the specialization of factories and their cooperation, the maximum reduction in the labor intensity of building ships. As for I. Tevosyan, he occupied a unique place in this troika, because he had no predecessors and had to create the apparatus of the People's Commissariat for the shipbuilding industry simultaneously with the delivery of the ships. And he coped with this most difficult task so successfully that even many years later one of his successors, V. Malyshev, said that he worked in many ministries, but never met such a strong apparatus as in Sudprom. “Here, - said Malyshev, - each employee of the apparatus is an experienced specialist in his field. Any employee can be sent to a factory or to a ship, and he will sort out any issue on the spot and make the right decision under his own responsibility. "
Ivan Fedorovich himself never made a secret of how he selected the necessary personnel. “When I was appointed head of the Main Directorate of Shipbuilding of the People's Commissariat of the Defense Industry,” he later told his employees, “I did not know ships or shipbuilding technologies, I was not familiar with designers, production workers, or customers-sailors. But I was well aware of the tense international situation and the challenges facing the shipbuilders. I thought, where is the best place to study ships? Of course, on the development of structures, that is, on acceptance tests. Where can you best understand shipbuilding technology? Of course, in factories, in workshops. Where can you meet the most experienced managers and the most skilled workers? Of course, in live, practical, production activities. And then I went to the factories, to the delivery of ships, where I met with shipbuilders of all ranks - from factory directors and heads of design bureaus to members of commissioning teams and foremen in the shops. And the better I got to know the shipbuilding personnel, the more my confidence in the success of the work entrusted to me grew ”.
Indeed, Tevosyan was the only one of all the people's commissars - the ministers of the shipbuilding industry - who personally participated in the development of ship designs, himself checked the readiness of each ship for delivery and systematically went to sea for testing. He walked around the engine rooms and boiler rooms, control posts and wheelhouses, without hesitation, asked specialists about the purpose and principles of operation of various devices and devices; and very soon he became a fully qualified shipbuilder and even an experienced ship delivery officer.
At one of the shipyards. In the center - G.K. Ordzhonikidze. To his right is I. F. Tevosyan. In the Kremlin on the day of the presentation of the high award. I. F. Tevosyan - to the right of M. I. Kalinin. 1944 g.
At the same time, everywhere - in design bureaus, in workshops, on ships - Ivan Fedorovich carefully looked at the workers, surprisingly quickly and accurately determining their abilities, experience, efficiency, perseverance and ability to make responsible decisions in a timely manner. A year later, in a thick notebook, where Tevosyan wrote down the characteristics of workers, information was accumulated about dozens of shipbuilding specialists - corps builders, mechanics, electricians, military personnel, systems engineers, technologists. And when at the beginning of 1939 the time came to recruit the staff of the newly organized People's Commissariat of the shipbuilding industry, Tevosyan, having looked through his notebook, was amazed at the abundance of experienced personnel ...
Ivan Fedorovich procured a spacious building for the People's Commissariat in Petroverigsky Lane, developed the structure and staffing table and outlined whom to appoint to which posts. So, the former responsible ship suppliers, whom the People's Commissar knew well personally from the delivery and development of structures, were appointed as the heads of the production central administrations. Former chief engineers of factories and heads of shops became the chief engineers of production central administrations.
The pride of Soviet shipbuilding is the Red Banner cruiser Kirov. Destroyer "Loud".The creation of the People's Commissariat for the Shipbuilding Industry was a completely new thing: the USSR became the first country in the world in which the entire shipbuilding business was united into a single industry. It could be expected that the organization and establishment of a clear work of the new People's Commissariat will take a lot of time. But it turned out the other way around. Most of the workers were left with the impression that the People's Commissariat began working literally the next day after the decree was issued. After the creation of the People's Commissariat, Ivan Fedorovich began to strengthen the management of the factory and design personnel.
Tevosyan had been at the head of Soviet shipbuilding for a relatively short time - only about three years. But the experience of these years convinced him that a close, careful attitude towards personnel is the main link in the chain that leads to the success of the whole business, which he never tired of talking about throughout his life.
Speaking at a meeting of the party and economic activists of the People's Commissariat of Ferrous Metallurgy in June 1940, the newly appointed People's Commissar Tevosyan said:
“Now I will focus on the most important issue - the selection of personnel. This question answers all other questions: why we have weak technical leadership, why they were not provided with raw materials, why the logistics were poorly organized. The question of personnel was in the corral. We must select people who are faithful, honest and knowledgeable in all areas. If a person does not know the case, he will not be able to cope with it, it is necessary to select such heads of shops, deputies, foremen, directors of factories who know the technique of blast-furnace, open-hearth and rolling business. Unfortunately, this was not the case. There was no other either. Over the years, tens of thousands of young specialists have been promoted to production at various sites. This is correct, but these new cadres must be led, seriously helped and taught. Unfortunately, it boiled down to the fact that people were constantly displaced and relocated ... We have thousands of engineers in factories, excellent workers who have advanced over the years, who will certainly go far ahead in the field of mastering technology. They need to be known, put forward, they need to be raised, shown to the whole country ... "
And examples of such an attitude towards qualified specialists himself Ivan Fedorovich repeatedly demonstrated in the years when he headed the Soviet shipbuilding industry.
“The next question is the style of technical leadership,” Tevosyan said at the same meeting of the party and economic activists of the People's Commissariat of Ferrous Metallurgy. - ... It seems to me that the factories did not receive technical assistance from the head office, the People's Commissariat, because chief Engineer, the engineer of the central office were loaded with routine, wrote a lot of papers, but forgot their child - the plant ... Leading workers went to the plant without chief engineers, without specialists - blast furnaces, open-hearth furnaces, distributors. They took technical personnel with them to write papers ... You can, of course, come to the plant, walk around the plant, create a tail for yourself - the plant director, chief engineer, party committee. I talked to the director, talked to the party committee, talked to two or three Stakhanovites, held a meeting at which he delivered a speech. The guide is to come to the plant with people who know the business, and send these people in advance so that they can also "dig deeper", check the specific situation in certain areas, find out the reasons for the shortcomings. Then the deputy chief of the central administration, the chief of the central administration and the deputy commissar come. They are involved in the work of this brigade, they are told about everything in detail, and then they begin to watch shop by shop. The central apparatus must be rebuilt so that its workers feel that they are dealing with the front, where military operations are taking place ... "
Behind these words, firmly and confidently said to metallurgists by their new people's commissar, was Tevosyan's weighty experience at the head of the shipbuilding industry. It was here that Ivan Fedorovich became convinced that it was not enough to find knowledgeable and intelligent specialists. It is not enough to nominate them to leadership positions. It is also necessary to educate them, to mobilize all their abilities, to teach them to be efficient, to be ready to delve into the very essence of emerging problems and take responsibility for their decisions. And here, as in any education, the show is a hundred times stronger and more convincing than the story. And Tevosyan never tired of showing employees how to act in a given case with his personal example.
Every time he appeared on the ship to be handed over, he got acquainted with the delivery team, questioned the workers, trying to find out if they had any claims and complaints. In general, the delivery crews did not have any special grounds for complaints: in our country, unlike many capitalist countries, the delivery crews received free meals on a par with naval sailors; on the deck of the ship there were always barrels of kvass and sauerkraut as a remedy against motion sickness. But sometimes there were still complaints about food, the provision of overalls and wages, and Ivan Fyodorovich wrote it all down in detail. Upon returning to the shore, he immediately began to call various organizations, demanding that they figure it out, eliminate the injustice and report to him about the culprits. After such telephone conversations, he never missed an opportunity to tell his employees: “If you have promised something to workers or other workers in factories, then you must fulfill it, not putting it off or on the back burner. Only then will you be respected not only as a leader, but also as a person. "
One of the most valuable and amazing qualities of Ivan Fedorovich was the rare ability to ignite, inspire a person to solve some puzzling technical problem.
When the tests of the first Soviet-built destroyer revealed incomprehensible melting of the main thrust bearings, the designer who designed the installation, instead of going to the ship, examining the damage and finding the reasons for the melting, suggested a different course of action. Reporting to the People's Commissar on what he was going to do, he suggested developing a new bearing design and even said that he had already started making new drawings. Such a businesslike, non-engineering approach deeply angered Tevosyan.
A new marriage can always be made, ”he said angrily,“ only there must be good reason for it. It is necessary to establish the cause of the unsatisfactory bearing performance. How can you start designing a new bearing when you haven’t even been in the engine room and haven’t seen the melted bearing? Go to the ship immediately, go down to the engine room, inspect the disassembled bearing and report back to me tomorrow morning with your thoughts and suggestions. I am convinced that the cause of the accident is a mistake that you made in the drawings!
And in the end, the opinion of the People's Commissar was confirmed: a gross error was found in the bearing drawing.
Tevosyan was outraged by the custom of some leaders to blame others, to cover up their own inactivity and laziness of mind with angry attacks and denunciations of counterparties. Tevosyan considered this custom to be the most dangerous phenomenon in shipbuilding, where the cost of counterparty supplies sometimes exceeds the cost of shipbuilding itself. And he suppressed such attempts, as they say, in the bud and in the most merciless way.
If the first "shipbuilding" act of Tevosyan is the creation of the People's Commissariat of the shipbuilding industry and the selection of personnel for its staff, then the second most important act should be the development and approval of test programs and delivery of ships to the customer. Indeed, before the organization of the People's Commissariat of the Defense Industry in 1937, there were no established norms and procedures in the preparation and approval of test programs. The test programs were drawn up only for ship affairs, that is, they included mooring tests of mechanisms and equipment, factory sea trials, in which the operation of the main mechanical installation was tested at long-term operating conditions, as well as speed, maneuverability, torpedo and artillery armament. Various customer organizations developed their programs that were not coordinated with the shipbuilders, which led to an unreasonable delay in testing.
Although representatives Navy participated in all these tests and checks, they finally did not accept anything, postponing the solution of all issues until state tests. And it turned out that in practice the ships were accepted by state admissions committees, whose temporary members could not bear responsibility for the quality of acceptance. The military representatives who were part of state commissions, they also did not bear personal responsibility for the quality of acceptance, since they also took part in their work from time to time. All this created a certain arbitrariness in the relationship between the shipbuilding industry and customers. Military envoys and commissions often demanded additional regimes and tests, which created ambiguity and uncertainty in the complexity of the construction and in the timing of the delivery of ships.
Tevosyan faced with the fact that the military representatives make demands on the factories that were not provided for technical projects, approved by the government, immediately after his appointment as head of the Main Directorate of Shipbuilding NKOP. On his first visit to the ships being built at one of the factories, he drew attention to the extremely expensive finishing of the wardrooms and other premises. So, at the request of military acceptance, the walls of the wardrooms of the new destroyers were decorated with inlaid panels made of valuable wood species based on the motives of A.S. Pushkin's fairy tales. Walking around the ships under construction, Ivan Fedorovich noticed that in the living quarters, electric cables, wires and pipelines were sealed under the casing. Gathering the designers and military representatives, he pointed out to them the excesses in the decoration of the premises, canceled valuable species of wood and ordered them to switch to external wiring of cables and pipelines. "Of course, the external wiring is not very nice," he said, "but it is convenient in combat conditions, when it is necessary to quickly detect damage and fix them."
When the military representatives began to object to these changes, claiming that, they say, we are the customers, and the shipbuilders must do what we demand, Ivan Fedorovich answered them quite sharply: “The customer is not you, but the state! You are the same clerks of the state, like us, but only in a different area. "
Later, learning that due to additional requirements the cruiser "Kirov" passed 7,500 miles in state tests and fully exhausted the resource of auxiliary diesel generators, so they had to be replaced with new ones, Tevosyan forbade the responsible suppliers to accept additional programs tests without his personal permission. But he, of course, understood that the decision of the Deputy People's Commissar of Industry, the supplier, is one thing, and the decision of the Navy, the customer, is another. It's clear that the last word should remain with the customer. Arriving from Leningrad to Moscow, he made attempts to coordinate his instructions to the deliverers with the People's Commissariat of the Navy.
The matter got off the ground after Admiral N.G. Kuznetsov, a seasoned sailor who headed the Soviet Naval Forces during the Great Patriotic War... Tevosyan went to Kuznetsov, and they quickly agreed on all issues of construction, delivery, testing and acceptance of ships. A procedure was established for the development of test programs and the responsibility of deliverers and receivers, as well as a procedure for considering requirements outside the specification. The leaders of industry and the fleet decided that the acceptance of ships for reliability in long-term modes is carried out by military representatives, while state admissions committee they check and accept ships only for their tactical and technical characteristics and therefore do not carry out long-term modes. These decisions streamlined the relationship between suppliers and acceptors, clearly delineated the extent of responsibility and ultimately contributed to the improvement of the quality of ships.
The initiative of Tevosyan and Kuznetsov was supported by the government. In 1940, when Ivan Fedorovich was already the people's commissar of the shipbuilding industry, he, together with a representative of the Navy, was summoned to the Council of Ministers of the USSR for a detailed report on the state of development and delivery of ships. On the basis of this report, a regulation was developed in which the order established by Kuznetsov and Tevosyan was legalized, as well as the norms for the consumption of motor resources for tests and the time standards for factory and state tests were indicated. In addition, the government has awarded commissioning teams to test quality and reduce time.
Since that time, combined testing programs have been widely used in our shipbuilding, when maneuverability, agility, controllability and even firing are checked at a long full speed mode. In accordance with this provision, specially appointed commissions developed unified test programs, including all specialties and all equipment of ships, and these programs were approved by the Main Directorate of Naval Shipbuilding and the People's Commissariat of the Shipbuilding Industry. The order established by this decision brought complete clarity to the relationship between customers and suppliers, contributed to the improvement of the quality of ships and, in general terms, has been preserved to this day.
In the fall of 1939, fascist Germany proposed to the Soviet Union to conclude a trade agreement in development of the non-aggression pact: in exchange for some types of raw materials and food, the Germans offered to supply us with the latest industrial equipment and familiarize us with the latest military equipment, including naval. Soviet government expressed interest in this proposal, but set its own conditions. Before concluding a trade agreement, the Soviet side must make sure that they are ready to sell really modern technology, and not some old stuff. therefore Soviet Union as an indispensable condition for concluding a trade agreement, he demanded that our specialists could go to Germany and get acquainted with the machines and equipment offered for sale on the spot. When, after reviewing the reports of the specialists sent on mission, the Soviet side is convinced that it is being offered really the latest samples, it is ready to start concluding a trade agreement.
The Germans accepted this condition. And in November 1939, a large economic delegation left for Germany, consisting of ninety major Soviet specialists - shipbuilders, aircraft manufacturers, instrument operators, and armed men. The delegation was headed by the People's Commissar of the shipbuilding industry I. F. Tevosyan ...
It was difficult to find a more successful leader of such a delegation than Ivan Fedorovich. This was his third trip to Germany - in 1929 he trained at the Krupna factories in Essen, and in 1931, on behalf of the People's Commissar of Heavy Industry G. Ordzhonikidze, he traveled to Germany to find and invite large specialists in the production of high-quality steels to the USSR. Thanks to these trips, Tevosyan knew German industry very well, spoke German fluently and was personally acquainted with many leaders of German industry.
Nevertheless, Ivan Fedorovich was fully imbued with the importance and complexity of the state commission entrusted to him. If in his previous visits Germany was a defeated and largely infringed power in its rights, now a fascist regime has been established in it, which has already unleashed a new war in Europe and took a short respite before new campaigns of conquest. If in previous trips Tevosyan played the role of a respectful student who came "for science" to the masters, now he headed a large delegation that was supposed to give a qualified and objective assessment of the level of the vaunted German military equipment, which has already made many European countries tremble. At the same time, Tevosyan understood that the Germans agreed to receive the delegation not of their own free will, but under the pressure of an urgent need for raw materials and food, and that they would do their best to reduce the inspection programs. Therefore, in order to successfully complete the government assignment, the head of the delegation in his behavior had to combine firmness in upholding his demands with high diplomatic tact. In the negotiations, not the slightest infringement of the dignity and interests of the Soviet Union was allowed and at the same time not the slightest pretext for any political provocations.
Throughout the entire stay of the delegation in Germany, Ivan Fedorovich was vigilant to ensure that the fundamental requirements of the Soviet side were strictly observed. When the fascist rear admiral, who received the Soviet shipbuilders, heard the list of ships and problems that our specialists wished to get acquainted with, he sharply declared:
There is a war going on. We do not have much time, so we can devote no more than two or three days to your entire delegation to inspect the German ships.
Learning of this, Tevosyan firmly insisted that Soviet requirements be fulfilled: the delegation was divided according to specialties, and it was given two weeks for examinations. Ivan Fedorovich himself behaved with the highest fascist officials with great dignity and did not miss an opportunity to put them in a puddle. Demonstrating to the Soviet delegation their difficulties with food, the Germans went too far. Once, during a meager dinner in a semi-lit hotel restaurant, one of the delegation members approached Tevosyan, who was sitting in the center of the hall with officials from the German Foreign Ministry, and said:
Ivan Fedorovich! You cannot work with such feeding, you need more high-calorie food!
Tevosyan, without changing his face, turned to the German representative and said harshly:
If the German side cannot provide the delegation with normal food, I will send a telegram to Moscow, and tomorrow food will be delivered here by plane.
The German jumped up as if stung and quickly left the hall. He returned a few minutes later and announced loudly that a real supper was being served to the delegations. The issue of food for the delegation was finally resolved, and the demonstration of food difficulties was over.
The culmination of the inspections, according to the German side, was to be the departure of the Soviet delegation to the sea on the newest heavy cruiser "Admiral Hipper". Wanting to increase the price of this demonstration in the eyes of the head of the Soviet delegation, the fascist admiral began to tell Tevosyan that the Hipper's departure to the sea was fraught with great dangers, since a meeting with British ships was possible. But Ivan Fyodorovich could not be frightened with such tales: he was making fun of the admiral, asking him, they say, was the German fleet really so weak that it was afraid of meeting an English ship every time it went to sea?
In the middle of the day, the Germans asked the entire delegation to come out on deck to show them a demonstration of firing blank charges simultaneously from guns of all calibers. Their intent - to make an overwhelming impression on the delegation - was obvious. But, despite the fire and roar, despite the shouts of the hefty gunners, who, firing from anti-aircraft guns, loudly rehearsed commands and for some reason shouted "Heil Hitler" before each shot, the circumstances that the owners tried to hide did not hide from Tevosyan. The cruiser did not develop full speed, and there were sentries near the hatches to the engine and boiler rooms: the Germans did not want to show the guests serious malfunctions in the operation of the machines.
Once, when all the trips around Germany ended and the entire delegation gathered in Berlin, Ivan Fedorovich gathered shipbuilders and reported unexpected news: the Germans offered the Soviet Union to buy two unfinished cruisers of the Admiral Hipper type. The head of the delegation wanted to know the opinion of the shipbuilders on the advisability of acquiring these ships. After lengthy discussions, most of the participants were inclined to believe that buying a cruiser is impractical, mainly due to the dependence on the supply of spare parts and ammunition from Germany. With this decision, Tevosyan went to Moscow.
He returned two days later in a bad mood: Moscow did not agree with his opinion. He was told that if the Germans sell two cruisers, they must be bought. If the Germans sell us their entire fleet, then they must also buy it. If they offer to sell all their weapons, then they must buy them. What we buy today will not fight against us tomorrow. No matter how much money we pay for a cruiser, destroying them in battle will cost us much more.
The German side was immediately informed that the Soviet Union was ready to buy both cruisers, but the Germans suddenly balked and announced that they had changed their mind about selling the cruisers. After lengthy negotiations, an agreement was reached on the sale of only one "Lyuttsov", and the Germans pledged to complete it in the Soviet Union. They, of course, did not fulfill this obligation, and the cruiser, named "Petropavlovsk", was never commissioned until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Nevertheless, it was used in hostilities as a floating battery and caused a lot of trouble for the Nazi warriors who approached the walls of Leningrad. On September 17, 1941, they managed to inflict such severe shocks on the cruiser that she sank and sat on the ground, but the Leningrad shipbuilders managed to patch up the holes and take the ship literally from under the enemy's nose. After repairs, in January 1944, he again opened fire on the enemy from his 203-millimeter guns.
On December 14, 1939, the Soviet economic delegation departed for Moscow. The members of the delegation carried out the government order, they got acquainted with the level of German technology and knew the quality of German ships no worse than their own. And in this success a prominent role belonged to the head of the delegation, People's Commissar of the shipbuilding industry, Ivan Fedorovich Tevosyan.
Once again, Ivan Fedorovich had a chance to visit Germany in November 1940 as part of a plenipotentiary government delegation. Then he was already appointed to the post of People's Commissar of Ferrous Metallurgy. But the knowledge and experience accumulated by him during the years of leadership of the Soviet shipbuilding were useful to him in his future work, and after the war, shipbuilders, not without trepidation, went to report to the engineering bureau, when it was headed by Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR IF Tevosyan. “At the bureau meeting, I made a report, confused and confused, for more than three hours,” recalls one of the leaders of the shipbuilding industry of those years. - Tevosyan endlessly pestered me with questions: as a former people's commissar of factories and ships, he knew perfectly well. In the end, based on my confused report, Tevosyan got a note in his notebook about the number of ships that I promised to hand over by the end of the third quarter. When, three months later, I was summoned to the bureau again, remembering the lesson taught by Ivan Fedorovich, I prepared well, felt confident, often objected to Tevosyan, left the long table and showed Ivan Fedorovich the graphs, neatly executed with colored pencils. When the session was over, Tevosyan said with satisfaction:
Last time you were generous with promises, and now you have been taught: you have become cautious and stubborn. It's good!"
Shipbuilding remained close to the heart of Ivan Fedorovich for the rest of his life. But in metallurgy, too, he remained a brilliant organizer and skillful strategist of this industry, which is most important for the entire economy of the country. He consecutively held the posts of People's Commissar and Minister of Ferrous Metallurgy, Minister of Metallurgical Industry, and in 1949 he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, until 1953, combining these duties with the leadership of the Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy. Great is Tevosyan's merit in the uninterrupted supply of metal to the front and rear during the Great Patriotic War. And in the first post-war years, the revival of the domain and open-hearth furnaces destroyed by the enemy in the west of the country is associated with his name, and that turn to qualitatively new technical solutionsthat have defined the industry today.
On October 14, 1956, Ivan Fedorovich Tevosyan received a new and unusual appointment for him - ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Japan, relations with which returned to normal after a long break. This appointment coincided with the change of the American ambassador to this country - he was the well-known General MacArthur. Learning that, according to diplomatic rules at official receptions, ambassadors are arranged not according to the rank of powers, but according to the time of arrival in a given country, Tevosyan dropped all personal affairs related to departure and rushed to Japan by plane to arrive in Tokyo at least an hour earlier. MacArthur. And he achieved his goal: at official receptions, the USSR representative stood in front of the American one.
In this episode - all of Tevosyan, who, having received a new appointment, immediately began to study the case, in a short time he was able to study and understand many problems and, most importantly, quickly made decisions and began to act. With his usual seriousness and thoroughness, he approached other articles of the diplomatic protocol, and the result was not slow to show itself. Usually during the presentation of credentials japanese emperor Hirohito is purely formal, limiting himself to uttering a few stereotypical phrases. But at the presentation of the credentials of the Soviet ambassador, Hirohito got into a conversation with him and, marveling at his youthful appearance, asked what the secret of youth was. To this Ivan Fyodorovich replied: "I'm just an optimist and always smile!"
Later, participating in the imperial hunt, where ducks are not shot, but caught with a net, Tevosyan, although he was not a hunter, was the only one of all the participants who managed to catch a duck. It was clear to people who knew Ivan Fyodorovich well that the hunting luck, about which all Japanese newspapers wrote, weighed down on him as a waste of time. But the conscientiousness and thoroughness with which he treated any task entrusted to him led him to success even in such a matter as the imperial hunt. The same can be said about Tevosyan's attitude to official receptions. Here he was greatly annoyed by the need to pose in front of the photographers who asked every five minutes: “Mr. Ambassador! Please shake hands with the minister and smile. " And he patiently and tactfully shook hands and smiled according to all the rules of diplomatic art.
In Japan, Tevosian faced the shipbuilding industry again, this time with Japan. And his trained eyes of the People's Commissar was able to see a lot of things that not only the diplomat, but also the majority of shipbuilders cannot see. The members of the Soviet delegation, which in May 1957 arrived at the World Industrial Exhibition in Tokyo, had a chance to make sure of this.
The first to receive this delegation in Japan was soviet ambassador... He immediately recognized and named shipbuilders and metallurgists by their last names, and then met with representatives of other professions. Immediately after a cursory examination of the exhibition, Ivan Fedorovich invited the shipbuilders to his office, asked about their first impressions, and then impromptu made a brilliant review of the Japanese shipbuilding industry.
Japan, according to him, has relied on foreign experience in shipbuilding, acquires a huge number of licenses for the construction of ship turbines, boilers, diesel engines, generators, etc. This decision was caused by a lack of time and money. Nevertheless, the exhibition also presents original developments of Japanese designers, whose qualifications and abilities Tevosyan highly appreciated and advised to treat their developments carefully. Although Japanese firms sell their licenses, their number is 10-15 times less than those bought in other countries.
Briefly formulating the features of Japanese shipbuilding, they boil down to the following: shipyards have large machine-building facilities. Plants make boilers, turbines, diesel engines for themselves. They enjoy wide cooperation on non-solving mechanisms and equipment. Some particularly important and large parts are also made by shipyards for themselves, not trusting their counterparties. Not knowing what such details mean for the vessel, the counterparty may be late with delivery and cause damage to the company, for which he will not be able to pay the forfeit ...
Most of the ships in Japan are built in dry docks, of which there are 83. All factories, even the largest ones, are engaged in the repair of ships - there are no difficulties with orders for repairs, since the main customer here is the American navy. As for orders for merchant ships, the largest customer here is small countries like Liberia, and in fact, the same USA and other large capitalist countries, which profit from exploiting low-paid Japanese workers and crews of small countries.
In this conversation, Ivan Fedorovich revealed the secret of the low cost of ships being built in Japan: it is explained by low wages and high discipline of workers, their qualifications, organization and intensity of their labor. “Don't try to look for a canteen in Japanese factories - you will never find it there. Workers eat lunch at their workplaces and eat what they bring in boxes from home, he said. “And also pay attention to the fact that people work without literally raising their heads.”
“We listened and marveled,” recalls one of the members of this delegation. - Twenty-five years have passed since Ivan Fedorovich was the people's commissar of the shipbuilding industry, but he spoke about shipbuilding with such knowledge of the matter, with such subtleties, so skillfully that we forgot that we were facing an ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary. It seemed to us again that the distant times had returned, and we again listen to our People's Commissar for shipbuilding. Later, he met with us several more times, was interested in the results of our visits to shipyards, questioned in detail, corrected us if we were wrong, explained, if we did not understand, emphasized the features of certain phenomena associated with customs and lifestyle in Japan. Later, talking with the metallurgists of the delegation, Ivan Fyodorovich again showed himself at the height of the situation. He knew the Japanese metallurgical industry like the back of his hand, and metallurgists told him about their impressions, listened to him, consulted with him on the most delicate issues of their craft. And again we listened and marveled at the broad knowledge, the extraordinary interest in any business, the speed of understanding the complexity of the issues. Before us was not the Minister of Shipbuilding, but the Minister of Ferrous Metallurgy. To be more precise, we had before us an outstanding specialist in industry in general ... "
During one of the last meetings with the delegation, Tevosyan formulated with utmost clarity the main directions of increasing production efficiency. “It is necessary to organize industry in such a way,” he said, “so that maximum specialization of all factories without exception is ensured, the broadest possible cooperation of industries, standardization and unification of machines, mechanisms and products and an all-round transition to mass production. This is the secret of the business, this is the secret of high productivity, it will give miracles in the socialist economy. "
On March 30, 1958, the country saw off its outstanding son on his last journey. Ivan Fyodorovich was buried in Red Square, near the Kremlin steppe. At the head of the funeral procession, by tradition, they carried his numerous awards on scarlet cushions: the Hammer and Sickle gold medal of the Hero of Socialist Labor, five Orders of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor and many medals. He, who never wore a military uniform, received military honors. And this is quite fair, for with the same reason he can be called "the commander of metallurgy" or "admiral of shipbuilding."
Ivan Fedorovich Tevosyan entered the history of Soviet industry as a leading metallurgical engineer and organizer of the metallurgical industry. But it is not by chance that the large oil carrier "Ivan Tevosyan" plows the sea. Not only this ship, the entire Soviet shipbuilding industry still bears the imprint of the personality of its first People's Commissar. Although Ivan Fedorovich headed the shipbuilding industry for a relatively short time - only a little over three years - in his life and in his formation as a prominent organizer of the industry, shipbuilding, apparently, played a decisive role. And the point here, of course, is not that the first people's commissar post in his life was the post of the people's commissar of shipbuilding. The point here is that shipbuilding with its developed specialization and cooperation of factories showed Tevosyan what a real modern highly organized production should be like. “I recommend that you go to the Ministry of Shipbuilding,” he once said to one of his employees at the Ministry of Ferrous Metals, “and study the schedule of construction work, from laying the ship on the slipway to launching it. Hundreds of enterprises are involved in the creation of the ship, but the shipbuilders managed to achieve such clarity in their work and such a conscientious attitude to their duties that the ships are delivered on time, on schedule. It is necessary for all of us to abandon the handicraft, carry out all construction work strictly according to the schedule - day after day, hour after hour! This is the only way to create an exemplary industry! "
Ivan Fedorovich (Hovhannes Tevadrosovich) Tevosyan (January 4, 1902 (December 22, 1901 O.S.), Shusha, Elizavetpol province - March 30, 1958, Moscow) - Soviet statesman and party leader, Hero of Socialist Labor (1943).
Delegate of the 16th-20th congresses of the CPSU; in 1930-1934, a member of the Central Control Commission, since 1939 - a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Candidate member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee in 1952-1953.
Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1-5th convocations.
Biography
Armenian, born in the family of a tailor-craftsman in the city of Shusha, Elisavetpol province (Nagorno-Karabakh). The family had four children. A few years later, the family fled from Shushi and settled in Baku.
He graduated from an Orthodox parish school and a three-year trade school in Baku. After graduation, he worked in the Volga-Baku Oil Society as a clerk, accountant, and assistant accountant. At the same time in the evenings he studied as an external student at the gymnasium.
Party member since 1918. In 1919 he was the secretary of the underground City District Committee of the RCP (b) in Baku.
Participant in the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion (1921).
Since 1921 he studied at the Moscow Mining Academy at the metallurgical faculty (graduated in 1927), was the secretary of the party bureau of the academy and at the same time worked as deputy. head Department of Propaganda and Agitation of the Zamoskvoretsky District Party Committee. Then he met his future wife Olga, who worked in the same district committee.
At the 16th party congress, he was elected a member of the Central Control Commission-RCI and was appointed head of the ferrous metallurgy department, however, according to his own son, he did not want to take this position and asked Ordzhonikidze to send him to work at the Elektrostal plant.
Since 1927 - assistant foreman, foreman, head of steel-making shops and chief engineer of the plant at the Elektrostal plant in the Moscow region.
In 1929-1930 he was on a business trip to metallurgical plants in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Italy.
In 1931-1936 he was the manager of the Spetsstal association of high-quality steel and ferroalloys plants of the People's Commissariat for Tyazhprom.
In 1936-1939 he was the head of the main board, the 1st deputy commissar of the USSR defense industry.
His son recalled: "He narrowly escaped arrest." In 1938, the husband of his sister Yulia Levon Mirzoyan was arrested. “Clouds began to gather around my father, ominous rumors spread that he was a German spy, recruited during his internship in Germany. Father, seeing that he was about to be arrested, writes a letter to Stalin that he cannot work in such an environment that has been created around him, that he is not guilty of anything and has always honestly served the party ... Stalin instructs to sort out the matter. Tevosyan commission consisting of - Molotov, Mikoyan, Yezhov and Beria. Father is being interrogated at the Lubyanka, which means that in fact he has already been arrested. After interrogation, the members of the commission come to Stalin. The leader asks: “Well, what?” Mikoyan and Beria answer that there are no grounds for Tevosyan's arrest. Molotov says there is a lack of facts. Yezhov is silent. After 2-3 days, Stalin wrote a note to his father with the following content: “As to your honesty, I had no doubts and no. As for Mirzoyan, God bless him, let's forget about him. With regard to your sister, you need to think “”.
In 1939-1940, People's Commissar of the USSR Shipbuilding Industry.
In 1940-1948, the People's Commissar, then the Minister of Ferrous Metallurgy of the USSR, supervised the grandiose work of evacuating the metallurgical enterprises of the South and Center to the east of the country. On September 28, 1942, JV Stalin signed the GKO Order No. GKO-2352ss "On the organization of work on uranium." In accordance with this document, he personally supervised the supply of products of his department to the address of the atomic nuclear laboratory. On December 8, 1944, I. V. Stalin signed the GKO Resolution No. GKO-7102ss / s "On measures to ensure the development of mining and processing of uranium ores", I. F. Tevosyan was involved in the mining of uranium ore as an accompanying raw material for development of existing deposits.
In 1948-1949, the Minister of the Metallurgical Industry of the USSR.
Tevosyan Ivan Fedorovich (real patronymic - Tevadrosovich) - People's Commissar of Ferrous Metallurgy of the USSR, the city of Moscow.
Born on December 22, 1901 (January 4, 1902) in the city of Shusha, Elisavetpol province (now the city of Shushi, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic). Armenian, the son of a handicraft tailor. In 1906, during the Armenian-Azerbaijani massacre, the family fled from Shushi and settled in Baku.
He graduated from an Orthodox parish school in Baku, a three-year Trade School in the same place. After graduation, he worked in the Volga-Baku Oil Society as a clerk, accountant, and assistant accountant. At the same time in the evenings he studied as an external student at the gymnasium.
He was an active participant in the revolutionary events of 1917. In July 1918 he joined the RCP (b) / VKP (b) / KPSS. From the end of 1918 to April 1920 he worked in the Baku Bolshevik underground, continuing to serve in the Volga-Baku Oil Society. In March 1919 he was elected a member of the underground city committee of the RCP (b), in August 1919 - the secretary of one of the underground regional committees in Baku. Was arrested and spent several months in prison, was released for lack of evidence of guilt. In April 1920 he took part in the uprising in Baku, coordinated with the beginning of the offensive of the Red Army.
Immediately after the establishment of Soviet power in Baku, on April 28, 1920, Tevosyan was appointed executive secretary of the Baku City District Committee of the RCP (b), as well as a member of the Central Board of the Union of Oil and Metallurgical Industry Workers of Baku and a member of the Baku Council of Trade Unions. As a delegate to the 10th Congress of the RCP (b), he participated in the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising. Since 1921 he studied in Moscow. From 1921 he studied at the Moscow Mining Academy at the metallurgical faculty (from which he graduated in 1927), was the secretary of the party bureau of the academy. During his studies at the Academy, Tevosyan passed industrial practice at the Taganrog Metallurgical Plant (open-hearth shop worker, henchman of the pipe rolling shop); at the Stalin Metallurgical Plant in Donbass (assistant to the shift engineer of the open-hearth shop); at the Dzerzhinsky plant (Kamenka, until 2016 - Dneprodzerzhinsk, an open-hearth furnace engineer), at the Elektrostal plant in the Moscow region (worker on a casting ditch, assistant foreman of an electric arc shop, workshop foreman).
From June 1927 to September 1929 he worked at a plant in the town of Elektrostal near Moscow as an assistant foreman of a steel workshop. From September 1929 to November 1930 he was on a production trip to study the world experience in metallurgy, worked at the Krupp metallurgical plants in Germany, at the Skoda plants in Czechoslovakia and Fiat plants in Italy. Upon returning to his homeland in November 1930, he was appointed head of the electric steel-making shops, and then the chief engineer of the Elektrostal plant.
On July 13, 1930, at the 16th Party Congress, Tevosyan was elected a member of the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, but with the permission of S. Ordzhonikidze, he refused this appointment and remained at the Elektrostal plant.
In August 1931, I. F. Tevosyan became the manager of the newly created association "Spetsstal" (as part of metallurgical plants: "Electrostal", "Hammer and Sickle", "Red October", "Dneprospetsstal", Verkh-Isetsky and Nadezhdinsky in the Sverdlovsk region, ferroalloys of Chelyabinsky and Zestafonsky). The association was given the task of mastering the production of ferroalloys and steels in a constantly growing volume and expanding assortment. And this task was solved.
Since December 1936 - Head of the Main Directorate for the Production of Armored Steel at the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry of the USSR. In June 1937, the USSR People's Commissariat for the Defense Industry was created, in which I.F. Tevosyan became deputy (06.1937 - 10.1937), and soon the first deputy (10.1937 - 01.11.1939) of the people's commissar.
In January 1939, the People's Commissariat of the USSR Shipbuilding Industry was created, and Tevosyan was appointed its first People's Commissar. He did a lot of work on the creation of the collegium of the People's Commissariat, the selection and appointment of the heads of the central administrations and the staffing of the staff of the People's Commissariat. In 1939, he again visited Germany at the head of a delegation to implement the Soviet-German trade agreement.
During these years, Ivan Tevosyan grew up into a talented and experienced organizer of the USSR industry, but he worked in an extremely difficult situation: his sister was arrested (she died in prison under investigation), her husband was shot. At the disposal of the NKVD, testimonies have already been obtained about the "sabotage activities" of Tevosyan himself, about which he had to give explanations at a commission consisting of Beria, Molotov, Mikoyan and others. A few days after this commission, Tevosyan received a note from Stalin: "work calmly."
May 17, 1940 I.F. Tevosyan was appointed People's Commissar of Ferrous Metallurgy of the USSR. By that time, this branch of the national economy was recognized as a failure, it hindered the development of all other branches. Tevosyan was tasked with urgently correcting the situation in the industry. He began with the reorganization of the People's Commissariat, was the first in the USSR to introduce a new system of bonuses and material incentives for workers and managers, and ensured that the workers of the People's Commissariat were supplied with higher standards for workers in the defense industry. For the uninterrupted operation of metallurgical enterprises, reserves of ore, coke, coal and other materials were created at each of them. Violations of the technological process were mercilessly punished, the obligation of each manager to work at a production position for at least 2 years before being appointed to a managerial position was introduced. A set of other measures has been completed. As a result, in the first half of 1940, the People's Commissariat fulfilled the plan by 94.5%. Thanks to his efforts, by mid-1941, the ferrous metallurgy regained its lost positions.
At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the enemy seized territories where 2/3 of the total volume of pig iron and 58 percent of steel were produced before the war. The most important sources of raw materials were lost. In the first period of the war, the evacuation from the front line of ferrous metallurgy plants to the east of the country was main task Commissar. Then, in the most difficult conditions, Tevosyan did a lot to dramatically increase metal production at the country's new metallurgical bases - the Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsk Combines. A huge amount of work has also been done to dramatically increase productivity at the old Ural factories. A number of old Ural factories were urgently modernized. 10 blast furnaces, 29 open-hearth furnaces, 16 electric arc furnaces, 15 rolling mills were built. Many organizational and technological problems of production were solved under Tevosyan's leadership. The construction of new facilities began in the east. In 1943, the Soviet steel industry produced more steel than Germany.
By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of September 30, 1943 for special services in the field of organizing the production of high-quality and high-quality metal for all types of weapons, tanks, aviation and ammunition in difficult wartime conditions Tevosyan Ivan Fedorovich awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the award of the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal.
In February 1946, the People's Commissariat of Ferrous Metallurgy was transformed into the Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy of the USSR and I.F. Tevosyan. In terms of the complexity of the tasks, the work entrusted to him to restore the metallurgy destroyed by the war in Donbass and southern Ukraine had no analogues in world practice. But it was completed - in 1948, the pre-war level of steel smelting and production of rolled products was reached in the Donbass, and in 1949 - iron smelting. July 29, 1948 I.F. Tevosyan headed the USSR Ministry of Metallurgical Industry, formed as a result of the merger of the Ministries of Ferrous and Non-Ferrous Metallurgy.
From June 13, 1949 to March 15, 1953 I.F. Tevosyan - Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, from March 15, 1953 to February 8, 1954 - Minister of the Metallurgical Industry of the USSR and from December 7, 1953 - again Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers.
After a critical review of one of the decisions of N.S. Khrushchev on December 28, 1956 I.F. Tevosyan was relieved of his duties as Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and two days later was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR to Japan. IF Tevosyan did not stay in "honorary exile" in Japan for long. In September 1957, he fell seriously ill and flew to Moscow for treatment. But the disease was fatal. On March 30, 1958, I. F. Tevosyan died. The urn with the ashes of IF Tevosyan was buried in the Red Square in the Kremlin wall.
Member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) / CPSU (03/21/1939 - 03/30/1958), candidate member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee (10/16/1952 - 03/05/1953), deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 3-5th convocations (1946-1958). Member of the Moscow Regional Committee of the CPSU (b) (1932-1937).
He was awarded 5 Orders of Lenin (03/23/1935; 09/30/1943; 03/31/1945; 09/03/1948; 01/03/1952), 3 Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (03/29/1939; 11/24/1942; 11/14/1951), medals, including "For Labor Valor" (06/05/1949).
The busts of I.F. Tevosyan were installed in the cities of Shushi and Elektrostal. The name of Tevosyan was given to the Elektrostal plant, a memorial plaque was installed on the building of the plant management. Streets in the cities of Elektrostal, Yerevan, Stepanakert, Dnepr, Magnitogorsk, Kamensk-Uralsky bear his name.
Ivan Fedorovich (real patronymic - Tevadrosovich) Tevosyan was born on January 4, 1902 (old style December 22, 1901) in the city of Shusha, Elisavetpol province (now the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh). Armenian, the son of a handicraft tailor. In 1906, during the Armenian-Azerbaijani massacre, the family fled from Shushi and settled in Baku.
He graduated from an Orthodox parish school in Baku, a three-year Trade School in the same place. After graduation, he worked in the Volga-Baku Oil Society as a clerk, accountant, and assistant accountant. At the same time in the evenings he studied as an external student at the gymnasium.
He was an active participant in the revolutionary events of 1917. In July 1918 he joined the RCP (b). From the end of 1918 to April 1920, he worked in the Baku Bolshevik underground, continuing to serve in the Volga-Baku Oil Society. In March 1919 he was elected a member of the underground city committee of the RCP (b), in August 1919 - the secretary of one of the underground regional committees in Baku. Was arrested and spent several months in prison, was released for lack of evidence of guilt. In April 1920 he took part in the uprising in Baku, coordinated with the beginning of the offensive of the Red Army.
After the restoration of Soviet power in Baku on April 28, 1920, Tevosyan was appointed executive secretary of the City District Committee of the RCP (b), as well as a member of the Central Board of the Union of Oil and Metallurgical Industry Workers of Baku and a member of the Botin Council of Trade Unions.
In March 1921, as a delegate to the 10th Congress of the RCP (b), he participated in the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising. From 1921 to 1929 he studied at the Moscow Mining Academy at the metallurgical faculty and was the secretary of the party bureau of the academy. During his studies at the academy, Tevosyan underwent practical training at the Taganrog Metallurgical Plant (a worker in an open-hearth shop, an assistant to a rolling mill operator); at the Stalin Metallurgical Plant in Donbass (assistant to the shift engineer of the open-hearth shop); at the Dzerzhinsky plant (Kamenka, now Dneprodzerzhinsk, an open-hearth furnace engineer), at the Elektrostal plant in the Moscow region (worker on a casting ditch, assistant foreman of an electric arc shop, workshop foreman). In 1929-1930 he was on a business trip to metallurgical plants in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Italy.
Since November 1930, he was the head of the electric steel-making shops, and then the chief engineer of the Elektrostal plant. From 1932 to 1937 Tevosyan was elected a member of the Moscow Regional Committee of the CPSU (b), from 1930 to 1934 - a member of the Central Control Commission of the Central Committee of the Military Industrial Complex (b), a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR in 1934-1937.
Since August 1931, I. F. Tevosyan - manager of the newly created association "Spetsstal" (as part of the metallurgical plants "Electrostal", "Hammer and Sickle", "Red October", "Dneprospetsstal", Verkh-Isetsky and Nadezhdinsky in the Sverdlovsk region , ferroalloys of Chelyabinsk and Zestafonsky). The association had a tough task to significantly increase the production of ferroalloys and steels. This task has been completed.
In December 1936 I.F. Tevosyan was appointed head of the Seventh Main Directorate (armor production) of the USSR People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry. In June 1937, the People's Commissariat of the Defense Industry of the USSR was created, in which I.F. Tevosyan was appointed head of the Second Main Directorate (shipbuilding), and at the same time - Deputy and First Deputy People's Commissar of the USSR Defense Industry. Domestic and foreign historians highly appreciate the work of the USSR shipbuilding industry in pre-war years... Then the cruiser "Kirov", the leaders of the destroyers "Moscow" and "Minsk", new types of submarines, destroyers, minesweepers, river monitors, and combat boats of various classes were put into operation. New large shipyards were built in the North and in Far East... In 1937, I.V.'s sister was arrested. Tevosyan (died in prison during the investigation), he himself was subjected to "operational development" and proceedings in the commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
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In January 1939, the People's Commissariat of the USSR Shipbuilding Industry was established and Tevosyan was appointed as its first People's Commissar. He carried out a lot of work to create the apparatus of the People's Commissariat, to attract the largest scientists to its work (three academicians worked at the People's Commissariat at once - A.N. Krylov, Shimansky, Pozdyunin). In 1939, the People's Commissariat handed over 112 ships to the fleet. The efforts of the People's Commissar could have brought even greater results, but considerable forces were thrown into the implementation of J.V. Stalin's decision to build two types of new battleships and the second generation of light cruisers. Despite the fact that their projects themselves were an outstanding achievement of Soviet shipbuilding thought, these ships themselves could not fulfill the tasks assigned to them in the Baltic and Black Sea, for which they were built. At the beginning of the war, construction had to be stopped. The same applies to the completion of the purchased unfinished German heavy cruiser Luttsov.
In 1940 I.F. Tevosyan was appointed People's Commissar of Ferrous Metallurgy of the USSR. By that time, this industry was recognized as a failure and Tevosyan was tasked with urgently correcting the situation in it. He began with the reorganization of the People's Commissariat, the introduction of the first in the country new system bonus payments to workers and managers, achieved the supply of workers of the People's Commissariat for higher standards of workers in the defense industry. For the uninterrupted operation of metallurgical enterprises, reserves of ore, coke, coal and other materials were created at each of them. Violations of the technological process were mercilessly punished, the obligation of each manager to work at a production position for at least 2 years before being appointed to a managerial position was introduced. A set of other measures has been completed. As a result, in the first half of 1940, the People's Commissariat fulfilled the plan by 94.5%.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War I.F. Tevosyan restructured the People's Commissariat in accordance with the needs of wartime, organized the development of a plan for the evacuation of enterprises. At the beginning of the war, the enemy seized territories where, before the war, 2/3 of the total volume of pig iron and 58% of steel were produced. The most important sources of raw materials were lost. Tevosyan did a lot to dramatically increase metal production at the country's new metallurgical bases - the Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsk Combines. A number of old Ural factories were urgently modernized. 10 blast furnaces, 29 open-hearth furnaces, 16 electric arc furnaces, 15 rolling mills were built. As a result, in 1943, the Soviet metallurgical industry surpassed Germany in steel production.
For exceptional services to the state in organizing the production of high-quality and high-quality metal for all types of weapons, tanks, aviation and ammunition in difficult wartime conditions, by the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated September 30, 1943, Ivan Fedorovich Tevosyan was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the award Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle Gold Medal.
After the war, I.F. Tevosyan headed the work on the restoration of the destroyed enterprises of ferrous metallurgy in the southern regions of the country. In terms of the complexity of the tasks, this work had no analogues in world practice. But it was fulfilled - in 1948, the pre-war level of steel smelting and production of rolled products was reached in the Donbass, and in 1949 - iron smelting.
In 1946, the People's Commissariat of Ferrous Metallurgy was transformed into the Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy of the USSR and I.F. Tevosyan. In July 1948, he headed the USSR Ministry of Metallurgical Industry, formed as a result of the merger of the ministries of ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy.
In June 1949, Tevosyan became deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, he heads a giant complex - ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, coal and oil industries, geology, shipbuilding. At the same time, in December 1950, he was appointed minister of the newly formed Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy of the USSR. From 16.10.1952 to 6.3.1952 he was a candidate member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
In March 1953, the management was reorganized national economy USSR, Tevosyan was appointed Minister of the Metallurgical Industry of the USSR (he was until February 1954) and relieved of his duties as Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. However, already in December 1953 Tevosyan was re-appointed Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers. Now he was in charge of ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, oil, gas industry and geology, construction of metallurgical, chemical, oil and gas enterprises, vocational education. During this period, under his leadership, the tasks of creating new materials for space technology, radio electronics and automation. The merits of I.F. Tevosyan is also in the fact that he proved the feasibility of developing the iron ore deposits of the Kursk magnetic anomaly, forced the study of the oil-bearing depths of the Caspian region.
The outstanding results of the work of I.F. Tevosyan in all the leading positions entrusted to him are explained by deep knowledge of metallurgical production, experience in all positions in production from worker to director, constant study of the advanced in other countries, as well as his dedication and efficiency.
In 1956 I.F. Tevosyan opposed the proposed by N.S. Khrushchev of the territorial principle of managing the national economy and proposed to apply in the USSR some advanced methods of managing US industry. The answer was the pogrom statements of N.S. Khrushchev and a number of his closest associates addressed to the outstanding industrial leader.
In December 1956 I.F. Tevosyan was relieved of his duties as Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR to Japan. But this honorable exile did not last long. In September 1957 I.F. Tevosyan fell seriously ill and flew to Moscow for treatment. Died March 30, 1958. He was buried at the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow.
He was awarded five Orders of Lenin (including 1943, 1952), three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor, and medals. Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR 1-5 convocations (1937 - 1958).
Outstanding statesman monuments were erected in the cities of Shusha and Elektrostal. The plant "Elektrostal" (city of Elektrostal, Moscow region) was named after I.F. Tevosyan. Streets in the cities of Elektrostal, Yerevan, Stepanakert, Dnepropetrovsk, Magnitogorsk, Kamensk-Uralsky bear his name. A memorial plaque has been installed on the building of the Elektrostal plant management.