Power Industry of the Victory

Abstract

In 2020, our country will celebrate a large number of important historical anniversaries. Most significantly, there will be the 75th anniversary since the victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War, which ended with the defeat and complete unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany and its allies and satellites. There will also be a lot of important anniversaries associated with the end of the World War II and the victory over Japan and the liberation of European and Asian countries, capitals, important cities, and military operations.

As time passes, there remain fewer and fewer living witnesses and participants of those events, so the historical link between generations is gradually broken. A few decades ago, there was no need not to talk in detail about the events of the war – the historical memory of living generations and direct participants kept these events in mind as fundamental and unshakable. Now it is necessary not just to utter general words full of pathos and emotions, but also to specifically name those events and those people the reminiscence of which is gradually fading for various reasons.

The approaching anniversary of the great Historical Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War gives rise to intensifying ideological and historical attacks on Russia as the successor of the Soviet Union and attempts to review the results of the war in favor of the current rulers of many countries. In his interview for the program “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin" shown on the Russia-1 TV channel on January 19, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ‘We must not allow the events of the Great Patriotic War to be forgotten’.

An important role in the Victory was played by the country's military economy, and of course, its power industry as a key industry that supported the operation of the national economy and the life of the population.

It is hard to imagine all this now. The battle front, military operations, bombing of cities and settlements, transport routes, emergency dismantling of equipment often under enemy fire, evacuation of power plants and the population, and "off-the-wheels" deployment of power enterprises in the Urals and Siberia. All these difficulties fell on the shoulders of the power engineers who had to bear their mission in the Great Patriotic War. It is difficult to tell about all the people and events, so the article focuses on A.I. Letkov and D.G. Zhimerin who headed the industry in those years.

Information about P.S. Neporozhny, I.T. Novikov, F.V. Sapozhnikov and some other prominent specialists in power engineering, who began their activities during the war years, is given. The article describes how the industry operated and developed under those extreme conditions and gives the main indicators characterizing the power industry in the war years, and provides some important facts.