Ivan Pavlovich
Bardin
1890-1953
Ivan Pavlovich Bardin was the Director of the Institute of Metallurgy of the USSR Academy of Sciences, academician, Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Hero of Socialist Labor. He was born in the village of Shirokiy Ustup of the Antarsky district of the Saratov province, now the village of the Kalininsky district of the Saratov region. Since 1889 he studied at the school of the village of Shirokiy Ustup. In 1891 he finished Saratov City Pushkin School No.1. In 1896 he finished Alexandrovsky Vocational School (Saratov), in 1902 – Mariinsky Agricultural School in the Nikolaevsky town of the Saratov province. After his graduation from 1902 he worked as a manager of the estate. In 1903 he entered Novo-Alexandrovsky Agricultural Institute, but in 1905 he was expelled from there for his active participation in student speeches during the first Russian Revolution. In the years of the Civil War, he hid from mobilization into the White Army, and after 1920 he led the restoration of the Yenakiyevsky Metallurgical Plant. In 1923-1924 he was on a long business trip to study the experience of metallurgical enterprises in Germany, England and Belgium. Since 1924, he was the chief engineer of the Makeyevsky Metallurgical Plant and at the same time an engineer of the Yugstal management (Kharkov). Since 1925 he was the Chief Engineer of the F.E. Dzerzhinsky Metallurgical Plant in Kamenskoye (now Dneprodzerzhinsk). From February 1929 to June 1937 I.P. Bardin was the technical director and chief engineer of the construction of the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Combine. The plant was built in record time – exactly 1 000 days from the moment of hammering the first peg. In addition, as a result of the work of Bardin and other engineers, it was possible to increase the design capacity of the plant from 400,000 to 1,500,000 tons of pig iron per year. For technical developments and the introduction of new principles in construction technologies in the year of commissioning of the first stage of the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Combine (1932), I.P. Bardin was awarded the title of Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences without published scientific papers and without the title of corresponding member. Since 1937, I.P. Bardin was in leadership positions in the ferrous metallurgy: since 1937 he served as the Chief Engineer of the Ferrous Metallurgy Department of the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry of the USSR, since 1938 he was the Chairman of the Technical Council of this People’s Commissariat, since 1939. – the Deputy People’s Commissar of Ferrous Metallurgy of the USSR. Ivan Pavlovich Bardin actively participated in the development of the most important issues of the state’s technical policy in the field of ferrous metallurgy. At the same time, the press began to call Bardin «the main metallurgist of the USSR». In 1937-1953 he headed the Ural branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was the Director of the Institute of Metallurgy of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939-1960) and the Central Research Institute of Ferrous Metallurgy under the USSR State Planning Committee (1945-1960), bearing his name since 1960. He was the Head of the Department of the Moscow Institute of Steel (1943-1958). From May 1942 to the end of his life Bardin was the Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was the Academician-Secretary of the Department of Technical Sciences of the Academy of Sciences (1942-1946). During the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), he supervised the work of the Academy aimed at mobilizing the resources of the eastern regions of the USSR for defence needs. Evacuated major scientific institutes of the country joined the Ural Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences headed by I.P. Bardin. His great contribution is that in the hardest years of war Soviet science did not vegetate in the difficult conditions of evacuation, but made an unprecedented qualitative leap forward, bringing invaluable help to the fighting army and the rear military industry. By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated June 10, 1945, for outstanding services in the design, construction and development of the largest metallurgical plants and for scientific achievements in the field of ferrous metallurgy, Ivan Pavlovich Bardin was awarded the title of the Hero of Socialist Labor with the award of the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal. In 1940-1946 he was at the head of a team of scientists who developed the construction project of the Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant, and then actively participated in its construction. In 1943-1958 he taught at MIS named after I. V. Stalin, until 1960 he headed the Department of Economics and Organization of Metallurgical Production. He was a member of the main editorial board of the 2nd edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
Address: Moscow, Radio str., 23/9, p. 1
