Alexei Ivanovich Shachurin

Alexei Shachurin, 1941

Alexei Ivanovich chess urine ( Russian Алексей Иванович Шахурин * January 30 ^{. Jul} / 12. February  1904 ^greg. In Mikhailovskoye ( province Moscow ); † 3. July 1975 in Moscow ) was from 1940 to 1946 Minister for the aircraft industry in the Soviet Union .

Life

Alexei Schachurin was the oldest of six children of the coppersmith Iwan M. Schachurin and his wife T. M. Schachurina. The family lived in the village of Mikhailovskoye, then about 20 kilometers from Moscow and on the road to Serpukhov . His father worked in the "fittings and manometer factory of Hakental" in Moscow, but was drafted as a soldier during the First World War in 1915, so that his wife now had to support the family on her own. Schachurin therefore began an apprenticeship in an electronics shop at an early age in May 1917, but had to break it off again six months later due to the events during the October Revolution . He then worked for two years as an assistant in an electrical company and in 1920 came to the Podolsk municipal administration as an electrician . Following his father's intercession, Schachurin moved to the former Hakental factory in the spring of 1922, which was now called "Manometr". There he was hired as an assistant in the company's own forge, and later he came into the tool shop.

In December 1924 he was appointed secretary to the Komsomol District Committee in Moscow's Bauman District. He carried out this political activity for three years, and in 1927 Shachurin became deputy chairman. In March 1925 he joined the Communist Party .

In addition to his work in the “Manometr” factory, Schachurin began evening studies at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in the fall of 1927, but after two years finally gave up his profession and switched to regular studies. However, he was still politically active in the faculty's own Komsomol group. During his student days, Schachurin became increasingly interested in aviation and attended corresponding courses. After completing his studies, he took up a position as head of the organization department of a “Civilian Air Force” plant. At the beginning of 1933, on the advice of P. S. Dubenski, he moved as an engineer to his test and construction department at the Zhukovsky University and also attended the aviation seminars there. He also came into contact with such well-known experts as Vladimir Pyschnow , Boris Jurjew , Viktor Bolchowitinow and Vladimir Wettschinkin .

In August 1937, Shachurin was recalled as "party organizer" for political work in an aircraft factory, but in April of the following year he was appointed 1st Secretary of the Communist Party's Regional Committee for the Yaroslavl District. His task was to organize production and record the resources generated. In January 1939 he moved to the Gorky area in this capacity . Finally, on January 10, 1940, he was appointed People's Commissar (Minister) for the Aircraft Industry. During his term of office, the modernization of the Soviet air force resulted from the experience of the Spanish civil war and the winter war against Finland. These conflicts had shown that the USSR's flight material was out of date compared to foreign designs. Since the beginning of 1939, intensive work has therefore been carried out to develop new, more modern types of aircraft, new design offices were opened and new plants were built. Thanks to these measures, the Soviet Union had already begun testing and introducing new models when the war against the German Reich began. Production of such types as the Jäger Jak-1 and MiG-3 and the attack aircraft Il-2 had started only a few months before the start of the fighting and only a few specimens had been put into service, but the industry was able to continue its output Extreme increase in the course of the war, so that the material superiority of the aircraft over the German war opponent was secured. Shachurin was also responsible for the evacuations in September of the aircraft industry in the west of the Soviet Union and its suppliers to the east of the Soviet Union. In 1946, Shachurin was dismissed from his post on charges that inferior aircraft had been produced during his tenure and was sentenced to seven years in prison. After Stalin's death in 1953, he was rehabilitated from all charges and reinstated as Deputy Minister for the Aviation Industry in August of the same year. Later he said about this time in retrospect:

“I did not see a band of enemies of the Soviet state at work at the time. Only later did I realize that my case was not a mistake, as I thought at the time, but a sophisticated system of denunciation of honest Soviet people, their abuse, their deportation by means of torture into the category of enemies of the Soviet people, the invention of "conspiracies" and again defamation and shooting ... "

Schachurin is the author of the book "Krylja Pobedy" ( Russian Крылья победы , wing of victory), which was translated into German in 1989 by the military publishing house . He was the bearer of the title Hero of Socialist Labor .

Works

• Alexei Ivanovich Shachurin: Wings of Victory . Military Publishing House of the GDR , Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-327-00822-1 (Russian: Крылья победы . Moscow 1985. Translated by Horst Wendt).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ulrich Unger: Pe-8. The Soviet long-range bomber. Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89488-048-1 , p. 230
2. ↑ Unger, p. 6