Who was the first red director of the Salair mine. Discovery of ore deposits and development of metallurgy in Kuzbass

From June 1, Kuzbassrazrezugol (KRU) will completely stop mining production in Salair (Kemerovo region), which has brought in more than 4.7 billion rubles over eight years. losses. It is planned to mothball two quarries as part of a separate structural division of the company, and liquidate the processing and gold extraction plants, along with a number of hazardous facilities. Mine workers are expected to be employed at the KRU coal mines.

The management of the Kuzbassrazrezugol Coal Company OJSC issued an order to stop the work of the Salair Mining Production (SRP), which has the status of a separate structural unit (OSD). The justification for this decision states that from 2005 to 2012 production activity the mine brought in 4.77 billion rubles. losses. The main reasons for their appearance in the explanatory note to the order (Kommersant has copies of both documents) indicate poor-quality exploration and design assessment of the Kamenushinskoye deposit, insufficient copper content in the ore (0.8-0.9% instead of the expected 1.4%), high the cost of stripping work and the need for a large volume of capital construction work.

In accordance with the order, mining work at the Kamenushinsky open-pit mine, which was stopped on March 1, will not resume. From June 1, work will cease at the Novo-Salairsky quarry, processing and gold recovery factories and in other departments. By October 1, it is prescribed to prepare projects for the conservation of quarries, and by May 1, 2014 - projects for the liquidation of factories and other hazardous facilities, with the exception of boiler houses, tailings facilities, and the mine lifting and drainage area.

The Salair silver mine operated in 1782-1897, and in 1928 it was restored to extract polymetals for the Belovsky zinc plant. In 1998, JSC Salair Mining and Processing Plant went bankrupt. Its property was acquired by ZAO Salair Chemical Plant (SCC), which also bought a license to develop the Kamenushinskoye copper deposit with reserves of about 150 thousand tons. At the end of 2005, the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company (UMMC) acquired SCC, in 2008 She launched the Kamenushinsky quarry into operation. A total of 2.6 billion rubles were invested in the development of the mine in 2005-2012.

The fact that the Salair OSP will likely be stopped became known earlier this year. On February 5 in Kemerovo, the general director of UGMK-Holding LLC (KRU management company) Andrei Kozitsyn said that the mine, “despite the high prices for metals that exist and have been, taking into account the stripping ratio and current costs, generates losses every year, which within the coal company are compensated through the coal business.” He called this situation wrong, because “every business must work or has no right to life.”

The employment of employees of the Salair GRP is handled by a commission of representatives of the KRU, the administrations of the Kemerovo region and Guryevsky district, and the trade union committee of the enterprise. After the closure, “no one will be left without work,” Igor Moskalenko, director of Kuzbassrazrezugol, told Kommersant yesterday. For this purpose, KRU is ready to provide places for all laid-off workers at other company enterprises located near Salair and ensure their delivery. In addition, it was decided to organize retraining courses for employees who decide to change their occupation. “For those who still do not wish to continue their work in the company, all payments provided for Russian legislation“- emphasized Mr. Moskalenko. Some of the mine's divisions and workers (64 people in total) were transferred even before the order to stop production: the transport division was included in the Avtotransport OSP, and about 20 more drivers were transferred to other KRU enterprises. Thus, 784 hydraulic fracturing workers will need to be employed. In accordance with the company's order, offers are being prepared for them to work at the Bachatsky, Krasnobrodsky and Mokhovsky coal mines, branches of the KRU.

According to the chairman of the trade union committee of the enterprise, Marina Bushinskaya, there is no exact number proposed vacancies and it is unclear how many employees will remain working at the mothballed mine sites. But for employment in KRU branches, PIU employees have already begun to study new jobs in order to choose a profession and retrain. So, yesterday, 20 employees of the processing and gold recovery plant in Salair got acquainted with the work of the apparatchiks, operators and coal processing drivers at the Bachatskaya-Energeticheskaya processing plant, as well as with the chemical laboratory as part of the Bachatsky open-pit mine.

Igor Lavrenkov, Kemerovo

This deposit brought a lot of trouble to investors and joy to all mineral lovers.

The history of the Kakmenushinskoye deposit begins in the 18th century, when two small silver-containing veins were found and mined here. Then, already in the 19th century, prospectors carried out work to search for primary and placer gold and developed one poor spoon placer (which was abandoned without completion). And finally, in the 20th century, when drilling deep wells, sulfide copper mineralization was discovered. Further exploration in the second half of the twentieth century gave life to the deposit. The development of the Kamenushinsky quarry itself was short-lived and quite difficult. The company OJSC "Siberia Polymetals" (already known to many collectors from the Rubtsovsky mine), later JSC "Salair Chemical Plant", tried to conduct economic activities at this site with varying degrees of success. Start mining operations on Kamenushka occurred in 2007, and in 2013 they were completely stopped.

What are the reasons for such unhappy results? As they say, it’s not for us to judge them, but that’s what people say. During exploration of the deposit, geologists overestimated the copper content in the ore - they calculated 1.5% (it turned out to be less than 1%). This is clearly not enough for the construction of our own mining and processing plant, and rebuilding the Salair facilities, focused on gold extraction, turned out to be not so easy. And besides, according to the existing technology, the extraction of gold from oxidized ores is unacceptably low. In addition to all the above-mentioned troubles, the quarry was laid out slightly incorrectly, which led to a significant increase in stripping work, and still, in the end, the ore body “went” beyond the contour of the quarry. As a result, we have a significant “pit of water”, surrounded by both waste rock dumps and stockpiled reserves of oxidized gold ore, listed on the state balance sheet, and unclear prospects for the future of this entire economy. Nevertheless, the quarry is guarded (video cameras are installed and guards drive UAZ vehicles), and the gold ore has to be guarded. Although it is poor, it is state-owned, and it is almost impossible to write it off the balance sheet...

From personal impressions following the trip, I was struck by the extreme poverty of the Kamenushinskoye deposit in collectible minerals; you can walk through the dumps all day and find only all sorts of “junk”. High-quality samples are found very rarely; they are strictly confined to certain sectors of the dumps, and these places are already almost completely devastated. It’s especially unfortunate for the so-called “malachite scree” - the real pearl of Kamenushka, on which we still have time to complete the work. If you choose the symbol mineral of the Kamenushinsky deposit, then without any doubt it will be malachite! At the end of this short story I would like to express a special Thanks a lot To the Siberians who organized this expedition. Let's wish them new successful finds!

Having turned from the excellent Altai-Kuzbass highway onto a broken-down country road, we are approaching our goal - the Kamenushinskoye deposit quarry. Its dumps appeared on the horizon. Right on foreground you can see the cemetery of the village. Sosnovka.

Entrance to the village Kamenushka. The sign by the road remains, but the village itself is no longer there. Only the foundations of houses overgrown with nettles and the remains of fences remained on the site of the village founded by Siberian miners. Nothing can be done, the village entered the mining allotment of the quarry and had to be resettled.

But the quarry itself appeared on the right, very close to the road, literally 200 meters away. Above the quarry you can see a small hill on which there is a local landmark, the Stone Gate - a narrow crack in the rocks that was once blocked by a lintel. We didn’t take pictures of it because it was evening time, and we didn’t want to collect ticks at night.

Of the entire village of Kamenushka, only the 4 furthest houses on the lake shore survived. One of the houses has been renovated and now the owners of the field welcome their dear guests here.

What can I say, the places here on the lake are picturesque and in the summer a lot of people from the environmentally unfavorable cities of Kuzbass, which is just a stone’s throw away, constantly stop here.

The next morning, first day of work. We set up camp right at the foot of the dumps. Spring cherry blossoms and bird cherry blossom...

The territory of the deposit is located in the foothills of the Salair Ridge. The area around the quarry is slightly hilly, continuous hayfields and copses. After rains, roads instantly get wet and become impassable for cars.

Old site from 2013 with azurite nodules on a stump. We couldn’t drive up to it by car, it was too muddy in the fields in May.

We climb to the deposit dumps. You can immediately see that they are of two types - clayey and rocky. In general, this is how it is. Stone dumps can be divided into two more types - carbonate and silicate, but more on that below.

Almost all the dumps at the deposit are alive. Landslide phenomena affect vast areas. Many cracks have opened recently.

It’s the end of May and the temperature is 25 degrees, however, not all of the snowfields have melted yet. The remains of one of them are visible in the middle of the slope. Thanks to the snowfields, the dumps are full of puddles and streams of water. You can wash your hands and stones in them, but you cannot drink such water; the oxidizing pyrite has done its dirty work, saturating the mine water with vitriol.

Here the water has already gone, but in other more clayey places, it will remain until mid-summer, and this is on top of the dumps...

The first productive place we came to is called the Pension Fund dump. This is a fairly large area with heaps of rock containing azurite and malachite. The best Kamenushinsky samples were obtained in other places, but here you can always find small samples. In principle the most a good place to get acquainted with the range of minerals of the deposit.

Having split the block I liked with a sledgehammer, I discovered cavities with fine-needle malachite. The malachite is finely radiant and very delicate; we’ll see how it survived the journey when the stones arrive in Moscow.

Close-up of the same malachite block. There was no azurite in it at all; azurite is found in much denser rock. The denser the rock, the greater the chance of finding good crystals - this is a universal rule for the Kamenushinsky deposit.

We go to the quarry, the road there goes straight along one of the ledges of the dumps.

Quartz-chlorite schists are exposed in the roadbed. They are always accompanied by an admixture of fine-crystalline minerals. Pyrite oxidizes and smells strongly. The smell of sulfur is an indispensable companion of shale, but we never came across decent pyrite crystals. We conclude that pyrite from the Kamenushinsky deposit is a completely useless mineral.

On one of the upper ledges of the quarry, on the side of the road, there was a heap of white clay with a decent content of rounded nodules of malachite and azurite. It is impossible to find out where it was brought from; similar rocks are not found in the modern walls of the quarry.

We quickly fill our backpacks with “free” azurite and head to the lower part of the quarry, closer to the water.

The roads in the quarry are not preserved everywhere. Its clay sides are blazing no worse than the dumps, so we descend straight down the body of a living landslide.

A small discovery awaited us below. Finally, it became clear where the sintered forms of malachite came from in the quarry dumps. Perhaps this is not clearly visible in the photo, but on the side of the quarry a zone of karst was opened at the contact of marbles and some strange, highly ferruginous rocks. The surface of the marble fragments is highly dissolved, and the karst itself is filled with clay with black manganese oxides and malachite crusts.

Malachite crusts were thin, up to 1 cm. Malachite formed veins and grew on the walls of geodes in clay rock. It is likely that large samples of “sinter” malachite in the dump, which will be discussed below, came from a similar karst zone in marbles.

Chalcanthite is another useless Kamenushin mineral. The entire block of chalcopyrite-containing rock is covered with its blue crust. Now the sun will warm up and the vitriol block will begin to crumble little by little and turn white...

The water surface of a flooded quarry. In the background you can see a hill with the Stone Gate rock hidden in the forest.

The photo clearly shows the dissolved surface of marbles subjected to the karst process.

Fresh liquid landslide on a quarry road. A hard crust has already formed on its surface, but it’s better not to fall through...

About a third of the quarry section is composed of clayey rocks and this is its weakest point. The clay in the sides is quickly eroded to form canyons as tall as a person.

At the bottom of one of these canyons a whole scattering of balls was discovered. Could it be azurite concretions - that was the first thought. Everything turned out to be simpler. these were banal lumps of clay rolled up by flowing water like snowballs for a snowman.

Having walked around the top of the area of ​​karst marbles, we found ourselves on the opposite side of the quarry. From here you can clearly see the dark karst zone with malachite, pigmented with manganese oxides. It is located in the middle of the red clay outcrops.

Right next to the edge of the quarry, on a site leveled by a bulldozer, there were small blocks of dense limonite with azurite-malachite voids. This manifestation was located in a completely unpredictable place, but its scale turned out to be small. This point ended its existence in literally 2 hours.

Difficult task. Quite a large example of azurite, but at the same time the quality is quite average. It's a long way to the camp, to take it or not to take it - that is the question. The stone remained there until the next time, although the builders of the Ural slides would probably have been delighted with such a model.

Another random Belaz ore rock on board the quarry. The stones from this heap contained a lot of cuprite, native copper, but azurite and malachite were small and substandard. So let's move on...

The near part of the dump is composed of gray marbled limestone, the far part is red clay, empty and meaningless.

Dark green rocks from the dike complex of the deposit are quite common in the dumps. Their petrographic composition has not been specifically studied, but almost everywhere they are subject to late epidotization. For example, in the lower part of this block a calcite nest with epidote crystals even formed. Part of this nest was knocked out. Probably closer to autumn, when it gets better over time, I’ll throw it into acid and then, if I’m lucky, I’ll get a single druse of epidote from the Kamenushinskoye deposit. I don’t think there are any other fools ready to thresh blocks of epidosites.

Around the quarry are the lands of a local farmer. He's not an evil guy, but if he meets strangers immediately calls security. Not all the ferrous metal has been taken away from the quarry yet, so there is something to guard.

In a marble block at the foot of the quarry dumps, we recorded calcite crystals of record size. For the Kamenushinskoye field, the record was 2 cm along the long axis.

Almost the complete set of rocks from the Kamenushinskoe deposit can be observed in these dump heaps. The pile of green shades in the center are quartz-chlorite schists, the gray pile to the right is the same thing but subjected to oxidation. The light pile on the left is volcanic rocks, and the red and pink piles in the center are clay rocks from the contact of marbles and volcanic rocks.

Panorama of the surrounding area from the third tier of dumps. On the surface of the second tier a chain of heaps is visible, one of which turned out to be very interesting.

Its entire surface is covered with small balls of azurite.

Azurite is not the best color, it is not blue but grayish-blue, it does not look very noble.

The value of this azurite is not too high, so it lies on the surface of the dumps, pleasing the eyes of rare geologists passing by.

To be completely precise, it lay there until May of this year. Stone-hungry Muscovites robbed the pile to the last stone...

The next day it was decided to go to the far flank of the dumps. No miracles were found, the dump is just that, a dump, especially a clay one...

The most valuable thing is stored on the uppermost horizon of the ovals - gold ore. Actually, in appearance it is the same clay as in other places, but according to sampling data it contains gold. To be on the safe side, we didn’t go there, although we had permission from the authorities to visit the quarry.

But from the top of the dumps it opens great view throughout the entire district. If you look to the south, you can see the quarries and tailings of the Salair GOK and the city of Salair itself.

If you look to the southwest you can see the village of Sosnovka, the nearest large locality to a quarry where there is a store, post office and drinking water.

If you look at your feet, you can see heaps of waste dumps stretching into the distance. Empty dumps...

On one of the heaps of silicified marbles, numerous crusts of sintered goethite were found on the walls of open cracks. This was the only mineralogical highlight of this part of the dumps. The goethite crusts had a shiny surface and were even a little beautiful.

Quite a fresh find. At first we wondered what the blue needle-shaped mineral might turn out to be. But as is often true, the most banal option turned out to be cyanotrichite. The mineral is certainly not the rarest, but until May of this year it was not known on Kamenushka.

In the photo we are not even seeing a landslide, but rather a kind of mudflow. On its edge, centuries-old birch trees were broken like matchsticks, and the soil layer was swept away by the body of the landslide like a bulldozer.

In the photo you can see the remains of a block that gave two best sample azurite from the Kamenushinskoe deposit. It lay right on the surface and came apart in one or two pieces.

Photo of one of the two best samples. This one was smaller...

Rejoicing at this success, the entire surrounding area was examined. All suspicious blocks were dug out from the depths of the dump.

The excavations were sometimes quite decent, but the result was worth it.

In some places, cavities with azurite crystals reached the surface of the dump and were filled with clay. The clay can be washed off quite well, but such a noble shine cannot be achieved with these crystals.

A very typical example for this part of the dump. Radiant malachite in association with azurite crystals. Very often, malachite completely replaces azurite crystals, and sometimes the surface of the crystal remains azurite, and the core is already replaced by malachite.

Another malachite “stalactite” found this spring. The sample is small but very characteristic. As you can see in the photo, the Kamenushinsky malachite has a thin base of the stalactite, and a wider top. This rule is always observed.

This photo clearly shows the process of replacing azurite with malachite. Malachite began to “eat” azurite not from the outside of the crystals but from the inside.

A void with azurite crystals, the walls of which are covered with gibbsite, another mineral very characteristic of the Kamenushinsky oxidation zone.

The previous photo is a close-up. Gibbsite is colored blue with a small amount of copper.

Some fresh catch...

The useful lump, spotted on one of the previous trips, was finally dismantled. There were no masterpieces among the samples, but overall the stones turned out beautiful and elegant.

Such samples at the field have become very rare and the discovery of each new productive block becomes a great success.

Poor birches suffer not only from landslides. Very close to the parking lot, another tree was struck by lightning. The birch itself broke, but the birch bark was scattered tens of meters around. It rumbled terribly, but for some reason the lightning chose the birch tree, and not the electrically conductive dump rich in sulfides, towering several tens of meters above the entire area.

And again we return to the “Pension Fund” dump.

The promising piles here consist of angular, dark brown blocks of dense limonite.

The most promising heaps had already been excavated by our arrival, but some small things remained for us.

In some heaps there were pieces of malachite crusts. On the rain-washed surface of the dump, they are clearly visible, but it is impossible to dig them; it is too difficult to distinguish malachite crusts filled with dark clay from waste rock.

Geodes with needle malachite. Needle-shaped malachite is a common mineral here.

Very rarely, large geodes with radiant malachite were found; to find such samples, you need to look for a large block of limonite, and such stones for the most part broken.

Ferrous rock with oolitic structure. Local "miners" call it bauxite, but of course no one checked the aluminum content in it...

Manganese oxides are widespread in the deposit. Sometimes they form quite large monomineral accumulations. Testing showed that it was the lithium-containing mineral lithiophorite.

In addition to oolitic iron ore, similar structures are also found in azurite.

Close-up of a sample of "bean" azurite ore. The light blue mineral on the right is gibbsite.

The main asset" Pension Fund" this is the so-called sarinite. Zarinite is the commercial name for a variegated ferruginous rock containing variable amounts of azurite, malachite and gibbsite. The rock does not polish well, but looks very decorative.

The blocks of “sarinite” rock certainly don’t look so beautiful, but according to local experts, when processed, they are simply a masterpiece.

Well, at the end of the report, it’s time to talk about the interesting place at the quarry, its main attraction. This is the so-called malachite dump.

This is a rather thin and narrow raincoat-like scree on the surface of the dump. A classic case when a random Belaz breed from a productive zone turned out to be the last. It’s good that this place didn’t turn out to be covered and buried, it’s good that it was found at all. Many coincidences happened in one place and now we are already digging magnificent samples malachite practically from the surface of the earth.

The richest, lower part of the deposit had already been selected by the time of our arrival, and by the time the report was published, the entire dump would be completely reclaimed. But in May 2015, we still managed to find unexcavated areas. The productive layer was only 10-15 cm, and large blocks of malachite mostly rolled down, but some remained on the steep slope.

Here he is, a handsome malachite beetle, Oleg’s luck! Size no less than 15 cm.

During excavations, we were often misled by other green stones from the dump, which were much more common than malachite.

If you hit such a stone with a sledgehammer, it will turn out to be white marble. Only its outer surface is covered with a thin malachite film.

Legendary 230 years

This is how the Salair mines began. Thanks to their development, the Gavrilovsky silver smelting plant was built and launched in 1794; the Guryev Metallurgical Plant, and Guryevsk itself, owe their appearance to Salair. Much water has flowed under the bridge over the past 230 years, during its long work history Salair gave the country hundreds of thousands of tons of lead, zinc, barite, as well as gold, silver and rare metals. And today, at a time when the brothers of the first Salair mines, born at the same time, such as the Zmeinogorsky mine, have already ceased to exist, the Salair deposit continues to amaze with its inexhaustible reserves.

Salair's new life

More than once or twice, the mining industry in Salair experienced ups and downs, but each time people had enough strength to breathe life into what seemed to be a dying industry. In 2005, the enterprise entered the sphere of influence of the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, one of the largest holdings in Russia, uniting more than 50 enterprises. This event became fateful both for the enterprise and for the entire city. Phased technical re-equipment began at the Salair hydraulic fracturing site, and in 2007 the development of the Kamenushenskoye copper ore deposit began. On October 1, 2008, the enterprise became part of the Kuzbassrazrezugol company (under the management of UMMC-Holding).
Today, OSP "Salair GRP" remains a monopolist in Russia in the production of barite concentrate, continues the extraction of quartz-barite ore, from which gold-silver-containing gravity and flotation concentrates are then obtained, but the main hope and support of the enterprise has become the extraction of copper-pyrite ore and the production from it copper concentrate.
The industrial reserves of the Kamenushenskoye field, according to experts, will be enough for 10 years of development. In the first half of 2012, 309 thousand tons of copper pyrite ore were mined here - this is almost 41 percent more than during the same period in 2011. Today, miners are faced with the task of increasing the volume of overburden. The stripping ratio here is complex: in order to extract one ton of ore, it is necessary to remove 10 cubic meters of waste rock, and it was precisely for the purchase of new mining and transport equipment, without which the volumes of stripping cannot be mastered, that in 2012, Management Company Kuzbassrazrezugol increased investments in the development of the Salair hydraulic fracturing almost threefold . This year, the enterprise has already received five BelAZ-75131 dump trucks with a carrying capacity of 130 tons and three 55-ton BelAZ-7555. Until the end of the year the park modern technology it is planned to replenish with a motor grader, a tire manipulator, etc. Two boiler houses will be built at the industrial site and the construction of a warm box will be completed, where BelAZ trucks can be repaired. The technical re-equipment of the plant will also continue: this year the launch of a new pumping station is expected, designed to transport enrichment waste from the factories to the tailings dump.
...Today the depth of the Kamenushensky quarry is almost 100 meters. You look from the side, and BelAZs seem like small insects. But they crawl, scurry back and forth, making 20-30 moves per shift. And I believe that it was, is and will be. So Deputy Director for Production Oleg Antonenko answers the question about the prospects of the enterprise with confidence: “The prospect is seen as a straight line. Today, 950 people are provided with both work and wages. People saw that UMMC paid attention to the enterprise, and their enthusiasm increased.”
At the Kolyvan factories, through the work of whose craftsmen the Salair mine was founded, copper was smelted back in the 18th century, and almost all of it was used to make money: in Suzun they minted “ Siberian coin", with the image of two sables instead of a coat of arms. Copper money is hardly made from Salair copper today, but Salair copper today brings in a real penny, which helps the enterprise live and develop and feeds almost a thousand families.

People of special temperament

In his festive address, Viktor Fedoseev, director of the Salair GRP, first of all addressed words of gratitude to the veterans. For years they created the authority of the enterprise and glorified it with their work. These are Nikolai Mikhailovich Pyrsikov, who worked at the enterprise for 51 years, Vladimir Stepanovich Krasilov, whose experience is 41 years, and many others. At the enterprise, whose age is measured in centuries, there are, of course, labor dynasties: the Kolesov family has worked here for 188 years, four of its representatives are still working here, members of the Tkachenko family have given 163 years to the enterprise, the Zakharchenko family has 161 years of experience.
And today the team does not give up its positions, does not change the traditions laid down by the veterans. At the celebration dedicated to the anniversary, the best employees of the Salair mining production received awards from the administration of the Kemerovo region, Guryevsky district, as well as UMMC-Holding and the enterprise.

In connection with the Northern War (1700-1721), at the initiative of the government, mines and factories began to be intensively built in the Urals. And after the Urals (in the 20s of the 18th century), the search for ores and the construction of factories in Siberia began.

On the left bank of the Tom-Chumysh River at the end of the 18th century, a graduate of Moscow University, Vasily Chulkov, an expert in mineralogy, using information from local residents, discovered iron ore deposits. Not far from this deposit, Chulkov proposed building an ironworks. In 1770-1771, under the leadership of Dorofey Fedorovich Golovin, it was built and received the name Tomsky. This was the first plant erected on Kuznetsk land, 50 kilometers west of the city of Kuznetsk, near the village of Tomsk, modern Prokopyevsky district.

During 1780-1802 The exiled ore prospector Dmitry Popov traveled in different directions throughout the Salair region, asking local hunters about interesting stones encountered in the mountain taiga, promising a reward for indicating their places.

He made several dozen ore applications, which were registered, checked and tested in the Barnaul laboratory. In 1781, Popov discovered a very rich deposit of polymetals, and a year later the Salair mine was founded. Miners from the Tomsk Iron Smelting Plant worked on the exploration and laying of the mine. Near the first Salair mine, a second silver mine was founded in 1786, and a third in 1798. All these mines were taken over by Empress Catherine II. In those days, Salair silver ores were considered “poor” and were used as fluxes with silver-rich but refractory Zniznogorsk ores. Therefore, for a long time, Salair ores were delivered on peasant carts to the Ob factories, where they were smelted in a mixture with Zniznogorsk ores. A long line of peasant carts, loaded with silver ore, stretched from Salair to the Barnaulsky (165 km) and Pavlovsky (175 km) factories.

In the mid-80s of the 18th century, a brick factory appeared in Salair, which could not but affect the further construction and development of the mine. In 1795, the silver smelter was named by order of Empress Catherine II Gavrilovsky in honor of the head of the Altai factories, Gavriil Simonovich Kachka. IN early XIX century, there was a need to build a second silver smelter. The manager of the Salair region, Polikarp Mikhailovich Zalesov, received an order to find a site for the construction of a new plant.

The site for the plant was found in 1811 on the Bachat River. But the question of building the plant was postponed until better times due to the outbreak of the war with Napoleon. The silver smelter was launched on November 15, 1816, the day of the holy martyrs Gury and Dmitry, and was named Guryevsky. The construction of this plant is an example of the ill-conceived, short-sighted management of the Tsar’s Cabinet: they built a silver smelting plant, and soon they “considered it good” to turn it into an iron-making plant. Already in the summer of 1819, the plant also installed a blast furnace with two furnaces for smelting iron ore and brown iron ore found nearby. In 1844, silver smelting at the Guryev plant was finally stopped; it became exclusively an iron-making plant. At that time, the Tomsk and Guryev plants were the only iron-making manufactories of an extensive cabinet economy in Western Siberia.

The colossal coal reserves in the Kuznetsk basin continued to remain in complete oblivion. Metallurgical plants ran on charcoal. Traditional methods of melting non-ferrous metals are hopelessly outdated. In pursuit of silver, copper, lead, and zinc, which were contained in the polymetallic ores of Salair, were sent to the dump.

The depletion of the upper, rich horizons of the silver-lead mines of Kuzbass due to predatory exploitation was discovered already in the 30-40s of the 19th century. This forced the mining department to send one geological expedition after another to the areas of the Kuznetsk basin to search for new deposits. At this time, prominent Russian scientists of that era worked on studying the subsoil of Kuzbass: Kulibin, Sokolovsky, Chikhachev, Gelmersen, etc. It was at this time that gold was discovered in Salair, and then in Kuznetsk Alatau. This discovery somewhat revived the mining industry in these places.

Placer gold deposits were first discovered in Salair in 1830. Signs of gold were found on the Kolbika River, which flows into the Biryulya River, 20 km from the Salair mine. In November 1830, industrial exploitation of the gold deposits of Salair began. Since the spring of 1831, exploration resumed in the Kuzbass regions, which led to the discovery of new gold mines. It was necessary to provide the mines with labor. And enslaved mining workers began to be sent here for service, as a penalty. The cabinet gold miners thought little about housing and other amenities for workers. There weren't even barracks. The workers lived in hastily constructed dugouts. Work in gold mines became the worst kind of hard labor even compared to work in office mines and factories. The cane regime also reigned here: whips, and gauntlets for escapes and the slightest violations hard labor discipline.

The mines discovered in the Salair ridge in the upper reaches of the Verdi, Ini, and Chumytpa rivers were called Yegoryevsky or Yegoro-Salairsky. During the convict period, up to ten mines arose here, which were opened one after another: the available reserves were quickly plundered, and the mines were abandoned: Egoryevsky (the control center of the entire group), Ursky, Uspensky, Orlovsky, etc. These mines arose near a fairly populated rural area and soon were connected to each other by country roads, thereby forming a kind of connection that in the future would contribute to the development of larger settlements here.

In 1835, Regulations were issued for the mining of gold on public lands by private individuals. The development of placer gold promised millions. Merchants' capital began to be actively invested in the Siberian gold industry. The first mine in the region for the extraction of ore gold was founded in 1900 on the Lotereynaya vein by the Kolyvan merchant I.M. Ivanitsky. Now this is the Yubileiny mine. At the same time, the first gold factory began operating there. For the first time in the region, gold dredging was used in 1901 at the Olginsky mine in the lower reaches of the Kiya by the famous gold miner N. Astashov. But its operation turned out to be unprofitable, and soon the dredge was transported to the Yenisei taiga.

By the 60s of the XIX century. For more than 200 years of the existence of Russian metallurgy, the energy-to-work ratio of metallurgists has hardly increased. The mining plants of the Kzunetsk region were technically behind even the older metallurgical plants of the Urals. main reason The backwardness of industrial Kuzbass was due to the feudal-serf relations prevailing in those days

The implementation of the reform to abolish serfdom in 1861 led to the loss of cheap labor and caused the curtailment of production, the closure of factories and mines, and a reduction in the number of residents in factory villages. After the reform of 1861, the mining authorities were forced to introduce civilian labor. Production costs that increased several times significantly reduced the huge profits that mines and factories previously provided. The government did not have money to carry out new exploration, to study ores, to improve and expand existing mines and factories. Meanwhile, the rich upper horizons were worked out, and the extremely backward mining technology did not allow the development of deeper layers.

In 1864, the Tomsk ironworks was closed, in 1897 - the Salair mines and the Gavrilovsky silver smelter, which by that time was producing only 60 pounds of metal per year. For a long time, state gold mines in Kuznetsk Alatau, Salair and Gornaya Shoria, coal mines in Bachati, Kolchuginov and the Guryev Metallurgical Plant experienced difficulties.

Despite the great opportunities (the presence of huge reserves coal, ores of various metals and non-metallic raw materials) no industrial takeoff occurred during this period of time. Cities and towns practically stopped developing. The state of “temporariness” did not provide an incentive to “put down solid roots” in one place or another. Migration processes have intensified, which, of course, has had a negative impact on further development these districts, towns, cities. All this led to the complete collapse of the cabinet economy. Iron production, despite the increased demand for iron products, concentrated on one Guryev plant, which from year to year reduced its already small production. But after the recession of the 70-80s, having reorganized work to meet the needs of the free market, the production of cast iron at the plant increased by about 3 times and iron by 3.6 times. The monopoly position allowed the plant to operate for some time without technical reconstruction. The workforce was recruited under contracts that were concluded for a year. They determined the amount of wages. A worker could leave the factory only after returning the deposit and finding a replacement. Wage in 1880 was 6-7 rubles per month. In 1892, the number of workers at the plant was about 300 people. After 30-35 years of work, a worker could be assigned a pension of 30-40 rubles per year. The plant had a paramedic and a hospital with 10 beds. The fee per day per patient was 40 kopecks. There was also an elementary school at the plant. In 1885, there were 109 students studying there.

Critical iron production was replaced by puddling; the production of long products, agricultural implements, equipment for the manufacturing industry, and some spare parts for steam engines began. However, with the launch of the Trans-Siberian Railway, its products could not withstand the competition of Ural factories and in 1908 the Guryevsky plant was mothballed.

While the small industry of the Middle and Southern Kuzbass came to complete collapse, on the northern outskirts of the basin, on lands not owned by the Cabinet, in the Anzhero-Sudzhensky basin, the foundations of what was at that time a large area of ​​capitalist industrial coal mining were laid. Anzhero-Sudzhensk is one of the oldest coal centers in Kuzbass.

In those years, several projects were developed for the development of the coal and metallurgical business in Kuzbass, but all these projects in the conditions Tsarist Russia was not destined to come true. For a long time, the opinion was widespread and stubbornly supported in ruling circles that the time for the development of large-scale industry in Siberia had not yet come.

With the general trend of decline in production, industrial coal mining has gained some development. By 1890, coal production in Kuzbass increased 20 times and amounted to 1,051 thousand poods. But on a Russian scale this was only 0.28 percent.

A significant factor that influenced the development of Kuzbass was the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway through its territory. The construction of the railway and its fuel needs determined the development of the Kuzbass coal industry. Exploration of coal deposits was organized near the highway and in the vicinity of the Kolchuginskaya mine. The only difficulty was the lack of a road for transporting coal to the highway. Build railway line, which could not quickly pay off, was considered irrational.

In 1912, with the permission of the minister royal court a group of capitalists, organized by Privy Councilor Trepov and State Councilor Khrulev, received the right to exploit the subsoil of Kuzbass. A joint stock company was organized, which received the name “Joint Stock Company of Kuznetsk Coal Mines and Metallurgical Plants”, abbreviated as Kopikuz. The actual owners of Kopikuz were not Trepov and Khrulev, but foreign banks. Before the war, the main shareholders of Kopikuz and in fact its owners were two competing foreign capitals - German and French. The World War brought changes to the distribution of Kopikuz shares. The decisive word began to belong to French-Belgian capital.

The tsarist government, according to the agreement, provided Kopikuz with an exclusive lease until January 1, 1917, and since 1922, a preemptive right to lease coal plots over a huge area of ​​16 million dessiatinas, or 176 thousand square meters. All allocated plots were leased for 60 years, and “if the entrepreneurs are in good working order” for the same period, i.e. until 2032. The shareholders pledged to create a large industry in the Central and Southern regions of Kuzbass, build a metallurgical plant, and organize coke production. During the First World War, Kopikuz founded mines in Kemerovo and the Kolchuginsky mine and built the Yurga-Kolchugino railway line. At the Kapitalnaya mine of the Kolchuginsky mine, an iron Koper and a reinforced concrete mine superstructure were erected, as well as stone buildings in the city of Kemerovo. However, despite the unlimited potential of these areas, Kopikuz did extremely little to develop them.

At the same time, the shareholders began building coke ovens and a chemical plant in Kemerovo. The government allocated 20 million rubles to Kapikuz for these purposes. All this is a revival of economic activity in Kuzbass.

One of the best domestic specialists, Professor L.I., studied Kuzbass during this period. Lutugin with his employees. The Lutuginsk group of geologists has done a great job of studying the Kuznetsk coal basin, re-evaluating its geological reserves. Before the revolution of 1917, together with the Lutuginsk group of geologists, a group of metallurgists worked in Kuzbass, settling first in Kuznetsk and then (1919-20) in Guryevsk. This group was headed by the famous blast furnace operator, self-taught engineer M.K. Kurako. Dreaming of the industrial flourishing of Russia and the progress of its metallurgy, he designed a large metallurgical plant in Kuzbass based on the use of Kuznetsk coking coals and iron ores from Gornaya Shoria.

Winter 1914-1915 There was a major strike by mine workers in
Mariinskaya taiga. In the spring of 1916, masons went on strike for 18 days
building the Kemerovo chemical plant and achieved satisfaction of their
requirements. In 1917, power peacefully passed to the Soviets.

By the beginning of 1917, Kuzbass was one of the most developed
industrial regions of Siberia.

Already in 1921, coal mining began to rise in Kuzbass. This allowed him to occupy a position in the next five years leading place in creating a base for coke production. In May 1921, the Council of Labor and Defense, signed by V.I. Lenin, adopted a resolution declaring the Prokopyevsky and Kiselevsky mines as priority construction projects, Railway Kolchugino-Prokopyevsk, as well as Kemerovo and Guryev plants. Their supply was equal to that of the Red Army.

In 1921, the construction of the railway from Kolchugin to Prokopyevsk was completed. From southern Kuzbass, block trains with coking coal, which the country desperately needed, began.

With the active support of V.I. Lenin, the Kuzbass State Autonomous Industrial Colony was created in Kuzbass in 1922. company,
aiming to provide technical assistance in the restoration and
further development of the national economy of the Kuznetsk basin. At AIK
included the Kemerovo, Prokopyevsky, Kiselevsky and Kolchuginsky mines, a chemical plant under construction in Kemerovo, the Guryevsky metallurgical plant and a plot of land of 10 thousand hectares. The colony was subordinate to the Council of Labor and Defense. AIC was truly international. In the summer of 1921, an initiative group of American workers led by the Dutch communist engineer S. Rutgers and the American communist B. Heywood approached the Soviet government with a proposal to create a colony of foreign workers and specialists in Kuzbass. On June 28, 1921, S. Rutgers, accompanied by T. Barker, B. Heywood, G. Calvert and B. Kornblit, left for Kuzbass. Inspired by the consciousness of their international duty, the colonists brought a vibrant creative spirit into the economic life of the young region.

On Lenin's instructions, party and economic bodies began to
development of a plan for the creation of the Ural-Kuznetsk industrial region.
After Ilyich’s death, the construction plan for the UCC, projects for the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant (KMK) and other large enterprises in the Urals and
Kuzbass were developed under the leadership of V.V. Kuibyshev, Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR. The 16th Party Congress decided to “...immediately create a second coal and metallurgical base.” From this moment the rapid development of the region begins. Coal mines, a metallurgical plant, and a chemical plant are being built. enterprises, power plants.

The railway between Kuzbass and the Urals is being reconstructed.
Over the years, social industrialization of Kuzbass from a small coal region
has become the largest coal basin in the country. One of the largest
Kuzbass becomes the Kemerovo coal region, where it is being reconstructed
mine "Central", and under construction: "Severnaya", "Pioneer", "Yagunovskaya".
In 1927, a competition between the two largest swimming pools began
countries: Donbass and Kuzbass. In February 1929 the first
Komsomol youth shock brigade. Its organizer was
Komsomol member Zakhar Begansky. And in August in Kuzbass there were already 94
such brigades. In 1937, about 3 thousand Stakhanovites and about 20 thousand shock workers worked in the mines of the basin. Already the first successes of Stakhanovsky
movements allowed the miners of Prokopyevsk at the rally of Stakhanovites of the mine
declare: “We have obtained an average productivity per worker of two
tons, leaving behind capitalist countries such as Germany,
Holland, England, Belgium, France."

In 1929, construction began on the giant of Siberian metallurgy -
Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant. The construction required a huge
quantities of equipment and building materials. Tens of thousands were needed
workers and specialists. In the summer of 1931, over 50
thousand workers and specialists. 1932 was the year of the first great victories.
The first coke and the first Kuznetsk cast iron were produced, and the
power station. Open hearth furnace No. 1 produced the first melt of steel,
The first ingots were rolled and Siberian rails were produced. Behind
pre-war years, KMK gave the Motherland over 10 million tons of cast iron, about 10
million tons of steel and about 7 million tons of rolled products, which was almost 10%
All-Union production of ferrous metals.

In 1924, the Kemerovo coke plant came into operation,
built to a state-of-the-art level. In 1934 it went into operation
a new coke oven battery, built according to the drawings of Soviet engineers.
Its annual productivity exceeded 400 thousand tons of coke. By the end
1934 4 batteries of 55 furnaces each came into operation at KMK. Kuznetsky
coke was recognized as the best in the country.

In April 1933, on the outskirts of Kemerovo they began to dig pits for workshops
future nitrogen fertilizer plant. On June 4, 1938, the plant received its first
cubic meters of coke oven gas, on July 21 the first ammonia was obtained, and soon
“vitamins of the earth” - saltpeter, which the fields of the country so needed. Kuzbass
became a major center of the chemical industry.

During the war, a new plant in Western Siberia was put into operation - the Kuznetsk Ferroalloy Plant. However, the large losses suffered by the metallurgy industry during the Great Patriotic War and the need for restoration work affected the level of labor productivity. Output per worker in 1946 was only 77% of the pre-war 1940 level.

During the Great Patriotic War A significant number of enterprises from the western regions of the country were evacuated to the cities of Kuzbass, but coal mining remained the dominant industry, most cities remained single-industry towns. In total, the equipment of 82 evacuated enterprises was fully or partially located in Kuzbass. Of these, 5 factories were soon re-evacuated. Based on the remaining and restored equipment of 77 enterprises, 33 new plants were created, including 11 new plants in Kemerovo, 6 in Novokuznetsk, 3 in Prokopyevsk (two plants and one factory), in Leninsk-Kuznetsky and Anzhero-Sudzhensk - 3 factories each, in Kiselevsk and Belovo - 2 each, in Yurga, Topki and Promyshlennaya - but one plant.

After the war, a dozen kilometers from KMK, near the former village of Antonovka, on an area of ​​1.5 thousand hectares, a new industrial giant, the West Siberian Metallurgical Plant, was built. Zapsib is a continuation of the legendary Kuznetskstroy. Used here for the first time in the country
feeding raw materials into the oven using a conveyor. On the eve of 1969 it was commissioned
operation of the first converter in Siberia - the first Zapsib steel was received.

Bibliography