Alexander Ivanovich Shokin
Alexander Ivanovich Shokin, the minister of electronic industry of the USSR, headed this branch for almost twenty-five years and in essence was its creator.
Eight defense ministries were headed by outstanding representatives of the next generation of leaders of Soviet industry. The oldest was E.P.Slavsky - Minister of Medium Engineering (the so-called nuclear industry). Minister of General Engineering (and so called missile technology) was Afanasyev. The defense industry was headed by a native of opticians S.A.Zverev, aviation - PV Dementiev, shipbuilding - B.E.Butoma, radio engineering - V.D.Kalmykov. All of them went through a severe school during and after the war, learned a lot from their predecessors, who left active roles in the Khrushchev era, grew into big leaders.
A.I.Shokin occupied a worthy place in this magnificent eight, having the longest length of service in the central apparatus of the People's Commissariats - ministries. At the same time, unlike others, he did not have to occupy managerial positions (director, chief engineer) at the enterprises of his industry. This, on the one hand, allowed him to approach objectively the solution of the contradictions between the specialists' points of view on various problems of the industry development. On the other hand, having no experience of the first person of the enterprise, and admiring the art of directors to pull out of their breakthroughs and develop their factories, research institutes and design bureaus in the most difficult conditions, he often overestimated their merits.
Alexander Ivanovich Shokin was born October 28, 1909 in Moscow. The record of this event was made in the metric book of the Holy Trinity Church of the 6th Grenadier Tauride Regiment, in which the father of the newborn Ivan Shokin served as a sub-lieutenant. The sacrament of the infant's baptism was performed by Archpriest Constantine Mislavsky. Baptismal fathers were fellow countrymen of the boy's parents: Dmitry Alekseevich Zakharov - a peasant from the Penza province, Moksha district, Tulzakovskaya volost and Pekasiya Zablovskaya - a peasant wife from Samara province of Buguruslan county, Vovyanovskaya volost.
Alexander's father was a native of the peasants of the Chelmodeyevsky village of Maidan of the Insara County of the Penza province, where he was born in 1880. The village is Russian, although geographically it belongs to Mordovia today. It is known that Ivan's parents were called Akinfiy and Agafia, and the surname according to some information was originally Shokin-Chekushkin. After becoming an adult, Ivan Akinfievich rejected the second part, finding it offensive and not corresponding to his appearance; Patronymic by the end of life gradually transformed into Akimovich. The name of the village for the past century also decreased to Chelmaidan of the Insara region of the Mordovian ASSR. Insar, where the mother of Alexander Praskovya Petrovna came from (1892-), in 1956 he became a town from the village.
Ivan Akinfievich in the family was the youngest among three brothers. The elder brother Nikita moved with his wife Tatiana to Moscow, where he served as a clerk. The descendants of Vasiliy's average brother still live in Chelmodeyevsky Maidan.
Education Vanya was able to get only in a rural school, although he had good abilities. He solved problems in arithmetic easily and did it not only for himself, but also for his friend Volodya, the deacon's son in Chelmodeevsky Maidan, who later played a significant role in his life. True, he helped out his poverty not unselfishly, but for a piece of sugar. The amount of knowledge obtained at school was small, but the abilities and desire to learn remained, and when at the age of forty, life forced Ivan Akinfievich to study decimals, he successfully coped with this.
A.I.Shokin, heading the MEP, tried to get as much as possible personal impressions about the true state of the enterprises now subordinate to him and the possibility of their development. In the list of his trips in 1965, Leningrad, Odessa, Yelets, Ryazan, Novgorod and Pskov, Gorky and Kazan. Again, he visited not only the MEP enterprises: in Kazan, in addition to his plant connectors, he visited the aviation, in Pskov - not only at the factory radio components, but also on the telephone; he could not not go to Mikhailovskoye, Trigorskoye and Pechorsky monastery at the same time. He was all interested.
In the year of the MEP's formation, the seven-year period ended. At the 23rd Congress of the CPSU, held in 1966, its results were summed up and plans for the further development of the country were determined. A.I.Shokin was again a delegate to the congress, in which he was first elected a member of the Central Committee. For the successes achieved by the electronic industry in the implementation of the seven-year plan, its leader was awarded the next (third) Order of Lenin. A.I.Shokin received it in the Kremlin from the hands of NV Podgorny on October 5, 1966. Together with him on that day, their awards were received by D. Shostakovich, E. P. Slavsky, Minister of Petrochemical Industry V. S. Fedorov, the oldest member of the party F. Petrov and others. All together were photographed for memory.
The new five-year plan was presented by A.I.Shokin much more complicated. Having received the management of the factories, the minister and his colleagues received a huge increase in responsibility and concern. The pace of development of the electronics industry was set very high, and all the difficulties with equipment and materials, which had to be overcome earlier for the implementation of developments, now rose in the mass production of products.
A.I. remained a member of the CPSU Central Committee, and in 1986 he was awarded the "years in the party" badge. The XXVII Congress of the CPSU was due. Of course, in order to elect AI. delegate, there was no question, but as a member of the Central Committee, he had to participate in the work of the congress until the new elections. The "Great Democrat" Gorbachev, who was terribly afraid of criticizing his older comrades with all his team, did just that: all members of the Central Committee-former ministers were told that they did not go to the congress, writing a voluntary refusal and, as if acknowledging that such retrogrades, there is nothing to do at the congress of the reformers. There were still deputy duties, which he continued to perform even after retiring.
Soon after the birthday of A.I., he once again went to Barvikha and there at first, too, felt good. Suddenly he became worse, the sanatorium doctors immediately began to insist on hospitalization, and AI. went home. He did not get any better, and he went to the hospital on Michurinsky Avenue, where he met the new 1988 year. A.I. felt worse and worse, and on January 7th the phone in his ward ceased to respond - he was transferred to the intensive care unit with a diagnosis of acute heart failure. The hardest fight against the disease went on for many more days, but on January 31, Alexander Ivanovich died.
He did not leave his memoirs. To this genre he had a twofold sense - he liked to read them, but did not believe in the objectivity of the authors, especially those who knew him well. When he retired, his children began to persuade him to write memoirs, he was a participant in many important events in the history of our country, he communicated with almost everyone who was somehow involved in the defense (and not only defense) industry, was a good storyteller and a good writer.
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