Empress Catherine II St. Petersburg Mining University (St. Petersburg, Russia)

A. V. Fedkin, Cand. Hist., Associate Prof., Dept. of History1, fedkin_av@pers.spmi.ru

The article is devoted to the history of the Metallurgical Bureau, founded in Petrograd in 1915 by an outstanding mining engineer, metallurgist, professor and graduate of the Mining
Institute V. E. Grum-Grzhimailo. The author analyzes the prerequisites and conditions for the opening of the Metallurgical Bureau; describes the specifics of its work during the First World War; provides an estimate of the number of personnel; examines financial reports that allowed assessing the work of the Metallurgical Bureau in dynamics. The extraordinary conditions in which Russia found itself with the outbreak of World War II and the need to overcome the “shell famine” required the state to take a series of urgent measures to strengthen the country’s defense capability. To meet the needs of the front in weapons and ammunition, private factories were actively involved, which required them to undergo serious restructuring in the field of technology and equipment. The article evaluates the role of V. E. Grum-Grzhimailo in the redesign of flame furnaces for the production of shells, the importance of the bureau’s activities for the organization of “projectile business” at domestic enterprises from the Caucasus to the Urals is revealed. In addition, based on the study of previously unpublished archival documents, circumstances were revealed that led not only to the departure of V. E. Grum-Grzhimailo from Petrograd to the Urals, but also to the forced termination of the activities of this organization in the context of escalating civil strife and growing economic difficulties at the turn of 1918-1919. In 1924, the brainchild of V. E. Grum-Grzhimailo was reborn in Moscow as the Bureau of Metallurgical and Thermal Engineering Structures. His successor later became the Stalproekt Institute, which is still functioning today.

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