THE ROAD TO THE BLUE MOUNTAINS
Popov Yuri P.
Brigadier of electrolysis workers Theological aluminum plant
City Krasnoturinsk in which he lives, Yuri Popov, P., lies to the north of Sverdlovsk region. There is, further, is the Polar Urals, permafrost and tundra to the Arctic Ocean. Here, in his native place, wherever you look, for thousands of kilometers nemerenoe but all are drawn by the forest, the taiga is a real, where an end, the edge is unclear. In the summer breeze brings the smell of sun-warmed pine resin, and in winter, in cold, icy-needles. On clear days, far to the west and the blue blue caravan, pulled the Ural Mountains. As a child, it seemed that half a day before they can reach, what is there, and he tried it once and walked walked and walked, and the blue mountains are all well away from and not closer, remains the same distant and vague. In general, he lives in the north. From Moscow to their 2079-kilometer, from the Sverdlovsk-426, and runs a passenger train 677-cheerful "Sverdlovsk-Bauxite," leaving late at night, come early morning, and happy st call only because it stops at each pole, as a hurt every time they say and I said, but nothing can be done: he has a schedule.
Winter day lasts three hours in the summer sun is, does not go, and in June begin white night, an amazing time of anxiety and restlessness of the heart with delight, when all recall Pushkin's words about how "the dawn of a hurry to replace the other, giving the night for half an hour," and prepared to argue that Krasnoturinsk really Leningrad in miniature. Not only the white nights reinforce this similarity, the case also in the fact that the city of Leningrad architects began to design, and the central area of the frozen grand semicircle, like the Palace, the river Turia, though not mailed in a granite, stately and quietly carries its leaden waters, as the Neva.
Roads not close to us,
The roads to our forests,
To us the path lies through the gray Urals
And we are proud to sincerely
What we Krasnoturyinsk
What is known throughout the country became a city ...
So the song of their city, where everything is familiar from childhood, "and has long been
native.
Yuri Pavlovich Popov thirty-seven. Tall, broad-shouldered, about such talk, okay tailored and tightly sewn, it is surprising finality of their judgments:
- The nature of my work I do not like. But in the near future is not going to change the profession, 'he said once, though in their hearts, in one meeting, responsible, directly from the podium, and the hall was quiet. He felt that the skin frozen silence. One is not accepted, or just strange, when the noble brigade, and even a Hero of Labor says. Where are all safer when talking about his work as about the right (or right), but with difficulty found a purpose in life, to which we should strive as in a continuation of the infinite, in his opinion, the dispute: what works for people? To live or live to work?
In fact by talking about the difficulties of his profession, and begin our acquaintance, that first conversation, when known, there will be candid or not.
His city has grown on the spot turinskih mines, where miners extracted for the daily wage of ten cents daily Ural copper ore.
But it is not obliged to Krasnoturinsk copper status of the city, an unexpected growth and value. Is there an exact date. Everything happened May 9, 1945, Victory Day, when just as he gave the first workshop aluminum. Flying metal.
Turinsky district, or, more precisely, theological mining district, and why the plant is called the Theological-from old times was famous for the wealth of the subsoil. In the "Guide to the Urals" indicated neither more nor less than 74 species of minerals and ores found in these parts: augite, asbestos, and there is more to the zinc-blende-and jasper. However, bauxite, raw material for aluminum production, has not been found, according to Yuri Pavlovich, solely because that time is not come.
- After all, what's interesting, 'he argues, first, the problem is determined. And that's really how it was defined, and there are solutions. Not once, not suddenly, but there are! The main thing, the task set.
There was a time when the major geological authorities stressed that the deposits of bauxite have "a distinct latitudinal character with a strong inclination to the equator." Guinea in Africa, but South of France, that's where they found rich deposits of bauxite, and in our country, they are increasingly looking to the south, in the hot Central Asian republics in the southern spurs of the Rocky Mountain ranges.
Geological party went and brought the samples investigated, the reports written. The country needs was aluminum in the first place for the air fleet, and had to buy it at an exorbitant price for gold in foreign lands.
The institute in the first year almost in the introductory lecture Yuri Pavlovich told how an obscure geologist Ural Karzhavin them in the "Little Red Riding Hood" rich deposits of bauxite and prophetically wrote: "All the further development of the region, the region's economy is closely connected with this type of mineral. " That was in late 1931. It was the first Five-Year Plan. The news of the opening of the North-Urals bauxite, without exaggeration, then spread around the world. "" Little Red Riding Hood "to supply the Soviet Union near the world's bauxite-monopoly France, newspapers, and the first 10-ton North-Urals Bauxite, sent abroad in the world market have caused a great sensation."
We need only imagine the time, time of occurrence of electrical power problems, which required hitherto unknown materials, including aluminum and its alloys, the construction of the first giant hydroelectric, blocked such rivers as the Dnieper and the Volga, while the formation of aviation record flights, search for new, heavy-duty, ultra-light alloys, the use of which would enable our aircraft to fly Krasnozvezdny higher, faster and further than others.
Once assembled veterans of the plant, talked, reminisced, and then they have guys in the team, though the intensity of that time felt, arguing, figuring out all the details of the solution, when weighed all the circumstances: to build their own theological works or postponed. The proposals were to choose another site.
Energy-intensive aluminum production requires a lot of cheap electricity. And where was this taken in a remote power station on the northern edge of Turinskih mines.
But along with Krasnoturinsk discovered deposits of brown coal Volchansk, which determined the final construction of the smelter, where Popov worked in the electrolysis shop for nearly thirteen years, once he came out of the army. Yuri Pavlovich strongly suggested that extended-stay, because you told him the commander for military service is all objective data.
- As regards the data do not know, 'he recalls,' but at the home of our family, right from childhood to the discipline taught. His father, Pavel, was strict about pampering. He also was electrolysis worker, so it appears that it is a parent, I continue to work.
However, nothing unusual in this fact is not: they have in the city, he hastens to add, the main profession of metallurgical plant and an aluminum-base business. They, and the first secretary of the city, a metallurgist, and in the executive committee of metallurgists, and even the director of the bakery, first learned to cook the metal, and then went to relearn. Bake bread, too, by the way, not a simple matter, not easy. Metal and bread is the foundation of our lives.
He began to work after school, ending eleven classes, electric welder in the electrolysis shop. Then he worked as a mechanic, too long. But the specifics of work in the electrolysis realized immediately.
He was stunned electric hum and rumble, fascinated flames raging behind curtains standing on a formation of electrolysers, which are called bathrooms in them that, in the fire and roar, comes a winged silver metal. Alumina gray dust on the floor. On the walls. On their faces. Reflections of the flames.
It is up to the army managed to get married, just like in the song, "lived in the neighborhood, met just so ..." They are on the street Club Galia Grigorieva was the most interesting girl, he is an outstanding guy. And in a military unit received a telegram: he has a son, Slava. All rank by rank, congratulations to the system, and when given a short leave, and he saw his dear little man, his plump face in a blue envelope, I realized, would be to study by correspondence. Study and work: now the other way. Family. Was discharged in December, came to Krasnoturinsk, Ural frost burned face, walked from the station and not used to it even seemed a strange way, that is such a fierce frost, and people are currently on the streets, rosy-cheeked, cheerful, collar is not raised, and the boys in the the school yard playing snowballs.
Rested for a month and returned to the factory, also in his first building, but not a mechanic, and electrolysis worker.
The first brigadier - that's when he decided to become an electrolysis workers - was a man of business, most experienced, except with respect to name and patronymic, Nikolai Alekseevich Rogachev foreman styled nobody, except if the eye with each other, Uncle Kolya. Uncle Nick was in the business as. Teaching is thorough, prefer to be a beginner just one hundred pots got away, but the problem was understood more clearly clear.
Choose a profession once. Once and for all life. This is both true and not true. In every case.
- That's what I thought then, 'he says, is evident here is the very place for me in working order, that being said, I am destined to.
He became a foreman, after six years have passed Rogachev training. And was able to put yourself in is not just any team-laws are the same, in a research institute you are working in the KB or in a team of workers of electrolysis where the trick will not forgive, and lazy will not be easy to keep. He was respected, but suddenly the fire! And it happened on January 7, just as the evening was when their team was honored at the Palace of Culture and the kind words spoken about their employment success in the Tenth Five Year Plan. Spread the disease to the electrolytic his team. "She caught!" And they had all run in full dress at the factory to the baths, to pacify the fire has escaped control. And how to tame? This is not done at once.
He said slowly, his work has its own strategy and tactics, no fuss, no promeshkat not. It should feel like there is a process, not too much to keep. Sometimes, it happens, a bath, "obdirut" poured more from inexperience or from good intentions: they want the plan to fulfill and surpass, but that if more metal was poured, it violated the regime in the bath, is not the same capacity, not the resistance, and if now to take a bath again, then it will not carry out the plan, but only aggravate the situation because a decision is made: perhaps best left as a cold or even add metal to re-enter the mode? And all this is being accomplished in one day. Problems are treated for a long time. And then, when they fled from the Palace, decorated Christmas tree with garlands and colored balls, they realized that are coming, maybe even many months of hard work.
- That's how it happens in a minute error in the year of work, he says.
The work is always work. And each his secret, which of the books did not choose. They need to stand by the fire and wait for the experimental laboratory of the thermocouple temperature to determine the yield, he brings his hand wide to the fire.
- 960 Degrees, plus or minus three. You can not check ...
It's the subtleties of his craft. It is the experience, skill, not innate, not how the news emerged a sense, and so unmistakably, clearly feeling the operating parameters of the business, go and distinctive heat of a thousand degrees of heat in the 960! And as the color of fire to determine when normal mode is when you should expect and what kind of surprises?
Corps, where he started, where his father, and now there, but on the other team is working teacher Nicholas A. Rogachev, the oldest in the factory. He was reconstructed several times, here and now work in this area are conducted in the building is the oldest bath, which gave its first aluminum in the Victory Day. So far it is working. Clearly, many if not all, of it changed, because the life of an ordinary bath, 48 months, four years, but the tub under the number 168 is in the brigade ranks seven years! And it works without repair. Gives the metal.
They have their own subtleties, complexities, and, perhaps, in its judgment, they require the full commitment, as introduction to the art, when there is no formula for every time there is no established, fast rules, they should look for, search for yourself and act on instinct, guided by its sense of mastery, and to know in this case, that in no way be mistaken. This is playing with fire caught him. He left the institute.
- I do not know how I was an engineer, but I'm a good worker. Not quite bad. He has the team are people of different ages. There are older veterans who gave the plant more than a dozen years, there are young guys who had just come from the army. Their wages are high, and comes to them youths, to get to his feet and on his experience. Is this not a test, when the six o'clock standing on their feet and shop floor beneath you varies, though Baikonur plate when the mast control, swaying, moved to the side and went to the curb rocket launch, and the blinding white flame pouring from the rocket nozzle.
He chose to work for a lifetime, if health permits. (It should make a correction: it is hard.) His sense of the manufacturing is mainly interested in the affairs of brigades, not just a plan, and human relationships, caring, excitement, without which the plan will not understand what is required.
One spring in Moscow, in the Hall of Columns, a metallurgist told me that when they come to him in the team recruits, he each one and asks the same question:
- Want to know what is fit? A year later, I say.
- And what happens?-Whisper asked Yuri Pavlovich.
- First, all say "want" and then, when they leave, unable to stand, do not say anything.
That's how they talked, sitting in a red velvet chair, and at this time on stage one by one out, too noble brigade, metallurgists, in full and, sitting down, all the big, broad, with a short, wobbly table and began to talk about their work and it turned out that they are all the same age, all in one year and began this work is still in the same composition. Applause rang out in the hall.
- And what about after you left when you are at once leave to retire - Popov asked loudly.
- Like what?-Chairman of his question was not understood, but the room is light rustle went: it was clear to many that the foreman of the Krasnoturyinsk worried.
- You leave, and so ended your team, right?
Agreed with him then. He argued that this team, that's how he, she is living as a family, in her fathers, grandfathers and grandchildren to grow their own. Its history, its traditions, their family care, strange outsider. In it there is someone to help, have someone ask for advice. It is considered as too well turned out, it is not clear that a worker on the job, if he is a good worker, should grow in one direction: it is working today, tomorrow or the foreman, went to college, many if he correspondence gives , is not about speech, but became a foreman, then master, then-chief of section, head of production and there is more ...
Yuri Pavlovich looks fun and expectantly, what I say? He loves to argue. This much character.
When he says that he does not like his work, it does not mean that tomorrow he will throw it. Did he mean? What he does not like the heat, dust, what a change of water have to drink a lot, drink, and drink in the morning you come to the plant, still wet overalls. That would be to find a way to craft environmental temperature decrease to room, but it is clear: the metal is melted by fire, born in the fire. And work with fire since ancient times was considered the most severe. But he loves her, that her hard work, a clear visible involvement in the great cause. For what you feel your human, labor value. He loves the feeling of satisfied exhaustion, a sense of duty, when, after changing slowly coming back to the factory alleyke planted with young trees flexible with their kids. You go and you know, now you're all laid out. Without a trace. He is confident that the engineering office that did not receive. And whether it is necessary to persuade? What is he talking with the guys, young, shaggy, the future masters of the fire difficult profession?
Now what to be afraid of words - the skill, he teaches his children - forever. This is my world every time. Its universe seriously. Today you are a beginner, tomorrow you first picked up the height, you're a master. Then, good master, and then-good, then, this is better, perhaps even difficult to find in the area. In the Urals. In the whole wide world, you know!, And then ... But can there be a limit to the skill? You're always in the way, what is interesting, here's what he is grateful to his profession, and the other did not want to change. This is the road until the Blue Mountains, your way of life, difficult, hard, on which you walk, walk, and all thy mountains as far as beautiful and just beckon you. Far, far away is always the top of high skill.
