«Cadres determine everything». To the question of the reasons for the failure of the Volga shale project during the pre-war five-year plans

The author examines the activities of managers of shale ores and heads of party bodies of the Kuibyshev and Saratov regions who implemented the Volga shale project in the 1930s. The managers from mining departments committed a number of unprofessional actions in the organization of the production process of shale mining, which contributed to the departure of workers from the mines, mass absenteeism, downtime of teams of miners during work shifts. The party leaders of the Kuibyshev and Saratov regions did not provide the necessary assistance to engineers from the Volga Heat Engineering Institute in organizing tests of shale furnaces and paid little attention to the problems of shale mines.