Pellets and Industrial Monotowns (Kazakhstan)

Commentary
Pellets and Industrial Monotowns (Kazakhstan)

Purified and refined iron pellets represented the pride and honor of Soviet industrialization in the remote steppes of Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. A gigantic production of these little dark balls ‘in the middle of nowhere’ featured several in-situ mining pits, the largest of them is Sarbayskiy with 2.4km wide and 3.3km long. The depth of Sarbayskiy open pit mine in 2019 equaled to 520 meters. In addition to the mining pits, iron ore was purified at the Sokolovsko-Sarbayskiy Mining and Processing Plant (SSGOK). SSGOK produced, among other things, 5.4mln tons of refined pellets made of 60% of purified refined iron in two stages: the refining and calcination process, which required furnaces reaching 1300C. Most of its 120 000 residents of Rudny, a typical monotown located in Northern Kazakhstan, Qostanay Oblast worked in a single enterprise – the SSGOK. Production of pellets imposed several characteristics on residents of the city that acquired a spot on the map in 1957 when Soviet geologists discovered rich deposits of ferrous ore.

Rudny was a product of two principles of Soviet industrialization. First, the principle of location, which favored producers of the means of production rather than consumers. The belief was that if the workers have adequate access to the tools, they will be able to produce whatever consumer goods they wanted (Chulanov 1951). As a result, industrial enterprises were placed close to the location of raw materials and staffed with people. Distances and considerations for efficiency were irrelevant since all workers’ needs were satisfied through State Plan. Second, the principle of internal economy of scale ensured that Soviet production facilities were gigantic. One plant could supply the entire Soviet Union with rubber tires, as Saran’. One city, such as Ivanovo, produced bedding for most of the country. SSGOK became an indispensable chain in the Soviet production of steel, so planners from Moscow created a town in the middle of nowhere, in the ‘naked steppe’.

Besides economic requirements for employment of labor to produce the pellets, local specialists did not have necessary knowledge of the full cycle of the enrichment process. There was only one Polytechnique Institute in Kazakh SSR that prepared metallurgists, who knew how to mine an ore, but not to refine it. So Soviet Union distributed highly qualified specialists and graduates to such cities from other parts of the country. As a result, 95.7% of Rudny’s population consisted of ethnically European (mostly of German and Jewish descent) and Slavic specialists. Representatives of the ‘titular Kazakh nationality’ were relegated to the groundwork of mining the actual metals, such as Aldabergenov, who won the title of the ‘Hero of the Socialist Labor’ for his work on an excavator.

In order to attract highly qualified specialists to monotowns, Soviet Union offered ‘moskovskoye obespecheniye’ (procurement from Moscow), i.e. consumer goods to these towns directly came from Moscow, bypassing the republic-wide channels. In practice, monotown residents had access to precious things that were long missing from store shelves elsewhere, such as condensed milk, canned vegetables from Hungary, Czech leather boots, teas, furniture. These goods were still available in Rudny.

Procurement from Moscow also meant a better pay and better infrastructure. When specialists moved to Rudny, they had an apartment, a kindergarten or a school for their kids, employment for their spouses. In order to ensure high quality of education, best teachers, doctors, creative artists were sent to monotowns. All specialists received additional payments that ranged from 10-30% of their salaries for ‘osvoyeniye novogo proizvodstva’, for ‘Kazakhstanskiye’ and ‘Severnye’. Incoming specialists also had longer vacation days, retired faster, they had vouchers to access wellness facilities (sanatoriums) and summer camps across the Soviet Union.

Production of the refined ferrous pellets created monotowns with pockets of qualified labor from Slavic and European descent in post-independent Kazakhstan who were and are no longer attracted by the small-town benefits. Emigration of these specialists from 27 similar monotowns leaves behind ruined economies, spaces and people.

Assel Tutumlu and Ilyas Rustemov were residents of Rudny from 1982-1996. Both are scholars who conduct research on and in Kazakhstan and broader Central Asia. Ilyas Rustemov is an Associate Professor and a Candidate of Science in the Organic Chemistry of Construction Materials from Kiev. Assel Tutumlu is an Assistant Professor in International Relations and has a Ph.D. in Global Affairs from Rutgers University.