The history of West Siberian geological institutions on the creation of the mineral resource base in the years of the Great Patriotic War

The article studies the history of activities of the geological institutions of Western Siberia during the Great Patriotic War. The role and place of the West Siberian Geology Administration in order to meet the urgent needs of the war economy of the country. The problems and features of increasing the military-industrial potential of the country in wartime are identified. A huge amount of work for the study and efficient use of raw material resources in Western Siberia in wartime was performed by the geological institutions in the region. The West Siberian Geology Administration was one of the largest organizations of the geological industry of the Soviet Union during the war. There was a great personnel shortage, poor material supply and numerous immediate tasks at the time. All institutions, like geologists of Western Siberia, had their own discoveries and achievements, their own history, but the West Siberian Geology Administration became the topic of this study. In 1941 the West Siberian Geology Administration of the Committee on Geology at the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR led work on the area of about 4.8 million sq km, part of six administrative units: Altai Krai from Gorno-Altai Autonomous Oblast (the area of 261 600 sq km), Krasnoyarsk Krai, Khakass Autonomous Oblast (2 403 600 sq km), Novosibirsk Oblast (590 sq km) and Omsk Oblast (1 500 sq km). In 1944 the Krasnoyarsk Geology Administration was organized in Krasnoyarsk. It performed the geological service of the Committee on Geology throughout the region with the transfer to it of the geological institutions (with the staff) from the Western Siberian Geology Administration, except works on aeromagnetic images that the organization temporarily retained. Geological institutions, simultaneously with the exploration of major minerals - coal, ferrous, non-ferrous and rare metals, made large explorations to supply mining and metallurgical enterprises, and their construction, with non-metallic raw materials, and conducted hydrogeological surveys. During the war, parties and expeditions of the West Siberian Geology Administration opened 17 new deposits of various minerals and gave 68 fields to industry for design and operation. Geologists of the West Siberian Geology Administration found industrial reserves of the most important types of strategic raw materials - gold, tin, base metals, mica, coal. The materials of the Russian Federal Geology Fund (Rosgeolfond) are first used in the article.

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