Vadim Tumanov

Vadim Ivanovich Tumanov (Russian: Вадим Иванович Туманов; * September 1, 1927 in Bila Tserkva, Ukrainian SSR; † July 10, 2024) was a Russian mining entrepreneur.

Career

Tumanov was born into a working-class family. At the age of 14 he became a member of the Komsomol. He took part in World War II as a soldier. After the end of the war he attended the school for navigation officers. In 1948 he was arrested as a navigation officer on the ship "Uralmash" and sentenced to eight years in a camp. According to Tumanov's own words, the reason for his arrest was "love for Yesenin". He tried to escape eight times in vain, which earned him a total of 25 years in prison. He was only released and acquitted after Stalin's death in 1953. All previous convictions were removed and he regained his civil rights.

After his release, Tumanov completed training to become a mining master. Since 1956, he has built several large gold mining cooperatives. Some of them are still operating today. Among the cooperatives built by the entrepreneur, which stretch from the Urals to the shores of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, are "Semiletka" (1960-1966), "Progress" (1966), "Aldan" (1969), "Amur" (1973), "Vitim" (1973), "Lena" (1976), "Pechora". The enterprises built by Tumanov, together with subsidiaries, have mined over 400 tons of gold.

Tumanov's work as the head (since 1979) of the "Pechora" cooperative, founded in 1956, received the greatest response. At the beginning of the 1980s, the cooperative, which was actually a cooperative, switched to commercial accounting. In 1987, Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev, as a member of the Politburo, and the Minister of Non-Ferrous Metallurgy of the USSR, V.A.Durasov, led a campaign against the "Pechora" cooperative and Vadim Tumanov himself. Others also took part in the campaign against the gold miner, such as the editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Socialist Industry", A.A.Baranov, the first secretary of the regional committee of the Communist Soviet Party of the Komi region V.I.Melnikov and the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. The cooperative was liquidated as a result. In 1987, Tumanov opened the "Stroitel" cooperative. Registered in Karelia, it specialized in road construction. He later set up the joint-stock company "Tumanov & Co."

Reception in literature and film

The actor and songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky was a friend of Tumanov. He dedicated some of his songs to him, including "Escape to Advance". His life as an entrepreneur provided the material for the book "The Black Candle" by Vladimir Vysotsky and Leonid Manchinsky, which was made into a film in 2006 under the title "Fartovyj" (Lucky Man).

In 2004, his autobiography was published entitled "Losing everything - and starting again with a dream...", in which he talks about the years he spent in Kolyma, about setting up gold prospecting cooperatives and about personalities he met.

Two documentaries were made about Tumanov and several television programs were broadcast.