Dear Colleagues, I wish to congratulate you on our professional holiday, the Day of Metallurgist.

I am a professional coal miner, but I have a good reason to call you my colleagues, because I evolved as an engineer and a manager in Novokuznetsk, the city of metallurgists which was awarded with the title of "City of Labour Valour and Labour Glory". Our production was used to feed the blast furnaces of the Kuznetsk, Magnitogorsk, West-Siberian metallurgical complexes.

Russia is a relatively young mining and metallurgical country. Despite the tremendous natural resources, regular ore mining and smelting that followed can be said have originated during the reign of Peter the Great, when in 1700 he founded the Board of Mining later transformed into the Berg Collegium.

The success of the Russian metallurgy in the Peter the Great times is also testified by the fact that instead of importing 35 thousand poods of iron from Sweden, Russia was able to export over 55 thousand poods through the Baltic ports alone already in 1726.

The Berg Privilege ordinance stated: «Herein a will is given to all and everyone, whatever their rank and dignity, in every place, both on their own and other's land, to look for, dig, melt, smelt and affine all kinds of metals, silver, copper, tin, lead, iron, as well as minerals».

The Demidov and Stroganov families of industrialists were exploring the Urals, building mines and factories. Metallurgical production was developing, but a real leap took place in the 1930-40-s, when the largest metallurgical plants were built in the Urals, the Kuzbass, in the city of Norilsk and other places, which laid down the foundation for our survival and victory in the Great Patriotic War.

The privatized metallurgical and mining enterprises are still successfully developing, modernization and reconstruction are underway, and the companies are now conquering the international markets.

Today's major metallurgical shareholders V.S. Lisin, V.O. Potanin, A.B. Usmanov, M.D. Prokhorov, A.A. Kozitsyn, A.A. Mordashov, I.V. Zyuzin, R.A. Abramovich, V.F. Rashnikov, A.G. Abramov, A.V. Skoch, A.V. Frolov, D.M. Pumpyansky, and others are successfully running their business keeping up to the Demidov's traditions and are heading the many thousands of metallurgists.

In these challenging times I wish success and prosperity to all those in the metallurgical industry and their families.

Yu.N. Malyshev,
Editor-in-Chief of the Russian Mining Industry,
President of the Academy of Mining Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
President of Vernadsky State Geological Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

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Original Paper