Sobolev, Georgy Georgievich

Born on December 6, 1909 in Yekaterinoslav.

In 1934 he graduated from DGI , and was sent to work in the mountain rescue units of Donbass .

In 1934 - 1936 he worked as the commander of a mountain rescue platoon in Stalin , then in Makeevka .

In 1936 he was appointed assistant commander of the Petrovsky paramilitary mine rescue squad , in 1937 - commander of this squad.

In 1938 - 1940 he led the militarized mountain rescue units of the Donbass as deputy head of the Supreme High Court .

In 1940 he was transferred to Kopeisk , where he headed the mountain rescue units of the Urals, Bashkiria and Karaganda .

During World War II, he organized the fulfillment of government tasks entrusted to the Ural mine rescuers: participation in coal mining, production of anti-tank grenades, mines and parts for the legendary Katyushas , assistance in the construction of workshops for evacuated plants.

In 1943, he was appointed head of the Central Directorate of the VGSCh NKUP of the USSR .

After the liberation of Donbass, in 1943, mobilized mine rescuers to restore the destroyed mines - groups of underground divers and welders were the first to descend into the flooded and polluted workings, conduct reconnaissance, ensure pumping of water, and establish ventilation.

Until 1982, he almost invariably led the mining and rescue service of the USSR coal industry.

In 1982, retired.

He died in 1993 . He was buried in Moscow at the Kuntsevsky cemetery .

G. G. Sobolev entered the history of mining as a direct participant and permanent leader of many rescue operations during major accidents in coal mines of the USSR. With its help, the explosion threats were eliminated and dozens of underground fires were extinguished in Donbass , Kuzbass , Vorkuta , Karaganda , as well as in the mines of Poland , Czechoslovakia , Bulgaria and Spain .

Under the direct supervision of G. G. Sobolev, the scientific foundations of mining and rescue were developed, apparatus and equipment for mining and rescue operations were developed, and methods and means of preventing and eliminating accidents in coal mines were improved.

He brought up hundreds of highly qualified commanders of the Supreme High Command .

In the 1970s, the HCSC was assigned the tasks of preventing accidents in mines. To solve them, G. G. Sobolev organized the creation in the structure of mine rescue units of specialized groups for the prevention of fire and explosive mines. By order of the Minister of Coal Industry of the USSR B.F. Bratchenko, VGSCh specialists were given the right to suspend mining operations and take people to safe places in case of detection of violations of emergency protection standards and a threat to the life of miners.

On the initiative of G. G. Sobolev, in 1968, by the decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR , the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Mine Rescue (VNIIGD) was created - the first institute of this profile in the world.

Thanks to his initiative, five pilot plants for the production of mining and rescue equipment (in Donetsk , Makeevka , Lugansk , Dnepropetrovsk and Leninsk-Kuznetsk ) were created as part of the VGSCh of the coal industry.

Throughout his service at the Higher Military Court, G. G. Sobolev was looking for new scientific, technical and organizational solutions to improve accident response tactics and to develop new mine rescue equipment. Under his leadership, it was provided:

• equipping the HCSC with respirators of the new generation R-12;
• serial production of isolating SHSS self-rescuers for miners and their implementation instead of filtering self-rescuers;
• equipping auxiliary mine rescue teams with containers with RVL-1 insulating respirators directly at the place of work;
• the introduction in mines developing self-igniting coal seams of automatic monitoring devices for the micro-concentration of carbon monoxide SIGMA-CO, which ensures the detection of an endogenous fire at an early stage of its initiation.

G. G. Sobolev was the initiator of the creation of powerful training bases of the Higher Military Command.

The activities of G. G. Sobolev contributed to the creation of mining and gas rescue services analogous to the coal industry at ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy enterprises, in the oil and gas and agrochemical industries, and in mining tunnel departments of metro construction .

Thanks to G. G. Sobolev, the authority of the Soviet professional mine rescue service is recognized throughout the world. Soviet experts and scientists of the Higher Military Testing Service repeatedly went to extinguish underground fires and eliminate complex accidents on Fr. Svalbard , to Iran , Poland , Czechoslovakia , India , Bulgaria and Mongolia .

His recommendations were accepted and implemented by foreign experts in organizing mountain rescue services in Poland , Czechoslovakia , Hungary , East Germany , China and Mongolia .

He is the author of 14 special books and more than 30 articles on mining and rescue, 10 copyright certificates for inventions.

In 1991, he published the book “Mine Rescuers,” dedicated to the history of the development of mining and rescue in Russia and the USSR .

• Order of the October Revolution
• two orders of the Red Banner of Labor
• Order of the Badge of Honor
• five medals
• foreign awards
• Stalin Prize of the third degree (1950) - for a radical improvement of regenerative oxygen respirators and their widespread use for mountain rescue units
• USSR State Prize (1976) - for the development and implementation of inert gas generators of the GIG type for localizing fires and preventing explosions in mines
• Mining Glory badge of three degrees

• Sobolev, G. G. Organization of mining operations in mines / Ing. G. G. Sobolev. - Moscow; Kharkov: Ugletekhizdat, 1951. - 92 p. : ill .;
• Sobolev, G. G. Mine Rescue. - 2nd ed., Revised. and add. - Moscow: Nedra, 1979.- 432 p. : ill .;
• Sobolev, G.G. Organization and conduct of mine rescue operations in mines / G. G. Sobolev. - 3rd ed., Revised. and add. - M.: Nedra, 1988 .-- 279 p. : ill .;
• Sobolev, G. G. Mine Rescuers. - M .: Nedra, 1991 .-- 251 p. : ill. - ISBN 5-247-01763-3 .

• Sobolev Georgy Georgievich // Civil protection. Encyclopedia in 4 volumes / V. A. Puchkov . - 3rd, revised and supplemented. - Moscow: EMERCOM of Russia , FSBI VNII GOCHS (FC), 2015. - T. 3: P-S. - S. 430. - 658 p. - ISBN 978-5-93790-129-7 .

• Militarized mine rescue units

1. Gladkov Yu. A. In memory of George Georgievich Sobolev (on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth). Coal Magazine, December, 2009. - P. 62.