Dmitrii Ivanovich Gontar

Born Jan. 15 (28), 1911, in the stanitsa (large cossack village) of Umanskaia, in present-day Krasnodar Krai. Soviet combine operator and innovator; twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1951 and 1954). Member of the CPSU since 1944.

Gontar’ graduated from a school for tractor operators in 1930. From 1930 to 1932 he worked as a tractor operator at the machine tractor station in Leningradskii Raion, Krasnodar Krai. Between 1933 and 1936 he served in the ranks of the Red Army. From 1936 to 1941 and 1946 to 1959 he worked as a combine operator for the Eastern Machine Tractor Station of Leningradskii Raion, Krasnodar Krai. In 1950 he threshed with his combine 8,095 centners of grain from the area he had harvested in 25 working days. Gontar’ also achieved high levels of harvesting in subsequent years. Between 1959 and 1962 he worked as a machine specialist at the Kirov Kolkhoz in Leningradskii Raion, Krasnodar Krai. He was a delegate to the Nineteenth and Twentieth congresses of the CPSU and a deputy to the fourth convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. He was the author of the pamphlet “On the Ship of the Steppes” (1953). He has received four Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and medals of the USSR, as well as medals of the Ail-Union Agricultural Exhibit.