Iakov Chaikovskii

Born May 30 (June 12), 1901, in Ekaterinoslav, now Dnepropetrovsk; died July 8, 1947, in Dnepropetrovsk. Steelworker; founder of the Stakhanovite movement in the metallurgical industry. Member of the CPSU from 1936.

In 1936, Chaikovskii became the first in the country to make steel by a high-speed method. On Jan. 5, 1937, he smelted 18.6 tons of steel in 4 hours 20 minutes, using a hearth 1 m square in a furnace with a capacity of 8.4 tons. He was named the “Best Steelworker in the Soviet Union” in 1937. He became a foreman in 1938 and a shift supervisor in 1939. Chaikovskii worked at a metallurgical plant in Gorky in 1942 and at the Revda Metallurgical Plant in the Urals in 1943. From 1944 to 1947 he worked at the Komintern plant in Dnepropetrovsk. Chaikovskii was awarded the Order of Lenin.