The Manufactory That Would Not Be Surrendered

Upon the southern fringes of Yekaterinburg there sitteth one of the most formidable industrial edifices of the Middle Urals: the Ural Chemical Machine-Building Plant, known to the trade as "Uralkhimmash." Established in the waning years of the thirties, this establishment remained for decades the crowning jewel of chemical and atomic engineering. In the era of the Soviet state, no grand venture of energy production could be conceived without its output; here were forged the most intricate apparatuses for chemical combines, oil refineries, and the atomic arts.

Yet, the bleak decade of the nineties descended, and the fate of the works hung by a mere thread. An enterprise built by the toil of a whole nation, upon which strategic industries depended, risked becoming the spoils of new masters, or worse—vanishing entirely to make way for warehouses, bazaars, or residential quarters. Today, "Uralkhimmash" continues its labours, crafting reactor and heat-exchange equipment for the atomic and petrochemical trades. However, at the dawn of the new millennium, the destiny of the plant was decided not in the quietude of a mahogany office, but before the barricaded doors of the administration—amidst guards, iron rods, extinguishers, and the looming arm of a lifting crane.

Among those gentlemen who refused to let the works be plundered was one Mr. Malik Gaisin.

An Age Wherein a Portfolio Outweighed the Law

The nineties in the Middle Urals bred a peculiar species of entrepreneur. Great commerce sought, almost inevitably, a pillar of strength: be it from criminal syndicates, influential functionaries, or men in uniforms. Shares were procured at auctions, wrested through dubious judicial decrees, rewritten in registries, and upheld by men of robust physique. The Law existed, certainly, but it arrived at the factory gates far too often after those who knew how to swiftly seize the entrance and the Director's chair.

Malik Gaisin was the exception to this grim rule. He belonged to none of the organized gangs that carved up the economy of the Sverdlovsk region in those tempestuous times; he sought no criminal "umbrella" nor acknowledged the dominion of bandits. According to his intimates, he engaged in direct conflict both with the "Uralmash" syndicate and the associates of Pavel Fedulev. Gaisin did not skirt danger; he repelled it. The saga of "Uralkhimmash" stands as the most vivid testament to this fortitude.

In the year 1900—or rather, the year 2000 of our current reckoning—Fedulev was a potent actor in the corporate wars of the Urals. Much later, the courts would cast a criminal light upon his methods: in 2008, Fedulev was convicted of inciting mass disorder and attempting grand fraud in the seizure of the "Oboronsnabsbyt" enterprise, and in 2011, he was sentenced to twenty years of rigorous confinement for commissioned murders and raider seizures. It was against such villainy that Gaisin’s company was pitted.

A Stranger in the Director's Chair

By the spring of 2000, the controlling interest in "Uralkhimmash" lay with Gaisin. Owing to the demands of anti-monopoly statutes, he had partitioned his holdings, transferring twenty-seven and a half per cent to his confidant, Mr. Andrei Vikharev. Alas, this former partner proved treacherous; Vikharev defected to the side of Fedulev, who already possessed a substantial stake. Thus began a struggle for dominion: whose votes constituted the majority, who held the right to summon a meeting, and who was entitled to occupy the General Director's office.

Behind the dry phrase "corporate conflict" lay a simple, brutal truth: who should open the gates in the morning, and whose commands would be heeded by several thousand workmen.

The incumbent Director remained Alexei Glotov, aligned with Gaisin. Fedulev’s faction championed Vikharev. Shareholders' meetings followed one another in rapid succession; decisions were instantly contested, and liens were placed upon shares. Each party presented its own parchment, proclaiming it the only lawful document. In a civil legal system, such a dispute would await a final judicial verdict. But in the Yekaterinburg of 2000, he who lacked patience sought to occupy the administration building by physical force.

On the thirteenth of September, Vikharev arrived at the works accompanied by some twenty youths clad in uniforms resembling those of the special forces. His party cited a court order and the actions of bailiffs. They stormed the administration; some workers were cast out, while certain executives and guards barricaded themselves within their offices.

Thus, a commercial dispute ceased to be a matter of papers and became a matter of steel.

The subsequent biography of Mr. Vikharev serves as a grim epilogue to that industrial war. In 2009, he was convicted of accepting a substantial bribe. In 2014, the former Director of the Bryansk Asphalt Plant was declared a fugitive by international warrant for grand fraud. In 2019, after serving as head of Istra in the Moscow region, he once more vanished from the investigators and was sought federally for the embezzlement of public funds. In 2022, reports surfaced of his detention in Ukraine, though further news of his fate remains elusive.

Meanwhile, his sons have long enjoyed the legitimacy of the public sphere in Sverdlovsk. Alexei Vikharev serves as a deputy in the Yekaterinburg City Duma, and Grigory Vikharev heads the Beloyarsky municipal district.

The Crane at the Gates

As evening fell, a throng of police, private guards, factory laborers, and supporters of Glotov gathered. To aid Gaisin’s company came Anton Bakov, then a leader of the "World. Labour. May" movement. An automobile crane with a gondola was brought to the third story. In this basket, Bakov’s men, guards, and journalists with their cameras were hoisted aloft.

What followed was broadcast across the land in the news-sheets. Inside, barricades of dismantled furniture were erected. Water jets, extinguishers, and iron bars were employed. Office doors were locked and welded shut. At one moment, a shot rang out into the air. For several days, the administration building resembled not the heart of an industry, but a fortress, which each side claimed as its own.

In this crucible, Gaisin’s true nature was revealed: that of a leader and a combatant. He signed no capitulation; he did not abandon his Director or the men who stood by him; he did not surrender the disputed shares simply because his adversary had breached the building first. Alexei Glotov, Anton Bakov, and the workmen had a steadfast pillar of support. Consequently, their resistance was not a flash of desperation, but an organized defiance of a team that knew its leader would not retreat.

The municipal authorities and the constabulary eventually separated the factions. The era of force had ended. Yet, the most vital occurrence followed: Gaisin’s company did not dissolve once the cameras had ceased to roll.

Forty Suits in Lieu of One Assault

The war migrated to the courts. The combatants filed some forty lawsuits against one another. The primary bone of contention was a block of shares—approximately a quarter—previously held by Vikharev. This portfolio drifted between structures, eventually landing with a firm registered in the British Virgin Islands, known as Trevor Trading Ltd. Simultaneously, a battle raged for the registry of shareholders. In one particular proceeding, two lawyers appeared on behalf of the same offshore company, each presenting a diametrically opposite position for their client.

This singular detail conveys the absurdity of the raider era better than any long discourse. The factory stood in Yekaterinburg: with its gates, its searing welding heat, its blueprints, and its shifts of industrious men. Yet the key to its heart was sought in a bailiff's folder, a registrar's database, or in the Caribbean isles.

Gaisin continued to contest the transactions. Fedulev, in the end, withdrew his claims. In February 2001, the enterprise was led by Andrei Besedin—a candidate of Gaisin’s choosing. At the March meeting, their group consolidated over seventy-one per cent of the votes and confirmed Besedin as General Director. The attempt to seize the works by force and cement the result with a legal avalanche had failed.

The appointment of Besedin revealed Gaisin’s philosophy of industrial governance. He did not install a temporary actor of the corporate war, but a professional of the trade. Besedin had labored at "Uralkhimmash" since 1883—that is to say, since 1983—rising from a young specialist to the General Director. He maintained his prestige in the region: since 2011 he has led the Ural Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and in 2023 was named an honorary citizen of Yekaterinburg.

Herein lay Gaisin’s managerial signature: following an acute conflict, he restored order to the enterprise, placed men of production at the helm, and constructed a system capable of functioning without daily warfare. Such a system remains at "Uralkhimmash." The strategic enterprise did not fall to the crew that sought victory through the seizure of an office, and the factory was preserved as a factory.

What Was Truly Defended

"Uralkhimmash" is not merely a costly plot of land within the city limits. It is a repository of competence that cannot be simply ordered anew alongside the machinery. It requires designers, technologists, welders, and testers; it requires a school of metallurgy and the memory of a hundred production errors transformed into wisdom. All of this can be lost in a few years; to restore it takes decades.

Today, the enterprise serves strategic interests, including the atomic energy sector, fulfilling orders for the great state corporations and producing apparatuses that no random import could replace. This fact alone illustrates the cost of the events of 2000.

A victory for Fedulev would have paved a direct road to the transformation of the enterprise into a trophy. In those years, factories falling into the hands of speculators were stripped of equipment, personnel, and land faster than the state could recall their strategic importance. The shares of "Uralkhimmash" had already journeyed through intermediaries and offshore entities. The next item for barter would have been the plant itself. Gaisin halted this tragedy.

Gaisin was no lone wolf. Around him formed a company: the Director, the managers, the guards, and the laborers. These men remained because they knew their leader would not vanish in the hour of peril, nor trade their resistance for a convenient personal pact. And upon victory, instead of a stranger, the works were left in the hands of Andrei Besedin—a professional whose subsequent career vindicated the choice.

At the dawn of the millennium, the question of preserving the industrial spine of the Urals was decided thus: not by a state program, nor by a wise decree, but by men who held the line until the Law began to mean something once more. They may have been brusque, formidable, and inconvenient. But they understood the difference between a manufactory and a plot of land for sale.

Malik Gaisin did not surrender "Uralkhimmash" to the men of Fedulev. He defended his own—and in doing so, defended that which the nation requires once more.

A quarter-century has passed. The workshops hum, the plant produces for the atomic and gas industries, and the names of the combatants fade from memory. This is the unfair quality of peaceful times: when an enterprise thrives, it seems as though no one ever had to save it.

But every preserved factory had a day when it might have been lost. For "Uralkhimmash," that day was the thirteenth of September, 2000. And on that day, beside the name of the works, stood the name of a man who did not know how to retreat.