On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Cherepovets Metallurgical Combine, we presented the book "Is it possible to make a world leader in metallurgy out of a Soviet plant? The short answer is "Yes!".
The book and its audio version performed by theater and film actor Anatoly Kot are available for free on Severstal's website and on the Litres service. There are plans to sell paper books from the Cherepovets publishing house.
We wish you a pleasant reading!
Here you will find answers to questions about how the company, established in the Soviet era, turned into one of the most efficient metallurgical companies in the world. To create this story, the team of authors of the Laboratory "Once upon a Time", led by journalist Dmitry Sokolov-Mitrich, studied archival materials, conducted dozens of interviews with managers and employees of Severstal and immersed themselves in the life of the plant.
"Our book is an attempt to tell the story of our company and the company against the background of the history of the city of Cherepovets and our country as a whole. A very difficult one, full of ups and downs. Readers of this book can become not only employees of Severstal and residents of Cherepovets, but also anyone who is interested in the history of Russian business development. As a child, I read Soviet production novels with great pleasure, then the novels of the American writer Arthur Haley became available – also, in fact, production, but on American soil. It seems to me that today there is a great lack of stories about how people do business, create something. We have a lot of stories about various antisocial elements, for example. criminals are very popular characters in books and movies. But there are not enough people of labor – the most diverse, workers, businessmen, engineers, managers. The life of people in our country has improved significantly over the past 30 years. And it didn't happen by itself, not at the command of individual bosses. It happened because all of us have been working hard all these years. It seems to me that our book can help to partially fill the shortage of such stories in literature,"
– Alexey Mordashov noted.
Dmitry Sokolov-Mitrich, leader of the Laboratory "Once upon a Time":
"The book has not only an eventful outline, but also a deep semantic core, and perhaps the second is even more important than the first. The story of CherMK's transformation from a Soviet giant into the most efficient steel production in the world is part of a larger historical story that we all live in now – Russia's acquisition of a culture of optimism that it had never had before. It was especially interesting for our team to work on this project, because we ourselves, the characters in the book, and the colleagues from CherMK who helped us in our work are genuine bearers of this culture. That's why it turned out to be truly authentic.
