Oleksandr Fenin: socio-professional portrait of an engineer-entrepreneur of the late 19th – early 20th centuries

Abstract

Introduction. In the post-reform era, forced industrialization took place in the Ukrainian ethnic lands of the Russian Empire and a capitalist market economy was actively formed, an important component of which was private entrepreneurship. The aім of the study is to reconstruct the activities of engineer Oleksandr Fenin in the coal industry of the Donetsk Basin in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to reveal the features of his public work as part of the organization of southern miners. Scientific novelty: based on a wide range of sources, the figure of engineer Oleksandr Ivanovich Fenin, a famous public figure and industrialist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is examined. Main results. It was found that at the end of the 19th century, large mining companies and sole proprietorships were created one after another in the Donetsk coal basin, which required more and more technical specialists – engineers and technicians. Among such individuals who, in the early 1890s, began their professional careers as engineers in the region’s coal mining companies was O. Fenin, who graduated from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute. From 1895, he supervised the construction of the large Verovsky mine, which belonged to the Russian-Belgian Metallurgical Company, for which he was eventually awarded a personal silver medal at the Paris World Exhibition. From 1899 to 1911, Fenin was the managing director of a powerful British company that mined coal at the Maksimovsky mine in Donbas. At the same time, during this period, O. I. Fenin was still a member of the board and director of the Donetsk-Hrushevsky Joint-Stock Company of Anthracite and Coal and Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Seleznyov Coal Industry Company. It is noted that in 1907, Olexander Fenin was elected deputy chairman of such an influential organization as the Council of Congresses of Mining Industrialists of the South of Russia. He held this responsible position for 12 years. He was also at the origins of the organization of the rescue service in the mines of the Donetsk basin. Attention is also drawn to Fenin’s political views and his attitude to the labor issue. It is noted that during the First Democratic Revolution he was a member of the Cadet Party. Conclusions. It was emphasized that mining engineer Fenin, using his knowledge and skills, managed to become one of the brightest representatives of the technical intelligentsia, who achieved significant success in his activities in the mining industry of the Donetsk Basin in the post-reform era. At the same time, as a representative of top industrial managers, he played an outstanding role in the industrial development of the region.