Minister of the USSR

          Pyotr Faddeevich Lomako had no equal in the world in terms of the duration of his ministry in ministerial posts. He was the Minister of Nonferrous Metallurgy of the USSR for forty-six years, from July 1940 to October 1986.
          Non-ferrous metals are Lithium, Beryllium, Magnesium, Aluminum, Sodium, Potassium, Calcium, Scandium, Vanadium, Chromium, Titanium, Nickel, Copper, Zinc, Gallium, Silver, Cadmium, Indium, Hafnium, Tantalum, Iridium, Platinum, Lead, Tin, Cesium, Tungsten, Gold, Mercury, Uranium, Radium... and so on! All this was produced in the USSR.
          Minister Lomako was competent in all this diversity. He undoubtedly knew the intricacies and needs of all industries, knew the directors of large enterprises of his ministry, had an idea about technologies, about the world industry ... not to list everything. Great man... Who leafed through the nine-volume book with a list of all the enterprises of the Soviet Union? Each volume of this publication was a weighty book the size of a folio of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia... I worked with these volumes of information for some time and calculated that there were about seventy thousand enterprises represented there.
         We would never dream of knowing what the ministers of the USSR knew and were able to