January 12 – Birthday of Dinmukhamed Akhmetovich Kunayev!

January 12 is the birthday of the outstanding statesman and public figure Dinmukhamed Akhmetovich Kunayev.

Dinmukhamed Akhmetovich (1912-1993) was an outstanding statesman and public figure, three-time Hero of Socialist Labor, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, Doctor of Technical Sciences, holder of orders and medals of the USSR and foreign countries. He led the country for more than thirty years.

D.A. Kunayev was born on January 12, 1912, in the city of Almaty. He began his career in 1936 at the Kounrad mine after graduating from the Moscow Institute of Gold and Non-Ferrous Metals. He wrote his diploma thesis on bringing the capacity of the Kounrad quarry to 90 thousand tons of blister copper and defended it with an excellent grade. In three years of work, he rose from a drilling machine operator to workshop chief, head of the mine's technical department, chief engineer, and director. The drilling machine on which Dimash Akhmetovich worked has been permanently preserved as a monument at the entrance to Kounrad.

In those years, the construction of Kounrad was developing rapidly. The house where D. Kunayev lived was built, along with a kindergarten, hospital, and cultural center. For such dedicated labor, he was awarded the medal "For Special Labor" in July 1938.

This was his first award. Having quickly demonstrated himself as an effective leader with high standards, D. Kunayev was nominated by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan in 1939 for the position of director of the Ridder Mining Administration. This was because the work of the Ridder polymetallic plant, especially the raw material mines, had significantly deteriorated. This proposal was a measure to rapidly boost the economy of the Ore Altai. Thus, the Central Committee placed great trust in the young communist Kunayev and assigned him a heavy task. Although he knew it would not be easy to organize the work of a major enterprise, Dimeke decided to take the risk: "There are no insurmountable heights or impassable roads for a warrior." "Being first is always an honor, but blazing a new trail and organizing a large enterprise in a backward area was not easy for me," he wrote in his memoir.

During the Great Patriotic War years, he not only remained among those who organized production at the highest level, but also served as Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Kazakh SSR from 1942 to 1952. He then served as President of the Academy of Sciences for 3 years. He twice served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Republic — in 1955-60 and 1962-64. After that, D. Kunayev led the republic's party organization for nearly a quarter of a century, until his retirement in 1986.

Despite the complexity and contradictions of his life, Dinmukhamed Akhmetovich made an enormous contribution to the development of the economy, social sphere, science, and national culture for the multinational people of Kazakhstan. He received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor three times, was awarded the Order of Lenin eight times, and received other orders and medals from our country and foreign states. He was able to combine party and economic work with scientific activity, publishing more than 100 scientific works. Academician Kunayev was a deeply educated person with a broad outlook.