Many years philosophers argue about the role of personality in history. But in spite of the priority of social processes over personal significance historical events do not occur without bright and strong human figure.

The violent years of 2000-2009

The nineties have fallen upon us suddenly and violently. It wasn’t easy to fight out this pressure.

“We were thrown into the wild market, as puppies to the cold water”, - the Director General of “Almaz” of that time, Nikolai Polyashev, said. - “Our scientists, engineers had to produce cooking pots. All this was called conversion”.

But cooking pots could not save the unique defense enterprise. The Ministry of Defense did not pay for its orders.

Polyashev realized that it was difficult for people of the old breed to adapt to the new conditions and so he chose as his deputy the young entrepreneur, Igor Ashurbeyli. Ashurbeyli not only felt good under the new market conditions, but was also engaged in the completely new for that time information business and the products he had developed were highly appreciated by the legendary Designer-in-Chief of the enterprise, Boris Bunkin.

Soon enough the effort of the young deputy was rewarded: a contract had been sighed which helped to pay salaries for six months.

"The more I delved into the work of the enterprise, the more respect I felt for the people who had created the wonderful defensive armament for the air defense and who continued working on the promising air defense missile systems even without wages”, - Igor Ashurbeyli recollected. - “They were amazing people with their own “Almaz” patriotism”.

Fifth-generation weapons

When Ashurbeyli became CEO, he had not only "to pick out semicriminal tenants from the production areas", but to collect the fragments of the enterprise, because “Almaz” were divided into 31 companies. By the end of 2010 the restored holding that attained its full strength had integrated the enterprises and AD-ABM scientific schools of the Air Force, Ground Forces, Navy, Space Forces and Air Defense automated control systems. Today SSDB "Almaz-Antey" named after Academician A.A. Raspletin can be called a basic backbone developer.

Under his leadership the latest modifications of the ​​air defense missile systems S -300 "Favorite" (that we see during the military parades) were created. And his basic concept of creating the integrated system of air and missile defense AD-ABM (IS IMD AD-ABM) of the fifth generation was approved by the Russian government. And the technical projects of the IS IMD main components were adopted by the state commissions when he was CEO. This means such systems as "S-500", "Vityaz", "Morpheus" which have demonstrated that Russia has technology to repel possible air and missile attacks.

The Military Aerospace Defense (ASD) is recognized as a priority of the national military doctrine today, but earlier Ashurbeyli helped it forward hard and for a long time. The Non-Departmental Advisory Board on Aerospace Defense (NAB ASD), where he is the Chairman of the Presidium, brings together leading scientists and experts, including members of RAS. And Ashurbeyli himself is the supervisor "Design Bureau-1".

When Igor Raufovich came to the defense industry, he was less than 30. Recently he has reached the age of 50. That means that he devoted the most part of his active life to strengthening the defense shield of the power.