Guennady Donkovtsev - Chairman of the Board(21.01.1945 - 2.08.2010). +7 (3532) 55-01-12
Gennadiy Donkovtsev was born on 21 January 1945 in Ashkhabad in the family of Orenburg Cossacks who moved to Turkmenistan in the 30-ies. His grandfather experienced the regime's repression; his father participated in the Great Patriotic war. In 1949 when a terrible earthquake struck the city their family moved back to Orenburg, where Guennady started his career with general labor professions - locksmith of the railway depot, train driver assistant. After graduating from the institute of the railway transport engineers he worked as a foreman in depot. A young energetic specialist was noticed and put forward for the party career, which lasted 15 years (1970-1985) and contained all the steps from the industry department instructor to the 2nd secretary of the City Committee of the party in charge of the economics and industry. In 1984 Donkovtsev maintained a thesis and became the candidate of economic science.
The year 1985 became a turning-point in his life: Guennady Donkovtsev starts his work in the Orenburg City Council where he is elected to be its chairman and in 1993 appointed to the position of the Head of the Administration. In 1996 the Orenburgers elected Guennady Donkovtsev as the Head of the City in the direct privy universal suffrage, according to this post he also got at the head of the City Council. All in all Donkovtsev had ruled over the half-a-million city for 15 years - since 1985 till 2000. Till March 2002 he was the deputy of several terms of the Regional Parliament.
The 90-ies were the time of self-government development in Russian cities. The tempo of municipal reforms depended on the personality who ruled over the city and on the team made up by him. Already in the halfway of his Mayor career Donkovtsev became one of the laureates of the Russian nation-wide competition for the "Best Mayor of the Country Award".
In the second part of the 90-ies the problem of public transport in Orenburg was gradually solved, the city had vigorously been equipped with the new telephone stations, after a long stagnation a building construction speeded up. It is important that all the changes were made in the framework of the market economy only. The city took the burden of housing, kindergartens, social and cultural institutions that previously belonged to state enterprices. The mayor managed to find additional financial resources in the difficult economical situation. The World Bank for example gave 3 million dollars non-refundable subsidy for supporting pre-school educational institutions abandoned by privatazed enterprises. In the end of the 90-ies Guennady Donkovtsev persistently introduced the energy saving technologies in housing system and proved the efficiency of the agricultural business using the suburban farms as test cites.
Guennady Donkovtsev stands for the support of education and culture in every possible way. The Orenburg municipal chamber choir, Orenburg publishing house, revived Orenburg municipal cadet corps are fairly considered to be his deserts. The monuments to Musa Dzhalil, Pushkin (in Berdy settlement), Pushkin and Dahl (on the Sovietskaya street), the victory memorial "Orenburg - for the front-line" were installed in the city right in the years of the nation-wide economic crisis. At that period for the first time in history seven exhibitions of the Orenburg artists took place in France (Paris and Touluose). For many years Donkovtsev keepd friendship with the honorable citizen of Orenburg Mstislav Rostropovich, who annually comes to the town where he spent his childhood. Guennady Donkovtsev was the initiator of the museum-house of Leopold and Mstislav Rostropovich and the Orenburg Open Contest of talented young musicians.
The municipal chamber choir took part in the Shostakovich's opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk district", directed by Rostropovich in Moscow. This cooperation with Maestro went on during the work at the Sofia Gubaibullina's composition "The Song of the Sun", which was performed by the choir in Spain and Italy. Guennady Donkovtsev is the first Russian who possesses "The Golden Certificate of the Mecenate of Publishers" given by the Russian national association of publishers. The Russian Orthodox Church also recognized his deserts. Multinational and multi-confessional Orenburg region still bears in mind his persistence in creating the German cultural center and return of the synagogue building to the Jewish Community, creating the national schools, libraries and centers. The President of Russia V.Putin awarded finishing his work as the mayor of Orenburg Guennady Donkovtsev with the Order of Honor.
At present he is the governor of the Union of industrialists and undertakers of Russia.