Fadeyev, the youngest of seven children, was born on 10 April 1937 in Shimanovsk,
Amur Oblast, to Matvey Yakovlevich and Yekaterina Ivanovna. Matvey worked at the
Amur Railway's Shimanovskaya station in a locomotive depot, outfitting steam locomotives. Fadeyev finished 10 classes at the Ministry of Railways departmental school number 59. He spent time with older relatives on the railway, immersing himself in its environment and learning railway work. After receiving his certificate, however, Fadeyev went to
Vladivostok to enter its Higher Naval School. When he saw the ocean for the first time, he realized that he was ill-suited for the sea and became a railway worker. On the entrance exams of the Institute of Railway Engineers in
Khabarovsk, Fadeyev scored 24 out of a possible 25 points. He graduated with honours from the institute in 1961, and was sent to the
East Siberian Railway.
Early career As a student, Fadeyev was a duty officer at the
Shimanovskaya station, a train dispatcher at the
Skovorodino station, and worked at the Irkutsk-Sortirovochny station. After graduation, he worked at the Taishet junction as a dispatcher and senior assistant before becoming chief engineer from 1963 to 1965. About 1,100,000 freight cars operated on Soviet railways that year, transporting 4,100,000,000 tons of cargo;
Minister of Railways On 20 January 1992, Fadeyev became Minister of Railways. Shortly after his appointment, an agreement was reached to retain the universal
1520 mm track gauge. The Council for Railway Transport of the Commonwealth and Baltic states was created to maintain railway unity throughout the former Soviet Union. An agreement allocating rolling freight stock among the CIS and Baltic countries, developed with Fadeyev's participation, was signed in
Minsk on 22 January 1993. The Council for Railway Transport developed a unified tariff policy for interstate traffic. The Tariff Agreement for Railway Carriers of the CIS Countries was signed in February 1993, facilitating long-term contracts for international traffic. In August 1996, after the re-election of
Boris Yeltsin, Fadeyev resigned as minister and was elected Secretary General of the International Coordinating Council for Trans-Siberian Transportation. In the late 1990s, rail profitability fell and the bureaucratization of the ministry under
Nikolay Aksyonenko was criticized. The first reform, formulated by the ministry in 1998, under Aksyonenko, was criticized for creating a joint-stock company under the ministry instead of denationalizing the industry. A program for reforming the Russian rail industry was developed under Fadeyev's leadership with the involvement of private consultants. The Accounts Chamber and the Prosecutor General's Office carried out large-scale inspections which revealed serious violations, resulting in a criminal case against Aksyonenko. The Russian rail industry was in a management crisis, with large federal and regional debts; over 300 criminal cases were initiated. Fadeyev learned that under Aksyonenko, large private mining companies were secretly using government funds to build railway approaches to promising coal and iron-ore deposits. In 2002, Russian railways had a significant amount of freight construction in progress. Wages of railway workers were lower than those of other industries, causing an exodus of qualified engineering personnel. The first cost-effective, deficit-free financial plan, which included state support for unprofitable passenger traffic, was formulated under Fadeyev in 2003. Preparations were made to separate state regulation from economic activity, leading to the creation of state-owned
Russian Railways (headed by Fadeyev) at the end of 2003. Fadeyev predicted a strategic need for the
Northern Latitudinal Railway and a third main route along the length of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and construction began 15 years later.
Head of Moscow Railway Fadeyev was appointed head of
Moscow Railway, part of the Ministry of Railways, on 3 March 1999. After a steep price increase by Riga Carriage Works, production of Russian electric trains began at the Demikhov Machine-Building Plant and Fadeyev instituted economic reforms.
President of Russian Railways On 22 September 2003, Fadeyev became the first president of
Russian Railways. Under his tenure, the
BAM's Severomuysky Tunnel was completed; the
Sakhalin conversion from narrow to broad gauge began; strategic lines, including the Trans-Siberian Railway and the route to
China, were electrified. In
Saint Petersburg, the
Ladozhsky railway station opened. It was assumed that the trains would be produced in Russia as a joint venture with the Sinara Group. After the June 2005 appointment of
Vladimir Yakunin as president of Russian Railways, the project was changed by the Russian Railways board of directors. By 2006, eight Siemens Velaro trains had been purchased in Germany. The contract had decreased to €750 million (including €300 million for trains and €300 million for maintenance for 30 years), and train production in Russia was no longer planned. From June 2005 to 2007, he was an assistant to Prime Minister
Mikhail Fradkov and a member of the board of directors of Russian Railways. After the 2007 resignation of the
Mikhail Fradkov government, Fadeyev was removed from the Russian Railways board.
Later activities and Oleg Belozyorov opened a new
marshalling yard at the BAM's
Tynda station on 7 July 2019. Fadeyev's 2007 memoir,
My Destiny is the Railway, describes his many years in the industry. Fadeyev repeatedly advised President
Vladimir Putin that the state should retain control of the railway industry and considered it as one of the three pillars of Russian statehood, with energy and a strong army. He interpreted increased 2016 discussions about the possible partial privatization of Russian Railways as a sign of impending disaster. In September of that year, Fadeyev criticized the system which emerged from the railway reform in which regional management was weak and railway leadership lost its power. "The directorates of the central level of Russian Railways are not capable of making prompt decisions in connection with the real situation in a particular region. Moscow cannot see everything that happens thousands of kilometers away and take into account the specifics of each road. A situation has arisen where the 'tops' do not see all the real problems, and the 'bottoms' cannot solve them due to the lack of the necessary resources", he said in an April 2016 article in the main Russian Railways newspaper. ==Personal life==