Gennady Fadeev

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. Fadeyev then rose through the ranks of the Nizhneudinsk branch of the East Siberian Railway, overseeing construction of a new station in Nizhneudinsk. He was a member of the Nizhneudinsk City Council of Workers' Deputies from 1970 to 1975, and headed the railway's Taishet branch from 1974 to 1975. Fadeyev was head of the railway's Krasnoyarsk branch from 1975 to 1977, and was elected to the Krasnoyarsk Regional Council of Working People's Deputies. He was the East Siberian Railway's first deputy head from 1977 to 1979, and headed the Krasnoyarsk Railway from 1979 to 1984. Fadeyev headed the October Railway in Leningrad from March 1984 to August 1987, and was elected to Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR in February 1985. He was deputy minister, head of the Main Traffic Directorate, and a member of the Board of the Ministry of Railways of the Soviet Union from August 1987 to 1988.

In 1988, Fadeyev became First Deputy Minister of Railways. About 1,100,000 freight cars operated on Soviet railways that year, transporting 4,100,000,000 tons of cargo; this was over three times the 2018 freight volume. The railways were independent enterprises, rather than branches of the ministry.

Fadeyev has been married to Lyubov Yevgenyevna Fadeyeva since 1960, when they were engaged in the village of Kukhterin Lug, Amur Oblast. Friends since childhood, Lyubov was a year ahead of Gennady at the Ministry of Railways No. 59 departmental school and graduated from Blagoveshchensk State Pedagogical University with a degree in English and German education. They have two daughters, three granddaughters, two grandsons and one great-grandson.

Fadeyev has enjoyed sports since childhood. He became interested in alpine skiing, and regularly visits ski resorts in the Swiss and Italian Alps; he was in Zermatt in February 2020 at age 82. Fadeyev also enjoys tennis, cycles in Meshchyorsky National Park, and rides 15–25 km daily on an exercise bike. As a youth, he played on railway football and volleyball teams. He is a theatergoer.