Mark Ozernyi

Born May 22 (June 3), 1890, in the village of Mishurin Rog, now in Verkhnedneprovsk Raion, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR; died there Dec. 27, 1957. Initiator of a movement of leading collective farmers to obtain high corn yields. Hero of Socialist Labor (1947). Member of the CPSU from 1940.

Ozernyi joined the Chervonyi Partizan Kolkhoz, Verkhnedneprovsk Raion, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, in 1933 and was a team leader there from 1936 to 1957. His team obtained the following corn yields [quintals per hectare (ha)]: 108.3 in 1937, 120 in 1939 and 1940, 136 in 1946 (a drought year), and 150 in 1947; in 1949 it obtained 223.8 quintals from 2 ha and 175 per ha on an area of 8 ha, establishing a world record for this crop’s yield. Using intervarietal hybridization, Ozernyi developed the high-yield Partizanka corn variety; for this achievement he received the State Prize of the USSR (1946).

Ozernyi was a deputy to the second through fourth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR. He was awarded two orders of Lenin, several medals, and the large silver medal at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition.