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The research featured the contribution of prominent mining engineers to the development of the coal industry of the USSR and Russia. The research objective was to identify innovative results of the outstanding Soviet mining engineers and their influence on the intensification of all processes associated with coal mining. The methodological basis of the study was the theory of modernization. The authors compared scientific, technical, and socio-economic processes at different stages of development of the coal industry. Comparative-historical and problem-chronological research methods helped to reveal the causes and features of the competitive potential of Soviet world-class mining engineers, as well as to identify the origins of the crisis in mining science. The study contributed to a better understanding of the prominent mining engineer phenomenon, revealed its origins, and defined the most important contributions to the development of the coal industry of the USSR and Russia. The research will be of interest for historians of domestic coal industry. It is also valuable experience in formulating the development strategy of the fuel and energy complex. Intensive factors prevailed over extensive ones in the development of the USSR coal industry before the turn of the 1970s–1980s. This was made possible thanks to the intellectual and innovative contribution of prominent mining engineers to the development of fundamental and applied mining knowledge.