On April 28, 1920, the Grozny oil industry was nationalized. On its basis, the “Grozny Central Oil Administration” was established. To restore the industry, the VIII Caucasian Labor Army was created.
The capacity of the oil refineries built before 1917 was 1.2 million tons per year. Extraction and refining methods were primitive. For the needs of industrialization, it was necessary to rebuild the oil industry from scratch. A Central Oil Administration (TsNU) was created, headed by Iosif Kosior. Within the TsNU, a department was set up to train engineering and technical personnel and skilled workers. Two months later, this department became an oil technical school for training certified specialists for the oil industry, with Leonid Vladimirovich Kurskoy appointed as its director. On August 1, 1920, the technical school began its first academic year. In the summer of the same year, the Grozneft central plant laboratory was established, headed by Ivan Osipovich Luchinsky.
In the summer of 1922, the labor army was disbanded, and the technical staff and skilled workers who had been part of it were added to the Grozneft payroll. By the end of 1923, the restoration work was completed.