Tankograd

Tankograd
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Also by Lennart Samuelson
PLANS FOR STALIN’S WAR-MACHINE: Tukhachevskii and Military-Economic

Planning, 1925–1941
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Tankograd
The Formation of a Soviet Company
Town: Cheliabinsk, 1900s–1950s
Lennart Samuelson
Associate Professor, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden
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© Lennart Samuelson 2011
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2011 by
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To Elza
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9780230_208872_01_prexi.indd vi 7/4/2011 8:34:27 PM
Contents
Preface ix
1 Cheliabinsk As a Mirror of Russia in the 20th Century 1
2 From the Civil War to the Five-year Plans 13

The Civil War in the Southern Urals 20
The Battle of Cheliabinsk, July–August 1919 28
Militarisation of labour and force against the peasantry 33
Recovery under the New Economic Policy 39
A new industrial landscape emerges 40
Transformation of the countryside:
collectivisation and dekulakisation 48
3 The Industrial City As a Socialist Vision and Soviet Reality 69

The changing character of Cheliabinsk city in the 1930s 78
Sotsgorodók – a socialist ideal for the tractor
factory city district 84
Barracks for industrial workers in ‘shanty towns’ 90
Health care and education 94
Sport 99
4 The Tractor Factory’s Civilian Production

and Military Potential 103
Foreign specialists 112
The significance of the tractor factory for the Red Army 118
Evolution of the military doctrine 123
Military-economic preparedness:
The ChTZ enterprise in the 1930s 128
5 Stagnation and Streamlining in the

Whirlwinds of Terror, 1936–1939 134
Purges of party members in 1937–1938 138
Repression against technicians, engineers and
leading cadres in the economy 143
Mass repression campaigns 150
Lavrentii Beria and the streamlining of
NKVD internal affairs 154
vii
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viii Contents
6 Industrial Preparedness in Cheliabinsk, 1939–1940 163

The USSR’s preparations for war in 1941 174
The start of tank production at the
Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory 176
7 Production Conditions for Heavy Tanks in the Urals 183

The establishment of ‘Tankograd’ 191
The final battle for Berlin 213
8 1418 Long Days on the Home Front in the Southern Urals 217
Evacuation and conversion of industry 220
Working conditions in Tankograd 226
Soviet Germans build the new iron and
steel works in Cheliabinsk 237
Prisoners of war in Cheliabinsk 241
The countryside 241
The political information sphere in the Urals 249
Victory Day 1945 in the Southern Urals 252
9 The New Military-Industrial Complex in

Cheliabinsk during the Cold War 255
The reconversion of the tractor factory after the war 258
The labour force 261
Housing conditions 264
The end of the career of the ‘Kings of Tanks’ 267
Youth protests in post-war Cheliabinsk 268
The closed atomic cities in the Cheliabinsk region 272
10 Historical Memory and Research in Today’s Cheliabinsk 278
Notes 290
Bibliography 327
Index 345
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Preface
For more than 15 years, the conditions for conducting research on

Russia’s 20th-century history in the archives have exceeded the expec-
tations that most scholars would have had prior to 1991. Through a
series of happy coincidences over a number of years, I have been fortu-
nate enough to study a theme that has fascinated me for many years:
the significance of the Urals in the history of Soviet Russia.
My research in the archives in Moscow and Cheliabinsk was sup-
ported considerably by grants, initially from the Jan Wallander and
Tore Browald Foundation of Handelsbanken, Stockholm, and after
2001 by the Swedish Research Council. I was also encouraged by discus-
sions with Håkan Lindgren, the director of the Institute for Research in
Economic History at the Stockholm School of Economics. At a workshop
in August 2004 at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies
of the University of Birmingham, Robert W. Davies and his colleagues
offered pertinent commentaries on my paper regarding the wave of
repressions in Cheliabinsk’s industry in the late 1930s.
However, a study of this nature, on a city that was closed to foreigners
from the mid-1930s until 1992, would not have been possible without
the enthusiastic support I received from the archivists at the Regional
State Archives (OGAChO) in Cheliabinsk. By the summer of 1996, I had
started my research there on a few themes from my doctoral disserta-
tion, in particular concerning rearmament and preparations in the late
1930s to convert civilian factories to military production centres. The
director of the archive, Aleksandr Finodeev (now the chairman of the
Committee of Archives of the Cheliabinsk region), and the archivists
Galina Kibitkina (now deputy chairman of the said Committee), Igor
Vishev (now director of OGAChO), Irina Iangirova, Elena Kalinkina,
Elena Turova and the late Rafkat Valeiev have always been willing to
help me to locate documents that could shed light on my research or to
discuss questions arising from the documents.
Among the first sights I discovered in May 1994 was the museum
of the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory. Since that time, I have had regular
opportunities to discuss the history of the factory with Iurii Pivanov
and Tatiana Pushkariova. The Cheliabinsk Quality Steel Works
(MEChEL), built during World War II, also has a museum and I was
ix
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x Preface
fortunate enough to have Larisa Iarosh guide me through its memora-

bilia, models and documents. At the Urals Wagons Factory in Nizhnii
Tagil, I had the opportunity to visit its museum and expo of old tanks
in 2000 and, in 2003, to discuss the wartime history of the factory with
Alla Pislegina and Sergei Ustiantsev. The librarians at the department of
regional history at the Cheliabinsk Public Scientific Library have been
very helpful in locating rare journals and publications. Many historians
in Cheliabinsk have inspired me and shared their research results; in
particular, would like to thank Aleksandr Abramovskii, Vladimir Bozhe,
Vladimir Kobzov, Iurii Maksimov, Igor Narskii, Vladimir Novosiolov,
Nadezhda Paletskikh, Andrei Pass, Nina Shmakova and Vitalii Tolstikov.
I have had interesting discussions with Veniamin Alekseev, Mikhail
Glavatskii, Gennadii Kornilov, Boris Lichman and Andrei Speranskii
at the Institute of History and Archeology at the Urals Section of
the Russian Academy of Sciences and at the Urals State University in
Ekaterinburg. Viktor Kirillov and Olga Porshneva of the Nizhnii Tagil
Pedagogical Institute told me about their research projects, particularly
the history of repression in the Soviet period and the revolutionary situ-
ation in 1917. In addition, it has been especially stimulating to learn
more on the basic education programmes of contemporary Russian his-
tory, thanks to my regular visits to Marina Salmina, her colleagues and
pupils (some of whom are history teachers already) at School No. 59 in
the tractor factory district.
For any mistakes and deficiencies that remain in the book, despite all
this support, the author alone bears the responsibility.
Last but not least, I would express my sincere gratitude to Elza
Shakhrinova, to whom this book is dedicated, because more than any-
one else she has made it so fascinating to learn ever more about the
recent past of her country.
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Figure 1 ‘Soviet Russia is a beleaguered fortress! All for the defence!’ is the main
text on this poster from 1919 (printed in 20,000 copies) by D.S. Moor, the style
of which is reminiscent of lubok, the Russian popular art form. ‘The Workers’ and
Peasants’ defence. The communist points at the enemy and leads the battle. The
worker forges the weapons. The peasant brings grain. The woman takes the place
of the men in production. The youth learns military tasks.’
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1
Cheliabinsk As a Mirror of
Russia in the 20th Century
‘What do they tell of the war?’ ‘They are not prepared. Particularly not
the factory in Cheliabinsk. The army is ready, but the peasant country
is not.’ This conversation took place in a Paris café on 21 October 1932
between the Soviet author Isaak Babel1 and the Russian-born French
socialist Boris Souvarine.2 With his novel, Red Cavalry, about the legen-
dary cavalier Budennyi’s army during the Civil War, Babel had acquired
a position at the apex of Soviet cultural society. Although Souvarine
was among the founders of the French Communist Party, he had been
excluded in July 1924 for his oppositional views.
They both had a sound grip on Stalin’s changing policies and the
Communist Party leadership after 1929. The key words in the conversa-
tion – the war, the army, the factory and the peasant countryside – also form
the central elements of this book.
The Soviet Union experienced the threat of war on several occasions.
In 1927 it was threatened by the United Kingdom and in 1929 from
Chinese warlords who had taken control of the Russian-owned Chinese
Eastern Railway that passed through Manchuria on its way from Siberia
to the Pacific Ocean. There was also a more continuous threat from
Japan, which had occupied Manchuria in 1931–1932 and then from
Nazi Germany after Hitler ascended to power in 1933. During the same
years, a dramatic transformation started in the Soviet Union, with
forced industrialisation and collectivisation of the countryside becom-
ing the foremost priorities.
So how did the Soviets prepare for these wars? How was this backward
and predominantly agrarian country industrialised, how was the Red
Workers’ and Peasants’ Army built and how did life change for those
who experienced the transformation of society? These are some of the
questions that this book will seek to answer.
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2 Tankograd
The Soviet Union emerged victorious from World War II, which was
the opposite of what many in the West had foreseen in the summer of
1941, at the start of Germany’s Operation Barbarossa. An explanation of
this paradoxical development starts with a description of how the new
Soviet state was established during both the revolution and the Civil
War. It will examine the changes in society, how the specific militarisa-
tion of the economy was introduced and how the education system was
modernised.
This book is about Cheliabinsk during the 1920s and 1930s, during
World War II and during the first phase of the Cold War. It describes the
specific militarisation of the economy, the modernisation of the educa-
tion system and cultural life in Cheliabinsk.
On 13 (the 4th in the Julian calendar) of September 1736 Colonel
A.I. Tekelev and his 600 soldiers founded a fortress on the Miass River,
which they named Cheliabinsk. In the 1740s, a road was established
between Brodokalmak and the Cheliabinsk fortress; at the time, these
fortresses were on Russia’s easternmost borders. By 1800, approxi-
mately 2500 people lived around the fortress, mostly Cossacks, trades-
men and artisans. The main economic sector was agriculture, but
there was also a grain mill, leather tanning, a blacksmith and soap
manufacturing. Throughout the 19th century, Cheliabinsk remained
a small, trade-oriented town in the Russian Empire, while small-scale
gold panning started elsewhere in the southern Urals region in the
1840s.
Iron manufacturing soon started in the nearby towns of Zlatoust,
Kasli and Miass. During the latter part of the 19th century, Cheliabinsk
changed profoundly when the Trans-Siberian Railway was completed.
Its western extension, from Cheliabinsk to Kurgan and Omsk, was com-
pleted in 1894 and led to Cheliabinsk becoming a doorway to Siberia for
those hundreds of thousands of peasants wishing to move to new farm-
lands there. The Tsarist state not only organised the migration facilities,
such as loans with favourable conditions, but also provided extensive
information about the various regions in Siberia. This was one element
of Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin’s efforts to create a wealthy peasantry.
An administrative ‘settlers’ point’ (pereselencheskij punkt) was estab-
lished near Cheliabinsk railway station. More than 30,000 people could
live in the village that had been built there especially for settlers. The
village comprised an administration that established a land register and
ownership claims for all settlers. Between 1894 and 1909, more than
four million people passed through Cheliabinsk on their way to new
homes.3
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Cheliabinsk As a Mirror of Russia in 20th Century 3
These new transport facilities transformed Cheliabinsk from a slum-

bering small town of fewer than 10,000 inhabitants to a fast-growing
city with commercial and industrial enterprises.
In many respects, Cheliabinsk and the surrounding province
(oblast) are representative of the entire Soviet Union.4 The first Russian
Revolution of 1905 saw the emergence of political parties for the first
time and workers formed councils (sovety) in the industrial towns in the
Urals. However, during the reactionary period that followed, all politi-
cal activities were forced into the framework dictated by the autocratic
regime. The 1917 revolution released popular, democratic movements
and the Soviet power that was established in the winter of 1917–1918
represented democracy. However, the refusal of the Bolsheviks to accept
the results of the elections to the Constituent Assembly was the start
of a long period of dictatorship. While the Bolsheviks could certainly
count on varying degrees of support among the broad popular masses
and among industrial workers, they had much less of a following among
Figure 2 Saturday market in the 1920s in the village of Brodokalmak, one

of the oldest settlements in Cheliabinsk province. A ‘sloboda’, a town with a
non-serf population, was established in the early 18th century near the River
Techa in order to protect the Kalmatsky ford. The task of the villagers was to
enforce the Tsarist defence line through the Urals. By 1816, Brodokalmak had
150 farms and 907 inhabitants, two churches, one school and a market place.
In 1924, Brodokalmak became a regional centre and by 2000 its population had
increased to approximately 4000 people.
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4 Tankograd
the peasantry, who formed the majority of Russia’s population at that

time.
The one-party state that emerged in 1917–18 was consolidated dur-
ing the violent Civil War of 1918–1921, which was fought not only
between Red and White Armies but also against spontaneously formed
peasant armies. The changes introduced in 1921 in the form of the
New Economic Policy (NEP) constituted a compromise between the
Bolsheviks and the majority of the population, peasants and small-scale
entrepreneurs and tradesmen.
From the end of the 1920s, the Soviet Communist Party forcibly
introduced changes in all spheres of life. Their intention was to make
the country as independent as possible from the rest of the world. The
collectivisation of the countryside was designed to convince people
to move from their unproductive family farms to building sites and
industrial factories in the cities. An important element of the offi-
cial Soviet ideology was that personal consumption would be much
higher in the future. They did not foresee that the manner in which
collectivisation was implemented would actually lead to famine and
harsher conditions on the collective farms than had existed on fam-
ily farms.
This book is about the people who lived in the city of Cheliabinsk in
the Southern Urals, who in the early 1930s built and then worked at the
Figure 3 Cheliabinsk. Panoramic view of the centre in the early 20th century
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tractor factory – Cheliabinskii Traktornyi zavod, or ChTZ for short (the

name was changed to Uraltrak after 1992). The book describes how the
city changed during industrialisation and what everyday life was like in
‘Tankograd’ during the war years, 1941–1945.
The essential purpose is to offer a concrete reconstruction of how
Stalin’s ‘revolution from above’ was implemented. World War II
changed all of the earlier visions that had existed for the development
of Cheliabinsk. The history of the Soviet military-industrial complex
takes a concrete form with the example of a few factories in Cheliabinsk
and the surrounding region that represented the Soviet model of eco-
nomic preparedness.
Each chapter in the book explains the extent to which and the rea-
sons why the industrial city of Cheliabinsk was militarised. Findings
in the recently opened archives have led to the discovery of many
other interesting documents on social, political and cultural condi-
tions that have been used to shed some light on the modernisation
of Soviet society overall, in a wider sense. These new insights into
both everyday life and industrial activities in the Soviet Union offer
a multifaceted picture of the dynamics during this phase of Russia’s
history.
Most cities in the Soviet Union were, to all practical intents and pur-
poses, closed to foreigners, even in the 1970s and 1980s. The French
specialist on the history of Soviet architecture, Anatole Kopp, noted in
1978 that it had not been possible to travel to the great industrial cities
built in Stalin’s time: ‘How do they look like today, and how did they
look at the end of the Stalin period, these cities that we know only by
their names: Magnitogorsk, Cheliabinsk, Komsomolsk-upon-Amur and
others?’ Kopp was forced to use his imagination and postcards to envi-
sion how these cities actually looked.5
I experienced some of the same mystique around the legendary iron
and steel works in Magnitogorsk, Nizhnii Tagil and the armoury in the
Urals in 1970. As an exchange student at Moscow University, I was asked
by the rector what I would also like to see during my year-long visit
and I responded immediately that I wished to travel to the Urals. The
rector’s answer was just as succinct, that such travels were out of the
question. For many more years, I had to use my imagination in order
to understand the heavy industry beyond the Volga, with little to flesh
out the statistics, literature and scarce photographs. In the 1980s, under
glasnost, American historian Stephen Kotkin became the first Western
scholar to have an opportunity to conduct research in Magnitogorsk. In
his grand oeuvre, Magnetic Mountain, Kotkin showed how the city was
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6 Tankograd
founded on the steppes of the Southern Urals during the 1930s. In a

similar manner, I hope that this book can offer some new insights into
life in the region’s central town of Cheliabinsk between the early 1900s
and the end of World War II.6
As early as the 1940s, American correspondent and author William
Henry Chamberlin (1897–1969) introduced the term ‘Tankograd’ to
the Western public in his book The Russian Enigma.7 However, it only
became possible for foreigners to visit this city in the 1990s. Although
Cheliabinsk was not one of them, there were cities in the USSR that
not even Soviet citizens were free to visit and whose inhabitants had
extremely restricted travel opportunities. Among these were the so-called
‘atomic cities’ for the production of components of nuclear weapons.
Several atomic cities were situated in the Cheliabinsk region, including
Ozërsk and Snezhinsk, which were also known as Cheliabinsk-40 and
Cheliabinsk-70. Relatively little has been written about the recent his-
tory of the industrial city of Cheliabinsk itself or the role of its industry
during WWII and the Cold War. This book will provide a clearer image
of the evolution of one specific but, in most respects, very typical Soviet
company town. It is important that we have as much knowledge as possi-
ble regarding the Soviet heritage and legacy for today’s Russia, not least
in order to understand the reforms and development strategies chosen
by post-Soviet leaders.
This book describes Soviet industrialisation in the 1930s through the
example of one particular factory which was typical of how the Russians
thought they could prepare their economy in case of a new war. The
Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory was one of several hundred great factories
that were built at a rapid pace during the first five-year plan. This example
serves also to illustrate the harsh realities that emerged when American
technology for tractor production, using production lines, was intro-
duced to a country with a great shortage of qualified industrial workers.
The spirit of those times is reflected in the propaganda of the early
1930s. For example,
We are steaming ahead at full speed on the road from industrialisa-

tion to socialism and are leaving centuries of Russian backwardness
behind us. We shall become a metallic country, a land of automobi-
lisation and tractorisation. When we put the USSR in a car and the
peasant on a tractor, then the respected capitalists can only try to
catch up with us; they who speak loudly of their civilisation. Then
we shall see which country is civilised and which is advanced!8
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In the 1930s, the capitalist system was struck by the Great Depression.
Certain economists in the West advanced ideas about state regulation
or even certain measures for planning within the free market econ-
omy. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, who in 1930 had visited the exiled
Leon Trotsky in Turkey to discuss the fate of the Russian Revolution,
made extended trips to the USSR. In their immense study, Soviet
Communism: A New Civilization?, the Webbs described the Soviet state
system, the economic planning organisation and almost all aspects of
Soviet society in great detail. Most of their book was based on official
Soviet sources and, to a certain extent, overlooked the fundamentally
repressive structure in the one-party state. For this reason, the book
has stood out as a prime example of how Westerners were fooled into
believing official Soviet myths. Their book has been denounced more
often than it has actually been scrutinised and does indeed contain
many passages about the role of the secret police, named OGPU for
United State Political Directorate in the 1920s and early 1930s.
For several decades, the concept of planning had positive connota-
tions within the Labour Party and among socialists on the European
continent as a model for a mixed economy in the welfare state. Many
observers assumed that a market economy could be successfully com-
bined with a directing role for the state in certain areas. Even consid-
ering the high growth rates of the Soviet economy, at least until the
early 1960s, the above quotation offers food for thought. For many
years it was taken as a given that a Stalinist planned economy could
achieve higher growth rates and direct the investments that were nec-
essary for long-term development in accordance with general goals. In
other words, the Soviet economy was, paradoxically, superior in terms
of obtaining high growth rates, although it evidently lacked the pos-
sibility to satisfy consumer requirements. The ‘convergence’ that many
economists and sociologists envisioned between the two systems in
the 1960s was just one expression of this mode of thinking.
In only a few decades, the Soviet Union experienced urbanisation
on a scale that cannot be expressed merely with statistics. Chapter 3
describes how the city of Cheliabinsk was completely transformed in
the 1930s through an enormous influx of people and the resulting
problems with which the city’s authorities had to cope. In 1930, the
first earth was moved in what was to become an enormous factory for
the production of crawler tractors. As with the rest of the Soviet Union,
the factories were built at the same time as infrastructure was estab-
lished. Houses, daycare centres, schools, hospitals and leisure activity
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8 Tankograd
facilities were all built simultaneously. Entire city regions grew up in

cooperation between enterprises and town authorities.
At the same time as tractor production started, the construction of
the surrounding area for the factory’s workers was accelerated. The
ideals of the 1930s envisioned a socialist town with radical solutions
to alleviate the situation for housewives, children and the elderly. In
reality, however, the meagre resources were only enough for a small
number of houses. Barracks for industrial workers and their families
remained a reality for decades after the start of the factory. Still, the
harsh realities and the hopes for the future among ordinary peo-
ple is one explanation of what they wanted to defend as their new
homeland.
The Soviet leaders emphasised that industrialisation was the deci-
sive factor for the country’s defence capabilities. Accordingly, mining,
heavy machinery and the machine-building industry were the top pri-
orities. An industrial basis and infrastructure should also have a civilian
component in peacetime, for the production of consumer goods and
durables in particular. From a wider perspective, this Soviet model was
intended to achieve a higher growth rate over time than a balanced
growth for both capital and consumer industries. Consumption was
held at a lower level for some time in order to reap the fruits from a
higher technological level. The 1930s marked the start of an intensive
period of exploitation of the rich natural resources in the Urals and
Siberia that, prior to this, had not even been entirely prospected. The
leadership chose to develop several major industrial regions in this inte-
rior part of the country. This was, of course, an essential defence factor
for the long-term plans. Chapter 4 describes how the tractor factory
became part of this industrialisation effort.
Chapter 5 shows how repression, purges and mass terror interrupted
seemingly successful development under Stalin’s leadership. In the sec-
ond half of the 1930s, widespread purges took place in the Communist
Party, industry and state administration against anyone who was
considered to be an actual or potential enemy of the state. The terror
reached its peak in 1937–1938. Another change occurred in the secret
police in 1939 and many of the illegalities and misdeeds of the preced-
ing years were punished.
The tractor factory in Cheliabinsk was intended to produce a cer-
tain type of tractor and, in case of war, supply the army with tanks
and artillery haulers. Chapter 6 analyses how the planning for this
industrial mobilisation changed throughout the 1930s. The original
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design was that it would be possible to convert the entire factory eas-
ily from the serial production of crawler tractors to light tanks, with
most of the equipment on the conveyor belt having the same dimen-
sions. The mobilisation plans for the factory also included such items
as ammunition, grenades and spare parts for tanks and aeroplanes.
Other items for wartime production were spread out to a large number
of enterprises that were not part of the military-industrial complex.
During the war years, production of tractors stopped in Cheliabinsk.
Instead, the factory started to mass produce heavy tanks after incorpo-
rating equipment that had been evacuated from Leningrad, Kharkov
and other cities in the European parts of the USSR. Cooperation
with other enterprises in Cheliabinsk, Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg)
and Nizhnii Tagil was essential for the mass production of medium
and heavy tanks. During the autumn of 1941, most of the equip-
ment from the Kirov Works in Leningrad and the diesel engine fac-
tory in Kharkov was evacuated to Cheliabinsk. Tens of thousands of
engineers and workers, along with their families, followed. At that
time, the tractor factory changed its name to ‘The Kirov Works in
Cheliabinsk’ and, in the jargon of the day, the city started to be called
‘Tankograd’. However, Soviet newspapers and radio never mentioned
where their arms were produced and photographs in the newspapers
merely referred to ‘a factory in the N city’ or ‘produced deep in the
home front’.
In only a few decades, the Soviet leadership had transformed its Tsarist
military system into a defence capability that could withstand and win
the most withering assault in the history of the world. The most strik-
ing events in the early phase of World War II were Nazi Germany’s swift
victories over Poland and France. The concept of ‘Blitzkrieg’ referred to
deep armoured breakthroughs supported by long-distance air strikes in
the rear of enemy territory. Even the most cunning of the German gen-
erals behind this new doctrine, such as Heinz Guderian – who had per-
sonal experience with Soviet Russia – underestimated the Red Army’s
capacities in the early 1940s. ‘Operation Barbarossa’ has almost unani-
mously been deemed a failure because the resources of Germany and
its fascist allies were insufficient to maintain the logistics of occupying
Russia.
Chapter 7 describes the changes in tank production during World
War II. After the evacuation of equipment from Leningrad, Kharkov
and Moscow to Cheliabinsk, Sverdlovsk and Nizhnii Tagil, the Soviet
Union mass produced robust and highly efficient tanks on a scale that
9780230_208872_02_cha01.indd Sec1:9 6/27/2011 11:31:26 AM

10 Tankograd
far surpassed that of German industry. The wartime effectiveness of

Soviet industry was a continuous feature of its planning system. During
the war years, the loss of millions of people and the evacuation from
occupied territories of the main providers of food for the entire country
led to heavy strains on society in the Urals.
Chapter 8 provides some glimpses from the Russian home front
in 1941–1945. Tens of thousands of evacuated persons, refugees and
wounded soldiers were sent to the Cheliabinsk region from European
Russia. The housing situation was barely resolved by packing families
together in small rooms and flats that were already too small, in bar-
racks or dugouts on the outskirts of the city. There were numerous prob-
lems in terms of how to feed the expanded population. However, the
intensive production rate at the converted tractor factory made it pos-
sible to have such a surge in weapons output that the Red Army could
use this as a comparative advantage, even after its disastrous losses in
the initial phase of the war.
During the Cold War, Cheliabinsk achieved a greater role in the Soviet
military-industrial complex. Under extreme secrecy, the important
plutonium works were located not far from the city. In Miass, another
town where industries had been converted to wartime requirements
on a huge scale, production of ballistic missiles for submarines started.
Higher education in Cheliabinsk, at the Polytechnic Institute (ChPI,
today Southern Urals State University), had several faculties with a defi-
nite military-industrial orientation. Chapter 9 shows this development
from the late 1940s and the first phase of the Cold War.
The final chapters in the book are devoted to how historians and archi-
vists in the Urals have written their region’s history in recent years. The
first detailed description of the tractor factory was written in the 1970s
by Leonid Komarov and others who had access to archival material and
were able to interview many veterans. Soviet historiography on the Great
Patriotic War of 1941–1945 i.e. the German–Russian War as part of World
War II, was enormous in quantity and detail. However, because many
aspects of the war years were either taboo or secret, any official historiog-
raphy was considered by many during the glasnost years in the late 1980s
to border on falsification. Since that time, military, social, economic
and political historians in the Urals and in Russia in general have been
able to draw a much richer, more detailed and truthful picture of these
years. Chapter 10 reveals some parts of this multifaceted development in
Cheliabinsk and also discusses the role of archivists in the region in open-
ing up and publishing documents from what had previously been closed,
9780230_208872_02_cha01.indd Sec1:10 6/27/2011 11:31:26 AM

secret holdings. Among the most promising aspects in Russia today for
historians is the vivid interest among the younger generation. Nationwide
history competitions are organised regularly for the higher classes in gen-
eral schools, and the topics these teenagers have chosen bear witness to
changes that are still to come.
9780230_208872_02_cha01.indd Sec1:11 6/27/2011 11:31:26 AM

Figure 4 Poster by A. Apsit for the first anniversary of the Bolshevik takeover of
power. ‘The Year of the Proletarian Dictatorship. October 1917 – October 1918’
and ‘Proletarians in all countries, unite!’
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 12 6/27/2011 11:31:33 AM

2
From the Civil War to
the Five-year Plans
The Russian Revolution in 1917 and the Civil War that followed between
1918 and 1921 are usually described from the centre of events – Petrograd
and Moscow. This book, however, focuses on how the city of Cheliabinsk
and its surroundings changed before World War I and on the condi-
tions in which the new Soviet power was established in the Southern
Urals. The takeover of power in November 1917 by the Red Guards and
Workers’ soviets created an unstable situation. There were profound con-
flicts with other groups in society – merchants, peasants and, most of
all, the Cossacks in Orenburg. Many decisive moments in the Civil War
took place in the Southern Urals. The New Economic Policy (NEP) in the
1920s seemed for a short time to have created a model for the recovery of
the country and the evolution of a ‘mixed economy’. Ambitious invest-
ment targets in the five-year plans set in 1928–1929 changed the situ-
ation. Stalin and the leaders of the Bolshevik Party opted for the swift
collectivisation of agriculture, which changed the Ural countryside pro-
foundly. The ‘flight from the countryside’ to the cities was a major factor
in determining the character of the new industrial sites in the 1930s. In
less than ten years, as a result of great effort and much suffering for the
population, a new heavy industry was created in the Urals that exploited
the rich natural resources in the region.
The Russian personalities described in this chapter belonged to politi-
cal parties and groups that can be called ‘history’s victors’. In Russia, a
complex party system started to emerge in the early 1900s. However,
the ‘alternatives’ of the liberal and conservative political parties were
never to be actualised by history.1 Ultimately, the most radical social
democrats, the Bolsheviks, were the only real victors in the Civil War.
Social democratic societies were founded in Cheliabinsk in the late
1890s. Russia’s social democracy split after its second congress in 1902
13
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 13 6/27/2011 11:31:34 AM

14 Tankograd
between Lenin’s Bolsheviks and Iulii Martov’s Mensheviks and, piece

by piece, the differences widened between the two sides on all of the
important political questions. However, there was no such deep split in
the Ural’s social democrats, who eagerly joined forces in political actions
with the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) and the liberal Constitutional
Democrats (Kadets). Local organisations in the Urals were even allowed
to contain members of both Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDAP)
and the SR Party. At its apex, during the first Russian Revolution in 1905,
the Social Democratic party counted 14,300 members in the Urals. The
counter-revolution of 1906–07, with its mass arrests and exiles, almost
extinguished the party. With great difficulty, party members managed
to print leaflets and, in 1908, three issues of their illegal newspaper,
The Worker’s Voice. The membership in the Urals declined to 2300 in
1908–1911 and to around 1200 in 1912–1916. In Cheliabinsk, Orenburg
and other cities in the Southern Urals, the party had fewer than 500
members in 1912. Some life stories may illustrate this early history of
the social democratic movement in the Urals.
Samuil Moiseevich Tsvilling (1891–2 April 1918) joined the RSDAP in
1905. He took part in the revolutionary events in Tobolsk in Western
Siberia during the first Russian Revolution. He was arrested and sen-
tenced to death but the verdict was later reduced to five years in prison.
After serving his sentence, Tsvilling became a socialist agitator in the cit-
ies of Tobolsk, Ekaterinburg and Cheliabinsk. He was drafted into the
army in 1914 but soon started to spread Bolshevik agitation against the
war among soldiers.
Sofia Krivaia (1894–1919) moved to Cheliabinsk in 1902. While she
was still at school she joined radical groups that helped political prison-
ers who were held in the transfer prisons in Cheliabinsk after being sen-
tenced to exile in Siberia. She was arrested for the first time at the age of
14 for having contacts with the RSDAP, although she was soon released
because of her age. She was excluded from school, however, and worked
as a teacher and a pharmacist and organised the nurses’ trade union.
In 1915, she became a member of the RSDAP and joined the Bolshevik
wing of the party.
After a few years at a parish school, Dmitrii Koliushchenko (1881–3
June, 1918) worked as an apprentice blacksmith at a winery in Voronezh.
He joined the RSDAP in 1903 and moved to Cheliabinsk, where he
worked as mechanic. In 1910, he started work at ‘Stoll V.G. & K.’ as
a blacksmith and later as a turner. He organised a social democratic
workers’ group that organised the inaugural First of May parade in
Cheliabinsk in 1912, as a protest against the massacres of workers at
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 14 6/27/2011 11:31:34 AM

From the Civil War to the Five-year Plans 15
the Lena gold fields in Siberia. Unrest and strikes were widespread in
the Russian labour market during the years leading up to World War I.
In 1914, Koliushchenko was arrested as a strike leader but was released
after vehement protests from the workers at the factory.
Evdokim Vasenko (1882–1 June, 1918) was another personality in the
city’s labour movement. He had a diploma from the Ekaterinburg min-
ing college and worked as a clerk in the post and telegraph office. He
was active during the first Russian Revolution in 1905 and sentenced
to four years in prison in Novorossiisk. At the outbreak of World War I,
Vasenko was again arrested and exiled to Tobolsk in Siberia.
These were typical lives among those who tried to engage in radical
political activities in Tsarist Russia. Strong social-democratic group and
trade unions were also organised in the old industrial towns of Zlatoust,
Miass and Verkhne-Uralsk.
The outbreak of war in 1914 created a patriotic atmosphere in
Cheliabinsk, as it did throughout the country. Most political parties
supported the Tsar’s proclamation of war against the Kaiser’s Germany.
The only party that agitated against the war from the start was the
Bolshevik social democrats. As the war became more troublesome for
the Tsarist government and no decisive victory had been obtained by
1916, the atmosphere changed profoundly. The general dissatisfaction
intensified towards the end of that year as feeding the workers in the
major cities became more and more difficult.2
The historically crucial events for Russia took place in Petrograd, where
Russian elite groups forced Tsar Nikolai II to resign in February 1917.
Some weeks later, a provisional government was formed. The Russian
Revolution was characterised by the twin power structure that had the
provisional government on one side and the worker, peasant and soldier
deputies’ councils (soviets) on the other. Such a structure emerged in
Cheliabinsk in early March 1917, as power passed from the governor
and the Tsarist administration to the leaders of the local council (zem-
stvo) and the chairman of the city duma, who were appointed as emis-
saries of the provisional government. The workers’ and soldiers’ soviet
re-emerged in the same form as it had had in 1905, with representatives
of the Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries. Samuil Tsvilling
was elected chairman of the workers’ and soldiers’ soviet in the city. The
situation in Cheliabinsk was still unclear and full of unrest, with several
of the new organs actually being quite powerless. Because the revolu-
tionary changes had undermined the police and the courts, a commit-
tee for the security of the society was formed with representatives from
industry, trade and the free professions, as well as from the trade unions
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 15 6/27/2011 11:31:34 AM

16 Tankograd
and labour parties. In Cheliabinsk, this committee grew into a parallel

power organ until the provisional government took control throughout
the entire country. In other cities in the Urals, which had similar situa-
tions, the primary task of such committees was to maintain the produc-
tion of necessary supplies to the fighting army.3 In 1917 a wide variety
of unions and associations grew up spontaneously. In Cheliabinsk, a
number of new organs, unions, clubs and commissions were formed,
with broad popular support. According to various sources, the RSDAP
had between 550 and 900 members in the southern part of the Urals
prior to the February 1917 revolution. A few months later, the consoli-
dated Bolshevik and Menshevik social democrats in Cheliabinsk had
600 members; the party was then allowed to act legally. After Vladimir
Lenin’s return from exile in Switzerland in April 1917, the Bolsheviks
opted openly for Russia’s withdrawal from World War I. This appealed
to the masses and the number of members from among the soldiers,
peasants and workers increased. By late April, the Bolshevik organisa-
tions in the Urals had over 10,000 members, in addition to support
from another 1,560 persons who were members of party organisations
with both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
However, the fact that the population in 1917 was dominated by
peasants, Cossacks and tradesmen meant that the Bolshevik group in
Cheliabinsk did not really have a broad popular support. The Socialist
Revolutionaries (SRs) enjoyed by far the most support from the peas-
ants, but were split on the question of whether the party should sup-
port the peasants’ spontaneous takeover or confiscation of landlords’
property or whether the party should wait for new agrarian laws from a
parliamentary assembly. The most powerful Cossack organisations were
in the Orenburg region in the southern part of the Urals.
Dmitrii Koliushchenko, who organised the first Red Guards, was one
of the leading personalities in the city’s workers’ and soldiers’ soviet
after the February revolution. Another leader of the armed work-
ers’ group was Vladimir Mogilnikov (1895–1918), who only had a few
years of schooling in Brodokalmak and then received education at the
Cheliabinsk pedagogical seminary. He was mobilised into the army in
1914 and received training at the cadet school in Kazan, after which
he was sent to the 169th infantry regiment in Cheliabinsk. In 1917
he joined the RSDAP and organised the Red Guards in the city. Sofia
Krivaia was another member of the first Red Guards in Cheliabinsk.
Tsvilling had earlier been arrested for spreading anti-war propaganda
among the soldiers in the city but was later elected to the leadership
of the Ural section of the RSDAP (Bolsheviks) and participated in the
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 16 6/27/2011 11:31:34 AM

sixth party congress. The elections to the soviet in August 1917 saw the
Bolsheviks gain the majority of the votes, as they had done in other
parts of the Urals. Under the action led by General Kornilov to establish
a military dictatorship in August 1917, which was eagerly supported by
officers in the Urals, the Red Guards were mobilised to fight against the
threat of the counter-revolution. Tsvilling led the ‘Committee for the
Salvation of the Revolution’. As the Red Guards had been completely
legalised in connection with Kornilov’s action, the Bolsheviks attempted
to take power on several occasions shortly afterwards. The number of
organised Bolsheviks in the Urals had grown to 27,000 by July and to
35,000 by autumn as they took power in Petrograd and other cities. In
Cheliabinsk, there were still only 2100 Bolsheviks in September 1917,
yet the party’s core still tried to launch an armed takeover of power in
the city. Evdokim Vasenko was the leading Bolshevik in most events
in Cheliabinsk during 1917 and 1918. He took part in the Second All-
Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd that proclaimed the takeover
of power on 25 October (7 November according to the Gregorian cal-
endar). On his return to Cheliabinsk, Vasenko was elected chairman of
the workers’ and soldiers’ soviet. When the news of successful Soviet
takeover of power in Petrograd reached Cheliabinsk, the Bolsheviks
proclaimed that all power in the city should be handed to the soviet.
Vasenko led the new military-revolutionary committee in the city and
was appointed commissar for internal affairs. Under his leadership, a
peasant and Cossack congress was organised to approve the revolu-
tionary changes, although these new organs could hold on to power
only until 30 October. Following a request from the Mensheviks, the
Constitutional Democrats (Kadets), the Popular Socialists, the Socialist
Revolutionaries and the Cossacks, a military unit of 526 soldiers and
officers under the command of N.N. Titov arrived in Cheliabinsk to dis-
solve the workers’ soviet. The soviet was given an ultimatum to return
power to the city duma and dissolve the soviet and the Red Guard. The
Bolsheviks accepted these demands and made a resolution that the Red
Guards should be dissolved. At the same time, however, they appealed
to other cities for military support to Cheliabinsk as the city had been
surrounded by Cossack units. The Socialist Revolutionaries, for their
part, appealed to the Cossack leaders not to engage more troops and
military pressure in the city as this would probably lead to widespread
fighting with the workers’ guards. Vasenko led the negotiations with
Titov’s Cossacks and a formula was found for handing power back to the
city duma. The revolutionary situation changed again a few weeks later.
Vasilii Bliukher (1890–1938) had participated in World War I but joined
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 17 6/27/2011 11:31:34 AM

18 Tankograd
the RSDAP in 1916 and took the Bolsheviks’ side in 1917. He was a mem-
ber of the military-revolutionary committee that organised the armed
takeover of power in Petrograd. From there, he was sent to Cheliabinsk
and brought strong Red Guard units from the Volga region to firmly
establish Soviet power there. After some minor fighting, Bliukher man-
aged to consolidate Soviet power in Cheliabinsk and from 2 December
1917, Bliukher chaired the military-revolutionary committee in the city.
After these events in October-November, Vladimir Mogilnikov became
the deputy chief of the newly organised secret police in Cheliabinsk.
The most notable armed resistance to the Bolsheviks was organ-
ised by Aleksandr Dutov (1879–1921), the Cossack leader and ataman
(leader). He was an aristocrat, the son of Major-General Ilia Dutov,
Figure 5 Vasilii Bliukher fought in World War I, joined the Russian Social
Democratic Party (RSDAP) in 1916 and joined the Bolsheviks in 1917. He was a
member of the military-revolutionary committee that carried out the Bolshevik
takeover of power in Petrograd in November 1917. He was then sent to help the
Red Guards establish Soviet power in Cheliabinsk. From 2 December, 1917 he
was the chairman of the Cheliabinsk military-revolutionary committee.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 18 6/27/2011 11:31:34 AM

and had received his military training at Nepluev Cadet College and
Nikolai Cavalry Military College. Thereafter, he gained a degree at the
Electrotechnical Institute in Kharkov. He participated in the Russo-
Japanese War of 1904–1905 and graduated from the General Staff
Academy in 1908. During World War I, Dutov commanded the 1st
Cavalry Division of the Orenburg Cossacks and by 1918 had advanced
to the rank of lieutenant-general. In 1917, Dutov was appointed chair-
man of the Orenburg Cossacks and was given responsibility by the pro-
visional government for the food supply in the Urals. Dutov did not
recognise the Soviet takeover of power in Petrograd or elsewhere. In
November 1917, he led an armed uprising in Orenburg to establish mili-
tary power and started by arresting dozens of local Bolsheviks. Dutov
attempted to organise a wide anti-Bolshevik movement in support of
the fallen provisional government. He proclaimed state of emergency
throughout the Cheliabinsk and Orenburg provinces (gubernii). Power
was transferred to the Cossack’s military council, which still accepted
the legitimacy of the provisional government. On 15 (28) November,
all Bolsheviks in Orenburg were arrested but soon managed to escape
from the prison. Dutov was supported by Mensheviks and Socialist
Revolutionaries and established a ‘Committee for the Salvation of the
Fatherland and the Revolution’. The name alluded to similar committees
that had been formed in Cheliabinsk in August 1917 with extraordinary
power to fight against General Kornilov and the threat of a military
dictatorship.
Dutov’s primary support came in the form of hundreds of Cossack
officers, who managed to gather 7000 soldiers and take power in
Orenburg, Troitsk and Verkhne-Uralsk. However, the majority of
Orenburg Cossacks were hesitant to support Dutov’s action. They were
not united against the Bolshevik takeover of power and some Cossacks
even expressed their sympathy for the Red side. Among these Cossacks
were the brothers Ivan (1890–1938) and Dmitrii Kashirin (1888–1938),
who grew up in a large Cossack family and studied at Orenburg Junker
School until 1909. In 1917, Ivan became a member of the RSDAP. After
the February revolution, he chaired a military division’s party commis-
sion and then the Orenburg workers’ and soldiers’ soviet. During the
summer of 1918, Ivan’s units fought against the units of General Dutov
and the Czech Legion. He led a new partisan army in the Urals and after
joining the regular Red Army units he was promoted to brigade com-
mander of the Third Army on the Red side.4
A third brother, Nikolai, had also fought in World War I. After
the February 1917 revolution, he became chairman of a regimental
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 19 6/27/2011 11:31:34 AM

20 Tankograd
committee and later formed the voluntary Verkhne-Uralsk Cossack

units. From 16 July until October 1918, he was commander of the Urals
partisan army and from January 1919 commanded the 30th infantry
division of the Eastern Red Army. In 1920, Nikolai was appointed corps
commander of the Southern Red Army.5
The Bolsheviks mobilised workers’ and Red Guard units from
Petrograd, Moscow and Ufa, Samara and Motovilikhi. When these
superior troops approached Orenburg, Dutov’s army was forced to fight
hopeless battles of retreat along the railway from Cheliabinsk to Troitsk
and in the town of Verkhne-Uralsk. The regular units were then dis-
solved and dispersed into smaller armed units for self-defence in the
Cossack villages on the steppe in the Turgai region. Samuil Tsvilling
was killed in one of these battles with Cossack units.
The situation in the Southern Urals was characterised by sharp divi-
sions between the radical soviets in Cheliabinsk and the industrial
towns of Zlatoust and Miass, on the one hand, and the countryside,
on the other, where the Cossacks were the fiercest and best organised
opponents of the soviets and the Bolsheviks. During the elections to the
Constituent Assembly in December 1918, the Socialist Revolutionaries
gained overwhelming majorities in most peasant districts.
The Civil War in the Southern Urals
Soviet power was established throughout Russia following the success-

ful coup of November 1917 in Petrograd. Cheliabinsk was also the first
major city in which Soviet power was overturned in 1918 but this was
little more than a minor historical incident. Czech prisoners of war
from the Austro-Hungarian army were released in order to travel back
to Europe and fight for an independent Czechoslovakia. The POWs
had been formed into a well equipped and well armed corps of 40,000
men. They were to travel on the Trans-Siberian Railway to the Far East,
from where they would head back to Europe by sea. This Czech Corps
was divided among dozens of train echelons across the entire railway
but many Czechs feared that the Red rulers were slowing their journey
through Russia. Several train echelons were held up at the railway sta-
tion in Cheliabinsk. This unit had approximately 12,000 soldiers and
was under the command of General Sergei Voitsekhovskii (1883–1951),
who had graduated from the General Staff Academy in 1912 and been
promoted to lieutenant-general in the Tsarist army. From the summer
of 1917 he directed the staff of the Czech corps and he was also to be a
key figure in the resistance to the Bolsheviks.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 20 6/27/2011 11:31:34 AM

The trains with Czech officers and soldiers had been delayed at
Cheliabinsk’s railway station and many conflicts occurred with the
local soviet. Rumours spread among the commanders that the soldiers
were to be sent back to German captivity. During a skirmish on 14 May,
a Hungarian prisoner of war from another train heading westwards was
killed – this event had drastic consequences. The people’s commissar of
defence, Leon Trotsky, sent a swift order to the soviet in Cheliabinsk to
disarm the corps but the strong Czech soldiers refused to allow them to
do so. The local soviet then arrested ten suspected Czech soldiers. The
commander of the corps considered this an illegal act and, on 17 May,
sent a group of soldiers into the city centre.
Regular Red Army soldiers had started to receive training in the spring
of 1918 but their numbers in Cheliabinsk totalled no more than 1500
soldiers and 120 officers. Even when they were joined by the Red Guards
in the city, these weak forces could not cope with the battle-hardened
and well equipped Czech troops. As a result, the Czech Legion took over
the central parts of the city, surrounded its garrison and dissolved the
Red Guard. In less than one day, the city had fallen into the hands of
the Czech troops – this uprising was to be the start of the Russian Civil
War.6 On 27 May 1918 Vladimir Mogilnikov was arrested by the Czechs
and he was executed on 3 June.7
Immediately after the Czech rebellion, Koliushchenko was arrested
and on the same day as Mogilnikov he was executed by Cossacks with
sabres. Other leading revolutionaries, including M.A. Boleiko, P.Ia.
Triashkin and Sh.I. Goziosskii, were also executed.8 The White Armies
soon had total control of the Southern Urals and large parts of Siberia.
On 1 June power was formally transferred to the head of the city’s gar-
rison and the Committee for People’s Power was formed a few days
later. This constituent assembly contained representatives from politi-
cal parties, religious associations and the Cossacks. The parties that had
opposed the Bolsheviks were free to act in the city. Among these were
the Socialist Revolutionaries, who had received the most votes in the
elections to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly in December 1917.
Other active political parties in Cheliabinsk were the Menshevik Social
Democrats, the Popular Socialists and the Union for Russia’s Rebirth
party. In August 1918, a conference was organised to debate the future
political system in the country. For a couple of months, Cheliabinsk
had self-governance and there were elections to various assemblies
and organs. Many people sympathised with the aim to convene a con-
stituent assembly, as expressed in the so-called Ufa Declaration. The
Directorate in Ufa was initially supported by General Denikin, whose
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 21 6/27/2011 11:31:35 AM

22 Tankograd
Voluntary Army constituted its main military force. However, given the
tense situation in the country, Cossack leaders in Orenburg, along with
other personalities in the armed forces, instead supported the establish-
ment of a direct military dictatorship. The dictatorship option had been
widely discussed as the only means to combat Bolshevik power in the
country’s centre and in the industrial towns in the Urals.
Figure 6 The Cossack leader, ‘ataman’ Aleksandr Dutov (1870–1921) was a noble-
man and the son of Major-General Ilja Dutov. He received his education at Nepluev
Cadet School and Nikolai Cavalry Military College, after which he received his
degree from Kharkov’s Electro-technical College. He participated in the 1904–1905
Russo-Japanese War and then graduated from the General Staff Academy in 1908.
During World War I, Dutov commanded the 1st Orenburg Cossacks’ Cavalry
Division and by 1918 had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 22 6/27/2011 11:31:35 AM

The rebellion of the Czech troops in Cheliabinsk had therefore been

successful and, at the same time, had taken control over several cit-
ies along the Trans-Siberian Railway. At the time, General Dutov, who
had been appointed field ataman of all Russia’s Cossacks in April 1918,
set up an anti-Bolshevik Cossack army in the Southern Urals. General
Sergei Voitsekhovskii was commander of the Czech troops in the
Cheliabinsk-Ekaterinburg regions and also, later in 1918, of the Czech
forces in Samara.
The Bolsheviks responded swiftly to the revolt of the Czech Legion
and takeover of the Trans-Siberian Railway. In May 1918, the workers’
soviet was evacuated to Ekaterinburg. Vasenko did not escape and was
arrested in the nearby village of Argaiash and strangled to death by
White officers as he was being brought back to Cheliabinsk. In order to
combat the Czech troops, which controlled virtually the entire Trans-
Siberian Railway from Samara to Vladivostok, the Red Army leaders
formed the Eastern Army Group under the command of Mikhail Frunze
(1885–1925).9 When the Czech troops took control of Cheliabinsk in
June 1918, Bliukher formed a partisan army, which, after heavy fight-
ing, managed to join the Red Army units. The units of Ivan Kashirin
were fighting in the southern mountains and managed to reach the
regular Third Army in the Eastern Army Group in the city of Kungur.
Those Red Army soldiers who did not manage to flee from the Czech
Legion units, together with Bliukher, dissolved their units and even
joined the opponents of the Bolsheviks on the White side.
The 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets proclaimed ‘mass terror
against the bourgeoisie’. The Ural Chekists arrested hundreds of intel-
lectuals and persons in the free professions in Ekaterinburg, Perm and
Cheliabinsk. This ‘Red Terror’ was intensified all over the country after
the August assassination attempts on Lenin and Semën Uritskii, the
leader of the Petrograd Cheka.10
Aleksandr Kolchak (1874–1920) was the son of a navy officer and
received his education at St Petersburg Classical Lyceum and the Navy
Cadet Corps. He took part in polar expeditions, fought in the Russo-
Japanese war in 1904–1905 and World War I, then served as vice-admiral
and supreme commander of the Pacific Ocean Fleet. He resigned in 1917
and travelled to the United States on a study trip. He accepted an offer
to join the British navy and was sent to control the Chinese-Eastern
Railway (from Siberia to Vladivostok through Manchuria). The British
and French governments supported the anti-Bolshevik armies in Russia
and had made several attempts to unite the various armies that were
fighting against the Red Army in the summer and autumn of 1918.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 23 6/27/2011 11:31:35 AM

24 Tankograd
Figure 7 Ivan Dmitrievich Kashirin (1890–1937) was the son of a Cossack fam-
ily and, like his brother Nikolai (1888–1938), received his basic education in
Orenburg’s Junker School. From 1917, Ivan was a member of the RSDAP and,
after the February revolution, was chairman in an army division committee
and then chairman of Orenburg’s district soviet. In the summer of 1918, Ivan
Kashirin fought against the troops of Dutov and the Czech Legion. He led an
army unit in the Urals partisan army and then became brigade commander in
the Third Army on the Red side in the Civil War. From 1920 onwards, he was
active in the VChK-OGPU secret police. During the collectivisation of the coun-
tryside, he led repressive operations against peasants in the Volga region. He was
arrested and then executed in 1937 during the Great Terror.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 24 6/27/2011 11:31:35 AM

Figure 8 Admiral Aleksandr Vasilevich Kolchak (1874–1920), the son of a naval

officer, received his education at the Saint Petersburg Classical Lyceum and the
Naval Cadet Corps. He participated in Polar expeditions, the Russo-Japanese War
and World War I, in which he commanded the Black Sea Navy as a vice-admiral.
He resigned in 1917 and started a study visit to the United States of America.
He then accepted an invitation to enrol in the British navy and took over the
command of the Chinese-Russian Far Eastern Railways. One way in which Great
Britain and France attempted to establish a broad anti-Bolshevik coalition was
by betting on Admiral Kolchak. In 1918, he travelled through China to Siberia
together with his British and French military advisors. In November of that year,
Kolchak declared a military dictatorship in Russia.
One of their moves was to support Admiral Kolchak as the supreme

leader of the anti-Bolshevik forces. Kolchak travelled from China to
Siberia and was appointed war and naval minister in the Directorate
in Omsk in October 1918. The following month, with the support of
British and French advisors, Kolchak proclaimed a military dictatorship
over all of Russia. This caused legal and organised political life to disap-
pear in the parts of Russia that were under Kolchak’s regime. A White
Terror was unleashed in the Urals and Siberia, directed against anyone
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 25 6/27/2011 11:31:35 AM

26 Tankograd
who had supported Soviet power. The White side soon abandoned all
the principles of the state of law and democracy, directing their atten-
tion not only against Bolshevik and active socialists but also against
others in the civil population who had neither accepted nor supported
the Soviets. The White Armies also enforced harsh grain requisition
policies on the peasantry.11
In June 1918, Cheliabinsk’s new rulers outlawed the Bolshevik party.
The communists responded by forming an underground committee
that had a few hundred activists by the winter of 1918–1919 and dis-
tributed leaflets that were printed at an underground printing house.
However, the underground Bolshevik organisation was too weak to
shake the new military order. An attempt to organise an armed work-
ers’ uprising failed after a provocateur had disclosed its plans. In March
1919, 60 Bolsheviks were executed. Sofia Krivaia was one of the activ-
ists of the underground Bolshevik organisation in Cheliabinsk. She was
arrested on 29 March 1919 and tortured and interrogated at Ufa prison,
where she died on the night of 17–18 May.12
Figure 9 Young railway workers who took part in the battles against Kolchak’s
army in the Southern Urals. Photograph from 22 April 1920.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 26 6/27/2011 11:31:36 AM

Many people who had been active in politics before 1917 died dur-
ing the Civil War. Those who joined the Bolshevik Party in the 1920s
had a different, and often more diffuse image of the social transforma-
tion that the party leaders such as Lenin and Trotsky had envisioned.
The further one went from the Soviet centre, the more importance was
given to the Soviet government’s policy on taxes, wages and prices, as
well as the perspectives of the local leaders on the region in question.
In the winter and spring of 1918–1919, the White Army, under Admiral
Kolchak, achieved its most far-reaching control of territory in Siberia
and the Urals. Along with the Czech Legion, they controlled practically
the entire stretch along the Trans-Siberian Railway from Ekaterinburg
and Cheliabinsk in the west to Vladivostok in the east. They also con-
trolled the area from Ufa in Bashkiria across the whole mountainous
region of the Southern Urals. In February 1919, Admiral Kolchak held
Figure 10 Nurses Evdokia Davydova (left) and Taisia Kuznetsova (right) in the
Red partisan units during the Civil War. The photograph is from 1919.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 27 6/27/2011 11:31:36 AM

28 Tankograd
Figure 11 The Diadins’ house on the Kommuna and Elkin streets was consid-
ered the most comfortable hotel among the many that flourished in the boom
years after the Trans-Siberian Railway was built. It was established in 1908 by
Mikhail Diadin, a merchant. During the Civil War, the house was first used by
the White Army and thereafter for the staff of Tukhachevskii’s Red Army in
1919. The photo is from the mid-1920s.
a military council in Cheliabinsk at which it was decided to initiate a

great offensive westwards.
At the same time, the Red Army was planning a counter-offensive
in order to force Kolchak’s troops away from the Urals. The advance
of the Red Army through the Urals in 1919 was very successful. In
spring and summer, the Fifth Army, under the command of the young
Mikhail Tukhachevskii (1893–1937) led victorious operations through
the passes in the mountains of the Southern Urals. The Reds were also
able to mount subversive operations behind the front lines of Kolchak’s
troops.
The Battle of Cheliabinsk, July–August 1919
Having given up and retreated from Ufa, Zlatoust and Troitsk, the White
Armies’ commanders expected to force a decisive battle at Cheliabinsk
in August 1919. These operations had started with the battle of Zlatoust,
over 200 kilometres west of Cheliabinsk. Tukhachevskii’s Fifth Army
had 32,000 soldiers, 100 guns and 713 machine guns, while the White
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 28 6/27/2011 11:31:37 AM

Siberian army, under the command of Sergei Voitzekhovski (1883–1951),

was almost as strong and well equipped. The Red side started a frontal
attack in the direction of Cheliabinsk and a smaller attack south-west
towards Troitsk at the same time. Having broken through the defen-
sive line of the White 35th Army, Tukhachevskii’s army advanced
towards Cheliabinsk. General Voitzkhovskii then changed his tactics
and ordered a fast retreat. The divisions of the Siberian Army regrouped
and reinforced in order to be able to attack the Red Army units inside
the limits of Cheliabinsk city and ‘take them as in a sack’. The plan was
that the White Armies would then start a counter-offensive to press the
Red Army back beyond the Urals.
Figure 12 Map of the battle of Cheliabinsk, July–August 1919.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 29 6/27/2011 11:31:37 AM

30 Tankograd
After heavy fighting the Red Army conquered Cheliabinsk on 24 July

but the next day the White Army initiated two counterstrikes, from
the north and the south. The Red Army withstood the advance in the
south but the Whites were successful in the north. They forced a wedge
between two Red divisions and cut off the railway from Cheliabinsk
to Ekaterinburg, a move which threatened the support and rear of the
Red Armies. Eight thousand workers were mobilised to strengthen the
White Army units and another 4500 men were formed into workers’
guards. With this concentration of forces, Tukachevskii started his coun-
ter-attack and between 29 July and 1 August they eliminated General
Voitzekhovskii’s foremost divisions. This allowed the Fifth Army to con-
tinue its operations and consolidate its hold over the city. The Battle of
Cheliabinsk was extremely bloody and an estimated 40,000 men died
Figure 13 The 26-year-old Tukhachevskii in a typical top cap, or ‘budionovka’,

named after the legendary Red Cavalry commander Semion Budionnyi.
Tukhachevskii commanded the Fifth Eastern Army that fought its way through
the Ural Mountains in the early summer of 1919 and won a victory over General
Voizekhovskii’s White units in the battle of Cheliabinsk in July–August 1919.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 30 6/27/2011 11:31:38 AM

in battle on each side. The battle continued for an entire week, with
skirmishes inside the city and major encounters around its boundaries.
The Battle of Cheliabinsk was one of the key encounters of the Russian
Civil War and the most bloody at the eastern front lines. However, the
loss of life during these battles, even including the partisan or peasant
armies, made up only a small percentage of the total number of soldiers
who died in these years. Diseases such as typhus, fever and malaria
took many more lives. Likewise, the number of victims of the Red and
White Terrors was far lower than the number of civilians who died from
under-nourishment or poor immune defence against epidemics, in par-
ticular the influenza pandemic (‘the Spanish flu’).13
Tukhachevskii was awarded the Order of the Red Star for his suc-
cessful planning and implementation of the decisive operations of the
Fifth Red Army in the Southern Urals. He remained in Cheliabinsk for
a couple more weeks in order to plan the next operations of the Fifth
Army, in Siberia.14 Throughout the autumn of 1919, minor cleansing
operations continued in the region around Cheliabinsk against scat-
tered Cossack units and remnants of Kolchak’s divisions. The Southern
Urals had been reconquered by the Red side and a state of emergency
was introduced that lasted until 1920.
Mikhail Tukhachevskii was one of many commanders in the Red Army
with a background in the Tsarist army. In only a few years he advanced
to the rank of komandarm – general or commander of an army. In 1917,
he returned from captivity in Germany and in the spring of 1918 he
volunteered for the Red Army and was soon adopted as a member of the
Communist Party. He expressed radical ideas about how communism
should be spread internationally in order to consolidate the revolution.
Tukhachevskii was given responsibility for ever larger military units.
In 1920, he commanded the Western Army in a counter-attack against
Jósef Pilsudski’s army into Poland. During the Russian Civil War and
the Russo-Polish War of 1920, the basis was laid for Tukhachevskii to
rethink the conditions of modern warfare. His desire to find the causes
of the Red Army’s defeat outside Warsaw in August 1920 (‘the miracle
at Wisla’) spurred Tukhachevskii to formulate new ideas on mobile war-
fare with the latest weapons technology. A few years later, he combined
these insights with a vision of the possibilities of a mechanised war
using fast-moving armour units and the airforce.15
Admiral Kolchak’s troops had lost an important battle in Cheliabinsk
and his last strategic reserves were weakened. The White Armies had
been split into northern and southern wings and they were unable
to cooperate since the Red Army had captured both Cheliabinsk and
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 31 6/27/2011 11:31:38 AM

32 Tankograd
Troitsk. The wealthier peasants in Western Siberia had initially sup-

ported Kolchak’s regime but the harsh repression of his military dic-
tatorship led to a peasants’ rebellion against the White Armies. This
further weakened the White Armies in Siberia, which allowed the Red
Army to advance swiftly along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Kolchak
resigned as supreme commander in January 1920 and travelled east-
wards. At Irkutsk, on Lake Baikal, the Socialist Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks arrested Kolchak and handed him over to the Bolsheviks
for interrogation. Their original idea was to stage a trial against him but
the Bolshevik leaders instead decided to execute him under the pretence
that the strained situation did not allow for an open trial. Kolchak was
executed on 7 February 1920. After the Battle of Cheliabinsk, General
Dutov’s Cossack troops also retreated through Siberia and managed to
reach China. Dutov himself was murdered in March 1921 by Cheka
soldiers. Together with Kolchak’s troops, many engineers and intellec-
tuals from Cheliabinsk decided to flee, even if they had not been active
opponents of Soviet power.
Power had thus changed several times in the Urals and Western
Siberia, from the Reds to the Bolsheviks and Soviet power, then to the
anti-Bolshevik regimes that had demanded the Constituent Assembly
regather according to the election results of December 1917, and finally
Kolchak’s military dictatorship. At times, some areas in the Southern
Urals were controlled by so-called Free Cossacks. When the White
Armies took control of an area, they enforced an anti-peasant policy of
not letting the revolutionary change of landed property remain, which
led to peasant rebellions in the rear of the White Army. These con-
stant regime changes meant ever less for the ordinary citizens when the
sheer material conditions of life deteriorated each month. The White
troops had evacuated much industrial equipment and production from
Cheliabinsk and Zlatoust. In total, 43 trainloads with over 4000 railcars
were sent away with such equipment. The leaders of the White Army
knew that they would not have time to evacuate these goods fully so
they set the trains on fire instead.
The Red Army’s victory in the Civil War of 1919–20 led to the consoli-
dation of Soviet power in the Urals. Through the workers’ and peasants’
councils, the soviets were re-established and became the basis of the
new power system.16 However, the triumphant Bolsheviks encountered
opposition from other peasants, who protested against the forced grain
requisition, to which they had already been subject at the hands of
the Red and White sides during the war. Peasant households were fre-
quently plundered. Other groups in the population protested against
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 32 6/27/2011 11:31:38 AM

the forced labour system, rationing and the abolition of the monetary
system. On 29 August 1919 the provincial revolutionary committee
(gubrevkom) became the leading organ in Cheliabinsk. On 3 September
the All-Russian Executive Committee (VTsIK) defined the borders of the
newly established Cheliabinsk province (guberniia), which was to incor-
porate the former districts (uezd) of Cheliabinsk, Kurgan, Kustanai and
Troitsk. Revolutionary order in the Southern Urals was retained through
the winter of 1919–1920 by the Bolshevik party, with the provincial
directorate of the Extraordinary Commission established to combat the
counter-revolution (VChK). The first local ChK leader in Cheliabinsk
was Andrei Korosin, who had extensive experience with the secret
police. He was sent to Cheliabinsk on the orders of Feliks Dzerzhinskii
with the task of eliminating the remaining units of Kolchak’s armies
and controlling the requisition of food from the peasants.
The food situation was better in the Southern Urals than it was in many
cities that had been depopulated during the Civil War. In May 1920 a
train loaded with over 400 tons of grain was sent from Cheliabinsk to
Moscow to be distributed to starving people in other regions.
Militarisation of labour and force against the peasantry
Towards the end of the Civil War, Leon Trotsky, People’s commis-
sar of the army and navy, advanced the idea that, instead of merely
demobilising the Red Army units, the soldiers should be retained and
should form so-called labour armies.17 Similarly, on 10 January, General
Mikhail Matiasevich, the commander of the Third Red Army, proposed
to the highest military leadership that his units should be transformed
into ‘The First Revolutionary Labour Army of the Republic’. A few days
later, the Council of the People’s Commissars adopted a resolution to
form ‘The Labour Army of the Urals’, which would be regrouped for the
recovery tasks for the economy in general and the reconstruction of the
railway network in particular. Several other labour armies were formed
in other parts of the country and a set of rules was written up for these
armies. The Labour Army of the Urals was engaged in public works
in Cheliabinsk. From 15 April to 1 July, 1920, more than 2.5 million
Red Army soldiers took part in these economic activities. Initially, the
Labour Army of the Urals was led by Trotsky, who visited Cheliabinsk
in March 1920, and it was later commanded by Georgii Piatakov. The
First Labour Army of the Urals can be credited with rebuilding railway
lines and organising supplies of food, fodder for the farms and lumber
for heating factories. The labour army continued tasks of this nature for
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 33 6/27/2011 11:31:38 AM

34 Tankograd
Figure 14 A military parade in Troitsk on 20 July 1920 celebrates the first anni-
versary of the victory over Kolchak’s troops in the Urals. The fight for the Urals
started in June 1919 when the Eastern Army Group, under the command of Leon
Trotsky and Mikhail Tukhachveskii, first conquered the old industrial cities of
Zlatoust and Miass in the mountains. Following this, the Battle of Cheliabinsk
started on 24 July, involved heavy, bloody fighting, and ended on 4 August with
the Red Army emerging victorious.
more than two years and then also took part in building houses and
repairing factories. The army was dissolved in 1921 with the introduc-
tion of the New Economic Policy.
The fact that these labour armies were led by the most prominent
Bolshevik leaders – Joseph Stalin in the Ukraine and Grigorii Zinoviev
in Petrograd, for example – shows that the communists paid great atten-
tion the use of militarised labour forms in the transition phase after the
revolution.18 In the last year of the so-called war communism, purely
militarised work conditions were not presented merely as solutions in
a desperate situation or as a way to avoid anarchic conditions for the
workers when the Red Army demobilised. Trotsky was among those who
depicted ‘labour armies’ as forerunners of things to come, an embry-
onic form of labour in a socialist society. In response to Karl Kautsky,
the grand old man of German social democracy, who had harshly criti-
cised the Russian Revolution for its terror and undemocratic methods,
Trotsky raised a number of arguments in favour of militarised labour.
Although Trotsky’s pamphlet entitled Communism and Terror (1920) is
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 34 6/27/2011 11:31:38 AM

mainly polemic against German social democracy for its support of the
bourgeois governments, it also contains a number of theses advocating
forced labour. In the same vein, Lenin had also criticised Kautsky for his
1914 betrayal of the cause of the Second International’s anti-war pro-
gramme.19 Nikolai Bukharin, who belonged to the Left in the Bolshevik
Party at the time, wrote enthusiastically about the role of violence and
force during the transition to socialism. Lenin eagerly and positively
commented on these specific passages of Bukharin’s book.20
In actual fact, forced requisition without immediate payments to the
peasants had already been introduced in 1916 by the Tsarist govern-
ment. The provisional government continued this policy in 1917. In
1918, the Bolshevik government tried for a short time to make requisi-
tions seem like an extension of the class struggle, a way to force the
wealthier peasants to give up their grain to the Poor Peasants commit-
tees that were sent out into the countryside.
The Bolsheviks’ economic policy during ‘war communism’ attempted
to establish a fair and direct exchange of products between the city and
the countryside. From September 1919 to April 1920, 800,000 tons of
Figure 15 Forced requisition (prodrazverstka) in Shchadrinsk in the Cheliabinsk

region in 1919. These exceptional measures to force the peasants to deliver
crops and other products without monetary compensation continued in 1920
and then provoked several peasant uprisings in various parts of Russia. In the
Southern Urals, peasants forced the so-called Blue Army to stop Bolshevik req-
uisitions of grain.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 35 6/27/2011 11:31:39 AM

36 Tankograd
grain and 32,000 tons of meat were to be exchanged for family quotas
of textiles, sugar, matches and soup. Because of the shrinking amounts
of products from industry, the collections became characterised as
confiscation without compensation; this led to widespread protests in
the regions that the Reds controlled. In the Southern Urals, organised
peasant revolts occurred in 1920–1921. In the Kurgan district, peasants
formed the so-called Blue Army, which the Red Army was able to crush
only after extremely harsh measures.
The most organised opposition to Soviet power came from soldiers
who had deserted from the Red Army and formed their own military
units to fight the new Cheliabinsk authorities. The local press reported
that 30,230 deserters had been captured between November 1919 and
November 1920; the real number of armed peasant rebels was prob-
ably much higher. These loosely organised groups were united by slo-
gans such as ‘Down with the communists!’ ‘Abolish forced requisitions!’
and ‘Reinstate free trade!’ The largest peasant army in the Cheliabinsk
guberniia called itself the Blue Army and had approximately 50,000 sol-
diers, mainly from Cossack villages in the south. However, they did
not present well-organised military formations and the Red Army and
Cheka units were easily able to pacify the region. The Cheka sentenced
143 rebellious peasants, 60 of whom were to be executed and the rest
sent to prisons. Cheliabinsk’s prisons, referred to as ‘correction houses’
after the revolution, accommodated 10,097 prisoners in 1920. Troitsk,
Kurgan and Verkhneuralsk also housed hundreds of prisoners after the
Civil War.
Concentration camps were established during the Civil War in places
like Miass, Verkhneuralsk, Troitsk and Kurgan as detention places
for defeated Cossacks and other political prisoners from the peasant
armies.21 In March 1921 several hundred nuns from the convent in
Cheliabinsk received long-term sentences. Because Soviet historians
have not studied these early camps for political prisoners, very little
is known about their character. The camps had been used at times
for German and other prisoners of war from 1914–1917.22 Most of the
camps were considered to be temporary solutions and most of the peas-
ants detained were allowed to go home after short periods. The Urals
camps for imprisoned Cossack families were quickly dissolved. The
more elaborate opponents of Soviet power, such as former White offic-
ers or Cossack leaders, were under constant surveillance by the Cheka
and special registers were kept of political opponents. During the col-
lectivisation drive from 1930 to 1932 and the Great Terror in 1937, these
lists of names were often used to determine which categories of the
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 36 6/27/2011 11:31:39 AM

population should be targeted by various ‘mass operations’ of repres-

sion and terror.23
In the spring of 1921, Lenin became the first member of the
Communist Party to publicly admit that the earlier economic system
had been a failure. A New Economic Policy (NEP) was introduced that
gave the peasants the right to trade their surplus freely on the market,
after having paid a tax in kind (in the form of grain or other products).
These changes came too late, however, to avoid a disastrous famine,
which had several causes. The immediate cause was a severe drought in
many parts of southern Russia.24 At the same time, a number of small
enterprises were given back to their former owners and private owner-
ship was allowed in certain categories of trade and industry. Foreign
owners were offered concessions to their enterprises in Russia.
Before the NEP produced any benefits, the consequences of the Civil
War and the earlier Bolshevik economic policy took a high toll. There
was a disastrous scarcity of foodstuffs and mortality rose sharply in
the cities. In the Cheliabinsk guberniia, over 30,000 people died as a
direct effect of the famine and reduced immunity to illnesses. The city’s
population dropped from 62,654 in 1920 to 55,735 in 1923.25
The suffering people received help from two Russian and several for-
eign organisations that sent food and medicine and built shelters and
restaurants in the Volga region as well as in other regions. The leading
relief organisation was the American Relief Administration (ARA), which
distributed food to over 80,000 people in the guberniia and to more
than 7000 people in the city of Cheliabinsk, where food was distributed
from seven canteens. American doctors who accompanied the ARA
were alarmed by the lack of competent personnel in local hospitals. In
Cheliabinsk, for example, a barber was responsible for the polyclinic,
an ordinary industrial worker performed the role in Ekaterinburg and
a veterinarian assumed the same duties in Ufa. None of these people
had reliable information about the most frequent illnesses or epidem-
ics in the region. The Americans distributed medicine in the hope that
it would be of at least some use.26 At the same time, ARA personnel,
particularly those who were officers in the US Army, were under surveil-
lance from the Soviet secret police, who suspected that these Americans
were carrying intelligence work as well as philanthropy.
A great social problem in Cheliabinsk in the 1920s, as in the other
parts of Soviet Russia after seven years of wars, was the great number of
orphans and homeless children, known as bezprizorniki. Authorities esti-
mated there were over 125,000 bezprizorniki in the Russian republic in
1920. Following the massive famine of 1921–22, this number increased
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 37 6/27/2011 11:31:39 AM

38 Tankograd
Figure 16 Registration of people waiting for a place in the night shelters in

Cheliabinsk. In 1921, 40 per cent of Russia’s territory was struck by a disastrous
famine that left more than 20 million people starving. Many fled to more pros-
perous, less badly hit areas in Siberia and desperate people gathered in the wait-
ing halls at the Cheliabinsk railway station. More than 100,000 persons were
registered at the Cheliabinsk evacuation centres in 1921. In that year, more than
600 children were evacuated from the famine-stricken districts in Cheliabinsk
to the grain-rich areas in Siberia, a measure that only marginally relieved the
procurement situation in the city.
to over half a million children. By the end of the 1920s, there were still
130,000 orphans in approximately 2000 orphanages.
The fate of these children depended on whether they had relatives
who could take care of them. Some children were sent to foster homes,
others were put to work in factories, artisan shops or peasant house-
holds. The Soviet state strove to give these children a fair chance of
elementary education and basic professional training. Many radical
pedagogical methods were tested in the 1920s, particularly regarding
the criminalised gangs of youths that hung around in the big cities.
The pedagogy of Anton Makarenko is one example of how the Soviets
tried to form new citizens out of this lost generation. Other children’s
colonies were founded by the secret police.27
This section has covered the first dimension in the Soviet drama:
how the wars changed Russian society and what the consequences were
of the militarisation of society. As the well known Hungarian-Soviet
economist Evgenii Varga did in a booklet that was not published in
the USSR until the 1960s, many historians have emphasised the severe
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 38 6/27/2011 11:31:39 AM

Figure 17 Workshops for shoemaking, binding, weaving and tailoring were the
first labour schools for hundreds of young people.
impact that the brutalisation, terror and reprisals during the Civil War
had on the people and their new leadership.
The next dimension concerns what Babel and Souvarine discussed in
Paris; how industry and the economy at large prepared for the expected
next great war.
Recovery under the New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy (NEP) that was introduced in 1921 gave the
peasants freedom to trade their grain surplus after paying a tax in kind.
Small enterprises could be taken back by their former owners and the
large industries remained state property. This mixed economy did, in
fact, reinvigorate the economy within a few years and trade boomed
after the disastrous period of 1918–1921. In the mid-1920s, Cheliabinsk
was again a flourishing trade centre for the peasants in the surround-
ing villages. The population increased greatly from 1923 onwards. This
reflected the well known phenomenon that, following many years of
suffering, population tends to experience a compensatory high natal-
ity. Livestock in Cheliabinsk was also reconstituted after the war years.
In 1920 there were 210,000 horses and 249,000 cows but this number
dropped in 1922 to 82,000 horses and 89,000 cows. The stock of horses
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 39 6/27/2011 11:31:39 AM

40 Tankograd
had not recovered by 1927, when there were only 190,000 horses, but
there were 315,000 cows in the smaller Cheliabinsk district (okrug) that
was merely a part of the guberniia.
The NEP was a success until 1926. However, as the situation of the
peasants changed at a faster pace than that of the industrial workers
and as unemployment surged in the cities, a Leftist opposition within
the Communist Party warned that growing income differences and
the emergence of new social classes were undermining Soviet power.
Nouveau riche personalities, so-called NEP-men with a pattern of
conspicuous consumption, were considered to have become the new
exploiting category. Similarly, the wealthier peasants, pejoratively called
‘kulaks’, were considered to be the exploiting class in the countryside.
However, trade was also sensitive to all movements on the market. A
price structure that was unfavourable for the peasants led to less grain
being sold at the market. International conflicts and the war scare led
to speculative price increases in autumn 1927. The state refrained from
raising its fixed purchase prices despite changes in the size of the har-
vest or the movements on the market.
The general opinion in the party leadership was that since the main
industrial enterprises were state owned, there was no risk of capital-
ist restoration and the demands of the workers must be given higher
priority. The Soviet state could not yet cope with the geopolitical chal-
lenges that had emerged after World War I. After the mid-1920s, the
Soviet leadership considered that the mixed model of the NEP economy
had exhausted its potential. The fact that Soviet agriculture was, to a
large extent, still considered self-sufficient for domestic consumption,
hampered the development of industry. The internal market was too
small for the consumer industry to receive enough demand for long-
term growth.
A new industrial landscape emerges
The natural resources of the Urals have been utilised ever since the reign
of Peter the Great in the 18th century, when iron works were estab-
lished. William Chamberlin wrote:
An old Russian joke goes that the schoolboy who hesitates where a pre-
cious metal is found can assuredly answer that it exists in the Urals.
These mountains are poor in carbon coal, but rich in almost all miner-
als: iron, copper, gold, platina, nickel, asbest, lead, zinc, cobalt, wana-
din and kali – to mention only some of the more important ones.28
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 40 6/27/2011 11:31:40 AM

Many industrial projects were envisioned in the Urals after the end of
the 19th century, but economic calculations predicted they would be
unprofitable. In the latter half of the 19th century, industries in south-
ern Russia and the Ukraine were vastly more expansive than those
in the Urals. Geopolitics had made it important to spread important
industries to the interior of the country, and farther from the parts of
the Ukraine that might come within range of foreign bomber planes in
possible future war zones.
The Bolshevik industrialisation drive was heavily influenced by
the global economic crisis that started in 1929. From the end of the
1920s, the strategic considerations of the army, which assumed that the
most probable threat would come from a coalition of hostile powers,
had a decisive influence on the debate of tempos and growth rates.29
Geopolitical considerations determined that industries that were vital
in wartime should be spread across the interior of the country rather
than concentrated in vulnerable areas of the Ukraine. Accordingly, old
industrial factories in the Urals were reconstructed during the 1930s,
while new workshops were added and modern equipment was bought
from the West. In many respects, the accomplishments in this dimen-
sion merely continued what scientists and capitalists had wanted to do
in Tsarist times. Those projects remained unfulfilled, however, because
they were seldom found to be commercially motivated. The Bolsheviks
believed that their strategic advantage was that the USSR would achieve
a second metallurgical basis with which to compensate for the higher
investment costs compared to the existing iron and steel works in
southern Russia and the Ukraine.
Charcoal iron was still in high demand in the 1930s and during World
War II, particularly for the production of high-quality steel. However,
charcoal was also the main deficient product in the 1920s that hin-
dered metallurgy in the Urals from growing and competing with the
Ukraine.30
The Soviet elite, party functionaries, engineers and technicians pre-
pared an impressive reconstruction programme that involved build-
ing hundreds of new industrial plants. However, many problems were
encountered before the buildings were ready for production. Raw mate-
rials were extremely scarce and there were few qualified workers and
specialists. The most important task was to overcome backwardness
and reach the same levels of production as Western countries. During
one ten-year period, the Soviet Union accomplished what the British
historian Edward Carr at the time described as ‘a monumental accom-
plishment at a monstrous price’. Carr was referring to the more than
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 41 6/27/2011 11:31:40 AM

42 Tankograd
Figure 18 Timber floating on the Ai and Tesma Rivers. The ironworks in

Cheliabinsk continued to use charcoal in the 1930s. Approximately 10,000
cubic metres of forest was felled daily for the making of charcoal.
9000 industrial enterprises that were created in the 1930s and were a
decisive factor in the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.31 Iron and steel
works and aluminium and nickel factories, as well as machine-building
plants, were located east of the Volga and in the Urals, which consti-
tuted a future economic basis for weapons production.32
The 15th Communist Party Congress in December 1927 adopted a
draft for a five-year plan for the economic development of the country.
The spokesmen for the Supreme Economic Council (VSNKh) Valerin
Kuibyshev, defence commissar Kliment Voroshilov and the chairman
of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate (Rabkrin) V.N. Andronnikov,
all argued that the further industrialisation of the Urals was of great
importance from a defence perspective.33 The only opposition came
from those party leaders who preferred to continue investing in the coal
mines and existing industrial structures in the Ukraine. An American
named Hubert Knickerbocker, a contemporary observer of the Soviet
Union at the time, noted how carefully the Bolsheviks debated the new,
industrial country with clear geostrategic perspectives in 1930.34
In the early 1930s, the Soviet military leadership feared that the next
great war could involve the USSR, both in the east against Japan and
in the west against a coalition of great powers. For this reason, a new
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 42 6/27/2011 11:31:40 AM

military-industrial basis should be built at secure distances from both

these potential war zones. At the 17th Communist Party Congress in
1934, the former chairman of the State Planning Commission (Gosplan),
Gleb Krzhizhanovskii, argued that the arms industry should be located
as far from the borders as necessary, and referred to such an industrial
site in the Urals as ‘the backbone of our defence’.
The frequent and solemn declarations of the 1930s did not corre-
spond to the actual achievements. First, an industrial basis had to be
established to secure the needs of the defence industry in terms of raw
materials, semifinished products and machinery. Second, the industri-
alisation itself required ever-increasing amounts of natural resources.
Instead, the first five-year plans planned to maximise the existing
mines and natural resources. Finally, the lack of investment capital for
the Urals led to a significant expansion of the existing factories in the
European parts of Russia and the Ukraine, a move that was motivated by
a wish for a higher return on investment. On the one hand, therefore,
the state planning organs had a strategy of locating the new defence
industry in the country’s interior. On the other hand, military propa-
ganda would have it that Soviet territory would witness only short-term
skirmishes, after which any potential aggressor would be driven back
and defeated on its own territory. Consequently, new factories for the
production of shells and other ammunition were built in Zaparozh’ie,
Dnepropetrovsk, Dneproderzhinsk, Kharkov and Leningrad during
the second half of the 1930s. Prior to 1939, few members of the mili-
tary dared to express any other view than the official position, that an
enemy could advance no more than a hundred or so kilometres beyond
the well armed western defence lines, the so-called Stalin Line. To some
extent, army intelligence in the 1920s had been more realistic about
how swiftly a foreign invasion might come and how far it might reach
into Soviet territory. In the 1930s, the supreme command had a greater
degree of self-confidence. This misplaced confidence regarding the
strength of the Soviet armed forces nearly proved fatal.35
The transfer and further development of technology from the West
to the USSR was an important feature of the country’s economic policy.
Education of technicians and engineers was started on a massive scale
and after their examinations engineers were moved to the new indus-
trial cities. Their social position was uncertain, however, depending on
whether they had received their training in Tsarist times or if they were
among the new engineers who had been trained in the more politicised
Soviet spirit. Between 1928 and 1932, specialists were repressed and
sentenced to labour camps or execution, as they were often depicted
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 43 6/27/2011 11:31:40 AM

44 Tankograd
in show trials as scapegoats for the numerous mistakes that hampered

industrialisation; mistakes that were often worsened by political deci-
sions. With the benefit of hindsight, this can be interpreted as a forced
generational change within the engineering corpus.
The original five-year plan was based on directives from Gosplan and
the party congress in December 1927. However, these guidelines were
soon changed in favour of higher targets, which were often incompat-
ible. Initially, realistic targets were set for the whole Urals area. In the
summer of 1929, the central authorities in Moscow and the local elite
started to promote even higher targets based on an already strained
investment plan. This plan was then ‘adjusted’ later that year to account
for the ‘encounter proposals’ that were supposedly promoted by the
workers themselves at mass meetings. One all-encompassing plan was
called ‘The Greater Urals’ (Bolshoi Ural) and was designed to incorporate
many of the proposals from earlier business ventures, electrification
plans and the latest draft of the five-year plan for the region. It was
discussed in September 1929 and approved in April 1930. ‘On the tasks
for Uralmet’, a decision by the Communist Party’s Central Committee
on 15 May 1930, refers to this decision and the ‘Greater Urals’ plan was
finally approved by the 16th All-union Communist Congress in 1930.
As events would soon show, this was an especially daring planning
document. It soon became evident that it would be impossible even to
approach the levels of production that the plan demands. Accordingly,
the second five-year plan, of 1933–1937, contained ambitions that were
more balanced and in line with real capabilities.
After several years of debates and with the area in competition with
the traditional industrial regions of southern Russia, a decision was
made that a new iron and steel works would be built close to the iron
ore deposits at Magnitka mountain in the Southern Urals. Coal was to
be sent from the Karaganda basin in the Kuznetsk region of Siberia.
This vision of the Urals further developed plans that had already been
approved in Moscow. The Ural leaders lobbied for their project, which
was referred to as the Ural-Kuznetsk-Kombinat (UKK).36 This was one of
several similar attempts in the first five-year plan to create new centres
of growth in a region that would have otherwise remained underused.
Another long-term vision that did not progress beyond the drawing
boards and debates concerned the industrial use of the resources in
the Northern Urals – the expansion of the railway network to allow for
expanded exports of forestry products.37
One of the most widely publicised achievements of the five-year
plans was, as mentioned,the Magnitogorsk iron and steel works, which
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 44 6/27/2011 11:31:40 AM

were built in record time. In the second half of the 1930s, the plant
approached its projected maximum capacity with 5.83 million tons of
iron ore, 1.55 million tons of cast iron, 1.49 tons of steel and 1.18 mil-
lion tons of rolled iron. Cheliabinsk oblast (region) had two iron and
steel works that had greater significance for the arms industry because
they were based on the purer iron ore at Bakal and used charcoal for
processing. The Asha quality steel works was completed first. In 1938,
the Satka and Asha factories together produced 143,000 tons of cast
iron, while the Asha works delivered a further 57,000 tons of high-
quality steel.
A few years later, the quality steel works in Bakal started production
based on local ore resources. For a couple of years, the building site
evolved as planned to complement the Magnitogorsk iron and steel
works. Between 1932 and 1934, a new road and railway bridge over river
Miass, a mechanical workshop, a sawmill and several garages were com-
pleted. However, due to a lack of resources, construction was stopped in
1935. It was only in early 1941, when war with Germany seemed immi-
nent and demand for steel from the armaments industry increased, that
work restarted.
It should be emphasised that many other minerals, apart from iron
ore, are vital for the modern machine-building and armaments indus-
try. Special steel and many other alloys, which are easier to handle and
forge than iron, cast iron and steel, would be impossible to produce
without copper, zinc, aluminium, nickel, cobalt, tungsten, molybde-
num and other metals. Nickel, chrome, tungsten and titanium are
harder than iron and can help to produce alloys that are extremely
steadfast. The mass production of aluminium made a modern airplane
industry possible in the 1930s, a time when all the above-mentioned
metals were developed in the Urals.38
The Cheliabinsk zinc factory was an important part of the five-year
plan. One reason for locating the factory in Cheliabinsk was the simul-
taneous decision to build a regional coal-fired power station because
of the fact that electrolytic refining of zinc is very energy consuming.
Construction of the power plant started in 1930 but its completion was
constantly delayed by a lack of resources, such as reinforcement bars
of low-quality steel, which was not delivered in sufficient quantities.
By 1932, the zinc factory was supposed to have been ready and to have
reached half of its projected capacity (10,000 tons of zinc per year). In
reality, not even the building itself was ready. The zinc works were only
completed after people’s commissar Ordzhonikidze had set different
priorities for the second five-year plan (1933–1937).39
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 45 6/27/2011 11:31:40 AM

46 Tankograd
An important precondition for the energy-demanding zinc and other

non-ferrous works in Cheliabinsk was the new ChGRES regional power
station, which had a capacity of 99,000 kWh. The power stations in
Cheliabinsk, Magnitogorsk and Krasnogorsk only partly satisfied the
rising energy requirements in the 1930s.
The new coal-fired electric power plants in Cheliabinsk, Magnitogorsk
and Krasnogorsk only partially satisfied the increasing energy require-
ments of the 1930s. At the same time, lignite (brown coal) was exca-
vated in the Kopeisk region east of Cheliabinsk, in Korkino and other
places in the region. The new industry had enormous transport require-
ments; most railway tracks needed to be renovated, especially along
the Trans-Siberian Railway, while other existing lines and a number
of completely new rail connections needed to be double-tracked. The
southern part of the Trans-Siberian Railway (Samara-Ufa-Cheliabinsk)
was repaired and modernised up to Tomsk, where it joined the northern
part (Iaroslavl-Vjatka-Sverdlovsk). The regional South Urals Railways
grew in importance when the industries in Magntiogorsk, Zlatoust and
other industrial centres expanded.
Figure 19 The Mechanical Works in the old metal industrial city of Zlatoust
in 1926. Most of the enterprise’s machinery had been returned from Tomsk in
Siberia, where the White forces had sent it during the Civil War. Production
restarted at a low level in 1919.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 46 6/27/2011 11:31:41 AM

The Ferro Alloys works (Ferrosplav), later called Cheliabinsk Electro-

Metallurgical Kombinat (ChEMK), was of key importance to the defence
industry in the 1930s. The first furnaces started firing on 7 November
1930 and the factory itself was inaugurated in August 1931. By 1933,
production included 12,710 tons of iron alloys, which included 3451
tons of high-quality alloys. Overall, the factory’s plans were often ful-
filled, except for the quality alloys. The initial period using the new
machinery saw many interruptions in production, often due to an insuf-
ficient electricity supply or electrodes that had worn out and not been
replaced. Repairs accounted for approximately 30 per cent of production
stoppages and in 1933 the furnaces were unusable for 12,000 hours.40 In
1938, 15.7 tons of ferro-chromium were produced, along with 12.8 tons
of ferro-silicon, 2.5 tons of ferro-tungsten and 1,160 kilograms of ferro-
molybdenum.41 Ferrosplav’s products were in demand from factories in
Moscow, Leningrad, the Ukraine and Western Siberia, for use in armour
plating, construction iron and other items that need reinforcement.
An internal report from Ferrosplav provides a vivid picture of the new
industries:
Just as in many other enterprises, the turnover of labourers and clerks

was great. In 1932, 1416 workers and 308 servants were hired, while
1253 workers and 284 servants left Ferrosplav. The ventilation system
did not function in the workshops, where the heat in summertime
was unbearable. There was a cross-draught because many windows
were broken and because the doors between the shops were almost
always open. Another reason why many left the factory was that the
promised dwellings had not been built. The canteen at the factory
did not have its own kitchen so food was brought there in thermoses.
There are reports of thin soups, porridge and other meals that give
no satisfaction. Sometimes the workers quite simply refused to eat
the food. There was no well-organised wage system with differentia-
tions to encourage workers to stay at the factory. Except for A. Walter,
who was the technical leader at the factory, all of the management
are recently graduated engineers and technicians who finished their
studies in 1931–1932 and who were in their first workplace.42
An entire chapter would not be enough to paint a complete picture

of the problems and the progress of forced industrialisation. However, a
brief list of the factories that were built in the region hints at the basis
for an industrial mobilisation and, therefore, for the Soviet war efforts
from 1941 to 1945.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 47 6/27/2011 11:31:41 AM

48 Tankograd
The Nickel Works at Ufaleisk were completed in 1933.43 At the same

time, the Cheliabinsk Abrasive Tools Works (Abrazivnyi kombinat) had
received a completely new machine park. In 1933, the machine-build-
ing industry received 42 tons of cutting and grinding discs and 1610
tons of alum in pellet form. The following year saw the completion of a
new rolled steel works in Kamensk-Sinarsk and an electrode factory in
Cheliabinsk. Factories were set up in Kyshtym and Karabash to refine
and roll copper.44 In May 1935, the modern Ordzhonikidze Machine-
building Works (Stankostroitel’nyi zavod im. Ordzhonikidze or
‘Stankomash’) was inaugurated in Cheliabinsk. While its basic produc-
tion line was for heavy machinery, the enterprise also had an industrial
mobilisation plan for the production of shells and other ammunition.45
The emphasis in the second five-year plan, from 1933–1937 shifted
from achieving the highest possible growth rates to assimilating and
mastering new technology. There were numerous problems related to
raising labour productivity.46
There were frequent conflicts between the modernisation of agricul-
ture and the desire to strengthen the country’s defence potential. Did
this mean that the Soviet planned economy had coordinated enterprises
in different sectors better than a market economy could have? The links
between the different industrial plants and a sectorial division between
mutually dependant enterprises in the metals and machine-building
sector were planned. The goal was to achieve rational growth of heavy
industry and to create growth pools in the Urals and in Kazakhstan.
From a long-term perspective, however, the industrial structure of the
Urals became overly one-sided and this imbalance had to be corrected
after World War II in favour of producing more consumer goods. There
was a lack of planning for the vast Urals region that stretched across
regional (oblast) borders. Every decision at the ministry level (people’s
commissariat before 1946) prescribed actions for dozens of other min-
istries (people’s commissariats) and the same was true for decisions at
the regional level.
Transformation of the countryside:

collectivisation and dekulakisation
During the intensive debates that took place regarding the industrialisa-
tion of the country, various commissions proposed drafts for the five-
year plan for the entire economy. This plan was then revised under
pressure from the central powers and from local interest groups. The
Urals were to become a new industrial centre.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 48 6/27/2011 11:31:41 AM

At the same time, in the late 1920s, the party leaders debated how the
transformation of the countryside should take place. The crucial ques-
tion was how it would be possible to achieve a higher marketed surplus
of grain in order to feed a rapidly growing urban population, while at
the same time being able to export agricultural products. Apart from
timber and grain, the Soviet Union had few commodities that could
generate substantial export income. The five-year plan presumed that
imports of industrial machinery would be financed by such exports
because the Soviet Union could not expect to receive foreign loans on
good terms.
One crucial historical question is why Stalin’s circle could no longer
accept the idea of a wealthy middle class in the countryside, on one
hand, and state owned, cooperative and private agriculture, on the
other, within the framework of the New Economic Policy. According
to their interpretation, the NEP had extinguished its expansion pos-
sibilities by the mid-1920s. Agriculture was dominated by self-sufficient
farming and was therefore seen as a drag on industrial growth. The
relative share of marketed agricultural products was indeed lower than
it had been before World War I. This was due to ownership changes, as
more households were now independent, self-sufficient units that had
little motivation to expand their production for market sale. In other
words, the state could not count on this agricultural system to achieve
the communist party’s geopolitical aims.
Until 1929, the collectivisation of agriculture was expected to evolve
in parallel with the delivery of new technology that allowed for large-
scale production. However, the conflicts between the peasantry and the
state’s pricing policy created a sale crisis in 1927–1928 that was tem-
porarily solved by harsh, repressive measures against those peasants
who did not agree to deliver grain at the low fixed prices. Stalin and
other party leaders led expeditions to various parts of the country and
forced peasants to sell more grain or face being accused of ‘specula-
tion’, a crime under the Soviet penal code. This so-called Urals-Siberian
method of forced grain deliveries in the winter of 1928 recreated the
situation that had prevailed under ‘war communism’ during the Civil
War. During this period, Nikolai Bukharin and others in the party lead-
ership continued in to argue for a softer, market-oriented link with the
peasantry.
The foundation of the New Economic Policy was that the peasantry,
after paying a fixed tax either in kind or in money, were free to trade
their grain surplus and other products. Trade expanded rapidly after
the initial difficult period but it was very sensitive to price changes.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 49 6/27/2011 11:31:41 AM

50 Tankograd
Relative price changes to the disadvantage of agriculture led to reduced

quantities of grain being offered on the markets. International conflicts
and the war scare of 1927 led to sharp price rises that year. Regardless
of the various crop sizes and movements in the markets, however, the
state refused to change its pricing policy. There were acute problems in
supplying enough food in the cities in the autumn of 1927. This was the
immediate background for Stalin’s decision to use repressive measures
against peasants accused of hoarding grain for speculative purposes.
Supported by the secret police, then named the United State Political
administration (OGPU), campaigns took place in the winter of 1928
to confiscate grain in Western Siberia and the Urals. These measures
helped to prevent famines from striking the cities in 1928 and were
approved as temporary and extraordinary measures. However, a similar
situation occurred the following autumn and the use of force had to
be applied widely. The upper strata of the peasantry was depicted as a
social force that was opposed to the modernisation and collectivisation
of agriculture. Step by step, the Stalinist group of the Communist Party
urged a faster rate of collectivisation than had been approved in the
first five-year plan, in which various forms of cooperation in the coun-
tryside would grow only to a small extent between 1928 and 1932.
In the late 1920s, the cooperative movement among the peasantry
in the Urals comprised only one-third of all households, organised as
consumer and artisan cooperatives. When the plan for grain delivery
was not fulfilled, the break with NEP orientation took place. The coun-
try-wide situation regarding grain supplies in the winter and spring of
1927–1928 was alarming. There were reports of bread shortages in the
mining city of Kopeisk and people were lining up at midnight in order
to have the opportunity to buy bread when the shops opened in the
morning. In the mines workers were already discussing whether to strike
if the bread shortage was not addressed. On 26 April 1928, 434 miners
went on strike.47 In January-February 1928, a series of purges took place
in the rural areas in the Urals, with 1157 functionaries dismissed from
their jobs and often arrested on various charges. The peasants were
forced to deliver their grain and the penalties for failing to do so ranged
from monetary fines and restricted access to water and stoves to the
exclusion of their children from schools and reduced health care. These
measures led to a huge stream of protest letters to the authorities. Still,
the plans had only been 83 per cent met by May 1928.48Grain deliveries
in November 1928 were only 58 per cent of the previous year’s amount.
The peasants refused to sell more grain at the prices set by the govern-
ment, which were still very low. The New Economic Policy had entered
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 50 6/27/2011 11:31:41 AM

a blind alley because industry had not grown to the extent to which it
could produce enough commodities to stimulate the peasants to sell
more grain and, in turn, buy industrial products.
The state had to either to use repression and forced requisitions, or to
make concessions to the peasantry, i.e. to change its pricing policy in
order to get grain to the market; this would probably have meant that
less grain could be set aside for exports and, consequently, less resources
acquired for financial investments. In 1928, a new form of forced deliv-
eries to the state through the method of ‘self-taxation’ was introduced.
This to be no more than 25 per cent of the total agrarian tax and was
to be established by the peasants themselves at public meetings. In
January 1929, a new directive allowed self-taxation to be set as high
as 50 per cent of the agrarian tax, which amounted to almost the total
confiscation of peasants’ property.49
In the first nine months of 1929, the OGPU arrested approximately
1000 individuals throughout the Urals. Of these, 380 were sentenced
according to the infamous Article 58 for ‘counter-revolutionary activ-
ity’, while many others were charged in regular courts and sentenced
for other crimes and misdemeanours. All these measures were part of
the intensified struggle to speed up collectivisation. The forced requisi-
tions in 1929 were on a greater scale than ever and, in addition to grain,
also included dairy and meat products.50
Stalin’s ‘revolution from above’ started with the collectivisation
of the countryside through the intensive use of force and at a much
faster tempo than previously planned. There was no longer room for
development that had preconditions for a mechanised and techni-
cally advanced agriculture with cooperative and collectives in several
different formats, where tractors and machines would gradually sup-
plant horses and other draught animals. Instead, the local party leaders
were ordered to ensure the rapid establishment of collective farms, or
kolkhozy, very few of which had modern equipment from the start.
Stalin had support for his aims within the core leadership, who saw
industrialisation as a way to consolidate what they regarded as the
basic preconditions of socialism. Stalin’s personal role in these events
should not hide the fact that he was surrounded by a large group of
like-minded communists. These party cadres held the same views as
Stalin and were sometimes even more eager than he was to take drastic
measures against the wealthier groups in the countryside. The meetings
of the party’s central committee and its politburo were dominated by
economic questions regarding the factories, power stations and mines
that could be built in the fastest possible time. Many political meetings
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52 Tankograd
Figure 20 A tractor on its way to the fields in 1927 in the Troitsk district. In
1926, there were only 555 tractors in the whole Urals, most of which were
owned by machinery cooperatives and sovkhozy (state farms). In the Cheliabinsk
region, there was a plan to establish 6000 new settlements where the peasants
would receive loans, social benefits and fodder for the animals, so that new vil-
lages could be created.
discussed the prognoses for sowing and harvesting, as well as the req-
uisition of grain.
In the early 1930s, the supreme party organs made a number of deci-
sions regarding collectivisation. Most of the first collective farms were
set up by poor peasants and were indeed based on voluntary agree-
ments. From the summer of 1929 onwards, however, a more repressive
and forceful approach was implemented. In January 1930, the politburo
decided that all regions with a grain surplus should establish collective
farms. For a few chaotic months, rural authorities forced peasants to give
up their horses and their machinery to the newly formed collectives. A
target was set to establish collective farms fully before the spring sow-
ing season of 1930. Within a couple of weeks, many villages had been
totally collectivised. However, many peasants protested strongly against
the collectives. One protest method was the mass slaughter of livestock;
the peasants preferred to slaughter their own animals rather than give
them up to the new collectives. Horses, cows and goats were slaughtered
on a mass scale. From 1929 to 1934, the number of horses was reduced
from 1.34 million to 315,000, cows from 2.07 million to 1.22 million
and sheep and goats from 3.3 million to 1.18 million. Despite a recovery
of sorts in the years that followed, the Cheliabinsk region (oblast) had
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 52 6/27/2011 11:31:41 AM

Figure 21 The general store of a workers’ cooperative on a street in the

Cheliabinsk region.
fewer animals in 1937 than it had in 1926 (24.8 per cent of the horse
stock, 57.7 per cent of the number of cows, 51.5 per cent of the pigs and
57.7 per cent of the sheep and goats).51
The peasants’ protests in the winter of 1929–1930 extended far beyond
those who were threatened directly by expropriation. As a result, the
communist leadership was forced to slow down the collectivisation proc-
ess and emphasise the voluntary transition to kolkhoz farms. In Stalin’s
article entitled ‘Dizzy with success’, the faults and excesses were ascribed
to the local party leaders. Many kolkhozy that had been set up during the
first campaigns of 1930 had weak foundations. As soon as the authorities
declared that membership in the kolkhoz was voluntary, many peasants
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54 Tankograd
opted to leave. In the next phase of collectivisation, the authorities set

more reasonable targets and used less force and more economic levers
against individual peasants. By 1932, the number of kolkhoz peasants in
the Urals had dropped to approximately 70,000. In 1931 and 1932, many
protest actions took place in the Urals: leaflets were printed and distrib-
uted calling for the elimination of Soviet power, while exiled Russian
political groups performed a variety of terrorist acts.
Figure 22 Harvesting with horses in 1930 on a sovkhoz in the Magnitogorsk

building settlement.
Figure 23 The Barancha sovkhoz in the summer of 1930. Since 1929, 17 sovkhozy
had been formed in the Cheliabinsk region.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 54 6/27/2011 11:31:42 AM

Agricultural production in the Urals as a whole fell during collec-

tivisation. The gross harvest (calculated at the point of harvest, regard-
less of how much was actually barged and stored later) dropped from
4.94 million tons in 1928 to 3.35 million tons in 1932. The number of
draught animals was halved, from 12.7 million horses and oxen to 5.3
million.52
The poor harvest of 1931 and equally dire predictions for 1932 forced
the authorities in the Urals to cut rations in the cities and even for
kolkhoz members. At the same time, food products were exported from
the Urals. In 1931, 5 tons of butter; 6.5 tons of bacon; 345 railcar-loads of
eggs and living birds were sent abroad, including 438,500 hens, 275,000
geese, 25,000 ducks (an 80 per cent increase from 1930) and 552,933
units of game; 49 tons of meat preserves (98,000 tins); 493,000 cans of
preserved fish; 22.5 tons of frozen alpine char and 18.4 tons of frozen
salmon. This can probably be explained by the fact that certain admin-
istrations were responsible for exports, while others were responsible for
internal procurement. The regional party committee in Sverdlovsk was
not authorised to change centrally decided export plans; it was consid-
ered more important to obtain hard currency from foreign trade, even
if it resulted in a semi-starving population.53
Despite poor harvests prior to 1932–1933, the famine in the
Cheliabinsk region during this period was not as serious as in the
Ukraine and northern Caucasus. Large parts of the Urals (70 out of
143 regions) experienced what were euphemistically termed ‘foodstuff
problems’ (prodovol’stvennye zatrudneniia); in other words, hunger that
led to widespread begging and theft from the property of the kolkhozy.
The special settlers, the deported kulaks from other regions, were hit by
the disaster during this winter.
In 1932, as harvest time approached, a law was adopted that became
popularly known as ‘the law of the five grains of corn’ (zakon o pjati
kolosach). In this decree of 7 August, severe punishments – ranging from
forced labour in camps to the death penalty – were administered for
the theft of kolkhoz property. The grain that hungry and starving peas-
ants took from their own fields amounted to much more than a few
grains of corn. Groups of peasants and entire families, often number-
ing 20–30 people, would take tens of kilograms of grain at night and
then hide it. Stalin wrote to another party leader that the law was to
be applied primarily to such groups. On the basis of this law, 27,700
people in the Urals were sentenced for the theft of kolkhoz property and
other misdemeanours during grain harvests. From August 1932 to May
1933, 763 persons were sentenced to death, 961 were given camp terms
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56 Tankograd
of up to ten years, 305 were sentenced to shorter camp terms and 165
were given the penalty of labour (with reduced earnings) at their ordi-
nary place of work. Most of those sentenced were ordinary members of
the kolkhozy, the so-called middle class and poor peasants.54 Some years
later, many of the sentences were commuted and the individuals were
given amnesty from camp sentences in general.
Arson of kolkhoz property and the burning of haystacks was wide-
spread. The Cheliabinsk regional party committee (obkom) sent an order
to the Troitsk region in the southern part of the oblast that reliable
kolkhoz members should form a guard to protect the fields and the hay-
stacks, day and night. The local departments of the secret police OGPU
were responsible for bringing in the harvest.55
At the same time, the new cadres in the kolkhozy were tested in purges.
In the autumn of 1932, many local leaders set up their own stores of
grain to feed the kolkhoz families in winter rather than fulfilling the
quotas of state deliveries. In a letter from a local party organisation,
the leadership of the kolkhozy were threatened with severe punishments
if state grain requisitions were not fulfilled first. Kolkhozy that did not
fulfil their quota were forced to give up the small reserves they had set
aside. This suggested an upcoming severe famine in the Urals.56 In 1933,
more than 30,000 persons were dismissed, including holders of senior
leading positions and many ordinary kolkhoz members (mechanics,
tractor operators, etc.).57
When the Cheliabinsk region oblast’ was constituted in 1934, it had
4199 kolkhozy comprising 268,000 households and 118 grain and cat-
tle sovkhozy (state farms). In 1933, 13,100 households voluntarily left
the kolkhozy, in addition to the 37,000 households that were forced to
leave them; only 21,800 households joined the kolkhozy. Approximately
100 machine and tractor stations (MTS) served the kolkhozy with 4780
tractors and 1115 combines. In October 1934, there were 119,000 house-
holds that were not part of state and cooperative agriculture; in other
words, collectivisation had been carried out for 69.5 per cent of the
population.58 From 1934 onwards, the 125,395 remaining individual
peasants faced increasing pressure to join the almost 270,000 in the
kolkhozy.59 As 1935 approached, there were 4780 kolkhozy and there
had been a considerable increase in the total number of tractors and
combines.
Dekulakisation in the Southern Urals

In the 1920s, the government even tried to find economic criteria to
divide the rich into different categories. The decrees of 1930 separated
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 56 6/27/2011 11:31:43 AM

the kulaks – the most prosperous group of peasants – into three cat-
egories on economic and also political criteria. The most ‘counter-rev-
olutionary’ peasants were sentenced to concentration camps and their
families were deported from the villages. Other groups of kulaks were
deported to remote regions of the Northern Urals or to Siberia. Finally,
members of a third subgroup of kulaks were merely deported to outly-
ing parts of the region. Through a variety of measures, the property of
the kulaks was transferred to the collective farms organised at the same
time. Kulaks who owned smaller farmsteads received new property out-
side the village community and new special settlements (spetsposëlki)
were occasionally created far from the railways and rivers.
The OGPU’s order of 2 February 1930 talked about ‘liquidating the
kulaks’. It is necessary at this point to digress briefly in order to make a
clarification. To the Bolsheviks, ‘eliminate as a class’ meant removing the
Figure 24 The special settlement of Sukhaia Atia in the Miniar district. Although
the deported ‘kulaks’ with their families in the special villages were counted as
part of the Gulag administration system, their status was different from that of
the camp prisoners. After some time, these villages had a developed infrastruc-
ture that included schools. The kulaks and their children could, in principle,
be counted with the same rights as ordinary Soviet citizens according to a 1936
decree, although they were bound to remain in their village. The youth felt bit-
ter because they were not entitled to the same pre-military training or even to
pass the tests for the popular Voroshilov marksman plaque. Those who married
a person from the free citizens in the neighbourhood had their deportation
status relieved and could move from the special village. The conditions varied
substantially depending on the local commandant and his attitudes more than
on written laws and regulations. When some special settlements in harsh forest
regions prospered and expanded, certain commandants would even talk of the
risk of a ‘kulakification’ (okulachivanie). The special settlement system for these
kulaks was abolished in 1948.
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58 Tankograd
social and economic preconditions for the re-emergence of kulak peas-

ants. During the Russian Civil War, one Chekist had bragged that the Red
Terror in 1918 aimed to ‘liquidate the bourgeoisie’. He was reprimanded
by Lenin for his lack of understanding of elementary Marxism. The task
was by no means physically to exterminate bourgeois individuals but
was instead to hinder the preconditions under which the bourgeoisie
itself could emerge. A similar view permeated Stalin’s speeches of the late
1920s and the threats against the kulaks. Contrary to what was written at
the time in Nazi German propaganda and other descriptions of the USSR,
the dekulatisaton did not aim to annihilate physically the peasants as able-
bodied persons. Instead, their position in Soviet society was degraded to
a that of a class without property. They were forced to do commanded
work with a minimal salary, which was often paid in kind.60
The lists of the various subgroups noted who in the villages had taken
part in demonstrations against Soviet power. These people were charac-
terised as kulaks or ‘middle peasants’ to be expropriated and, together
with their families, deported from their villages. The kulaks were forced
to give up their cattle and tools to the collective and then travel hun-
dreds of kilometres. It was initially decided that 2200 households in the
Cheliabinsk area (okrug) were to be expropriated and lists were made
for every village. The motto was that it was better to ‘over-dekulakise’
the villages than ‘under-dekulakise’ them, despite the absence of any
definite criteria of what a kulak actually was. The kulaks’ houses, farm-
ing tools and cattle were confiscated. In principle, a kulak family was
allowed to keep their clothes and other personal belongings, bedclothes,
kitchen equipment and tools that were necessary for forestry and fish-
ing, plus foodstuffs for three months and 500 roubles for expenses dur-
ing their deportation. However, it was common for other villagers to
confiscate the kulaks’ personal items.
More than 30,000 households were classified as ‘kulak’ through-
out the Urals and expropriated. The Southern Urals, which included
Cheliabinsk and its surroundings, accounted for 4000–5000 of these
households. In the end, the number of ‘counter-revolutionary kulak’
families was fixed at 4685, the fathers of which were sent to Gulag con-
centration camps or even executed. For the Cheliabinsk region (okrug),
this category of kulaks accounted for 700 families. The second category
of wealthy peasants, who were to be sent to remote locations, comprised
15,200 families in the entire Urals area and 2250 families from the
Cheliabinsk region alone.
Expropriations and deportations were mostly performed by OGPU
military units, sometimes with support from the Red Army. According
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 58 6/27/2011 11:31:43 AM

to official reports, most of these decisions had been approved at pub-

lic meetings with poor peasants and kolkhozniks. In addition to the two
above-mentioned categories, another 700 peasant families were deported
from their farmlands but received permission to resettle within the same
region (okrug); that is, in the vicinity but outside of the kolkhoz.61
In order to increase the number of regions with complete collec-
tivisation, the Urals executive committee decided on 8 March 1931 to
deport the remaining kulaks from regions where the kolkhoz area had
reached 40 per cent of the total. All households that had not joined
the kolkhozy were automatically included in the vague ‘kulak category’
because of their presumed political attitude – regardless of whether
their economic status corresponded to the original criteria for the cat-
egory – and deported from the region. In 1931, 12,000 peasant families
were sent from the Urals and the same fate befell another 5000 house-
holds the following year. At the same time, the greater Urals regions
received 123,000 kulak deportees from other parts of European Russia
and the Ukraine. This gave the Urals one of the greatest concentrations
of deported kulaks in the Soviet Union.
From the point of view of these individuals, the dekulakisation was a
tragedy of enormous proportions. Although many people managed to
flee from their villages in the early 1930s, most did not. Thrifty peas-
ants who had achieved a certain measure of well-being and who had
been respected in their villages were forced to leave everything they
had worked for and start anew under horrendous conditions. Their
families had to start new lives in barren forest areas in ‘special settle-
ments’ that lacked any health care facilities. The local soviet and party
organs in the deportation regions had not made sufficient preparations
to carry out such colonisation. During the winters of 1930 and 1931,
innumerable children and elderly people died in the ‘special settle-
ments’. It has not yet been possible, even in recent historiography, to
calculate exactly how many people were doomed to death in these Urals
regions. Although it might sound paradoxical, the food supply situation
was eventually stabilised as the OGPU – after 1934 the USSR People’s
Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) – took over full responsibility
for these ‘special settlements’. The NKVD’s directorate for the concen-
tration camps and the special settlements for kulak families was then
responsible for feeding, building schools and culture houses and for
commandeering able-bodied adults to various work at sites. This led
merely to a slight improvement in living conditions. In November
1932, for example, NKVD convicted 140 persons who had allegedly sold
40,000 tons of grain at speculatively high prices that should have been
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60 Tankograd
distributed to the ‘special settlements’ in the Urals and Western Siberia.

Nevertheless, the demographic situation among the deportees deterio-
rated. Even in January 1935, there were more deaths (1292) than births
(743) among special settlers in the Cheliabinsk region (oblast’).
So what did the state and party leadership think that these meas-
ures had achieved? Many explanations have been proposed as to why
the Soviet leadership, under the supreme guidance of Stalin, carried
out the brutal collectivisation. According to the most distorted parts of
the descriptions of the kolkhoz system, which were given in later years
by Stalin himself, a more stable supply of foodstuffs was considered to
be an essential result. This differed from the earlier vision of growing
Figure 25 The GPU commandant at the Verkhneasinsk special settlement with

youngsters striving to fulfil their daily quota of sawn timber.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 60 6/27/2011 11:31:43 AM

production by mechanisation and modernisation. Henceforth, the lead-

ership could carry out their intended industrialisation without great
concern for the changing needs of the direct producers in the Russian
countryside. The status of these producers had been changed because
of collectivisation, and the new passport system introduced in 1932 had
led the peasantry to a refined form of serfdom in which they did not
have the right to leave their home villages and were forced to perform
the planned tasks at kolkhozy or at nearby building sites.
The American historian, James Schneider, has explained the brutal col-
lectivisation from a military perspective, as an effort by Stalin to com-
bine the ideas of military strategists such as Aleksandr Svechin and Boris
Shaposhnikov concerning the economic preparedness of modern socie-
ties for total war. Without a secure source of food procurement, the Soviet
Union would not be able to withstand a well armed enemy in a modern
war. Schneider considered this to be a rational element that could clar-
ify some of the reasoning behind Stalin’s new strategy in the 1920s and
1930s. In other respects, Stalin referred to the experience of the Russian
Civil War and the significance of a stabilised, reliable home front.62
Figure 26 The brown coal fields in Kopeis are 12 kilometres long and 11 kilome-
tres wide. The resource was discovered in 1904 and mining started in 1916. The
coal mines were nationalised in 1918. Rail-bound excavators were produced at
the Putilov works in St Petersburg in 1901 and this line of production continued
in the Soviet period.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 61 6/27/2011 11:31:44 AM

62 Tankograd
Figure 27 Deported kulak families arrive at the mines in the brown coal dis-
trict east of Cheliabinsk. Up to 1935, 2671 families (10,776 persons) were sent to
Kopeisk. The working conditions were so harsh that almost 50 per cent of the
people deported had fled from the area within a few years. A total of 2913 people
fled in 1931, 6038 in 1932, 3070 in 1933 and 460 in 1934. The miners’ city of
Kopeisk expanded through the 1920s to approximately 31,000 inhabitants by
the end of the decade. The deported peasants had to build their own worker’s
villages (trudposiolok) with some 2300 barracks and 1263 dugouts.
Viktor Zemskov made a detailed study of the various categories of spe-

cial ‘colonists’. According to a decree of 18 August 1930, the dekulaki-
sation intended peasants to colonise the Northern Urals and Western
Siberia and develop the agriculture, crafts and forestry of the area.
However, from 1931–1932 onwards, the exiled peasants were more com-
monly commanded to building sites or industrial factories and were
therefore regarded as a universal labour force.63
In 1932, the Urals executive committee sent out a directive on how
the special settlers should be put to work. The local OGPU was now
responsible for workplaces, housing and feeding, as well as for schools
for the deported children. This resulted in somewhat better condi-
tions than had existed in 1930 and 1931, when tens of thousands of
deported people, mostly elderly and children, had died from famine
and diseases.64 The local Soviet authorities were obliged to provide
the settlers’ children with cultural and educational facilities. Schools
were to be built to provide a seven-year school and at least one school
for every 9000 inhabitants. In the larger spetsposëlki, reading houses
and clubs were also to be built and experienced teachers, prefera-
bly party members, were to be sent to these villages.65 The underly-
ing motive was to educate the children in an atmosphere in which
they would be separated from their so-called counter-revolutionary
parents.66
From the Ukraine and the Central Ivanov industrial region, as well as
from within the greater Urals regions, 1.8 million kulaks and their fam-
ily members (over 300,000 households) were deported. In 1931–1932,
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 62 6/27/2011 11:31:44 AM

many individuals appealed against their deportation sentence but

only a small percentage of these appeals were directly approved. For
example, if a peasant’s son had served in the Red Army, the peasant
would not be subject to dekulakisation. In other cases, the commis-
sion would investigate the appeal concerning the status of a peasant.
Fewer than 10 per cent of those who protested were allowed to return to
their home villages. Others were acquitted of the expropriation charges
and received compensation but were convinced to stay at their new
deportation places. As the new infrastructure developed, these places
were no longer called ‘settlers’ village’ (spetsposëlok) but ‘workers’ vil-
lage’ (trudposëlok). The new ex-kulak villages in Cheliabinsk oblast’ were
described in 1934 in a regional NKVD report to the Main Directorate
of Correctional Camps and Workers’ Villages (Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei
i Ispravitelno-Trudovykh Posëlok, GULagITP NKVD SSSR). This report,
which ran to more than 150 pages, included data on the geographical
location and specialisation of each village, the population structure,
the re-education of ex-kulaks and the number of nurseries and cottage
hospitals.
This part of the Gulag in the Cheliabinsk oblast consisted of 34 work-
ers’ villages (trudposëlki), with deported peasants from the Ivanovo-
Voznesensk area, the Ukraine and other parts of the Urals. A total of
52,256 individuals and 14,532 families lived there, distributed as shown
in Table 1.67
These villages were dispersed across a region of 2.5 million inhab-
itants and thousands of ordinary villages, where the kolkhoz was the
Table 1
Place in Cheliabinsk oblast Number

(activity) of villages Families Inhabitants
Magnitogorsk (Magnitostroi) 4 6842 24,104

Miniarsk (LPCh) 4 301 1121
Satka (Magnezit-factory) 1 376 1373
-’- (Bakal-mine and factory building) 2 429 1612
Karabash (copper mine) 3 681 2790
Kamyshel (brick factory) 1 360 1421
Zlatoust (construction, mines) 4 537 1997
Kamensk (Sinarstroi) 1 465 1880
-’- (mining) 2 531 1951
Kyshtym (fishery sovkhoz in Uvil’di) 1 23 84
Cheliabinsk (Tomino-sovchos) 1 146 323
-’- (NKVD penal and forced labour colony) 2 906 1922
Total 34 14,532 52,256
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 63 6/27/2011 11:31:45 AM

64 Tankograd
predominant form of organisation. The ‘special settlers’ met labour

requirements for forestry/logging in the Miniarsk area, manual ore
and coal mining in Karabash, Satka, Zlatoust, Kopeisk and Kamensk
and digging and building works for new factories in Magnitogorsk and
Kamensk. As many as 60 per cent of the labourers at some building sites
were ‘special settlers’.
The average living space in these villages was 1.88 square metres per
person; 47,199 of this consisted of dugouts that were considered unfit
for living, 53,693 were in barracks with one common room and 101,556
were standard barracks with separate rooms for each family. The NVKD
report also showed that the worst conditions existed in the more remote
areas, where the adults were engaged in logging. In 1935, 5 kilograms of
flour were distributed for each working person per month, along with
0.5 of grain and 0.3 of sugar. It was also noted that there were few
opportunities for the special settlers to acquire foodstuffs using tradi-
tional methods and that many of the older people used substitutes and
let the children eat. There were even occasional reports of cannibalism.
In November 1932 a group of 140 people were convicted of embezzling
4000 tons of grain that should have been sent to special settlers in the
Urals and in Western Siberia.68
After a couple of years, the situation stabilised. The settlers were able
to move from dugouts to houses, often with several rooms, that they
had built themselves. In those areas where the forests had been cleared,
the ground was used for agriculture and the food situation improved
slightly. Many of the deported peasants had followed vocational train-
ing courses, particularly for the mining and building professions. Still,
the living conditions in the coal miners’ city of Kopeisk were inferior
to those in nearby Cheliabinsk. The 50,000 inhabitants in the city
lacked running water and a sewage system and the old water main from
Cheliabinsk was made of wood and ran the risk of rotting. The NVKD
report concluded that the water question in Kopeisk needed to be solved
within a few years.69
A total of 24,916 people in 7632 families were deported to the Kopeisk
coal mines. Because of the poor housing and living conditions 2913
persons fled in 1931, 6038 in 1932, 3070 in 1933 and a significantly
reduced number of 460 in 1934. In all, 12,481 people –50.4 per cent
of the deported ex-kulaks – fled from these special villages in Kopeisk.
During the first years of the settlements, mortality was extremely high.
In 1931, over 800 deaths were registered among the deported persons;
1130 died in 1932, 704 in 1933 and in 336 in 1934. From epidemics alone,
283, 416, 24 and 12 people died in each of these years, respectively. This
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alarming situation was described in a report by NKVD’s Cheliabinsk

director, A.M. Minaev.70 By way of comparison, 6886 kulak families
had been deported for the construction of the metallurgical works in
Magnitogorsk. The total population was 24,063, including all family
members, 13,447 of whom were considered to be among the able work-
force. This was a marginal but important group during the first build-
ing phases in Magnitogorsk.
As of 1 January 1935 the Cheliabinsk Coal Mining Directorate
Cheliabugol counted that there were 2671 families and 10,776 fam-
ily members. Of these, 4551 were considered to be able to perform
physical labour. In total 4888 persons were employed; in addition to
the mines they also worked in agriculture and artisan shops belong-
ing to the Cheliabugol. These deported peasants constituted approxi-
mately 45 per cent of the total workforce in Kopeisk coal mining. Even
in 1934, mortality was higher than nativity among the special settlers
in Cheliabinsk oblast; 1292 persons died that year and only 743 were
born. This report raises some interesting questions, given that it was
written by the local NKVD for the Gulag central authorities. What data
might have been manipulated and what data could the local authorities
hide without risking further trouble? Did they under-report mortality
and indicate only a portion of those who had died? Did they miscalcu-
late the number of births due to unreported infant deaths? The major
question is whether NKVD’s commandants in the special settlements
had reason to file a biased report to the population registrar and the
regional statistical authorities.
Only careful checking over a longer time period could provide clear
answers to these questions, so some of the population and production
data should be treated with a degree of scepticism. In 1934, Cheliabugol
reported that many ex-kulak brigades had achieved far in excess of 100
per cent of the work norms. In that year alone, 114 kulaks who had
shown such enthusiasm for labour had regained their citizen’s rights.
Proposals for rationalisation in production and overfulfilment of pro-
duction norms were honoured with monetary rewards. Throughout the
1930s, Cheliabugol strove to alleviate the housing problems in Kopeisk
and established some facilities for sport and general education. However,
compared to the conditions in Cheliabinsk, the town remained under-
prioritised and backward far into the 1950s.
The Cheliabinsk oblast was characterised by forced urbanisation in
the 1930s and suffered from the same growing pains as Soviet soci-
ety in general. The cities of the Southern Urals had still not achieved
a strong, steady population structure. In many respects, each town
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66 Tankograd
was characterised by the habits and manners of the migrants from the
countryside.
Another migrant current was constituted by the 7100 households
(33,158 people, including family members) who had moved voluntarily
from poorer regions in Russia to Cheliabinsk oblast. Of these, 5985 had
joined kolkhozy and 403 families had later decided to return to their
home regions. On 21 April 1940 the Supreme Soviet adopted a resolu-
tion to move 10,000 more households from other regions to Cheliabinsk
oblast. By January 1941 10,420 families had arrived, of which 2410 had
returned by 15 February.71
Another widespread phenomenon in the 1920s and 1930s was the
flight from the countryside. During the famine years of 1921 and
1922, many peasant families had left their homes and moved from
the Cheliabinsk region. After the forced collectivisation started, the
number of migrants increased dramatically. In 1930, more than half of
the homes in the Troitsk region – 23,056 out of 45,947 – were deserted.
By 1935, more than 17,000 homes in the oblast had been registered as
empty for over three years. Some of the deported ex-kulaks coming to
Cheliabinsk as migrant peasants (pereselentsy) were given these deserted
houses. Special settlements were also set up on land that did not belong
to the collective farming units. Other special settlers were less fortunate
and had to build their first houses during the short summer, often using
a special bricks formed with a mix of hay, linen and other materials.
In 1926, 83.8 per cent of the population of Cheliabinsk and the sur-
rounding gubernii lived in the countryside. By 1939, this number had
dropped to 57.8 per cent. In absolute terms, the countryside popula-
tion had decreased from 1.98 million to 1.62 million persons, while the
urban population had grown from 382,000 to 1,182,000. With the bor-
ders of 1938, Cheliabinsk oblast comprised 163,500 square kilometres,
with a population of 2,802,904, according to the census of 17 January
1939. This meant an overall population growth of 18.54 per cent since
1926 (when the population, within the same borders, was 2,368,460).
The Southern Urals grew mostly due to what is called mechanical popu-
lation growth. This was comprised primarily of the migrant industrial
workers who were attracted from other parts of Russia and Ukraine to
the new industries in the Urals. Many of these people were deported
ex-kulaks and their families who had lost most of their property during
the forced collectivisation of 1930–1933.
Conscious and long-term efforts to erect giant industrial plants, such
as the Magnitogorsk iron and steel works, as well as a large number
of metal and machine-building enterprises in Cheliabinsk, changed
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 66 6/27/2011 11:31:45 AM

society profoundly. One major effect of the collectivisation of the

countryside was the loss of human capital that had been accumulated
among the most productive peasants. Dekulakisation meant that hun-
dreds of thousands of the most thrifty peasants, with years of agricul-
tural experience, had to forego their participation in the development
of the region. Eventually, however, a compromise was reached between
the state and the peasants in general and a stable supply of grain for the
growing cities was secured. Therefore, Stalin could fairly claim to have
achieved one of the conditions for a secure home front in case of war.
However, it is also clear that Stalin considered the interests of the state
to be more important than human rights and individual property.
9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 67 6/27/2011 11:31:45 AM

Figure 28 ‘The building of socialism’, poster by N. Kotov from 1927
9780230_208872_04_cha03.indd 68 6/27/2011 11:31:52 AM

3
The Industrial City As a
Socialist Vision and Soviet Reality
The Bolshevist views on socialism, particularly on democracy but

also in many other respects, differed from what other Russian social-
ists and social democrats, especially the Mensheviks, had considered
to be fundamental. There is an obvious risk in using ideological con-
cepts that mean different things to different people as guidelines. Even
since the breakdown of the Soviet communist regime, historians have
argued about how best to characterise the system that emerged in the
1930s and existed in various forms until 1991. Ironically, if one uses
the terms ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’ without qualification to describe
the economic and social conditions in the USSR, this usage matches the
terminology that Stalin announced from the mid-1920s and onwards.
Thereafter, it was taboo to question whether socialism – as previously
understood in Europe – could be established in a country like Soviet
Russia. The criterion for the ‘socialist direction’ of the development, as
established in the party, solely concerned property relations. As more
and more enterprises in industry, agriculture and elsewhere fell into
state or cooperative ownership, the official line was that socialism had
triumphed over private capitalism. Stalin’s claim that socialism was
established in 1936 in connection with the adoption of the new consti-
tution can be questioned from several different aspects. This has been
done by the Swedish slavist, Professor Anton Karlgren, among others.
In his biography of Stalin, Karlgren described how Soviet society actu-
ally preserved and developed the signs of a typical class society, instead
of achieving equality and other socialist goals. Karlgren described eve-
ryday life and high politics in the USSR and pointed at the growth of
new privileged groups and exploited classes. He even talked of a new
‘party bourgeoisie’ as the ruling class. Karlgren was decades ahead of
debates by other experts on the Soviet Union. These later debates were
69
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70 Tankograd
spurred by the dissident Yugoslav thinker Milovan Djilas and his book
The New Class, which argued that a system was established from the
1930s onwards that had characteristics from Tsarist and Western soci-
eties.1 In general, those observers in the West who did not embrace the
self-image of the Soviet rulers had fewer illusions regarding conditions
in Soviet Russia and could better describe the country’s evolution, both
during and after the Stalin era.2
Today, with access to the reports of the secret police, as well as diaries
and correspondence between Soviet citizens, it is clear that there was
much more discussion and questioning of the official ideology in the
Soviet Union than scholars in the West used to think. Lenin and the
Bolsheviks who took power in Russia in 1917 had not counted on trans-
forming the agrarian-dominated Russian society in a socialist direction
unless there was a revolution in Germany and other states of Western
Europe. Towards the end of his life, Lenin realised that his goal of spur-
ring a general socialist revolution had failed and that victory in the
Russian Civil War had not created the preconditions for a socialist trans-
formation in Soviet Russia. Even less clear was the question of how to
modernise Russia’s economy. In Lenin’s last writings, he pessimistically
but realistically described state capitalism in the form it had taken in
Germany during World War I as a prototype for Russia. Lenin had stud-
ied the leading German statesman Walter Rathenau (1867–1922), partic-
ularly his book on Germany’s wartime economy, and looked forward to
meeting him. However, in 1922, Lenin had a stroke and Rathenau was
assassinated. Of course, history contains alternatives, which never came
to fruition because of what are referred to as accidental circumstances.
Therefore, it can only be speculated upon as to how far these alterna-
tives might have progressed before encountering the same challenges as
those that struck Lenin’s successors.3 In the mid-1920s, the ideological
struggles intensified in the sole, ruling party. Stalin managed to get more
followers in the Communist Party to accept his idea of how socialism
could be established in Soviet Russia through industrialisation and by
radical changes in the production conditions in the countryside. With
his vision of ‘socialism in one country’, Stalin had coined a formula that
legitimised his position as theoretical leader among the party elite, and
at the same time appealed to the broad masses of the people. The party’s
propaganda could then imbue a new Soviet patriotism in order to create
an enthusiasm and a willingness to make sacrifices, given that socialist
ideals seemed to be guiding star.
Can Stalinism therefore be seen as a version of socialism? This book
argues that it is necessary to make a distinction between an abstract
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Industrial City As Socialist Vision and Soviet Reality 71
model of a capitalist economy (based on one theory or another) and

the concrete national market economy systems. In the same way, it is
worthwhile to make a strict distinction between a model (sometimes
called an ideal or a utopia) of a socialist society (within the Marxist,
social democratic or communist tradition) and the concrete forms that
societies with communist regimes have had in the 20th century (and
which some regimes still have today).
Of course, the historical circumstances in this part of Russia mean that
the distance to a model of a socialist society is quite great. Therefore,
a case study at the regional level can only clarify and modify the com-
plexity of the development. The transformation can be better explained
as the leadership’s efforts to achieve a military-industrial mobilisation
of the country’s productive forces; in a wider sense, it wished to develop
education and progress in technology in order to secure the state against
internal and external opponents and enemies.
The unique power position of the communists implied that all infor-
mation about the society could be directed and controlled. In the
Marxist tradition, a programme for social revolution was brought in.
In certain respects, the Soviet Communist Party was reminiscent of a
religious sect, in which Lenin and, in later years, Stalin were regarded
as sacrosanct. Their speeches and even single sentences could be used
to legitimise a practice that was anything but socialist. One of the first
signs that these Bolsheviks had entered a quasi-religious course was
their decision to enbalm Lenin’s body in 1924 and to build a mauso-
leum to his memory as a place of pilgrimage. This was something of a
return to medieval traditions in which the Orthodox Church would
sometimes display the mortal remains of its saints as examples of mir-
acle-working. However, in another dimension than that of the emerg-
ing cult of Lenin, Soviet Russia recognised the memory of those who
had fallen in the Civil War, in the Urals and elsewhere. Streets and
squares were named after them and statuettes were created to celebrate
the pioneers of the revolution. A necropolis for fallen Red Guards and
Red Army soldiers was raised on a central square in Cheliabinsk, just
as those who died in battle in Moscow from October to November of
1917 had been buried in graves along the Kremlin wall on Red Square.
There are many apparent similarities between traditional Orthodox
religious processions and Soviet mass demonstrations with portraits of
the Communist Party leaders.
The power of the Communist Party in the Urals became clear after a
military confrontation with virtually anyone who had opposed Soviet
power in 1917. What the local leaders in the Southern Urals envisioned
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72 Tankograd
was hardly an all-encompassing utopia of a future kingdom of happi-

ness. Instead, they looked like a growing group of industrial leaders who
wanted to give the Urals a central place in the Soviet Union on the basis
of the region’s natural resources and despite its backward infrastruc-
ture. The realism, efficiency and energy – in contrast to the ideological
slogans, official speeches and indoctrination that permeated the party’s
resolutions and many of its concrete activities – should not be underes-
timated. This contrast is particularly clear when analysing the regional
archival material – surveys for decisions and stenographic protocols
from meetings in the 1930s.
The Communist Party was strictly centralised. Nominations to
important posts were controlled by the nomenklatura, a list of appoint-
ments that had to be approved at central committee level. A city like
Cheliabinsk, with several hundred thousand inhabitants, was governed
by the local communist cadres. Within the category of industrial and
town planning in Cheliabinsk were a number of carefully prepared
decisions that were based on precise descriptions of the situation and
followed by detailed plans for action. Rather than an abstract utopian
or kingdom-come idea for the workers, the Cheliabinsk communists
envisioned modern industries, the best in Western technology and a
developed education system. Even if this was described as socialism,
one should not lose sight of the realities and social conditions that can
be analysed even without such an ideological concept.4
Until 1934, Cheliabinsk and the surrounding districts were part of
the huge Urals region. The party committee in Sverdlovsk (known
as Ekaterinburg prior to 1918) had successfully lobbied for extensive
investments in the Ural-Kuznetsk Kombinat project. The first five-year
plan, from 1928 to 1932, contained many industrial items that would
give the cities in the Urals a key role in the country’s future industrial
structure. However, as these enterprises were built and the collectivisa-
tion of agriculture was carried out, it became clear that it would not be
possible to govern the entire Urals area properly from only one centre.
In 1934, the area was divided into the Sverdlovsk, Perm (later Motolov)
and Cheliabinsk regions (oblasts). New regional power centres were then
formed that were more or less under the control of the central commit-
tee, the politburo in Moscow. In this way, Cheliabinsk was included in
a decision-making structure that had Moscow as its centre. From 1934
onwards, when Cheliabinsk was consolidated with its machine-build-
ing industries and the iron and steel works in Magnitogorsk had been
completed, the Southern Urals formed a definite economic-geographical
unit. Only minor changes later took place in the oblast’s borders as certain
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Figure 29 Map of the Eastern Urals with the main cities from north to south.
The 1934 administrative borders are shown.
parts in the north and some agricultural districts in the east were moved
to the Kurgan oblast, which was formed in 1941.
The neighbouring city of Magnitogorsk was dominated by the iron
and steel works and this led to the People’s Commissariat of Heavy
Industry becoming as important as the Communist Party organisation
in matters of daily organisation in the city. Cheliabinsk, on the other
hand, had a more complex industrial structure and a widespread net-
work of party committees at the factories and in the city districts. After
1934, the regional party committee (oblastnoi komitet, obkom) was the
last resort for fulfilling plans. The communists in individual enterprises
were subordinated to the direction of the factory, the people’s com-
missariat and to the powerful obkom. Appointments and promotions
were easier to control than the specific results of industrial investments
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74 Tankograd
and other investments at the local level. The existence of a series of

bottom-up parallel information organs did not make it easier to survey
the situation. Historians are fortunate that so much of the reality from
those days was recorded, in one way or another.
The first secretary in the new Cheliabinsk regional party committee
was Kuz’ma Ryndin. Ryndin’s life, in a way, represented a generation of
Bolsheviks: their formation as a group during the revolution, the Civil War
and the establishment of the one-party state. His character provides an
idea about those who led the forced industrialisation in the 1930s. His fate
also provides a background to the extensive purges in the party towards
the end of the decade. For this reason, the description of his life is split into
two parts. The first shows how Ryndin advanced within the Communist
Party and how he handled the task of guiding the Cheliabinsk region dur-
ing the second five-year plan (1933–1937). Chapter 5 of this book, which
chronicles the activities and fate of the obkom chairman in 1937, serves to
exemplify how the terror was spread on a regional level. Ryndin’s career,
leadership style and position in the hierarchy provide a background that
can be compared with other party functionaries in the 1930s.
Kuz’ma Vasil’evich Ryndin was born in 1893 in the village of Yearl in
the Ufa district (a guberniia in what is now Bashkiria). In 1915, he started to
work at the iron works in the city of Sim and he joined the Russian Social
Democratic Party (RSDAP) later that year. The following year he helped
to organise a First of May meeting for young workers in the city. Because
he risked being arrested for this, he moved to Revda and then to Nizhnii
Tagil in the Northern Urals, where he found a job as blacksmith.5
After the February revolution in 1917, Ryndin returned to Sim, where
he became a member of the city’s revolutionary committee. After the
Soviets were crushed by the White Armies, he carried out underground
resistance against the Kolchak dictatorship. When the Red Army defeated
Kolchak’s units in the Urals in 1919, Ryndin was appointed head of the
Ufa district Cheka, the powerful organisation that had been set up for
state security to combat the counter-revolution. It actually acted as a
secret police service with wide and extraordinary powers to punish, with-
out judicial trial or sentence, anybody who was considered an enemy of
Soviet power. For the next year, Ryndin also served as a political com-
missar in the Red Army’s Western Front, the army group under the com-
mand of Mikhail Tukhachevskii that advanced into Poland in 1920.
After the Civil War, Ryndin returned to the Urals and established
his career in the Communist Party. In 1921–1922, he was party sec-
retary in the industrial city of Zlatoust, in Nizhnii Tagil from 1923 to
1924, in Perm in 1925 and 1926, and from 1927 in the Urals regional
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Figure 30 In 1936–1937 the Chairman of the Cheliabinsk Regional Committee

(obkom), Kuz’ma Ryndin (born 1893), led the first purges of party cadres and
industry leaders. In the summer of 1937, Ryndin was a member of the three-
man commission (troika) that carried out mass repressions according to the
infamous NKVD Decree No. 00447 against former kulaks and criminals, which
resulted in the executions of thousands of innocent people. Ryndin himself was
arrested on 12 October 1937. After harsh interrogation, he ‘confessed’ to anti-
Soviet activities in the so-called ‘Right-Trotskyist block’ and was sentenced to
death in February 1938. Ryndin was formally rehabilitated from all charges in
March 1956.
committee. His background was typical of many party cadres who had
been moulded during the Civil War period, who never had the chance
to receive a solid education but showed their practical and organisa-
tional capacity within the ruling party.
Ryndin supported Stalin in his struggle against the internal right-
wing opposition led by Nikolai Bukharin. Towards the end of the
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76 Tankograd
1920s, the preconditions returned for the ruling group to imagine the
social changes in the same terms as they had during the Civil War.
The polemics of 1928–1929 between Stalin and Bukharin reflected the
range of opinions within the ruling party. Stalin then formulated a
radical policy that in many respects reminded others of what Trostky’s
defeated Leftist opposition had called for: higher investment in indus-
try and economic pressure against richer individual peasants. From
1929, Ryndin was a member of the party’s control commission, which
meant that he often checked the ideological reliability of the cadres. He
participated in the purges of the followers of Bukharin within the party
organisation in Moscow.
After 1930, the Moscow region’s party committee was led by Lazar
Kaganovich (1893–1991), one of the hardest-working functionaries of
the 1930s. He was secretary of the politburo, people’s commissar of the
transport industry and first secretary of the Moscow party organisation.
Kaganovich seems to have been the ideal role model for Ryndin, who on
at least one occasion even referred to him as ‘my teacher’. In September
1936, after being appointed head of the Cheliabinsk regional bureau,
Ryndin suggested that the city would be renamed Kaganovichgrad but
Stalin rejected the idea. In the 1930s, the Bolsheviks renamed many
cities, mountains, electric power stations, enterprises and kolkhozy after
themselves or recently deceased communists. This habit started in 1919
during the Civil War and might have had Byzantine ideological roots.
There were obviously limits to these habits and Stalin refused some
name changes. A campaign was organised in Cheliabinsk to change
the name of the city, which comes from a Tatar word meaning ‘hole’. It
was suggested that the city’s name should refer to the proud history of
the Bolsheviks and be named ‘Koba’, the revolutionary name that Iosif
Dzhugashvili used in the early 1900s. However, on this occasion Stalin
rejected the name change. In general, the so-called cult of personality
that surrounded Stalin’s public image from the late 1920s onwards seems
to have been something that he controlled himself for both the popular
masses, who, as Stalin once said, might need ‘a little God’ (Bozhok), and
also vis-à-vis the communists. When Vyachislav Molotov once men-
tioned ‘the Leader’ (Vozhd) too many times in a speech, Stalin muttered
that this was excessive eulogising and that he had not expected that
from Molotov, whom he evidently held in higher esteem than many
other party members.
Ryndin’s career was typical of many who led the grand projects of
the first five-year plans in the 1930s. As second secretary of the Moscow
regional party committee, he supervised the defence industry, the iron
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Figure 31 ‘We must finally recognise that of all the valuable capitals in the
world, the people, the cadres are the most valuable and the most decisive capi-
tal’, Stalin concluded in his speech to the Red Army academies’ final examina-
tion celebration on 4 May 1935. ‘The cadres decide everything!’ says the text
on this poster by Gustav Klutsis. It is a photomontage of two groups of people:
one that waves and rejoices with flowers, the other as an anonymous mass by
the feet of the leader. The slogans appear grotesque when read in their historical
context. In the early 1930s thousands of specialists in industry and the army
with ‘suspect backgrounds’ were purged, sometimes after show trials, and sen-
tenced to long camp terms or execution. A few years later, tens of thousands of
experts were again the victims of a new wave of terror, controlled by Stalin, that
swept through the party, the economic administration and the armed forces.
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78 Tankograd
and steel works and the electro-technical industry. From 1929 to 1932,
Ryndin worked in the Moscow branch of the Workers’ and Peasants’
Inspectorate Rabkrin, a control organ that, as the name suggests, was
originally created to check the bureaucracy in administration and indus-
try. In the 1920s, however, the Rabkrin gradually became yet another
organisation that merely increased bureaucratisation.6 Ryndin was a
member of the party’s central committee from 1930 onwards, first as a
candidate member and then, following the 17th Party Congress in 1934,
as full member. In 1932, he returned to the Urals to lead the Nizhnii
Tagil district’s party organ and in 1934 was appointed head of the new
Cheliabinsk regional party committee. In other words, Ryndin was a rep-
resentative of the new nomenklatura, the functionaries in state and party
organs whose appointments were controlled by higher party organs. The
following example illustrates how the party’s supervision could mani-
fest itself. In a letter to Lazar Kaganovich and others dated 13 September
1934 Stalin wrote that Ryndin was one of those regional secretaries who
had turned into ‘petty demagogues’ and were too meek with the cadres.
Stalin said that Ryndin should be told to fulfil the plan completely and
on time or face charges and be dismissed. On 30 September 1934 the
politburo then approved a decree from the council of the people’s com-
missars that stated precisely what Stalin had suggested and a group of
leading functionaries was sent from Moscow to the Cheliabinsk region.7
Lazar Kaganovich undertook an inspection trip to the Urals and Siberia
to check the progress of the grain deliveries to the state. On 7–9 October
he arranged a meeting with the party secretaries in the Cheliabinsk
region and heads of the machine and tractor stations. He appealed to
their memories from the struggles 15 years earlier during the Civil War.
This meeting adopted a resolution that not only described the deficien-
cies but also ascribed them to alleged ‘counter-revolutionary elements’,
individuals who had participated in Kolchak’s and Dutov’s armies and
had infiltrated the leadership of the kolkhozy. The regional branch of the
NKVD was instructed to speed up the handling of these exposed persons
and to publish its verdict in the local press.8
The changing character of Cheliabinsk city in the 1930s
The central districts in Cheliabinsk changed drastically within a few

years. Broad streets were built with alleys that separated the wide pave-
ments from the roadway in the middle. In the centre, many of the old
buildings were torn down and small wooden houses made way for mul-
ti-storey buildings.
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Figure 32 Construction of new houses on the Workers’ and Peasants’ Street

and Kommuna Street in 1928. In the background are the Catholic Church and
the church of the Monastery of the Ascension, with its tower torn away, and a
wooden building that used to be the girls’ lyceum.
The disappearance of the Orthodox churches and cult centres of

other religions was remarkable and symbolic. The Bolsheviks had the
most radical anti-religious policy of all of the international workers’
movements in the inter-war period. This policy had sharpened since
the Orthodox Church had supported the counter-revolution’s defence
of Tsarism and pronounced its opposition to the Bolshevik leaders in
1918 for separating state from church. In the 1920s and 1930s, a wide-
spread campaign was launched in Cheliabinsk and elsewhere against all
religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam were considered to be social
institutions that should no longer hamper man’s consciousness.9 In
1922, an anti-religious movement was created by the party against the
Orthodox clergy in particular. Instead of celebrating Easter, people were
told to work and then take holidays some days later. The struggle against
religion included meetings, lectures and demonstrations, exhibitions
and such actions as ‘anti-Easter’ or ‘anti-Christmas’. Popular textbooks
were distributed with atheist propaganda. Party members and young
communists were the leading members of the ‘Union of the Militant
Godless’ (Soiuz voinstvujusjchich bezbozhnikov).10
Towards the end of the 1920s, the fight against the clergy and religions
intensified. Synagogues and all the Orthodox churches (except one)
were torn down. In 1921, a nunnery in the centre of Cheliabinsk was
closed down. Some nuns were accused of being counter-revolutionary
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80 Tankograd
elements and were sent to concentration camps, while elderly ones

were sent to old people’s homes. In 1926, the nunnery buildings were
taken over by the city authorities with the intention of rebuilding them
into a house of congress; no traces of the building’s former use were to
remain. However, there was a lack of money for this grandiose build-
ing plan, so both the nunnery and the Voznesenskii church were torn
down and replaced with the ‘Iuzhnyi Ural’ hotel. The main cathedral,
Khristorozhdestvenskii, was torn down in 1932 and the Holy Trinity
church was rebuilt into a museum. Other churches were simply torn
down or renovated for use as printing houses and other purposes. The
mosque was closed for cult purposes and used by clubs, while the syna-
gogue was transformed into dormitories.11
Where wooden houses and churches had been torn down, multi-storey
buildings were erected. In the central square, a seven-storey administra-
tion building was constructed for the party’s regional committee and
the executive Soviet organs. Farther to the west, on Spartacus Street, was
Figure 33 The Iuzhnii Ural (Southern Urals) Hotel was built on the former site
of the Hodegetria nunnery. The original plan was to build a huge congress hall
that could hold 700–800 people. This was in line with the plans to build the
Palace of Congress on the former grounds of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior
near the Moscow River.
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Figure 34 Parks were designed and trees planted along the streets. This photo
from the 1930s shows cleaning and cutting in a park in Cheliabinsk’s city
centre.
the ‘Chekists’ house’ – an entire block comprising single-family flats,

restaurants, cinemas and service facilities. It was originally intended
for only NKVD employees but in practice was also used for party cadres
and engineers.12 There were now ten saunas and bath houses and three
laundries in the city.
A new tram and bus network was expanded to service the needs of the
factory workers.13 More streets were paved or asphalted; a total of 500,000
square metres was paved and 48,000 square metres of pavements and four
streets in the centre were asphalted. The central Spartacus Street, which
ran east-west, was widened to 50 metres and was given wide pavements
that were separated from the roadway by alleys. Parks were built and
many trees were planted in the city. For example, 9840 trees were planted
in 1937 alone. The City Gardens were refurbished and a new leisure and
culture park was inaugurated, with surrounding forest areas for walking.
The Dynamo Stadium opened for football matches and athletics competi-
tions. In general, all building projects turned out to be much more expen-
sive than estimated and there was a constant distance between plans for
public buildings, schools and hospitals and their fulfilment.14
This part of the chapter shows a simplified map of the main streets
and some of the buildings and enterprises in Cheliabinsk.
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82 Tankograd
Magnitogorsk is one of many examples of a city that was created

during the forced industrialisation around a huge enterprise, where
only peasant villages had existed before. In contrast, Cheliabinsk is
an example of how typical Russian provincial cities were drastically
changed during industrialisation. The city’s centre and the new dwell-
ing areas were built at a time when architectural trends were chang-
ing. Accordingly, Cheliabinsk’s centre and the new factory city districts
displayed a combination of Soviet constructivism, as seen in the Main
Post Office and the first Culture Palace, and so-called Stalinist neoclas-
sicism, as in the Great House on Revolution Square, the Opera and the
Theatre of the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory. The Main Post Office and its
telegraph station were built according to drawings by N.K. Futukov in
the constructivist style that was predominant in the early 1930s, and
opened in 1936. It is situated on Kirov Street, has three-storey wings and
a four-storey corner house with an attic. This was the last building in
Cheliabinsk to be built in the constructivist style.15 Later in the 1930s,
Soviet Russian architecture acquired its distinctive neoclassicist form
Figure 35 The Main Post Office, built in 1936, was the last building in the city
designed in the constructivist style. In 1935, a statue of Sergei Kirov, the party
chairman who was assassinated in Leningrad on 1 December 1934, was raised
in one corner of the building.
9780230_208872_04_cha03.indd 82 6/27/2011 11:31:56 AM

with columns and decorations on the garlands, roofs and friezes. These
contrasting building styles call for an explanation of the social courses
of events that were reflected in the changing architecture.16
In order to understand the new society’s class divisions, the population
can be divided in order of falling status into the nomenklatura (the lead-
ing officials who were controlled by the Communist Party), the techni-
cal intelligentsia and the cultural personalities and workers with various
levels of qualifications, from ‘shock workers’ to ‘stakhanovites’ with sub-
stantially higher than average wages. Further down the class divide were
the unqualified and seasonal workers who were mostly engaged in build-
ing activities at industrial enterprises.17 It can be argued that the par-
ticular architectural style known as Stalinist neoclassicism corresponded
with the tastes of the new ruling class and the ambitions of the elite. At
the same time as a new industrial society was being created at great cost
for the broad masses, the architecture was a classical, monumental aspect
of this society that would withstand the test of time forever. Anatole
Kopp analysed the transition from constructivism to Stalinist neoclas-
sicism in L’architecture soviétique à l’époque stalinien (1978). In the preface
to this book, the French economist Charles Bettelheim characterised the
Figure 36 ‘Late Stalinist Empire’ style. This 1936 photo shows the construc-
tion of a seven-storey block with the Central Gastronom food store and apart-
ments for the regional Soviet cadres on Spartacus Street (today Lenin Avenue)
and Revolution Square, where a necropolis existed until the 1950s with graves
of martyrs, fallen revolutionaries and Red Army soldiers.
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84 Tankograd
architectural changes as reflecting a restoration of relations of produc-

tion, which were in all essential aspects the same as capitalism, even
though they were veiled by socialist rhetoric and ideology, which was
consciously or unconsciously used to legitimise the new system. There
is an increasing reassessment of Stalinist architecture in Russia today. It
is judged less critically than it was before for being anachronistic, as was
the case with Moscow’s high-rises, which were pejoratively called ‘Stalin-
cakes’. Less emphasis is placed on the totalitarian traits in city planning
and more on the far-sighted social thinking.18
Sotsgorodók – a socialist ideal for

the tractor factory city district
The Soviet project included a vision of a model socialist city. In The

Socialist City (1930), Nikolai Miliutin presented some grand ideas for the
rational planning of Soviet cities.19 In many respects, the Soviet Union
was considered a pioneering nation for modern city planning and archi-
tecture in the inter-war period. Some of the grand building projects
in Moscow and other cities received proposals from famous Western
architects such as Le Corbusier and Naum Gabo, as well as architects
from Germany, the United States and elsewhere.20 Their designs were
found in the new factory buildings and dwelling areas that were erected
in the 1930s in the USSR. Among the best-known examples of entire
cities or city districts that were designed by modernist architects were
Ivan Leonidov’s plans for Magnitogorsk and Nizhnii Novgorod (later
named Gorkii). Workers would receive individual flats in multi-storey
buildings, while women would be relieved of household tasks since
every block would be equipped with a dining hall, laundries and day-
care centres. It is noticeable for the modern observer, however, that the
grandiose plans for industrial development did not always match the
corresponding investments in the city’s infrastructure.21
Unlike the cities mentioned above, Cheliabinsk was not an example
of well thought out city planning. The first five-year plan for 1928–1932
included the erection of a number of factories in the city. The tractor fac-
tory was to be situated far to the east of the centre, south of the railway
and with dwelling complexes to the north of its site. However, more fac-
tories were soon built. For example, the Ordzhonikidze Machine-building
Works was situated south of the tractor factory and its dwelling complexes
were downwind from the latter. Several other metal industries were located
without careful consideration of the distances to the dwelling areas and
the predominant wind directions. Only in 1935 did the authorities try to
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Figure 37 A bus on the number 1 line that opened on 13 September 1925

and stretched from the city centre to the railway station and farther on to the
Koliushchenko Factory.
achieve a better balance between the requirements of the model socialist

city and the existing and future industrial structure.22
In the mid-1930s, a general plan was adopted for the expansion of
Cheliabinsk that considered the predominant westerly and south-westerly
winds. Accordingly, the workers’ city districts were to be located west of the
factories, such as the tractor factory city district situated on Lake Pervoe.
Model socialist towns (sotsialisticheskii gorodok, abbreviated sotsgorodok)
were to be built around the new factories and the regional power station.
The project for the sotsgorodok by the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory was
designed by Andrei Burov (1900–1957), one of the leading architects
in the 1920s in the constructivist Union of Contemporary Architects
(OSA, Ob’edinenie sovremennykh arkhitektorov) and a member of the
Cheliabinsk Traktorstroi group. In 1931, he was sent to the Ford fac-
tories in Detroit to study the development of industrial construction
design, after which he designed the tractor factory. Originally, the sots-
gorodok plans included the total socialisation of everyday life as well as
the cultural and educational programmes.
The sotsgorodok was to include entire blocks of family apartments and
blocks with so-called communist housing principles. The latter were
called dwelling combinats (combines). However, the ideas of creating
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86 Tankograd
Figure 38 Map of modern-day Cheliabinsk with its industrial districts to the east.
Figure 39 The Workers’ and Peasants’ Street (known since 1935 as Kirov Street)
in 1932–1933. In the foreground is one of the first blocks built in the Soviet
period in the centre of Cheliabinsk to have individual flats.
9780230_208872_04_cha03.indd 86 6/27/2011 11:31:57 AM

such ‘communes’ (the Russian word kommuna alludes to the socialist

tradition, as in the Paris Commune of 1871) were not realised. In the
sotsgorodok, individual living was combined with partial efforts to cre-
ate a common sector. Some of the houses were built based on the model
of each group having their own apartment. The kitchen was shared
with others on the same floor. Every house was to have a common eat-
ery, where the family could have their breakfast or evening meal served
by special cooks. The eating house was, however, later transformed to
the Restaurant Vostok. Only one house on Gorkii Street was built totally
in accordance with the ‘commune principle’; in the other houses, the
families had their own kitchens. Service and amusement places were
accessible. In addition to shops, the city offered a bathing and washing
complex, a trade school with dormitories and a cinema (today called
‘The Kirovets’ cinema) and two clubs (later integrated into the Palace
of Culture and the Theatre of the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory). Burov’s
project was one of the first in the USSR in which an entire town district
was built according to the principles of constructivism.23
Many Cheliabinsk housewives entered the workforce in the 1930s.
However, there was evidently still a large number of housewives who
were outside the workforce because many children could not receive day-
care. In 1933, the share of women in the labour force was 28.5 per cent;
it was somewhat lower (19.3 per cent) in the construction sector. In other
Figure 40 Five-storey blocks with apartments for workers, engineers and clerks
at the tractor factory. Today, the alleys either side of Spartacus Street have been
reduced to make way for heavy traffic on the four-lane road.
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88 Tankograd
words, almost every third woman was engaged in the labour force.24 Of
the 408 Cheliabinks Tractor Factory (ChTZ) workers who had advanced
to positions of responsibility in the economic administration, only 31
were women. This was criticised by the city party committee, as was the
fact that only one woman had been promoted to workshop overseer.25
The total dwelling area in Cheliabinsk city was calculated differently
in various reports from the authorities. However, a common feature
of all these reports was the crisis situation prior to the war in 1941.
From 1928 to 1938, the city’s population grew from 67,000 to 312,000,
yet the total dwelling area in the same period only rose from 298,600
square metres to 826,000. A population growth of 100,000 persons had
Figure 41 ‘Down with kitchen slavery! Give us a new everyday life!’ A poster
argues how food courts, restaurants and daycare centres for children would lib-
erate women from drudgery at home and enable them to choose their own pro-
fessions. In the tractor factory city district, a few houses were built according to
this model, with common restaurants, laundries and kindergartens. However,
the collectivist forms of life of these so-called ‘kommuna’ never predominated.
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been predicted up to 1933 and the average dwelling space per person
was expected to rise from 3.4 square metres to six. In reality, however,
the average living space was only about 3 square metres. The situation
deteriorated drastically during the war years, when tens of thousands
of families were evacuated to Cheliabinsk and forced to share the same
space as the already overcrowded population.26
A report from the party’s central control commission to Stalin and
Molotov concerning ‘the housing and living conditions at the Tractor
Factory in Cheliabinsk’ described in drastic terms how the enterprise
had neglected the housing question. Many houses had severely decayed,
while management had not kept its homes in repair or built a sufficient
number of new ones. The budget allowances for building homes had
not been fully used for several years and few of the scheduled building
schemes had been completed. A total of 52,824 square metres of living
area was added in 1934 but in the three following years, as the number
of employees had increased significantly, only 23,134 square metres of
living area had been built. At the same time, barracks with a total area
of 26,500 square metres, which had been erected in 1929–1930 and had
decayed, were torn down. In reality, this meant that the living space
decreased by 3426 square metres. By 1 January 1939 the tractor factory
had provided only 48.3 per cent of its workers with apartments, while
the remaining 15,366 people had no modern housing.
The report then provided a detailed description of some of the worst
living conditions. On the 6th section, 14 families – a total of 40 people –
lived in a dormitory of 129 square metres. Nine workers’ families with
infants lived in dark, moist rooms in a basement with a total area of 35
square metres. In springtime, the basements were filled with water. The
commission said that 2134 workers and their families, including young
children, lived ‘in unsuitable, damp and cold basements’. Nine hundred
and fifty-eight workers’ families lived in half-demolished barracks that
had been rented from nearby factories. Because of the housing shortage,
seven ‘workers’ villages’ (trudposëlki) comprised mainly of half-dugouts
had appeared in the vicinity of the tractor factory. In these villages, 17,467
workers and clerks lived with their families. The commission frequently
employed the term ‘wrecking’ with regard to the building methods that
had led to widespread mould damage. Wooden material instead of metal
had been used to cover the sewage system, drain pipes were lacking, the
roofs were leaking and the electricity system often malfunctioned.
In 1938, the report continued, ‘few effective measures had been taken
to liquidate the consequences of wrecking’. Only 2.7 out of the 5.1 mil-
lion rubles that the tractor factory had planned to spend on housing
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90 Tankograd
was actually used. Similar ‘wrecking’ was noted in the construction of

water and sewer pipes along the roads in the Tractor Factory city dis-
trict. The workers had paid almost three million rubles in rent for their
apartments and rooms and the factory had allotted 816,000 rubles for
municipal purposes. Despite higher rents, the workers in the barracks
did not received fresh water on a regular basis and were unable to wash
themselves properly for days on end.
The food served for the workers was bad. All the dining places were
situated near the workshops and workers could only be served during
working hours. In the trudposiëlok there was only one restaurant, which
could not serve meals on a mass scale. The only dining hall (stolovaia)
in the village had closed down.
The poor living conditions were the most important factor behind
the high turnover of labour. In 1936 17,419 workers (64.5 per cent of the
total workforce) left the factory, and the trend continued in 1937, with
18,192 workers (66 per cent of the total) departing.
This investigation by the central control commission was shown to
the people’s commissar of the machine-building industry, L’vov, to the
head of the directorate of the tractor industry, P. M. Zernov, and to
director Umanets at the Cheliabinsk Tractory Factory. They confirmed
its conclusions on all matters and then set up a series of proposals to
improve the housing of the enterprise and the municipal services.27
Basically, the city continued to experience problems throughout the
1930s with regard to housing, although these did not receive the same
attention as production and planning targets. There were gradual
improvements, however, and certain city districts did acquire a better
functioning infrastructure; at the same time, a clearly differentiated
hierarchy of living conditions was more discernable.
Barracks for industrial workers in ‘shanty towns’
The speed with which the original vision of a socialist model city based
around modern industrial factories was lost is striking. By far the top
priority was the creation of the factories, which meant that the workers
and their families had to continue living in barracks, huts and dugouts.
Thirty to forty people would live in the barracks, in dormitories with
bunk beds. For some time, the majority of workers lived under such
conditions, not only in Cheliabinsk but also in other cities in the Urals
and in the Kuznetsk region of Siberia. Single people and married cou-
ples lived together in the barracks, with their sleeping places separated
only by blankets or rugs. The better barracks had wooden bunks or iron
beds rather than bunk beds but bedclothes were in short supply.
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Many people around the tractor factory lived in barracks that had
originally been considered as only temporary one-storey houses.
Approximately 48 per cent of the workers at the tractor factory were
under 23 years of age.28 To the north of the first blocks with barracks,
construction of one-family single houses [individual houses, e.g. one
family one building, or apartment blocks where families had individual
flats?] started in the 1930s. In the latter half of the 1930s, the area to the
east of Lake Pervoe, where small villages had existed for many years, was
developed. These construction works were not planned and, even by the
Soviet standards of the day, the buildings were hastily and chaotically
erected in order to alleviate the housing shortages in the barracks.29
The government’s policy made it practically impossible for regional
party leaders to alleviate the social misery that they constantly encoun-
tered in the early 1930s. If they failed to meet industrial production
and construction targets, they risked their careers, while the centre
would overlook the non-fulfilment of the social ambitions in the plans.
Following an inspection of the miserable conditions in the barracks
around factories in Novosibirsk, one party boss exclaimed, ‘Why do
the workers not revolt?’ This may be partly explained by the fact that
workers already understood that complaints could lead to further dete-
rioration, and accusations of slander that could lead to forced labour in
camps under even worse conditions. Another explanation could have
been that the situation in the villages, from where most of the new
workers had recently arrived, was even worse. Finally, even though the
situation had lasted for several years, the workers might have been con-
vinced that the problems would be solved fairly soon.
The fact that barracks and four- or five-storey apartment blocks had
been erected quickly and carelessly with bad building materials caused
a severe housing crisis in Cheliabinsk. From 1932 to 1939, the popula-
tion of the city grew from 59,000 to 274,000, while the living space
area only increased from a total of 560,000 to 1,043,000 square metres.
Each person in Cheliabinsk had an average living space area of only
2.8 square metres.30
In March 1937, the NKVD secret police performed an unannounced
check of the conditions in Cheliabinsk. Its report depicted the housing
and living situation in a negative light. On the outskirts of the city were
six relatively large villages with barracks and dugouts that had been con-
structed without any plan. Over 50,000 people lived in these villages.
One village, called Port Arthur, in the south-eastern part of the city was
named after the Russian fortress in the Far East that became famous in
the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905. It had originally grown up in
chaotic fashion to the east of the railway in the late 19th century, and
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92 Tankograd
by 1937 its 17,000 inhabitants worked at machine-building enterprise

No. 78 and the tractor factory.
The village of Kolupaevka, south of the city, had been founded in 1900
and in the 1930s consisted mostly of half-dugouts and had over 6000
inhabitants, most of whom were workers at the Koliushenko Factory. The
village of Medvedevka consisted entirely of dugouts for temporary work-
ers at various factories, while the village of Nagornyi, north-east of the
city centre, also had mostly dugouts and over 10,000 inhabitants who
worked at the tractor factory. The village of Oziornyi was situated in
the eastern part of Cheliabinsk near the southern tip of the Lake Pervoe
Ozero. It was built at the same time as the tractor factory in the early
1930s, and people used to call the village ‘Partizanskii’ as it was situ-
ated far away and consisted mostly of a chaotic complex of dugouts. In
the mid-1930s, Oziornyi had approximately 5000 inhabitants, most of
whom were workers at the tractor factory. Around 6000 people, many of
whom had only temporary jobs, lived in the village of Kirsaroi, north of
the city, where criminal elements were widespread. These villages had
no running water and simple wells had been dug for water for cooking.
The sanitary conditions were extremely bad. Many barracks were torn
down, windows were broken and substituted with paper or cardboard.
Half-dugouts of 8–10 square metres might house two families with ten to
Figure 42 Primitive barracks and huts made by the workers themselves for tem-
porarily employed personnel at the tractor factory.
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twelve members. Most dugouts were moist and draughty and there were
no laundries nearby. Since there were no places for culture or entertain-
ment, the report noted that the main pastimes for the young people in the
villages were card playing, heavy drinking and fighting, especially during
holidays. The lack of communication from the Suburban villages posiolki
was a further factor that isolated the inhabitants from city life in general.
The NKVD report quoted complaints that there were no passable
roads that would allow ambulances to reach the sick in these villages.
As the distance to the hospitals was too great, women often gave birth
to children in their homes ‘under un-sanitary conditions and without
midwives’. The complaints were numerous and frank, as in the follow-
ing example: ‘In the evenings, it is not possible to get away from our
cursed village of Kirsaroi. It is dark everywhere. To go into the city or to
a club is too far and too dangerous. There are too many hooligans.’ The
NKVD report also quoted women in the workers’ village of Port Arthur.
One young lady, Pershina, exclaimed:
Nothing is done for the women. Most of them are still religious. Oh,
how many among our housewives do not wish to join circles with
singing in choirs or sewing groups? I and many like me would eagerly
take on social work but nothing is possible. When you read in the
newspaper about how women take part in study circles and of the
success stories, I feel shame and I cry because we are doomed here.
The NKVD report concluded that ‘these villages have been deserted by
the city soviet and the social organisations. The villages are nests of
culturelessness, drunkenness, hooliganism and criminal activities.’31
The children in the village of Oziornyi had to walk 5 kilometres to
their school. The city authority had delayed the building of a school in
the village or consideration of whether children would be allowed to
travel for free on the tram. Oziornoe had no police at all. Many house-
wives wanted to work but could not because there was nowhere to leave
the small children. In addition, the workers in these villages had to
walk more than 5 kilometres to the tractor factory. The workers had
complained both to the city district soviet and the city council about
the bad transport facilities, which involved many changes when travel-
ling by tram. Sometimes, no trams would go at all. As the street lights
were often out of order, workers had to stay overnight at the factory,
said Konovalov at the forge of the factory. There were numerous com-
plaints about the lack of goods in the shops. There was seldom enough
bread and foodstuffs, and the queues were long and a permanent part
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94 Tankograd
of everyday life. ‘Speculation’ with scarce commodities was frequent. It

was often impossible to find clothes for children.32
The city newspapers often contained criticisms of these conditions and,
from time to time, the authorities would try to remedy the situation.33
However, the well recognised criticism was just as often rebutted with
reference to the dire economic situation of the city administration.34
Health care and education
What really changed the appearance of the city in the 1930s lay in
general education and improved health care. Twenty-three new schools
were built in the 1930s, along with three high schools and institutes
and five technical colleges. All children were guaranteed basic educa-
tion. The task was also to eradicate illiteracy among the adult popula-
tion. Many people joined the study society that helped adults to learn
reading and writing (Russian abbreviation Vsevobuch). The following
quote from American engineer John Scott, who worked for several years
in the nearby town of Magnitogorsk, shows how enthusiasm for study
was an important trait in the Soviet life of the 1930s:
Every night from six until twelve the street cars and buses of
Magnitogorsk were crowded with adult students hurrying to and
from schools with books and notebooks under their arms, discussing
Leibniz, Hegel, or Lenin, doing problems on their knees, and acting
like high-school children during examination week in a New York
subway. These students, however, were not adolescents, and it was
not examination time. They were just the run of the population of
the Soviet Union making up for several centuries of lost time.35
The Pedagogical Institute was organised in 1934 with faculties for his-
tory, physics, mathematics, geography and literature, as well as a spe-
cial faculty for the natural sciences. By 1939, over 1400 students had
passed through the day courses at the Pedagogical Institute and just as
many had followed the evening courses as external students. One hun-
dred and eighty students had been admitted at the so-called workers’
faculty and 150 had followed the teachers’ courses as free auditors. The
Pedagogical Institute had over 100 teachers, 17 of whom had completed
doctor’s degrees and six of whom had bachelor of sciences degrees.36
The Cheliabinsk Pedagogical Institute had an especially important
role given the great lack of teachers. In the early 1930s, ordinary schools
contained over 30,000 pupils who were taught in two or even three
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Figure 43 Vocational education in schools attached to the industrial enterprises.

This photo shows woodworking lessons at the Urals Railways School Number 2.
In 1928–1929, factory and professional education received a new status thanks
to contracts with enterprises that provided the schools with new equipment and
tools. In Cheliabinsk, 12 professional schools employed 18 specialist teachers.
shifts with more than 30 pupils per class. Teachers were also enrolled
in the campaign to ‘liquidate illiteracy among the adult population’.37
However, in actual fact, it was not possible to engage everyone. Of the
535 workers at the tractor factory who were to undergo courses in read-
ing and writing, 169 did not take up the opportunity. Of those who
did attend the courses, 85–90 per cent followed the lessons regularly.38
This poor turnout called for new measures. The responsible party mem-
bers at the tractor factory received a disciplinary reprimand and were
ordered to organise ‘a daily, systematic course in reading and writing’
within ten days and find new teachers for reading circles within five
days. Members of the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) at the fac-
tory were to supply 40 people to help with these courses of basic train-
ing in reading and writing.39
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96 Tankograd
Figure 44 The Cheliabinsk City Library was founded in 1898. Workers from the
railways are shown here visiting the library.
Figure 45 Stakhanovite workers with their wives on an excursion. Cars had

been bought by the tractor factory in response to a direct order from People’s
Commissar Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who wished to give premiums for the out-
standing engineers and best workers at the plant.
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Figure 46 Dormitory for the students at the Pedagogical Institute. Out of 278
teachers in the city, only 13 had higher education, while 31 had only a basic
elementary school background.
In 1931, a series of professional schools opened in Cheliabinsk: an

automobile and road construction school and an energy and building
school. The oldest vocational school was transformed into a tractor and
food industry school.40 In order to cope with the growing demand for
teachers, an evening course department was set up with two separate
directions: one for party members and one for youth in the Komsomol.
One hundred and fifty pupils were recruited from the tractor factory,
190 from the regional electric power station, the ferro alloy factory and
the nickel works and 100 from the coal mines, in addition to 250 stu-
dents from other organisations in the city.41
The city adopted a general plan for the expansion of hospitals and clin-
ics attached to the industrial enterprises. The number of places in the city’s
hospitals increased from fewer than 300 in 1928 to over 1700 in 1932. The
old city hospital was totally renovated in 1935. The Cheliabinsk outpa-
tient department was adapted to accommodate 625 patients, including
200 for each of the surgical and therapeutic sections. Besides the hospital
proper, apartments were also built for the head doctor, the surgeon, the
midwife and the finance director. Head nurses received their own flats,
departmental and surgical nurses received separate rooms and staff nurses
were accommodated in dormitories for up to 40 persons. Cheliabinsk
received an ophtomological clinic with 60 berths, a blood doning centre,
a regional epidomological and sanitary inspectorate.42
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98 Tankograd
In June of 1933, Kazimir Lovin, the first director of ChTZ, asked the
People’s Commissariat of Health in the Russian Federal Soviet Republic
for budgetary allocations that would guarantee adequate health care for
everyone employed at the factory, at both the stationary and ambula-
tory polyclinics attached to the enterprise. Until then, ChTZ had only
‘a little sanitary town’ (medgorodok) in the barracks, which was decaying
and had insufficient equipment and instruments. There was a constant
lack of educated personnel.43 The ChTZ polyclinic was repaired, the
walls were tightened up and painted, as were the roofs and ceilings, and
the water supply system was improved.44
The extent to which health care developed during the second five-
year plan (1933–1937) is reflected in the growing number of doctors,
nurses and hospital beds, as well as in the increase in the number of
workers who attended health resorts, sanatoriums and convalescent
homes and the number of people who participated in the start of Soviet
tourism and other forms of relaxation.45
Before the war, the Cheliabinsk oblast had six health resorts with a
total of 1800 beds. Among these were two balneological resorts (which
use mud packs around the body) by Lake Gorkoe, the radon kurort
(health resort) in Sungul, the tuberculosis sanatorium at Uvilde and the
so-called climate sanatoriums at Troitsk. There were also more than ten
sanatoriums for children with tuberculosis. In total, these 18 sanatori-
ums had almost 4000 beds. During the war, they were used largely as
hospitals for wounded soldiers.46
In the first half of 1936, the NKVD reported an alarmingly high mor-
tality rate, especially infant mortality, in the Southern Urals. In the
Cheliabinsk oblast, the number of deaths was greater than the number
of births. The general situation was the same in the cities as it was in the
countryside. It was expected that new epidemics would erupt before the
summer, and this was happening at the same time as the children’s hos-
pital had reduce its patient capacity. As a result, five to seven children
were refused entrance every day, despite which there was still 80 chil-
dren for the 50 sickbeds. The NKVD report contained details from the
smaller cities in the region, where the situation was much worse. The
lack of doctors and use of incorrect medication had led to high infant
mortality. ‘Although these facts are well known, neither the health
departments nor the procuracy have taken any measures to demand
responsibility from anyone’, concluded the NKVD.47 In July 1936 the
party regional committee adopted a resolution ‘on the education and
increasing competence of medical personnel’.48
The Cheliabinsk OGPU directorate reported to Party Secretary Ryndin
about how bad the water supply from the filtration and pumping station
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in Sosnovo was for the city and for the new factories. Current stops in
supply led to production fulfilment failures, while insufficiently clean
water had led to the spread of infectious diseases. The GPU stated that
no medical personal were involved in the water purification, that the
water was chlorified only and that testing was performed only once a
day. The cleaning plant itself was not covered, which meant that dust
and dirt from nearby workplaces and construction sites was drawn in to
the water basins. The cleaning station’s electric cable had been incor-
rectly installed in 1932, which meant that the electricity supply was
often interrupted.
A number of conclusions can be reached from these documents, to
which the new obkom secretary had to react. The plenipotentiaries of the
secret police had a clear picture of the situation in industry and the city’s
infrastructure, and they reported directly to the concerned local authori-
ties and also upwards in the GPU (later NKVD) hierarchy. However, the
extent to which Ryndin managed to remedy the most concerning defi-
ciences in the city’s supply of industrial and drinking water that summer
is unclear. Repeated raids and instructions led to a better situation.49
Sport
During the 1920s, many initiatives were taken to develop football, ath-
letics and sports with mass orientation.50 The Olimpiia football team
was founded in 1922 and played at Aloe Pole, a park in the city centre.
The football clubs lacked a stadium of their own until 1930. Football
was easier than many sports to fit into the ideology that physical educa-
tion could serve the country’s defence needs in the long term. A football
match was compared to battle and the team spirit reflected what was
needed from a platoon on the battlefield. Physical education and sports
were a large and prestigious part of the responsibility of the industrial
enterprises. The Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory organised its own Pioneer’s
Camps.51 In July 1936, ChTZ allotted 800,000 rubles to build a stadium
that was to be ready for use by 1 July 1937 and 100,000 rubles for cot-
tages for young workers to be ready by August of the same year. ChTZ
allocated a further 70,000 rubles to construct a so-called Cultural Base
near the recently opened park.52
The so-called Spartakiads were originally seen as a rebuttal of the
‘bourgeois’ Olympic games. More than 8000 athletes participated in
the first Spartakiad in Moscow, most of whom were from Russia, with
others from Western Europe. However, many were also members of the
communist parties in Europe. Some of Cheliabinsk’s best athletes were
sent to the qualifying competition in Sverdlovsk.
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100 Tankograd
Figure 47 A bicycle race from Miass to Moscow (1800 kilometres) involved a

team from the Miass Gold Excavation Plant.
Figure 48 Mobile film projection teams travelled throughout the countryside.
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Figure 49 A jazz orchestra performs at the tractor factory theatre in the mid-
1930s.
It was decided that the Dynamo club should organise an ice rink in
wintertime, with 300 pairs of skates to be rented out. A running track
and a hockey rink complex was also to be established, as well as a sepa-
rate ice rink for children and a ski base with 500 pairs of skis for hire.
In the same manner, the Dzerzhinets club was to arrange skating places
and keep 400 pairs of skates and 1000 pairs of skis for hire, as well as
build an amusement area for children with carousels and chutes. The
aim was that at least 3000 people should be able to take the tests for the
‘Ready for Work and Defence medal’ (in Russian GTO, Gotov k trudu i
oborone). Similarly, all other enterprises, schools and technical institutes
were instructed to establish ski and skating rental bases, on a smaller
scale. In Cheliabinsk, many ski and skating competitions were organ-
ised in all parts of the city.53
A final reflection on everyday life in Cheliabinsk is that the descrip-
tions in this book could be supplemented by DVDs with excerpts from
the many films that attracted cinema-goers in the 1930s, both Soviet
and imported examples. The factories’ so-called ‘cultural palaces’ had
music for any taste, from classical to jazz and other modern dance
forms.
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Figure 50 Gustav Klutsis’ poster from 1932 illustrates how four horses drawing
one sowing-machine would be replaced by one caterpillar tractor drawing four
sowing-machines. The working class was to lead the technical development for
their peasant allies. The catchphrase formulated by Stalin states: ‘By the end of
the five-year plan, the collectivisation process must, in the main respects, be
completed’. The harsh reality, however, involved resistance by the peasants to the
collective forms of property and production, crop failures in 1931 and 1932 and,
finally – as a consequence of hard requisition norms from the kolkhozy – a massive
famine that had millions of victims in 1932–1933 in the Ukraine, the Northern
Caucasus, the Volga region and the Southern Urals.
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4
The Tractor Factory’s Civilian
Production and Military Potential
Tractorisation (traktorizatsiia) was one of the strange catch-words created

by the Bolsheviks. Automobilisation (avtomobilizatsija) and radiofication
(radiofikatsiia) were other new words that referred to the mass consump-
tion of cars and radios. In the first five-year plan, large-scale solutions for
agriculture were the obvious aim. The mechanisation of agriculture fol-
lowed international models and was considered imperative for the mod-
ernisation of the whole country. However, many things were rather more
chaotic than planned during Stalin’s ‘revolution from above’. Instead of a
progressive transition to mechanised agriculture, in which model farms
could have served as ideals for new collective farms, the actual result
was an undermanned kolkhoz system with special so-called machine and
tractor stations. Instead of specialists and motivated kolkhoz members,
hundreds of thousands of the most thrifty peasants had been deported to
far-off forests and had not found a new lifestyle that could surpass their
old peasant culture. On the contrary, the new existence reminded many
people of the old serfdom. Many peasants and their sons who filled the
new workplaces in the cities’ factories and building sites brought with
them a ‘country mentality’. Contemporary travellers to Russia were sur-
prised by how the rural elements in the Soviet cities, and social historians
characterise the phenomenon as a form of de-urbanisation.
Almost 9000 industrial factories were built in the USSR during the
three five-year plans prior to World War II. Start-up problems were com-
mon in these hundreds of industries with their relatively unqualified
workers who came more or less directly from the villages. The tractor
factory in Cheliabinsk is in many respects as typical of the epoch as of
its management, specialists and workers.
Wheel tractors were produced in Leningrad as early as the 1920s. The
party’s politburo decided in 1929 that factories for caterpillar tractors
103
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104 Tankograd
Figure 51 In November 1929, the first poles were set in the ground for the future
tractor factory workshops. Much of the design work for the factory’s equipment
was done at the Detroit office of the Cheliabinsk Tractor Plant, where 40 Soviet
and 12 American experts used their experience from the advanced machine-
building and automotive industries in the USA.
were to be built in Stalingrad, Kharkov and Cheliabinsk. The Stalingrad

Tractor Plant was built on a contract with Caterpillar Inc. and the
Kharkov factory with assistance from International Harvester Inc. The
Kharkov Tractor Plant had close contact with the locomotive factory
in the city that also produced the first Soviet tanks. According to these
plans, the Soviet Union should have had a peak capacity in its tractor
industry of over 100,000 tractors per year. The directives for the tractor
factory in the Urals were formulated centrally with due consideration of
the available raw materials from the region’s iron and steel works. Coal
was extracted in the opencast mines in Kopeisk and the Cheliabinsk
basin. The regional coal-fired electric power station satisfied the enter-
prise’s energy demand and building materials were plentiful in the
vicinity.
The Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory (CHTZ) in the end received a larger
planned capacity than the Stalingrad and Kharkov factories combined –
40,000 tractors per year. The ChTZ was typical of Soviet industrialisation
in that the latest technology was brought in from the USA, Germany
or the United Kingdom. However, the ChTZ differed from many other
construction sites in that the entire project was to be handled by the
factory’s own specialists.
The Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory was a high priority object. The
Supreme Economic Council (and from 1932, the People’s Commissariat
of Heavy Industry NKTP) followed the construction, as did individual
members of the politburo. A resolution of 23 May 1931 referred to the
deficiencies in the building plans. On 15 September 1931, the polit-
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Tractor Factory’s Civilian Production and Military Potential 105
Figure 52 Measurements at the Cheliabinsk Traktorstroi site. In June 1929

excavations started according to the project developed by the GIPROMEZ con-
struction bureau in Leningrad, in conjunction with the experts at Cheliabinsk
Tractor Plant in Detroit.
buro condemned the fact that high-quality imported metals, which

had been earmarked for ChTZ, had been sent elsewhere. This led to
an investigation by the procurator and penalties for the guilty parties.1
On 23 May the politburo adopted a series of resolutions intended to
speed up the completion of the tractor factory.2 Sanitary facilities such
as water supply, sewerage, heating, ventilation and electrical supplies
were delayed. No engineers or technicians were to be removed from
Cheliabinsk Tractor Building site (Traktorstroi) to other factories until
the production of tractors had started.
Simultaneously, the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade was
obliged to provide equipment for the workshops, the originally planned
capacity of which had by then been raised to 20,000 tractors per
annum. Between 20 and 25 inspectors were sent to the supply factories
that were to deliver equipment to ChTZ.3 The NKTP was to supply all
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106 Tankograd
the necessary building materials to ChTZ. On 28 November 1932 The

Council for Labour and Defence published a resolution on the defini-
tive completion of the factory.4 The Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory was
one of the most important projects for forced collectivisation in the
early 1930s and the coordination of all involved enterprises was closely
checked by people’s commissar Sergo Ordzhonikidze.5
The supreme leadership not only received reports from the enter-
prises. The OGPU secret police had a special EKO economic directorate
that collected and analysed information, which was then presented
to a small group in the party leadership. The secret police regularly
reported on the construction of the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory, both
during the construction period and after production had started.6 The
centralised control of production continued. On 30 September 1933
Stalin criticised other members of the politburo regarding the revela-
tion that many tractors had been sent to areas other than agriculture.
Stalin stressed that ChTZ had been primarily built to satisfy the needs
of agriculture, yet the sovkhozy and machine and tractor stations had
received only 600 out of 1365 caterpillar tractors. The same applied to
the distribution of wheel tractors and lorries, far too few of which had
been sent to the kolkhozy and machine and tractor stations (MTS).7
The construction period of the tractor factory is one of many exam-
ples of how Soviet labour forces changed during the course of indus-
trialisation. Recruited peasants who performed unskilled labour at the
sites were given a crash course in their new profession. Many received
their first courses in reading and writing at this time. They were encour-
aged to go from building trades into training for the machine-building
industry. A substantial part of the Soviet working class at the end of
the 1930s had arrived from the countryside merely a few years before.
Managers of building sites and industrial enterprises encountered
numerous problems as the former peasants had difficulty getting used
to the rhythm and discipline of factory life.8
One day in November 1929 Kazimir Petrovich Lovin and his assist-
ants arrived to the site east of Cheliabinsk where the new factory was to
be situated. Lovin was born in 1893 in the Sushki village in the Vitebsk
province (guberniia). He began to work in St Petersburg at the age of 14.
From 1912, he had contacts with the Bolshevik faction of the Russian
Social Democratic Party and played an active role in the 1917 revolu-
tions. Lovin had participated in the reconstruction of the power sta-
tions in Petrograd after the war and in the building of Moscow’s MOGES
power station. Having completed his studies at a technical institute, he
was appointed head of Moscow’s united power stations in 1925 and
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Figure 53 Kazimir Lovin (1893–1937) was in charge of the construction of the

plant from 1929 to 1933 and, thereafter, its first director until he was brought up on
fabricated charges of being an enemy of the Soviet regime and executed in 1937.
then head of the Cheliabinsk Tractor Building Site. In 1930, he and

several other experts travelled to the United States to study how the
tractor industry had developed at enterprises like Caterpillar and Allis
Chalmers.
Lovin visited several enterprises in the United Kingdom and the
United States. The Russians had models of almost all the tractors in
the world and had evaluated the terms for licensed production from
International Harvester, Caterpillar and other companies. Amtorg,
the Soviet trade delegation in New York was actively involved but the
negotiations with Caterpillar led to no conclusion. The Soviet side was
willing to consider only technical assistance and was not prepared to
accept the further demands from the Americans. Other complications
included that the drawings would be done only in English and all meas-
urements would be Imperial (yards, inches, pounds, etc.) rather than in
the metric system. As a result the Russians rented an entire floor of a
skyscraper in Detroit to set up their own office, the Cheliabinsk Tractor
Plant, and with the help of their own and American experts, designed
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108 Tankograd
Figure 54 Horse-drawn carts with gravel and building materials. These labour-
intensive methods were characteristic of Soviet industrialisation.
the new factory. From Cheliabinsk, 40 qualified workers were instructed

to travel to the United States in order to study modern methods of trac-
tor production and contemporary building materials and procedures.9
These workers, who were nominated by the party, received courses
in English. Grigorii Treubov, the secretary of a party committee, was
appointed the leader of the group. In Moscow, all were given new suits
and instructions before their first trip abroad. The group also included
workers from the future Ford Automobile Factory in Nizhnii Novgorod
(named Gorkii from 1934 to 1992) who were to study the car produc-
tion process at American firms. The Soviet delegations travelled via
Hamburg or Le Havre to the United States.
The individuals who travelled to the USA to learn more on tractor
production were in their early thirties; Treubov was born in 1896, the
others just after the turn of the century. Some had worked at the power
station in Cheliabinsk, while others had been recruited from faraway
places. When they returned from the United States, they soon advanced
to the rank of foremen or supervisors but, for a few of them, the visit
abroad led to other consequences. Treubov and several others had
bought the recently published autobiography Moia zhizn’ (My Life) by
Leon Trotsky.10 Trotsky had been excluded from the Communist Party
9780230_208872_05_cha04.indd 108 6/27/2011 11:32:12 AM

in 1927, sent to internal exile in Alma-Ata and then expatriated in

1929. He remained a legendary personality from the Russian Revolution
and the Civil War so it was hardly surprising that the specialists from
Cheliabinsk would be eager to read his book. It is worthwhile noting,
however, that none of them seem to have hidden their opinions on
Trotsky’s book. When the Great Purges started after the show trial in
August 1936 against Grigorii Zinoviev and others, their outspokenness
cost them dearly.
Before the project group from Cheliabinsk started to draw up the blue-
prints for the factory they had travelled around the state of Michigan to
enterprises in the car, tractor and engine industry. Some of the workers
had contracts to study and work for a longer period of time in American
firms, where they acquired technical skills in certain aspects of the
production process. When these technicians and workers returned to
Cheliabinsk in 1931, they began to assemble and start a factory produc-
tion line according to the drawings they had made in Detroit. In most
respects, the first tractor that was produced in Cheliabinsk was a copy
of the Caterpillar 60-horsepower model from 1925–1931. However, the
Russians called it the ‘Stalinist-60’ (in Russian Stalinets-60).
In 1934 Lovin was appointed director of ChTZ. Naturally, the cadres
at the factory were scrutinised from a political point of view. All the
cadres from the construction period who were to be employed at the
new factory had their biographies checked by the secret police on behalf
of the people’s commissariat. The profiles given to each person at their
place of employment would follow them throughout their working life.
The Communist Party and security organs would appoint commissions
at regular intervals to check further into the personal files for data on
their past, their relatives, their possible contacts in foreign countries
and, just as importantly, their political activities before and after the
1917 revolutions.11
In December 1929 alone, 1754 persons from the countryside were reg-
istered at the labour exchange in Cheliabinsk. This was roughly half the
number of newly registered workers. On 1 January 1930 the number of
registered workers was 3336, of whom 2808 were unqualified workers,
including 1644 women. Over 30,000 people worked at the industrial
enterprises and the mine in Cheliabinsk in 1931 and the authorities
counted on that figure doubling within the following year or two.12
On 9 April 1930 the Urals regional labour directorate wrote to the
kolkhoz unions in the Cheliabinsk region and the responsible authori-
ties ordering that 27,000 people were to be sent to the new industrial
factories, exclusively by moving superfluous labour from the country-
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110 Tankograd
Figure 55 One of the future workshops of the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory

during the building phase. The fact that solid steel constructions were used
from the very beginning allowed the conveyor and movements to be converted
swiftly from one workshop to another for the production of heavy tanks during
World War II.
side to the cities. The kolkhozy were estimated to have 18,117 persons,
from various working specialisations, who it would be suitable to recruit
to building sites. The kolkhoz peasants were not free to leave as they
wished; they were required to have a permit to move before they could
register at the Cheliabinsk labour exchange.13
During the construction period, there was substantial labour turn-
over at ChTZ. In January 1930 it was decided that 7000 Komsomol
(Communist Youth League) members and 3000 poor peasants should be
trained as building workers during their worktime at the ChTZ.14 At the
end of 1930 the number of employed personnel was 10,504. This was
lower than the 14,941 calculated in the building plan. In October alone,
2614 persons were employed, of whom 1801 joined of their own accord,
279 had been enlisted by the representatives of ChTZ and 205 were
forced labourers, usually petty criminals from the corrective colony in
the region. In the same month, however, 3120 workers quit ChTZ for
various reasons, such as the fact that no workers’ clothes or shoes had
been distributed or that the requirements for housing conditions had
9780230_208872_05_cha04.indd 110 6/27/2011 11:32:12 AM

not been adequately satisfied. In the same month, 19,249 violations of

labour discipline (working time, absence, etc.) were recorded.15
The composition of the labour force on the construction sites in the
Urals varied from place to place. The tractor factory construction site
did not have a lot of forced labour, while other cities in the Urals used
a lot more. An iron and steel works and a railcar factory were built in
Nizhnii Tagil, mainly by deported kulaks. In the neighbouring city of
Magnitogorsk, criminal and political prisoners made up a substantial
proportion of the labour force in the early 1930s.
Historiography in recent years has tended to exaggerate the role of
forced labour during industrialisation. Discussions about the significance
of the Gulag during the Stalinist industrialisation have been radically
changed by fundamental research in the archives in recent years. In 1940
Gulags made up only 1.2 per cent of all industrial production and 90 per
cent of industrial construction work was done by free labourers.16
Figure 56 The conveyor belt in the workshop where tractors were assembled.
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112 Tankograd
Figure 57 The first serial-produced tractors on their way out of the factory.
The methods used to increase labour productivity changed during the

1930s. The Stakhanovite movement from 1935 onwards took precedence
over earlier forms of premiums to ‘shock workers’ (udarniki) through its
emphasis on increased production by rationalisation and more intensive
forms of labour. In actual fact, Stakhanovism was implemented in many
various forms. Successful workers not only received higher wages but
also special privileges and better apartments and were often appointed
to administrative posts at the factory. On 1 August 1937 the Cheliabinsk
Tractor Factory employed 21,135 people, 17,841 of whom were workers.
Of these, 6060 workers were enrolled in the Stakhanovite movement.
These were given better opportunities to study, were offered tickets to
the amusement and culture park, could have books delivered to their
home from the library, received better health care and in many cases
did not have to line up for food. Fifteen apartments had been built for
Stakhanovites with individual ‘radio-points’ – inbuilt loudspeakers in
one room. These workers could also receive assistance to build their own
small country houses (dachas).17
Foreign specialists
Foreign specialists held key roles in many cities in the Soviet Union dur-
ing industrialisation. Germans, Italians and people of other nationalities
9780230_208872_05_cha04.indd 112 6/27/2011 11:32:13 AM

were recruited by representatives from the USSR and not all workers who
left for the Soviet Union had ideological motives. The great depression
had struck particularly hard in certain countries and the expectation of
employment in Russia was certainly attractive. In total, it is estimated
that more than 40,000 foreign workers were employed in Soviet indus-
tries in the early 1930s, only a minority of whom were members in a
communist party. Most were employed in the large factories in the Urals,
the Kuzbass basin and in Kharkov under the direction of the People’s
Commissariat of Heavy Industry (before 1932, under the Supreme
Economic Council VSNKh). Today there is a rich body of memoirs and,
since 1992, contemporary documents have been published on how vari-
ous categories of immigrants and political refugees experienced every-
day life, factory conditions and the political atmosphere in the Soviet
Union.18
Eyewitness descriptions of the grand building projects in the Soviet
Union in the first half of the 1930s have been provided by persons
who had sought escape from the unemployment-ridden conditions in
Germany and the United States or from the oppressive regime in fascist
Italy. Their memoirs contain observations by experts, technicians and
ordinary workers about how they had to foster a first generation of Soviet
industrial workers to be exact, careful and punctual. Foreign workers
and engineers wrote of enthusiastic but overly self-righteous commu-
nists who often tried to exceed the established practice and disregarded
elementary technical requirements. This frequently led to damage to
expensive imported equipment that had to be repaired at high costs.19
There were hundreds of Germans, Americans and other foreigners in
Cheliabinsk, often with their families, who set their imprint on the city
life in this pioneering era. The city’s centre still looked like any provin-
cial Russian town, with its low-rise, wooden houses. A few kilometres
to the east, however, a completely new city district arose with its long
factory workshops and four- to five-storey apartment buildings.20 More
than anything, the foreign workers were struck by the many contrasts
between modern industrial technology and the primitive work forms.21
Among the most important foreigners was Edward J. Terry, the chief
advisor on the construction of the factory.
Many foreigners left Cheliabinsk after the inauguration of the tractor
factory. In 1934, around 180 foreign workers and specialists remained;
including their family members, they numbered around 300 people. Of
these, 128 were Germans or Austrians, 17 Englishmen, five Hungarians
and ten Czechoslovaks. One hundred and twenty-seven were married
and 41 were single. Only 22 were members of the Soviet Communist
Party, 16 were candidate members and 31 were members of another
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114 Tankograd
country’s communist party. Four were members of the the Komsomol.

Two political study groups for Englishmen and Germans had gathered
60 participants in 1934. Fifty foreign workers had acquired their own
allotment gardens, a total area of 3.5 hectares. A German ‘agitation
brigade’ and its orchestra had travelled to a sovkhoz and had also per-
formed at the First of May celebrations at the city’s electric power sta-
tion to an audience of over 500 persons. Twenty-four foreigners were
members of a sports club that competed in Magnitogorsk, Zlatoust and
Cheliabinsk.
Meetings were arranged between the foreign specialists and the
Russian workers to discuss labour questions, organisation at the factories
and improved technical skills among the Russian workers. Visits were
made to Kashtak and to the ferro-alloy works, where over 200 people
had participated in the meetings. Some 100 people attended a lecture in
May 1934 on the situation in China, where the communists had recently
completed what would become known as ‘The Long March’ away from
pursuing Kuomintang troops. A lecture on the situation in Nazi Germany
was particularly addressed to the women among the foreigners. Twelve
foreign specialists participated in an orchestra that performed concerts
for the factory’s workers eight times a week. A special library had been
organised with over 2000 books in English, German, Hungarian and
Czech. A summer camp for 20 of the specialists’ was organised in July.
For the youngest children, another camp was organised jointly with
the Russian children’s organisation (pionery). The foreign specialists
received 25 tickets to the spas on the Crimea, in southern Russia and in
the Caucasus; four travelled to Siberia and ten stayed at retreats in the
Cheliabinsk region. There was a functionary among the factory’s man-
agement who had responsibility for foreign specialists.22
The Soviet authorities had close control over the foreign specialists.
Any sign of intelligence gathering was tracked and political opinions
and other personal matters were carefully recorded. For example, the
American Edward J. Terry (born 1893) worked for the Cheliabinsk
Tractor Plant bureau in the United States in 1930 and from 1931 was
a leading specialist in Cheliabinsk. He was characterised by the local
secret police as ‘anti-Soviet’ and was reported to have expressed his total
scepticism of the Russians’ ability to get the plant ready for production.
He had taken a lot of ‘compromising photographs’ of the building site
and the workshops. At least ten foreign specialists were depicted as hos-
tile, incompetent and therefore dispensable, from the factory’s point
of view. However, for most of the foreigners in the register, it was said,
‘compromising documents have not been found’.23
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Figure 58 The Tractor Factory was officially inaugurated on 1 June 1933
Another sign of the times was the almost lyrical descriptions of

Soviet industrialisation. The official propaganda described how the
country would become modern and self-sufficient with tractors that
would provide great opportunities for large-scale, collective farming.
The poet and Nobel Literature Laureate in 1958, Boris Pasternak, vis-
ited Cheliabinsk and the Traktorstroi with other authors in May–June
1931. He wrote of his impressions in a letter to his wife, Z.N. Neiguaz-
Pasternak, and compared the tractor factory building site with the pyra-
mids of Egypt, but also sarcastically described the façade that had to be
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116 Tankograd
erected before the arrival of the authors. Pasternak and other poets and
authors read at poetry evenings for the factory workers.24
Experience gained from the Stalingrad Tractor Plant showed that
small-scale production should begin before serial production. It was
planned that the tractor conveyor could start in 1933 when the factory
was to be officially inaugurated. Before that, a smaller unit called the
experimental and testing factory (Opytnyii zavod) was built and was ini-
tially directed by an American, John Thane, and his assistant, both of
whom had worked at Caterpillar. Tractors of every known brand were
disassembled and studied at this factory and whatever seemed to be
useful was used in the original Cheliabinsk design. As for the labour
force, the intention was to recruit as many workers as possible to gain
experience in the experimental factory, which started production in
Figure 59 The President of the USSR, Mikhail Kalinin, spoke at the inaugura-
tion of the factory in June 1933.
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November 1930. Over 4000 people worked there before they were
transferred to the main plant in 1933. More important were the 100 or
so American workers from Detroit who were the first overseers at the
experimental factory.
The solemn inauguration of the factory, which was enormous by
the standards of the day, took place on 1–3 June 1933. Thousands of
workers, building workers and soldiers from the city’s garrison gath-
ered to listen to speeches by President Mikhail Kalinin and local party
leaders. Orchestras played when some ten tractors rolled out from the
assembly workshop. There were three days of festivities with singing
and dancing in the nearby parks. Sergo Ordzhonikidze, the people’s
commissar of heavy industry, visited the tractor factory some weeks
later together with the chairman of the Urals regional party committee,
Ivan Kabakov.
The number of workers at ChTZ increased from 3247 in the first
quarter of 1933 to 11,943 by the end of the year. In 1934, the number
of employees grew from 12,761 to over 16,700 and by 1939–1940, the
number of blue and white collar employees was approximately 15,000.
The factory had many initial problems and constant deficiencies in
quality control. In 1934, the first year of production, an average of 9.6
per cent of production (in price terms) was discarded. Thereafter, the
amount of rejected sank to 5.7 per cent of production value in 1936 and
then increased alarmingly over the next two years. In 1938, the losses
were 34.3 million rubles, or 10.6 per cent of production value. This was
mainly due to the fact that there was no clear understanding of how
the conveyor production line should be organised. It was also caused by
the high turnover of labour and the fact that the new workers received
only elementary training before been placed at the machinery. This
led to insufficient quality and costs that were far higher than had been
calculated. Furthermore, in the individual workshops it was difficult to
maintain working discipline or work rate.
Lovin, who was in charge of the construction of the tractor fac-
tory, had been struck by illness and exhaustion. He was relieved of
his duties and reassigned to matters closer to his training, as dep-
uty head of the Main Energy directorate, Glavenergo in Moscow. In
March 1934 Ordzhonikidze appointed Aleksandr Bruskin as the new
director of ChTZ. Izrail Nesterovskii was appointed as main engineer,
L.A. Meksin as deputy main engineer and I.G. Markhasov as chief
designer.
Aleksandr Bruskin (1897–1939) was born in Kherson and completed
his engineering education in 1922 at the mechanic-technological fac-
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118 Tankograd
ulty of the Kharkov Institute of Technology. He then studied at pol-

ytechnical institutes in Germany in 1923 and 1924. At Kharkov he
worked as mechanic and as designer and advanced to the position of
workshop overseer in 1927 at the tractor factory in the city, while also
teaching at the Kharkov Institute of Technology. From 1929, he was
chief engineer at the Traktorstroi, the Kharkov Tractor Building site. He
was sent to the USA in 1930 to order machinery and to make designs for
the new factories in Kharkov and Cheliabinsk. He was then appointed
technical director and, in 1932, became director of the Kharkov Tractor
Factory. In March 1934, Ordzhonikidze appointed him as the new
director at ChTZ. In Bruskin’s time, changes were made in the foundry
and coordination between the other workshops and the assembly line
was improved so that, by 1936, a daily production of 100 tractors was
achieved. In other words, the annual production capacity was nearly
30,000 tractors. At the same time, the factory was rebuilt to produce the
stronger, diesel S-65 tractor.
By the first quarter of 1937, a total of 69,261 tractors with kerosene
engines had been produced. After the reconstruction of the workshops,
production of the diesel-driven S-65 tractor started in the third quarter
of 1937. From 1938 onwards, an S-65G model with a gas accumulator on
diesel basis was produced in parallel with the S-65.
The significance of the tractor factory for the Red Army
A Red Army representative, Pavlovskii, visited the future Cheliabinsk

Tractor Factory for a couple of days in November 1930. In his report,
he noted that the experimental factory had opened on 7 November in
order to start building tractors and to educate qualified workers. This
was done in order to avoid all the problems that had haunted the trac-
tor factories elsewhere, notably in Stalingrad. Pavlovskii left an order for
two tractors with the specifications that were required by the Red Army
Motorisation and Mechanisation department (UMM RKKA). The order
was for tractors with a maximum speed of 9 or 12 kilometres per hour.
Higher speeds were not yet possible as the carts had no springs. In the
long run, however, the army required a faster tractor, and it was decided
that the experimental factory would build a four-geared tractor with a
much higher maximum speed.
Pavlovskii also argued that the tractor factory should be under Red
Army supervision during its construction phase, partly in order to
avoid sabotage but primarily so that all the requirements of the defence
commissariat regarding buildings and future lines of production could
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9780230_208872_05_cha04.indd 119
Table 2 Production of tractors at the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory in the 1930s
1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940
1st quarter – 1174 4475 6497 8002 2731 1699 2815

2nd quarter 52 2281 4560 7575 – 3562 3726 2403
3rd quarter 610 2008 5354 7160 1372 2678 2760 2270
4th quarter 988 3637 6061 7827 3611 2672 3074 1069
Entire year 1650 10,100 20,450 29,059 12,085 11,143 11,259 7757
6/27/2011 11:32:15 AM
120 Tankograd
Figure 60 In 1936, the diesel-driven Stalinets-60 tractor from Cheliabinsk was

presented at the World Exhibition in Paris, where it received the Grand Prix. In
1936 caterpillar tractors from Cheliabinsk were tested under hard conditions:
seven tractors covered a distance of 2000 kilometres in snowy terrains in Iakutia
and another group with Stalinets-60 had climbed up to 4000 metres above sea-
level in the Pamir mountains. These tractors were also adjusted to the demands
of the mining industry and produced for the Red Army as artillery haulers.
be met.25 A representative of the military at industrial enterprises –

voenpred in Russian, abbreviated from voennyi prestavitel’ – became an
institution in Soviet industry. The Voenpred had the last word on the
approval of products that were sent to the army and had a significant
influence on the organisation of production. In the first instance, a
military representative would be sent to the experimental factory in
Cheliabinsk to supervise the production of T-24 tanks even before
the main factory was ready. The T-24 tank was a modification of the
first Soviet tank, the T-12, which had been produced at the Kharkov
Locomotive Works and would enter serial production in 1931. It
had riveted plate iron with a thickness of only 20 millimetres in the
gun-turret and the front. Its total weight was 18.5 tons and it had a
300-horsepower petrol M-6 engine and a maximum speed of 22
kilometres an hour. Only 20 T-24 tanks were ever produced, since a
decision was made in 1931 to develop a version of the fast American
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Christie tank, which the Soviet authorities had acquired licences to

produce.
Several factors should be taken into consideration concerning these
tanks when making international comparisons. The first of these is
the question of the engines’ effect with caterpillar or wheel operation.
The second is that the Soviet Union, for several reasons, opted for
and managed to develop a diesel engine that was powerful enough for
heavy tanks. This would prove to be quite advantageous during World
War II. The Soviet tanks were less flammable and could use less refined
diesel. Finally, it is important to compare the thickness and quality of
the armour and armaments such as guns and submachine guns.
The Christie tank had solid potential for further development due
to its configuration and combined wheel and caterpillar operation.
The first Soviet modification was called the BT-2 (Russian abbrevia-
tion of bystrokhodnyi tank or fast-moving tank). It had an imported
or produced-under-licence 400 hp Liberty engine and a maximum
speed of 72 kilometres per hour with wheels or 52 with caterpillar
tracks. Walter Christie himself had reached much higher speeds in
the USA but the results attained in Russia were more than sufficient
for the Red Army’s requirements for new armour. The BT-2 tank had
one 37 millimetre Hotchkiss gun and one 7.62 millimetre machine
gun. In the 1930s, the Russian designers refined this fast-moving,
Figure 61 The BT-2 tank.
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122 Tankograd
light tank with its total weight of 11–14 tons in models called BT-5
and BT-7. 26
Some of the design ideas introduced for this originally American tank
would later be incorporated onto the successful T-34 tank. Until the end
of the 1930s, the Red Army preferred tanks with a combined wheel and
caterpillar track operation. However, this not only made the production
process more complex, but also limited the possibility of strengthening
its armour without risking too much of an increase in the tank’s total
weight.
In the 1930s, the methods producing of armour evolved so that more
specific parts could be made thicker. The technique of manual welding
allowed for casting and welding of detail in armour plates. This was an
important leap towards the production of tanks that could withstand
hits by shells. As for the thickness factor, it is the effective thickness
in the horizontal level that counts. This is illustrated by the following
figure.
The incline of 60 degrees implies an effective thickness twice as deep
in the horizontal direction. The angle of penetration of a shell is deter-
mined by how it has been fired and whether the tank moves in the
horizontal plane or not. In practice, inclinations of the front part of the
tank over 45 degrees mean that the projectile would change direction
and ricochet against the armour. Even if a shell did penetrate a thick
plate, it would lose much of its kinetic energy. As a counter-measure,
German engineers designed a shell with arrows that, because of their
Figure 62 By lowering the armour plate to an angle of 30 degrees, the active

thickness was increased by a factor of two. Projectiles bounced off the tank more
easily and their hitting power was reduced.
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Figure 63 The BT-7 tank.
much higher speed, could penetrate deeper, regardless of the angle of

inclination.
These changes had already been included in the Soviet modifications
to the BT-2 and its successors. The last versions, BT-7 and BT-7M, had
achieved a good combination of mobility, armour and fire power and
they were the foundations of the designer Mikhail Koshkin’s models
that would lead to the medium-sized T-34 tank.27
Diesel engines that were powerful enough for tanks weighing doz-
ens of tons were yet another technological factor that would make
the Red Army more powerful than its enemies during World War II.
The diesel engine had two obvious advantages: it used low octane
diesel and the fuel tank itself was non-flammable, even when hit by
shells.
Evolution of the military doctrine
A decisive factor following any war is how the army manages to analyse
the past war and then foresee the contours of coming wars. The 1920s
and 1930s were characterised by the paradox that the losers and out-
siders after World War I – the Soviet Union and Germany – achieved
the most far-going reforms, while the victors – France and the United
Kingdom – had found themselves in a conservative position of passivity
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124 Tankograd
in the areas of technology and doctrine. In the exhausting battles of the

Great War, the first tanks appeared as a means to bring mobility back
to battles. The English transported these vehicles in cisterns, hence the
name ‘tank’ for an armoured gun-wagon. The tank was only one of sev-
eral new types of weapon that had radical consequences during World
War I. Aeroplanes and new chemical weapons had also changed the
preconditions of battle.
From 1926 to 1932, there was secret and mutually advantageous coop-
eration between the Red Army and the German Reichswehr. When their
cooperation started, both armies had, independently of each other and
of the more famous British military theorists, created similar concepts
for the use of armoured vehicles. Military historical research has estab-
lished the background to the German doctrine on armour as compared
to the theories on future war that were advanced by Britons J.F.C. Fuller
and B.H. Liddell Hart. The new Soviet doctrine was not an imitation of
Fuller’s or Liddell Hart’s ideas, still less a copy of the German blitzkrieg,
as is sometimes claimed in Western literature.28
The development of the Soviet armed forces in the 1930s was actu-
ally founded on the theory of deep operations, which assumed that
future wars would be long and would involve many states. They would
therefore include situations with great, mobile battles and long peri-
ods of impasse. The main method of subduing an enemy would be
through offensive actions to surround or split the opposing army. Key
components of success would be intensive advances in the direction of
the main attack and pre-empting the enemy’s counter-measures. The
mechanised units should be able to achieve great mobility through fast
tanks, the BTs and later the T-34s.
Operative and strategic studies had already shown that a drawn-out
war would inevitably lead to situations with operative pauses, when an
enemy would have time to re-establish its positional defences. Therefore,
mobile warfare should start with by breaking through the well prepared
defences of an enemy’s tactical zone. Studies had shown that such a
breakthrough with mechanised units would leave opposing forces too
torn down to develop their own breakthrough into an operative depth.
Therefore, an offensive army group must contain one echelon dedicated
to creating a breach in the enemy’s tactical defences, through which the
mechanised units could then pass in order to achieve initial success.
The base for the troops in the first echelon was the infantry, as it
was necessary to take the fight to the enemy in their trenches. In the
first instance, the artillery should wipe out an enemy’s defensive posi-
tions. However, even under the most favourable conditions, the artil-
9780230_208872_05_cha04.indd 124 6/27/2011 11:32:16 AM

lery could only be expected to eliminate a relatively small part of the

enemy’s defensive line. Therefore, tanks were necessary to support the
advancing infantry. This would clear up enemy firing positions at tacti-
cal depths that had withstood the initial artillery attacks and then open
up the way for the next divisions to advance deep into the operative
zone. In the first half of the 1930s, the Red Army considered that the
light T-26 tank would be the main support for the advancing infantry,
with up to 60 tanks per kilometre of the breakthrough area.
The T-26 was a modification of a British Vickers tank, with changes
made in Russia by the chief designer, M.A. Zigel. The tank weighed 9.4
tons and was produced at the Voroshilov Works in Leningrad from 1933
to 1936. In case of war, it could also be produced at the Cheliabinsk
Tractor Factory. It had a 45 millimetre gun model/1932 and 136 shells,
and a 7.62 millimetre machine gun. The T-26 had 16 millimetre thick
armour (25 in the turret) and a 90 horse power petrol engine. Its maxi-
mum speed was 30 kilometres per hour. The T-26 was made in many
versions, as self-propelled artillery and as a fire-thrower. The T-26
tanks were successfully employed during in the battle of Khalkhin-
Gol against the Japanese army in the summer of 1939. Between 1931
and the German invasion of Russia in 1941 more than 11,000 T-26s
were produced. However, none had been produced at the Cheliabinsk
Tractor Factory, where only the latest design changes had been carefully
recorded as a measure of economic preparedness.
The theoretical development of the Red Army in the 1920s and early
1930s was intensive. This epoch was among the most productive in the-
oretical terms as well as at a technological level. Debates were relatively
open and were held on the unexpected changes in World War I for
all the involved states and armies. One of the most influential Russian
proponents of a new form of mobile warfare was Vladimir Triandafillov
(1894–1931), who produced pioneering articles and books. From the late
1920s, these were the main guidelines for the Red Army. Triandafillov
died in an aeroplane accident in 1931 but his basic work was continued
by others under the guidance of deputy people’s commissar of defence,
Mikhail Tukhachevskii.29 Of great significance for the reconstruction
of the Red Army was the introduction of the concept operational art
(operativnoe isskusstvo), which defined a level between tactics and strat-
egy. A war could no longer be decided in one single, general battle, and
separate tactical victories could easily be compensated for by the enemy
because of the new forms of communication.30
Step by step, the Red Army developed its new ideas of deep battles
with fast-moving and fast-shooting tanks. These had to be capable
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126 Tankograd
of breaking through a heavily defended line and advancing towards

the further deep defence lines of the enemy, while the slower (but
mechanised within the foreseeable future) infantry would advance to
consolidate its hold over conquered terrain. It was well known in the
rest of the world in the mid-1930s that the Soviet Union had acquired
strong armour. At manoeuvres held in Kiev and Minsk in 1935 and
1936, respectively, many foreign observers were impressed by watching
hundreds of tanks in action in conjunction with parachute troops and
the infantry.
The theory on armour was ahead of the Soviet industry’s capabil-
ity but it spurred the ongoing modernisation of the defence industries.
It would take several years before the factories in Leningrad, Kharkov
and Stalingrad had tanks in production that fully satisfied the army’s
technical and tactical requirements. The backwardness of Soviet indus-
try was overcome as the Soviet designers managed to refine and adapt
to the internal preconditions of the best British and American tanks,
which were initially produced on licence. In 1940, after a series of mod-
ifications and having equipped it with the original Soviet diesel engine,
Soviet designers presented what was to become the legendary T-34 tank,
considered by some to be one of the best in World War II. Stalin’s forced
industrialisation had created the necessary capacity to produce the tens
of thousands of tanks, as well as countless other military equipment,
that would prove decisive during the war.31
The swift development in anti-tank guns soon demanded a different
type of tank that could withstand an intensive artillery attack from an
enemy. Tanks were therefore more heavily armoured. The heavy tanks
were then considered to be suitable only for breakthrough operations.
The first Soviet heavy tanks had been produced on a small scale for the
strategic reserve of the headquarters (the T-28 and T-35). Now the heavy
tanks had to be produced on a mass scale.32
The Red Army was twice struck by the repression of the OGPU-NKVD
secret police. In 1930–1931, thousands of officers were purged, many
of whom had extensive experience, often with careers that stretched
back to the Tsarist army. Most of them were sentenced to up to ten
years in forced labour camps. The local wars in China and Spain in the
late 1930s, in which the Soviet Union assisted the Nationalist govern-
ment in Beijing and the Republican Army, respectively, with experts
and weapons,33 were carefully analysed by the Red Army’s generals.34
Some of these evaluations were influenced by the ongoing purges of
the Great Terror against the supreme leadership of the Red Army. These
purges also concerned the defence industry. Many more designers and
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Figure 64 The T-28 tank.
engineers in the aviation and rocket industry perished in the Gulag or

were executed than in the tank industry.
Most of these military men were formally rehabilitated in Khrushchev’s
time, but only in the 1990s did some of the archival source material
concerning their cases reach the public domain. Iaroslav Tinchenko
has analysed the little-known operation, spuriously called ‘Operation
Springtime’ (Operatsiia Vesna), which in the early 1930s was predomi-
nantly directed at those officers who had been recruited to the Red
Army during the Civil War, and who were now considered to have
‘counter-revolutionary ideas’. Oleg Suvenirov, colonel and professor at
the Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defence in Moscow,
conducted pioneering research concerning the widespread purges in the
Red Army of 1937 and 1938. His work has been further enriched by the
publications of Colonel Nikolai Cherushev at the Central Russian Army
Museum in Moscow. Through their research in the archives and that of
other historians a lot more is known today about the wave of bloody
terror that struck the Red Army high command in 1937. However, there
are still far too few documents to understand the intentions of Stalin
and the political leaders around him.
The Great Terror had grave implications for the theoretical develop-
ment of the Red Army. Thousands of officers were executed in 1937–
1938, including some who had formulated the new theories on mobile
warfare, operational art and deep operations. Thereafter, it was nec-
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128 Tankograd
essary to discuss these new concepts in veiled terms. Several of the

tank designers escaped the repressions of 1937–1938. However, among
those who were falsely charged and executed was Nikolai Tseits, who
had developed the heavy tanks. However, his ideas were refined by
Aleksandr Morozov (1904–1979) and Mikhail Koshkin (1898–1940) at
the Kharkov Tractory Factory, where the prototype for the T-34 tank
was completed in 1938. Zhosef Kotin (1908–1979) and Nikolai Dukhov
(1904–1964) were tank designers at factories in Leningrad and would
later become the leaders in refining the Soviet heavy tank. By the late
1930s the Soviet tank industry had kept up some of its momentum and
was even more technologically advanced than Germany.
Military-economic preparedness:
The ChTZ enterprise in the 1930s
The term mobilisation is usually associated with the call-up of soldiers

and officers to a rallying point, where they receive their uniforms and
weapons from the mobilisation reserves and are then sent in accord-
ance with tested transport plans by rail, lorry or aeroplane to their cor-
responding army units. On the European continent, such mobilisation
plans were highly developed after the 1870–1871 German-French War
and calculations were made as to how many divisions of 10,000 or more
men could be sent to the state frontiers within a certain time. These
calculations formed the foundation of war planning in Berlin, Paris and
Moscow in the early 20th century.
In this book, however, mobilisation is mostly used in connection with
industrial mobilisation, a concept that was widely in used in the inter-
war period concerning how states could redirect their economy to sup-
port the demands of a future total war. After World War I, organisations
were set up in a number of countries to prepare – even in peacetime –
the entire economy, the transport and the finance systems and internal
and foreign trade for those conditions that might arise in the next war.
Such organisations were established in Germany, France, Sweden and
the United States.35 Mikhail Tukhachevskii even studied the experience
of industrial mobilisation from textbooks used at military academies in
Europe and the United States.36
Before the opening of the archives, Western observers had no exact
knowledge of how the Soviet theory of economic planning also included
plans to mobilise the entire industrial base in case of war. Those Russian
economists who were engaged in this part of the planning were well
informed about the history of planning. Naturally, however, they were
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not able to discuss such matters in ordinary Soviet economic journals.

In this respect, much has changed recently. One of the leading experts
on Soviet ammunition production in World War II, Ivan Vernidub,
wrote:
The mobilisation plans for the factories were documents that pre-
scribed everything that must be required in peacetime, in order to
change in the initial phase of a war to the stipulated level of pro-
duction. However, in practice these plans were merely calculations
of the necessary materials and equipment, of shop floor space and
of labour resources. They often lacked a complex interconnection of
all elements in the factory’s mobilisation plan. They did not foresee
imbalances and did not prescribe measures to dispose of such imbal-
ances in the production phases.37
By examining how the theories of industrial mobilisation were effec-

tively realised in Cheliabinsk before and during World War II, this book
is also a case study that may add concreteness and reality from every-
day factory life to a general treatise on industrial change in the Soviet
Union. These specific questions are inspired by the author’s earlier
study on the principles of industrial mobilisation in case of war. How
realistic were the plans that had been drawn up for conversion of a fac-
tory and which preparations had been most significant? How had the
change from civilian to military production actually been prepared for
at the enterprises in the Urals? How had the management estimated and
taken into account the changes in manpower supply when many of the
male workers were drafted into the army?
The central question concerns the Soviet Union’s military-economic
preparedness, which aimed to prepare the economy, the transport sys-
tem and the country’s infrastructure for conversion to wartime condi-
tions. This planning was shrouded in secrecy, both among the military
and the civilian authorities and very little was written on the topic in
the open press and publications. It was taught at special faculties at
military colleges for those chosen to be responsible for the conversion
of industry, distribution, transport, etc. when war broke out.
In the period leading up to World War II, economic preparedness
was just a small part of the activities in Soviet enterprises. A few peo-
ple connected to the director kept track of the industrial mobilisation
plan and its updating in correspondence with changing requirements
from the military. The forced industrialisation under Stalin’s despotic
leadership laid the foundation for Soviet endurance in World Ware II
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130 Tankograd
in other senses, primarily the enormous surge in the iron and steel
industries and the parallel growth of the modern machine-building
industry. More thoroughly than most of the great powers, the Soviet
Union had confronted itself with a series of scenarios for the next
great war and how this war would change production and living
conditions.
What we know about the economic preparedness of the tractor
factory in Cheliabinsk is based on lists in the enterprise archives.
These lists were made in autumn of 1941 by a commission from the
NKVD archival directorate (all state archives were part of the People’s
Commissariat of the Interior until the early 1960s). Its members’
checking of documents was completed on 16 October 1941, and sug-
gested what enterprise documentation should be shredded and burnt,
specifically documents that ‘lack interest from the point of view of
production or exist in many copies in other places’. Among these
materials were general plans for the tractor factory from the early
1930s, projects and calculations for mobilisation plans of ammuni-
tion and even the last pre-war mobilisation directives of 6 June 1941.
These materials were also available in other archives in Moscow, and
can still be accessed there. However, the detailed plans for transition
at ChTZ according to the mobilisation plans of the mid-1930s have
been lost forever.
By 11 June 1941 the Archival section of NKVD’s directorate in
Cheliabinsk had already checked which material from the ChTZ archive
could be disposed of. It concluded that 34 dossiers had ‘historical, scien-
tific and practical information value’ and the rest could be destroyed.38
The saved inventory lists at the ChTZ experimental factory hint at how
they prepared for industrial mobilisation. They include, for example, a
translation of an article from Machinery (8 February 1934) on the serial
production of aeroplanes in factories in Blackburn, England, and the
Soviet expert’s comment that this article requires ‘careful consideration’
by other industries tasked with serial production. The experimental
factory’s special library also contained secret bulletins from the State
Planning Commission (Gosplan) and the People’s Commissariat on
Industrial Mobilisation.39
From 1929, when the factory itself started being built, instructions
had already been drawn up for how the completed factory should
organise its possible wartime production in accordance with mobilisa-
tion plan S-30, and also a series of directives for how the tractor factory
should organise its cooperation with other enterprises in the city and
elsewhere in case of general mobilisation.
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The enterprise archive had kept instructions on defence-industrial pro-

duction planning for 1930 and 1931, as well as directives for how the plan
for labour resources in case of industrial mobilisation should be handled.
All of these were at first handled in accordance with the S-30 mobilisa-
tion plan but were later coordinated with the new MV-10 plan.40
It is worth noting that by the time the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory
started serial production of civilian products – tractors, spare parts and
equipment – its special department at the experimental factory had
already received several booklets on industrial mobilisation practices
in France and Poland. For 1933–1934, the library also had received a
bibliographical bulletin on military production.
From 1933, the archives also contained a note on the production plan
for T-28 tanks at ChTZ, in case of war, to be prepared for by the end of
the second five-year plan, that is, by 1937. Although the commission
decided in 1941 that this plan should not be destroyed, it has not yet
been found in the regional archive’s collections on ChTZ. From 1933,
the special department also had directives for the new M-3 mobilisation
plan in accordance with the decisions of the People’s Commissariat of
Defence.
The special workshop at ChTZ was responsible for the permanent
checking of the mobilisation plan for production of tanks. However,
from an historian’s point of view, the regrettable fact is that these plans
were eliminated when the war actually broke out in 1941. The archival
commission decided that the mobilisation plans from the 1930s had
become obsolete and that they had no technical or historical value,
which was the criterion for keeping older records in the factory’s
archives. From 1934 onwards, that is from the first year of ChTZ, there
were demands from the Red Army’s mobilisation directorate regarding
what was to be produced according the M-3 mobilisation plan. Every
enterprise with such mobilisation tasks was to have an updated pro-
duction and technology plan for the first period of a total war. The
technical director or the chief engineer had responsibility for the indus-
trial mobilisation plan.41
The mobilisation plans of the enterprise were to be sent to the main
directorate of the People’s Commissariat for approval. At the centre,
the mobilisation plans from enterprises were to be coordinated and the
definitive plans for the first period of war sent back to the factories. At
the factories, a trusted group in the special departments were to super-
vise three key things: first, that the mobilisation plans were updated to
the latest requirements of the armed forces; second, that the machin-
ery of the factory was sufficient and flexible enough for battle condi-
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132 Tankograd
tions within the short stipulated time and third, that the important raw
materials and other goods were always in stock.
One of the leading individuals at the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory
involved in industrial preparedness was Izrail Nesterovskii (1898–1938).
He was born in Kherson in the Ukraine and started working at nine years
of age. After finishing at the trade school, he got a job as blacksmith at
the Putilov Works in Kherson. He worked as teacher at the Kherson
trade school in 1921 and was appointed head of a trade school in Odessa
a few years later, while studying at the Odessa Industrial Institute. He
then became chief engineer at an enterprise in the city before being
appointed chief mechanic at the tractor factory in Kharkov. In March
1934, he was transferred to the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory where he
became the chief engineer.
In December 1934, the head of the ChTZ experimental factory, who
was allowed to read top-secret acts, was commanded to prepare the fac-
tory for the production of tanks in case of war. He was to study the
drawings of the T-29 tank that was produced in Leningard. The task to
prepare ChTZ for wartime conditions contained instructions from sev-
eral main directorates of the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry.42
On 10 January 1935 Nesterovskii reported to the Special Machine
– Building Trust (Spetsmashtrest) in Moscow, ‘no production of tanks
takes place yet at ChTZ’. Spetsmashtrest had enquired about standardisa-
tion so that tractor and tank spare parts could be produced in the same
machinery and according to the same drawings.
On 12 January 1935 Director Bruskin protested to the main directo-
rate against the order to produce three T-29 tanks: ‘As you know,’ he said,
‘we are completely unprepared to produced three T-29 tanks since no
preparations have been made for that purpose yet’. He demanded that
one tank and a set of blueprints and drawings be sent to Cheliabinsk.
NKTP thus commissioned those factories that made parts for that tank
to send drawings to ChTZ and keep the Cheliabinsk factory updated
on any changes in the design of the T-29 tank. It was also emphasised
that the specialists at ChTZ should receive more information on experi-
ments and research on tanks. Director Barynov from the testing and
experiment workshop at the Kirov Works in Leningrad explained in a
letter to NKTP that the expert from ChTZ Oleinikov had been shown
everything concerning this tank and that a set of drawings had been
sent to ChTZ on 26 February.43
In February 1935 the directorate of NKTP discussed whether the T-28
or the T-29 should be produced during wartime at ChTZ. Otherwise,
the factory’s mobilisation plan could not be updated. On 25 February
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Oleinikov gave his report to the Kirov Works, in which he described the
production of the T-28 with its 12-cylinder aeroplane engine, and also
the T-29, which was a further refined version of the American Christie
tank with combined wheel and caterpillar track operation. Three or
four engineers at ChTZ were required to study all the drawings for both
tanks until it had been decided which of them should be produced at
ChTZ in case of war.44
On 26 February 1935 the people’s commissar of heavy industry,
Sergo Ordzhonikidze, signed order No. 51-ss (‘ss’ denotes sovershenno
sekretno, top secret) on the ChTZ’s preparation of tank T-29-5. Two
mechanics from ChTZ were to travel to the Kirov Works in Leningrad
to study and take part in the testing of this tank. The test and experi-
mental workshops of the Kirov Works were to create a complete set of
blueprints and drawings of the tank and send these to Cheliabinsk.45
Seven people – three mechanics, one electrician and specialists from
the assembly lines at the Kirov Works – arrived from Leningrad to set
up these facilities at the second factory. The defence industry had tra-
ditionally been concentrated in and around St Petersburg until World
War I and, to a large extent, remained there during the first phase of
forced industrialisation in the planning era since 1928. However, the
more thorough economic preparedness spread this knowledge to other
enterprises.46
Behind these descriptions of the activities at the experimental work-
shops of ChTZ was more than so-called planning on paper by a few
specialists. More and more of the development work at the big Soviet
producers of tanks was assimilated. This also included training to fore-
see all the measures that must take place in case of an industrial mobi-
lisation. This explains why the Soviets managed to improvise a wartime
economic system in 1941 at so many enterprises that was to exceed the
seemingly superior German economy. Even if the civilian production
at ChTZ had severe quality problems, another and more demanding
task had been solved by training for industrial mobilisation. The trac-
tor factory had, just like the nearby machine-building factory No. 78,
undertaken extensive preparations for production of shells in wartime.
The Soviet Union had decided never to repeat its mistakes of World
War I by allowing there to be a deficiency of ammunition in case of a
new total war.
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5
Stagnation and Streamlining in the
Whirlwinds of Terror, 1936–1939
Figure 65 Poster by Viktor Govorkov, 1940: ‘Stalin in the Kremlin takes care
of each and every one of us.’ Victoria Bonell (1977, p. 168) notes that 100,000
copies of this poster were printed, making it one of the most widely distributed
to clubs and enterprises. The image reinforced the impression that the general
secretary of the Communist Party worked hard until late in the night. He actu-
ally rose very late in the day but thereafter had a strict routine of meetings with
visitors from various party organs and enterprises. The fact that the logbook of
these visitors was kept in the archives has made it possible to disentangle certain
myths on Stalin’s work routines.1
134
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Stagnation and Streamlining in Whirlwinds of Terror 135
Repression and terror were present in all periods in Soviet history but
were especially severe in the latter part of the 1930s. The year 1937 is
associated with massive, bloody purges in the Communist Party, the
state apparatus and among the industrial enterprises. Contemporary
observers at the time were stunned by the reports from the public tri-
als in 1936–1938 in Moscow against leading party members. A few
believed that the accusations and confessions were based on reality.
Other reporters were frightened of the state terror and speculated about
how the old party members might have been tortured in order to break
their willpower. One such contemporary witness was the Swedish social
democrat Zeth Höglund, who described his impressions in articles in
the Socialdemokraten newspaper and later published a book entitled
Witch-night over Europe.2
Since that time, the causes and driving forces in the great purges
have been debated, not only in the scholarly world but also by writers
and philosophers. Russian emigrants, including natural scientist Fritz
Houtermans (writing under the pseudonym Frederick Beck) and the
historian Konstantin Shteppa (writing under the pseudonym W. Godin)
described with many pertinent insights how the terror had developed
on a nationwide scale. They argued around dozens of explanations that
had been forwarded among their compatriots, victims as well as ordi-
nary Soviet citizens.3
Since the opening of the Russian archives, the research on repression
in Stalin’s time has again intensified. Every generation naturally makes
its own representation of the past. However, such information as has
been required in the political debates in European political organisa-
tions on ‘coming to terms with communism’ has actually been avail-
able before. What the archives have added are delineations and better
background descriptions.
Among the pioneers are the Russian historian Roy Medvedev’s monu-
mental Let History Judge, a translation of the Russian version, K sudu
istorii. Medvedev’s father was a political officer in the Red Army who
was sentenced to the Gulag camps in 1938, where he died a few years
later. Roy Medvedev wrote his settlement with Stalinism when he was
employed at a research institute in the 1960s. His book could not be
published in the Soviet Union. In fact, he was dismissed from his post
and excluded from the Communist Party for having criticised the ongo-
ing attempts to rehabilitate Stalin. The Russian version of the book
contains enormous amounts of information that was excluded in the
abridged English version published in the early 1970s.4 Medvedev’s
book was updated in the late 1980s, as was another classic work – Robert
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136 Tankograd
Conquest’s The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purges in the 1930s. Both of these
scholars based their presentations on the many memoirs and articles
that had appeared in the USSR after the de-Stalinisation campaign
started in 1956. Medvedev could also refer to many unpublished manu-
scripts and some archival data that had been used by other historians
who intended to write about the forced collectivisation, the dekulaki-
sation and the purges. The framework of interpretation in Let History
Judge was close to the official, Khrushchevite version of Stalin as an
usurper of power who had distorted the basically sound plans for a
long-term socialist transformation drawn up by Lenin. Both Medvedev
and Conquest wrote mostly about the terror that struck the Communist
Party members – high officials in the state and economy administra-
tion. Medvedev tried to set the Stalinist dictatorship in a wider histori-
cal framework and advanced social and economic factors to understand
why Stalin’s absolute dictatorship had become possible.
The terror in the Soviet Union is often explained by the intentions,
actions and orders of Stalin or of a few leading personalities in the party
and state apparatus. However, the massive purges and the widespread
support for unmasking ‘enemies of the people’ can also be seen as evi-
dence that many other groups in the society took part in these proc-
esses. Such an alternative perspective was launched by historian Robert
W. Thurston, who also hinted at the fact – which was hotly disputed
some 15 years ago but is more recognised today – that large groups in
society were not hit by the terror at all. Thurston’s view of the dominant
Cold War presentation of the Soviet Union as permeated with fear may
have been somewhat exaggerated. However, his contribution spurred
research into a new area.5
After the opening of the Russian archives, and since a huge number
of documents have become available, much more is known about the
mechanisms of repression. It is necessary to distinguish between differ-
ent levels. First, there was repression against leading communists who
had been opponents of Stalin and his policies. Second, there were the
actions that led to widespread purges against party cadres – the nomen-
klatura in industry, agriculture and transport. The third part, which had
been least known but which represented by far the greatest number of
victims, was the so-called mass operations.
The three great Moscow show trials took place on the first level. They
were held publicly and there were widespread discussions about why
and how it had been possible to force the accused to confess their guilt,
of even the most unthinkable crimes. In these trials, Grigorii Zinoviev,
Karl Radek and Nikolai Bukharin, as well as dozens of the Bolshevik ‘old
9780230_208872_06_cha05.indd 136 7/4/2011 6:19:54 PM

guard’, were sentenced to death or, in a few cases, to long prison terms. In
June 1937, Marshal Tukhachevskii and seven generals were condemned
for alleged high treason. In the wake of these trials, hundreds and, in the
end, thousands of their followers or relatives were purged.6
Earlier in the 1930s, the party had regularly purged its ranks and
members had been excluded for their oppositional views, for breach of
discipline or for moral degeneration. However, these purges seldom had
such drastic consequences as camp sentences or executions. After the
assassination of Leningrad’s party secretary, Sergei Kirov, on 1 December
1934, the control over the party members’ views increased. Anyone
who had been in the opposition groups against the ‘general line’ in the
1920s was suspected of ‘counter-revolutionary views’ and could easily
be repressed in the successive waves of purges of former oppositional
communists. In March 1935 censorship sharpened regarding what pub-
lic, party, school and factory libraries were allowed to display. Earlier
cleansings in the libraries might have concerned the writings of bour-
geois or socialist authors; from this point on, all works were withdrawn
if they were written by or contained articles by Grigorii Zinoviev, Lev
Kamenev and others who had been accused of being associated with
the murder of Kirov.7
At an intermediate level, another wave of repressions was directed
against cadres in the party and managers in the economic administra-
tion and at factories, as well as among scientists. The extent of these
purges was clarified in the late 1950s, when many victims (sometimes
posthumously) were reinstated and their fate described in the Soviet
press. The two highest levels in the socio-political hierarchy counted
a few hundreds and several tens of thousands of victims, respectively,
and were the best known in the research that could be undertaken
between the 20th Soviet Communist Party Congress and the glasnost
period of the late 1980s. By that stage it was already known that Stalin
and his collaborators inspected and signed their approval of lists of over
40,000 persons in 1937–1938, most of whom were sentenced to death.
In other purges, the politburo gave only general directions about how
many persons in various categories should be convicted and left the
final decisions regarding who should receive the death penalty and who
should be sent to the Gulag to the local elite (usually the regional party
secretary, the head of the secret police and the prosecutor).
As ripples on the water, it used to be considered that several hundreds
of thousands, maybe even several million people had been arrested and
sentenced for political crimes in 1937 and 1938. This purge, called the
‘Ezhovshchina’, has been associated with Nikolai Ezhov, the successor
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138 Tankograd
Figure 66 The leaders at the Gulag penitentiary colony in Sinatra, 11 July

1934.
to Genrikh Iagoda as people’s commissar of internal affairs. The term

is misleading to the extent that very little of this terror campaign took
place on the initiative of the security police themselves. On the con-
trary, NKVD was, from the end of 1936, much more firmly control-
led by Stalin and a few leaders in the politburo. NKVD was merely an
executive organ for the Communist Party.8
From 1936 onwards, foreign workers in the Soviet defence indus-
try – and later also in civilian industries – were dismissed and often
repressed. In particular, the secret police were instructed to remove all
Germans, whether they were Soviet Germans by nationality and citi-
zenship or political refugees from Nazi Germany, from the Soviet fac-
tories. Naturally, this affected the many heavy and machine-building
industries in the Urals, and in Cheliabinsk in particular.9
Purges of party members in 1937–1938
In Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech to the 20th Communist Party

Congress in February 1956, he mentioned that 110 out of 139 central
committee members had been executed between 1934 and 1938. In his
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book Let History Judge, Roy Medvedev gave a lot of biographical data on
these personalities. However, the main theme of the book is the evil
and hunger for power of Stalin. According to this view, Stalin had a
preconceived plan to eliminate all former and potential opponents to
his autocratic rule in the country. Accordingly, anyone who had taken
a Leftist position in the 1920s and against Stalin would be eliminated
first; this included the followers of Trotsky and Zinoviev. Thereafter,
the purges continued and affected more groups. Starting in early 1937,
‘Right-Trotskyist elements’ were targeted, including party members
who had supported Bukharin’s line in 1927–1939 and those who had
later criticised Stalin’s economic policy. As a smokescreen of cryptic for-
mulation, these repressive measures can be interpreted as an attempt
to renew the cadres in the administration, both by eliminating certain
individuals and by highlighting delinquency. Certainly, dreadful condi-
tions really existed; however, they were seldom primarily due to neglect
but had a systemic character. Other means taken to discuss the causes
of low labour productivity, accidents or deficient quality had often been
inconsequential, since the concerned groups would rather protect each
other than make administrative changes.
In the Urals, the party purges started in 1936 with accusations against
cadres in Sverdlovsk. Ivan Kabakov, who had been elected member of
the central committee at the 17th Congress in 1934 was excluded at
its plenary session in June 1937. Kabakov was accused of negligence in
industry and agriculture and accused of ‘wrecking on behalf of the Right-
Trotskyist centre’. After prolonged interrogation, Kabakov ‘confessed’ to
Figure 67 The penal work colony in Kamyshov.
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140 Tankograd
all charges and was executed on 3 October 1937. In addition to Kabakov,

those sentenced included the regional party committee’s second sec-
retary K.F. Pshenitsyn, the head of the party’s industrial sections G.G.
Ian, the chairman of the regional planning commission Uralplan G.I.
Krumin and his deputy Ia.A. Istomin, as well as the party secretaries in
the cities of Perm, Nizhnii Tagil, Magnitogorsk and Cheliabinsk. They
were all accused, with minor variations from case to case, of perpetrat-
ing widespread wrecking and diversionary activities in the economy,
with the alleged intent of undermining the defence capability of the
Soviet Union.
British historian James Harris interpreted the dismissal of Kabakov in
Sverdlovsk as an attempt by Stalin and NKVD to use terror to break up
a petty fiefdom and corrupted network around Kabakov. According to
Harris, Kabakov had control of the local NKVD, so only initiatives from
the centre and higher party organs could bring the region back under
the tight control of the politburo.10
There could be a similar explanation for the purge process in the party
organisation in Cheliabinsk. After the show trial of Zinoviev and other
members of the Leftist opposition within the party in the 1920s the
purges in the Cheliabinsk region were initially directed against anyone
who had ever belonged to an opposition group in the party. The regional
committee’s chairman, Kuz’ma Ryndin’, initially led the purges. On 4
March, 1937, at the plenary session of the central committee, he reported
that 165 leading cadres in Cheliabinsk had been exposed as ‘Trotskyists’
and excluded from the party. On 12 May, Ryndin informed the people’s
commissar, Nikolai Ezhov, that a member of a ‘counter-revolutionary
Rightist organisation’ by the name of Tsykov had been found guilty and
arrested. On 16 May Stalin received a delegation from the Urals with
Kabakov and Chitarov from the Sverdlovsk obkom and Ryndin from
the Cheliabinsk obkom. They remained in Stalin’s cabinet together with
Viacheslav Molotov, defence commissar Kliment Voroshilov and Ezhov
for almost three hours.11
In the middle of the summer of 1937 the Cheliabinsk regional party
organisation held its conference, with Ryndin as the main speaker.
A few days before, Andrei Andreev (1895–1971) had arrived on an
inspection-and-purge tour on behalf of the politburo. On a daily basis,
Andreev informed Stalin and conferred with him about what measures
to take against cadres in the Volga region and, thereafter, in the Urals.
In Saratov, Andreev had arrested a number of leading functionaries in
the party and at the machine and tractor stations. In Cheliabinsk, how-
ever, he only gave a talk with minor criticism of Ryndin. On direct
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instructions from Stalin, Andreev was to support Ryndin against criti-

cism from individual party members. It would have been simple to let
Ryndin or any other leading cadre be the scapegoat for many of the real
problems in the city.
In July 1937 the NKVD leadership asked all its regional organs, jointly
with the regional party committees, to inform the centre about how
many ‘anti-Soviet elements’ there were in the region, as well as the
number of kulaks who had returned from exile. They were to then pro-
pose how many of these should be sentenced to death and how many
sent to the Gulag camps. These decisions were to be made by a troika
consisting of the local NKVD and party chairmen and the regional
prosecutor.12
As with many other leaders in the 1930s, Ryndin present a dual,
even split profile. On one hand, he worked hard to be informed and
qualified about economic matters concerning the development of the
Cheliabinsk region. On the other hand, he would start campaigns to
‘expose’ opponents and implemented harsh reprisals against those
described as ‘wreckers’ or ‘spies’. In the summer of 1937, Ryndin sat on
the three-party commission that led the mass operations that resulted
in the execution of thousands of ‘former kulaks and anti-Soviet ele-
ments’ according to the infamous order No. 00447. But the bell soon
also tolled for Ryndin and he was arrested on 12 October 1937. He was
subjected to extended night-time interrogation sessions and was forced
to confess to a number of fabricated accusations.
The documentation of these interrogations is scarce. There are protocols
dated 17 November and 27 December, although he was not interrogated
on these dates. On the other hand, there are seven signed protocols from
30 November and 28 December 1937, in which he took responsibility for
a growing number of ‘crimes’. Ryndin confessed that he led ‘anti-Soviet
activities’ from 1928 to 1934 and had organised ‘anti-Soviet’ terror in
Cheliabinsk on behalf of the ‘Rightist bloc’ since 1934. In 1935, he had
allegedly formed a ‘bloc’ with the party head in Magnitogorsk, Vissarion
Lominadze, who later committed suicide in order to avoid arrest. In the
same year, Ryndin had established contacts with the Trotskyists around
Georgii Piatakov in the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry and, on
their orders, had carried out ‘wrecking’ in the industry in Cheliabinsk.
In actual fact, however, Ryndin had pushed for the expansion of indus-
trial production during his time as party chief in the city and supervised
it to the best of his ability. In light of all the problems and how much
did not go according to plan, it was easy in hindsight to use anyone as a
scapegoat for problems that had much more complex causes.
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142 Tankograd
Following these protocols, Ryndin finally confessed to having been an

agent of the Polish intelligence services since 1933. All these fabricated
charges, typical for most cadres arrested during this period of terror,
were ascribed to Ryndin in the winter months of 1937–1938. He was for-
mally excluded from the Communist Party on 8 February 1938 and was
executed two days later. His ‘confessions’ were read to party meetings in
the city districts and in the region. With the benefit of hindsight and
with access to other documents, it is possible to discern how the NKVD
interrogators had woven together some real meetings, events, accidents
and malfunctions and then forced the accused – often through torture –
to sign any protocol.13 Just as had happened at similar meetings con-
cerning the victims of the purge in other parts of the Soviet Union,
the Cheliabinsk city party committee denounced Ryndin on 25 October
1937. A resolution denounced ‘the band of Ianus-faced wreckers’ and
named Stepanov, Simonov, Freiman, Krichevskii, Raskin and several
others who had been arrested as the time as ‘enemies of the people’. In
close collaboration with the Trotskyists, the resolution said, they had
profited with Polish and German spies for a number of years from the
‘lack of vigilance among Cheliabinsk’s communists’. They had occupied
all the key posts in the party organisations and the soviets in order sys-
tematically to carry out ‘wreckage’. It was stated that their goal had been
to re-establish capitalism through insidious double-dealings, forgeries
and distortions of Soviet laws so that the party’s directives on produc-
tion plans could not be fulfilled in industry and agriculture. This had
created discontent among the population, and then the local party lead-
ership had suppressed anyone who criticised the social evils. Nepotism
and servility flourished under ‘this group of fascist legionaries’.
The fact that Ryndin’s ‘group of wreckers’ had managed to carry on
their dealings for so long was a serious lesson for the entire regional
party organisation. This was explained, according to the resolution,
by the fact that the local communists had forgotten ‘comrade Stalin’s
repeated instructions that class struggle had not ceased but was con-
tinuing in new, even sharper forms’ and that the enemy had used more
refined forms in its struggle against Soviet power. The new party organ-
isation expressed their gratitude to NKVD and comrade Ezhov, who had
exposed Ryndin’s ‘rightist wreckers’ group.
The new regional party secretary, Dmitrii Ogurtsov, was only to lead
the organisation from October 1937 until May 1938. He was arrested on
7 May, accused of ‘collaboration with enemies of the people’ in the city
of Gorkii and summarily executed. He was replaced by the 42-year-old
Dmitrii Antonov, who had spent two winters in a parish church
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before starting to work in the mines at the age of 13. After the revo-
lution, Antonov had the opportunity to study at the workers’ faculty
in Kharkov and then at the mineralogical institute (Gornyi institut) in
Moscow. His career in the Communist Party included his post as chair-
man of the control committee at the institute and later at the People’s
Commissariat of Labour and the Academy of Foreign Trade. He worked
for a couple of years as deputy head of the industrial directorate of the
central committee with responsibility for the fuel industry.14
From 1935, Antonov was part of the central party apparatus as assist-
ant to the head of the CC industrial department and its fuel section. As
the main machine-building industries in the Cheliabinsk region had
not fulfilled their production plans in 1939 and 1940, Antonov was
dismissed. The official explanation was that he had not ‘liquidated the
consequences of wrecking’ in the industry and administration. This
might refer to the fact that Antonov had neglected all but those matters
that were of direct interest – the coal mines and the mineral resources
in the Southern Urals. Antonov was not repressed, however. He admit-
ted that he had not coped with the problems of being a leader for the
industries in Cheliabinsk and that the crisis phenomena had deepened
in recent years. From February 1940, he was again at the disposition of
the central committee.
In a couple of rounds, the entire political and economic leadership in
Cheliabinsk had been arrested on various trumped-up charges. By 1938,
practically all the experienced cadres had been eliminated. Their place
had been taken many inexperienced but sometimes better educated
younger technicians who were hastily promoted. This chapter presents
the terminology and mentality of those years, as it was expressed at the
meetings in the region, much of which has been known for many years.
The great show trials in Moscow have not, however, been discussed by
historians in recent years. The pattern of the purges that emerged in
Cheliabinsk was, to varying degrees, similar to that in other regions of
the Soviet Union during the Great Terror.15
Repression against technicians, engineers and

leading cadres in the economy
The purges on mid-level cadres followed a pattern; the first ones

arrested in 1936–1937 were those who had earlier been Trotskyists or
closely linked with Piatakov and other opponents. The next round of
arrests included the real or alleged supporters of Bukharin’s more mod-
erate policy in the late 1920s. From early 1938 onwards, the central
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144 Tankograd
committee urged the regional party committee to end its ‘excesses’ in

purges within the party. However, it was only after the politburo called
the purges to a halt in November 1938 and after Ezhov’s dismissal that
a partial reconsideration concerning some of the most fabricated affairs
was investigated, although very few persons were rehabilitated or liber-
ated under the new people’s commissar of internal affairs.
In August 1936, Aleksandr Bruskin was appointed deputy people’s
commissar of heavy industry. His predecessor, Georgii Piatakov, was
arrested and accused of diversion. These seemingly absurd accusations
of ‘conscious sabotage’ and ‘wrecking’ (Russian vreditel’stvo) often con-
tained a grain of truth. Mine pits would collapse and equipment was
destroyed because of negligence or extended periods of use. Many acci-
dents in the Soviet economy and transport system could be explained
by ‘the human factor’. However, even the authorities were aware that
they were not due to any ‘systematic counter-revolutionary activity’,
as the charges often claimed. Still less were they intended to ‘under-
mine the socialist system’ or ‘restore capitalism’. But for a few years
from 1936 on every arrest of a leading cadre was announced in the
press with an enumeration of all the offences that this person was said
to have committed. Thereafter, that person’s successor and his col-
leagues would gather and adopt a resolution or programme to ‘combat
the consequences of wrecking’ (bor’ba s posledstviami vreditel’stva). This,
in essence, was simply another way of saying that everyone should work
harder and follow the technical instructions, check quality norms and
adhere to timetables.
NKTP was the largest people’s commissariat in the 1930s. Its direc-
torates governed all the important new industrial enterprises built in
the period of the plans, as well as old factories that had roots in Tsarist
times. Moscow’s new town plan even included a project to tear down
the Vasilii church on Red Square and build a skyscraper for the heavy
industry ministry in its place. The administration of a growing number
of enterprises became more and more complicated. From the second half
of the 1930s a growing number of people’s commissariats were formed
in place of the subdivisions within NKTP, which was split in 1936 on
sectorial principles. Some branches were left within the new NKTP and
Ordzhonikidze remained its leader. Other enterprises were led by the
People’s Commissariats of Light Industry (NKLegProm), the Machine-
building Industry (NKMashProm) and the Defence Industry (NKOP).
A few years later, NKMashProm was, in turn, separated into a new
People’s Commissariat of Heavy, Medium and Light Machine-building
Industries. By 1939, NKOP had split into ministries for ammunition,
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armaments, aeroplanes and shipbuilding. The number of people’s com-

missariats (referred to as ministries after 1946) grew to several dozen.
The accusations that the Cheliabinsk branch of NKVD levelled
against engineers and technicians in the wake of the trial of Piatakov
and others in Moscow in January 1937 were met with widespread scep-
ticism. Some charges were clearly groundless, such as when the head of
the railway directorate in the Southern Urals was accused of a number
of counter-revolutionary actions. In a report from a mass meeting, an
NKVD informer said that ‘NN had frankly declared that the charges
were false and that the authorities were looking for a scapegoat. Now
they blame everything on K who actually did his job well. No Red Army
soldiers died in the collision; they were free riders who hang on the
brake car.’16
The secret police reports mentioned that engineers at ChTZ had
openly declared their scepticism, and that a tailor had said at a meet-
ing that the communist leaders must be responsible for the people they
have appointed. Others were reported as having expressed sympathies
for some of those convicted at the show trial, particularly journalist Karl
Radek and deputy people’s commissar Piatakov. The ‘special survey’
(spetssvodki) of the secret police was based on a wide basis of inform-
ant networks in various parts of Soviet society. Although they do not
present a representative selection of views, they at least provide a hint
of the various opinions that reigned in various layers of society. Still less
do these reports allow for any quantification in a scientific, sociological
sense. It is noteworthy, however, that there was obviously a wide range
of ideas that differed substantially from what was reported in the Soviet
press and newsreels on ‘diversion’, ‘wrecking’ and the machinations by
agents of foreign states.
Among the victims in Cheliabinsk was the former director of ChTZ,
Kazimir Lovin, who had been transferred to the energy directorate of
the People’s Commissariat of the Building Industry. He was arrested
on 20 August 1937 and sentenced to death on 15 November. One of
his successors, the former chief engineer and director at ChTZ, Izrail
Nesterovskii (b. 1898), was arrested during the fourth regional party
conference on 3 July 1938 and sentenced to death on 29 August. Like
most political victims of the terror, he was only rehabilitated after the
20th Communist Party Congress in 1956.17
From 1934 to 1936, Ivan A. Kniaziev (1893–1937) was head of the
Southern Urals Railways and was then promoted to deputy people’s
transport commissar. He had extensive experience in railway manage-
ment, having started his career before World War I. During the Civil
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146 Tankograd
War, he was commissar with responsibility for railway transport in the

Red Army. Despite this, he was arrested in 1937 and accused of ‘anti-
Soviet activities’.18 In 1937–1938, many people from the Southern
Urals Railways were sentenced to long terms in the Gulag, apparently
as a result of accidents, derailments and delays that were classified as
‘counter-revolutionary crimes’.19
I.K. Zelinskii, the independent-minded pioneer at the Pedagogical
Institute, was the victim of a campaign in the local press. Having been
accused of tolerating Trotskyists and others as teachers, he was dis-
missed from his post and then arrested. He confessed to the accusations
under torture but tried unsuccessfully to protest during the ‘trial’. He
was executed in the summer of 1938.20
Historians have debated the widely held opinion of the time that
Stalin was, to some extent, unaware of what was going on during the
purge period of 1937–1938. After the events, Stalin sometimes blamed
unfounded repression on people’s commissar Ezhov. Many ordinary
Soviet citizens, whether they were victims of or bystanders to the terror
wave, believed that they should appeal to Stalin to stop the persecutions.
The substantial documentation from the archives of the Communist
Party and the security police that has become available during the last
two decades has shown that there is no doubt that Stalin was aware
of the purges. In fact, he actually initiated and directed many of the
individual cases as well as supervising the mass operations. Stalin fre-
quently met with Ezhov during these years, and received protocols from
interrogations and lists of persons to be sentenced. It was up to Stalin
and members of the politburo to decide which punishment – execution
or extended camp terms – should be given in the rubber-stamp trials
for accused party members, industrial specialists and others. However,
on their own initiative, the NKVD organs in the regions often fabri-
cated their own cases and falsified biographical and other data in order
to present a group of innocent persons as, for example, an armoured
‘counter-revolutionary, terrorist organisation’ with links to the Japanese
or Polish general staff. Many cases like this were disclosed when the
next people’s commissar, Lavrentii Beria, took over the NKVD in 1939.
Many Western textbooks on Soviet history often include statements
implying that ‘all Soviet citizens felt a deep fear in 1937’, that all party
members went to sleep with a small trunk filled with their essentials,
waiting for a night-time arrest, or even that they slept with a revolver
under their pillow. Such ideas were even being spread at the time of
Nazi propaganda against the USSR.21 However, many of these gener-
alisations were founded on a small number of memoirs written by
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defectors or survivors from the Stalinist forced labour camps and they
serve only to over-simplify the real situation in Russia. In the 1950s, the
mass interviews with former Soviet prisoners of war or labour slaves in
Nazi Germany, then incarcerated as ‘displaced persons’ in the Western
occupation zones in Germany, showed another pattern. Merle Fainsod
and Barrington Moore Jr. published studies on how the Soviet Union
was governed and the driving forces of the system, on the impact of
the dominant ideology and how the terror had changed social rela-
tions. These interview-based studies showed that a significant number
of people had not felt that 1937, or any other specific year, particularly
exemplified the repressive apparatus and its actions. A lot depended on
to which part of society a person belonged; peasants would describe
the early 1930s as the fatal years, while many workers would not at all
consider these events as unfounded, baseless repressive actions. Based
on the fact that the new industrial labour class constituted some 20 mil-
lion people and that the peasantry was still the largest group in society,
it is evident that one should be careful when making generalisations of
a widespread, or even ‘general fear’ in Soviet society.
It is evident that during these conditions of repressive actions against
the management of industrial enterprises, the economy suffered in the
sense that growth rates were lower than expected. As noted above, how-
ever, many problems that had accumulated as unsolved or hushed-up
questions during the first two five-year plans could be discussed in a
straightforward, objective manner, even as the public discourse was full
of ‘saboteurs’, ‘spies’ and ‘wreckers’. One striking example of this was
on 1 September 1937, when a long session was held at the Cheliabinsk
regional party committee with all the city’s great factories’ directors
discussing the economic situation of the time. The meeting had a
strong business-like character and was devoid of the agitational verbos-
ity of the press reports. Naturally, none of the problems in industry
discussed were presented as the result of ‘wrecking’. Ryndin chaired
this meeting but he and other party leaders made only short remarks
and proposals.22
Today, with access to the Russian archives, it is possible to perform
micro-studies on the purge era at individual enterprises, in villages
or among geographical and ethnic groups. At the Kirov Works in
Leningrad, a number of commissions did conduct investigations during
1937. Their many reports describe the situation in detail, where acci-
dents had been covered up and deficient products sent to the Red Army.
Severe problems had been exposed at a number of Leningrad factories,
including the Kirov Works, the Bolshevik Factory and several others
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148 Tankograd
that produced tanks. Test protocols had been falsified, sometimes even
with the approval of the representative of the army (voenpred). To the
extent that these reports can be judged, there was real mismanage-
ment and widespread corruption. As a result of these investigations,
the reality-based conclusions were often termed in the typical ‘counter-
revolutionary wrecking’ formulas. Dozens of technicians and engineers
were dismissed, arrested and sentenced to the Gulag, while others had
to be much more careful in their behaviour.23 These reports on one of
the main factories in the Soviet defence-industry complex are of par-
ticular interest because the future director of the Cheliabinsk Tractor
Factory during the war years, Isaak Zaltsman, had been the Kirov
Works’ chief engineer during these purges and in 1938 was appointed
as its director.24
This situation not only promoted more loyal Stalinists or a new gener-
ation of the technical intelligentsia, it also saw a stricter enforcement of
discipline in management and better control of the technological proc-
ess at the factories. John Scott, a keen contemporary observer, noted in
1937 that significant changes had occurred in the group of directors at
the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works. This may well be said to have
been the case also in Cheliabinsk; as a result of the purge waves and the
constant campaign to ‘liquidate the consequences of wrecking’ the new
management could be more frank and outspoken about problems in
industrial management – at least, it could be less inclined to embellish
the situation and cover up the backwardness.
Isaak Moiseevich Zaltsman was born on 9 December 1905 in the vil-
lage Tomaspol in the Vinnitsa district in the Ukraine. His father Moisei
was a tailor and his mother was a housewife. Moisei had been crippled
during a pogrom by Symon Petliura’s bandits during the Russian Civil
War and died in 1928. Isaak had been at school for only four years before
he started to work on sugar beet fields and in sugar factories. In 1922
he joined the Communist Youth League and profited from their union
work and opportunities to study. In 1929, Isaak received basic schooling
and trade education as welder. That same year, he was sent to Odessa’s
Polytechnic Institute, from which he graduated four years later. He then
found work at the legendary ‘Red Putilov Works’ (renamed the Kirov
Works in 1935 after the assassination of Leningrad’s party secretary),
first as deputy shop supervisor, then as head of the turbine workshop,
as chief engineer of the whole factory and, in 1938, as director of the
Kirov Works.
At the age of 33 he was ‘entrusted with one of the greatest enterprises
in the Soviet Union’, he wrote in his autobiography. Zaltsman stressed
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that his father, a Jewish tailor in an isolated shtetl in the Ukraine, would
never have imagined that his son would one day advance to such a posi-
tion in the new Russia. When Zaltsman took on responsibility for the
Kirov Works, the Great Terror had reach its apex. Former managers,
supervisors and directors had been eliminated, based either on actual
technical shortcomings or false denunciations. Any false step could ruin
a career. However, the example of Zaltsman suggests that there were
other currents in the Soviet industrial world during these years. Based
on the predominant views promoted during Cold War information cam-
paigns, it is easy to accept at face value the idea of an all-embracing fear
that permeated everything in the Soviet Union in these years. A more
balanced picture or representation can be pieced together from the mul-
titude of documents from the archives that show how much of everyday
life, whether in the factories, the countryside or in the spheres of educa-
tion and science, continued as usual. Far from every cadre, still less the
workers, felt any fear for their part when they read about or heard of
purges or wrecking. Occasionally they might have considered that there
was a grain of truth in such reports. If they or any of their relatives fell
victim to repression, they would consider it as an individual mistake.
Another personality at the Kirov Works in the late 1930s who was
to play an important role for the Soviet tank programme was Nikolai
Leonidovich Dukhov, who was born in 1904 in the Poltava district in
the Ukraine. His mother was the daughter of an impoverished aristocrat,
his father a barber-surgeon in the Tsarist army. Nikolai received his edu-
cation at the Gadiakh boys lyceum and learned English, German and
French, something that was very uncommon among Soviet experts in
the 1930s. He started to work at 14, first as a bookkeeper in a village soviet
committee and later at a factory. He was able to continue his education in
1926 when he was sent to the ‘workers’ faculty’ (rabfak, rabochii fakul’tet)
at Kharkov’s Geodesic and Amelioration Institute. After graduating from
this rabfak, he was accepted at the mechanical faculty of Leningrad’s
Polytechnic Institute. Thereafter, in 1932, Dukhov started to work at the
Putilov Works’ design bureau, first on parts for the mass-produced tractor
‘Universal’ and the first Soviet light automobile ‘Leningrad-1’. In 1936,
he advanced to the special design bureau SKB-2 at the Kirov Works and
made improvements to the gearbox of the T-28 tank. Towards the end
of 1938, Dukhov presented his proposal for a new heavy tank, named
‘KV’ (after defence commissar Klim Voroshilov). Dukhov’s ideas for this
new type of tank were decisive and were approved by the Red Army after
testing. His contribution was also acknowledged by the country’s future
enemy – the Germans would call these Soviet weapons ‘Dukhov tanks’.
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150 Tankograd
Serial production of the KV tanks started in 1939, at which time Dukhov

was deputy head of SKB-2. These KV tanks were used in the invasion of
Finland in 1939–1940 and many useful lessons were drawn for improve-
ments in its construction, its weapons and engine.
In 1940, Dukhov was often seen on the testing and firing range as the
driver of the new tank. His motto was that only the designer can improve
a tank as an engineer because only he knows its character. Dukhov also
took the initiative in giving other designers an education as drivers of
tanks.
Some parts of the Soviet defence industry, notably the aeroplane
industry, were hit enormously by the terror. Other branches of the
defence industry, including the production of tanks and artillery, were
less subject to purges.
Mass repression campaigns
The notion of the Great Terror as a distinct phenomenon has radically

changed since the Russian archives opened. Research efforts used to
focus on elites, the ‘nomenklatura’ and intelligentsia but these groups
represented only a small proportion of all the victims. The repressions
in the wider sense – the so-called ‘mass operations’ – were directed at
ordinary people, the workers and peasants. The new perspective of the
Great Terror stresses the so-called kulak operation in the summer of
1937 and campaigns against Germans working in the defence industry
(both Soviet Germans, residents in the USSR, and exiled members of
the German Communist Party).25
In the autumn of 1937, a mass action started against former kulaks
who had returned from exile to their original home villages or who had
received jobs on building sites. The fundamental causes are still debated
among historians concerning these purges of Soviet society’s under-
classes – the marginalised petty criminals without steady workplace
or housing – as well as the harsher repression against ‘anti-Soviet ele-
ments’, which was based on NKVD top secret order 00447. In June–July
1937, high-level party commissions debated the scope of the operation.
Preliminary data and inquiries were sent to the regional NKVD office.
Then the security police determined the estimated number of ‘kulaks,
anti-Soviet and criminal elements’ to be executed or sent to the camps.
This operation started in August 1937 on the directive of the politburo.
Other mass operations were initiated against ethnic groups such as
Germans, Latvians, Poles, Finns and others; that is, people of the same
nationalities as the most probable enemies in a future war.26
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Over 700,000 people were executed in 1937–1938, approximately

40,000 of whom were functionaries in the party or state apparatus.
Their names were added to lists that were approved by Stalin, Molotov,
Anastas Mikoian or other members of the politburo. These cadres were
tried individually, with no defence lawyers, in mock trials by the so-
called ‘troikas’, that is, the procurator, a local party’s representative and
an NKVD officer.
The victims of the mass operations essentially fell into two categories.
One category was the so-called ‘anti-Soviet elements’, ex-kulaks and
criminals who allegedly could threaten the state; the other category was
national groups that were considered a potential ‘fifth column’ of hos-
tile states such as Germany, Poland, Finland and Japan. The supreme
political leadership had given directives to the secret police regarding
Figure 68 Nikolai Grigorievich Bukharin and his family. Nikolai was born in
1896 into a merchant’s family, took part in World War I and worked in differ-
ent factories during the Civil War. He married and had four daughters and two
sons. When Bukharin was arrested, he worked as mechanic at a water depot
on the 1st Poletaevo station on the Southern Urals Railways. He was arrested in
December 1937 and was forced to sign ‘interrogation protocols’. He ‘confessed’
that Aleksandr Dorokhov had engaged him as a spy for Japanese military intel-
ligence at the same depot and that they were committed to providing Japan
with information on the localities and movements of troops to the Far East. His
‘confession’ stated that his ‘diversionary activity’ would be to destroy the pump-
ing stations that provided the steam engine locomotives with water. Nikolai was
sentenced to death in accordance with Articles 58: 2, 6, 9 and 11 in the Criminal
Code. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 3 December 1957, as no criminal
activity had ever taken place.
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152 Tankograd
how many persons should be arrested and the sentences they were to
receive.
There are different theories to explain the widely separate phenom-
ena of what is inappropriately called the Great Terror. In actual fact,
between 1935 and 1939, several of these actions were independent
of each other while some were very closely linked to one another.
One type of explanation can illuminate why the ‘old guard’ in the
Communist Party was purged in silence, while others were forced
to appear in show trials. Today, many interrogation protocols have
become available and they provide new insights into the mechanisms
of terror. Other explanations are necessary to shed light on the bloody
purges of the local party leaders or enterprise managers. Scholars have
advanced theories on social engineering and modernisation to explain
why Stalin and the political leadership would have placed hundreds
of thousands of people in widely separate categories, such as priests,
former noblemen, kulaks and anyone who had uttered opinions that
were critical of the Soviet state. The Russian historian Oleg Khlevniuk
noted some of the explanations that were advanced a long time ago,
specifically the fear of and perverted ideas concerning a potential
‘fifth column’ in Soviet society. To a certain extent, this explanation
may be correct. 27 However, this is only part of the explanation. During
the collectivisation of agriculture in 1930–1931, the local OGPU had
purged all groups in the countryside who voiced their opposition. The
deputy head of the GPU secret police, Genrikh Iagoda, criticised those
local OGPU chiefs who had carried out social cleansing (of merchants,
entrepreneurs, teachers and priests). He stressed that these groups were
to be cleansed later, not mixed up with the arrests of kulaks.28 The ter-
rorist wave-like repression in 1937–1938 would then be interpreted as
a consequent operation in line with how the ‘enemies’ of the working
class should be eliminated, rather than being rationally motivated by
the approaching total war and the fear of a ‘fifth column’ in the rear
of the Soviet armies.
Most researchers agree that over 700,000 people were executed in 1937
and 1938. Approximately the same number were sentenced to long camp
sentences. The camp system has been described as being ‘integrated’ in
the planned economy and it has been said that the planning organs would
distribute ‘orders’ from the camp administration and their ‘demands’ for
new forced labour to the secret police, who would then allegedly find
reasons to arrest that number of innocent persons and ‘supply’ them to
Gulags. The actual developments during the Great Terror seem to contra-
dict this theory.
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In fact, in 1937, in its proposal for the third five-year plan between
1938 and 1942, the Gulag had calculated that its ‘kontingent’ of forced
labourers would actually decrease until the early 1940s. However, as
a consequence of the Great Terror, the Gulag’s administrative system
had to be reformed to cope with the increased number of prisoners.
New labour camps had to be erected – mainly in forests – to make use
of the mostly unqualified prisoners. These camps required the least
investment. Therefore, it seems illogical to assume that repression was
driven by the demand for forced labour. If one assumes that the camp
system was the motive for repressions, this explains why three-quarters
of a million people were executed during those two years. It is safer to
Figure 69 Aleksandr Ivanovitj Kasimov was born an ordinary peasant in 1886

in the Verkhne-Uralsk area. He was living with his wife, two daughters and
two sons in the village of Spasskii when he was arrested in 1937 and accused
of participating in a 600-man counter-revolutionary organisation, which was
allegedly led by two of the ‘enemies of the people’, the Magnitogorsk party sec-
retaries Vissarion Lominadze and Alperovitz. Kasimov was sentenced on 2 July
1937 for preparing an armed uprising and for planning to destroy the main
equipment at the iron and steel works in case of war. The 119 persons who had
been found ‘guilty’ by the same 1937 decision of the NKVD and innocently
sentenced on fabricated charges were rehabilitated by the regional court in
Cheliabinsk in 1956.
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154 Tankograd
assume that Stalin and others in the leadership group were motivated
by paranoid misconceptions of internal enemies of the system, not by
calculations of the expansion and conservation of the Gulag.
After Beria’s appointment as head of NKVD, the Gulag labour camp
system was reformed and a revision was carried out of the main directo-
rate for the construction of roads, canals and hydroelectric stations, as
well as factories. Despite the enormous increase in the number of politi-
cal prisoners in the Gulag camps towards the end of the 1930s, it should
be kept in mind that the camps only contributed to a small portion of
Soviet industrial production and that 90 per cent of all building activity
was performed by ministries other than NKVD. In 1938, a forced rear-
mament started, at which time the production of the defence industry
grew more than all the other branches.29
Lavrentii Beria and the streamlining of

NKVD internal affairs
Among the problems that historians have insufficiently analysed is the

paradoxical combination of progress and terror in Stalin’s time. This
is despite the fact that one of the pioneers of sovietology, Barrington
Moore Jr., had analysed the totalitarian system in the 1950s, both
dynamically and dialectically.30 Recently published sources, such as
the reports from the secret police – OGPU–NKVD – to Stalin, make
it possible to disentangle this paradox. There are many examples of
how the Soviet leadership – at the same time as it fabricated conspira-
cies – could discern and successfully handle the real external threats.
For example, in one week Stalin could read a report containing ‘confes-
sions’ from a deposed minister who had allegedly sabotaged the Soviet
defence industry on orders from the Japanese General Staff, and then
study an actual intelligence report based on intercepted Japanese dip-
lomatic mission dispatches.31
Stalin’s rule in the 1930s and 1940s was characterised by a strange
duality between paranoia and grim barbarism on one hand and
foresightedness and professional intelligence on the other hand. It
seems to be an open question as to how Stalin himself, as well as the
leaders at the security service’s headquarters in the Lubianka managed
to separate their own fiction – often written by the investigators them-
selves – from the hard facts of economic and foreign intelligence mat-
ters. After November 1938, when the great purges were stopped based
on a directive from the politburo, there are few instances of such fabri-
cated ‘crimes’ as had been prosecuted before. Hard, concrete evidence
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was thereafter the main proof, not the forced ‘confessions’ about what
was going to happen.
There is a common interpretation of the consequences of the
Great Terror that can be revised in the light of new archival findings.
According to this version, one category after the other was repressed as
‘socially alien elements’ or ‘socially harmful elements’. Old Bolsheviks
with views that differed from Stalin’s were among the first victims of
the purges. Hundreds of thousands of people perished in the ‘mass
operations’. In the end, after so many exclusions through the bloody
purges by NKVD, the secret police itself became the object of scrutiny
and a round of arrests, allegedly to ‘silence the witnesses’ of the forego-
ing terror. A completely new society with no real ‘historical memory’ is
then said to have been created. The grain of truth in this version is that
new cadres did indeed receive a new ‘historical background’. The new
collective memory was stamped in the millions of distributed copies of
the book entitled the Short Course, a history of the Communist Party
that was carefully edited by Stalin himself.
However, this interpretation may be over-simplified. On the basis of
the politburo decision in November 1938, NKVD was ordered to halt its
mass operations. Within a short period, the political leadership drasti-
cally changed the guidelines for the secret police. Stalin, Molotov and
others in the politburo had constantly been informed in detail about
the individuals charged with treason, exposed ‘organisations’ and ‘spy
networks’. To some extent, they had also been convinced that repressive
measures in industry, agriculture and transport did not lead to better
performance. They had also read many complaints from party mem-
bers, functionaries and ordinary people regarding the misuse of power
by the secret police. Therefore, the directive given to the new leadership
of NKVD under Beria was to look into doubtful cases and, if neces-
sary, liberate those individuals who had been arrested on false grounds.
NKVD also purged its own ranks of those who had misused their power
during the preceding two years. These interrogations revealed numer-
ous conscious falsifications, total fabrication of ‘counter-revolutionary
groups’ or changed personal data (social category, nationality, etc.) in
order to fulfil quotas in the mass operations. The fact that all of these
internal NKVD cleansings were carefully recorded is evidence against
the common theory that ‘the witnesses were to be silenced’ regarding
the Great Terror.32
In Cheliabinsk, the aftermath of the Great Terror campaign of 1937–
1938 is more complex. The new NKVD regional leadership undertook
an internal check of what had happened in the preceding two years.
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156 Tankograd
The protocols with some of the responsible persons in the NKVD branch
showed that the purpose was to find as much solid evidence as possi-
ble, not to cover up events. The new NKVD chairman, Lavrentii Beria,
had ordered that individual cases as well as mass arrests and execu-
tions should be re-investigated. Beria’s NKVD order No. 00762 gave the
guidelines for the cleansing of the secret police and was drafted on the
basis of a resolution from the Communist Party’s central committee.
Although neither the resolution nor Beria’s order have been published,
it is possible to discern the consequences and the main events in the
various parts of the USSR.
The man who led NKVD in Cheliabinsk during the Great Purge era
was Pavel Chistov, who was born in 1905, the son of a painter. Chistov
became a member of the Communist Party in 1926 and made his
career in the secret police during the 1920s and 1930s. He arrived in
Cheliabinsk in 1934 and was head of the regional NKVD from July 1937
to February 1938, precisely when the mass operations against various
groups in society took place. Thereafter, Chistov was appointed to the
construction of the hydropower station and dam in Kuibyshev. He was
taken prisoner there by the advancing German troops in 1942 and sent
to a POW camp in Germany. He was liberated from the Mauthausen
camp in 1945 and interrogated until the autumn of 1946 in a control
and filter camp in Podolsk. In accordance with Articles 58-1b and 58-11
of the Soviet criminal code, he was condemned to 15 years of forced
labour for giving secret information to the Germans. He served his term
in Magadan in the Soviet Far East until 1955, when he was released early
but not rehabilitated. Thus, Chistov was not accused of the unlawful
acts he may have committed in Cheliabinsk before the war but for the
fact that he had given the Germans secret information as a POW.
In Cheliabinsk, the former NKVD head, Fëdor Lapshin, and his two
deputies, Lugovtsev and Voronchikhin, were arrested, as was the opera-
tive plenipotentiary from the special department of the NKVD. They
were accused of transgressing their mandates and instructions and for-
mally charged according to Article 193-17 in the Soviet criminal code.
Lapshin, Lugovtsev and Voronchikhin were charged with having made
illegal arrests and having instructed their subordinates to fabricate
‘counter-revolutionary criminal cases’, if necessary by provoking the
arrested persons. The report mentioned a number of such fabricated
cases. In 1937 and 1938 ‘confessions’ had been extracted from inno-
cent persons who had been forced to stand still for hours, put into ice-
cold showers or beaten with sticks. Sometimes the arrested would start
to confess under instigation from co-prisoners or provocateurs. In an
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investigation led by the military brigadier lawyer, Iegudin, from the

military court of the Urals military district, several ‘investigation pro-
tocols’ were found that had been written down without the accused
having even been interrogated. In numerous cases, data on individuals
had been falsified and class backgrounds had been changed arbitrarily
to fit certain quotas for arrests in the mass operations. Ordinary peas-
ants in the categories of ‘poor’ or ‘medium peasant’ (Russian bedniak or
seredniak) were classified as ‘kulaks’.
Iegudin noted in his 1940 report that illegal methods and falsified
protocols formed the basis upon which many innocent people had
been sentenced to death or long sentences in the camps. He mentioned
that, towards the end of 1937, Pavel Chistov had fabricated a ‘counter-
revolutionary espionage and diversionary organisation of former SRs’
(Socialist Revolutionaries)33 with 581 members, 494 of whom were con-
demned to be executed by the troika led by Chistov and Lapshin.
In at least 294 different cases the investigation showed that com-
pletely innocent people had been executed. One such case saw an entire
family sentenced to death: a typographer named Zykov; his wife who
was a housewife; their 25-year-old daughter, Olga, who was doctor at
a polyclinic, and their 21-year-old daughter, Galina, who worked in
a laboratory. Another example was the innocent Evsei family, which
included the father, mother and their daughter Olga, who was a student
at the medical institute in Perm. In the spring of 1938, another opera-
tion was carried out against the Socialist Revolutionaries. Without any
data on counter-revolutionary, let alone anti-Soviet activities, NKVD
had invented a ‘menshevik and socialist revolutionary organisation’
that allegedly prepared espionage and diversions.
In another case, 288 persons were arrested for their ‘counter-
revolutionary terrorist activities’, and 236 were sentenced to death. In
December 1937, Chistov and his collaborator, Lugovtsev, invented a
‘counter-revolutionary officers’ organisation’ with a purported mem-
bership of 231 persons. When the local NKVD was to implement the so-
called ‘national mass operations’ against suspected or merely supervised
Soviet citizens with Polish, German, Finnish or other nationality – on
orders from Ezhov, and in the last instance from Stalin himself – they
used many tricks to fulfil the operation. Anyone guilty of having a ‘sus-
pect surname’ was arrested.
When the ‘special troikas’ with extra-judicial rights restarted their
activity in September–November 1938 Lapshin supervised the interro-
gations that led to the execution of 2430 persons and Lugovtsev con-
trolled the process that led to the execution of 610 persons. However,
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158 Tankograd
360 of these sentences were not carried out because of the November
1938 instructions that put an end to the terror campaigns. One hun-
dred and eighty-three of the 360 sentences were revoked directly but
Iegudin’s report does not say what happened to the other 177.34 In June
1940 Lapshin and Lugovtsev were sentenced to death, Voronchikhin
was given ten years and their colleague Kuranov eight years in the
Gulag forced labour camps.35
The main culprit for the mass terror in Cheliabinsk escaped this inter-
nal inquisition. Iegudin’s examinations showed proof that Pavel Chistov
had given instructions to fabricate cases, use torture and carry out mass
executions. However, Chistov had been transferred to the NKVD build-
ing site of a hydropower station and a dam near Kuibyshev on the Volga
River. After the German invasion, Chistov became a prisoner of war and
his name and story were used heavily in Nazi propaganda. By the end of
the war, he was arrested and charged for his traitorous behaviour dur-
ing the war and as a POW. He was sentenced to 15 years in the Gulag.
He was released in 1955 but was not rehabilitated.36
This new data on the cleansing of the NKVD in 1939–1940 calls for
at least a partial revision of the traditional view that Beria, the new
people’s commissar, merely silenced those who might have witnessed
the Great Terror from the inside. Instead, the archival documents from
the FSB archives in Cheliabinsk and elsewhere show the return of the
secret police to a ‘sounder working habit’. In 1937–1938, people were
executed simply because of their social (‘class’) background, past politi-
cal activities or, more often, on the basis of protocols that had been fab-
ricated by NKVD personnel. This was reminiscent of barbaric medieval
witch-hunts, as the Swedish publicist Zeth Höglund remarked in his
articles in 1938. To judge from the interrogations carried out by Iegudin
and others, at least some of the NKVD officers at the time understood
that they were forging documents instead of carrying out such state
security operations as they had been trained to do before. Sometimes
they argued that this was necessary and that their actions had been
sanctioned not only by Ezhov and the NKVD leadership but also by
Stalin and the party leadership. Although the secret police certainly did
not become liberalised after 1938, the charges against arrested persons,
whether they were artists or army personnel, technicians or musicians,
seem to have conformed much more with actual events.
On the basis of German interrogations of Soviet POWs, historian
Gabór Rittersporn argued that many NKVD personnel really did
believe in the existence of far-flung conspiracies in Soviet industry and
administration during the 1930s and that these extended to foreign
9780230_208872_06_cha05.indd 158 7/4/2011 6:19:58 PM

intelligence. However, the investigations in Cheliabinsk of dismissed

and arrested NKVD cadres do not support this interpretation. Many of
the secret police operations in 1937–1938 against ‘Trotskyist, counter-
revolutionary or fascist’ conspiracies had been created intentionally,
and against their better judgement by the so-called ‘authors’ (pisateli)
in the NKVD.37
Beria’s regime was recalled by veterans of the military-industrial com-
plex as a new era compared with the earlier hunt for ‘wreckers’. Beria
was determined that those specialists who had been arrested on false
charges or sentenced to extremely long Gulag terms for technological
failures be given a chance to be liberated relatively soon. To this end, the
so-called ‘sharashka’ system was re-adopted with special design bureaux
attached to the NKVD for the aeroplane, ammunition and shipbuilding
industries. Specialists were moved to factory prisons where they worked
alongside free personnel in the daytime. As soon as these specialists had
performed the first successful tests of aeroplanes, guns and other weap-
ons they had designed, they were released from these prisons within
two or three years, instead of the 8–10 years that their formal sentence
required. The renowned aeroplane designer, Andrei Tupolev, had been
arrested in 1937 but only slowly admitted to some charges during press-
ing interrogations in 1938. Towards the end of that year, he was called
in front of Beria and asked to revoke his confessed crimes. Tupolev ini-
tially suspected yet another provocation but was soon convinced that
the new leadership wanted him to return to his usual job. Tupolev was
asked to set up a ‘sharashka’ to design new fighter and bomber aero-
planes and to recruit as many specialists as he thought necessary for
this task. Within a few years, most of these prisoners had been given an
amnesty and were free.
The historiographical settlement with the Great Terror of 1937–1938
took place in three stages. The first was the initial scrutinisation under
Beria in 1939–1940 and the liberation of a relatively small number of
victims, as well as the purging of the NKVD ranks of those who had
fabricated ‘affairs’ against innocent people. However, this was not a
rehabilitation process as such. Beria did not question the mass opera-
tions, only the ‘excesses’ and ‘breaches of socialist laws’ committed by a
few individuals. Still less would Beria, as commissar of state security, hes-
itate to execute those considered to counter-revolutionaries, for exam-
ple after the annexation of parts of Poland and the Baltic Republics.
A second stage in the rehabilitation started after Stalin’s death. The
new collective leadership had a fairly clear idea of the mass repressions
since the early 1930s but was hesitant about how to proceed and lessen
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160 Tankograd
the grip that terror had over society. Many of the leaders had been
active in the Great Terror, even though the full scope of repressions
across the country may have eluded them. Therefore, they requested
information from the ministries of state security and of internal affairs.
On 11 December 1953 Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) sent a report
to the party leaders about the people who had been sentenced for politi-
cal crimes from 1921 until the first part of 1953.38 Between 1935 and
1940, 1,980,635 people were arrested, 688,503 of whom were executed.
The vast majority of these people – 681,692 – were executed in the two
years of the Great Terror, when 1,548,366 people were arrested.39
First, amnesty was given to several hundred thousand Gulag prison-
ers, mainly ordinary and petty criminals. The political prisoners in the
camps usually had to wait another three to four years before their cases
were re-investigated. The political leadership was very hesitant about
how to proceed with these cases. Many military men were rehabili-
tated relatively quickly because the leading marshals had such a strong
influence. Individual party members, writers and artists were fairly
easy to rehabilitate. However, neither Nikita Khrushchev nor anyone
else in the politburo of the party had a clear idea about how to pro-
ceed. Khrushchev prepared an unannounced speech to the 20th Party
Congress in February 1956 in which he denounced the terror that had
reigned in the USSR. Except for the few names mentioned in his speech,
and what appeared randomly in the Soviet press later, most of the reha-
bilitation process was carried out with great discretion. The Soviet pub-
lic was kept in the dark, whereas by the early 1960s, the judges, the
secret police and the party leadership had a detailed representation
of the amount of political repression, which was officially referred to
euphemistically as ‘infringements on socialist legality’.
In his ‘secret speech’ to the extra session of the 20th Communist Party
Congress, Khrushchev had emphasised the terror against party mem-
bers and presented the terror as the machinations of Stalin and, to some
extent, even Beria. Khrushchev, who was better informed than anyone
about the mass terror against several hundred thousand ordinary Soviet
citizens, pretended that these cases were the main events during the
Great Terror. Since the opening of the former party archives, it is now
known that many communists argued against Khrushchev’s form of
presentation. After the conference, an abridged version of his speech
was read out by party emissaries who appeared in various institutions,
army units and factories. They reported that numerous questions had
been raised against the simplistic analyses in Khrushchev’s speech.
9780230_208872_06_cha05.indd 160 7/4/2011 6:19:59 PM

They demanded better explanations than merely talk about ‘the conse-
quences of the cult of personality’ of Stalin.
After Khrushchev’s fall in 1964 the contemporary period in Russian
history was again severely censored by Communist Party ideologues.
The political repression from the late 1920s onwards was not mentioned
in scholarly works, and textbooks for schools and universities had only
subdued references to the purges in the late 1930s. This censorship cre-
ated rising discontent among the educated public. Mikhail Gorbachev
and the new leadership in the late 1980s understood that only openness
and frankness concerning the Soviet past could restore the Communist
Party’s reputation. The first revelations under glasnost concerned the
most outrageous falsifications or denials in official Soviet historiogra-
phy. At the same time, it had become evident that historians’ calls for
better access to the archives could no longer be denied. Even before the
collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian scholars had started to publish
their findings from these archives.40
A third stage in the rehabilitation started with the commissions of
the Supreme Soviet in the late 1980s and has continued since with the
president’s commission for rehabilitation, as well as with the main pros-
ecutor of the Russian Federation. The Democracy Foundation, which
was started by Aleksandr Iakovlev (1923–2005) has published source
collections on the initial rehabilitation process in the 1950s and 1960s.
These documents provided a new view of the post-Stalin political
changes, when the new leadership was confronted with hundreds of
thousands of more or less forged investigation files and severe sentences
for fabricated crimes.41
9780230_208872_06_cha05.indd 161 7/4/2011 6:19:59 PM

Figure 70 ‘Long live the Red Army – The armoured branch of the international
proletariat!’ A poster by V. Elkin (1897–1991) from 1935, a period when the Red
Army still relied on airships for transportation.
9780230_208872_07_cha06.indd 162 6/27/2011 11:32:34 AM

6
Industrial Preparedness in
Cheliabinsk, 1939–1940
Starting in the mid-1930s, the Soviet leadership believed that a new

great war in Europe was inevitable. Articles in the army newspaper Red
Star (Krasnaia zvezda) foresaw, as did informed organs in other parts of
the world, a forthcoming war between Japan and the USA. The most
serious fears from the Soviet perspective involved which coalitions were
possible and most probable in terms of aggression against the USSR.
Ernst Henry wrote two books on this question, Hitler over Europe? and
Hitler over Russia? In the former, Henry warned of an appeasement policy
towards Germany.1 The other book contained, with nightmarish preci-
sion, a possible scenario for a fascist coalition war against the Soviet
Union. Ernst Henry was the pseudonym chosen by Semën Rostovskii
after fleeing from the Nazis to London, where he worked as correspond-
ent for several newspapers. During his time in Germany he had col-
lected a lot of material on which groups in German society supported
Hitler. Although Henry’s book predicted a joint fascist army invasion
of the Soviet Union, his further reasoning about the outcome of such
a conflict merely reflected the ideas of the Communist International,
that a victorious workers’ revolution would be the ultimate consequence
of a new war.
The pseudonym Ernst Henry actually covers a fascinating life story.
He was born in 1904 in Vitebsk, the son of a wealthy businessman
Arkadii Khentov, who already had nine daughters, and was given the
name Leonid. Leonid received a solid education with a teacher at home
and then at a classical lycée. After the 1917 revolution, Leonid received
a Soviet passport and travelled to Germany. There he was active in the
Communist Youth International (KIM) as a courier between Moscow
and Berlin. He then joined the German Communist Party and adopted
the pseudonym Semën Nikolaevich Rostovskii. He continued his
163
9780230_208872_07_cha06.indd 163 6/27/2011 11:32:35 AM

9780230_208872_07_cha06.indd 164
Figure 71 A map from Ernst Henry’s book ‘Feldzug gegen Moskau?’ (A Campaign against Russia?) of 1936 shows a potential com-
bined fascist attack on the Soviet Union.
6/27/2011 11:32:35 AM
Industrial Preparedness in Cheliabinsk, 1939–1940 165
underground political activities and, for example, was present at the

founding congress of the Turkish Communist Party in 1922. He was
arrested after the failed communist coup attempt in Germany in the
autumn of 1923 and sent to internal exile in Saxony. After 1927, he
lived in Berlin and started to collect documents about political life in
Weimar Germany for two books, The Concentration of Capital and The
Dynamics of the New German Imperialism. They remained unpublished,
however, because Rostovskii had to leave the country after Hitler took
power. Rostovskii managed to get to London and stayed in England.
Much of his personal archives was lost but he decided to reconstruct
parts of the manuscript and wrote what was to become the bestsell-
ing Hitler over Europe? This was one of the first early warnings of Nazi
Germany’s aggressive plans against Western Europe.
In 1934–1937, the Soviet Union, as a new member of the League
of Nations, strove to establish an effective means against aggression.
Attacks on another state were to be stifled by sanctions by the League
member states. However, Moscow did not succeed in consolidating its
alliance with France due to internal developments in the Soviet Union
(the purges in the Red Army) and the international changes during the
civil war in Spain (the inability of France to support the republic). The
appeasement policy towards Hitler culminated with the 1938 Munich
Agreement dismembering Czechoslovakia. The various attempts that
started too late and with mutual distrust in 1939 between the USSR,
France and the United Kingdom to prevent Germany’s further expan-
sion had few chances for success. The negotiations between these pow-
ers in the summer of 1939 did not produce any concrete results.2 Soviet
mistrust was due to the fact that, throughout the 1930s, it was felt
that leading circles in London were not opposed to German eastwards
aggression that was ultimately directed towards the Soviet Union.3
It would be misleading to speak of the militarisation of Soviet soci-
ety based solely on the government’s directives to the public, industry
and the army since the mid-1920s.4 The Swedish intelligence officer
and later director of Swedish Military Intelligence, Frey Rydeberg, was
well informed about the conditions in Soviet Russia. Based on his read-
ing of Red Army literature and other sources, he described the soci-
etal changes with a mixture of fear and admiration of the enormous
civilian and military preparedness for a coming war that had started in
the 1930s. His Det militariserade samhället. Några ord om Sovjetunionens
maktmedel (The militarised society: A few words of the power of the Soviet
Union) was in many ways dependant on official sources. His descrip-
tions of how various measures had been implemented in civil society
9780230_208872_07_cha06.indd 165 6/27/2011 11:32:35 AM

166 Tankograd
lacked an understanding of the real conditions. It is necessary to com-

pare with what defence preparedness actually looked like in a city such
as Cheliabinsk in 1939–1940.5
The voluntary defence organisation of the air force and chemical
defence, abbreviated as Osoaviakhim, was established in the 1920s.
It grew into a mass organisation by enrolling the workers and other
employed people at industrial enterprises. Particularly intensive exer-
cises and campaigns were conducted in the summer of 1927, as the
threat of war seemed to intensify against the Soviet Union once the
British broke off diplomatic relations. As a result, by 1 October 1928
there were 123 study groups in the Cheliabinsk region with more than
Figure 72 Voluntary sniper training.
9780230_208872_07_cha06.indd 166 6/27/2011 11:32:35 AM

10,000 members who studied military technology. In the 1930s, the

fascination among the youth for new techniques, not least glider flying
and parachute jumping, was combined with the possibility of training
at new sports clubs. The iron and steel works in Asha had constructed an
arena for military sports. Firing ranges were constructed close to other
factories, where people could strive to gain enough points to acquire the
popular ‘Voroshilov badge’ (named after the legendary marksman and
people’s commissar of defence).
The image that the Soviet Union wished to give to the outside world,
of a nation that was well prepared for hardship and with a youth that
was almost ready to carry weapons, must be nuanced, given the concrete
results actually obtained. In the Cheliabinsk region, 4777 Osoaviakhim
units in enterprises had 150,075 members. However, the launching of
parachute training had been unsuccessful. In the city itself there were
three towers for parachute jumps but two of these were not ready to
use and the third was placed outside of public reach within a closed
military facility. Here, the Osoaviakhim clubs existed at only 422 of the
1200 enterprises and had only 23,300 members out of a population of
390,000.6
The voluntary defence organisations became more active in 1940.
On 18 June the military section of the party and Osoaviakhim com-
pleted a f5-kilometre march with gas masks on while the participants
defended themselves against air attacks, camouflage and sanitising of
contaminated areas.7 Another example took place in the Sovetskii city
district, whose Osoaviakhim prepared and carried out a tactical exercise
in July. Commanders followed a five-day course before the exercise. At
Aloe pole, the square in the city centre known as the Purple Fields,
ten training sessions took place with up to 300 participants, divided
into sections, platoons and companies. Seven hundred and fifty people
participated in the exercise itself, which was carried out with machine
guns, guns and tanks. The participants were divided into cavalry,
armoured, air force, infantry, signal forces and medical personnel. In a
10-kilometre march from Aloe pole, these units were attacked by differ-
ent means from the ground or from the air. The attacks were to be coun-
tered in a regular way. As they reached the village of Shershnia, they
trained in camouflage and regrouping forces. An analysis of the vol-
untary defence organisations in Cheliabinsk shows that some military
preparations had indeed been carried out with young people and oth-
ers. However, it is not possible to state that some form of ‘militarisation’
permeated Soviet society. Evidently, the preparedness also included the
health care sectors. In case of war, many public buildings and schools
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168 Tankograd
were to be transformed into so-called evacuation hospitals. These plans

were implemented as soon as World War II started in 1939, and in the
following years concerned more and more buildings in Cheliabinsk. On
19 February 1941 the city’s executive committee decided that schools
No. 30 and 36 should be adapted or completely rebuilt into hospitals.8
In order for these evacuation hospitals to function properly, the school
authorities were to keep in stock at least 40 tons of coal and 7.5 cubic
metres of firewood, corresponding to one month’s supply, at schools
No. 12, 27, 30 and 36. In the spring of 1941 extensive preparations were
made at another eight schools to take care of wounded and sick soldiers
who would be evacuated from front line areas in case of war. In March
1941 another city decree ordered that all necessary household utensils
should be procured. The factories’ clubs were to provide the evacuation
hospitals with chess and dominoes sets.9
By this stage, a dozen of the factories in the Cheliabinsk region
had been designated as important elements in the defence indus-
try. The core of the Soviet defence industry was directed by the four
People’s Commissariats for Ammunition, Armaments, Aeroplanes and
Shipbuilding. Large parts of the machine-building industry, on the
other hand, were already considered to be linked to the defence-indus-
trial complex. In Cheliabinsk, the tractor factory, the Koliushchenko
Agricultural Machinery Works and the abrasive tools factory were con-
sidered part of the defence industry, as were a host of similar factories
in other cities in the region, particularly those that had taken large
defence orders in peacetime.10 In these factories, the combination of
civilian and military production was fairly open, although the military
activities took place only in separate workshops and design bureaux.
A special design bureau had started at the tractor factory in October
1937. The People’s Commissariat of the Machine-building Industry (the
principal agent of the factory) had instructed that, in order to secure the
design and experimental projects and the modernisation of so-called
special goods for the army, special design bureaux should be started at
all automobile and tractor factories. Research was coordinated in the
people’s commissariat’s All-Union Institute (NATI) with its own design
bureau for military research projects within the machine-building
industry.11
On 30 October, 1937, Izrail Nesterovskii, the director of ChTZ, issued
his directives on how to organise the special design bureau (SKB). The
head of the technical department, Antyshev, was appointed as the main
person responsible for the SKB. Director Shvelidze at the experimental
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factory was to prepare the workshops and rooms for the SKB. The dep-
uty main engineer at ChTZ, Korotkov, was instructed that supply orders
for the SKB were to be given the highest priority status. Shvelidze and
Chief Inspector Khlebnikov were told to set higher quality require-
ments on special products than on civilian products such as tractors
and haulers.
Izrail Nesterovskii presented a long-term plan for the special work at
the SKB. The first task was to develop a engine more powerful to corre-
spond to the requirements of the Red Army’s armour directorate. Among
the experiments that were to take place during 1938, Nesterovskii high-
lighted new starter motors, construction of a new diesel engine with
a turbo compressor and a series of endurance tests on various equip-
ment.12
As was often the case when a new group of leaders took over at a
Soviet enterprise, they made overly frank criticism of the failures and/
or negligence of the person who had been dismissed from the post.
When Nesterovskii was arrested, the new director, Solomonovich, sent
a report to the factory’s main engineer, Nikanorov, on the ‘wrecking’
that had occurred at the factory. Although such reports should be
taken with a grain of salt, there was some corroborating evidence to
his statements: ‘The factory’s leadership did not consider it as neces-
sary to prepare this factory for war ... The question of experiments with
substitutes for deficit raw materials was never handled in a proper man-
ner ... The Experimental Factory was not used for its proper purpose,
did not undertake experiments but developed the ordinary products of
the factory ... The mobilisation stocks at the factory had not been set up
according to plan.’13
On 16 March 1939 a conference was organised at the ChTZ special
design bureau. An extensive report was sent to the head of the secret
department at the main directorate of the tractor industry. Attendees
at the conference included the head of the SKB, Ananiev, and the engi-
neers Bannikov, Prikhodkin, Sosnitskii, Drozdov and Kozlov. The pro-
tocol gives an indication of how those responsible at ChTZ evaluated
their enterprise’s economic preparedness. A constant problem for the
SKB was that most of the engineers were newly recruited and hesitant
regarding which issues were to be given priority. In other cases, it was
urgent to receive new drawings for shells from other factories. The
director at ChTZ was even criticised for having paid too little attention
to the question of mobilisation reserves. ‘I have to look all over the fac-
tory myself ... Materials have been thrown everywhere and mobilisation
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170 Tankograd
goods have instead been used for the current production,’ concluded
Drozdov. Preparations for 1939 were to be made so that production of
152 millimetre shells and S-4 tractors could commence according to the
army’s requirements. The lack of preparedness for mobilisation was also
evident, as important equipment from Kharkhov Factory No. 183 on
production of the BT tanks and ‘Komintern’ tractors had not even been
unpacked and checked.14
On 10 August 1939 in connection with the uncertain situation in
Europe, wartime conditions were introduced at the tractor factory in
Cheliabinsk. This implied that much more overtime work could be
claimed in order to fulfil the daily production plans. The most impor-
tant customer was the Auto, Armour and Tank Directorate (ABTU) of
the Red Army. In July 1940, serial production of the S-2 artillery hauler
started. The new S-65 caterpillar tractor was successfully used in the
final phase of the invasion of Finland in 1940. The heavily defended
Mannerheim Line could be broken, due in part to the fact that the
152 millimetre howitzer could be brought forward in very rough ter-
rain. In the spring of 1940, ChTZ received an order for several hundred
such artillery haulers.
On 25 May 1940 representatives from ChTZ were summoned – in a let-
ter addressed to director Solomonovich from the People’s Commissariat
of the Medium Machine-building Industry (NKSM) – to a conference in
Moscow on 13 June concerning mobilisation preparedness at the facto-
ries.15 On 19 June the military department of the people’s commissariat
sent out directives on how the mobilisation groups were to be formed,
along with detailed instructions of their tasks and functions.16 In July
1940 the NKSM sent proposals for a new schedule of how the capac-
ity of the enterprises was to surge in case of war. It was emphasised
that complete checking must be carried out to ensure that all technical
documentation of blueprints, specifications, etc. for all products in the
mobilisation plan were actually at hand.17
At the 18th Communist Party Conference in February 1941, the
Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory was mentioned as a cautionary example of
how management had failed to raise productivity and quality. Director
Shor was called to answer why monthly plans had been fulfilled only
to an average of 80–85 per cent. At the same event, the local party rep-
resentatives were criticised for not having implemented the decisions of
the 18th Party Congress in 1939. They should have striven for ‘Bolshevik
discipline’, strictly followed the decisions from the centre and not hesi-
tated to punish guilty persons. At the ChTZ, the new products were not
up to the expected standard. The people’s commissar of the medium
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machine-building industry, Viacheslav Malyshev, had issued a resolu-

tion on 20 March 1941 on the subject of ‘improving the instrument
workshop at the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory’. However, given what
was still being debated at the Cheliabinsk regional party conference on
18–20 June 1941, only a few days before the German invasion, the reso-
lution had not yet been implemented. This and similar examples show
that the factory management did not see resolutions as laws and that
the Communist Party could have a pragmatic attitude to daily work at
the enterprise levels.
Submission of daily reports from the workshops at the tractor fac-
tory had not yet been implemented, despite this having been stated
as a priority at the 18th Party Congress. The large-scale production at
ChTZ demanded precise control of every link in the production proc-
ess. There were constant interruptions in production and ‘storming’
towards the end of the month to fulfil the plans. In May 1941 5000
hours were lost due to stoppages in production while 8000 hours of
overtime was paid at the end of the month. An inspection of machin-
ery and equipment showed a high degree of wear and tear and an
excessive number of parts had to be rejected. The forms of wages and
piece-rate versus self-costs at the factory were discussed frankly. The
need for better order and cleanliness at the factories was discussed
and it was noted that since these anomalies had been criticised at the
highest levels, some factories had indeed cleaned up and carried away
‘hundreds of tons of metal waste and garbage that had gathered over
several decades’.18
A decree from the Supreme Soviet of 10 June 1940 to reduce the
quantity of discarded products had not produced any visible effects at
ChTZ and factory management had not punished any guilty parties.
Many details were not up to standard, while engine blocks, drive shafts,
filters and many other parts were sent directly to the rejected goods
category.19
The 18th Communist Party Conference on 15–20 February 1941
concentrated on those problems that needed to be solved for faster
development of the defence industries. In actual fact, many of the reso-
lutions adopted by the conference, as well as the plan for 1941 that was
approved by it, involved a series of measures designed to convert the
industry and the transport system to wartime conditions.
On the whole, the Soviet experiences from the Spanish Civil War, the
border battles against Japan in the summer of 1939 and the invasion of
Finland in 1939–1940 had a decisive influence on the development on
the defence industry in the Urals. An important lesson was the need
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172 Tankograd
to design much heavier tanks than those of the 1930s. One of the men
who played a major role in the development of the Soviet heavy tanks
was Zhozef Iakovlevich Kotin. He was born in 1908 in Dnepropetrovsk
in the Ukraine and grew up in a worker’s family. In 1932, he gradu-
ated from the Feliks Dzerzhinskii Military-Technical Academy and then
worked at various research institutes in Leningrad until 1937, when
he was appointed head of the special design bureau (SKB) at the Kirov
Works. He supervised the production of a heavy armoured tank that
could withstand hits by shells. Various models were advanced, named
SMK (after Sergei Mironovich Kirov, the Leningrad party leader assas-
sinated on 1 December 1934) and KV (after defence commissar Kliment
Voroshilov). The KV tank was used in the Soviet invasion of Finland
and was able to withstand most of the shells that the Finnish defence
had at its disposal. Accordingly, the Soviet leadership opted for serial
production of the KV tank.20
When the prototype of the Kotin-designed SMK tank was shown
to Stalin and the politburo members in Moscow, it is said that Stalin
walked up to the model and removed one of the three gun turrets. He
exclaimed that tanks should not look like new department stores with
turrets and pinnacles. ‘How much is the weight of this turret?’ he asked.
‘Two and a half tons’, Kotin answered. ‘Then add so much more solid
armour instead!’ Whether this is merely one of the many legends of
Soviet historiography may be hard to prove. In any case, the structure
of heavy tanks from the 1930s with many turrets and a large crew was
abandoned thereafter.
The tractor factory in Cheliabinsk was also due to start production
of the new heavy tanks because it had become evident in the sum-
mer of 1940 that the capacity at the Kirov Works was insufficient. The
first order to ChTZ was to produce five such tanks in 1940, during a
trial period. On 10 November 1940 Director Solomonovich reported
to the new people’s commissar for the medium-heavy machine-build-
ing industry, Viacheslav Malyshev, that ChTZ would not be able to
start serial production of the heavy KV tank. Solomonovich’s letter
informed Malyshev that all drawings and blueprints received from
the Kirov Works had contained errors and even superfluous elements
in the production process. Therefore, Cheliabinsk was to make their
own drawings and coordinate the changes with Leningrad. According
to Solomonovich, the drawings were not ‘technologically complete’.
In some instances, the use of these drawings had simply led to more
rejected goods. In other cases, the drawings included production
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phases that would be unnecessary if the original parts had been made
more precisely.
One hundred and sixty-four parts could not be produced according
to the drawings without the risk of low quality. More than 1000 faults
had been identified regarding how the parts should be put together. By
1 November ChTZ had changed some 350 drawings and still adhered
to the principle of interchangeability. In the meantime, the Kirov
Works had checked their drawings, both with respect to critiques from
the Red Army’s tests of the tank in the summer of 1940 and in light of
the defects that had been found by the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory.
During the first half of 1940, the hundred thousandth tractor was
produced at ChTZ. In the first quarter, with various forms of ‘socialist
competition’, production exceeded the plan by 191 tractors. By April,
however, the production rate had sunk below the plan targets. Many
workshops lacked parts and there was a shortage of metal. There were
many standstills on the conveyor belt, which caused growing discon-
tent among the workers. Since the beginning of the year, 360 workers
had left the workshops, of whom 238 had been dismissed because of
unauthorised absence from the workplace.
The party criticised the factory’s communists for having had too
many meetings; sometimes several meetings were held in the same
evening. Since the meetings lasted from 7 p.m. until the early hours
of the morning, the foremen and supervisor spent more time on meet-
ings than they did on devoting themselves to leading activities. On
the other hand, far too few meetings had been arranged at the fac-
tory concerning the new labour laws adopted by the Supreme Soviet in
December 1940.21 ChTZ was in a vicious circle, in which bad working
and living conditions in the new enterprises led to a high turnover of
labour. This, in turn, caused a worsening of quality, productivity and
profitability. The trade unions made a summary of the bad situation
and also pointed at a series of technical defects that should have been
remedied much earlier.22
In 1939, the high turnover of labour remained one of the main
problems at the factories. Among Cheliabinsk’s six largest factories,
23,204 persons had left their workplace during 1939, 15,265 of whom
were dismissed because of unauthorised absence. In 1939, ChTZ
employed 14,131 new workers, while 15,136 persons left the factory
for various reasons. The situation was the same in the first winter
month in 1940; 1154 persons were employed and 1316 left the factory
or were fired. 23
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174 Tankograd
On 26 June 1940 a decree from the presidium of the Supreme Soviet

reintroduced the seven-day week, extended workdays to eight hours
and introduced a number of penalties for unauthorised absences.
Anyone who left a factory on their own initiative could be sentenced
to two to four months in prison. Anyone who was absent from their
workplace for a day could be sentenced to six months of correctional
work – that is, forced labour – with a reduction in their wage. The back-
ground to the harsher factory laws can be explained as the awareness
that total war was imminent and indiscipline in the labour force could
not be tolerated. These laws cannot be described as purely ‘draconian’;
even a modern enterprise with conveyor belts, quality requirements
and production targets could not allow a large part of its workforce
to arrive half an hour or more late. For the first time, these laws were
strictly implemented and a huge number of workers were penalised.
Many factories tried to raise factory discipline by a combination of
premiums and penalties. Half a year after the introduction of the law,
however, the problems with labour absence and turnover continued.
The wartime situation called for special laws regulating the labour situ-
ation.24
On 10 July 1940 a law was passed regarding ‘responsibility for deliv-
ery of products that do not satisfy quality requirements or lack parts
and for negligence of obligatory standards in industrial production’.
This law placed penal responsibility on the directors and departmen-
tal and workshop supervisors for any deficiency in products from their
respective levels. The penalties for breaches of the law varied from five
to eight years’ imprisonment. A decree of 28 December 1940 aimed to
achieve a similar increase in discipline; students at trade, railway and
factory schools were sentenced to ‘prison in labour colonies’ for up to a
year if they left their education.
The USSR’s preparations for war in 1941
It has been a recent subject of discussion as to whether Moscow knew

in advance about Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany’s invasion plan,
knowledge which would have allowed the Soviet Union to make a pre-
emptive strike and forestall the planned German attack. The propa-
ganda myth spread after 22 June 1941 by Joseph Goebbels, who referred
to Hitler’s talk on the eve of the invasion, was that after the capitu-
lation of France in summer 1940 the Soviet Union had concentrated
large armies along the common border with Poland. In this situation,
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the Nazi propaganda asserted, Germany had no option but to attack

the Soviet Union. From the Soviet perspective, however, the situation
looked quite different.25 After the invasion of Finland in 1939–1940,
so many defects in the Red Army had been exposed that far-reaching
reforms were necessary. Some results of these reforms were visible in the
autumn of 1940. On the technological field, the USSR was in the middle
of great changes in its aeroplanes and tanks. In 1940–1941, the develop-
ment of new types was sped up and modern weapons on par with the
best German models were produced at a faster tempo. However, there
was still a glaring gap between what the army required in order to set
up mechanised units and what Soviet industry delivered in 1941. The
archives in Cheliabinsk reveal more details about how the organisa-
tional measures advanced during the period before the war to prepare
industrial enterprises for a transition to wartime production in the sec-
ond half of 1941.
The traditional, official Soviet historiography claimed that the Soviet
leadership only ordered the State Planning Commission, Gosplan, to
draw up a new plan regarding wartime requirements after the German
invasion of 1941. However, in the months before Operation Barbarossa,
intensive planning was taking place for the wartime production of
ammunition, arms and much else that was expected to be required
during the first period of war. In June 1941 Stalin was appointed chair-
man of the council of the people’s commissars, Sovnarkom; in other
words, the Soviet government. In the following weeks, a number of
Sovnarkom resolutions were edited to require factories to redraft their
mobilisation planning. However, these measures do not support the
theory that the Soviet leader had offensive intentions at that time.
Many facts indicate that Stalin expected some form of new ultima-
tum from Berlin and did not believe that the concentration of German
troops along the Soviet Union’s borders could actually be preparations
for war.
The resolutions signed by Stalin in early June 1941 to all the peo-
ple’s commissariats concerning higher mobilisation preparedness
required that all factories should be prepared, with clockwork pre-
cision, to switch to their wartime levels and assortment by 1 July.
These decisions indicate that the Soviet leadership had both theo-
retically and practically assimilated their knowledge on industrial
mobilisation. 26
On 10 June 1941 people’s commissar Malyshev, who had responsi-
bility for large parts of the machine-building industry, sent an order
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176 Tankograd
marked ‘very urgent, strictly secret’ and ‘making of copies is categori-

cally prohibited’, concerning ‘measures to prepare industry for tran-
sition to the mobilisation plan of ammunition’. The order was sent
to three main directorates and a dozen large machine-building fac-
tories, such as the Gorkii Automobile Works and the tractor factories
in Kharkov, Stalingrad and Cheliabinsk. The order specified over 20
measures that were to be taken instantly, what must be prepared and
the stocks of raw materials, instruments and parts that were to be set
up so that ammunition could be produced in case of mobilisation of
the industry.
The military section of the people’s commissariat was responsible
for receiving updated information from the People’s Commissariat
of Defence, NKO, regarding the required types of ammunition. The
section was to receive the updated drawings and specifications of
this ammunition from the People’s Commissariat of Munitions, NKB
(Narodnyi Kommissariat Boepripasov). Within three days of receipt of
this, Gosplan, the State Planning Commission, should specify which
iron and other metal products, as well as chemicals and forged and
cast details, the enterprises in the machine-building industry would
require in the second half of 1941 in order to fulfil this mobilisation
plan. These organs were also to study how labour resources should
be distributed between the factories and whether workers needed
to be recruited from other branches and their respective people’s
commissariats. 27
The start of tank production at

the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory
Soviet historiography consciously hid the USSR’s real preparedness

for transition to a war economy. It stated that a new State Defence
Committee, GKO, was formed as soon as the surprise attack by German,
Italian, Rumanian, Hungarian and Finnish troops along the borders
occurred. Gosplan was then instructed to change the plan for the third
quarter of 1941 in accordance with the unexpected wartime situation.
This historiographic myth on Soviet economic preparedness could be
well-motivated at the time, since the Cold War still required a certain
degree of secrecy about the planning principles.28
The same myths also surrounded the history of the great industrial
plant before and immediately after Operation Barbarossa. Very little
had been written about the preparedness for war at the Cheliabinsk
9780230_208872_07_cha06.indd 176 6/27/2011 11:32:37 AM

Tractor Factory or that it had prepared for tank production long before
June 1941. With access to the archives, it has become possible to study
how the original mobilisation plans of this factory, like many other
enterprises and organs in the region, were designed in the 1930s.
After the war against Finland in 1939–1940, it was decided that heavy
tanks should be produced not only at the Kirov Works in Leningrad
but also at the tractor factory in Cheliabinsk. For a couple of months, a
group of engineers, technicians and designers at ChTZ were to produce
the first KV-1 tanks. This was no easy task. To start with, they lacked
drawings and blueprints and they had no experience of how the differ-
ent components should be produced.
If a great war had started in 1936, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
would have had practically identical armed land forces. After that, the
German generals continued to refine their ideas about ‘Blitzkrieg’ and
they managed to win swift victories in the initial stages of World War II.
The doctrine developed on the Soviet side was the obverse. There are
two main explanations for this. Russian generals drew incorrect con-
clusions regarding the role of tanks in battle but correct conclusions
on the future tank’s construction, based on their own experiences in
the Spanish Civil War. They did not fully consider the specific condi-
tions in Spain, but generalised from the bitter fights with the numerous
tanks involved, the great losses and the relative lack of success. The
Soviet doctrine therefore dispersed independent, mechanised units and
spread their tanks out among the infantry divisions.29
Thereafter, Soviet experts understood that tanks needed to have
armour that could withstand grenade attacks. Until then, tanks had
armour plates no thicker than 20–30 millimetres that could withstand
only machine gun fire; it was believed that the enemy artillery posi-
tions would have been destroyed before the armoured vehicles advanced
with the infantry. In 1938–1939, the Red Army’s Auto, Armour and Tank
Directorate (ABTU) ordered the enterprises to develop prototypes that
could be tested according to the new specifications. Several projects were
adopted for testing: the heavy SMK tank, which was ready in the sum-
mer of 1939 at special design bureau-2 of the Kirov Works in Leningrad,
and also the heavy T-100 tank, which was designed by the design Bureau
at factory No. 174. The former was designed by Nikolai Tseits and A.S.
Ermolaev and the latter by I.V. Gavalanov. Both models took part in
the Soviet invasion of Finland, in the battles along the Mannerheim
line in the winter of 1939–1940. The heavy T-100 tank provided the
basis for later versions of self-propelled artillery units, the SU-100 with a
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178 Tankograd
Figure 73 The KV-2 tank.
133 millimetre B-13 naval gun and the SU-100Z with a 152 millimetre
gun, but these never went into serial production.
The evaluation of the SMK tank after the war was positive; none
of the Finnish shells could penetrate its armour, there were only a
lot of small indentations. The SMK tank had run over a land mine
and had to be saved with great difficulty by other tanks under heavy
bombardment. The Finns had not found any haulers that could move
the 55-ton tank. Following evaluation of the first battles, its design
was modified. According to one memoir as mentioned above, it was
Stalin himself who suggested that the small gun turret with a 45 mil-
limetre gun and 300 shells be removed and only the 76.2 millimetre
gun (with 150 shells in the prototype) be kept instead. “Why should a
tank look like the Miur and Maryliza shop in Moscow?” he said before
removing the smaller turret from the model showed to him in the
Kremlin. Instead, the armour plates were to be made much thicker.
This model was developed in 1940 by Leonid Dukhov at the SKB-2
and given the designation KV-1. 30
It was produced with two different types of gun turret; one was welded
with 75 millimetre thick armour plates and another cast tower with a
thickness of 95 millimetres. The original L-11 gun was replaced with a
76.2 millimetre F-32 gun and then in 1941 with a 76.2 millimetre ZIS-5
gun with 114 shells in stock. The armour protection was increased with
millimetre mm thick plates and the walls in the gun turret up to 105
millimetres. The tank had a crew of four soldiers. The first projects had
9780230_208872_07_cha06.indd 178 6/27/2011 11:32:38 AM

not stipulated the tank’s maximum speed or how much ammunition it

should carry. On the basis of the KV-1, a long series of other tanks was
designed – KV-2, KV-3, KV-8, KV-9 and others. Not all were mass pro-
duced but they did remain as prototypes. The KV-2 model appeared in
February of 1940, with a different configuration of the turret, a 152 mil-
limetre M-10 gun and 36 shells. Three hundred and thirty KV-2 tanks
were produced in 1940–1941. More than 4800 KV tanks, of all models,
were produced at the factories in Leningrad and Cheliabinsk during the
war years.
Delegations from Cheliabinsk travelled to Leningrad in March
1940 to study the production methods at the Kirov Works; drawings
and instruments were then sent to ChTZ. Specialists from Leningrad
arrived at the tractor factory, where 50 designers and 24 technicians
had struggled to produce an item that they were not at all prepared
to produce. Only one-third of the parts that were needed for the KV-1
had been produced. The People’s Commissariat of Building, NKStroi,
was to reconstruct five workshops so that production of the tanks
could start in 1940. However, no building activity had been started
because of the great lack of manpower; only 1178 out of the required
5000 building workers had been hired. Very few had been recruited
from the regions near Cheliabinsk and NKStroi had failed to send its
2000 workers according to the adopted plan. A series of other people’s
commissariats had also failed to deliver raw materials, intermediate
goods and equipment to ChTZ on time. In August 1940 the chief engi-
neer at the new special department of ChTZ said it was evident that
no production of tanks according to the original orders could start
that year. 31
On 28 September 1940 the People’s Commissariat of the Medium
Machine-building Industry sent instructions to ChTZ for a new mobi-
lisation plan for 1940. In case of war, the tractor factory in Cheliabinsk
was to produce the following:
KV tanks 400 units

Spare parts for tanks 100 units
S-2 tractors 3500 units
S-65 tractors 13,000 units
Engines for S-2s and S-65s 3000 units
Spare parts for S-2 10 million rubles
Spare parts for S-65 100 million rubles
152 millimetre howitzer shells 200,000 units
52 millimetre shells and punched containers 2,300,000 units
9780230_208872_07_cha06.indd 179 6/27/2011 11:32:38 AM

180 Tankograd
The people’s commissariat ordered the enterprise to check everything

in the mobilisation plan and to determine the other factories with
which it must cooperate and which parts could ordered from other fac-
tories. The chief engineer at ChTZ then completed the requirements for
mobilisation at the factory. This was a detailed instruction of over 140
machine-typed pages concerning everything that must be available in
case of war.32 In a letter dated 28 November 1940, the deputy head of
the military section of ChTZ asked for a number of corrections to be
made to this mobilisation list before 15 December.33
When assessing the industrial military-economic preparedness of the
Soviet Union, it is important to make a distinction between the plans
and measures that had been discussed on a general level and what had
actually been implemented at the factory level.34
In June 1941 Stalin chaired the government directly and Viacheslav
Molotov remained only as people’s commissar of foreign affairs. During
this month, a series of decrees were adopted for the revision of indus-
trial preparedness. Decree No. 1502-614ss, which concerned the pro-
duction of ammunition, was directed not only at the NKB but to all
concerned enterprises under other commissariats as well. All factories
that had mobilisation plans for shells, mines and cartridges for guns,
howitzers, guns and pistols were affected by this decree. These facto-
ries were required to check their plans and send them for approval to
the defence and munitions people’s commissariats so that a new mobi-
lisation plan for the second half of 1941 could be available before 1
July. The people’s commissariats were allowed to move equipment from
one enterprise to another. The decree contained even more detailed
instructions about what should be checked and inspected and what
must be reported. As an example, the required number of metal-cutting
machines was estimated to be 35,000, and 2000 pressing machines and
300 units of melting machinery were required. The decree even calcu-
lated the number of cubic metres of wooden boxes needed for the trans-
portation of ammunition and specified that 16,000 tons of spikes were
needed. Similarly, the planners had calculated the required amounts of
chemicals and metals. It was up to Gosplan to coordinate this finally,
which was only one part of the new mobilisation plan. Gosplan had ten
days to complete the plan for the second half of 1941 and was given 20
days to present that for 1942.
These documents from early summer 1941 illustrate the Soviet Union’s
high level of military-economic preparedness at the time. There were
well established routines for planning to ensure that the deficit situa-
9780230_208872_07_cha06.indd 180 6/27/2011 11:32:38 AM

tions that occurred in World War I would never be repeated. The man-
ner in which the party leaders hastened the revision of mobilisation
plans in June 1941 displayed an awareness that war with Nazi Germany
might be imminent. Officially, and for the benefit of the Soviet public,
the government still spread the idea that the frequent rumours of an
imminent war with Germany were false.
9780230_208872_07_cha06.indd 181 6/27/2011 11:32:38 AM

Figure 74 ‘The Urals give to the front’ is the message on this 1942 poster by P.
Karachentsov.
9780230_208872_08_cha07.indd 182 6/27/2011 11:32:46 AM

7
Production Conditions for
Heavy Tanks in the Urals
Germany’s swift victory over France in 1940 was directly linked to its
surprise tank advance through the Ardennes forest. These armoured
forces were seen as a key component in the German Blitzkrieg. Likewise,
when planning for war against the USSR, the German leaders calculated
that independent mechanised army groups could strike a decisive blow
against the Russians in a campaign lasting only one summer.
Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Soviet Russia in 1941,
has been the subject of many military histories. Much has been added
recently since the opening of the Russian archives enabled new interpreta-
tions of how the Soviet Union prepared for war.1 Hitler’s generals assumed
that a decisive victory could be won against the Red Army in the sum-
mer of 1941 just as easily as they had crushed Poland and France. Their
calculations determined the requirements for the weapons to be used in
the east but they did not count on meeting Soviet tanks that would be
stronger than the British and French ones they had encountered in 1940.
Although Soviet preparedness for war had some defects, in many
respects Moscow had a better understanding of how formidable an
enemy the Wehrmacht would be. The Soviet leaders were very well
informed about the evolution of German armour and which tanks were
already fighting. In this facet of the arms race, the Soviet Union had
certain advantages, although it could not always profit from them at
an operational level. Their strong armoured divisions in the western
parts of Belorus, including the medium-heavy T-34, did not have suf-
ficient fuel and weapons stores in June 1941 and could not be used
in the defence after 22 June. The Soviet army had a large number of
BT tanks which, if they had been correctly grouped and prepared for
battle, would have been equal to the German Panzer III and IV tanks,
with their similar technical specifications.
183
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184 Tankograd
However, before retreating, the Red Army had to leave many of its
new T-34 and KV tanks or destroy them with explosives because they
lacked fuel. Most fuel and ammunitions depots had been situated to
counter an invasion in which the attack would be in the direction of the
Ukraine. Right up until the last days before the German invasion, Stalin
had forbidden the Red Army to increase its level of preparedness.2
Nazi Germany’s global outlook was presented in their propaganda.
In connection with Operation Barbarosa, the Germans published a
so-called ‘Red book’ entitled Warum Krieg mit Stalin? (‘Why War with
Stalin?’), which contained Hitler’s speech to the nation of 22 June 1941.
In this speech, Hitler explained why Germany had found it necessary
to conclude a non-aggression pact in 1939 with the Soviet Union. He
then described how Stalin had nonetheless continued to encourage
Figure 75 Nazi German propaganda in 1941. The booklet is entitled ‘Why war
with Stalin?’
9780230_208872_08_cha07.indd 184 6/27/2011 11:32:47 AM

Production Conditions for Heavy Tanks in the Urals 185
communists in all countries to undermine Germany and had even

allegedly started to plan for an attack against the country.
Nazi propaganda had used the same story in 1933 regarding an immi-
nent communist coup d’état that had been prevented by Hitler’s takeover
of power. After June 1941, the same anti-Soviet clichés and depictions that
had been in vogue before September 1939 were used. In the ‘Red book’,
the USSR, the Communist Party, the state and the army were described
as being totally controlled by Jews.3 One Nazi myth was that after Stalin’s
second wife had committed suicide in 1932, Stalin kept 17-year-old Rosa
Kaganovich – daughter of Politburo member Lazar Kaganovich – as his
private secretary and mistress. According to the myth, this arrangement
made Kaganovich the real power man in the Soviet Union and the centre
for the ruling Jewish clique in the ‘Soviet paradise’, since he held influ-
ence over Stalin. For anyone who could follow the German propaganda at
the start of the war, there could be no doubt that the brutal war of anni-
hilation was directed both against members of the Communist Party and
against the Jews as an ethnic group.4
The character of the invasion, as a war of annihilation (Vernichtungskrieg),
was soon evident to the Soviet people. Numerous reports from the west-
ern regions told of repressions against the civilian population. Those who
were lucky enough to flee in time with the evacuation trains eastwards
had horrifying stories to tell. The systematic persecution was prepared
in advance by the so-called ‘commissar order’ – not to take communist
or Jewish officers as prisoners of war. This is also evident from the ‘Red
Book’ published by the propaganda department of the German Ministry
of Information in 1941, one the alleged reasons why Germany must pre-
vent an imminent Soviet attack. The mass executions in 1941 of Jews and
others, not just representatives of the Soviet regime, indicated that the
Holocaust was part of the German invasion plans from the beginning.
It has been debated whether the Nazi attack against the Soviet Union
was directed primarily against the communists or the Jews. To grasp
this and other Nazi world views, it is worth remembering that their
presentation of ‘Judaeo-Bolshevism’ had been a constant leitmotif.
Communism was presented primarily as a Jewish movement, domi-
nated by Russian Jews who had taken power in Petrograd in 1917 and
who, along with the Communist International, then aspired to glo-
bal conquest. During the interwar period, there were of course anti-
communists who did not have any Judaeophobic ideas. However, in the
ideological contest between the socialist, liberal and conservative ideas
of the time, all of which were opposed to dictatorship (Soviet commu-
nism, Italian fascism and German national socialism), the anti-Semitic
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186 Tankograd
German propaganda against the Soviet system hindered clear analysis

of what was really happening in the country.5
Hitler and the German military leadership had calculated that one
single ‘Blitzkrieg’ would wipe out most of the Soviet military and eco-
nomic potential. However, they split their resources and advanced in
three diverging directions. The first headed towards the Ukraine and
thereafter towards the Volga River and Caucasus in order to conquer
those resources that were vital for the German economy. A second
group moved towards Moscow, with its many industries and admin-
istration, which was considered to be so centralised that the rest of
the country would collapse when this goal had been reached. A third
group was directed towards Leningrad and the northern parts of
European Russia. The idea was that the Soviet Union would capitulate
after the Red Army had been defeated in these areas. Germany would
then again have enough oil and other natural resources to take up the
war against the United Kingdom. The Wehrmacht’s leaders thought
that only then would they need heavy tanks to combat British forces.
In the first months of Operation Barbarossa, events on the battle-
field seemed to confirm the German generals’ calculations. However,
Germany had underestimated the scale of the industry of the USSR
that had already been created in the Urals, in the regions east of the
River Volga and in Western Siberia. When those factories and their
infrastructure were combined with the evacuated equipment, the
Soviet Union had, within half a year, acquired a new industrial basis
for a protracted war.
Modern Russian historians do not hesitate to discuss the fact that the
Soviet Union was actually on the verge of a catastrophe in the summer
of 1941. If the rapid evacuation of industrial equipment and people had
failed at some essential stage, the country would certainly have been
forced to capitulate or give up much more territory than was the case
in 1941–1942.6
After its heavy losses in 1941 and 1942, the Red Army managed to
change the course of the war and actually won it in grand-scale opera-
tions against the Germans in the last years of the war. Among the sug-
gested explanations for the German failure in Operation Barbarossa,
the ‘Russian winter’ is often mentioned, as if the weather would influ-
ence the fighting capability only of an aggressor. A group of German
generals and general staff officers in American captivity after WWII
studied how each of the four seasons had mostly negatively influenced
their army – implicitly less than the Red Army – during the war with
the Soviet Union; they attempted to show that it was primarily Russia’s
9780230_208872_08_cha07.indd 186 6/27/2011 11:32:48 AM

weather conditions, its undeveloped infrastructure and road network

that had prevented the Germans from winning the war.7
In the West, the Red Army’s victories used to be linked to what was pejo-
ratively called ‘the Russian steam-roller’, implying that the success had
been attained by Soviet superiority in soldiers, weapons and armaments.
Linked to this argument was the idea that Soviet victory had depended
on lend-lease assistance from the USA and the United Kingdom.
Contrary to the proverb that ‘the winner writes the history books’, the
losers’ historiography of the German-Russian war of 1941–1945 – that
is, books by and memoirs of German generals – was more widespread
and believed (in the West) than those of the Soviet marshals and gener-
als. Soviet historiography until the late 1980s was only party to blame
for this, because it had censored many questions that were considered
sensitive or inopportune. Under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, the
history of the ‘Great Fatherland War, 1941–1945’ was adopted to suit the
party leadership, to the detriment of an objective, complex reconstruc-
tion of events.8
It is only hypothetically possible to guess what might have hap-
pened if, instead of spreading their attack in three diverging directions,
Germany had systematically advanced along only one of them and
then attained less ambitious but more solidly consolidated goals. On
the other hand, if the German-Russian war had taken place more as the
Soviet defence plans had predicted, it would have been easy to deter-
mine how well prepared their industry was. A large part of the Soviet
defence-industry capacity was located in the western parts of Russia
and in the Ukraine. The chairman of the State Planning Commission
(Gosplan), Nikolai Voznesenskii, wrote in a classic work that, for a cou-
ple of months, a significant portion of the Soviet industrial equipment
was moving around on the railways.9
One of the first decisions of the State Defence Committee (GKO) con-
cerned an increase in tank production. At an early stage of the war it was
evident that all previous estimates of wartime needs were insufficient for
the requirements at the front. The man responsible for the tank produc-
tion was Viacheslav Malyshev, the people’s commissar of the Medium
Machine-Building Industry. He was surprised already in July 1941 to
read reports on armoured battles involving up to 4000 tanks. He then
suggested to Stalin that a number of large machine-building factories
should be re-equipped for production of tanks or details to the tank
factories. The forced evacuation of industry from the zones threatened
by the fast-advancing German troops temporarily disrupted the Soviet
defence industry. In the end, however, the relocation eastwards allowed
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188 Tankograd
the Soviet tank industry to be concentrated in new, huge units such as the
Urals Car Factory in Nizhnii Tagil and the tractor factory in Cheliabinsk.
A few months after the German attack, the most important personnel
at the Kirov Works in Leningrad were evacuated to Cheliabinsk, where
they would develop new tank models designed by Zhozef Kotin.
The evacuation of equipment from hundreds of factories, according
to plans that had to be drawn up within a few weeks, is indirect proof
that much constructive thinking had been done since the late 1920s
concerning wartime economic changes. The economic preparedness
had included discussions about so-called ‘duplicate factories’ or ‘shadow
enterprises’ that could take over production from other parts of the
country that were subjected to bombardment or destruction. The plan-
ning authorities knew which links existed between factories that were
to be evacuated and the existing plants and facilities in the Urals and
western Siberia. Nonetheless, since the course of the German-Russian
war had been so different to that outlined in various Soviet industrial
mobilisation plans, many enterprises in Cheliabinsk had to be radically
rebuilt and adapted to receive the evacuated equipment.
The Soviet authorities managed to carry out an evacuation that was
largely unplanned. The fact that it succeeded can be interpreted as a
sign of how the economic preparedness plans before the war had been
meant to train personnel in discipline and creative solution-seeking.
Over 700 industrial enterprises of significance for armaments produc-
tion were evacuated to the Urals. Here, a new basis was created for the
expansion of production of tanks, guns, rifles and ammunition. The
amount of machine production and raw materials that would be nec-
essary in wartime had been recalculated in detail. The reconstruction
of old factories to accommodate the evacuated equipment was carried
out by the People’s Commissariat of Building, NKStroi, and the experi-
enced organiser, Semën Ginzburg, who commanded hundreds of build-
ing battalions and a substantial number of Gulag prisoners. Like those
in the Gulag had been before the war, these prisoners were a marginal
but very important addition to the war effort.10
The new People’s Commissariat of the Tank Industry (NKTankoProm)
was set up on 12 September 1941 and included several factories that
had produced tanks in the 1930s. In Kharkov were Factory No. 183 –
producer of the T-34 tanks – and Factory No. 75 – producer of the V-2
diesel engines for tanks. In Leningrad were the Kirov Works – producer
of the heavy KV tanks – and Factory No. 174 – the light T-26 tank. In
Moscow was Factory No. 37 – producer of the light amphibious T-40
tank; in Mariupol was the Ilich Works – producing the chassis for the
9780230_208872_08_cha07.indd 188 6/27/2011 11:32:48 AM

T-34 tanks – and in Podolsk was the Ordzhonikidze Works, which pro-
duced the chassis for the T-40 tanks.
Since several of these factories were already to be evacuated eastwards,
enterprises that had not previously produced tanks were to take over
their equipment. The best known was the tractor factory in Cheliabinsk,
which received equipment from the Kirov Works in Leningrad. The car
factory in Nizhnii Tagil was to receive machinery and equipment from
Factory No. 173 in Kharkov and start production of the T-34 tanks. The
Urals Turbo Motor Factory was to continue the engine production after
the evacuation from the Kirov Works. The Urals Heavy Machinery Works
in Sverdlovsk (UZTM) received machinery from a number of defence
establishments, including the Izhorsk Factory outside Leningrad. In
October 1941, a combine for production of heavy tanks was formed,
including the Tractor Factory in Cheliabinsk (renamed during the war
years as the Kirov Works in Cheliabinsk). UZTM delivered armour detail
and tank guns and the Urals Turbo Motor Factory produced the V-2
diesel engines, while a series of other factories produced other items. A
number of other factories were later incorporated into this group.11
Figure 76 The interior of the tank production workshops.
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190 Tankograd
The main person responsible for Soviet tank production was

Viacheslav Malyshev, who was to a large extent the main organiser of
production of heavy and medium tanks at the factories in Cheliabinsk,
Sverdlovsk and Nizhnii Tagil. He was born in 1902 in Ust-Sysolsk (now
Syktyvkar in the Perm region) and grew up in a family of teachers.
After studying at the Railway Technical Institute, Malyshev worked
from 1924 as mechanic and machine-man on a steam locomotive. He
had the opportunity to study at the Moscow Higher Technical College,
now the Bauman Moscow State Technical University in Moscow and
then worked from 1934 as designer, chief engineer and director at the
Kuibyshev Works in Kolomna. Malyshev was a typical representative
of the new generation of specialists who had received their higher
education in Soviet times, and his career advanced quickly. He had
survived the Great Terror of 1937–1938 and advanced afterwards to
become people’s commissar of the medium machine-building indus-
try. From 1940 to 1944, Malyshev was deputy chairman of the State
Defence Committee and between September 1941 and August 1942
and from June 1943 to October 1945 was the people’s commissar of the
tank industry.12
Another personality who had been overlooked in earlier Soviet his-
toriography was Lavrentii Beria. From the end of 1942 GKO gave Beria
supreme responsibility for the tank industry, given that his predecessor
Viachyslav Molotov had not coped with this task. According to mem-
oirs that could not be published until the 1990s, Beria was an outstand-
ing organiser who accomplished good results at factories that had been
ridden with problems, without resorting to ‘repressive measures’.13
In Sverdlovsk, the gigantic Urals Factory for Heavy Machine-building
UZTM was reconstructed to produce a chassis and canon turret for
the tanks that were to be assembled at the factories in Nizhnii Tagil
or Cheliabinsk. These three cities, with their large machine-building
factories, constituted the core of the Soviet tank combine. In turn, they
depended on a well-organised network of hundreds of suppliers.
In Nizhnii Tagil, the Urals Railcar Factory (Uralvagonzavod) was
reconstructed and equipped with machinery from the tractor factory in
Kharkov and started production of the medium weight T-34 tank. Under
the leadership of Semën Ginzburg, the people’s commissar of building,
the Uralvagonzavod was to have an annual capacity of 9000 such tanks.14
In Sverdlovsk, the UZTM was reconstructed to produce chassis and gun
turrets for the tanks that were assembled at factories in Nizhnii Tagil
or Cheliabinsk. These three factories were the core of the Soviet tank-
building network and each was dependent on hundreds of suppliers.
9780230_208872_08_cha07.indd 190 6/27/2011 11:32:49 AM

Figure 77 Shell production in accordance with the industrial mobilisation plans

started in 1940–1941 at the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory and other factories.
The establishment of ‘Tankograd’
One of the many books that were important in the 1940s for the West’s
understanding of the unexpected Soviet successes in the war was William
Henry Chamberlin’s The Russian Enigma. Chamberlin (1897–1969) had
been a correspondent in Moscow in more than a decade and later recalled
his impressions of ‘Stalin’s revolution from above’ – the industrialisa-
tion and elimination of the kulaks– in a classic book entitled Russia’s
Iron Age (1935).15 The play on words in the title captured both the brutal
social order of the pre-historic era and the Soviet Union’s large-scale
construction of iron and steel works that provided the foundation for
a modern, metal-consuming war industry. Chamberlin considered that
the essence of Stalin’s industrialisation was a high military-economic
potential. In The Russian Enigma, he wrote that the supreme military-
economic potential was the secret behind the Red Army’s victories. As
noted above, Chamberlin wrote that an old Russian joke says if a school
child hesitates in answer to a question about where a certain metal is
found, he can surely answer, ‘In the Urals!’ These mountains have small
amounts of coal but rich deposits of almost any other ore, such as iron,
9780230_208872_08_cha07.indd 191 6/27/2011 11:32:49 AM

192 Tankograd
copper, gold, platinum, nickel, asbestos, lead, zinc, cobalt, vanadium

and potassium. Chamberlin described how a series of modern factories
had emerged there, from the chemical plants in Berezniki in the north
to the iron and steel works in Magnitogorsk in the south. He mentioned
that Cheliabinsk was sometimes mentioned in secretive ways in the
press as ‘Tankograd (the tank city)’. According to Chamberlin, most of
the more than 200 new factories could easily be converted into produc-
ers of military hardware.16
The experience of the invasion of Finland in December 1939 had
prompted the Soviet designers to modify the KV tanks and start serial
production in 1940. The tank had armour that in 1941 had no counter-
part on the German side and could withstand heavy fire from German
guns. On the other hand, its engine and transmission deficiencies were
soon apparent; tanks would often come to a standstill and then be an
easy target for fire from non-frontal attacks.
In June 1941, the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory (ChTZ) had only one
workshop that produced the KV tanks. The experiments by the spe-
cial department and its designers had been surrounded by great secrecy
since early 1940 in the production of this tank. Until the outbreak of
the war, only 25 KV tanks had been produced at ChTZ. The main pro-
duction of the factory was still the S-65, S-65G and S-2 tractors. The
production of tractors at ChTZ stopped only in November 1941. In July,
August and September, it had produced 25, 27 and 24 KV tanks, respec-
tively. In October, the volume had increased to 88, in November to 110
and in December to 213 tanks. A total of 511 KV tanks were produced at
the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory during 1941.
At 2 a.m. on 25 June the tractor factory received an order from
Moscow to start the production of ammunition according to the new
mobilisation plan for the second half of 1941 and for 1942. The order
was sent as an encoded telegram with reference to the code-name of
this plan as adopted on 10 June 1941. Some time later, a similar order
arrived for ChTZ to produce tanks and artillery haulers according to its
mobilisation plan.
The converted tractor factory was thus not only to produce heavy
tanks but also to supply the army with shells.17 It is difficult to sum-
marise the total quantities of shells produced of different types and
calibres in Soviet industry during the war. To give an idea of why the
USSR seldom lacked ammunition in 1941–1945, as had been the case for
Tsarist Russia and other states in World War I, it is necessary to break
down and analyse the seemingly astronomical figures of hundreds of
thousands of shells produced, divided into use by various groups, corps
9780230_208872_08_cha07.indd 192 6/27/2011 11:32:49 AM

Table 3 The production plan of Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory for the 4th quarter
of 1941
4th quarter in October
KV tanks units 490 125

S-2 tractors units 600 250
S-65 tractors units 1600 250
V-2 diesel engines units 1300 200
Tractor engines units 500 200
Spare parts for KV tanks rubles 15,000,000 6,000,000
Spare parts for tractors rubles 13,000,000 4,600,000
76 mm shells units 39,000 13,000
152 mm shells units 75,000 25,000
Zab-T-G-50 details for
M-13 rocket artillery shells units 39,000 13,000
Rolled steel for 76 mm shells units 60,000 20,000
Chains for Bereznev machine gun units 600,000 200,000
Metal-cutting machines units 30 10
Steel tons 16,000 5500
and divisions in the Red Army, and then calculate how many shells were
used in various phases of the German-Russian war. Ivan Vernidub, an
expert on the Soviet ammunition industry, provided detailed descrip-
tions of most weapons and also clearly illustrated the enormous quan-
tity of shells that had been produced prior to the arrival of raw materials
and weapons by lend-lease aid from the allies. From 1941 to 1945, at the
industries in the Southern Urals alone, the shells for the Red Army were
loaded onto 130,000 freight cars, the unit that Vernidub found most
suited for his purpose. For the entire Soviet Union, production was as
follows:
1941: 21,000 railway freight cars with artillery and 1990 with howitzer
ammunition
1942: 44,801 railway freight cars with artillery and 17,469 with howit-
zer ammunition
1943: 62,200 railway freight cars with artillery and 32,895 with howit-
zer ammunition
1944–1945: 143,293 railway freight cars with artillery and 50,712 with
howitzer ammunition.18
With three to four times less steel and three to three-and-a-half times
less coal than Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union managed to produce
almost twice as much ammunition and other weapons. Germany and
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194 Tankograd
Figure 78 An ISU-152 battle tank on its way through the assembly hall.
9780230_208872_08_cha07.indd 194 6/27/2011 11:32:49 AM

its satellite states used annual production of 32 million tons of steel,

compared to 8–11 million tons in the Soviet Union.
In the summer of 1941, Nikolai Dukhov was transferred from the
Kirov Works in Leningrad to Cheliabinsk, where on 25 July he was
appointed chief designer for tanks at department No. 3 of the tractor
factory. It was expected that production of the KV tanks would start on
a grand scale. A modified version named the KV-3 had been designed,
based on the experiences from the Finnish campaign. At the outbreak of
war, however, production started with the old drawings on hand for the
KV-1 type. Nikolai Dukhov wanted to exploit the established conveyor-
belt production practice at ChTZ. This would have required a number
of modifications to the blueprints from the Kirov Works, where every
Figure 79 Isaak Moiseevich Zaltsman (1905–1988) held the rank of major-gen-

eral in the engineer and tank armed services. In 1941, he was awarded the medal
Hero of Socialist Labour and thereafter a number of other medals for his suc-
cessful organisation of tank production in the Urals. His popularity during the
war years spread far beyond Cheliabinsk and the people’s nickname for him was
‘The Tank King’ (Korol tankov).
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196 Tankograd
tank was assembled separately and small construction defects could be

corrected during the assembly job.
Production of tanks at the Kirov Works in Leningrad continued for
some months, even after the outbreak of war, until it was decided in
October that the main machinery park and the qualified workers were
to be evacuated.
In October 1941, Isaak Zaltsman was appointed by the Communist
Party central committee as director of a new enterprise, the reconstructed
tractor factory in Cheliabinsk, which was to receive equipment and per-
sonnel from the Kirov Works in Leningrad. He was also appointed as the
deputy people’s commissar of the Commissariat of the Tank Industry,
NKTankoProm. In the late summer months of 1941, Zaltsman and his
colleagues were assigned with preparing the factory in Leningrad to
withstand the expected German attack, while also preparing everything
that should be sent on the railway to the east. The factory was the object
of precision German bombing and artillery fire but production contin-
ued at a lower level and the tanks rolled straight from the factory to their
battle positions around the city. It was only a matter of weeks before the
whole city would be surrounded and beleaguered.19
The tractor factory was rebuilt in the second half of 1941. It included
a new 12,000 square metre assembly hall, a 15,000 square metre
mechanics workshop for processing details and assembly work, a
15,600 square metre mechanics section and a long factory especially
built for the assembly and testing of tank engines, with an area of 9000
square metres. Equipment for these new halls came successively from
Leningrad and Kharkov. The time allotted before the start of serial pro-
duction was extremely short. In less than three weeks, 5800 machines
and other mechanical equipment from Leningrad were placed in halls
that did not yet even have roofs.
When the designers from the Kirov Works arrived from Leningrad in
October, the special design bureau moved over to the director’s build-
ing, where it occupied the entire third and fourth floors. The blueprints
were made on the fifth floor. Initially there were only a few desks in the
corners of the rooms and very few people worked there but this quickly
changed with the arrival of personnel of all ages, men and women in all
kinds of clothes. This was the large group of specialists from SKB-2 in
Leningrad who worked under the direction of Zhozef Kotin. From this
day, the factory started to be called ‘The Kirov Works in Cheliabinsk’,
and it would soon be regarded as one of the most important defence
establishments there. Under Kotin’s supervision, the SKB-2 continued
to develop new tank models. Thirteen different tanks and self-propelled
9780230_208872_08_cha07.indd 196 6/27/2011 11:32:50 AM

guns were designed during the war years. In conjunction with the
engine expert, Ivan Trashutin, the chief designers Kotin and Dukhov
introduced the KV-1S, KV-85, IS-1, IS-2 and IS-3 tanks, as well as the
self-propelled artillery (Russian abbreviation SAU or SU) SU-122 and ISU-
152. Kotin gathered the designers E.P. Dudov, K.N. Ilin, B.A. Krasnikov,
M.I. Kreslavskii and G.N. Moskvin at the SKB-2, along with other young
engineers who had graduated from the prestigious Moscow Higher
Technical College, now the Bauman State Technical University or the
Urals University in Sverdlovsk.
Ivan Trashutin was born in 1901 in the Ukraine. He studied at the
Kharkov Institute of Technology and then worked as an engineer at the
Kharkov Locomotive Works . In 1931, he was sent by the Soviet govern-
ment for further studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
After graduating from MIT, he returned to Kharkov and participated in
the development of the first new diesel engine for tanks, named the V-2.
For this accomplishment, Trashutin was awarded the Order of Lenin.
When the Kharkov Engine Factory was evacuated in the autumn of
1941, Trashutin came to Cheliabinsk, where he was appointed head of
the diesel department. The KV, IS and T-34 tanks all had diesel engines
that had been designed by Trashutin’s collective. Trashutin was to
remain at the Cheliabinsk factory for more than 40 years and further
refined the diesel technology for both tanks and tractors.
At the outbreak of the war, the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory was
expected to need 24,000 workers, 3000 engineers and technicians and
1200 clerks.20 After the evacuations, however, the composition of the
workforce was as follows:
Evacuated from the Kirov Works in Leningrad 7000

Of which were workers 5891
Engineers and technicians 1185
From Factory No. 75 in Kharkov 3004
Of which were workers 1773
Engineers and technicians 1033
Evacuated from Stalingrad’s Tractor factory 2050
Evacuated from Moscow 1000
Mobilised workers 10,000
Workers already employed at ChTZ 15,000
Of the almost 40,000 people who were employed at the beginning

of 1942, 43 per cent were under the age of 25 and 32 per cent were
women. Young people who had not previously worked in industry
were given trade courses so that they could quickly advance to more
qualified professions and become brigade leaders and overseers. Despite
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198 Tankograd
all the hardships, management encouraged competitions and prizes for

the best departments at the factory, as they had done before the war.
However, the internal party report indicated that, even without any
of the agitation, the workers strove to obtain maximal production vol-
umes for the army. Everyone understood the enormous demands on
new tanks at the front. During the Red Army’s heavy retreating battles
in 1941 and 1942, this became more than evident, as the news was
very clear to everybody. In 1942, special tank divisions were formed
in Cheliabinsk and other cities in the Southern Urals. They were com-
bined to form the Urals Corps, which was to receive its baptism of fire
in the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943. The formation of a special
tank division with soldiers from the city created tighter bonds between
the army and those at the home front.
The Soviet heavy KV-1 tank was initially a great surprise for the
German troops, as the its much thicker armour could withstand
many direct hits from the German P-III and P-IV tanks. The German
anti-tank weapons in 1941 consisted of the 37 millimetre PaK 35/36
(Panzerabwehrkanone), which could penetrate 50 millimetre armour at
a range of 500 metres. They were far too weak against the KV and T-34
tanks, however. There were occasions when Soviet KVs were hit dozens
of times and still only suffered slight indentations in the front. The
Germans soon received the PaK 38 with shells that proved stronger and
could penetrate the KV from up to 500 metres. The Red Army also lost
many KV tanks once the Germans identified the weak spots of the tank
and could direct their fire from behind or to the sides.
A series of reconstruction works took place and new buildings were
added at ChTZ for the intended serial production of heavy KV-1 tanks.
The first tanks left the conveyor belt in September, and from 24 September
onwards the designers held around-the-clock control of the assembly
workshop, with work done in two 12-hour shifts. The first tanks were
produced exactly according to the drawings from Leningrad’s Kirov
Works, which led to a number of problems with adaptions, correction of
faults and new measurements. At the start of the heavy tank production,
not all the advantages of conveyor production of ChTZ could be used.
The reports from the front of the weak spots on the tanks prompted con-
stant changes. The engines overheated easily and needed to be changed,
while the brakes sometimes failed. Incorrectly designed optical instru-
ments had made it possible for shrapnel to enter the cabin and kill the
crew without the tank itself getting broken. At this time, people’s com-
missar Malyshev often visited Cheliabinsk to follow the progress of the
introduction of tank production at the new factory compound.
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The new Kirov Works in the Urals saw a clash of industrial traditions
between mass assembly-line production at the Cheliabinsk Tractor
Factory and the piecemeal, separate assembly that had been used at
the Kirov Works in Leningrad. Kotin noted these problems along the
conveyor belt of the new factory. He did not accept all the changes that
Boris Arkhangelskii, from the Cheliabinsk factory, had made to adjust
the KV to the assembly-line principle. Kotin instead opted to use the
same methods as in Leningrad, which meant that the entire direction
of tank production had to be changed again. Arkhangelskii and several
designers from the tractor factory were transferred to other workshops
and replaced by persons from Leningrad. However, the experience of
the conveyor principle proved very useful when the Kirov Works was
ordered to produce large numbers of the T-34. In 1944, the new heavy
IS tank was assembled according to the conveyor principle.
On 17 October 1941 a large order of KV tanks was to be delivered to
the army outside Moscow, at the time when the German offensive had
reached its closest point to the capital. The tanks were completed except
for the starter motors. Aeroplanes had twice been sent to the factories
where these engines were produced but had crashed on both occasions.
Director Zaltsman decided to put the tanks on a train to Moscow and
wait for the delivery of the starting engines at a station near the capital.
Zaltsman and a group of workers from the assembly workshop travelled
on the same train to supervise the final delivery of the tanks, which
were to take part in the first Soviet counter-offensive under the com-
mand of Georgii Zhukov in December 1941.
The leadership introduced new routines for the tank divisions in
order to avoid the problems that had occurred in 1941 due to the tank
drivers and marksmen not being accustomed to the new vehicle and
not knowing exactly how to drive the tank or direct the gun. Future
crews arrived in Cheliabinsk and followed the final stages of the assem-
bly work at the factory, then participated in the testing of the tanks at
the factory’s firing range. This allowed them to gain a better under-
standing of the tank’s performance characteristics and the stresses it
could withstand. The KV tanks were also evaluated on visits to various
locations at the front by the chief designers, Dukhov and Kotin. There
they talked with the officers and soldiers who reported on their battle
experience. On one occasion, a lieutenant jumped out of his tank and
referred to ‘that idiot’ who had designed the breech sight with an obvi-
ous defect. Kotin, who held the rank of general at the time, happened to
be standing nearby but is reported to have appreciated such frank com-
ments. During the autumn of 1941, the KV tanks mostly participated in
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200 Tankograd
defensive battles. Their thick armour enabled them to force much larger
groups of German tanks to halt. The bad breech sight had less impor-
tance in such types of battles towards approaching targets. All feedback
from the front and from the repair shops at the front was dutifully sent
back to the designers in Cheliabinsk.
On other occasions, the new tanks or prototypes were driven to the
testing ground at Lake Pervoe, where they were tested under active serv-
ice conditions. Similarly, the Soviet defence industry tested their guns
by firing against German trophy tanks or fired against new Soviet vehi-
cles with German guns or German ammunition. People’s commissar
Malyshev constantly reminded the Soviet designers that their main task
was to imagine their enemy’s development ideas and anticipate their
next weapon accordingly, with even better countermeasures.
In 1942, the Russian army ordered a fast, self-propelled gun, since
artillery that was drawn by horses or tractors could not keep up with the
advance of the tanks. A modified SAU-KV-7 was quickly built and used
in the final stage of the Battle of Moscow. After that, Kotin designed the
KV-9 tank and equipped it with a 122 millimetre howitzer.21
In February 1942, Dukhov was appointed chairman of the new tech-
nical expert committee on inventions and rationalisation in the tank
industry. Evaluation after month-long battles had led NKTankoProm to
the conclusion that the heavy tanks had to be radically changed. Many
bridges and roads were unpassable for the 50-ton KV-1 tanks, while their
engines were too weak for them to pass over hills. One of the first modi-
fications was the KV-1S (S = skorostnoi, speedy), produced in 1942–1943,
which was five tons lighter, equipped with a new engine and a better
gear box and had a top speed of 43 kilometres per hour. Its armour in
the front was 75 millimetres (82 millimetres in the turret). This tank
proved very useful in the Red Army’s counter-offensive in the winter of
1942–1943 when there was a better understanding of the proper place
for heavy tanks in formations.
In March 1942, it was decided that the special experimental factory
for tanks (then known as Factory No. 100, Opytny tankovyj zavod No.
100) should use parts from the former experimental factory. The prior-
ity of this new factory was to develop the concepts for the next heavy
tank further. Chief designer at Factory No. 100 was A.S. Ermolaev,
under the command of Zhozef Kotin, who was its director from March
1943. At this factory, Kotin had gathered the same group of technicians
who had worked with him in Leningrad. During the war years, they
designed more than ten prototypes and models of heavy tanks and self-
propelled guns. The first priority was to design lighter tanks with the
same firepower and armour protection as the first KV tanks.
9780230_208872_08_cha07.indd 200 6/27/2011 11:32:51 AM

Figure 80 The interior of the tank construction factory.
In 1942, the KV tank could still, in theory at least, withstand the German
anti-tank guns because the new 75 millimetre PaKs were very scarce in
the Wehrmacht. Russian tank losses remained high, however, because
the German soldiers had learnt new tactics for fighting against the heavy
Soviet tanks. They shot from better positions and had identified the tanks’
weak spots. More and more design defects in the KV tanks were exposed:
the commander was also the loader and his peripheral vision was poor:
the tank had poor radio communications with other members of its unit,
which led to limited cooperation with the artillery and the infantry so the
tanks could not always be directed towards the best targets. As the battles
were more drawn-out and tanks had be transported over long distances,
the wear and tear on them was revealed. When the experience from the
battles of the summer and autumn of 1942 was evaluated, the conclusion
was that the KV tanks, with their strong armour, would not have been
necessary for the less fortified areas that needed to be conquered. On the
other hand, the German anti-tank guns had managed to eliminate a large
number of KV tanks. For the type of battles fought during that period, the
medium T-34 had proven more suitable.
During the same time period, the monthly production of tank ammu-
nition increased from 110,000 to 300,000 76 millimetre shells and from
50,000 to 150,000 122 millimetre ones. In 1942, the Soviet Union over-
all produced 24,700 tanks, a few hundred of which were merely new
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202 Tankograd
Table 4 Production of tanks at the Kirov

Works in Cheliabinsk 1942
Month KV tank T-34 tank
January 216 –
February 264 –
March 250
April 282
May 351
June 150
August 125 30
September 180 220
October 175 300
November 135 230
December 125 275
Total 2553 1055
Figure 81 The T-34 tank (the 1941 model, 28.5 ton, diesel V-2-34 engine,
500 horse power, maximum speed 55 kilometres per hour, 40–45 millimetres
armour and 52 millimetres in the turret, an 85 millimetre gun and 77 shells)
was described as the best tank in World War II. Even so, many outspoken critics
of ‘tankisty’ pointed out its defects and weaker parts, which were continually
improved upon during the German-Russian war.
prototypes. The heavy KV tanks formed approximately 10 per cent of

the total and the medium weight T-34s roughly half. During late sum-
mer and autumn of 1942, approximately 70 per cent of the capacity
of the Kirov Works in Cheliabinsk was allocated to the production of
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T-34s, while only 30 per cent of capacity was earmarked for the produc-
tion of the heavy tank series.
The huge losses of tank units in 1942 can be explained in part by the fact
that the Germans had the strategic initiative. The Red Army had to fight
in an enforced situation where incomplete divisions did not have time for
reconnaissance, concentration or determination of their battle tasks. They
could not accomplish any surprise movements and cooperated poorly with
the other Red Army units. This often led to dispersed attacks with tanks
whose commanders and drivers were unfamiliar with the terrain and the
forward battle situation. This led to great Russian losses in the minefields
or from German attacks on the flanks of the Soviet tank units.
In October 1942, the KV tanks were taken away from mixed units to form
separate heavy tanks regiments, in which all vehicles had the same speed,
manoeuvrability and endurance. The new principles for heavy tanks in
battle were formulated after detailed analyses in the people’s commissariat
of defence in order No. 306 of 8 October and No. 325 of 16 October 1942.
The German offensive had continued during the summer of 1942 and its
target seemed to be Stalingrad. The tractor factory in Stalingad produced
the T-34 tank, which had become one of the most appreciated among the
soldiers and officers of the Red Army. However, the continued production
at Stalingrad was under threat and the new production site at the Urals
Railcar Factory in Nizhnii Tagil – which would become the leading pro-
ducer of T-34s after the evacuation of the Kharkov Tractor Factory – had
not yet reached full capacity. Therefore, the State Committee of Defence
ordered that the Kirov Works in Cheliabinsk should start production of
the T-34 while continuing to produce heavy tanks.
The party members at the factory received specific tasks on the measures
that had to be taken so that the GKO order on production of T-34 tanks
could be implemented. The metallurgical workshop was to be changed and
better coordination was needed with the Urals Railcar Factory in Nizhnii
Tagil, where most T-34 tanks had been produced, so that the Cheliabinsk
factory could receive all the drawings and assistance it needed to start up
the new production line. The party resolution stressed the importance
of the decrees of the Supreme Soviet of 26 June 1940 (concerning labour
discipline) and of 26 December 1941 (desertion from the defence indus-
try). ‘An iron discipline must reign at the factory’, the resolution stated,
although the party committee was well aware that the factory actually
faced many problems related to misdemeanours, cheating and absences
that had to be tolerated even in the dire wartime conditions.22
The party resolution called for better use of the internal resources at
the factory rather than calls for new equipment and materials. A special
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204 Tankograd
group from the Communist Party was to be responsible for the rapid
start-up of production of the T-34 tanks. ‘The party activists promise our
fatherland, our beloved leader and the commander of the Soviet people,
comrade Stalin, that the Kirov Works labourers shall unconditionally start
production of T-34s on time’, were the solemn final words of this reso-
lution.23 During the first war winters, occasional threatening telegrams
from Stalin addressed to individual directors were widely distributed as
leaflets among the specialists and workers on factories in Sverdlovsk and
Cheliabinsk. To some extent, these extra measures proved effective.
On 15 August 1942 yet another resolution by the factory’s party com-
mittee expressed concern that not enough had been accomplished in the
20 days since the decision regarding production of the T-34s. By 12 August
only half the number of preparatory measures in the planning agenda of
the director had been achieved – a delay of five or six days. The party reso-
lution also noted that the ordinary August monthly programme for pro-
duction of the KV-1 and KV-1S, as well as tank engines, was unfulfilled.
Some workshop supervisors were criticised for arguing against the simul-
taneous production of medium and heavy tanks. It was decided that, as
much as possible, the assembly-line principles should be used for the pro-
duction of the T-34s. The workshop supervisors were given deadlines by
which the first new tanks must be delivered. It was stressed that, as com-
munists, the party members had a duty to fulfil the resolution on produc-
tion if they wanted to avoid being excluded from the party, which was
often the first step towards harsher repressive measures.24 In little over a
month, the factory’s workshops had indeed been refurbished to produce
the medium tanks and the train echelons from Cheliabinsk started to
send out the T-34s. In 1942 they produced 1055 T-34, 1902 KV-1 and 651
KV-1S tanks, a total of 3608 tanks in 365 working days. During the first
war years, practically none of the employees in the defence industries had
any days off, including Sundays and summer holidays.
It is worth pondering what it meant for these people to be forced
to produce ten heavy tanks a day, month after month. Obviously this
was a far cry from the visions that socialists might have had 15 years
earlier. The alternative society that might have appeared in the Soviet
Union had this war taken place in a different form or not at all can
only be guessed at. Trotskyist descriptions of the former Soviet Union
characterised it as a ‘bureaucratised workers’ state’, but its ability to
counteract any bureaucratism when its existence was threatened is
striking. French economist Jacques Sapir explained the system’s essence
better when he characterised it as ‘a mobilised economy’ (une économie
mobilisée). However, Sapir overstressed the militarisation in the system,
as is evident from the terminology of German title of his book, Die
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Figure 82 ‘Do not gossip! Be on your guard. In these days, even the walls have
ears. There is only a small step from gossip to treason.’ The poster by Nina Vatolina
was among the most widespread in the Soviet Union during the war years.
Permanente Kriegswirtschaft (The permanent war economy).25 Although

it is a generalisation, it can be concluded that standard textbooks on
the Soviet command economy treated the system’s prioritisation of the
heavy machine-building industry and its unbalanced growth as a good
precondition, as a sound principle only if the goal was to maximise the
production of war materials. However, nowhere in the standard text-
books on the so-called command economy or the planning system was
there any mention of the extensive peacetime preparations for swiftly
converting the entire economic system to the requirements of a total
war. With the historical outcome at hand – that, ultimately, the Soviet
form of communism could neither be democratised nor become sus-
tainable in comparison with market economies – it maybe more objec-
tive to ponder what would have been the result, on a European scale,
if the Red Army had not countered the Nazi assault. This is a problem
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206 Tankograd
without easy answers and can also be left for fictional presentations
such as Robert Harris’s counter-factual novel from 1992, Fatherland.
The turning-point in the European theatre of World War II was, with-
out any doubt, the Battle of Stalingrad, where Nazi Germany suffered
its first major defeat.26 However, it was only after the battles in the sum-
mer of 1943 that the Red Army could take the strategic initiative. In the
spring and summer of 1943, German troops had 75 millimetre anti-
tank guns and an 88 millimetre gun with armour-piercing shells that,
even with an angle of incidence of 0 degrees, could penetrate the KV-1S
from distances of 1000 to 1300 metres. In practice, therefore, the
heavy KV tank was as badly protected against German weapons as the
medium T-34s. In April 1943, production of the KV-1S was stopped at
the Cheliabinsk factory and the equipment was instead used to produce
a self-propelled gun, the SU-152.
In the winter of 1942–1943, the Russians received intelligence that the
Germans had produced new heavy tanks, the T-VI type with modifica-
tions. The heavy self-propelled gun SU-152 was built on the chassis from
the KV-1S and was engaged at the Battle of Kursk to counter these new
German challenges. In 1943, the Wehrmacht had Panther tanks (T-V)
with a 75 millimetre KwK (Kampfwagenkanone) guns with a 70 calibre
gun tube, and also Tiger tanks (T-VIH) with 88 millimetre KwK guns.
The ammunition included armour-piercing shells and cumulative shells
with even higher penetration capability (up to 155 millimetres armour
from a distance of 1000 metres). At the same time, the German troops
were formed up over a larger depth than they were during the first years
of the war. Their first defence line consisted of two to three trenches.
In front of these and into the depth, all kinds of sapper obstacles had
been erected. The depth of the German defence could be between 4 and
12 kilometres per division. At 10–15 kilometres from the first line was
the second line of defence. Naturally, breaking through such defences
required quite different operational planning from the Soviets, which
had to break through the whole defensive depth and accomplish a breach
of 8 to 12 kilometres in width. The first time the Red Army had to tackle
this task was at the Battle of Kursk.27 During the operations in the Kursk
Bulge in July–August 1943 2.5 million men troops were engaged to crush
a German army formation of over one million men. Afterwards, six mil-
lion Red Army soldiers would carry out offensives against 2.5 million
Germans along a front that stretched over 2000 kilometres before finally
reaching the Dnepr River. One of the main events in the Battle of Kursk
was the engagement between Soviet and German armoured forces on
12 July. In order to break through the German defences in the Orël and
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Figure 83 Infantry soldiers wait for support from a tank brigade during the
Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943.
Kharkov directions, the Soviet supreme command engaged more troops

and weapons than it had on any previous occasion.
During the counter-offensive in the Battle of Stalingrad, the density
was approximately one division per 3-kilometre front section and 30 to
80 guns per kilometre at the breakthrough. At the Battle of Kursk, the
density was one division per 1.6-kilometre front and 170–230 guns per
kilometre at the breakthrough areas. In order to suppress the enemy’s
defences, artillery bombardment of two to three hours was used, after
which the artillery was directed to those points in the enemy’s defence
that were still active. However, the artillery could only reduce the defence
capacity in the enemy’s first lines of defence. Reconnaissance informa-
tion on the enemy’s second and third lines of defence brought much
worse news. After breaking through the first lines, they encountered
much more concentrated resistance. The question of by how long an
artillery bombardment should precede an attack had to consider the ene-
my’s chances of moving its reserves to a sector where the attack could be
expected. One solution was to intensify the bombardment by using also
the heaviest guns from the artillery reserves of the Headquarters. After
such sustained artillery fire, the Soviet infantry could then advance, at
which point it would need support from tanks that should immediately
be able to destroy new targets.
At the Battle of Kursk, the Red Army had only KV and T-34 tanks that
were no longer difficult for the German defence to take out. As a result,
Soviet losses at the Kursk were as high as 6000 tanks. Only at a few parts
of the front line did the Red Army managed to transfer tactical success
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208 Tankograd
Figure 84 The Battle of Kursk. Army commander Leonov inspects the situation
at the battle field at Voronezhski.
into operational success, mostly in the southern area. Well prepared

German lines of defence had been set up on the northern area, however,
and no substantial breakthroughs could be achieved. In other words, the
situation was similar to that which the Wehrmacht had encountered a
month earlier when it started its offensive against the Kursk Bulge.
The experiences from the Battle of Kursk dictated that the Soviet
army must have a new breakthrough tank. This led to intensive efforts
to develop the KV-13 tank further. In the meantime, an 85 millimetre
gun was mounted on the KV-1S tanks.
The new tank was called the IS-1 (after Iosif Stalin) or Object 237 and
it was only produced in small numbers during 1943. This tank had an
armour of up to 120 millimetres, weighed 44 tons and was equipped
with the V-2-10 diesel engine, which at 520 horse power gave it a maxi-
mum speed of 40 kilometres. Its 85 millimetre D5-T85 gun had 59 gre-
nades and a range of 160 kilometres.
It is interesting to study how the Soviets competently and frankly
debated the results after the battle. People’s commissar Malyshev esti-
mated that some 6000 Soviet tanks had been lost, four times more than
the 1500 tanks the Germans had lost in addition to their loss of 70,000
soldiers. Malyshev argued that this had to be seen as a warning and he
asked the designers for better guns and stronger armour. The designer
L.S. Troianov managed to find an effective countermeasure against the
Tiger tanks.
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After the great Battle of Orël in the summer of 1943, when Soviet tanks
broke through a fortified German defence line, a lot a data was collected
about how the defenders’ shells had hit or damaged the Soviet tanks:
calibres, distances and angles of incidence were grouped and analysed
systematically. This provide a better technical basis for future techno-
logical development. Prior to this, the Soviet designers had relied more
on their intuition to develop a compromise between armour protection,
guns and mobility. The Soviet tank designers considered 50 tons to be the
maximum weight. If this was exceeded, transportation problems would
arise, bridges would be impassable and the speed would be too slow. Now
they could adapt the armour on the tanks to the enemy’s patterns of fire.
These data were used for the radically different contours and construc-
tion principles of the Soviet tanks towards the end of the war. During the
war, the technology for casting of armour details had improved substan-
tially and the capability of welding in armour had improved.
Kotin and Dukhov and their many assistants launched the ideas of
what was to be the IS-1 in the autumn of 1943. When all the models
and drawings were ready, the regional party committee’s chairman was
contacted. He accepted their new concept, despite the fact that a change
to producing the IS-1 was not included in any plan and that it would
require changes in the workshops and reduced production for at least a
month. The group received permission to build three test tanks under
the greatest possible secrecy at the factory.
When these tanks were ready, they were transported at night-time to
the firing and testing ranges. The test drivers arrived in the early hours
Figure 85 The IS-2 tank.
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210 Tankograd
and the tanks were submitted to all types of trials until it was obvious that
they satisfied the expected requirements. In September, Malyshev arrived
in Cheliabinsk to inspect the new tank. He took part in the night-time
tests and sat in the tank beside the driver. It was then decided that the
approval of the State Defence Committee, GKO, was required. Malyshev
flew back to Moscow with I. Zaltsman, Z. N. Kotin and S. Makhonin. On 4
September 1943 GKO approved serial production of the IS-1 tanks. When
Stalin had listened to Kotin’s report on the advantages and quality of the
new tanks, he exclaimed, ‘With these tanks, we shall win the war!’ In
October serial production of the IS-1 tanks started in Cheliabinsk,28 , first
of the IS-1 (also called IS-85) and from December the IS-2 (the 1943 model).
The IS-2 had a new 122 millimetre D-25 gun that could not only destroy
targets in open terrain but also destroy sapper obstacles or suppress fire
posts in trenches. The IS-2 weighed less than 50 tons but its armour was
still much thicker in the turret than its predecessors (up to 120 millime-
tres in the front, 100 in the turret and 90 on the sides). The Wehrmacht’s
anti-tank weapons at the time could not penetrate the IS-2 tank at an
angle of 0 degrees from 500 metres (with their 75 millimetre PaK 40s or
KwK 40/L43s on tanks). In practice, this meant that the IS-2 could direct
its fire at an enemy artillery position from as close as 300–400 metres.
The new and better protected tanks were also the result of a new
technique of casting armour details on an industrial scale. The front
piece and the parts under the turret were made from cast details, while
the sides and the bottoms were made of rolled armour plates. Casting
armour is the most economical method but, since it is more likely to
leave microscopic impurities than rolling steel, it is not generally as
solid as rolled parts. Finding a method for casting armour steel that left
as few impurities as possible was one of the great technological advances
during the war years.
In 1943, the Kirov Works in Cheliabinsk still produced approxi-
mately 3600 T-34 tanks, in addition to 469 KV-1S and 668 self-pro-
pelled SU-122 guns, as well as 102 IS-1S and IS-2 heavy tanks. The
IS-2 was constantly modified during the last year of the war. One
of the most significant changes was the broken front that was intro-
duced in June 1944. These changes were made to increase the armour
protection as much as possible. With an inclination of 60 degrees,
its 120 millimetre armour was effectively twice as thick. Neither the
calibrated, nor the under-calibrated shells from the German 75 mil-
limetre PaK 40 and 88 millimetre KwK 36 tank guns could penetrate
the armour of the IS-2.
In 1944, the Kirov Works in Cheliabinsk was ordered to participate in
the reconstruction of the Stalingrad Tractor Factory and to produce spare
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parts for the S-65 tractors for the People’s Commissariat of Petroleum
and for the tractors for the army.29 In 1944, a total of 5207 tanks and
self-propelled guns were produced in Cheliabinsk (2210 IS-2s and 2510
ISU-122s, ISU-122Ss and ISU-152s).
In Nizhnii Tagil, production of tens of thousands of T-34 tanks contin-
ued in 1944, despite the fact that the Germans had their heavy tanks –
the Tigers and the Panthers – by this stage. In essence, the German
designers had failed to combine strength, guns and mobility. ‘Many
people imagine heavy tanks to be like some colossus on crawlers, a kind
of armoured elephant’, said Zhozef Kotin. ‘But our new heavy tanks
have very modest exterior measurements, much smaller than their
predecessors. Still the armour is thicker and the guns are stronger ... A
heavy tank must be capable of hiding itself in the terrain.’
On 3 October 1944 Zaltsman issued Order No. 1541, in which he
noted that the plan targets had been achieved during the third quarter
of 1944 and the production of heavy tanks had increased to a maximum
desired level. ‘Now we have all the conditions’, he wrote, ‘to also fulfil the
plan targets for the rest of the year. This fulfilment of the plan must go
together with giving the workers more days off, with organisation of cul-
tural activities for the management of the enterprise.’ The workers in ‘the
hot workshops’ were to have three days off per month and workers in the
other sectors of the factory would have two days off. The working hours
of the management at the factory was as follows: work started at 9 a.m.,
there was a break for dinner from 5–7 p.m. and work would finish no
later than by midnight or 1 a.m. In the workshops, work would begin at
7.30 a.m., breakfast would be between 11 a.m. and 12 noon, dinner was
from 5–7 p.m. and the workday would end at 11 p.m. or midnight.30
The most forward-looking platform for the further development of the
Soviet tanks was formulated by Mikhail Balzhi during the last year of the
war. Balzhi was born in Ekaterinaslav in 1909, studied at the Kharkov
Mechanical and Machine-building Institute and was then sent to the
Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory where he worked until 1953 designing tanks
and self-propelled guns. His career advanced from designer to head of a
design bureau, deputy chief designer and, from 1947, as chief designer at
the ChTZ (renamed after the re-evacuation of the Leningrad part of the
workforce after the war). In 1949, Balzhi started to teach at the Cheliabinsk
Mechanics and Technology Institute and, from 1953 onwards, devoted
himself wholly to research and education on tank technology.
During the war years, Balzhi worked under the direction of Kotin
and Dukhov and was responsible for the IS-3 tanks that were finished
in 1945. Balzhi came up with the idea of the IS-3 tank during a ten-day
stay at a sanatorium. He returned to Cheliabinsk and two weeks later,
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212 Tankograd
Figure 86 The IS-3 tank as a monument in Cheliabinsk.
at around 1 a.m., placed a complete proposal on the table of Director

Zaltsman. Zaltsman looked at the blueprints and drawings, closed his
eyes and thought for a long time. Balzhi thought that Zaltsman had
fallen asleep but after an hour and a half, Zaltsman looked up and said,
‘This one we shall produce!’ It was not risk-free to introduce a com-
pletely new model during this final phase of the war, when the factory
was already producing at full capacity.31
The IS-3 tank had a much lower silhouette than its contemporaries.
This would lay the platform for a series of modifications that provided
the basic armour for the Soviet army for the next half-century. After the
war, Balzhi was engaged in work on the T-10 tank and on amphibious
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tanks. Balzhi formed a differential armour that featured maximal rico-

chet effects. He later defended his doctoral thesis in technology and
during his time at the Mechanics and Technology Institute (later the
Cheliabinsk Polytechnic Institute, ChPI) he was the main advisor for
13 PhD students on the subject of tank and tractor production.
The final battle for Berlin
For the final battles in Germany in 1944–1945, the Red Army set up
special heavy tank formations with 30–40 tanks per kilometre of front
line. The German lines of defence inside Germany itself could be up to
120–150 kilometres in depth and contained permanent defence forti-
fications. Therefore, massive tank units were concentrated in the main
attack directions; these consisted of seven guard tank brigades, each of
which contained 65 tanks.
Berlin was defended by a huge German force along the rivers Oder and
Neisse with a depth of 40–50 kilometres. All field and permanent fortifi-
cations were manned by troops with an operative density that is compara-
ble to that of the Wehrmacht’s offensive operations in 1941–1942. Taking
into consideration the well fortified German positions in the outskirts
of the city, the defence’s tactical depth was actually 90–100 kilometres,
along which were numerous anti-tank guns. Nonetheless, the 7th and
11th Guard Tank Brigades, with their IS-2 tanks in direct support of
Figure 87 A column of Soviet tanks on their way into Berlin.
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214 Tankograd
the infantry, managed to break through into Berlin with 70 per cent of
their tanks intact. In other words, the IS-2 fulfilled its main mission as a
breakthrough tank and in direct support of the infantry during a break-
through of the enemy’s tactical defence zone.
In total, 1354 Tiger tanks were produced in Germany and 489 of the
King Tiger version. These were more complicated to produce than the
corresponding Soviet heavy tanks.
A total of 2005 tanks were produced during the first six months of
1945: 980 IS-2s, 405 ISU-152s, 390 ISU-122s, 200 ISU-122Ss and 30 IS-3s.
The experienced IS-2 as well as the new IS-3 tanks and the self-propelled
guns mentioned above participated in the final battles of World War II,
notably in the 49th Guard Tank Regiment and in the breakthrough in
battles against the German King Tiger tanks in the Sandomir area.
Stalin, along with all the members of the State Defence Committee,
GKO, and their assistants, received production reports from the facto-
ries almost daily. He and other leaders in Moscow could phone a direc-
tor to make an enquiry, an order or a threat. It is probably part of the
myth surrounding Stalin’s personality that most such calls would take
place late at night. There are indeed a number of known incidences
when phone calls were made late at night from the Kremlin and, given
the time zone differences, even a couple of hours later in the Urals and
Siberia. A very interesting fictional form for this leadership style can
be seen in Aleksandr Bek’s The New Appointment (Novoe naznachenie).
This novel is based on information from directors who were close to the
people’s commissar, Ivan F. Tevosian, who was responsible for the heavy
machine-building industry during the war.32
Just as often, the directives from Stalin or the GKO were sent as
cyphered telegrams and the reports from the factories were also sent in
stipulated forms and secret codes. Nonetheless, the Cheliabinsk regional
party committee printed a leather-bound booklet with silver fittings
entitled ‘Report to comrade Stalin’, in which all the achievements of
the defence industry in the Southern Urals was clearly presented in fig-
ures, tables and photographs. On the first page was written, ‘The Kirov
workers made a solemn vow to comrade Stalin to learn how to produce
new, strong tanks. This task has been fulfilled – the front receives tanks
produced by the Kirov workers.’
A total of 97,700 tanks and self-propelled guns were produced in the
USSR during the Great Patriotic War from 1941–1945. Approximately
8000 of these were the heavy IS-2 tanks and SU-152, ISU-122 and ISU-
152 heavy self-propelled guns. Throughout all of WWII, Germany
produced 65,100 tanks, 1959 of which were the heavy Tiger, King
Tiger, Ferdinand and Jagdtiger tanks, in addition to 6400 Panther and
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Figure 88 Members of the 63rd Tank Brigade from Cheliabinsk reads a greeting
from workers in Cheliabinsk in the summer of 1944.
Jagdpanther tanks.33 In the Soviet Union, 1,515,900 machine guns of all

calibres, 12,139,900 rifles and carbines and 6,173,900 submachine guns
were produced. The Soviet industry had achieved a level of production
that was on par with or even surpassed that of Germany.
Russian historiography on World War II, and on the German-Russian
War of 1941–1945 on the Eastern front in particular, has changed
greatly since 1996, as many more archival materials have been declassi-
fied and other sources have appeared. In general, it can be said that the
historians have devoted most of their attention to those questions that
were taboo or rarely discussed in the official Soviet historiography. The
result is an impressive amount of new scholarly studies and an intensive
search for revisions and reinterpretations.34
The economic history of World War II, the struggle on the home
front, has not been the object of such intensive revisions. Instead, the
focus has been directed on formerly neglected aspects of everyday life,
the harsh near-famine situation in the countryside and even some cities
and the real attitudes and mentality of people under German occupa-
tion and after liberation by the Red Army. These new works show in
greater detail what was accomplished by the men, women and young-
sters in industry, transport and health care – facts that were previously
dominated by propagandistic sloganising.35
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Figure 89 ‘All for the front! To the front from the women of the USSR.’ A poster
by Alexei Kokorekin in 1942.
9780230_208872_09_cha08.indd 216 6/27/2011 11:33:02 AM

8
1418 Long Days on the Home Front
in the Southern Urals
June 22 1941 seemed to be just another sunny summer’s day. Many

people were enjoying a day off, walking in the streets, on their way to
the amusement park or to friends. In Cheliabinsk, news of the German
attack was received only at midday. The whistles at the factories started
to blow and the radio loudspeakers in squares and public places sent
the official TASS message that the country was at war and Viacheslav
Molotov’s speech about how Nazi Germany had ‘insidiously attacked
the Soviet Union and broken the non-aggression treaty’.
The archival documents hardly reflect the attitudes of the general
population. More than 10,000 people gathered at the tractor factory dur-
ing the first three days of the war. Around the region, similar meetings
were held. Some veterans recalled the near-panic situation; many had
been convinced that there would be no war in 1941. A TASS telegram
published as recently as 14 June had underlined that their were no com-
plications in the relations between the USSR and Germany. However,
others were more confident and believed that the war would be won by
the Red Army within a few months. The party leaders and the directors
of the large factories had been intensively engaged during the preceding
weeks with revisions of the industrial mobilisation plans that were to be
applied in case of a war. For these people, the constant reminders of the
hastiness in the messages from Moscow now appeared as evidence.
Hitler and the German military leadership had counted on a vic-
tory through a Blitzkrieg that would annihilate the heart of the Soviet
military and economic potential in a single campaign. Vitally, however,
they split their resources into three diverging attack lines: first, towards
the Ukraine and further to Volga and the Caucasus in order to get to
the resources that were vital for the German economy, second, towards
Moscow and its many industries and the central administration of the
217
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218 Tankograd
Figure 90 A mass meeting on Sunday 22 June 1941 in the city of Miass. Similar
mass meetings were held at time of Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union
in many other places in the Cheliabinsk region.
Soviet Union and third, towards Leningrad and the northern parts of
European Russia. One can only guess what would have happened if the
German army had systematically concentrated on achieving one of its
three goals.
Hitler’s plan, after crushing the key elements of the Red Army, was for
the German advances to force the Soviet Union to accept the Germans’
peace conditions dictated by himself. Germany would then have the
necessary oil resources, minerals and other resources that were vital
for its armaments industry. It would then be capable to continue its
war against the United Kingdom. However, Germany had underesti-
mated the industrial potential of the USSR east of the River Volga and in
Siberia. The Soviet leadership, on the other hand, knew precisely what
role the Urals could have from a geopolitical and strategic perspective. It
was soon evident how important it was for the Soviet Union to rely on
those industrial reserves and the potential capacity that had emerged
during the five-year period in the Urals. A new infrastructure had been
built and could easily be combined with industrial equipment evacu-
ated from the western parts of the country.1
Once this infrastructure was combined with the evacuated equip-
ment, the Soviet Union had the industrial basis for a protracted war.
The German military leaders only had a superficial idea of the indus-
tries in the Urals and their significance for the Soviet Union’s defence-
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1418 Long Days on Home Front in Southern Urals 219
industrial potential. The character of these elementary miscalculations

arose from the fact that Hitler even thought that the Wehrmacht, with
the help of special troops, could advance further towards the Urals or,
with the use of the long distance ‘Urals bombers’, eliminate the defence
industries in that region.2
According to the original Operation Barbarossa plan, after the ground
forces had reached the Volga River, which was expected to have been
achieved by September or October 1941 (a breakthrough of 1500 kilo-
metres in three or four months), the German air force units were to take
on ‘the last industrial bastion of the Russians’. The Junkers-88, Heinkel-
111, Do-17 and Do-215 bombers could theoretically reach Sverdlovsk
and other cities from some point along the River Volga. However, they
would not be escorted by fighter aircraft and would only have had a
chance of success if all the Soviet fighters had already been crushed.3
Even the most optimistic theoretical assumptions did not predict that
the German aircraft would have had enough bombing capacity to anni-
hilate the many defence-industrial plants that had emerged in the Urals:
from Magnitogorsk in the south to Nizhnii Tagil in the north, from
Molotov (Perm) in the west to Kurgan on the Siberian border. However,
the Soviet security forces during the war years had to liquidate a great
number of spies and saboteurs, who had either been long established or
sent by air to fulfil various sabotage missions.
This threat was still considered a reality in 1942. Courses in air defence
and self-defence were to apply to the entire civilian population but had
had little significance until this point. In May 1942 the city’s executive
committee urgently called all those responsible in the city districts to
check the air-raid shelters. It was then noted that the authorities had
not yet issued any instructions regarding defence against air-raids, or
evacuation of houses, institutions and factories in case of air attacks.
The militarised guards at the factories, called voenkhran, were to take
responsibility for these questions.4
The strong Russian defence in the autumn of 1941 and the success-
ful counter-offensive at Moscow in the winter of 1941–1942 changed
the character of the war, despite the enormous Soviet losses in terms of
lives and weapons, to a war of attrition. In such a conflict, the industrial
resources of the powers eventually became the most decisive factor. The
Soviet Union had a greater resource basis and, together with aid from
its allies, the United States and the United Kingdom, this basis by far
surpassed and was better used for military purposes than Germany’s.
In 1943, the German general staff was still pondering the possibility of
eliminating Soviet iron and steel works by sending ‘kamikaze pilots’ on
9780230_208872_09_cha08.indd 219 6/27/2011 11:33:03 AM

220 Tankograd
suicidal missions to Magnitogorsk and other cities in the Urals. Their

defeats at Stalingrad and then at Kursk put an end to such thoughts.
Evacuation and conversion of industry
The city of Cheliabinsk and the region changed drastically with the
transition to wartime conditions in 1941–1942. Factories in Leningrad,
Kharkov, Moscow and other cities in the west of the country were evac-
uated, along with thousands of workers and engineers. Important peo-
ple’s commissariats (ministries) or their sub-departments were relocated
to Cheliabinsk, while administrative organs were moved from Moscow
to the Urals or Siberia. The People’s Commissariats of the Tank Industry
(NKTankoProm), of Electric Power Stations, of the Ammunition Industry
(NKB) and of Building (NKStroi) were all relocated to Cheliabinsk.
Fifteen evacuated institutes or university faculties were also relocated to
the Cheliabinsk region, as were dozens of trade schools.5 One hundred
and thirty-three boarding schools and 92 orphanages, totalling 15,626
children, were moved to the Cheliabinsk region. The city had to take
care of large groups of refugees and the absolute priority of the produc-
tion sites was to serve the needs of the battle front.
The government (Sovnarkom) adopted a military-economic plan for the
third and fourth quarters of 1941 and for the next year, in particular for the
industry east of Volga, and in the Urals, Western Siberia and Kazakhstan.
The factory in practice stopped all production of civilian items and instead
produced ammunition, lorries and tanks. The Ordzhonikidze Machine-
building Works (Factory No. 78 or ‘Stankomash’) quickly changed its
workshops and started production of shells and chassis for the KV tanks.
Figure 91 Evacuation of the civilian population from Leningrad’s frontier areas

in April 1942, here seen at the station in Kobon.
9780230_208872_09_cha08.indd 220 6/27/2011 11:33:03 AM

The ‘Stankomash’ and Koliushchenko factories produced armour-piercing

shells for the BM-13 rocket artillery that the Russians nicknamed ‘Katiusha’
(Little Katarina) but which the Nazi soldiers called ‘Stalin-organs’
In the autumn of 1941, the Evacuation Council gave directives for
which factories and workers should be sent to Cheliabinsk. Approximately
200 industrial enterprises (and 700 enterprises altogether) were evacu-
ated to the Cheliabinsk region (oblast). In the spring of 1942, 427,700
refugees came to the region from other parts of the USSR. Strict centrali-
sation made it possible to avoid dispersal of scarce resources but in cer-
tain respects, many miscalculations were made. Too many enterprises
were located around the existing enterprises in the cities in the Urals or
demanded many new buildings. The energy resources in the Urals were
totally insufficient for the number of enterprises, which created new
problems that could have been avoided if the evacuated equipment had
been sent elsewhere.6
Of course, no one could follow in detail exactly when and to what
extent equipment arrived for the enterprises in Cheliabinsk. Some
documents are able to provide a general idea of how the local facto-
ries received hundreds of pieces of machinery, product parts and other
goods that simply remained unsorted on the factory yards.7
Entire factories’ equipment was sometimes redirected from one evac-
uation place to another. According to an order of 15 October 1941 the
‘Kalibr’ Factory was to be sent to Tashkent in Central Asia. The dis-
mounting started on the 19 October and was completed on 4 December.
The cargo consisted of 880 metal-cutting machines, 18 forging and
pressing machines and 78 machines for thermic treatment, plus many
smaller details and components. This cargo was sent on 185 railcars,
to which were added 40 cars with workers and engineers from the fac-
tory. On 6 November the first echelons had reached Tashkent and the
mounting of machinery for the new factory began. At that time, a new
order arrived stating that the enterprise should instead be relocated to
Cheliabinsk. On 3 December the trains started to arrive in Cheliabinsk
and by 12 January 1942 690 metal-cutting, ten forging and pressing
machines, plus 23 machines for thermic treatment had arrived – a total
of 723 units. However, only 370 of these had yet been loaded at the
intended new factory; the rest remained near the railway station. The
‘Kalibr’ factory in Cheliabinsk was to take over the halls that had begun
to be built for the new drama theatre of the city before the war broke
out. However, the party archives from Leningrad and a number of other
organisations had already been evacuated to these locations. Therefore,
much of December passed before the question of where to send the
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222 Tankograd
archives was solved. Only in mid-January, with a delay of more than

one month, was the factory equipment mounted in what would have
been the new theatre, with an area of 9800 square metres, which met
only 60 per cent of the factory’s requirements. An annex was built with
an area of 3000 square metres. Out of the 2700-strong workforce at
‘Kalibr’ in Moscow, only 650 workers, 170 engineers and technicians
and 50 clerks were evacuated to Cheliabinsk. This meant that the new
factory had to recruit 1650 qualified workers (millers, revolving lathe
operators, automatic lathe operators, grinders and so on). Many evacu-
ees and their families (530 out of 1510 persons) lived in the classrooms
of a basic school. Still, the final report from the Cheliabinsk representa-
tive of the State Planning Commission (Gosplan) shows how they man-
aged in this seemingly chaotic world of various pieces of equipment
from different enterprises to start production in January 1942 under
completely new conditions.
Thus, far too many evacuated workers and their families were liv-
ing in cities that were already struggling with enormous living and
provisioning problems in the 1930s. During the war years, 1942–1944,
the food situation and the provisioning and dwelling conditions were
almost catastrophic for the hundreds of thousands of people who lived
in Sverdlovsk, Nizhnii Tagil, Cheliabinsk and other cities in the Urals.
‘Evacuation points’ (evakopunkty) had been organised to receive those
arriving from Ukraine or other regions near the fronts in Russia. Many
evacuees were temporarily housed in school classrooms and corridors.
Thereafter, they lived together with other families in apartments that
would house more and more people. The workers and specialists who
were evacuated from Leningrad and Kharkov to the Cheliabinsk Tractor
Factory were required to share flats, or even rooms, with another fam-
ily, while others had to live in bathrooms, corridors or basements that
had become makeshift dormitories. The Russian term ‘packing together’
(uplotnenie) is used to describe this type of living arrangement and it
often happened that some of the workers at ChTZ had to ‘pack together’
repeatedly during the war to even smaller living spaces.8
Many internal refugees lost contact with their relatives. Letters
and enquiries to the authorities tell of mothers who had lost their
children during the evacuation. Refugees and wounded soldiers were
taken care of as well as possible in the many hospitals that had been
set up in schools and administration buildings. During these years,
the city authorities and the local NKVD directorate received innu-
merable questions concerning lost or missing relatives from various
parts of the country. Some had lost sight of each other when a train
9780230_208872_09_cha08.indd 222 6/27/2011 11:33:04 AM

had stopped at a station, while others had not seen each other since
a German air raid. As an example, a soldier named Chaskin, who was
being treated at a hospital in Cheliabinsk, asked the NKVD to search
for his mother, who had supposedly been evacuated from Leningrad
to Cheliabinsk. Soldiers’ wives asked for their three-to-nine-year-old
children who had been evacuated from Latvia. Another example con-
cerns Narutskaia and Glazova, who lost track of their evacuation train
during a stop in Smolensk, enquired as to which city that train had
been sent. These are merely a few examples of the many questions that
were sent to the information sector of the Cheliabinsk evokopunkt in
October 1941.9
With time, the authorities in the Soviet Union were able to form a
better overview of how the population had been evacuated from the
country’s western parts in 1941, and then prepared for their system-
atic return as these regions were liberated from the Nazi occupiers.10 By
April 1942 the Cheliabinsk region (oblast) had 427,700 evacuated per-
sons, most of whom were dispersed throughout the cities. By mid-1945,
the vast majority of them had moved back to their home towns.11
During the first, most chaotic, period food procurement in Cheliabinsk
was not even sufficient for those in the defence industry, who were enti-
tled to extra rations. As they worked in shifts of 11–12 hours, the goods
in the shops had usually sold out by the time they left the factories.
The trams in the city were overcrowded and often worn out. This cre-
ated delays in the public transit system and workers had to walk, often
up to 7 kilometres to the factories.12 In 1942, the city district around
the Kirov Works (formerly ChTZ) requested and set up their own bus
transport lines for the factory workers.13 From time to time, the most
evident needs were treated efficiently. In the spring of 1942, doctors,
police and representatives to the local soviets were ordered to organise
the cleaning-up of streets and gardens and to put the garbage on the ice
in the River Miass.14
Because of its many defence industries, the city of Cheliabinsk had
been reclassified with special security status, called a ‘regime town of
the first category’. This implied that restrictions were introduced regard-
ing who could live in the city. The intention was also to get near total
control of anyone who visited the city, even temporarily.15 For example,
former criminals who had served their sentences were not allowed to
live there. In some cases, the need for workers in the factories was so
great that these restrictions were ignored and the recruiters who trav-
elled to other cities and in the countryside did not check documents for
these matters.16
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224 Tankograd
Cheliabinsk could also aspire to a higher status in another sense

because of the tank industry’s importance for the whole country and
since many state authorities, institutions and culture groups had been
evacuated there. On 21 August 1943 Cheliabinsk was given the status
of a ‘city of republican rank’; that is, a centre for the Russian Socialist
Federative Soviet Republic. This implied that the city would receive
larger state budget subsidies for the further reconstruction of old build-
ings or the construction of new ones, or to radically improve the public
transport system, the water treatment station, the public saunas and
baths. A report on these matters indicated how worn out the transport
system was; out of 87 trams, only 26 to 30 were in use and 11 out of 18
trolley-buses were in need of substantial repairs.17 The director at the
Kirov Works, Isaak Zaltsman, tried to improve the transit system, at least
for the enterprise’s employees. He had Spartacus Street (today Lenin
Avenue), which ran from the factory area to the city centre, asphalted
and ensured that the capacity and timetable of the trams were adjusted
to meet the requirements of the factory.18
The formal change in Cheliabinsk’s status gave the city better oppor-
tunities to receive budget funds in order to improve its cultural life.
The party functionaries sent a request to Moscow authorities asking
that the theatre and writers unions should send more artists and poets
to perform in Cheliabinsk.19 During the war years, several theatre and
vocal ensembles stayed for longer periods in what had formerly been
regarded merely as a provincial small city. Among the repertoire of
the theatres were Western classics, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor,
Othello and The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare, Tartuffe by Molière
and plays by Schiller, Calderon de la Barca and Lopez de Vega. Standard
plays by the Russian classics Chekhov (The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard
and Uncle Vania), Leo Tolstoy and Mikhail Lermontov were often per-
formed, as were new Soviet dramas such as Pogodin’s The Chimes of the
Kremlin, Lukovskii’s Russian Sailors, and Svetlov’s 20 Years After. A pup-
pet theatre and an operetta theatre also opened.20 The artistic leader of
the theatre named after Tsvilling was E.B. Krasnianskii. He had moved
from Moscow and produced successful plays such as Durov’s Hope, The
Comedy of Errors, The Attack, Oleko Dundich and Three Sisters. In March
1944 the most important man in the city, regional party chairman
Nikolai Patolichev, sent a request to the central committee asking that
Krasnianskii be ordered to stay for another year or so in the city instead
of returning to Moscow. He protested that a less renowned theatre man,
Sokolov, would come instead of Krasniavskii. A letter from the regional
party committee to the sector for propaganda of the central committee
9780230_208872_09_cha08.indd 224 6/27/2011 11:33:04 AM

Figure 92 The opening of the Palace of Culture of the Railway Workers in the
city of Ust-Katav, 1952.
Figure 93 Nikolai Patolichev (1908–1989, sitting third from left) represented

a new type of party cadre who advanced and proved themselves in the heat of
World War II. Patolichev was first secretary in the Cheliabinsk regional party
committee (obkom). He is considered one of the most energetic regional party
secretaries and was appointed minister of foreign trade after the war, a post that
he held until the early 1970s.
9780230_208872_09_cha08.indd 225 6/27/2011 11:33:04 AM

226 Tankograd
referred to an earlier resolution on the importance of improving the

cultural level in industrial cities of Cheliabinsk’s magnitude to at least
the same as in the Soviet capital. Very little was accomplished, however.
Requests were also sent for more actors to be sent to the theatre groups
in Cheliabinsk, that the youth theatre receive more resources, that more
cinema halls be built and that renowned authors and actors be com-
manded to Cheliabinsk to write books and plays on the region and its
inhabitants during the war years.21
Working conditions in Tankograd
By the end of 1941, the labour force at the Kirov Works in Cheliabinsk
totalled 40,852 employees, 27,895 of whom were workers, 6922 engi-
neers and technicians, 2120 clerks and 3915 in other categories. There
were 14,121 women, 9315 of whom were workers and 1071 of whom
were engineers and technicians. Furthermore, there were some 2000
Red Army soldiers and 1000 prisoners from the Gulag penal colony on
the outskirts of the city.22 Cheliabinsk’s penal-labour colony, ITK No. 3 –
which was intended for petty criminals sentenced to up to three, occa-
sionally even five, years – had originally placed 1600 prisoners at the
disposal of the Kirov Works. Of these, more than 1000 worked directly
at the factory. The head of the ITK soon found reason to complain that
the factory had not fulfilled its obligations toward the Gulag. No fuel
had been delivered to the barracks and the dormitories were unheated
and lacked bedclothes. Many prisoners fell ill. Transport between the
barracks and the factory seldom functioned as expected. Similar com-
plaints arose frequently over the following years. Other reports show
that Gulag prisoners stole goods from the industrial workers, some-
times even with threats of violence. Conditions would improve only
with more intensive control at the workshops where the Gulag prison-
ers worked.23
The decree of 26 December 1941 from the Supreme Soviet declared
that workers, engineers and others in the defence industry and their sup-
pliers were to be considered as being mobilised on par with conscripts
in the army. Anyone who quit on their own initiative would be charged
just like an army deserter and would be punished according to wartime
laws. From the second half of 1942 onwards, the law was extended to
cover the coal, petrol and chemical industries and, from April 1943,
also included the railway and inland water transport systems. In the
end, however, these repressive measure could not completely influence
labour discipline or bind the workers to the factories. During the war
9780230_208872_09_cha08.indd 226 6/27/2011 11:33:05 AM

years, unauthorised absences and ‘desertions’ from the factories were

widespread. Many people were sentenced in absentia and were searched
for by the police with a sentence awaiting them. At regular intervals,
the regional authorities would emphasise how important it was that
workers did not leave their factories. On 29 June 1944 the Soviet gov-
ernment issued a decree with the telling title: ‘On eliminating failures
in the implementation of the decree of 26 December 1941’. In the same
manner, the Cheliabinsk regional soviet tried, in vain, to convince the
factories not to hire persons who had departed on their own initiative
from another factory. The fact that these directives had to be repeated
indicates how loosely the laws were applied in actual practice. The lack
of workers was too great and the knowledge of the bad living condi-
tions was widespread. As a result, new employers would protect their
recruited workers against charges of desertion. On 30 December 1944
a new decree proclaimed amnesty for anyone who had departed from
their workplace if they returned voluntarily to their factory.24
By 1 January 1943 there were 49,000 employee at the Kirov Works
in Cheliabinsk. Of these, 7500 had come from Leningrad, 3000 from
Factory No. 75 in Kharkov, 2050 from Stalingrad’s Tractor Factory and
1000 from enterprises in Moscow. A further 10,441 had been ‘mobi-
lised’, that is, sent to the factory instead of to the Red Army. The turno-
ver of labour was great in 1942. In 11 months, 29,080 people had been
newly recruited, while 21,807 had left the factory. No fewer than 1572
people were reported as having quit the factory on their own initia-
tive, in violation of the wartime laws. These ‘deserters’ were sentenced
in different ways, depending on the circumstances. Other enterprises
could attract workers by offering better living conditions, rooms or
flats.25 In many history handbooks on the Soviet Union, the labour
conditions are described as having been completely militarised by ‘dra-
conian’ labour laws, including the ones from 1940 regarding absences.
First, however, one should consider the requirement that production of
armaments should continue smoothly. Second, the application of the
laws was fairly pragmatic. Third, there were actually many reasons for
being absent from work, as is shown in the following table.
Although, in principle, the wartime decrees dispensed with the right
to ordinary and additional holiday, factory management continued to
approve leave on a large scale. ‘Authorised absence’ in the table refers
to the same form of holidays that had been allowed on short notice.
On the other hand, unauthorised and therefore illegal absence (progul
bez uvazhitelnych prichin) increased, from 415 persons and 820 persons
apprehended in the winter months to 2800–4000 persons in the sum-
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9780230_208872_09_cha08.indd 228
Table 5 Absences from the Kirov Works in Cheliabinsk, January–July 1942
Persons Workdays lost Of which social & Authorised

Total absence (progul) due to absence political work Holidays Maternity leave Illness absence
January 415 47,065 549 316 3.777 35,186 6922

February 761 48,278 942 283 3411 36,676 6034
March 820 59,886 911 521 3632 46,493 7328
April 1361 74,924 1348 462 3052 54,116 10,209
May 3200 98,761 2148 584 3277 71,056 11,895
June 2871 109,303 2058 764 2309 84,363 11,077
July 4129 107,453 2198 1692 2311 83,366 8,957
Total 13,557 545,670 10,144 4622 21,769 411,256 62,422
6/27/2011 11:33:05 AM
mer months of June and July. A partial explanation was that many work-
ers escaped to the countryside to help their relatives on the kolkhozy.
During the following winter (1942–1943), the Kirov Works reported
unallowed absences of 400–600 persons in 900–1000 cases per month.
The number of sentences for persons who had definitely quit their
workplace, who were often sentenced in absentia, was 2797. Of these,
1689 were tried as ‘deserters’, but in many cases were only punished
with reduced food rations.26 At the Kirov Works, as with other factories
in Cheliabinsk, the popular portrayal in textbooks of people who were
20 minutes late for work being sentenced to years in the Gulag is clearly
not the case. The usual punishment would be a couple of months of
forced labour at one’s own factory with reduced salary, not penal labour
in remote Gulag camps.
The major reasons for ‘desertions’ were noted as being (a) workers were
recruited to the factory but did not have enough physical strength or
qualifications, (b) bad housing and unsanitary conditions, (c) no care
shown to younger workers, (d) the militia being overburdened with
other crimes, (e) workers being lured to other factories in the vicinity
and (f) workers allowed short holidays to travel home not returning at
all.27
After the outbreak of the war, discipline, surveillance and control
inside the factory were increased and any misdemeanour could be
treated as a criminal act. The directors at the factories were also put
under stricter control. A report that included the phrase ‘unable to
fulfil the directives of the State Defence Committee GKO’ would be
considered by the NKVD a crime against the state and would lead to a
close check of that link in the production cycle. This often led manag-
ers to denounce any minor fault before the secret police exposed them.
In April–July 1942, eight directors within the ammunition industry
were arrested by the NKVD for breaches of production obligations,
including N. Serov, who was one of the managers at Factory No. 78 in
Cheliabinsk.28
When the men left for the army, their places in industry were taken
by women and young people of either gender. The civilian population
in Cheliabinsk was mobilised in several waves. On 13 February 1942 the
law on ‘mobilisation in wartime of city dwellers for work in production
and building activities’ was adopted, leading to many housewives, pen-
sioners and others being employed in industry. Only from August 1943
were the labour laws for these categories slackened when, for example,
working women with children under the age of eight years were allowed
one day off per week.29
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230 Tankograd
Elizaveta Kochergina recalled:
I was 16 years old in 1941. I was short and thin. When I and the other
teenagers arrived, the overseer at the No. 541 cartridge factory [in
wartime, all factories had numbers but no names, for security rea-
sons] looked at us and exclaimed, ‘Why have they sent us a nursery?’
There were few middle-aged persons at the factory but most were
young people and elderly persons. I worked at a machine that made
cartridges for automatic guns. If I could not reach the machine, they
put me up on a box. When after a while I could fulfil a double piece-
rate, the overseer changed his attitude. The workday was 12 hours
or more. And so it went on for four years. Without any days off or
holidays. It used to be like that: you arrived home at midnight and
by 8 o’clock in the morning you had to again be at the factory. We
were extremely tired. In order not to fall asleep, we used to sing by
the machines. But the worst thing was the hunger. We dreamt of at
least once eating a full meal. Towards the end of the war, my legs had
weakened. In May 1945 I was at a hospital.
Naturally, there was a lot of overtime, without compensation. In

a request from Factory No. 541 it was stated that due to the lack of
manpower, many workers worked up to 11 hours per day, with no days
off. In December 1942, 215 workers even fulfilled the norms of two
ordinary workdays in one day. The factory boasted 2200 workers who
overfulfilled the daily norms, 1450 of whom were in the category of
‘Stakhanovite workers’. Director Aleshin therefore demanded that the
factory should at least receive increased rations of foods and other goods
for these workers.30 All factories experienced a severe lack of manpower.
Towards the end of 1941, it was estimated that there were 25,865 evac-
uated persons who could be used in production, of whom 9200 had
graduated from institutes and trade schools. There were 1284 female
students from pedagogical institutes and 5763 pupils from the 9th and
10th grades in cities around the region.31
In the autumn of 1941 the Koliushchenko Works started to pro-
duce shells for the BM-11 rocket-artillery guns, which were mounted
on 1.5 ton lorries. They soon became known by the soldiers in the
Red Army as ‘Little Katarina’ (Katiusha). The shells were produced
in cooperation with the machine-building works – Factory No.
78 ‘Stankomash’ in Cheliabinsk, Factory No. 259 in Zlatoust, the
Mechanical Works in Kyshtym and the Cheliabinsk Factory for Metal
Constructions. 32
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The Koliushchenko Works also received a number of other defence

orders. Machinery from evacuated factories in the south of Russia had
been added to its own equipment. In order to start up production, after
the men had been drafted into the army, 1330 workers were recruited
in September and 3109 in October. Evacuated workers from the south
added another 1830 men to the workforce. Still, the management
lacked over 1200 qualified workers in 21 professions. The vacancies
were filled by young people who received a crash course in the trade at
the factory.
Vera Sheina was one of these workers, who made fins to the rocket
shells. ‘When you were welding, glowing metal would fly on to your
legs and feet,’ she said ‘It hurt terribly from the burns. On one occasion,
I stayed at home and was sick-listed because of the big burns. Then the
overseer came home and fetched me. With a bandage around one leg, I
sat down on a chair and welded rocket cases.’ Later, all workers received
protective clothes but there were still many accidents due to the lack of
elementary protective equipment.33
During the war, labour could be commandeered and redirected
between the factories in the Southern Urals. Even then, enterprises would
refuse to let some of their personnel be removed. Director Melekhin at
Machine-building Factory No. 54 in Zlatoust had made a list of his fac-
tory’s required labour, divided into 16 professions and totalling 1387
people. The regional party committee had sent out an order to remove
600 workers from the required professions, yet only 264 workers had as
yet arrived at the Zlatoust factory from Magnitogorsk, Chealiabinsk and
a few minor cities.34
After the enormous losses of the Red Army in 1941 2000 people born
in 1922, 1923 and 1924 were called up in February 1942. This created
additional problems at ChTZ because they had to let 90 persons who
had been exempt from the draft leave the factory, just as the nearby
Stankomash had to provide 80 workers.35
In October 1942, the factories in Cheliabinsk organised trade courses
for another 10,000 persons, mostly short courses for the mass education
of young people in the city but also for mobilised youth from the other
cities and villages in the region.36
Directors and leaders from 49 factories in the region gathered for a
grand meeting on 14 October 1942 to discuss education and procure-
ment for young people who had entered the industries after the outbreak
of the war. Frank reports discussed the frightening conditions in many
workshops. The houses for the workers had not received maintenance
and work clothes had not been provided. Many people slept in the large
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232 Tankograd
factory workshops because they lacked winter clothes or because the

journey back to their dormitories was too long. Baranov from Factory
No. 707 at Cheliabinsk gave an example of how he had met a 16-year-
old girl who worked at a complicated, imported machine. She did not
even look up as he approached but continued to work as steadfastly
as before. She told him that she had been barefoot for seven months
and had boils on her feet from frostbite. She had been evacuated from
Leningrad and she fulfilled all the production norms. Baranov encoun-
tered other similar cases and informed the management. It transpired
that there were 200 pairs of shoes and boots in stock but that no one
had thought of distributing them to the workers. In barracks at the
Kirov Works, inspections revealed that young women who had worked
for three to four years lacked boots. They had to walk barefoot to the
Figure 94 Schoolchildren at practical work in 1943 to produce cast iron forms.
9780230_208872_09_cha08.indd 232 6/27/2011 11:33:06 AM

factory to receive new ones and were sometimes even charged for hav-
ing lost their shoes. In the barracks, there were instances when bed
quilts and mattresses were lacking.37 On 3 December 1942 A. Goregliad,
one of the managers at the Kirov Works issued an order that 100 pairs
of solid felt boots (valenki) and 100 pairs of straw boots (lapti) should
be made, and that a centralised repair of up to 3000 pairs of shoes per
month should be organised, of which 400 pairs should be of ‘better
repair with leather’ for the Stakhanovite workers.38
To a certain extent, workers often quite simply left their workplace,
despite knowing that this was considered as severe a crime as desertion
from the army. Since there was a constant lack of labour, the supervi-
sors at other factories would disregard the fact that their new recruits
did not present their labour book or any certificate from their former
workplace. In November 1942, Filatov, the military prosecutor for the
NKVD’s internal troops, reported to the Ural’s military district’s prosecu-
tor, Blumfeldt, and the military prosecutor, Merkulov, that the number
of unsolved cases as of 1 October was 963 and that another 2832 cases
of desertion had been added during October. In total, there were 3795
cases to be solved in October, of which only 1119 had been checked so
far. Of these, 210 had been solved with the persons attending and 909
in absentia. As of 1 November prosecutor Filatov had 2517 undecided
cases. He made a clear statement that most of these desertions were
due to the miserable housing and living conditions. Having received
these ‘signals’ from the military prosecutor, the regional party commit-
tee in October inspected the defence industry factories to observe how
the workers lived, how they were clothed and what they were offered
to eat. These raids exposed a number of scandals. The situation in the
dormitories and dining rooms could easily explain why a whole group
of young workers from the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
had left Cheliabinsk.39
An order by Director Izaak Zaltsman of 27 August 1943 noted that a
check of the working conditions had exposed that youths under 16 years
of age were often forced to work overtime and night shifts but were not
paid at the proper rates. Far too often, young workers were given tasks
for which they were not qualified instead of being sent on trade courses
or to join work groups with higher piece-rates. Zaltsman’s order for-
bade youths from working overtime or night shifts. All youths born in
1928–1929 would thenceforth have a six-hour workday and would not
be allowed to work after 10 p.m. They should also be fed three times a
day. All claims of unpaid work should be settled immediately and pre-
miums should be paid. Children who were only 12 or 13 years old (born
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234 Tankograd
in 1930–1931) should be removed from some of the workshops. The

overseers were obliged to give them other jobs after some trade courses.
Deputy Director Zverev was to inspect the fulfilment of this order and
check that the children received better housing, shoes and clothes. A
general health check of all the young workers was carried out.40
Another order hinted at the working conditions and the goals
towards which the leaders were striving. On 21 March 1944 Director
Zaltsman signed an order, ‘with the purpose of fostering habits for
personal behaviour concerning the dress of overseers at the factory’.
The management should wear working suits of a pattern determined
by Zaltsman. As of 25 March wearing the uniform was obligatory for
workshop overseers and their deputies, assistant workshop overseers,
department chiefs, shift leaders, mechanics and energy technicians in
the workshops. No one was allowed to wear outdoor clothes in the
workshops. Zaltsman wanted everyone to arrive at work well dressed,
washed and clean shaven.41
During the war years, a number of new factories were built in
Cheliabinsk, albeit with great difficulties. According to the plans,
Factory No. 269 for the People’s Commissariat of the Aeroplane Industry
was to be ready at the end of 1941. However, far too few resources had
initially been given to the local building organisation, which, besides
the industrial constructions, also had to build new dwellings. There was
a great need for new rooms and apartments, with over 10,000 workers
and engineers still lacking their own housing. A stop-gap alternative
solution was to build barracks for 7000 workers.42
During the war, the People’s Commissariat of Defence NKO set up
special building battalions (stroibat), which recruited persons whose
health, age or other reasons meant they were not fit to fight in the
regular army units. The stroibat also contained formerly convicted
criminals or persons that the Soviet powers considered unreliable for
political and other reasons. Accordingly, it included formerly deported
peasants and youths from the Gulag ‘special settlements’ or ‘work-
ing villages’ (spetsposëlki, trudposëlki), as well as many new Soviet
citizens from the incorporated Baltic republics, Bessarabia, Western
Ukraine and Belorus. Another group consisted of Soviet citizens of the
same nationalities as those in the enemy coalition: Germans, Finns,
Hungarians, Italians and others. In the autumn of 1941, these build-
ing battalions were divided into working columns (rabochie kolonny)
and were distributed among other people’s commissariats. At the
beginning of 1942, there were over 120,000 persons in 20 such work-
ing columns.43
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Figure 95 The assembly hall for KV tanks.
In the early period, the city of Cheliabinsk was unprepared for hous-
ing and feeding all the persons in the building battalions and there was
not enough beds in the barracks. Food was insufficient for the build-
ing workers, many of whom did not receive proper winter and work-
ing clothes. During the first winter, so many people drafted to these
battalions lacked winter clothes that they had to stay indoors in the
barracks. In the 793rd Estonian Building Battalion, for example, 700 out
of the 1000 workers had to stay indoors.44 In 1943 young men from
the Central Asian Republics were also recruited to the building battal-
ions in Cheliabinsk because many of them were considered unfit for
service in the Red Army due to the fact that they did not understand
Russian, the command language, and did not have pre-military train-
ing. However, there were numerous problems for these building workers
in Cheliabinsk; they could not withstand the harsh climate and were
often sick. As a result, most of the Central Asian workers were demobi-
lised in 1944.45
The miserable conditions encouraged the workers to flee from their
building battalions, which led to them being reported as ‘desert-
ers’. In building battalions that predominantly contained Estonians,
Belorussians and Ukrainians from the recently annexed regions, there
were frequent reports of drunkenness, gang fights and go-slow work-
ing.46 In the privies and corridors, people wrote things like, ‘Down with
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236 Tankograd
Stalin, long live Hitler!’ In Building Battalion No. 65 at Factory No. 254
in Cheliabinsk, leaflets were distributed with calls to join the Hitlerite
army. No one was found guilty of having produced these hand-writ-
ten leaflets. In the same building battalions, theft of other prisoners’
belongings was common.
A report by the military prosecutor at the Cheliabinsk garrison dated
23 October 1943 Military Lawyer of the 3rd Rank, Ostapin, to Secretary
G.D. Saprykin at the Communist Party regional committee, sur-
veyed the most notorious cases. A total of 14 individuals had deserted
from the 765th building workers’ column in Chebarkul village, 55 from
the 776th column in the city of Zlatoust, 37 from the 793rd column in
Zlatoust, 15 from the 820th column in Kamensk and 28 from the 779th
column in Kamensk. As of 23 October 301 desertions had been reported
but only 133 persons had been found, arrested and sentenced; a special
department of the NKVD searched for the remaining deserters. Most of
these deserters from the workers’ columns were Estonian and so-called
‘Westerners’ (zapadniki); that is, from Western Ukraine and Belorus.
Many in the building battalions were classified as ‘socially alien’, that is
with a social background in the merchant class, representatives of the
free professions and, allegedly, former members of fascist parties from
Estonia and Poland. This report complained about the lack of politi-
cal propaganda among the building workers. It emphasised the lack of
elementary military orders but also complained of the material short-
comings that had caused frostbite wounds, the spread of diphtheria and
other illnesses due to unsanitary conditions.47
However, these building battalions did complete a number of new
factories under extreme conditions in a very short time. In 1942–1943,
for example, the OSMCh-22 battalion built the tube-rolling factory in
Cheliabinsk. Other battalions moved the equipment for a Bluming press
from the steel works in Mariupol in south Russia and other machinery
from the Izhërsk Works. This construction work was led by Mikhail
Shildkrot. To speed up these construction projects in Cheliabinsk,
building materials and scaffolding were appropriated from the inter-
rupted construction of the Palace of Congress in Moscow. With the
Cathedral of Christ the Saviour having been destroyed in 1931 – built in
the late 19th century to commemorate the victory over Napoleon – and
having Boris Iofan’s 300-metre high skyscraper topped with a 75-metre
statue of Lenin having been approved, the foundation works for the
palace had started in 1937. However, the clay in the soil meant that
enormous numbers of iron reinforcing bars were required and the work
was much more complicated than expected. When World War II broke
9780230_208872_09_cha08.indd 236 6/27/2011 11:33:07 AM

out, construction of the Palace of Congress was interrupted and the

iron reinforcing bars were moved to more urgent tasks. Thereafter, the
whole project was considered useless. Too many objections had arisen
to the grandiose city plan from the 1930s, of which the palace had been
only a small part.48
Soviet Germans build the new iron and

steel works in Cheliabinsk
It was already evident from the first period of the war in 1941 that
the defence industry would require much more metal than could be
produced at the existing iron and steel works. Some of these works had
to be evacuated and it was not possible to calculate how much of their
capacity could be restarted in regions that were beyond the German
airforce’s bombing range.
The iron ore in Bakal was regarded as an important resource for qual-
ity steel because of its low content of carbon and impurities, so con-
struction of an iron and steel works was started there. However, due
to the lack of investment capital and labour, the construction of this
second iron works (in addition to the Magnitogorsk Works) was inter-
rupted in the mid-1930s. In early 1939 the 18th Communist Party
Congress decided, in principle, that the Bakal quality steel works should
be completed because its product was dearly needed for the airplane,
tank, car and tractor industries. An important factor in the discussions
was the location of the factory far behind any conceivable front lines.
The Cheliabinsk regional party committee urged that construction of
the factory should start as soon as possible. The iron and steel works
in Magnitogorsk had mainly produced ordinary steel and only after
the transfer of a bluming press from Mariupol in the autumn of 1941
could rolled steel be produced there. The loss of the Soviet iron and steel
works during the first months of war spurred the authorities to build the
Bakal factory as soon as possible. The building site was near the village
of Pershino, 10 kilometres north-east of Cheliabinsk. According to the
first plan, the factory would only have been ready in 1945. Construction
started in February 1942, at which time the building organisation was
called Cheliabmetallurgstroi and the plant’s name was changed to the
Cheliabinsk Metallurgical Factory with coke works, blast furnaces, roll-
ing mills and other workshops. As early as 19 September 1943 the first
steel melt was received from the No. 1 electric furnace.49
This had been accomplished with the use of NKVD resources. A
special camp, Bakalstroi, was founded on 25 January 1941 with A.N.
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238 Tankograd
Figure 96 The labour-mobilised Soviet Germans (trudarmeitsy) lived in barracks

such as these in the labour camp north of Cheliabinsk.
Komarovskii as its first leader. Much of the building equipment was

moved from another NKVD building site near Stalingrad and most of the
labour force at Bakalstroi were Soviet Germans from the former Volga-
German Autonomous Republic who had been mobilised at the start of
the war. In accordance with a decree of August 1941 the Volga Germans
were not taken into the Red Army but were instead ‘mobilised for work’
(trudmobilizovannye) or to build factories. The Soviet leaders did not trust
their German citizens, most of whom were descendants of Germans
who had come to Tsarist Russia in the late 18th century. In August 1941
it was decided that the people in the autonomous German region on the
Volga should be deported to other parts of the Soviet Union. The Soviet
Germans were sent to special zones in the Urals and Western Siberia.
The ‘labour soldiers’ (trudarmeitsy) were placed in camps that were
very similar to the ordinary Gulag forced labour camps. The first
German ‘labour soldiers’ arrived in Cheliabinsk in January–February
1942.50 These men, who came from as far as Kazakhstan and other parts
of Central Asia, were sent to labour armies due mainly to their lack of
knowledge of the Russian language and their lack of pre-military train-
9780230_208872_09_cha08.indd 238 6/27/2011 11:33:07 AM

ing. The new wartime laws were therefore discriminatory against Soviet
citizens of German, Romanian, Finnish and Hungarian nationalities;
although they had not committed any crime, their fate was decided
by the mere suspicion that some of them would be easy prey for Nazi
German propaganda. Similar security measures were taken in the
United States against its citizens of Japanese origin.
Some material from the NKVD’s informants inside the camp in
Cheliabinsk, as well as surveys of censored correspondence from the
camp, indicated that the atmosphere among ‘labour soldiers’ was often
pro-German until 1943.51 It is only possible to guess their mentality if
these Germans had been part of the retreating Soviet army in autumn
1941 or during the Battles of Kiev and Moscow. Similarly defeatist or
pro-German expressions or hopes for a German victory had also been
noted among some kolkhoz peasants before and in the first phase of the
German-Russian war.52
An iron and steel works was built in record time 1942–1943 by the
forced labour of Soviet Germans, who worked side by side with the Red
Army’s building battalions and a small number of free workers, overseers
and specialists. The ‘labour soldiers’ were in fact part of the NKVD Gulag
system.53 Cheliabmetallurgstroi was a concentration camp surrounded
by high barbed wire and the workplace was surrounded by armed guards
with dogs. The labourers were brought from their barracks to the build-
ing site under the supervision of a convoy of soldiers. Work quotas were
set extremely high and severe repressive measures were taken against
any attempt to protest. These extreme conditions caused a high mortal-
ity rate. In February 1944, Cheliabmetallurgstroi counted 34,605 ‘labour
soldiers’ who lived in virtual isolation from the nearby city in their bar-
racks. NKVD had decided that whatever the cost in terms of human lives,
the new steel works should be completed as soon as possible. Five electric
steel blast furnaces were complete in the fourth quarter of 1942 and two
more blast furnaces were equipped in the second quarter of 1943.
Formally, the Soviet Germans were not prisoners but were mobilised
for work at the home front. By and large, most ‘labour soldiers’ changed
their attitudes over time, at least as far as can be ascertained from the
reports of NKVD. They had a more positive attitude to work and many
skilled specialists in various professions advanced proposals for ration-
alisation of the working process. Many of them would later advance to
leading positions at the Cheliabinsk Metallurgical Factory (ChMZ, now-
adays called MEChEL) or at the Cheliabmetallurgstroi building trust. In
the late 1940s this trust was moved from the Ministry of the Interior to
the Ministry for Building. In 1945 an order from Cheliabmetallurgstroi
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240 Tankograd
revealed the many proposals for rationalisations that had been made by
the mobilised Germans in 1944. Many German engineers, technicians
and qualified workers had received various premiums (fur jackets, sum-
mer suits, boots etc.).54
After Komarovskii, Iakov Rapoport (1898–1962) became the chief of
the building project at Cheliabinsk. He was born into a Jewish clerk’s
family and received a four-year college education in Voronezh. By
August 1918 he was conducting pre-trial investigations for the Cheka
and he advanced to become a member of the collegium of the local
branch of the secret police in Voronezh. Rapoport held various posts in
Voronezh’s secret police, some of which included control of the regional
industry. From 1922 onwards, he led the OGPU economic directorate
and was responsible for its report on the situation in Soviet industry,
transport and agriculture. From 1 June 1926 Rapoport was deputy head
of the OGPU committee for the camps for political prisoners and, from
July 1930, was head of its production sector. In July 1934 he was deputy
head of the fast-growing main directorate of the correction camps, the
Gulag, and had experienced the problems of leading the Baltic Sea–White
Sea canal construction project. He proved capable of being responsible
for Gulag’s extensive hydrotechnical projects – the water reservoir and
dams at Rybinsk and Uglich. As a result, he was appointed deputy head
of the new Gulag unit, the production directorate for hydro-electric
construction and the camps organised in the vicinity of those building
sites. After the start of the German-Russian war, Rapoport was head of
the Gulag directorate for construction of military defence buildings. He
then directed the NKVD building project of a new iron and steel works
in Nizhnii Tagil and was appointed head of the Tagillag, the forced
labour camp that was organised to cope with this task. From 29 April
1946 Rapoport was head of Cheliabmetallurgstroi.55
Rapoport described the ‘contingent of prisoners’ as mostly consist-
ing of ‘labour soldiers’, that is, Soviet Germans, and of criminals who
had been sentenced to long Gulag terms. In addition, many German,
Italian, Hungarian and other POWs, as well as interned Germans, had
been detained in Eastern Prussia. The proportion of able-bodied prison-
ers increased in 1944, while the number of sick and weakened prisoners
fell as general health improved in the camp. Rapoport noted that there
was still an extremely high mortality and sickness rate in Camp No. 68.
The camp leaders were criticised for not having procured enough food
to keep the prisoners fit for heavy labour. Rapoport felt that the new
prisoners from Eastern Prussia were mostly member of the Nazi party or
the Gestapo. ‘We must understand that these guys have been taken here
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to work, not for us to do any correctional education for them’, he said.

This was in contrast to the ordinary German POWs, who took part in
a number of propaganda courses in order to turn them into convinced
anti-fascists. The leaders of Camp No. 68 were instructed to improve the
everyday conditions for its prisoners, appoint new foremen from their
own ranks and divide the prisoners into companies and battalions.56
Labour-mobilised Germans also worked at the coal mines in Kopeisk,
at Cheliabinskugol, Korkinugol, Korkinshakhtstroi and other produc-
tion sites. After the war, the status of the work mobilised Germans
changed somewhat, as they were put on a par with exiled peasants and
held in the category of special colonists (spetsposelentsy). In January
1949, the Cheliabinsk region contained 384,400 Soviet Germans and
their families, who had been sent there during the war. These ‘special
settlers’ did not have internal passports and were not free to travel out-
side the special settlements without permission of the local comman-
dant, to whom they had to report on a regular basis. Only in 1956 did
they receive the same civil rights as other Soviet citizens and have their
special status annulled.57
Prisoners of war in Cheliabinsk
The countless German, Hungarian and Italian POWs captured by the

Red Army from 1941 onwards were taken to special reception camps
in the Urals and Siberia. Depending on their skills, professions, work-
ing capability and health, they were then distributed to various
labour camps that were organised by the Directorate for Prisoners of
War and Internees (Russian abbreviation GUPVI, Glavnoe Upravlenie
Voennoplennykh i Internirovannykh), a special section within the People’s
Commissariat for Internal Affairs, NKVD. For several reasons, this direc-
torate should not be mixed up with the Gulag camp administration.
The conditions for the POWs were regulated by international conven-
tions, which the USSR had agreed to follow. German, Hungarian and
other enemy state POWs were working at the Cheliabinsk Tank Factory
and other factories at least from autumn 1944 onwards.58
The countryside
Most of the called-up men were from the countryside. In 1941 there
were over 2700 kolkhozy, 161 machine and tractor stations (MTS) and
92 sovkhozy in Cheliabinsk region. Towards the end of the war, only 876
kolkhozy, 74 MTS and 41 sovkhozy were still functioning. A larger number
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242 Tankograd
of those who remained to work in the countryside towards the end of

the war were women, the elderly and very young people. Most men in
the kolkhozy had been called up to the Red Army. The composition of the
able-bodied population on the kolkhozy in Cheliabinsk oblast changed
drastically. In 1939, there were 206,000 able-bodied males and 231,700
females. By the end of 1941 the corresponding figures were 91,200 and
199,500. By 1942 the male workforce was 25,400 and the female work-
force was 75,100. These numbers dropped to 18,200 and 71,100 in 1943
and 18,600 and 66,600 in 1944. By 1945 there were 27,200 able-bodied
men and 66,800 able-bodied females.59 In 1941, there were 161 machine
and tractor stations in the oblast. In the first six months of the war,
24,500 tractor drivers, 5500 drivers of harvesters and 24,000 leaders
at tractor brigades were mobilised. These specialists were replaced by
women, who were given short training courses. A total of 12,400 ‘mekha-
nizatory’ were educated. Of the 10,868 tractor drivers in 1944, 7220 were
women and 1702 out of 2378 ‘kombainery’ (drivers of harvesters) were
women.
At the outbreak of the war in 1941, the kulak families in the Cheliabinsk
region that had been exiled during the forced collectivisation in 1930–1931
(a total of 46,900 people) lived in 29 so-called ‘labour villages’ (trudposëlki),
which were directed by eight regional commandants. From 1938 onwards
the children of these former kulaks were allowed to apply for passports
and were given civil rights (even though this was a bureaucratic proce-
dure and linked to political conditions). At first, none was drafted into the
Red Army but the heavy Soviet losses in 1941 forced a change in attitude.
From 1942 even former kulaks and their children were mobilised into the
Soviet armed forces. Russian historian Viktor Zemskov, who has written a
comprehensive study of the ‘special settlers’, estimated that approximately
half the number of men who were old enough for military service were
actually called up. Other men and women from the ex-kulaks’ ‘labour
villages’ were obliged to do the work that the NKVD command ordered.
Such ‘special contingents’ were used during the war on sectors that had
intensive demand for labour – building factories, new railway lines or in
forestry. With regard to forestry, it was actually the Communist Party that
decided how this form of the ‘camp economy’ should be organised. As
an example, in August 1942 the regional party committee ordered that
55 families from these ‘trudposëlki’ in Magnitogorsk, Karabash and other
places be transferred to the regional building trust. During the war, these
ex-kulaks were to live in the vicinity of factories, mines and building sites,
where they worked closely with other workers. This was against the NKVD
principle of isolating ‘socially alien elements’ from the rest of society as
much as possible. In this manner, the concept of a ‘special contingent’ lost
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some of its original meaning. From 1942–1943, ex-kulaks who had been
deported were allowed to join the Red Army, which gave them a form of
rehabilitation.60
Other ‘special settlers’ had been exiled to Cheliabinsk in 1939–1940
from Poland and the former Baltic republics. The invasion of Poland in
September 1939 was partly justified by the unfair peace treaty after the
Polish-Russian war in 1920, when western parts of Ukraine and Belorus
had been separated from the Soviet Republic. At the same time, the Soviet
power in the new territories pursued a conscious policy of undermining
what was left of the Polish state during the interwar period, through bru-
tal purges and deportations of a large number of Poles to the interior of
the USSR. In total, almost 400,000 Polish citizens were exiled, of whom
134,000 were sent to camps and prisons and 243,000 were forced to build
and live in so-called ‘special villages’ (spetsposëlki). Approximately 40,000
Poles were sent to the Urals, mostly to places near Sverdlovsk and Molotov
(now Perm). Some 200 Polish families ended up in the coal-mining town
of Kopeisk near Cheliabinsk. Immediately after the German invasion of
the Soviet Union, the security regime was strengthened in these ‘special
villages’. A decree of 12 August 1941 gave amnesty to all Polish citizens
who were designated as ‘prisoners of war’ or prisoners ‘on other grounds’
and they had their status changed to merely refugees. Some of them
joined the Polish army formed in the Soviet Union that left the country
in 1942, while most of them returned to Poland after 1945.
Food and Health conditions

The food situation worsened drastically during the first years after the
German invasion and occupation of Ukraine and Southern Russia.61 Even
in the Northern Urals there was widespread famine, particularly in the
countryside.62 From the start of the war the sections for workers’ procure-
ment ORS (otdel rabochego snabzhenija) – which had existed in 1932–1936 as
a closed distribution system for everyone within a factory, administration
or department but then closed as consumer goods were more available –
were re-established. The ORS were again responsible for the distribution
of goods from centralised stocks to the employees and had their own din-
ing halls, shops, stocks and plantations. They were also responsible for
the workers’ childrens’ dining halls. Every enterprise in Cheliabinsk was
obliged to provide several hundred portions of food to the children in the
nearby city district. On 22 January 1943 the State Defence Committee,
GKO, issued a decree on the ‘increased fight against the embezzlement of
food and industrial products’. The fact that such decrees had to be issued
indicates the widespread and systematic misuse and the lack of social con-
trol regarding how food was actually distributed.
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244 Tankograd
In the first winter of the war, the sickness and mortality rates among
the children due to pneumonia, cholera and intestinal illnesses increased
alarmingly.63 The authorities in Cheliabinsk noted that children had
been under-nourished and that far too few children had access to the
public dining halls in the city districts. Therefore, the machine-building
works Factory No. 78 (Stankomash) was obliged to arrange to feed 1500
children of its employees and others in the city district surrounding the
factory. The youngest children were to receive this food at home, while
those between five and 12 years of age could choose between eating at
home or in the mornings at the factory’s dining hall.64
A rationing system for food was introduced at the outbreak of the war
and food was also sold through the internal shops at the factories. Rules
on additional rationing were introduced in April–December 1942.65
On 10 June 1942 the city party committee, based on recommendations
from Professor Gubergrits, urged all factory dining halls to increase the
vitamin content in the food, for example, by adding onions and by
preparing concoctions of pine needles to be distributed at every meal.66
Every worker was entitled to 400 millilitres of this drink each day.67
The deficit situation led to a change in the character of criminality
in Cheliabinsk during the war years. Thefts of food and ration cards
became more frequent. There were widespread problems with the
Gulag prisoners, who could walk around in the factories, offer goods to
the workers only to swindle them, threaten them with knives and steal
their ration cards.68 The authorities struggled against the rising tide of
new criminality among the many orphans. A curfew was introduced for
under-aged children after 9 p.m. Children were forbidden from trading
goods or doing jobs such as shoe-polishing and the like.69 During the
war years, schoolchildren were sent in an organised way to work on the
kolkhozy during the summers. Tens of thousands of children helped the
peasants clear the fields of weeds and with harvesting.
In order to alleviate the food situation, the authorities encouraged
and supported the use of individual farmland for city dwellers. The
workers were allowed to have their own allotments outside the city
and kolkhoz members were allowed to have large private plots. This
soon became very popular; it was born out of sheer necessity but later
became a favourite leisure pastime. Practically all the industrial workers
in Cheliabinsk received their own allotment during the war years.70 The
enterprises also set aside part of their workforce in order to grow veg-
etables and potatoes for the needs of the factory canteens. Furthermore,
some factory workers were tasked as watchmen for the private plot areas
in order to prevent stealing.71
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Certain areas outside Cheliabinsk were given over to the employees’

allotments. On 15 April 1942 the city authorities designated 3754 hec-
tares for individual plots for the workers. The city also provided the
workers with seeds for vegetables and potatoes, with priority going to
members of the defence industry, for evacuees from other cities and for
invalids.72 The directors of the factories were responsible for the actual
distribution of these allotments to workers. The factories were also to
organise transport to and from the allotments during the summertime.
Because there was a great shortage of salt during the war, each employee
received 2 kilograms of salt, so that cabbages, cucumbers and tomatoes
could be preserved for wintertime.73
During the war years, the growth of allotments in the Cheliabinsk
region was substantial, as shown in the following table:
Table 6 Evolution of workers allotments
1940 1942 1943 1944
Number of growers (thousands) 200,000 276,200 476,000 514,000

Area (thousand hectares) 20.1 22.5 30.0 41.7
In 1945, 43,000 hectares were planted with potatoes and vegetables and
the harvest in the Cheliabinsk region was approximately one-third of
the harvest of the whole region. The inhabitants were estimated to have
harvested approximately 250 thousand tons of potatoes and vegetables
from these plots.74
Certain elements of everyday life are seldom reflected in the archival
documents. The memoirs of Iakov Goldstein, a mechanic who stayed
on at the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory after the war, include an episode
that highlights how some matters are often forgotten in historiography.
The Kirov Works had developed an extensive system of direct product
exchange with some kolkhozy in the region. One day, five young men
were sent from the factory to a kolkhoz to exchange some industrial
products for food. When a whole week had passed without any sign
of the boys, their colleagues at the factory started to worry. However,
some days later, the boys finally arrived, loaded with large sacks full of
potatoes, beets and dairy products. After a timid introduction, the boys
became more open about how the lonely women at the kolkhozy had at
first treated them with food and drinks, and then showed them their
appreciation in other ways for several days in a row.75
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246 Tankograd
To detail the demographic situation at the Soviet home front would

require a separate chapter. As mentioned, mortality rose as a conse-
quence of the under-nourishment of the population and the related
decrease in immunity against sicknesses. The birth rate also fell as a
consequence of the war. The number of live registered births is pre-
sented in the following table for the cities and the countryside (num-
bers in thousands).76
The demographic balance between men and women changed dra-
matically during the war. There were far fewer men than women in
terms of those who were fit for work in the countryside; there were
62,955 men (aged 16 to 55) and 138,468 women (aged 16 to 49). If chil-
dren older than 12 are included, the workforce in the region’s villages
was close to 270,000. The cultivated area had shrunk drastically.
In the spring of 1944, many people had used flour from grain that had
been left on the fields through the winter months, which caused an epi-
demic of septic tonsillitis in Brodokalmak, Nagaibak, Chesmensk, Varnensk
and other places. The regional authority sent scores of doctors and nurses
to cure the patients, while new flour was distributed to these districts.77
Table 7 Nativity in Cheliabinsk region (except stillborns), thousands
Year 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
Cities 45.9 44.7 30.0 13.6 13.2 19.6

Countryside 72.3 63.5 33.4 8.9 7.3 9.7
Total 118.2 108.2 63.4 22.5 20.5 29.2
Figure 97 Red Cross nurses (photo from 23 June 1940).
9780230_208872_09_cha08.indd 246 6/27/2011 11:33:08 AM

Hunger and exhaustion, and its symptoms, such as dystrophics, among

large parts of the population in the Urals were frequently reported by
NKVD and other organisations, particularly towards the end of 1943.
The regional party chairman, Nikolai Patolichev, called for a series of
countermeasures but this solved only the worst procurement problems.
Approximately two to three per cent of the workers, even in the defence
industry, were sick and at risk of dystrophy. On 12 April 1944 a survey at
the factories showed that a significant proportion of the workers could
be characterised as having dystrophy or as being in ‘a pre-dystrophic
situation’. At some factories, up to a quarter of the workers suffered from
under-nourishment to such an extent that their health was in danger.
The main reason for the spread of diseases had been neglect of elemen-
tary sanitary and hygiene requirements. The food in the dining halls
had a very low calorie content and little protein. The recommendation
to add vitamin drinks made of pine needles had been ignored. Reports
from NKVD inspectors noted that the ventilation systems in many
factories were out of order, meaning that the air was filled with dan-
gerous gas and dirt. The factory management was urged to follow the
decree regarding time off from work: at least two days per month for
the defence industry and four days at other factories. The dormitories
should be repaired and cleaned and the dining halls provided with bet-
ter food.78 The pharmaceutical factory in Cheliabinsk was ordered to
prepare 1.5 million doses of vitamin C. In May 1945, it was noted that
the food situation at the factory dining halls had improved, with an
average energy content of 3000 calories per day compared with fewer
than 2000 calories per day in 1943.79
Absence due to sickness at the Kirov Works in Cheliabinsk during the
first half of 1942 had been described as ‘colossal’ in the official report,
which showed the following statistics for the 40,000-plus employees:80
Number of cases Lost working hours
Influenza 6752 46,785

Chest pain, tonsillitis 510 3745
Furunculosis 1245 15,314
Rheumatism 314 4510
Tuberculosis 369 7871
Malaria 53 484
Intestinal infections 810 7059
Eye diseases 350 2115
Infections 60 1536
Others 6144 72,298
Total 16,607 161,717
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248 Tankograd
In the autumn of 1942, a garrison doctor warned of the spread of spot-

ted fever, as new groups of soldiers had arrived from heavily regions
with high rates of infection.81 In the early summer of 1943, there was
a rapidly growing number of cases of dysentery and spotted fever.
There was insufficient preparedness for disinfecting houses and other
sources of the epidemics. A group of 13 doctors and 12 assistants were
instructed to form five teams to stop the epidemics, inspect the workers’
barracks and other localities and carry out a thorough sanitisation.82 A
special order from the commander of the Urals military district forbade
Red Army soldiers from travelling in the trams in Cheliabinsk. Barracks
were to be cleaned much more carefully and all uniform items were to
be disinfected once a week. Only boiled water was allowed as drinking
water.83
Health care at the factories in the defence industry was regulated
centrally by a decision of 12 November 1941 that the local health
care centres at the factories should be guided by instructions from
the Republican People’s Commissariats for Health. However, many of
these centres had only very general directives concerning their obli-
gations. The hospital near the tractor factory (and then by the Kirov
Works) was open not only for employees but for everyone who lived in
the city district around it. One priority was to reduce the number of
sickness among the workers and avoid accidents at the workplace. The
doctors were also obliged to inspect workplaces from the point of view
of health conditions. During the first war years, it was impossible to
reduce the number of people who fell sick with tuberculosis, malaria
and intestinal illnesses. During all the war years, the sickness rate was
between 60 and 110 per 1000 workers. In 1944, the very young work-
ers who had been forced to work overtime and at night were taken to
the hospital and given additional nourishing food. They were given
proper clothes and shoes and the factory was obliged to issue new
directives regarding working hours for youths.84 In the summer of
1943 over 3000 children had the opportunity to live at a ‘pioneer’s
camp’ at Lake Smolino and at children’s sanatoriums in the Southern
Urals, where the general strengthening of their health was combined
with work in the garden plantations and collecting healthy herbs and
berries in the forests.85
On April 20 1944 Director A.F. Mokhov at the Cheliabinsk Electrode
Factory sent a letter to I.I. Pertsev, at the main aluminium directorate at
the People’s Commissariat of Non-ferrous Metals. The letter reported on
the health situation and how the workers could be distributed according
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to their working capability. His survey accounted for 1012 workers, as

well as those who had been commanded from the Gulag correctional
labour colony. Of these, 124 were ‘distrofiki’ or ‘pre-distrofiki’, and were
therefore totally unfit for any but the lightest forms of labour. Thirty-
nine workers were over 55 years and could only do specific work, while
31 were under 16 years of age and 17 workers had been commandeered
as drivers or repairmen for other factories. This meant that the actual
workforce was only 801 persons. The 80 persons from the Gulag colony
were very difficult to discipline and 31 criminals had deserted. Director
Mokhov asked the people’s commissar, P.F. Lomako, to intervene so
that at least 200 workers would be sent to the electrode factory, as this
was prerequisite for fulfilling the production plans.86
In the winter of 1943 so many wounded soldiers had died at the mili-
tary hospital from the 151st Division that many had to be buried with-
out coffins. Lieutenant-Colonel Zubenko demanded that the city soviet
speed up coffin production, as burials without coffins was categorically
prohibited.87 On 14 July 1943 it was reported that many soldiers who
had died at some of the hospitals in Cheliabinsk, Zlatoust and Troitsk
had been buried in mass graves without following the rules that they be
buried at specially designated places for fallen Red Army soldiers.88
The political information sphere in the Urals
Everyday life in Cheliabinsk during the war naturally had a lot of politi-
cal activity. The Communist Party was responsible for both propaganda
and providing information to the people. The party’s activists travelled
to hundreds of factories and kolkhozy in the region and, from the out-
break of war, gave short speeches on current affairs, as well as more
prepared lectures according to guidelines on various themes concern-
ing the war. These included the role of the Soviet Union in world affairs,
dissolutionary tendencies in the fascist bloc and the strength of the
Allied Powers.89 The staff party lecturers were Gubnitskii, Iakemenkov,
Fomin and Vanicek, as well as Filatov from the NKVD higher party
school. Some 20 other party members gave a total of 388 lectures
between March and June 1944, of which 108 were for active party mem-
bers, 114 at industrial enterprises, 33 on kolkhozy and just as many at
machine and tractor stations. Forty-seven lectures were presented to
railway employees and ten to groups from the intelligentsia. Later, they
added lectures about the liberation of the occupied parts of the Soviet
Union and the reconstruction work in the destroyed cities and villages,
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250 Tankograd
as substantial aid started to be sent from the factories in the Cheliabinsk

region to these places.90
Also of interest are the statistics from the Communist Party regarding
how many people attended these lectures. For example, 8196 speeches
and lectures in the countryside had a total audience of 524,238, accord-
ing to a report to the party regional committee. On the other hand,
the structure of the lecture series ‘The Foreign policy of the USSR’ gives
an indication of how the people viewed the history of international
relations. The subjects were: (1) Germany’s defeat in World War I and
the Versailles Peace conditions, (2) the Middle East in World War I, (3)
the Far East after World War I and the Washington Conference, (4) the
foreign policy of the Soviet Union during the world economic crisis
1929–1932, (5) two hotbeds [Germany and Japan] for a new world war
and (6) the Soviet foreign policy in 1933–1934.91
The party’s propagandists were then, as they also had to do much
later, required to report the questions that were put to them at these
meetings. These reports provide hints as to how well informed the peo-
ple of ‘Tankograd’ actually were about the global situation. In June 1944,
one such report included the following questions. What positions have
the neutral states of Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey taken? How are
relations between Germany and Japan? Where are de Gaulle’s troops?
How has the resignation of Badoglio been interpreted? What govern-
ment currently exists in Italy? Has Japan had victories in its war with
the United States? Why did the United States break off diplomatic rela-
tions with Finland? Does Germany have many rocket airplanes? How
will the rocket-airplane (V-1) be fought against? Do the Germans have
radio-guided tanks? Have the Germans used rockets on our front? For
how long will the food resources in Germany be sufficient? What are the
chances that Roosevelt will be re-elected as president? Will the Germans
start a chemical war? Can the landing of the Allied troops in northern
France be called a second front? How many German divisions are still
active today? How many of these divisions are positioned against the
Soviet troops? Where is Ernst Thälman [the German communist leader
arrested in 1933]? Is there a risk that Japan will attack us during the
decisive battles against Germany? What new military technology has
appeared in Germany?’
The audience seems to have been just as interested in international
developments in July 1944, judging by their questions, which included
the following. Where did the assassination attempt at Hitler take place
and how was it done? What caused the attempted assassination and how
did the situation in Germany change after that? What power will be
9780230_208872_09_cha08.indd 250 6/27/2011 11:33:09 AM

established in Germany after her defeat? Can a socialist state be estab-

lished across the world? How is Japan doing in its war against China?
How will China’s defeats and its weak initiatives in the war against Japan
be explained? Is there a revolutionary army in China led by the com-
munists? Why are the Allied troops advancing so slowly in northern
France? How many German divisions are fighting in Normandy, and
is that a second front? Will the Allies advance claims on France con-
cerning its territory and its colonies after the liberation of France? Are
there contradictions between the Democratic and Republican parties in
the USA concerning domestic and foreign policy? When, approximately,
will the war finish?
It can be interpreted from these questions that there was a fairly good
understanding of the most important changes in the international
arena and of the main battles on the European continent and in Asia.
More detailed analysis of the Soviet press, central newspapers and the
regional press in the Urals would make it possible to reconstruct the
wartime information sphere. At the moment it is possible only to sketch
an outline of the people’s knowledge and world views. It is possible that
the wartime situation called for more straightforwardness and outspo-
keness; it would not have been possible to lie about the disasters in 1941
or the losses in 1942 before the Battle of Stalingrad. Many people in
Cheliabinsk probably had their own sources of knowledge in the Red
Army, despite the censorship of army secrets.
Mass sport activities

Despite all the hardships at the factories during the war for the work-
ers, engineers and technicians, there was time for other activities. On
8 August 1942 a ‘Spartakiad’ in military sports was organised for the
employees at the Kirov Works. For many years, the prestigious GTO
medal had been awarded. GTO stood for Gotov k trudu i oborone (‘Ready
for work and defence’) and the medal was awarded after tests in run-
ning, throwing, shooting and a military steeplechase. Every workshop
could form a team with as many participants as they wished but only
the ten best results were counted in the competition between the teams.
The ‘Spartakiad’ included the following branches of athletics: the 100
and 1000 metres (500 metres for women), throwing blank grenades,
high jump and long jump as well as a military steeplechase. The indi-
vidual athletics events were the 400 and 5000 metres (100 and 1000
metres for women), discus, shotput, triple jump and standing long
jump. The factory also organised competitions in volleyball with teams
from several workshops.92
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252 Tankograd
A Spartakiad for the Urals was organised on 25–29 July, 1943 with
participants from the three regions, Sverdlovsk, Molotov (later Perm)
and Cheliabinsk. Cheliabinsk had 53 participants, chosen after trial
games on 3–4 July and training camps in July for the light ath-
letes, gymnasts, boxers, basketball and football teams and cyclists.
Sverdlovsk won the overall games; Cheliabinsk had winners in box-
ing, cycling and gymnastics and also won the football game against
the Sverdlovsk team.93
Wartime spin-off effects on higher education

The students at the institutes in Cheliabinsk were mobilised during the
first war winter to assist with the unloading of evacuated machinery and
equipment at various enterprises, which meant that they missed part of
their education schedule that year. Thereafter, the institutes tried to
give as complete courses as possible, given the special requirements in
wartime. A mechanical machinery institute was founded in 1943 with
two faculties: a tank technological and mechanical-technical faculty.
This institute was primarily intended to educate engineers for the mil-
itary-industrial complex. Overall, education in Cheliabinsk was closely
linked to the Kirov Works and its hundreds of highly qualified special-
ists from Leningrad, Kharkov and Moscow. In later years, the institute
would become the prestigious Cheliabinsk Polytechnic Institute and
would cover such high-tech courses as rocket technology.94
Victory Day 1945 in the Southern Urals
On 5 May 1945 the morning news reported that the Nazi German
army group in Berlin had been crushed by the Red Army. This news
spread quickly to all factories, schools and institutions. Mass meet-
ings were convened in a regular, organised form. At the Kirov Works
in Cheliabinsk, a meeting was organised for both the night and day
shifts, which arrived earlier than usual at the factory. During the same
day, 82 meetings were held in the tractor factory city district alone
and 302 speakers talked to an estimated audience of almost 50,000
people.95
The victory festivities in Cheliabinsk started on 9 May, when peo-
ple stayed awake around the city’s loudspeakers. At 4.15 a.m. it was
reported that Germany had signed an unconditional surrender. The day
was declared to be a general holiday. People soon started to assemble
in small groups in the streets. From the early morning until late in the
evening, meetings to celebrate the victory were held in factories all over
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the Urals.96 In Cheliabinsk 250,000 people from all city districts gath-
ered in the afternoon for the first demonstration through the streets in
four years. On 13 May the first weekend of peacetime, the grand victory
celebrations started with a day of people’s strolling (narodnoe gulianie).
The city’s squares and streets had been cleaned and orchestras played
dance music across the city. People danced or watched movies in out-
door theatres until late the next morning. After 1418 days, the war on
the home front was over.
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Figure 98 Nina Vatolina’s poster from 1948 illustrates the recovery after World
War II and the damage caused by the Nazi occupation of large parts of the Soviet
Union: ‘A new five-year plan – a five-year plan with magnificent building sites.
Let us rebuild, raise and start 5900 enterprises between 1946 and 1950!’
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9
The New Military-Industrial
Complex in Cheliabinsk during
the Cold War
In the early Cold War period, Cheliabinsk had the appearance of a typi-
cal Soviet company town with several new centres for higher education
in the natural sciences. The education of engineers and metallurgical
specialists was linked to factories that were closely connected with the
armed forces. The city was dominated by large metal and machine-
building industrial plants that were largely or totally part of the mil-
itary-industrial complex. A technical institute named the Mechanical
and Technology Institute had been founded in 1943 (later becoming
the Cheliabinsk Polytechnic Institute, ChPI) and had two faculties:
one for tank technology and the other called the mechanical-technical
faculty. The tank designer Nikolai Dukhov had received new awards
in 1945 for his contributions and was promoted to the rank of major-
general in the Engineers. Dukhov had taught at the institute since 1943,
where the foundation was laid for the education of new cadres for the
tank industry. After graduation, the best engineers from the ChPI were
distributed among the enterprises in the defence industry.1
Tankograd – a huge complex centred around the tractor factory with
its suppliers in nearby machinery factories – is situated in the eastern
part of Cheliabinsk. At the far end of the long Lenin Avenue (earlier
called Spartacus Street), a monument was erected to honour the physi-
cist Igor Kurchatov, one of the fathers of the Soviet atomic bomb. In
the 1940s, Kurchatov and the nuclear physicists were in the nearby
closed atomic city (in Russian Atomgrad) of Ozërsk (earlier known as
Cheliabinsk-40) and at the Maiak plutonium works. Between these two
points – Tankograd and Atomgrad – a kaleidoscopic representation of
post-war development can be sketched. There were several factors that
favoured the localisation of new defence industries to the Southern
Urals.
255
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256 Tankograd
Figure 99 The Polytechnic Institute (ChPI) in Cheliabinsk (photo from the

1950s).
The working rhythm returned to normal. The reconstruction require-

ments were enormous. The public had no exact knowledge of how many
people had died in the war but the demographic scars from it were vis-
ible everywhere. The proportion of women on the kolkhozy had risen
substantially in the post-war years. Innumerable men had returned
from the battlezone with permanent wounds and had to look for lighter
jobs. However, there was a firm belief that the people would deal with
the new reconstruction tasks.
The military-economic preparedness planning that had been applied
since the early 1930s seemed to be endorsed in all respects by World
War II. Without those extensive preparations for a total war, the con-
version of Soviet industry in 1941–1942 would hardly have been pos-
sible. Some of the victories on the battlefield may have been won at
too high a price, given the lack of training and the loss of cadres in the
Stalinist purges. However, the fact that the USSR withstood the unfore-
seen effects and the catastrophes in 1941 had convinced both the plan-
ners and the political leadership that the same priorities must now be
made as before the war.
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New Military-Industrial Complex in Cheliabinsk 257
The civil-military combination, which at the tractor factory had

initially intended to produce caterpillar-tracked instead of wheel trac-
tors, had been severely tested by the unexpected events during the
war. The economic preparedness and planning that had permeated the
Soviet industries in general had withstood the strain of the war against
Germany. However, in the very last phase of the war, the United States’
use of atomic bombs against Japanese cities had raised new challenges
for both the civilian and military planning authorities.
One particular example may illustrate how the theory of economic
preparedness could be implemented in Soviet practice after World War
II. The USSR carried out rearmament during the Cold War but not just
in the usual sense of the term. The production facilities at Cheliabinsk
pharmaceutical factory should, according to the mobilisation plan for
1949, have had a so-called mobilisation capacity for the production of
smoke and gas protection apparatus. According to an inspection, the
factory had calculated how much raw material would be necessary in
case of war and had also completed all the drawings and technical doc-
umentation. However, the necessary storage of these raw materials was
insufficient and many machines that had been delivered and stored in
separate workshops ran the risk of being spoilt over time. The total stor-
age area was 1250 square metres, although at least another 1150 would
be required. According to this inspection, the lack of mobilisation pre-
paredness was due to the fact that no one definite person in the medical
industries had responsibility in the last instance for the production of
military goods. Thereafter, the Cheliabinsk regional director of the All-
union Ministry for Food and Other Reserves listed a number of urgent
measures.2
In the field of theoretical nuclear physics, the scientists of the Soviet
Union were on par with the leading ones in the world. However, in the
first years of World War II no practical efforts were made to develop an
atomic bomb; it seemed too costly and there was even uncertainty as
to whether it would be possible to explode such a bomb fast enough to
influence the ongoing war. However, when information reached Stalin
from Soviet intelligence concerning the British and American nuclear
project, he gave the green light to speed up research on the atomic
bomb. When the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had
proven the strength of this weapon, the decision was made to organise
an intensive Soviet atomic project. One research centre was located in
Arzamas-16 (a city called Sarov) in the European part of Russia, and
another centre not far from Cheliabinsk. This was given the cover name
Cheliabinsk-40, and a plutonium reactor was built there. Other parts
9780230_208872_09_cha09.indd 257 7/4/2011 8:39:54 PM

258 Tankograd
of the atomic project were located in faraway places in the Urals under
deep secrecy. These cities were closed off from the outside world, with
special restrictions for all who lived there.3
The reconversion of the tractor factory after the war
The factory encountered many transformation problems in the years

that followed the end of World War II. To what extent was the factory to
continue producing tanks? How much of the factory’s capacity should
be devoted to tractor production? What division of labour should be
established in relation to other factories?4
Reconversion entailed the factory restarting production of tractors
for agriculture and continuing its production of tanks.5 The factory’s
plan opted for a daily production of 50 S-80 tractors and five heavy IS-3
tanks, as well as production of V-11 engines and spare parts to these
vehicles and the S-60 and S-65 tractors that had been produced until
1941. This implies an annual production of 15,600 tractors and 1560
heavy tanks.6
Some of the hectic pressure on the tractor plant during the reconstruc-
tion period is reflected in the long letter that Director Izaak Zaltsman
sent directly to Stalin. In it he wrote, ‘Considering my responsibility
for the fullfilment of the 1948 plan for heavy tanks, which is of such
importance for the country, I am forced to turn directly to You and ask
for Your instruction regarding the resolution of the Council of Ministers
of 5 April this year with No. 1116-399s, that support for the Kirov Works
must be given as soon as possible.’
The factory’s plan for 1948 included the production of 16,500 model
S-80 tractors, almost twice as many as were produced in 1947. The
average daily production was to be 64 tractors in the third quarter
of the year and 76 tractors in the fourth quarter. This was far above
the factory’s projected capacity of 50 tractors per day. Of the 164 new
machines that the tractor factory had ordered, only 49 had been deliv-
ered. Furthermore, Zaltsman had asked for another 228 special and
110 universal machines. The building directorate at the Council of
Ministers had fulfilled only one-fifth of the annual plan. The lack of
decent housing made it impossible to employ more personnel and the
lack of qualified workers was felt severely. ‘The enterprise struggles to
use all its internal resources’, Zaltsman emphasised. ‘In order to expand
capacity while production is still running, we have completely recon-
structed the workshops and moved over 400 machines. More than 700
engineers and technicians have moved to production. They are instead
9780230_208872_09_cha09.indd 258 7/4/2011 8:39:54 PM

introducing new technology and trying to increase productivity.

Almost the entire workers’ collective is working overtime. The instru-
ment workshop, repair workshop and other workshops have been used
for the production of parts and details for tractors.’
In a directive of 18 October 1948 on ‘measures to improve produc-
tive actions at the factory’, Zaltsman demanded that the engineers and
technicians should ‘avoid petty control over the overseers’ and other
leaders of production. The degree of administration should diminish,
the number of meetings should be reduced and every production sec-
tion should receive more competent personnel with responsibility for
each workshop. The number of orders from the factory managers should
be reduced and more emphasis should be placed on checking how they
were implemented. Zaltsman also indicated which courses for further
training of 300 shop supervisors and 700 workers should be organised
in the fourth quarter of the year. His directive also set tasks for the
housing conditions and the dining halls at the factory.7
After the first reconversion at the end of the war, the Cheliabinsk
factory produced the S-80 caterpillar tractor, which could also be
used as a hauler for artillery guns. In addition, the factory also pro-
duced the V-11 and V-12 tank diesel engines and spare parts for all
products. At the same time, a new S-64 caterpillar tractor was devel-
oped for both civilian and military use. Work continued on the IS-4
tank that had been sent for testing by the Soviet army; the first test
runs showed that it was a failure.8 Production of the IS-4 started again
in 1948. Ivan Nosenko, the minister for the transport workshops,
Figure 100 A machine and tractor station (MTS) was the formal owner of the
agricultural machinery park.
9780230_208872_09_cha09.indd 259 7/4/2011 8:39:54 PM

260 Tankograd
Figure 101 The S-80 caterpillar tractor, a new-generation tractor with many
applications.
criticised ChTZ for several defects in the tanks. In February 1949,

Zaltsman was ordered to stop production and correct all defective
parts. Together with chief designer Kotin from the Leningrad Kirov
Works, Zaltsman was to develop a new heavy tractor according to the
technical and tactical specifications of the Army’s armour directo-
rate.9 Consequently, only a few IS-4s were ever built and approved by
the Soviet army. The drawings for this tank were to be placed in the
mobilisation reserve and all efforts were to be concentrated on the
50-ton IS-5 heavy tank.10
After the war, Zhosef Kotin returned to the Kirov Works in Leningrad,
where he directed the production of the IS-4 tanks (from 1947), PT-76
amphibious tanks and a number of other military transport vehicles.
Kotin had achieved the rank of colonel-general in the engineering
troops and had received many orders and medals for his accomplish-
ments during the war. Some of his speeches to selected audiences and
highly classified articles summed up his experience from battlefield
confrontations with German tanks and set the broad lines for the future
development of the Soviet tank industry.11
The IS-8 heavy tank, re-named the T-10, further developed the best
traits of the IS-3. Despite its great armour protection, its high speed
and powerful gun, the IS-3 had achieved limited success because of the
9780230_208872_09_cha09.indd 260 7/4/2011 8:39:54 PM

commander’s limited vision. The T-10 tank had the same configuration
for its chassis as its predecessor but with a 120 millimetre armour plate
at the front, 80 on the sides and 220 in the cannon turret. Nonetheless,
the total weight was only 50 tons and the T-10 tank remained in active
use until 1995.12
It became urgently necessary to improve the cleaning of exhaust from
the large factories in Cheliabinsk. For far too long, both household and
industrial waste from the tractor factory, the iron and steel works, the
Sergo Ordzhonikidze machine-building works and the sulphuric acid
and the nickel factories had been dumped straight into the River Miass.
Besides the obvious sanitary risks, the dumping of chemicals and phe-
nols made it impossible to use the Miass as a fresh water reserve farther
south in the Urals.13
During the war years, less attention was paid to how the tanks had
been transported through the city, from the factory to the test and fir-
ing ranges. In July 1945 the city executive committee sent out direc-
tives regarding which roads could be used for heavy traffic, in order
to stop the tearing up of the road surface and destruction of railway
crossings.14
The labour force
Demobilised soldiers returned from the fighting army and were met at
railway stations around the country in solemn ceremonies. By February
1946 8005 demobilised individuals had returned to Cheliabinsk, includ-
ing 3908 privates, 3504 sergeants and 588 officers. The authorities had
received enquiries about 3863 families in which one or several mem-
bers had been demobilised, 3333 families with members who had been
reported dead in the war, 2469 families with close relatives who had
become invalids and 1686 families that still had a member active in the
Soviet army. Most questions concerned housing or changes of apart-
ments, requisitions of new clothes (in 6020 cases) or shoes (3745 cases).
The families received fuel (charcoal or firewood), housing, cash money
aid or foodstuffs and basic utilities.
The Leningraders wanted to return home as soon as possible. They
even threatened to strike unless they were informed when their journey
back would start. A secret report from the party committee at the tractor
factory referred to rumours among workers about a new law that would
give the workers the right to leave the factory of their own will. Other
rumours were based on the fact that management had raised the issue
of better housing and living support. This was interpreted as a sign that
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262 Tankograd
workers would be tied to the tractor factory in Cheliabinsk. Although

the dormitories were lacking in certain areas, no one complained dur-
ing war conditions. Many returned exhausted from their work shifts
and hardly paid any attention to how badly the sites needed repairs.
When the war was over, however, there was an increase in the number
of complaints regarding bad dormitories, the lack of amusements and
many other things.15
Many workers with families and children had to live in common
rooms, where they might only have a corner to themselves. Workers’
wives often wanted to find work at the factories but did not dare leave
their belongings in the dormitory.16 There were many cases of evacuated
workers and their families living as tenants for a period of time, only
to learn that they had to leave their flat when the soldiers returned.
Some workers even lived in barns. During the summer of 1945, many
meetings were held to convince the Leningrad, Kharkov and Stalingrad
workers – 30,000 out of the 45,000 employed at ChTZ – about why they
were still needed in Cheliabinsk.17 Those workers who agreed to stay on
at Cheliabinsk factories were promised their own flats. However, many
supervisors hesitated to encourage such an initiative since they knew
that the management would not be able to fulfil such promises.
By the summer of 1945 there were approximately 250,000 prisoners
of war in ten camps across the Urals. The State Defence Committee,
GKO, on 16 and 29 December 1944 had made it legal to intern German
civilians as labour in the Soviet economy. Enterprises in the leading
people’s commissariats were to receive some 140,000 interned Germans.
In accordance with a GKO decree of 3 February 1945 the 1st and 2nd
Belorussian Army Groups and the 1st Ukranian Army Group were to
arrest and inter all physically able German men aged 17 to 50 years and
send them to the NKVD camps for POWs and to labour battalions.18
The Soviet lack of manpower after the war led to more intensive use of
POWs and Gulag prisoners at the tractor factory in the latter part of the
1940s. The Ministry of Internal Affairs, MVD, organised a penal labour
colony in connection with the factory. However, since its 2000 pris-
oners were already living in extremely cramped conditions, the MVD,
could not satisfy the request of the ChTZ to transfer another 1000 pris-
oners to Cheliabinsk until the factory’s management had built more
barracks for them.19
In the spring of 1948, Zaltsman had requested that the Hungarian
and Romanian POWs who had been repatriated be replaced by other
kontingenty of either POWs or Gulag prisoners. Regular recruitment of
youths from the trade schools could satisfy only a small fraction of the
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demand for labour. The Ministry of Internal Affairs refused to send more
POWs to Cheliabinsk but the number of Gulag prisoners was authorised
to rise to 3900, provided that the factory could assure a sufficiently large
living area for them. The ministry was also prepared to exchange the
exhausted prisoners who were unable to work with healthier ones. In
a report earlier in 1948, Zaltsman had written to Lavrentii Beria and
requested that more prisoners be sent to the factory. The answer was that
the Gulag camp at the Kirov Works in Cheliabinsk had total living space
of 5500 square metres for its 3425 prisoners, only 2740 of whom were
regularly working at the factory. The others were too weak or starved to
work. The average living space of 1.6 square metre per prisoner was less
than the stipulated 2 so the MVD asked Zaltsman to build more camp
barracks to accommodate the requested increase of 2125 prisoners. The
MVD directorate in Cheliabinsk also lacked the resources required to
provide a strong enough guard for these kontingenty in three shifts.20
Special kontingenty at the Kirov Works in Cheliabinsk, as of 10 April 1949
1. Forced labour prisoners from Camp Unit No. 3 were used for the following types of
work:
Metallurgical workshop 1460
Loading and unloading at the railway workshop’s storage and
delivery sections 505
Maintenance work at the factory 65
Building and sawing at the factory’s reconstruction unit 49
Total Gulag prisoners 2059
2. Prisoners of war from Camp No. 2:
Workshops for tractor production 796
Copying and making wooden models 121
Engine construction 36
Maintenance workshops 109
Assembly and building 23
Repair works and maintenance 216
Loading and unloading 54
Total POWs 1355
Source: OGAChO, R-792, op. 16, d. 90, l. 32–33. In a report of 24 October Deputy Director
Safronov mentioned that 2045 POWs were employed at ChTZ. The distribution among the
workshops was essentially the same as above.
In 1949 5593 German POWs who were employed by the Ministry

of Transport Machine-building Industry were to be released (1237 in
the first quarter of the year, 1516 in the second, 1380 in the third and
1460 in the last). With the exception of the school buildings that had
been temporarily used as dwellings for the German POWs, all camp
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264 Tankograd
buildings and special hospitals were to be given to the Ministry of the

Interior, which was to place work-fit Gulag prisoners in the enterprises
that had previously used German POWs. Starting in 1949 the Ministry
of Labour Reserves was systematically to educate young people in those
professions and to those enterprises.21
Housing conditions
The evacuation of factories during the war meant that the general city
plan from the mid-1930s was no longer relevant. On 16 January 1946
the Soviet government issued a decree regarding ‘residential and pub-
lic buildings, cultural and welfare activities in the city of Cheliabinsk’,
which included guidelines for the city’s architecture. The architecture
committee was to formulate a new long-term plan for the city’s further
expansion and also to propose a more detailed short-term plan for the
next few years. An area equivalent to 11,000 square metres was to be
paved or asphalted, 9000 pathways were to be asphalted, electric lights
were to be installed and 60,000 trees planted along the streets. Two new
parks were to be laid out by the River Miass and the city’s circus. In
general, the authorities were instructed to conduct extensive cleaning
Figure 102 A recreation room for young workers at the tractor factory.
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9780230_208872_09_cha09.indd 265
Table 8 Housing conditions for employees in Cheliabinsk
Employees with families living Of which: dug-outs- Basements & Others living Living in
Factory uncomfortably zemljanki Barracks corridors uncomfortably comfort
ChTZ 25,300 9000 9900 5700 700 45,700

No. 200 3962 – 2500 51 1402 2954
No. 255 1635 – 1635 – – –
UralZiS 2658 – 2658 – – 5429
No. 78 8351 – 8333 18 – 10,149
No. 114 3401 – 2531 26 841 831
No. 259 1214 – 1173 36 – 4299
No. 66 5171 – 2171 – 3000 7199
7/4/2011 8:39:56 PM
266 Tankograd
up operations throughout the city and to drain and then reclaim the
marshlands surrounding Cheliabinsk.22
There was an even greater shortage of living space after the war than
there had been in the 1930s, even for the employees of the military-
industrial complex. The data on these factories suggest that the situa-
tion outside the priority defence sector may well have been even worse.
However, no fundamental changes in the housing conditions were pos-
sible in the immediate aftermath of the war because building resources
were directed to the new atomic compounds in the Cheliabinsk region.
The following table illustrates the living conditions at the ‘number fac-
tories’ in the defence industry. 23
Director Zaltsman frequently asked the centre in Moscow for more
budgetary means with which to alleviate this situation. The tractor
factory had expanded its production capacity more than twice since
1940, its workshop floor had grown in area 1.6 times and the number
of employees 1.9 times, yet the total living space had increased by only
1.32 times. The average living space per person was a mere 4.5 square
metres, compared to the minimum norm of 9. In November of 1948,
33,193 persons – 44 per cent of everyone at ChTZ – lived in substandard
conditions; 5054 people still lived in barracks that had been built in
1930 and should have been torn down many years before, 3130 lived in
basements and more than 10,000 in various annexes, 1677 had found
small rooms in clubs and by laundry shops, while almost 9000 people
lived in dug-outs they had made themselves. In the building plan for
1949, the council of ministers (Sovnarkom) – that is, the government –
had only provided funds for new dwellings with a total area of 11,000
square metres. Zaltsman requested that at least 25–30,000 square metres
be built in 1949 and the following years, in order to at least solve the
worst housing problems. His main argument was that ‘the serious dis-
proportion between the factory’s capacity and its residential conditions’
had made it impossible to recruit permanent qualified workers.24
In the immediate post-war years, over 13,000 workers (mostly young
people) lived in dormitories with two-layer wooden berths or in decay-
ing houses or barracks. Their average living space per person was 1.5–2
square metres. The situation improved only marginally over the next
few years. They were permitted to move into modern, well-equipped
dormitories with at least 4.5–5 square metres per person and no more
than six people in a room. By the early 1950s, only 6000 younger work-
ers were still living in the worse type of dormitories.
To avoid factory workers having to spend two to three hours looking
for bread and other goods, Zaltsman sent a request to the minister and
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deputy minister of the transport machinery industry, Ivan Nosenko and

Mosin, that ChTZ be allowed to organise the sale of bread and foodstuff
in the dining halls of the factory, and that the ChTZ should take over
this activity from the city trade department (gortorgotdel).25
The post-war situation was desperate, both because so little had been
built before 1939 and because demand for housing had increased dras-
tically due to the population that had been evacuated to Cheliabinsk.
Between 20 and 80 per cent of people involved in the arms industries
were in need of new housing. This gives an idea of what the situation
must have been like for enterprises in sectors that had lower priority
than the defence industry. During the first decade after the war, the
factories were allotted budgetary subsidies with which they could build
new houses. Many of these plans were not fulfilled, however, either due
to a scarcity of building materials or because there was still a need to
prioritise production. From the late 1940s onwards, enormous resources
were spent on establishing ‘atomic cities’ and their specific infrastruc-
ture and high-security regimes.
The end of the career of the ‘Kings of Tanks’
The career of Isaak Zaltsman came to a sudden end when he was

removed from his post by a decision of the party’s central committee on
11 July 1949. The official reason was that his attitudes to his employees
was brusque, tactless and unworthy of a party member (raznuzdanno-
chuliganskoe, nepartijnoie otnosjenie). The explanation continued that
Zaltsman had failed to mobilise the factory collective in the three years
following the war.26 This alluded to criticism within the local party
committee, which surfaced in 1946, that Zaltsman had continued the
same harsh style that had been commonplace during wartime condi-
tions. In 1946, Zaltsman had been criticised by the local party organi-
sation for his raw, domineering style and his use of swear words and
threats to obtain results. This was, however, only a formalistic reason
that lacked foundation in the real situation in the Communist Party.
Zaltsman was actually held in high esteem among engineers and tech-
nicians, as well as among the workers, not the least for his frank and
straightforward leadership style during the war years. He had never set
unrealistic demands and, as soon as circumstances allowed in 1943, he
had set aside money for better working and living conditions.27
A more likely reason for Zaltsman’s removal was that he had refused
to denounce his former colleagues in Leningrad who were the targets of
the first post-war purges. Aleksei Kuznetsov and Nikolai Voznesenskii
9780230_208872_09_cha09.indd 267 7/4/2011 8:39:56 PM

268 Tankograd
and several others were arrested during this ‘Leningrad affair’, allegedly
for wrongdoing during the war but more likely as a result of Stalin’s
struggle against independent groups in Leningrad. For his refusal to
denounce the arrested party members, Zaltsman was accused of defend-
ing ‘enemies of the people’. He was dismissed as director of the tractor
factory but not excluded from the Communist Party. He was not for-
mally demoted from his rank as general and kept his three Lenin orders
– the Suvorov, Kutuzov and Hero of Labour orders. Stalin is said to have
asked how Zaltsman had started his career. When he was informed that
it had been as a workshop overseer, Stalin exclaimed, ‘Well, send him to
some place where he can be an overseer!’ Zaltsman was sent to a small
enterprise in the city of Murom (300 kilometres east of Moscow). The
managers there soon realised that the demoted Zaltsman was a liability,
a personality who could not be hidden away. Isaak Zaltsman was known
by the workers as the legend behind the wartime success in ‘Tankograd’
and workers would gather around to hear his stories. At parades and
meetings, he used to wear all his orders and medals. Naturally, the pub-
lic paid more attention to Zaltsman than they did to the local party
leadership in the small city.
He did not receive any tasks that matched his capability and he soon
managed to be transferred to a machine-building enterprise in Oriol. In
1955, all of the accusations against him were retracted and he was able
to return to Leningrad where he was appointed head of a new experi-
mental factory attached to the grand Kirov Works. Isaak Zaltsman
never returned to Cheliabinsk. Neither the party nor the tractor factory
invited him or commemorated his achievements at the great anniver-
sary celebrations of Victory Day in 1955, 1960 or 1965 or thereafter.
This was despite the fact that few people could claim to have made a
contribution that was as significant to the victory over Nazi Germany
as Isaak Zaltsman. In 1984, the Communist Party’s journal, Kommunist,
published an article by Zaltsman entitled ‘To remember the lessons
from Tankograd’.28 Zaltsman remained energetic and worked on the
development of new tanks right up until his death on 17 July 1988.29 A
memorial plaque was finally placed in his honour near the entrance to
the factory.
Youth protests in post-war Cheliabinsk
The mentality of the Soviet people changed in many respects during

World War II. In particular, it has been emphasised how the soldiers at
9780230_208872_09_cha09.indd 268 7/4/2011 8:39:56 PM

the front (frontoviki) had experienced such drastic contrasts from their
pre-war civilian lives in the USSR that they could now be characterised
as a new social category. The former soldiers displayed their temper,
showed greater self-confidence and responsibility than the generation
that had led the social construction in the 1930s in line with the party
ideology. These new attitudes were frequently on display in meetings
in and around Cheliabinsk. Questions to lecturers about post-war
development and the conditions in Western Europe bear witness to a
relative openness and a critical attitude.30 There is no reason to exag-
gerate or underestimate how social problems could actually be hotly
debated in public even in the Stalinist society. Material needs, techni-
cal mistakes and social problems were discussed, just as they had been
in the 1920s and 1930s, in the newspapers and journals and on gen-
eral meetings. In Cheliabinsk, the post-war period witnessed several
campaigns to expand cultural life and amusements in the city. The
industrial enterprises started teams in such popular sports as football
and ice hockey.
During this time, had Zaltsman initiated the founding of the ‘Tractor’
ice hockey team and saw to it that a winter stadium was built nearby.
Towards the end of the 1940s, the biggest sport hall in the city was built
by the Tractor Factory. The most popular summer sports were football,
volleyball and track and field events, and skiing was popular during
the winter. In summer, excursions were organised for large groups of
factory workers and their family members to the lakes and mountains
in the area. Every Saturday, the culture and recreation park organised
theme evenings for young people, with lectures, amateur theatre shows
and performances by sportsmen and concerts by classical and dance
orchestras.31
Zaltsman’s time as director of the tractor factory is also linked to the
construction of summer houses (dachas) and boarding houses along
the Lake Smolino. In the post-war period, the ‘Kirovets’ cinema was
built and the ChTZ theatre received new auditoriums. Zaltsman also
supported the building of artists’ and music studios and a children’s
park in the Traktorostroitel’nyj rajon (today known as Tereshkova Park,
named after the first female cosmonaut).32
The ideological activities arranged by the factory’s party commit-
tee did not engage as many people as one might imagine, given how
the Soviet system tends to be described in the West nowadays. The
circles that studied the history of the Communist Party and meet-
ings for activists in the party and the communist youth organisation
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270 Tankograd
Figure 103 The Palace of Culture (Dvorets Kultury) at the iron and steel works
in Cheliabinsk had over 800 clubs for various leisure activities in the 1950s.
had a relatively modest and low participation rate among the workers
and youths at the tractor factory. On the other hand, the Communist
Party was the organiser of all activities in the Palace of Culture of the
factory.
The Communist Party had the final say on any attempt at independ-
ent organisation outside the communist youth organisations. Students
at the Pedagogical Institute in Cheliabinsk had published a newspa-
per entitled ‘Student’, which contained only poems and essays, but it
was soon prohibited. 33 As a result, four students – O.L. Plebeiskii, G.L.
Sorokin, A.I. Levitskii and B.Ia. Bruk – decided to publish an under-
ground version of the newsletter, which they called ‘Snow Wine’
(Snezhnoe vino). Although they used the aesthetics of Russian symbol-
ism, the secret police and the protocols carried out by the security bod-
ies felt that the journal was merely ‘anti-Soviet, political propaganda’.
Only two issues of ‘Snow Wine’ were published and they contained a
few blank pages on which readers could write their own commentaries.
The few copies of ‘Snow Wine’ that have been preserved in the archives
contain negative commentaries against the ‘romantics’ who published
the journal.
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In accordance with the infamous Paragraph 58, the editor of the jour-
nal was condemned for ‘spreading anti-Soviet propaganda’ and was sen-
tenced to prison and camp terms of various durations.34
Students who chose to form study groups adopted much from Marx,
Engels and Lenin. They contrasted the descriptions from official prop-
aganda with what they could observe, particularly during the severe
hunger of 1946 when families were starving, even in the cities. The
police in Cheliabinsk found a group of teenagers, schoolchildren in the
7th grade who had produced leaflets that read ‘Down with the govern-
ment!’ and had glued them to the walls of houses. Members of some
youth groups in Moscow and Leningrad were harshly sentenced to
10–25 years in the Gulag. Three students from Moscow were even given
the death penalty. The authorities strove to give as little publicity as
possible to these affairs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and they can
be analysed only from pre-trial and court protocols.
In Cheliabinsk, the police found a group of students led by I.S.
Dinaburg, G.F. Khenchik and G.I. Bondarev that called itself the ‘Idealistic
Communist Youth’ (Idejnaia kommunisticheskaia molodëzh). They were
accused of organising meetings in which anti-Soviet opinions were sys-
tematically formulated in order to combat the established order. However,
it is doubtful if the terminology of the court sentence in any real way
reflects the actual discussions that took place during these meeting and
what they actually debated. The NKVD-MVD had a long tradition of fab-
ricating protocols, so the statements in the sentence must be considered
to be unreliable. This characterisation is based only on the excerpts and
summaries that the Ministry of the Interior, MVD, chose to reproduce.
G.I. Bondarev and others said in their interrogations that the Communist
Party had turned into a petty-bourgeois party, had betrayed Marxism and
lacked ideas. ‘The party follows an incorrect line because the working
class is essentially kept in an oppressed, exploited condition.’ The disil-
lusionment among the students – as far as can be discerned – was often
expressed in Marxist ideological terms. According to the secret police
investigation, the group’s credo was as follows: ‘The party and communist
youth organisations have been infected by a philistine spirit. The leading
groups in the party and state apparatus constitute a new ruling class in the
USSR that mercilessly exploits the working class. A revolutionary leap is
necessary for the working class to take back power. To accomplish this, we
are formulating a theory and looking for ways to implement it. Our theory
is a continuation and development of Marx’s and Lenin’s teachings’. The
three students and their relations at the Cheliabinsk Energy-Technical
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272 Tankograd
Figure 104 Gymnastics.
Institute, V.I. Bondareva and R.N. Gil’vidis, were sentenced for their activ-
ity in this discussion group. Members of similar youth groups at the time
were arrested in Moscow and other cities, apparently with the ‘prophylac-
tic purpose’ of deterring others from independent thinking and activities
that were not officially controlled.
Historian P.R. Rozhdestvenskii stressed that it is difficult to delineate
these spontaneously formed youth groups in the Soviet Union. On the
one hand, only a few sentences and deliberations were recorded at higher
levels in the secret police, while on the other, numerous legends and
rumours have circulated among the people. Rozhdestvenskii considered
that it was mostly not a question of youth organisations with political
ambitions. They were ascribed political significance only because the
authorities would not tolerate any independent activity.35 The terminol-
ogy used by the students showed them to have thought mostly in terms
of the official ideology, and to have discussed the obvious contradictions
between the proclaimed goals and the real situation in the city.36
The closed atomic cities in the Cheliabinsk region
The significance and potential of the Urals as a defence-industrial cen-

tre had become evident during World War II. One of the lessons of the
war was that the USSR had a geostrategic advantage in locating its heavy
9780230_208872_09_cha09.indd 272 7/4/2011 8:39:57 PM

and defence industry in the Urals, far from the directions of attack of
land or air forces. As regards conventional weapons, industry in the
Urals remained practically unassailable. This situation only changed
with the development of rocket technology and new atomic weapons.
From the 1950s onwards, in the worst-case scenario of an atomic war,
whole cities could be exterminated in one single blow. To a certain
extent, the USSR even adapted to this threat by building new factories
underground, albeit at extremely high cost. As had been the case when
the iron and steel works were built in Cheliabinsk during the war, Gulag
prisoners did some of the construction work at the plutonium works
in Ozërsk. Other elements of the construction were performed by the
regular building battalions of the Soviet Army.37
The preconditions for high-tech military-industrial units in the city
of Cheliabinsk and the nearby closed cities in the Urals had therefore
emerged during the war. Important parts of the Soviet atomic project
were located in the nearby cities of Ozërsk, Snezhinsk and Trëkhgornoe,
while rocket production was located in the city of Miass. The Cheliabinsk
Polytechnic Institute had its higher education and research linked to
the military industry.38
The closed cities some tens of kilometres from Cheliabinsk were
shrouded in extreme secrecy, even in comparison with other Soviet
enterprises. Two centres for the atomic project were located a great
Figure 105 A dance in the Palace of Culture in Uvelsky in the 1950s.
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274 Tankograd
Figure 106 Miners in Miass in July 1950 sign the Stockholm petition against
nuclear weapons.
distance from each other – Arzamas-16 (Sarov) and Cheliabinsk-40

(Ozërsk) – and their research and experiment agendas were coordinated.
The first atomic reactor was built in Cheliabinsk-40 for the production
of weapons-grade plutonium. The entire Soviet atomic bomb project was
led by physicist Igor Kurchatov (1903–1960), who lived in Cheliabinsk-40
for long periods and had the ultimate responsibility for designing the
first Soviet atomic bombs. Although the Soviet atomic scientists had their
own ideas about how this weapon would be constructed, it was decided
at highest level – by Stalin – that the first bomb must be a copy of the
successful American bomb. As a result, Kurchatov had privileged access to
all Soviet intelligence material concerning the American atomic project.
The importance of this material cannot be over-emphasised; without the
corresponding state-of-the-art physical science and technological compe-
tence, the Russians would not have been able to interpret the intelligence
documents. Within a few years they were able to test their own types of
atomic bombs without the risk of having a strategic disadvantage.
In August 1949, a special train left Cheliabinsk-40, escorted in front
and behind by other military trains. It enjoyed green lights along its
entire journey to Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, where the first Soviet
atomic bomb was detonated on 29 August. The successful detonation
was not announced by the Soviet authorities. Only after American sur-
veillance stations had noted heightened radioactive radiation in the
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atmosphere did the USSR acknowledge that it had tested an atomic bomb.
The Soviet Union had managed to develop this high-tech weapon much
earlier than the experts in the American administration had expected
and this development upset the strategic planning of the United States
in the first phase of the Cold War. However, it would take some more
time before the Americans realised which of their earlier assumptions
of the Soviet economy had caused these incorrect predictions.
Nikolai Dukhov was not only a tank designer but, in 1948, was also
appointed chief designer at the KB-11 design bureau in Arzamas-16.
His exact role in the atomic project there has not been declassified. It
Figure 107 Igor Kurchatov, one of the ‘fathers’ of the Soviet atomic bomb and
chief designer at the nuclear reactor in Cheliabinsk-40.
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276 Tankograd
Figure 108 ‘Is Stalin with Us?’
9780230_208872_09_cha09.indd 276 7/4/2011 8:40:00 PM

is indicative of his success, however, that he was later appointed chief

designer and deputy director of one of the most prestigious research
institutes for automation on aeroplanes. He died from severe radiation
wounds in Moscow on 5 May 1964.39
Much research remains to be done into how the region developed
into a new type of military-industrial complex during the Cold War in
the 1950s and 1960s. A rocket industry was established in Miass, with
a special design bureau for missiles based on submarines. In fact, it was
only recently discovered in the archives that ChTZ was a sub-contracted
enterprise for the nuclear weapons industry.40
Cheliabinsk continued its modernisation during the remainder of
the Soviet epoch. The city’s technical institutes and research centres
expanded and, in certain sectors, were among the most prestigious in
the country, with links to the military-industrial complex. In a some-
what kaleidoscopic way, we can now imagine how fast the changes
came. We can see the evolution from Tankograd – an intensively, pul-
sating, complicated industrial site with its surrounding barracks and
shanty towns that offered a few hours of rest for the city’s residents and
evacuated workers in the 1940s – to a typical Soviet ‘company town’.
The most striking lack of housing was eliminated in the 1950s with the
hurried construction of five-storey houses and then, in the 1960s, more
comfortable multi-storey buildings.
Visitors to Cheliabinsk today can still glimpse some of the better
features of Soviet everyday life, such as the three 50-metre swimming
pools with their sold out one-hour sessions. In the winter, one can rent
skis for a modest sum in the leisure and culture park. The traditional
programmes of the dramatic, opera and children’s theatres have been
supplemented with cinema palaces that look like those in the West.
Revolution Square in the city centre, which became superfluous for
parades, was dug up in the late 1990s to make room for an underground
mall with shops directed at general public. Nearby, exclusive boutiques
with famous European brands have opened for the nouveaux riches,
who usually make appointments to shop individually. What was once
the downtrodden, noisy and dirty street – Kirovka – has been renovated
into a pedestrian thoroughfare, and its buildings from the first half of
the 20th century have been given the status of historical monuments.
There are many examples of openness and eagerness to tackle even the
hardest question of the recent past. An ultra-modern building near the
Miass River houses a new historical museum, the permanent and tem-
porary exhibitions of which provide a broad panorama of the region’s
multi-faceted history.
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10
Historical Memory and Research in
Today’s Cheliabinsk
Figure 109 The ‘Tankist’ statue by I. Golovnitskii on Kirov Street – ‘To the vol-
untary tank soldiers’.
The Russian Civil War was ignited by local skirmishes in Cheliabinsk

in June 1918. A year later, one of the decisive battles between the Red
Army and the Siberian White Army took place there. From the 1930s
onwards, tractors produced in Cheliabinsk had a crucial role in the
mechanisation of labour at kolkhozy all over the Soviet Union. During
World War II, the city was popularised as ‘Tankograd’, a term which in
278
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Historical Memory and Research in Today’s Cheliabinsk 279
itself showed the close links between the fighting armies and the home
front. These are merely a few historical hubs in which Cheliabinsk as a
Soviet company town played a central role during Russia’s 20th century.
However, from the perspective of the people in Cheliabinsk, history
takes on quite a different shape and is much more multi-faceted. During
the forced industrialisation, people from many different parts of the
Soviet Union came to live in Cheliabinsk. Some stayed merely for a
couple of years, others for several generations.
During the war years of 1941–1945, tens of thousands of people were
evacuated to Cheliabinsk from Leningrad, Kharkov and other cities. At
the same time, industrial factories were transported from the near-front
areas in the European parts of the USSR. Many of the people evacu-
ated chose to stay in Cheliabinsk and the surrounding province after
the war. The Soviet Germans who had been sent as forced workers to
build the Iron and Steel Works, however, did not have any choice but
to stay in Cheliabinsk until the late 1950s when their civil rights were
re-established. They lived as ‘special colonists’ in the Metallurgical City
district, the houses and enterprises of which they had built themselves.
To a lesser degree it was obligatory for most of the Soviet population
to accept the job to which they were appointed after graduation from
institutes and universities.
All of these changes in the population dynamics point at similarities
between Cheliabinsk and other Soviet cities as ‘melting-pots’ for people
with very different backgrounds; thus, to study and analyse this social
and economic history has been a priority task for historians and archi-
vists in the city and the region.
Several monuments on squares and in parks in Cheliabinsk com-
memorate the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945. The Tomb
of the Unknown Soldiers is placed in a square between the Main Post
Office and Kommuna Street. The statue ‘The Tank Soldier’ is placed
a few metres away on the same square, with an inscription that hon-
ours the Cheliabinsk people who fought in the armoured divisions that
were set up in the city in 1942–1945. The volunteers from Cheliabinsk
were part of the 62nd Urals Armoured Corps that first got a baptism of
fire during the intensive Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943, and
thereafter liberated Oriol and Belgorod. In 1944, the same corps took
part in the liberation of L’vov and by late April 1945 reached its battle
position for the final assault on Berlin for an attack to take Potsdam.
On Komsomol Square in another part of Cheliabinsk, one of the last
IS-3 tanks produced during the war has been placed on a pedestal, with
inscriptions to honour the heroes at the home front.
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280 Tankograd
Russia’s collective memory has, of course, deep imprints from the

defence against the Nazi German, Italian and other armies during 1941–
1945. There are not many themes in recent history that have been so
intensively under discussion in recent years as World War II. This is true
not only for Russia as a whole, but also for Cheliabinsk. In recent years,
new documents have shown how the Cheliabinsk region was indirectly
affected by the German-Soviet war. The archivists have collected data
for a martyrology with the names of over 150,000 fallen soldiers from
the region. This number should be compared to the population of the
province (oblast) in the late 1930s of slightly fewer than three million
people.
What is not generally acknowledged today in the West is that it is not
only Stalinist repression and terror that left its traces in the collective
memory, but that the suffering during the war period did so to an even
greater extent. It goes without saying that the history of World War II
both the battles against the German Wehrmacht and the struggle at the
home front have an important place in the school programmes. In com-
parison to Germany’s war campaigns in the West, the occupation of
parts of the USSR was part of a larger scheme of extermination warfare
(Vernichtungskrieg), in particular against all Soviet Jews but even against
others in the civilian populatation. Hitler’s schemes for ‘Operation
Barbarossa’ included the extermination of all Soviet Jews, but also the
mass shooting of Communist Party members and a planned elimina-
tion by starvation and other means of millions of Russians, Ukrainians
and other peoples.1
Until the perestroika and glasnost period, the USSR can be described
as a ‘closed society’. In Cheliabinsk – ‘Tankograd’ and later ‘Atomgrad’ –
this secrecy was considered as a precondition for coping with the mili-
tary and strategic challenges of the Cold War. Nonetheless, from the
1960s, Soviet historical and economic literature did shed light on cer-
tain aspects of the Soviet industrial landscape, but much more remained
unclear and therefore heftily debated in the West concerning the Soviet
military-industrial complex.2
This recent history was no less obfuscated for the Russians them-
selves, not the least as people lost trust in the official historiography.
The contemporary history of the country was re-written on several
occasions, evidently to suit the changing political leaderships. It is
probable that as the newly elected general secretary of the Communist
Party Mikhail Gorbachev hoped to strengthen the party-state system
by allowing a serious debate on the ‘blank spots’ in the recent history.
However, the massive publications during glasnost of the tragic history
9780230_208872_10_cha10.indd 280 6/27/2011 11:33:29 AM

of the Soviet people had the opposite effect. Most Russian historians
and many teachers were not at all prepared to discuss, even less to write
and teach on, the formerly taboo events. The first efforts to put history’s
records straight was undertaken by the journalists at the newspapers
Cheliabinskii rabochii and Vechernii Cheliabinsk. These papers were full
of articles on the fate of the recently rehabilitated party members, spe-
cialists and workers who fell victims to the Stalinist terror, and lists of
ordinary people who suffered under the collectivisation and dekulaki-
sation campaigns in the 1930s. At historians’ conferences and teachers’
seminars during the first half of the 1990s serious efforts were made to
liberate historiography from the impact of omissions and distortions,
and to establish new principles for historical research and pedagogics.
Not only have the state and party archives of the former Soviet Union
opened their collections to researchers but – concerning many aspects
of contemporary Russian history – printed source volumes also now
give the general reader access to documents that used to be hidden even
from the elites of Soviet society.3
Since the 1990s, scholars in Cheliabinsk have studied the suffering
of the peasantry during the Civil War, the forced collectivisation of the
countryside, the dekulakisation and the establishment of special settle-
ments for dispossessed peasants in the region without the formerly oblig-
atory propagandistic theses upheld by the Communist Party. Igor Narskii
has described in vivid detail how the peasantry in the Urals coped with
and survived the hardships of the Civil War, as the political regimes
changed several times.4 Special mention can be made of the works by
Aleksandr Bazarov.5 Tatiana Slavko has analysed the stages of the expro-
priation and deportation of kulaks in the Urals.6 Viktor Kirillov defended
his doctorate thesis on, and has since that written several monographs
on, the repression waves against various social groups in the Central
and Northern Urals, and also initiated a joint database program to link
similar projects in other parts of Russia.7 M.A. Fel’dman has analysed the
industrialisation of the 1930s in a broad comparative perspective – its
links to and parallels with earlier periods in Russia as well as its specific
traits. His assessments of the actual progress, as compared to the previous
tendentiously proclaimed success story, as well as or the human costs of
the forced industrialisation are characteristic of the interpretations that
new archival materials have made possible.8 The general ambitions to
interprete Russia’s history in the paradigm of modernity and modernisa-
tion was at the centre of a conference in the city in 2004.9
In Cheliabinsk, just as in many other parts of Russia, public inter-
est in historical questions was particularly high during the first years
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282 Tankograd
after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Historians and history teach-
ers lived through a crisis period when they could no longer teach or
study according to the old paradigm, but had not yet found a new, solid
basis for other interpretations of Russia’s recent history. However, they
strove to establish a reliable new source basis to assess their history, pri-
marily by searching for solid documentation or trustworthy witnesses.
There was a widespread scepticism against new narratives and an overly
strong emphasis on written documents or oral records, that would leave
each individual free to come to his or her own interpretations and con-
clusions. The archivists in Cheliabinsk’s United State Regional Archive
(abbreviated OGAChO) have likewise compiled a series of such docu-
mentary volumes that give at least a solid introduction for renewed stud-
ies of the recent past.10 They have also published a chronological source
volume that gives new insight into the history of OGAChO itself.11
Historiography in the Cheliabinsk region initially concentrated on
such topics that had been absolutely out of touch, called the ‘white
spots in history’ by the party’s general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.
Among such topics that were studied for the first time ever was the role
of forced labour in the industrialisation and construction of factories in
the 1930s. The deported kulaks lived in extremely hard conditions in
half-dugouts or barracks. Such facts might have been remembered well
Figure 110 The History Museum in Cheliabinsk was inaugurated in 2006.
9780230_208872_10_cha10.indd 282 6/27/2011 11:33:29 AM

by the older population in Cheliabinsk, but found no place in the his-

tory books until the late 1980s. The same is true concerning the Soviet
Germans in Cheliabinsk; it was comman knowledge that a relatively
large proportion of the inhabitants in the Metallurgical City districts
were Germans. However, no one had written their story, how they were
deported and how they worked under wartime discipline in the defence
industry in Cheliabinsk during World War II.
On these and many other topics, journalists and publicists wrote
much in the early 1990s. In the city’s newspapers, long lists with the
names of victims of political repression in the 1930s were published.
In a few cases, it was possible also to include a person’s life story, and
these investigations step by step opened up new discussion among
historians.12 However, on other topics in Soviet Russian history, there
evolved a consensus concerning the growth rates and long-term pat-
terns of development. The undeniable success story of the Soviet Union
seems to have been based on the combination of mass elite and educa-
tion from the late 1920s onwards. In the early 1960s, it was a common
argument in the USA that one of the major factors behind the success-
ful Soviet space programme was their all-encompassing school system.
The Soviet welfare system also showed similarities with the Western
European social democratic and social liberal models.13
The history of the Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory had been described
only in popular chronicle form (Russian Letopis) in the Soviet period.
Although that book was rich in detail, the absence of any footnote ref-
erences made it impossible to decide what was crude fact and what was
fiction. That many sombre sides of the factory’s history had been left
out or censored proved to be true when in the early 1990s the main
author, Leonid Komarov, published a new history of the tractor factory,
Russia had no tanks. In that book, he not only dug deep on the effects of
the Great Terror in 1937 – 1938 but also more realistically described the
production conditions in the early 1930s and during the war years.14
The historians Vladimir Novosiolov and Vitalii Tolstikov, who both have
lived in the closed atomic citi of Snezhinsk (Cheliabinsk-70) have writ-
ten very informative books on the atomic bomb projects of the 1940s
and 1950s. They have also, based on archival documents, described the
severe accidents in the atomic cities in the 1950s. 15
Many Russian historians in the 1990s published new interpretations
of Soviet history which adapted the classical theory of totalitarianism.
Their works show how Russian historians, since the breakdown of the
Marxist paradigm in the 1980s, have assimilated frames of interpreta-
tions and general theories in common with their Western colleagues.
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284 Tankograd
Some adopted the theory of totalitarianism in its classical form from

Hannah Arendt and Zbigniew Brzezinski, while others regarded the
1930s as ‘the Stalinist form of modernisation’, with more or less the
same ambitions as the rest of the world since the late 1800s. Aleksandr
Bakunin, at the Urals section of the Academy of Sciences, was one of
the most prolific proponents of this theory as a substitute for the earlier
Marxist paradigm.16 Within this current, it was also possible to advance
comparative analyses of various aspects in the Stalinist and Nazist
states; however, this was more for highlightning of similaries and dif-
ferences than for politicised purposes (as is often the case in Western
Europe).17 Historians have also adopted a more empiricist approach
and study’everyday history’ (istoriia povsednevnoi zhizhni). Many of the
exiled Russian historians of the 1920s and 1930s have today re-entered
the scientific discussions among historians. An example of this renewed
interest in the Russian diaspora is a survey article by E.E. Ivanov and
M.A. Kudinov on how Russian émigré writers, such as the ‘national
Bolshevik’ N. Ustrialov and the ultra-conservative groups in France in
the 1930s, assessed the forced industrialisation in the USSR.18
In a general sense, much that was written in the 1990s can be sorted
under the heading ‘coming to terms’ with ‘Russia’s tragic past’. However,
many scholars have widened their interest from events that used to
be taboo, from studies of the Stalinist repression to broad analyses
of the whole social formation.19 The textbooks by Boris Lichman, at
the Urals State University in Ekaterinburg, enable students to advance
their own ‘multi-conceptual interpretations’ of any aspect of Russia’s
history. The students get examples of the main interpretations con-
cerning industrialisation and collectivisation, the question of Stalin’s
personality and responsibility for repressions and the main features
during World War II. 20 Such textbooks train future history teachers
to discuss with the students how different ideologies, religions and
world views may influence a historical narrative. Students are trained
to discern the various interpretations of Russia’s long history through
Orthodox Christian, materialist (Marxist), liberal and ‘technocratic’
prisms. 21 In Lichman’s view there are no ways to promote one and
only one ‘objective theory of history’. While the separate facts must
be solidly established (in documents or otherwise), the interpretations
are always dependent on subjective factors. The goal is that students
will master several theories or conceptions, and develop their own
scientific research methods so that they can argue for a chosen theory,
but also find the strong and weak aspects in any other. An example
of such an approach is found in an article by S.E. Alekseev and V.D.
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Kamynin on the Soviet industrialisation as ‘the object of a multi-con-

ceptual analysis’. 22
The new historiography has evidently also changed teaching of Russia’s
20th century in the schools in Cheliabinsk, as well as everywhere else in
Russia.23 During my research visits at OGAChO, I have been fortunate
to discuss the challenges for teachers in the basic schools, in particular
for the 9th to 11th classes when the Soviet period is the prime subject.24
It is worth noting that many young people in Cheliabinsk, as well as in
other parts of Russia, take part in countrywide competition for the best
historical essays. The human rights organisation Memorial each year
invites school children in the upper classes to enter such a competi-
tion, on a given theme each year, but under the general heading Man
in history – Russias – the 20th century?.25 Some of the prize-winning
essays from Cheliabinsk bear witness to the attitudes and strivings of
the new generation. From School No 59 in the tractor factory district in
Cheliabinsk, Ilya Polezhaikin wrote an archive-based essay on the role
of forced labour at ChTZ during the war years.26 Ekaterina Burkova and
Nataliia Aksënova studied the fate of German, Hungarian and other
prisoners of war in the POW camps of the city, and how the foreigners
had been directed to various workplaces in the factories. There essay
was actually a pioneering study based on recently declassified materi-
als in OGAChO. They managed to present the first estimate of how
many of the POWs had actually been used in industry and the mortal-
ity rates during the war years, as well as their further fate until they
were repatriated. This research project was supported by their teacher,
Marina Salmina’s, own investigation of the POWs buried on a decayed,
overgrown cemetary in the city district.27 Denis Stepanov was inter-
ested in another topic that might have been totally taboo before – the
extent of public or secret denunciations to the secret police in Stalinist
Russia. His essay was based on a large number of letters from citizens to
the NKVD or party organisations, and also studied how the authorities
handled these accusations from anonymous or open petitioners.28
The dictum that a historian’s explanations of past events are depend-
ent on his or her own time may seem too obvious, and it certainly
does not imply that ‘each generation writes its own history’ in the
sense that one can neglect accumulated knowledge. It is rather a ques-
tion of small incremental additions from newly discovered facts or
circumstances that have not been studied before. The transformation
of Russia’s historiography since the early 1990s give many examples of
such additions and new perspectives on the sum total of old and new
knowledge.
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286 Tankograd
Popular history thrives on the outskirts of Russia’s recent historiog-

raphy. After the period when any new narrative on Soviet history was
distrusted, there is evidently an increasing demand for new narratives.
The main currents in this popular history are the neo-patriotic, anti-
communist on the one hand and the neo-Stalinist ones on the other
hand. The former is characterised by embellishing the achievements
of the late Tsarist regime and the prospects for Russia had the country
not been thrown into World War I, or, in a similar version, demonis-
ing the revolutionaries in general and the Bolsheviks in particular –
for their allegedly dependence on German financial support and their
coup d’état in November 1917. An important focal point for this current
is the regicide – the murder of the Tsarist family in 1918 – as the begin-
ning of a more or less genocidal epoch.
On the opposite side of the political spectrum, a pro-communist
presentation depicts the Soviet period, in particular the Stalin era, in a
hagiographic manner. Leading personalities of the Communist Party of
Russia (KPRF) describe Stalin merely in such political terms as were used
before the 20th Party Congress in 1956, i.e. as the wisest of the succes-
sors to Lenin, the mastermind of the industrialisation and collectivisa-
tion of agriculture and the architect of the victory in 1945 over Nazi
Germany. More extremist views can be found among this ‘Leftist’ cur-
rent which include anti-Semitic, conspiratorial interpretations in their
narrative. In their imagination, the Soviet regime was actually domi-
nated by Jews in the 1920s, which allegedly led to atheist propaganda by
the state and the destruction of the Orthodox churches all over Russia
and the catastrophes in the villages. Stalin is thus depicted as the one
who in the Great Terror put an end to this purported Jewish dominance.
Vladimir Karpov’s biography was the first in a series of hagiographies
devoted to give Stalin a new aura after the millenium. The first volume
even reproduced a fabricated ‘document’, intended to show that most
of the repressed persons in the 1930s and 1940s were actually enemy
agents and of Jewish nationality. At that time, together with the late
Professor Viktor Danilov, I had the unpleasant task of exposing this falsi-
fication. The experts at the Central Archives of the Federal State Security
could without the slightest doubt establish that Karpov had included a
‘facsimile’ of a recently written fabrication. Viktor Danilov published an
article in Otechestvennaia istoriia in which he ridiculed many absurd data
in Karpov’s biography, and in particular the fabricated ‘document’ alleg-
edly by Lavrentii Beria. In later editions, Karpov rewrote this paragraph
of his book and withdrew the ‘facsimile’.29 Since then, more nuanced
pro-Stalinist literature has dominated the book market, many trying by
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polemics against liberal and conservative exaggerations of the Stalin-era

horrors, to show Stalin instead as a great state-builder and foresighted
world communist leader.
A huge memorial monument has been created alongside the highway
to Perm, a few miles west of Ekaterinburg. It consists of a high column
with four world religious symbols – Christianity, Islam, Judaism and
Buddhism – framing it at the bottom, surrounded by circular pathways
of granite stones with metal plates. On these plates, the names, and dates
of birth and death of the more than 18,000 people from the whole Urals
who fell victim to political repression in the Stalin era are engraved. At a
local archive in Ekaterinburg, a research project has worked to establish
as full a picture as possible of the extent of this terror.
Memorial is also the name of a civil rights movement that for more
than 20 years has struggled to shed light on the crimes against human
rights and against humanity in the Soviet era. Memorial has an archive
with autobiographies, letters, documents and artifacts (letters, diaries,
drawings, official documents for the procuracy, etc.). In cooperation
with the State Archives of Russia, Memorial has published documents
on the Gulags, the organisation of the NKVD and on the rehabilita-
tions in the 1950s, as well as inventories of victims of Stalinist terror.
Archival documents from the Communist Party and the secret police
are reproduced. Other articles deal with the waves of repression that hit
Northern Russia in the Soviet era. Similar works on this tragic chapter
in Russia’s recent history have been done in Arkhangelsk and other cit-
ies. Likewise, a complete identification of all innocent victims of politi-
cal repression in Cheliabinsk oblast wasstarted several years ago.30 As
early as 1954 the regional security organs had started to re-investigate
political cases from the late 1930s and rehabilitated many who had
been innocent of any of the charges. In most cases, the persons were
posthumously declared as not guilty of any crime. A few years later,
the rehabilitation process took on the many accusations fabricated
against ‘counter-revolutionary organisations’.31 But the really massive
rehabilitation had to wait for several decades. It was only in the 1990s
that thousands of victims of political repression had their sentences
scrutinised by commissions set up on the orders and directives of presi-
dent Boris Yeltsin. This judicial process in Cheliabinsk still continues,
and is now guided by a decree from the city duma of 18 April 2003.32
At a recent meeting, it was stated that so far these commissions had
established as a proven fact that in the city of Cheliabinsk and sur-
rounding areas, 11,592 persons were executed for political crimes in the
Stalin era after hearings in judicial settings, while another 7066 persons
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288 Tankograd
had been executed by non-judicial organs and with even hearings for
the accused persons. In the province of Cheliabinsk, excluding the
city itself, 188,347 persons were rehabilitated from 1991 to 2001. Out
of these groups, 27,983 persons were convicted on ‘class basis and for
political reasons’ and 30,102 persons were repressed on ethnic grounds.
More than 60,000 complaints concerning restitution of property had
been answered, or more often compensation was given for expropriated
houses and confiscation of personal belongings.33
These are some of the changes in Cheliabinsk’s collective histori-
cal memory that made my own research project not only possible but
more stimulating with every visit. However, the main factor for me as
an economic historian has been the opening of the archives in Russia
in general and in Cheliabinsk in particular. Contrary to a widespread
opinion in the Western mass media, this is a still an ongoing process,
albeit the tempo of declassification has been slower in the 2000s, which
is due mainly to the cumbersome administrative procedures that have
been introduced for the archives concerning declassification. Both at
the central level, for example the state archive GARF in Moscow, and at
OGAChO in Cheliabinsk, there is a genuine striving to declassify more
of their holdings to which access was routinely restricted in the Soviet
period. For this book project, I have used the holdings for the period up
to 1945 that were declassified in the early 2000s.34 Finally, it should be
emphasised that the OGAChO archivists do not only serve historians
and other researchers, but form an organic part in the city’s collective
memory. The archive has taken on the tasks of documenting – by video
or audio – such events that used to be covered in Soviet times by state
or party organisations themselves. Thus, official visits, conferences and
meetings are regularly filmed or taped by one or several archivists. The
city archivists also follow up on personal archives that belong to celeb-
rities or to ‘ordinary people’ who have worked all their lives, or been
stationed for a short time, in Cheliabinsk. They travel to all the affiliate
subdivisions in the cities and villages of the Cheliabinsk province, also
in order to collect, document and record the industrial and cultural
sites that may soon be torn down or decay. OGAChO organises expos
on historical events with original documents and artifacts to illustrate
past times. Veterans of production as well as school classes are regularly
invited to lectures at the archives on such events. OGAChO, jointly
with the city’s television stations, produces documentary programmes.
At the turn of the millenium, a long series of five- to ten-minute pro-
grammes was broadcast all through 1999 on one of the TV stations at
prime time. Each programme covered a certain event, personality or
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transformation of the city’s and province’s life in the 20th century. In

conclusion, it must be mentioned that some extraordinary efforts by
historians and archivists in Cheliabinsk have been put into two encyclo-
pedias, one volume on the city of Cheliabinsk and five volumes on the
province. Evidently, a massive input in these collective works has come
from the archives in the provinces, but more important still seems to
be the striving to include as much as possible that used to be suppressed
information in the Soviet era so that each and every citizen, Russian or
foreigner, may form his or her own opinion on the multi-faceted and
contradictory, fascinating and captivating story of ‘Tankograd’ – be it in
a historical perspective or not.
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Notes
1 Cheliabinsk As a Mirror of Russia in the 20th Century

1. The conversation – ‘Que dit-on de la guerre?’, ‘On n’est pas prêt. Surtout l’usine
de Tcheliabinsk. L’armée est prête, le pays paysan ne l’est pas.’ – is described in
Boris Souvarine, Souvenirs sur Isaac Babel, Panaït Istrati, Pierre Pascal, Paris:
Gérard Lebovici, 1985, p. 17. Isaak Babel (1894–1940) was born in the Jewish
ghetto in Odessa; he grew up in the harbour town of Nikolaev and studied at
the university in Kiev. He then moved to St Petersburg, where he published
essays criticising Tsarism, antisemitism and the bureaucracy. Babel held a
very optimistic view of the prospects for the socialist movement. During
the Russian Civil War, he joined Budennyi’s Red Cavalry army. In 1923, he
started to publish short stories set during that period, which he later assem-
bled in Krasnaya konnitsa (Red Cavalry).
Babel was one of the most highly regarded Soviet authors and was privi-
leged to travel abroad. On many occasions he visited his wife Eugenia, who
had lived in Paris since 1925. Babel made a speech at the International
Writers Congress in Paris in 1935.
Babel had been living in a Ukrainian village in 1930, at the time of the
‘dekulakization’ and deportation of peasants from their villages to Northern
Russia and Siberia. He was deeply shocked by what he had seen, which was
a drastic change from the policies of the 1920s. Thereafter, Babel had lived
on a kolkhoz in order to gather information for a new book on the peasants’
new lives. Towards the end of the 1930s, Babel was more and more heavily
criticised and he was arrested in May 1939. The NKVD secret police accused
him of Trotskyism and ‘anti-Soviet activities’. He was executed on 17 March
1940.
For a biography, see Reinhard Krumm, Isaak Babel. Schreiben under Stalin.
Eine Biographie. (Norderstedt: Books on Demand 2005), idem, Isaak Babel.
Biografiia (Moscow: Rosspen, 2008). Compare with Vitalii Shentalinskii, Raby
svobody: V literaturnykh archivakh KGB, (Moskow: Parus 1995, p. 26–81) con-
cerning the denunciations against Babel, his interrogation and confessions.
At the time, his wife was falsely informed that Babel had been sentenced to a
Gulag and had died on 17 March 1941. Babel was rehabilitated in 1954. The
actual circumstances of his trial and execution were made public only in the
late 1980s under glasnost.
2. Boris Souvarine (Lifschitz) (1894–1985) belonged to the Left wing of French
socialists that protested against World War I, and was later among the found-
ers of the French Communist Party. However, by 1924 he had already been
excluded from the party for disciplinary reasons. Thanks to his independent
attitude regarding the Soviet experiment, Souvarine was soon considered
one of France’s most knowledgeable experts on the Soviet Union. Hist first
major work was the third volume of the Panaït Istratis novel Vers l’autre
flamme. It was later re-edited under the title La Russie en 1930, a title that
290
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Notes 291
referred to the Marquis de Custine’s classical description of Tsarist Russia in

1839. Souvarine eagerly followed what was happening in Soviet Russia by
reading the press. Like many ex-communists, he had a special advantage in
terms of his ability to analyse Soviet developments, although he was forbid-
den to return to the USSR. By the mid-1930s, he had collected materials for
a biography on Stalin, entitled Staline: Aperçu historique du bolchevisme (Paris:
Plon 1935). At the time, very few people in France appreciated this biogra-
phy because the dominant mode in the Popular Front era was pro-Soviet.
However, his biography withstood the test of time. Souvarine’s biography
of Stalin was re-edited in France and Italy in the 1970s with an afterword
by the author. On Souvarine’s struggle to create his own niche in predomi-
nantly pro-Soviet France before and after WWII in order to carry on critical
research and debates on the USSR, see Jean-Louis Panné, Boris Souvarine: Le
premier deçu du communisme, Paris: Robert Laffont 1993, pp. 174–261, 308–
366.
3. V. Bozhe, ‘P. Stolypinu videlas blestiashchaia budushchnost Urala i Sibiri’,
Cheliabinsk, 1999, no. 2. On the migration to Siberia, see Donald W. Treadgold,
The Great Siberian Migration: Government and Peasant in Resettlement from
Emancipation to the First World War, Princeton: Princeton University Press
1957, pp. 90–98, 146–149.
4. On the early history of Cheliabinsk, see Ivan Degtiarëv, Cheliabinskaia sta-
rina. Sbornik statei i materialov po istorii Cheliabinska rannego perioda (30-e gody
XVIII – seredina XIX veka). Tsentr Istoriko-kultornogo naslediia g. Cheliabinska
Cheliabinsk 1996; A.L. Pastukhov, Ot Cheliaba do Cheliabinska: Puteshestvie v
proshloe, Cheliabinsk: Vzgliad, 2000.
5. Anatole Kopp, L’Architecture de la période stalinienne, with a foreword by
Charles Bettelheim, Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble 1978, p.
154. As a pioneering French architect, Kopp made several study trips to the
USSR starting in the late 1950s. However, even though he was associated
with the French Communist Party he could not visit any other places than
the tourist-adapted cities of Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev and a few other towns.
To learn about the rest of the country’s architecture, he had to be content
with studying books and journals in the libraries.
6. Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization, Berkeley, CA,
& London: University of California Press 1995. It is worth noting that one
of the best-selling descriptions of Soviet Russia in the 1940s was Behind the
Urals: An American in Russia’s City of Steel (1943) by American engineer John
Scott. Scott vividly and with great empathy showed how the steel works at
Magnitogorsk had been founded. His book was translated into Swedish in
the same year and a German version was edited in Switzerland. Scott worked
as engineer in Magnitogorsk from 1931 to 1937. He was then stationed in
Moscow until 1941 as a correspondent for British and American newspapers.
During the last years of World War II, Scott was stationed in Stockholm as
a correspondent for Time-Life and as an undercover agent of the new intelli-
gence organ, the Office for Strategic Studies (or OSS). In the meantime, Scott
had prepared a massive survey in Washington for US economic intelligence
on Soviet heavy industry built during the pre-war five-year plans and situ-
ated beyond the Volga river, in the Urals and in Western Siberia. The level
of detail included in this intelligence study indicates that Scott might have
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292 Notes
been engaged in US intelligence work throughout his stay in the Soviet Union
from the early 1930s. See also Lennart Samuelson, ‘Making Sense of Stalinist
Industrialisation: An Insider’s Approach’, in Markets and Embeddedness:
Essays in Honour of Ulf Olsson, Göteborg: Ekonomisk-historiska institutionen
vid Handelshögskolan, Göteborgs Universitet 2004, pp. 209–218.
7. William H. Chamberlin, The Russian Enigma. An Interpretation, New York:
C. Scribner’s sons, 1943 p. 179.
8. OGAChO, f. P-75, op. 1, d. 686, l. 152–160, Protocol from the Cheliabinsk
okrug party conference 25–31 May 1930.
2 From the Civil War to the Five-year Plans

1. For the party system in Cheliabinsk city and the southern Urals before 1917,
see Igor Narskii’s PhD dissertation, Politicheskie ob”edineniia na Urale do 1917
g., Cheliabinsk 1995; idem, ‘Politische Parteien in der russischen Provinz
(Ural, 1901–1916)’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 1997, No. 45.
2. Elena Pavlovna Turova, ‘God 1914. Voina. Cheliabinsk i cheliabintsy’,
Neizvestnyi Cheliabinsk, vol. 1, 1996, pp. 65–83.
3. Ural: Vek dvadtsatyi. Liudi, sobytiia, zhizn, ed. A.D. Kirillov, Ekaterinburg:
Ural Politicheskii 2000, p. 34–38.
4. Ivan Kashirin was enrolled with the secret police from July 1920 and took
part in the OGPU repression against peasants during the 1930–1931 collec-
tivisation in the lower Volga region. He was arrested during the Great Terror
and executed in 1937.
5. Nikolai Kashirin was a member of the Military-Revolutionary Council of
the Red Army in the 1920s. During the Great Terror he was implicated the
one of the fabricated cases against the army.
6. For a survey of the Russian Civil War, see Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil
War, (London: Allen & Unwin 2000); on the battles between Red and White
forces in the Urals and in Siberia, pp. 75–111, 132–147.
7. Vladimir Mogilnikov’s memory has been preserved in the form of streets
named after him in the small town of Brodokalmak and in Cheliabinsk.
8. The square along the White Barracks was renamed The Fallen Revolutionaries’
Square in 1920 (Ploshchad’ pavshikh revoliutsionerov).
9. For a survey of the Russian Civil War, see Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil
War, (London: Allen & Unwin 2000); on the battles between Red and White
forces in the Urals and in Siberia, pp. 75–111, 132–147.
10. Gulsina D. Selianinova, ‘Intelligentsiia i terror: Opyt grazhdanskoi voiny na
Urale, 1918–1919 gg.’, Ural i Sibir’ v stalinskoi politike, Novosibirsk: Sibirskii
Khronograf 2002, pp. 5–30. Before 1991, Soviet historians had written
considerably more about the repressions perpetrated by the White Armies
against workers and others who had supported Soviet power. Similarly one-
sided descriptions of the Red Terror dominated in the West, see, e.g., George
Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1981).
Obviously, much research remains to be done in order to establish the
extent of summary executions and other repressive measures that are
habitually included in the concept of terror. From a post-Soviet perspective,
it has become more vital to provide a balanced description of both sides
and to explain better the widespread violence outside the direct military
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Notes 293
confrontations between 1918 and 1921. Compare Aleksei Litvin, Krasnyi i

belyi terror v Rossii, 1918–1922 gg., Moscow: Iauza/Eksmo 2004, especially
Chapter 3 ‘The practice of the anti-Bolshevik government’ (p. 139 et seq.)
and Chapter 4 ‘Total terror. The Crucification of symbols. The Dictators
liquidate the opposition’ (p. 225 et seq.). Litvin described (p. 99 et seq.) how
concentration and forced labour camps were established by the Bolsheviks,
as well as the 1919 laws that regulated the organisation of the camp. In
his concluding chapter, Litvin shows how new cadres were recruited to
the ChK. By the end of 1920, 17,000 people, mostly peasants and workers,
were imprisoned in these camps. Lenin supported the harsh repression, and
internal criticisms by other Bolsheviks were ignored.
Today, it is important to avoid politicising the population losses of Russia
between 1914 and 1921, and instead to carefully analyse and separate
various factors at work. This analysis has started in the form of the most
updated demographic calculations by Russian historians, Yurii A. Poliakov
and Valentina B. Zhiromskaia, Naselenie Rossii v XX veke. Istoricheskie otjerki,
vol. 1, 1900–1939, Moscow: Rosspen 2000, pp. 83–133. Unlike earlier stud-
ies, it is necessary to first separate the losses of the Red and White Armies
from the terror that was directed on the civilian population – from both
sides of the Civil War. It is then necessary to estimate the number of victims
in anti-Jewish pogroms that were perpetrated predominantly by the White
Armies. Thereafter, one must estimate how natality and mortality, as well as
the living conditions, changed in various parts of the country.
Although the registers of the population almost collapsed during the
Civil War and a more reliable census was only taken in 1926, there are fairly
good estimates of the different components behind the demographic devel-
opment. Of course, it is not possible to determine the exact number of victims
of the terror (just as for other forms of repression in later periods in Soviet
history). However, this argument should not be used to denigrate the scien-
tific progress that demographers and historians have made in recent years.
It is no longer appropriate to treat the estimates made by General Denikin’s
commission in southern Russia in 1919 that the Red Terror had claimed 1.7
million lives as equally valid. Those numbers reflect how wartime propa-
ganda was formed to influence public opinion.
Finally, it is necessary to estimate the approximate number of deaths
in epidemics (typhus and the Spanish flu) that spread across Russia and
Europe in 1918–1919. Danish historian Bent Jensen has lumped together –
in ‘statistics’ of Bolshevik terror – the total population losses between 1917
and 1922. Compare the table of population losses, in Bent Jensen, Gulag
og glemsel: Ruslands tragedie og Vestens hukommesestab i det 20. århundrede,
(Copenhagen: Gyldendal 2002), p. 24.
11. Among the rich body of post-Soviet literature on the White Armies in the
Civil War, it is worthwhile studying the objective and untendentious work
by the young Evgenii Volkov (b. 1964), entitled Pod znamenem belogo admi-
rala: Ofitserskii korpus vooruzhënnykh formirovanii A.V. Kolchaka v period grazh-
danskoi voiny, (Irkutsk: Sarma 2005).
12. A street named after Sofia Krivaia in central Cheliabinsk runs parallel to the
great Lenin Prospekt, the avenue that starts at Gagarin Park in the western
part of the city.
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294 Notes
13. See calculations by Colonel-General G.F. Krivosheev of the losses during the
1918–1921 Civil War and the battles against intervention armies. He briefly
discusses the source problems due to the lack of reliable reports, Soviet
Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century, London: Greenhill
Books 1997, pp. 7–39.
14. P.R. Nazyrov, ‘Cheliabinsk v 1918–1919 (Iz istorii goroda v gody grazhdan-
skoi voiny)’, Cheliabinsk neizvestnyi, vol. 1, Cheliabinsk 1996, pp. 90–103;
K. Zadirskii, ‘Tukhachevskii v Cheliabinske’, Vechernii Cheliabinsk, 13
September 1989. Also see the articles ‘Cheliabinskaia operatsiia’, ‘Ufimskaia
operatsiia’, ‘Zlatoustovskaia operatsiia’, Grazhdanskaia voina i voennaia inter-
ventsiia v SSSR. Entsiklopediia, Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1983.
15. Mikhail Tukhachevskii (b. 1893) has been judged by history in many ways.
He was sentenced to death in a closed show trial in June 1937 for alleged
high treason and espionage in favour of Nazi Germany. He then figured as
one of the main culprits in the ‘confessions’ at the third Moscow show trial
in 1938. A conspiracy theory was combined with the theme of his alleged
plan for a coup d’état. To communists in the Stalinist generation, these
myths became ‘truth’ in books like Michael Sayers and Albert Eugene Kahn
The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War against Soviet Russia (Boston: Little,
Brown, and Company 1946). In the 1950s, Tukhachevskii was formally
rehabilitated and the falsifications in the 1937 show trial became officially
known in the higher Party circles. Tukhachevskii’s main publications were
republished in the 1960s and his important role in the reconstruction of
the Red Army in the 1930s was recognised. A standard Soviet-era biogra-
phy is Valentin Ivanov’s Marshal M.N. Tukhachevskii, (Moscow: Voenizdat
1990), particularly for its account of Tukhachevskii’s campaign with the
Fifth Army of the Eastern Army Group over the Ural mountains and the
Battle of Cheliabinsk in 1919, pp. 97–121.
After the fall of communism, Tukhachevskii’s role in the Soviet experi-
ment was interpreted anew. Some new information on how Tukhachevskii
handled the crushing of the 1921 peasant rebellion in the Tambov region
have been found in the military archives. He is referred to as the ‘blood-
stained marshal’ by, for example, German Smirnov, ‘Pravda o krovavom
marsjale’ in the anthology Krovavyi marshal: Mikhail Tuchachevskii, 1893–
1937, (St Petersburg: Korona 1997). For an introduction to Tukhachevskii’s
role in the formulation of a new military doctrine, see Sophie de Lastours,
Toukhachevski: Le Bâtisseur de l’Armée Rouge, (Paris: Albin Michel 1996). A
recent addition to the body of Tukhachevskii literature, with interesting
excerpts from the interrogation of Tukhachevskii in May–June 1937, is Iuliia
Kantor, Voina i mir marshala Tukhachevskogo, (Moscow: Vremia 2005).
16. Larisa V. Borisova, Voennyi kommunizm: nasilie kak element khoziaistven-
nogo mekhanizma, (Moscow: Institute of Russian History of the Academy of
Sciences/MONF 2001).
17. Vladimir Bozhe, ‘Trudovye armii v Sovetskoi Rossii (1920–1921): Diskussiia
o meste trudovykh chastei v khoziaistvennoi zhizni strany’, Istoricheskie
chteniia, vol. 4, pp. 104–109.
18. Georgii L. Piatakov (1890–1937) led the economic recovery and recon-
struction in three different phases after the 1917 revolutions. He started
as head of the labour army in the Urals, was then put in charge of
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Notes 295
refurbishing destroyed coal mines in the Ukraine in the early 1920s and,
finally, in the 1930s became deputy commissar of heavy industry with
special responsibility for defence industries. His management style and
methods were formed during the first two of these phases. Piatakov was
close to Trotsky and joined the Leftist opposition in the mid-1920s against
Stalin. Although Piatakov had been an ardent promoter of the interests of
the defence industry, he was arrested on fabricated political motives and
false charges of economic failures in late 1936. He was sentenced to death
at the second Moscow show trial in February 1937. See Andrea Graziosi,
‘G.L. Piatakov: A Mirror of Soviet History’, ‘At the Roots of Soviet Industrial
Relations and Practices: Piatakov’s Donbass in 1921’, in A New Peculiar State:
Explorations in Soviet History, 1917–1937, (Westport & London: Praeger 2000),
pp. 1–64, 119–178.
19. For Trotsky’s view of the situation in Soviet Russia during the Civil War,
see Terrorism and Communism, Chapter VII, ‘The question of labour organi-
zation’. The interpretations of Trotsky’s suggestion to use ‘labour armies’
(trudarmiia) in 1919–1920 spurred controversy in the academic community.
For a survey, see, e.g., Francesco Benvenuti, ‘Dal communismo di guerra
alla NEP: Il dibattio dui sindicati’, Pensiero e azione politica di Lev Trockij,
vol. 1, (Milano: Leo P. Olschki 1982), pp. 261–288. For a historical back-
ground that clearly states the contemporaneous limits of the Bolsheviks’
labour policy, compare Lars T. Lih, ‘Our Position is in the Highest Degree
Tragic’: Bolshevik ‘Euphoria in 1920’, in Mike Haynes & Jim Wolfreys
(eds), History and Revolution: Refuting Revisionism, (London: Verso 2007),
pp. 118–137.
20. See Leninskii sbornik, vol. XI, pp. 345–403, for the passages in Bukharin’s
Ekonomika perekhodnogo perioda that Lenin had underlined or commented on.
Compare also Nikolai Bukharin, The Economics and Politics of the Transition
Period, edited and introduced by Kenneth J. Tarbuck, (London: Routledge
1979).
21. A.P. Abramovskii & P.N. Pankin, ‘Golubaia armiia’: Sozdanie, bor’ba,
razgrom’, Istoricheskie chteniia, 4, pp. 68–70; A.V. Bakunin, ‘Grazhdanskaia
voina i krasnyi terror v Rossii’, ibid., pp. 22–25; A.I. Skorikov, ‘Iz istorii pov-
stancheskogo i dezertirskogo dvizheniia na territorii Cheliabinskoi gubernii
v kontse 1919–nachale 1921 gg.’, ibid., pp. 59–62. See also Veprev & Liutov,
Gosudarstvennaia bezopasnost’, pp. 194–200.
22. Skripkov, Cheliabinsk. Vek dvadtsatyi, p. 64.
23. P.F. Nazyrov, ‘Cheliabinsk v 1918–1919 gg.: Iz istorii goroda v period grazh-
danskoi voiny’, Cheliabinsk Neizvestnyi, vol. 3, 1996, pp. 90–103. Compare
statistics for the number of prisoners of war in Cheka camps in 1921, Voenno-
istoricheskii archiv, 2004: 6.
24. V.L. Telitsyn, Skvoz’ ternii ‘voennogo kommunizma’: krest’ianskoe khozhaistvo
Urala v 1917–1921 gg., Moscow: RAN Institut Rossiiskoi Istorii 1998; A.V.
Ivanov, A.T. Tertyshnyi, Ural’skoe krest’ianstvo i vlast’ v period grazhdanskoi
voiny (1917–1921 gg): Opyt osmysleniia problemy v otechestvennoi istoriografii,
Ekaterinburg: Uralskii Gosudarstvennyi Ekonomicheskii Universitet
2002.
25. Vladimir Bozhe & Igor Nepein, Zhatva smerti: Golod v Cheliabinskoi guber-
nii v 1921–1922 gg. Cheliabinsk 1994. Irina Iangirova, ‘K vesne 1922 goda
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296 Notes
v Cheliabinskoi gubernii umerli ot goloda okolo 10 tysiach chelovek...’,

Vechernii Cheliabinsk, 23/12 1992.
26. Iu. Iu. Khmelëvskaia, ‘Rol’ amerikanskoi missii v bor’be s golodom na Urale
(po materialam Ural’sko-Ufimskogo okruga ARA, 1921–1923), Iuzhnyi Ural v
sud’be Rossii, Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 149–153.
27. Alan Ball, And Now My Soul is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia,
1918–1930, (Berkeley: University of California Press 1994), pp. 154–156, 183.
On child care and education in general, see Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, Small
Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932, (London
& New York: Routledge 2001). Anton Makarenko (1888–1939), a teacher,
organised an ‘internat’ for orphans who had started to lead criminal lives.
Education was combined with practical labour, and harsh discipline was
often the responsibility of the children themselves. The Road to Life, an
Epic of Education [1935] (Moscow: Progress 1977). For a description of the
Cheka colonies for homeless children and orphan (‘besprizorniki’), see
Aleksandr M. Plekhanov, VChK–OGPU, 1921–1928, (Moscow: X-history 2003),
pp. 430–437.
28. William Henry Chamberlin, The Russian Enigma, (New York: C. Scribner’s
Sons 1944).
29. G.K. Pavlenko, ‘Istoriograficheskie problemy industrialnoi modernizatsii na
Urale’, Industrializatsiia v SSSR, pp. 68–71.
30. A.A. Antufev, Ural’skaia promyshlennost’ nakanune i v gody Velikoi
Otechetsvennoi voiny, (Ekaterinburg: Ural’skoe Otdelenie Rossiiskoi Akademii
Nauk 1992).
31. Edward Carr (1892–1982) took an interest in Russian history in the early
1930s. He visited Moscow in 1937 and followed the terror-stricken society
at close range. However, he also saw the long-term effects of the harsh
industrialisation drive more clearly than many observers. See Jonathan
Haslam, The Vices of Integrity. E.H. Carr, 1892–1982, (London: Verso 1999),
pp. 74–79. Historians continue to debate the question of alternatives to
forced collectivisation. For a recent reinterpretation of Stalinist industri-
alisation, see Robert Allen, Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet
Industrialization, (Princeton University Press 2003). In the post-Soviet
Russian historiography, the price of ‘Stalin’s revolution from above’ has
also been hotly argued; see, for example, P.E. Alekseev & V.D. Kamynin,
‘Industrializatsiia SSSR kak obekt mnogokontseptualnogo rassmotreniia’,
Industrializatsiia v SSSR: Uroki istorii, Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 168–171.
32. Nadezhda Petrovna Shmakova, ‘Mashinostroitel’naia promyshlennost
Iuzhnogo Urala v 30-e gody XX veka’, Promyshlennost’ Urala v XIX–XX
vekakh, Moscow: AIRO-XX 2002, pp. 208–226.
33. In the 1920s, a popularly controlled organ to combat bureaucratisation
was set up in the so-called Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate (Rabkrin).
It was later combined with the Communist Party’s own control commis-
sion; see Arfon Rees, State Control in Soviet Russia: The Rise and Fall of
the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, 1920–1934, (London: Macmillan
1987).
34. Hubert R. Knickerbocker, The Red Trade Menace: Progress of the Soviet Five-Year
Plan, (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company 1931), pp. 61ff.
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Notes 297
35. D.V. Gavrilov, ‘Ural’skii tyl v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine: Geopoliticheskii

aspekt’, Ural v Velikoi Otechetsvennoi voine, 1941–1945 gg., Ekaterinburg 1995,
p. 58.
36. Tatiana Kirstein, Sowjetische Industrialisierung - Spontaner oder Planierter
Prozess? Eine Strukturanalyse des wirtschaftspolitischen Entscheidungsprozesses
beim Aufbau des Ural-Kuzneck-Kombinats 1918–1930, (Baden-Baden: Nomos
1979). This dissertation analysed the decision-making process for the mines,
transport system and the city to be built to exploit the Magnitka iron ores.
37. Vladimir Kucher, Magnitka – Eto navsegda. Dela i sudby stalinskikh direktorov,
(Moscow: Novosti 2003).
38. Albert A. Antuf’ev, Ural’skaia promyshlennost’ nakanune i v gody Velikoi
Otechestvennoi voiny, (Ekaterinburg: Ural Section of the Russian Academy of
Sciences 1998).
39. T.V. Palagina, ‘Iz istorii Cheliabinskogo elektrolitnogo zinkogo zavoda’,
Cheliabinsk neizvestnyi, vol. 1, Cheliabinsk 1996, pp. 112–120.
40. OGAChO, f. R-220, op. 5, d. 1, l. 10 ch. Materialy dokladchikam na otchëtnykh
sobraniakh o rabote gorsoveta za 1933.
41. OGAChO, f. 870, op. 9, d. 8, l. 1, 15.
42. OGAChO, f. 804, op. 1, d. 29, l. 24–27, Report from the Workers’ and
Peasants’ Inspectorate, Rabkrin, in March 1932.
43. P.V. Kostiunina, ‘Istoriia OAO “Ufaleinikel” – pervenets nikelevoi promysh-
lennosti SSSR’, Iuzhnyi Ural v sud’be Rossii, pp. 189–192.
44. OGAChO, f. R-1637, op. 1, d. 186, l.1–16; OGAChO, f. R-804, op. 11, d. 514.
45. G.V. Forstman & M. D. Mashin, Ural’skie stankostroiteli. Istoriko-biograficheskii
ocherk. Cheliabinsk: Iuzhno-Ural’skoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1985. OGAChO,
R-220.5.1: 1–2, 6–11. Materialy dokladchikam na otchëtnykh sobraniiakh o rab-
ote gorsoveta. 1. ‘Itogi pervoi piatiletki’. The results of the first five-year plan,
from 1928–32, were presented in a heavily censured and tendentious man-
ner. Few of the original goals had been achieved and there was a severe
famine in the autumn of 1932. The manipulation of the plan results was
particularly skewed for macro data on industrial production. It was undeni-
able that some targets had not been achieved and this was blamed on the
threat of war with Japan, which was claimed to have created new priorities.
This was, in fact, partly correct. However, the most unrealistic of the tar-
gets proclaimed in 1930 were simply dropped and the plan’s fulfilment was
instead compared with more modest, original targets set in 1928–29.
46. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 2, d. 605, ll. 1–7, 10–15, Dokladnaia zapiska o sostoia-
nii promyshlennosti, transporta i gorodskogo stroitel’stva g. Cheliabinska za
vremia ot III do IV gorodskoi partkonferentsii; see also Natalia P. Shmakova,
‘Mashinostroitel’naia promyshlennost’ Iuzhnogo Urala v 30-e gody XX
veka’, Promyshlennost’ Urala v XIX–XX vekakh, Moscow: ARIO-XX 2002,
pp. 208–226.
47. OGAChO, f. 75, op. 1, d. 566, l. 219–220, Report from OGPU to the regional
party committee, 27 April 1928.
48. OGAChO, R-134, op. 1, d. 210, l. 34–36, Resolution from May 1928 on the
collectivisation of agriculture in the Urals.
49. A.A. Napylov & N.V. Kostin, ‘Kollektivizatsiia kak neobkhodimaia pred-
posylka industrializatsii SSSR’, Industrializatsiia v SSSR: Uroki istorii,
Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 28–29; M.A. Ivanova, ‘Kollektivizatsiia – samaia
9780230_208872_11_not.indd 297 7/4/2011 8:41:12 PM

298 Notes
massovaia repressiia vlasti protiv naroda’, Totalitarizm v Rossii (SSSR) 1917–

1991. Oppozitsiia i repressii, Perm 1998, pp. 49–51. Postanovlenie biuro OK
VKP(b) o poriadke provedeniia rabot po likvidatsii kulachestva kak klassa,
11 February 1930. On the collectivisation, the deportation of kulaks and
their families in 1930–32 and the role of the OGPU secret police in these
operations, see Nikolai A. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie (nachalo
30-kh godov), Moscow: Magistr. 1996, and idem, Repressivnaia politika sovet-
skoi vlasti v derevne (1928–1933 gg.), Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN
2000.
50. On Article 58 on political crimes as defined in the Soviet criminal code,
see the appendix in Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purges in the
1930s, (London: Macmillan 1968).
51. OGAChO, f.804, op.8, d. 143, l. 21.
52. A.A. Rakov, ‘Opyt analiza kulatskogo khozhaistva 1930 goda: Ekonomiko-
pravovoi i politicheskoi aspekty’, Iuzhnyi Ural v sud’be Rossii: Materialy nauch-
noi konferentsii, Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 164–167; Irina Iangirova, ‘Zhertvy
‘Velikogo pereloma’, Golos, 10–17 January, 16–23 February 1992.
53. GASO, f. 245, op. 3, d. 341, l. 30–35.
54. V.V. Betenev, ‘Pravookhranitel’nye organy Iuzhnogo Urala v period provede-
niia kollektivizatsii’, Iuzhnyi Ural v istorii Rossii, Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 137–
139; P. Iu. Salmina, ‘Prokuratura Juzhnogo Urala v 30-e gody’, ibid., pp.
179–182.
55. OGAChO, f. 180, op. 1, d. 367, l. 194.
56. OGAChO, f. 180, op. 1, d. 398, l. 32.
57. Ivanova, ‘Kollektivizatsiia – samaia massovaia repressiia vlasti protiv nar-
oda’, p. 51.
58. OGAChO, f. 288, op. 2, d. 5, l. 8.
59. OGAChO, f.288, op.1, d.150, l. 198–202.
60. Nazi German propaganda during the 1930s frequently referred to Stalin’s
agricultural policy as aiming to ‘exterminate’ the peasants, using the
German words ausrotten or Ausrottung (extermination). The best-selling
novel based on Karl Albrecht’s life in Soviet Russia frequently used these
sliding terms to inspire anti-communist, anti-Jewish and anti-Russian opin-
ions. Karl Albrecht Der verratene Sozialismus. Zehn Jahre as Staatsbeamter in
der Sowjetunion Berlin 1938 (with numerous later editions until 1943).
61. Irina Iangirova, ‘Raskulachivanie’, rotaprint 90–02-21; idem ‘Velikii pere-
lom Iuzhnouralskii variant’, Golos, 4–11/9 1992. The data for all of the Urals
are based upon I.E. Plotnikov, ‘Kak likvidirovali kulachestvo na Urale’,
Otechestvennaia istoriia, 1993, No. 4, p. 159. The standard textbooks and
documentaries (khrestomatiia) used by students at Russia’s universities con-
tain the important resolutions of the Communist Party Politburo on deku-
lakisation, resolutions on the number of ‘counter-revolutionary peasants’
to be executed or sent to labour camps. See, for example, A.F. Kiselëv &
E.M. Shchagin (eds), Khrestomatiia po otechestvennoi istorii (1914–1945 gg.),
Moscow: Vlados 1996, pp. 435–440 on collectivisation.
62. James J. Schneider, The Structure of Strategic Revolution: Total War and the
Roots of the Soviet Warfare State, (Novato, CA: Presidio 1994), pp. 237–241,
257–263.
9780230_208872_11_not.indd 298 7/4/2011 8:41:12 PM

Notes 299
63. Viktor N. Zemskov, Spetsposelentsy v SSSR, 1930–1960, Moscow: Nauka

2003.
64. GASO, f. 245, op. 3, d. 376, l. 4–5 ob.
65. OGAChO, f. R–220, op. 9, d. 24, l. 81.
66. OGAChO, f. R–220, op. 9, d. 24, l. 83–85.
67. OGAChO, f. 1075, op, 1, d. 23, l. 89–90.
68. GASO, f. 245, op. 3, d. 376, l. 42.
69. OGAChO, f. R-804, op. 5, d. 10, l 72–87, On coal mining in Kopeisk in 1937
and preparations for increasing coal production in 1938; OGAChO, f. P-288,
op. 2, d. 602, l. 53–62.
70. OGAChO, f. 1075, op.1, d. 33, l. 89–145.
71. Footnote 183 in Cheliabinskaia oblast 1917–1945.
3 The Industrial City As a Socialist Vision and

Soviet Reality
1. See Anton Karlgren, Stalin: Bolsjevismens väg från leninism till stalinism,
Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt & Söners 1942. Karlgren (1882–1973) was profes-
sor of Slavic languages in Copenhagen and later editor at the Stockholm
newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
2. In France, Marxism has fascinated several generations of intellectuals,
mainly due to the strong position of the French Communist Party in the
working class. Intellectuals eagerly adopted the official Soviet self-image
and the myths surrounding the ‘construction of Socialism’ in Russia. A typi-
cal hagiography is the history of Soviet Russia as presented by Louis Aragon
in Histoire de l’URSS (Paris: Union Générale d’Editions 1962). As more ‘rev-
elations’ were made by Khrushchev and others regarding the USSR, French
ex-party members tried to formulate their new attitudes to Soviet history.
Jean Elleinstein wrote an officially accepted textbook on ‘socialism in one
country’, Le socialisme dans un pays. Histoire de l’U.R.S.S. (Tome 2) (Paris:
Editions Sociales 1973). Some years later, Elleinstein tried to formulate his
own explanation of Stalinism, Le Phénomène stalinien (Paris: Grasset 1975).
However, this attempt exposed him to severe criticism from the Communist
Party. Elleinstein later wrote biographies of Karl Marx and Joseph Stalin,
without adding anything substantial in terms of knowledge.
3. Among numerous Western and Russian works on how Lenin and the
Bolsheviks envisioned the prospects for their revolution in 1921 is Moshe
Lewin’s Lenin’s Last Struggle (1967, new edition with a new foreword by the
author, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press 2005).
4. Among those who maintained the opinion that the Bolsheviks were led
by a utopian vision were two Soviet historians who were in exile in the
1980s, Michel Heller and Aleksandr Nekrich, Utopia in Power: the History of
the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present, (New York: Summit Books 1986).
Lenin was allegedly ‘fettered’ by this utopian vision in 1917 (pp. 41–58), and
finally, the regime that emerged in the late 1930s was described by Heller
and Nekrich as ‘the socialist totalitarian state’ (p. 263).
5. This is based on N.P. Korolëv, ‘K.V. Ryndin i protsess industrializatsii v
Cheliabinskoi oblasti’, in Industrializatsiia v SSSR: Uroki istorii, Cheliabinsk
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300 Notes
2003, pp. 109–113; idem ‘K voprosu o deiatelnosti K.V. Ryndina kak parti-
inogo rukovoditelia sovetskogo gosudarstva’, in Iuzhnyj Ural v sudbde Rossii,
Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 174–178.
6. E. Arfon Rees, State Control in Soviet Russia: The Rise and Fall of the Workers’
and Peasants’ Inspectorate, 1920–1934, London: Macmillan 1987.
7. Compare R.W. Davies, Oleg V. Khlevniuk & E.A. Rees, The Stalin–Kaganovich
Correspondence, 1931–1936, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2003,
pp. 272–273. This English edition contains 182 of the original 867 letters in the
Russian edition of Stalin–Kaganovich. Perepiska, 1931–1936 (Moscow: Rosspen
2002). The letters exchanged between Stalin and Kaganovich were written
when one of them was on a month-long holiday by the Black Sea. Their cor-
respondence sheds light on many economic and foreign policy problems and
how the leaders argued over repressive measures and laws. Their letters have
added to the knowledge of the decision-making process at the highest level
of the Soviet Union. See also Stephen G. Wheatcroft, ‘From Team-Stalin to
Degenerate Tyranny’, in E. Arfon Rees (ed.) The Nature of Stalin’s Dictatorship:
The Politburo, 1924–1953 (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2004), pp. 79–107.
8. R.W. Davies, Oleg V. Khlevniuk, E.A. Rees, Stalin–Kaganovich Correspondence,
pp. 285–287.
9. Pismo ob organizatsii i provedenii anti-rozhdestvenskoi kampanii v 1931 godu,
OGAChO, R-221.1.107: 11–12, Materialy o rabote biuro soiuza bezbozhnikov,
1931.
10. On the atheist, anti-religious campaigns and, from another perspective,
enlightenment in the Soviet Union between the wars, which were directed
against all religions – the Russian Orthodox as well as Roman Catholic
and Judaism and Buddhism – see William B. Husband, ‘Godless Atheists’:
Atheism and Society in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932, DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois
University Press 2000, pp. 36–100, and Daniel Peris, Storming the Heavens:
The Soviet League of the Militant Godless, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
1998. On the mockery of religion, the societies of atheist propaganda and
the closing of churches in the late 1920s, see Paul Gabel, And God Created
Lenin: Marxism vs. Religion in Russia, 1917–1929, Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books 2006.
11. For a detailed analysis of religious life in Cheliabinsk from the late 1800s
to the 1930s, see Vladimir P. Bozhe, ‘Ocherk tserkovno-religioznoi zhizni
Cheliabinska nachala XX v.’, Cheliabinsk neizvestnyi: Kraevedcheskii sbornik,
vol. 1, Cheliabinsk 1996; idem, ‘Materialy k istorii tserkovno-religioznoi
zhizni Cheliabinska (1917–1937 gg.)’, Cheliabinsk neizvestnyi. Kraevedcheskii
sbornik, vol. 2, Cheliabinsk 1998, pp. 107–199.
12. See Veprev & Liutov, Gosudarstvennaia bezopasnost: Tri veka na Iuzhnom Urale,
Cheliabinsk: Iuzhno-Uralskoe Knizhnoe Izdatelstvo 2002, pp. 278–279.
13. OGAChO, f. 274, op. 3, d. 55, l. 79.
14. OGAChO, f. P.288, op. 2, d. 602, l. 53–62.
15. The Main Post Office in the city centre is a cultural heritage building. It was
rebuilt in the 1990s to achieve the original form that the architect had envi-
sioned and, at the same time, its infrastructure and technical facilities were
modernised. Kirov Street (referred to as the Workers’ and Peasants’ Street
before 1935) is now a pedestrian walkway. In Soviet times it became a rough,
torn street with a heavy traffic load. All the shops, cafes and offices from
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Notes 301
the early 1900s have now been given carefully restored exteriors. Along
the pedestrian street, a number of sculptures are reminders of the histori-
cal trades in Cheliabinsk. See also T. Maevskaia, ‘Glavpochtamt’, Biulleten
arkhitektury, 2000, no. 2; Iu. Filinskich, ‘Poslednii ‘vzvizg’ konstruktivizma’,
Vechernii Cheliabinsk, 26 February 2001.
16. For the dominant views on town planning in the 1920s, see Anatole Kopp,
Ville et révolution: Architecture et urbanisme soviétiques des annés vingt, Paris:
Anthropos, 1967; idem, Changer la vie, changer la ville: De la vie nouvelle aux
problèmes urbains. U.R.P.P. 1917–1932, Paris: UEG, 1975. On the history of
Soviet architecture in general, compare Selim Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of
Soviet Architecture: The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s (London:
Thames and Hudson 1983). Although Khan-Magomedov had to avoid certain
topics when writing in the 1980s, this book is the most comprehensive survey
of the history of Soviet architecture. The massive plans to transform the cen-
tre of Moscow are described in ‘Mysterious Pages of History of the 30s’, in V.A.
Vinogradov (ed.) Moscow. 850th Anniversary, Moscow 1997, vol. 2, pp. 94–96.
For other interpretations of Stalinist architecture, see Harald Bodenschatz &
Christiane Post (eds), Städtebau im Schatten Stalins: Die internationale Such nach
der sozialististischen Stadt in der Sowjetunion 1929–1935, Berlin: Braun 2004.
17. V.P. Terekhov, ‘Inzhenerno-tekhnicheskaia intelligentsiia Urala naka-
nune Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny’, Ural v strategii Vtoroi Mirovoi voiny,
Ekaterinburg 2000, pp. 160–166.
18. See Evgeniia Gershkovich & Evgenii Korneev, Vysokii stalinskii stil’, Moscow
2005; Alessandra Latour, Birth of a Metropolis: Moscow 1930–1955. Recollections
and Images, Moscow: Iskusstvo-XX vek 2005. For an interpretation of the
epoch’s art in the paradigm of totalitarianism, see Igor Golomstock, Arte
totalitaria nell’URSS di Stalin, nella Germania di Hitler, nell’Italia di Mussolini,
Milan: Leonardo 1990 (translation from Russian, Totalitarnoe iskusstvo,
Moscow: Gallart, 1994).
19. Nikolai Miliutin, Sotsgorod. Problema stroitel’stva sotsialisticheskikh gorodov.
Osnovnye voproys ratsional’noi planirovki i stroitel’stva naselënnykh mest SSSR,
Moscow 1930.
20. See Jean-Louis Cohen, Le Corbusier and the Mystique of the USSR. Theories
and Projects for Moscow, 1928–1936. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press 1992. Naum Gabo was one of more than ten foreign architects who
were invited to compete for the Palace of Soviets, see the catalogue Naum
Gabo and the Competition for the Palace of Soviets, Moscow 1931–1933, Berlin &
Moscow 1993, pp. 197–201.
21. V.I. Isaev, ‘Sotsial’nye problemy formirovaniia Uralo-Kuznetskogo kom-
pleksa’, in Ural i Sibir’ v stalinskoi politike, Novosibirsk: Sibirskii khronograf
2002, pp. 126–137.
22. Sotsial’no-ekonomicheskie ustanovki i skhema raspredeleniia territorii g.
Cheliabinska, vol. 1, Leningrad 1935. ‘Printsipial’nye ustanovki rasseleniia
i ego normativy’, ‘Proektnoe razmeshchenie promyshlennosti’, ‘Proektnaia
schema raspredeleniia territorii Cheliabinska’, vol 2: Cheliabinsk kak nauch-
nyi i uchebnyi tsentr.
23. E.V. Konysheva, ‘A. K. Burov i Cheliabinskaia arkhitektura rubezha 20-kh–30
-kh gg.’, Biulleten’ arkhitektury, 2000, No. 5; Marina Salmina, Istoriia Iuzhnogo
Urala XX–nachalo XXI veka, Cheliabinsk: Vzgliad 2004, pp. 93–94.
9780230_208872_11_not.indd 301 7/4/2011 8:41:13 PM

302 Notes
24. OGAChO, f. 180, op. 1, d. 359, l. 50.

25. On women in Soviet industry in the inter-war period, compare Wendy
Z. Goldman, Women at the Gates: Gender and Industry in Stalin’s Russia,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002; Melanie Ilic (ed.), Women in
the Stalin Era, London: Palgrave Macmillan 2001.
26. OGAChO, f. 804, op. 1, d. 141, l. 25; op. 8, d. 143, l. 31; op. 9, d. 4, l. 48;
Dokladnaia zapiska o sostoianii zhilshchno-kommunal’nogo khozhiaistva
v oblasti i g. Cheliabinske za 1940 god. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 3, d. 704, ll.
4–8, 12–14, 17–25 & 74–94.
27. OGAChO, P-297, op. 2, d. 480, l. 35–39.
28. OGAChO, f. 220, op. 1, d. 329, l. 109.
29. E.A. Malyshev, ‘Sotsialno-kul’turnye tendentsii istoricheskogo razvitiia
toponimiki zhilykh raionov ChTZ v 1930–60-ch gg.’, Industrializatsiia v
SSSR: Uroki istorii, Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 64–66.
30. OGAChO, f. 804, op. 1, d. 141, 25; op. 8, d. 143, l. 31; op. 9, d. 4, l. 48.
31. OGAChO, f. P-92, op. 1, d. 364, l. 186–191, the head of the 2nd depart-
ment of the NKVD directorate in Cheliabinsk, Lieutenant-Colonel Brudno,
special report (spetssvodka) on the conditions in the workers’ villages (trud-
posëlki), 28 March, 1937.
32. OGAChO, f. P-92, op. 1, d. 335, l. 1–5, Proposals from working men and
women, engineers and clerks at the deputies’ gatherings for the election of
the district soviet at the tractor factory, February 1937.
33. E. Podtiashkin, ‘Baraki’, Golos, 25 October–1 November 1991.
34. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 3, d. 499, ll. 1–8, 78–92, 112, 123, O sostoianii mest-
nogo khozhiaistva Cheliabinskoi oblasti.
35. John Scott, Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia’s City of Steel,[1942],
enlarged edition prepared by Stephen Kotkin, Bloomington & Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press 1989, p. 219.
36. OGAChO, f. 220, op, 5, d. 70, l. 45, Report to the City Soviet on the educa-
tion at the Cheliabinsk Pedagogical Institute, 21 January 1940.
37. A.P. Cherednichenko, (ed.), Cheliabinskskii Gosudarstvennyi Pedagogicheskii
Universitet, Cheliabinsk: Izdatel’stvo ChGPU 1999, pp. 14–64.
38. OGAChO, f. R–220, op. 11, d. 14, l. 105–106; f. R–220, op. 11, d. 15, l. 6–6ob,
Excerpts from the Cheliabinsk city party committee on the alphabetisation
campaign at the tractor factory, 3 June 1936.
39. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 1, d. 15, l 56–57, Rezoljutsiia Chelabinskogo gorkoma,
‘O sostoianii likvidatsii negramotnosti na ChTZ, 3 June, 1936.
40. OGAChO, f. 220, op. 1, d. 605, l. 66.
41. Cheliabinskskii rabochii, 28 January 1932.
42. OGAChO, f. R-1595, op. 1, d. 26, l. 48–50. Cheliabinskskii oblastnoi otdel
zdravookhraneniia.
43. OGAChO, f. 379, op. 2, d. 760, l. 30.
44. OGAChO, f. R-1595, op. 1. d. 26, l. 54–55.
45. OGAChO, f. R-1595, op. 1, d. 2, l. 13.
46. OGAChO, f.-R1595, op. 1, d. 13, l. 176–182ob.
47. OGAChO, f. R-1595, op. 1, d. 26, l. 88–91.
48. OGAChO, f. R.1595, op. 1, d. 26, l. 92–94.
49. OGAChO, f. 288, op. 1, d. 25, l. 57–61. During the two five-year plans from
1928–1937, 14.2 million rubles were invested in water supply lines, and by
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Notes 303
1937 their total length was 126 kilometres, OGAChO, f. 220, op. 4, d. 498, l.
16, op. 8., d. 143, l. 29.
50. V.M. Semënov, V.N. Novosiolov & L.V. Shubarina, Sport na Iuzhnom Urale:
Istoriia razvitiia fizicheskoi kul’tury i sporta v Cheliabinske 1919–1929 gody,
Cheliabinsk: Ural’skaia akademiia fizicheskoi kul’tury 2000.
51. OGAChO, f. 792, op. 1, d. 15, l. 72–73, Resolution of 23 July 1936.
52. OGAChO, f. 792, op. 1, d. 15, l. 110.
53. OGAChO, f. 792, op. 1, d. 15, l. 137–139.
4 The Tractor Factory’s Civilian Production and

Military Potential
1. OGAChO, f. P-124, op. 1, d. 28, l. 11.
2. R.W. Davies, Oleg V. Khlevniuk & E.A. Rees (eds.), Stalin– Kaganovich
Correspondence, 1931–1936, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2003,
pp. 64, 82.
3. OGAChO, P-124, op. 1, d. 28, l. 11.
4. OGAChO, P-124, op. 1, d. 28, l. 57.
5. On Sergo Ordzhonikidze,(1886–1937), one of the most important personali-
ties during the forced industrialisation, see Oleg Vitalievitch Khlevniuk. In
Stalin’s Shadow: The Career of ‘Sergo’ Ordzhonikidze, Armonk, NY & London:
Sharpe 1995.
6. For one such report, compare ‘Obzor raboty po stroitel’stvu Cheliabinskogo
Traktornogo zavoda. Sostavlen po materialam EKO Cheliabinskgogo
Opersektora PP OGPU po Uralu po sostoianiiu na 26 aprelja 1931 g.’,
OGAChO, f 75, op 1, d 685, l. 104–109.
7. Davies et al., Stalin–Kaganovich Correspondence, p. 221.
8. A.G. Kireev & E.G. Khoviv, ChTZ – moia biografiia. Cheliabinsk: Iuzhno-
Uralskoe knizhnoe izdatelstvo 1983. On the expansion of the working
class, from approximately three to six million persons during the first five-
year plan, see Jean-Paul Depretto, Les Ouvriers en U.R.S.S. 1928–1941, Paris:
Publications de la Sorbonne 1997, in particular his descriptions of the condi-
tions in the Kuznetsk region, which resemble the conditions in Cheliabinsk,
pp. 187–251.
9. In his analysis of Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development
1930 to 1945 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press 1971), American histo-
rian Antony Sutton tended to overestimate the Western part and under-
estimate the internal Soviet development of new technology. Nonetheless,
this is a magnificent survey of practically all sectors in which Western
companies contributed to Soviet industrialisation in the inter-war period.
Sutton’s problem was that the archives of private Western companies were
inaccessible or had kept very few documents of their Soviet affairs. The
opening of formerly closed Soviet archives in the 1990s shed more light
on the transfer of Western technology. On American technology and the
Cheliabinsk Tractor Plant, see Sutton, Western Technology, pp. 188–191;
Leonid S Komarov, ‘ChTZ – Katerpiller’, SShA: Ekonomika, politika, ideologiia,
1977, no. 1, pp. 59–70; Elena A. Kalinkina,’... Kazhdyi nash den’ oplachva-
etsia zolotom...’ (O komandirovkakh spetsialistov ChTS i ChTZ za granitsu
9780230_208872_11_not.indd 303 7/4/2011 8:41:13 PM

304 Notes
v 1930-e gg.)’, Industrializatsiia v SSSR: Uroki istorii, Cheliabinsk 2003,

pp. 204–208.
10. Trotsky’s memoir, Moia zhizn (My Life), was published in 1930 in Berlin, and
was soon translated into many European languages. Numerous new edi-
tions have become available in recent years.
11. OGAChO, f. R-379, op. 12, d. 6, l. 54–61.
12. Materialy k kontrolnym tsifram khoziaistva Cheliabinskogo raiona na 1932 g.,
Cheliabinsk 1932.
13. OGAChO, f. 98, op. 1, d. 3234, l. 91–92 (Cheliabinskaia oblast, p. 140).
14. Z. Krasilshchik, V borbe za Cheliabinskskii traktornyi, Sverdlovsk–Moscow
n.p. 1931, provides a detailed description of how the tractor factory was
intended to produce civilian tractors and artillery haulers.
15. OGAChO, 379. 2.11, 23ob–125.
16. The actual role of forced convict labour during the industrialisation of the
1930s has been overestimated in much of the Western literature. For better
data on the role of Gulag prisoners and special settlements in the Urals, cf.
Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization, Berkeley, CA, &
London: University of California Press 1995, pp. 230–235; James Harris, The
Great Urals: Regionalism and the Evolution of the Soviet System, Ithaca & London:
Cornell University Press 1999, pp. 105–122. For details of the camps and spe-
cial settlements that were essential during the construction of the metal works
and other factories in Nizhnii Tagil and the northern Urals, see Viktor Kirillov,
Kniga pamiati. Posviashchaetsia Tagilchanam – zhertvam repressii 1917–1980-kh
godov, Ekateringburg: UIF Nauka 1994; idem, Istoriia repressii v Nizhnetagil’skom
regione Urala, 1920–1950 gody, vols 1–2, Nizhnii Tagil: n.p. 1996; idem, Zhertvy
repressii: Nizhnii Tagil 1920–1980-e gody, Ekaterinburg: n.p. 1999.
17. OGAChO, f. R-804, op. 8, d. 49, l. 120–125. Stenogramma slëta stakhanovt-
sev i udarnikov vsekh predpriiatii Cheliabinskoi oblasti. The full report
from this Stakhanovite meeting in 1937 is 148 pages.
18. On recruitment outside the Soviet Union of qualified workers and special-
ists, see Elena Osokina, Za fasadom ‘stalinskogo izobiliia’. Raspredelenie i rynok
v snabzhenii naseleniia v gody industrializatsii, 1927–1941, Moscow: Rosspen
1999, pp. 105–110. See also Vincent E. Baker, ‘American Workers in the Soviet
Union Between the Two World Wars: From Dream to Disillusionment’, mas-
ter’s thesis, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 1998.
19. Richard Cartwright Austin, Building Utopia: Erecting Russia’s First Modern
City, 1930, Kent & London: Kent State University Press 2004.
20. Sergej Shurawljow, Ich bitte um Arbeit in der Sowjetunion Das Schicksal deutsche
Facharbeiter im Moskau der 30er Jahre (Berlin: Ch. Links 2003) described the
fate of German workers at an electric lamp factory in Moscow. For gen-
eralisations on foreign workers, compare Sergei Zhuravlëv, ‘Inostrantsy v
sovetskom obshchestve 1920–1930-kh godov’, Trudy Instituta rossiiskoi istorii
RAN, 1999–2000, Vypusk 3, Moscow 2002, pp. 186–209, and the ensuing
discussion among Russian historians on a new domain for archival research
in a comparative perspective.
21. Andrea Graziosi, ‘Visitors from Other Times: Foreign Workers in the Prewar
Five-Year Plans’, A New, Peculiar State: Explorations in Soviet History, 1917–
1937. Westport, CT, & London: Praeger, 2000, pp. 223–266. In footnote 26
(p. 227), Graziosi refers to a long series of workers’ memoirs that are almost
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Notes 305
forgotten today but were widely discussed at the time because of their
widely differing impressions of Stalin’s Russia.
22. OGAChO. f. R-792, op. 1, d.3, l.14–20, Ukazaniia, spiski, perepiska ob inos-
trannykh spetsialistakh, 1934; OGAChO, f. 379, op. 3, d. 555, l. 29–32;
OGAChO, f. 288, op. 1, d. 113, l. 19–22.
23. OGAChO, f. P-124, op. 1. d. 60, l. 4, 4ob, 5 (1934–35) dokladnye zapiski o
rabote s inostrannymi spetsialistami.
24. Izvestiia 28 May–7 June 1931; A. Aleksandrov, ‘Boris Pasternak v Cheliabinske’,
Vechernyi Cheliabinsk, 2 March 1990.
25. RGVA f. 31811, op. 1, d. 242, l.20, A report of an inspection trip to the
Tractor Experimental Plant at ChTS building site, Pavlovskii, 27 November
1930, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv.
26. The modifications of the Christie tank were the BT-5 and the BT-7, the lat-
ter of which had several models such as BT-7A, BT-IS, BT-SV-2 (never put
into serial production) and finally BT-7M with a V-2 diesel engine at 500
hp, a weight of 14.7 tons and a pressure on the ground of 0.68 kilograms
per square centimetre. A combined wheel and caterpillar track tank, with
a maximum speed of 86 kilometres per hour on wheels and 65 on tracks,
it had a 45 millimetre gun and three DT7 62 millimetre submachine guns.
Over 700 BT-7M tanks were produced in 1939.
27. See A.V. Karpenko, Obozrenie otechestvennoi bronetankovoi tekhniki (1905–
1995gg.), St Petersburg: Nevskii Bastion 1996.
28. Mary R. Habeck, Storm of Steel: The Development of Armor Doctrine in Germany
and the Soviet Union, 1919–1939, Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press
2003; see also: Sergei Gorlov, Sovershenno sekretno. Al’ians Moskva–Berlin
1920–1933 gg. (Voenno-politicheskie otnosheniia SSSR–Germaniia), Moscow:
Olma-Press 2001.
29. Compare Vladimir K. Triandafillov, The Nature of the Operations of Modern
Armies, [1929], edited with a foreword by Jacob W. Kipp, London: Frank Cass
1994.
30. For a detailed analysis of how Russian army theoreticians consolidated
the experience from the Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905, World War I and
the Russian Civil War see the survey by the former US military attaché to
Moscow, Richard W. Harrison, The Russian Way of War. Operational Art,
1904–1940, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas 2001.
31. On the technological arms race between the Soviet Union and Nazi
Germany concerning tanks, see Daniial P. Ibraimov, Protivoborstvo: Istoriia
sozdaniia voennoi tekniki v SSSR i Germanii, Moscow: DOSAAF 1989.
32. For an introduction to how the Soviet military conceived their panzer doctrine
for modern wars, compare Jacob Kipp, ‘Mass, Mobility and the Origins of Soviet
Operational Art, 1918–1936’, Transformation in Russian and Soviet Military History,
Proceedings of the Twelfth Military History Symposium, USAF Academy 1986;
Richard Simpkin, Deep Battle: The Brainchild of Marshal Tukhachevskii, with a
foreword by John Erickson, London: Brassey’s Defence 1987.
33. On Soviet military support to the Chinese Nationalist government, code-
named ‘Operation Z’, see Youli Sun, China and the Origins of the Pacific War
1931–1941, London: Macmillan 1993, pp. 109–130. For the support from the
Soviet Union and the Red Army for the legitimate Spanish government in
the civil war of 1936–1938, internally called ‘Operation X’, see Komintern i
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306 Notes
grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii. Dokumenty, eds. P.P. Pozharskii & A.I. Saplin,
Moscow: Nauka 2001; Gerald Howson, Arms for Spain: The Untold Story of the
Spanish Civil War, London: John Murray 1998; Jurij Rybalkin, Operatsiia ‘X’:
Sovetskaia voennaia pomoshch respublikanskoi Ispanii (1936–1939), Moscow:
AIRO-XX 2000.
34. D.V. Gavrilov, ‘Rol’ malykh voin v razvitii voennoi promyshlennosti Urala
pered Pervoi i Vtoroi mirovymi voinami’, in Ural v strategii Vtoroi Mirovoi
voiny, Ekaterinburg 2002, pp. 81–84.
35. See, Paul A.C. Koistinen, Planning War, Pursuing Peace: The Political Economy
of American Warfare, 1920–1939, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas
1998.
36. See Lennart Samuelson, Plans for Stalin’s War-Machine: Tukhachevskii and
Military-Economic Planning, 1925–1941, London & New York: Macmillan &
St. Martins 1999.
37. Ivan Vernidub, Boepripasy Pobedy. Ocherki, Moscow: TsNIINTIKPK 1998, p. 36.
38. OGAChO, f. 792, op. 1, d. 119, l. 10–10ob.
39. OGAChO, f. 792, op. 1, d. 119, l. 9 otborotjnyj spisok nr 3.
40. Proektnoe zadanie po assimiliatsii Cheliabinskogo Traktornogo zavoda mashinoi
T-29 posted as the target for 1933 that all the workshops at the tractor plant
(thermic, welding, coachwork, testing and assembly) should have wartime
preparedness to produce the T-29 tank.
41. OGAChO, f. R-390, op.1, d. 25, l. 103–104, Order from Sergo Ordzhonikidze,
26 October 1933.
42. OGAChO, f. 792, op. 1, d. 10, l. 6, Letter from ChTZ’s Director Bruskin.
43. OGAChO, f. 792, op. 1, d. 10, l. 5, 7, 8–9, 14.
44. OGAChO, f. 792, op. 1, d. 10, ll. 24—25.
45. OGAChO, f. 792, op. 1, d. 10, ll. 30, 31 and 43.
46. A.N. Shcherba, ‘Stanovlenie i razvitie tankovoi promyshlennosti Leningrada
do Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny’, Peterburgskaia Istoricheskaia shkola.
Almanakh. 1: O Viktore Anatoleviche Ezhove i ego tvorchestve, St Petersburg
2001, pp. 232–250.
5 Stagnation and Streamlining in the Whirlwinds of

Terror, 1936–1939
1. Victoria Bonnell, Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and
Stalin, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1997, p. 168. Bonnell
analysed the illustrations’ language in the posters from the Stalin era
(pp. 161–279) and showed how the power elite transformed the myths on
Lenin by showing Stalin as the fair and wise leader, by demonising the
opponents of his regime and, after the war, depicting him as a prescient and
far-sighted genius.
2. Zeth Höglund, Häxnatt över Europa: Tal till kristna och hedningar. Stockholm:
Axel Holmströms 1939, pp. 102–103.
3. Frederick Beck & W. Godin, Russian Purge and the Extraction of Confession,
London: Hurst & Blackett 1951. Beck and Godin discussed in detail which
categories of Soviet citizens, as well as foreigners, were struck by the terror.
9780230_208872_11_not.indd 306 7/4/2011 8:41:13 PM

Notes 307
They also summed up a dozen more or less credible explanations that were
in vogue inside the Soviet Union as to why the purges took place.
4. Roy Medvedev, K sudu istorii. Genezis i posledstviia stalinizma, New York:
Alfred A. Knopff 1974; idem, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences
of Stalinism, New York: Alfred Knopf 1971, enlarged ed. 1990.
5. Robert Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1934–1941, New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press 1996.
6. For a thorough and detailed chronological survey of the day-to-day events
in Soviet society, the Communist Party and the secret police, see Wladislaw
Hedeler, Chronik der Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937 und 1938: Planung,
Inszenierung und Wirkung, Berlin: Akademie Verlag 2003.
7. OGAChO, f. R-390, op. 2, d. 4, l. 2.
8. On the Great Terror of 1937 and the most recent fundamental research
findings, compare Marc Jansen & Nikita Petrov, Stalin’s Loyal Executioner:
People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1893–1940, Stanford: Hoover Institution
Press 2002; idem, Ezhov – stalinskii pitomets, Moscow: Rosspen 2008; Aleksei
Polianskiiskii, Ezhov: Istoriia ‘zheleznogo’ narkoma, Moscow: Veche 2003;
Vladimir N. Khaustov & Lennart Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD i repressii, 1936 –
1938, Moscow: Rosspen 2008.
9. V.N. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i Upravlenie Gosbezopasnosti NKVD,
1936–1938, Moscow: Demokratiia 2003.
10. James Harris, The Great Urals: Regionalism and the Evolution of the Soviet
System, Ithaca, NY, & London: Cornell University Press 1999, pp.
146–190.
11. It is not known how these meetings with Stalin were minuted or otherwise
documented. It is so far only possible to speculate on what might have been
on the agendas. However, new insights have already been gained from a
quantitative analysis of these meetings, who the most frequent visitors were
and how the categories changed over the years. See Stephen G. Wheatcroft,
‘From Team-Stalin to Degenerate Tyranny’, in Edgar Arfon Rees (ed.) The
Nature of Stalin’s Dictatorship: The Politburo, 1924–1953, London: Palgrave
Macmillan 2004, pp. 79–107.
12. N. Gevorkian,’Vstrechnye plany po unichtozheniiu naroda’, Moskovskie nov-
osti, 21 June, 1992, No. 29, pp. 18–19.
13. In March 1956, Ryndin was formally rehabilitated from all these fabricated
charges.
14. See Galina Kibitkina, ‘Vzgliad v istoriiu: Vysokoe doverie – bol’shaia otvet-
stvennost’, Tankograd, No. 12. 1999.
15. Numerous regional studies and documentary collections have been pub-
lished since 1992 concerning the purges. See, e.g. R.A. Khantalin (ed.)
Repressii v Archangelske: 1937–1938. Archangelsk: Pomorskii Gosudarstvennyi
Universitet 1999. Among the regional efforts to analyse the Stalinist era,
the Komi Republic, which contains the Vorkuta coal mines, deserves par-
ticular mention. In the 1940s, these mines were exploited mainly by Gulag
prisoners and there were many Gulag camps and special villages in other
part of Komi. Historians and archivists in Komi have eight huge volumes
entitled Pokaianie (Repentence) with the biographies of thousands of vic-
tims of Stalinist-era repression. For a survey of all the lists of victims of
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308 Notes
Soviet repression in various parts of the country, see Knigi pamjati zhertv
politicheskikh repressij v SSSR: Annotirovannyi ukazatel, St Petersburg: Rossiiskaia
natsionalnaia biblioteka 2003, edited by Anatolii Razumov from the asso-
ciation ‘Vozvrashchennyje imena’; on the martyrologies from Cheliabinsk
oblast in particular, p. 181.
16. OGAChO, f. P-92, op. 1, d. 364, l. 244–248, Spets-svodka ob anti-sovetskikh
projavleniiakh v sviazi s protsessom k[ontra].r[evoljutsionnogo] trotskist-
skogo parallelnogo tsentra, Nachalnik UNKVD Cheliabinskoi oblasti, star-
shii maior Blat, 27 January 1937.
17. G.I. Ierusalimchik, ‘Period industrializatsii i evreiskaia intelligentsia v 30-e
gody’, in Raznye gody – obshchaia sudba, Cheliabinsk 1999.
18. V.E. Sakhov, ‘Molokh stalinskikh repressii’, Prizyv, Cheliabinsk, 15 April
1994; N. Shukalin, ‘Nevinoven, no podsuden...’, Cheliabinskskii rabochii, 29
July 1994.
19. ‘Rol’ sudov v repressivnoi politike gosudarstva (na primere lineinogo suda
zheleznoi dorogi imeni Kaganovicha’, Archivy Urala, 1995, no. 2, pp. 154–164.
20. A.L. Khudoborodov, ‘Kak eto bylo: O tragicheskoi sud’be direktora
Cheliabinskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo instituta I.K. Zelenskogo
v 1930-e gody’, Iuzhnyi Ural v sud’be Rossii, Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 168–170.
21. Gustaf Mund, GPU. Das Angriff an der Abendland, Leipzig: Niebelungen 1942.
22. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 2, d. 228, l. 1–148, Soveshchanie direktorov predpriiatii
u sekretaria Obkoma VKP(b) t. Ryndina, 1 September 1937.
23. GARF, f. 8418, op. 12. d.91, l. 8–18, Reports with appendices, 11 photographs
from the military inspectors, letter from the military representatives (voen-
predy) and sketches of spare parts. N. Antselovich. 8 February 1937; GARF, f.
8418, op. 12. d.91, l. 19–23, N. Antinov with copies to Kliment Voroshilov,
Lazar Kaganovich, Valerii Mezhlauk and Moisei Rukhimovich.
24. A short biography on Zaltsman remains the only substantial work devoted
to this fascinating personality; compare Vladimir Sergiichuk, Tankovyi korol
Rossii, Kiev: Nichlava 2005.
25. The waves of repression that hit Cheliabinsk were made public during the per-
estroika and glasnost periods, when local newspapers published lists and short
biographies of the victims of political repression. See Rasstrel’nye spiski (Lists of
executions) in the newspaper Cheliabinskskii rabochii; for example, 23 March,
3, 11, 18, 25 April, 15, 29 May, 6, 28 June, 10, 19, 24 July, 7, 14, 28 August, 1991,
7, 8, 9, 14, 23, 30 July, 4, 25 August, 1, 5, 29 September, 4, 12, 24 November
and 24 December, 1991; 3, 15 January, 19, 25 February, 3, 11, 31 March, 8
April, 6, 13, 19 May, 16 June, 7, 8, 9, 14, 23, 30 July, 1, 5, 29 September, 4,
12, 24 November, 24 December, 1992. Under the heading ‘Reabilitirovannye’,
Vechernii Cheliabinsk published lists of 106 persons on 24 and 26 November
and 3, 8, 10, 24 and 29 December 1992. Each of these issues contained hun-
dreds of names and brief biographical data on some of them. Even in 1993
and much later, Cheliabinsk newspapers published similar articles and lists of
persons who were victims of political repression during the Soviet era.
26. These ‘mass operations’ were, in essence, unknown by historians until the
late 1980s. Since then, the relevant documents from the party leadership
and the security service have been published. How NKVD prepared and
implemented the mass operations is presented in Vladimir Khaustov et al.,
9780230_208872_11_not.indd 308 7/4/2011 8:41:14 PM

Notes 309
Lubianka: Stalin i organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 1936–1938, Moscow:

Demokratiia 2003. Historians in Russia and the West are still debating how
best to explain the background to the exceptionally brutal mass executions;
for an introduction to this debate, compare Barry McLoughlin and Kevin
McDermott (eds.), Stalin’s Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet
Union, London: Palgrave Macmillan 2003; Arch Getty, ‘Excesses are not to
be permitted...: Mass Terror Operations in the late 1930s and the Stalinist
Government’, Russian Review, 61 (January 2002); Nicolas Werth, ‘Repenser la
grande terreur: L’U.R.S.S. des années trente’, Le Débat, November-December
2002. See also the historiographical introduction chapter in Khaustov &
Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD i repressii, 1936 – 1938, Moscow: Rosspen 2008.
27. Compare Oleg Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to
the Great Terror, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005, pp. 140–185.
28. See Iagoda’s comment during the forced collectivisation in 1930 to local OGPU
cadres, who had arrested not only rich peasant and ‘counter-revolutionaries’,
but also priests, merchants and former White guardists. ‘We are not cleans-
ing the countryside of priests, merchants and “others”. “Others”? So they do
not know who they take. We will have time to finish off with merchants and
priests later. It is essential to hit correctly against the target, the kulak and
kulak-counterrevolutionaries’, Les Campagnes soviétiques vues par O.G.P.U.–
NVKD, 1930–1934, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami OGPU–NKVD, 1930–1934, ed.
Viktor P. Danilov et al., vol. 3: 1, Moscow: Rosspen 2003, p. 107.
29. On the relative economic significance of the Gulag camp system, see
Paul Gregory, ‘An Introduction to the Economics of the Gulag’, in Paul R.
Gregory & Valery Lazarev (eds.), The Economics of Forced Labor. The Soviet
Gulag, Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press 2003, pp. 1–21.
30. See Barrington Moore Jr., Terror and Progress, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press 1954.
31. V.N. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i Glavnoe Upravlenie Gosbezopasnosti
NKVD 1937–1938, Moscow: Demokratiia 2004, passim.
32. For a modern interpretation of the classical version on why the Great Terror
ended with the purge of the secret police, see Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic
Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization, Berkeley, CA, & London: University of
California Press 1995, pp. 350–354. When Kotkin conducted his magnifi-
cent study of Magnitogorsk in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the regional
archives were not yet open for researchers, least of all foreign scholars.
33. The Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR), which was the largest party at the
time of the elections to the Constituent Assembly in December 1917, had a
strong basis in the countryside in the Urals. The SR party split in 1917 into
a Leftist organisation that cooperated with the Bolsheviks in the first Soviet
government. After a putsch attempt by the Left-SR in the summer of 1918,
their organisation was prohibited. The SR took the White side in the Russian
Civil War in 1918 in an attempt to reassemble a Constituent Assembly as
groundwork for a democratic development in Russia. In 1922, a political trial
was arranged against SR leaders for having instigated the Civil War and for
terrorist activities. The persons who were accused of ‘counter-revolutionary
SR activism’ during the Great Terror in the late 1930s had only been mem-
bers of the SR some 20 years before and had long since ceased any political
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310 Notes
activities. The major settlement by the Bolsheviks against the SR party

took place in 1922, see Mark Jansen, The Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries.
Moscow 1922, Niemegen: Martinus Niehoff 1982 (Russian translation: Sud
bez suda: 1922 god. Pokazatel’nyi protsess sotsialistov-revoljutsionerov, Moscow:
Vozvrashchenie 1993).
34. OGAChO, f. 288, op. 3, d. 165, l. 236–240. Memorandum po delu Lapshina,
Lugovtseva, Voronchikhina i drugikh, 19 June 1940. A long excerpt from this
sentence against the NKVD officials is reproduced in Igor Nepein, Palachi
i zhertvy, Cheliabinsk n.p. 1997, pp. 189–193. Nepein’s book includes long
excerpts from interrogation protocols with eminent local authors and jour-
nalists in Cheliabinsk who had been arrested during the Great Terror. They
were broken down mentally and forced to confess to imaginary crimes.
Nepein had access to the archives of the Cheliabinsk FSB and could show
the mechanisms of the terror in great detail. Two of the four authors arrested
were executed; the other two survived their terms in camp and told inves-
tigators in the 1950s about how they had been tortured in 1937. Nepein’s
book also contains the protocols from 1940 and 1946 with the NKVD inter-
rogators who were accused of having forced the arrested persons to ‘con-
fess’ using illegal methods, such as falsifying the signed ‘confessions’ and
inventing entire groups of counter-revolutionary networks in Cheliabinsk.
For more details on how the arrested NKVD leaders in Cheliabinsk admit-
ted interpreting orders from Moscow in 1937–1938 and carrying out their
operations against fictional Polish and other conspiracies, see the extensive
volume on the history of the state security organs in the Urals in three cen-
turies by Oleg Veprev & Viacheslav Liutov, Gosudarstvennaia bezopasnost’: Tri
veka na Iuzhnom Urale, Cheliabinsk: Iuzhno-Ural’skoe Knizhnoe Izdatel’stvo
2002, pp. 287–318.
For an illuminating account of the methods used by NKVD to force
innocents to confess, compare the articles and documents by Aleksandr V.
Churakov, Voenno-istoricheskii archiv, nos 6 and 7, 2004.
35. Nepein, Palachi i zhertvy, pp. 193–194.
36. Nikita V. Petrov & K.V. Skorkin, Spravochnik: Kto rukovodil NKVD 1934–1941,
Moscow: Zvenia 1999, pp. 436–437.
37. Compare Gábor T. Rittersporn, ‘The Omnipresent Conspiracy: On Soviet
Imagery of Politics and Social Relations in the 1930s’, in Arch Getty &
Roberta Manning (eds.), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press 1994, pp. 99–115.
38. Reabilitatsiia – kak eto bylo, vol. 1, pp. 75–77. See also document 15, from 9
January 1956, on the mass terror against members of the Communist Party.
39. Reabilitatsiia, vol. 1, pp. 317–348, the report of Pospelov to the presidium of
the central committee, which provided the factual documentation for the
‘secret speech’ of Krushchev at the 20th Party Congress in February 1956.
40. On this turbulent period in Russian historiography, see, e.g., Robert W.
Davies, Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution, London: Macmillan 1989;
idem, Soviet History in the Yeltsin Era, London: Macmillan 1997.
41. Reabilitatsiia – Kak eto bylo. Dokumenty Prezidiuma TsK KPSS i drugie materialy.
vol. 1: March 1953–February 1956, eds. A.N. Artizov et al., Moscow: MFD
2000; vol. 2: February 1956–Early 1980s, Moscow: MFD 2003; vol. 3: Mid-
1980s – 1991, Moscow: MFD 2004.
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Notes 311
6 Industrial Preparedness in Cheliabinsk, 1939–1940

1. Compare Ernst Henry, Hitler over Europe? London 1935 and idem,
Feldzug gegen Moskau?, Strasbourg 1936. Both books were translated into
Russian, as Gitler nad Evropoj? and Gitler protiv SSSR: Grjadushchaia sch-
vatka mezhdu fasjistskimi i sotsialistitjeskimi armijami and issued in huge
print runs. Rostovskii was a frequent contributor of articles to The New
Statesman and The Nation. He stayed in London during World War II and
after his return to the Soviet Union, he was struck by the repression dur-
ing the anti-Semitic campaign in Stalin’s last years of power. In 1965,
Ilya Ehrenburg tape recorded Ernst Henry’s critique of Stalinism. The
notes were not published until the late 1980s, however, in the glasnost
period. See also the articles by Iakov Drabkin and Lev Bezymenskii in
the re-issues of Ernst Henry’s two books (Moscow: Russkii raritet 2004,
pp. 469–485).
2. Michael Jabara Carley, 1939. The Alliance that never was and the Coming of
World War II, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee 1999.
3. See Alvin Finkel & Clement Leibovitz, The Chamberlain–Hitler Collusion,
New York: Monthly Review Press 1998.
4. Maurice Edelman, How Russia prepared: U.PS.S.R. beyond the Urals, London:
Penguin 1942.
5. Frey Rydeberg, Carl Kempff & Georg Gärdin, Det militariserade samhället: några
fakta om Sovjetunionen och dess maktmedel, Stockholm: Hasse W. Tullberg 1934.
6. OGAChO, f. P-92, op. 1, d. 451, l. 83–89, 103–108, 147–149.
7. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 1, d. 23, l. 81–82.
8. OGAChO, f. R-220, op. 13, d. 1, l. 4.
9. OGAChO, f. R-220, op. 13, d. 1, l. 24.
10. OGAChO, P-288, op. 3, d. 676, l. 26–31, 35, report on the machine-build-
ing industry in the Cheliabinsk region, Dokladnaia o rabote mashinostroitel-
noi promyshlennosti Cheliabinskoi oblasti. The People’s Commissariat of
Machine-building, with its 11 large enterprises, was of direct importance
for the defence of the country.
11. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 1, d. 23, l. 81, 82. Jfr R-792.1.39: 83–83ob.
12. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 1, d. 23, l. 84–88.
13. OGAChO, f. 792, op. 1, d. 29, l. 10.
14. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 1, d. 39, l. 9–15.
15. OGAChO, f. R-792.2.23:31–32.
16. OGAChO, f. R-792.2.23: 33–39, Plan organizatsii kursov po povysheniiu
kvalifikatsii rabotnikov moborganov NKSredMash.
17. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 1, d. 23, l. 138–139.
18. OGAChO P-288, op. 4, d. 14, l. 220–206, Malinenko at the Plenum of
Cheliabinsk obkom plenary meeting, 18–20 June, 1940.
19. OGAChO, f. P-92, op. 1, d. 512, l. 41, Partinformatsiia Traktorozavodskogo
raikoma VKP(b) v obkom, gorkom VKP(b), September 1940.
20. Igor Shmelëv, Istoriia tanka, 1916–1996, Moscow: Tekhnika – molodezhi,
1996. On the designer and inventor Zhozef Kotin‘s life, see Konstruktor
boevykh mashin (O Zh. Ia. Kotine), Leningrad: Lenizdat 1988.
21. OGAChO, f. P-92, op. 1, d. 512, l. 69–72, Politicheskaia informatsiia sekre-
tariam gorkoma VKP (b), t. Fokinu, June 1940.
9780230_208872_11_not.indd 311 7/4/2011 8:41:14 PM

312 Notes
22. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 4, d. 299, l. 110–114.

23. OGAChO, P-92, op. 1, d. 451, l. 89.
24. OGAChO, P. 124, op. 1, d. 178, l. 108, Spravka o kolichestve osuzhdennykh
narushitelei trud[ovoi] distsypliny po ChTZ za period s 1 iiulia po 20 noi-
abria 1940; OGAChO, f. P-124, op. 1, D. 178, l 89–93, Dokladnaia zapiska.
Upravlenie kadrov TsK VKP(b), tov. Tsunikovu ot Burakovskogo, sekretaria
partiinogo komiteta Cheliabinskogo traktornogo zavoda im. Stalina.
25. See Evan Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon: Soviet Plans for Offensive War in
1940–1941’, The International History Review, December 2003, vol. XXV, pp.
818–865, see also Bianka Pietrow-Ennker (ed.) Präventivkrieg? Der deutsche
Angriff auf die Sowjetunion, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer 2000.
26. RGAE, f. 7516, op. 1, d. 750, l. 1–10, Postanovlenie SNK 1502–1503.
27. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 1, d. 88, l. 7–12, Prikaz po Narodnomu komissariatu
srednego mashinostroeniia’O meropriiatiakh po podgotovki k perekhodu
promyshlennosti na mobilizatsionnyi plan po boepripasam’, 10 June
1941.
28. The first very detailed history on the tractor factory had almost no infor-
mation about the mobilisation planning or conversion preparedness for
tank production; compare L.S. Komarov & Je. G. Khoviv & N.I. Zarzhevskii,
Letopis Cheliabinskogo traktornogo (1929–1945 gg.), Moscow: Profizdat 1972.
29. See Mary R. Habeck, Storm of Steel: The Development of Armor Doctrine in
Germany and the Soviet Union, 1919–1939, Ithaca: Cornell University Press
2003.
30. On the tank production in Leningrad before World War II, see A.N.
Shcherba, ‘Stanovlenie i razvitie tankovoi promyshlennosti Leningrada
do Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny’, Peterburgskaia Istorichestkaia shkola.
Almanakh. 1: O Viktore Anatoleviche Ezhove i ego tvorchsetve, St Petersburg
2001, pp. 232–250.
31. OGAChO, R-792, op. 1, d. 64, l. 79–85.
32. OGAChO, R-792, op. 1, d. 73, l. 108–109.
33. OGAChO, R-792, op. 1, d. 73, l. 240.
34. M.A. Feldman, ‘K voprosu o stepeni gotovnosti promyshlennosti Urala k
Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine’, Ural v voennoi istorii Rossii, Ekaterinburg
2004, p. 159–161.
7 Production Conditions for Heavy Tanks in the Urals

1. For an unsurpassed history of the Eastern Front in World War II, see
Alexander Werth, Russia at War, 1941–1945, (London: Barrie & Rockliff
1964 and later). Werth, whose Russian parents had migrated to the United
Kingdom after 1917, wrote several books on France’s political crisis in the
1930s and Germany’s victory over France in 1940. In 1941, after the Nazi
German alliance attacked the Soviet Union, Werth travelled on a convoy
steamer across the North Sea to Murmansk. His first newspaper articles from
wartime Moscow were published as Moscow ’41, (London: H. Hamilton 1942).
He was better able than most correspondents to feel the atmosphere among
Soviet soldiers and ordinary Russians. This forms the bulk of his later book,
which was limited in extent by the sources available in the late 1960s.
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Notes 313
His son is the French historian, Nicolas Werth, who, together with Stephan
Courtois and others, compiled The Black Book of Communism, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press 1999. (French edition 1997). Among other scholarly
works on the German-Russian war should be mentioned David M. Glantz,
Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War, Lawrence, KS: University
of Kansas Press 1998; Mikhail Meltiukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina: Sovetskii
Soiuz i bor’ba za Evropu, 1939–1941 (Moscow: Veche 2000). Meltiukhov does
not categorically deny that the Soviet leadership in 1941 might have planned
for a pre-emptive counterstrike against the mobilising German army. This
interpretation, which originally goes back to Hitler’s own arguments for start-
ing the invasion in 1941, has been rejected by most Russian and Western
scholars. See, e.g., Gabriel Gorodetsky Grand delusion: Stalin and the German
Invasion of Russia, (New Haven, CT, & London: Yale University Press 1999).
2. An update on why the Kremlin – that is, mostly Stalin himself – was surprised
by the German attack has been written by the CIA intelligence officer in
Berlin during the Cold War David E. Murphy, What Stalin Knew: The Enigma
of Barbarossa (New Haven, CT, & London: Yale University Press 2005).
3. Warum Krieg mit Stalin? Das Rotbuch der Anti-Komintern, Berlin: Niebelungen-
Verlag 1941, pp. 57–73.
4. This is not the proper forum for a survey of the research regarding what led
to the fatal decision on the ‘Jewish question’ at the Wannsee conference in
Berlin in February 1942. One hypothesis is that the decisions on ‘the final
solution’ to exterminate the Jews in Europe were made after the failure of
Operation Barbarossa in the autumn-winter of 1941–1942, as the German
armies had failed to conquer Moscow and Leningrad. The leading German
generals had understood that the war against the USSR could not be won in
a single campaign but would be yet another extended war of attrition.
Contrary to this hypothesis is the evidence that the mass executions of
Jews, as well as of communists and army political commissars, took place in
the summer of 1941 as the German armies made deep advances into Ukraine
and Russia. See Pavel Polian, ‘First Victims of Holocaust: Soviet-Jewish
Prisoners of War in German Captivity’, Kritika. Explorations in Russian and
Eurasian History, New Series, vol. 6, No. 4, 2005, pp. 763–788.
5. This controversial theme has received relatively little attention in the
scholarly literature. Nazi conceptions of ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ are discussed
by Johannes Rogalla von Bieberstein, ‘Jüdischer Boschewismus’. Mythos und
Realität, Schnellroda: Antaios 2003. For a general review of the represen-
tation and images of the Soviet Union in various social groups, parties,
churches and institutions in Nazi Germany, see Hans-Erich Volkmann (ed.),
Das Russlandbild im Dritten Reich, Cologne: Böhlau 1994.
aspekt’, in Ural v Velikoi Otetjetsvennoj voine, 1941–1945 gg. Ekaterinburg 1995,
pp. 55–62.
7. See Effects of Climate on Combat in European Russia, Historical Study CMH Pub
104–6, Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, D.C., no
year of publication.
8. From the literature on Hitler as warlord and the role of the German
Generalität, see, e.g., John Strawson, Hitler as Military Commander, New York:
Barnes & Noble 1971, chapter: ‘Barbarossa – The irretrievable Blunder’. For a
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314 Notes
long-term perspective on the German planning for a war against the Soviet
Union, compare Carl Dirks & Karl-Heinz Janßen, Der Krieg der Generäle.
Hitler als Werkzeug der Wehrmacht, Berlin: Ullstein 1999.
9. Nikolai A. Voznesenskii, Voennaia ekonomika SSSR v period Otechestvennoi
voiny [1947], Moscow: Ekonomicheskaia gazeta 2003, pp. 101–113, espe-
cially p. 110.
10. On his activity before and during the Great Patriotic War, see the memoirs
of Semën Zakharovich Ginzburg, O proshlom – dlia budushchego, Moscow:
Politizdat 1983. During those years, for obvious reasons, Ginzburg could
only allude to the existence of forced camp labour in the construction
industry.
11. See Arsenii Iu. Ermolov,’Perestroika tankovoi promyshlennosti SSSR
1941–42’, Otechestvennaia istoriia, No. 3, 2004, pp. 28–34.
12. There is only one solid biography of this important personality in the
Soviet military-industrial complex: see Viktor Andreevich Chalmaev,
Malyshev, Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia 1978. This book, part of the Zhizn’
zamechatel’nykh liudei series, was more reticent than usual about disclosing
any precise data about the Soviet defence industry. Malyshev later entered
the Atomic Project of the Soviet Union and supervised the construction of
the plutonium works in the Urals. He died at an early age from radioactive
over-exposure. See also Vladimir Nikolaevich Novosëlov, ‘V.A. Malyshev i
N. P. Dukhov – vydaiushchiesia organizatory oboronnoi promyshlennosti’,
Industrializatsiia v SSSR: Uroki istorii (K 70-letiiu puska Cheliabinskogo traktor-
nogo zavoda), Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 147–150.
13. See, e.g., Aleksei Toptygin, Lavrentij Berija. Neizvestnyj marsjal gosbezopas-
nosti. Moscow: Jauza/ Eksmo 2005, p. 160f. After the declassification of
Beria’s role in the Soviet atomic project from 1944–1949, a slightly dif-
ferent picture of the people’s commissar for internal affairs evolved. The
myths spread earlier by Khrushchev and others after Beria’s arrest and
execution in 1953 not only ascribed the Great Terror in 1937 to Beria, but
also included tales of his maniac behaviour, deviant sexual tastes and even
murders of young girls who were presumably picked up by his aides-de-
camp on Moscow’s streets.
14. On Uralvagonzavod in the 1930s and the reconstruction of the factory
for production of the T-34 tank, see Sergei V. Ustiantsev, Alla V. Pislegina
& Al’fiia Kh. Fakhretdennova, Uralvagonzavod, Elita rossiiskoi industrii /
Ural Car-Making Works: An Elite of the Russian Industry, Ekaterinburg: Start
2001.
15. Chamberlin’s description of the events in 1917, The Russian Revolution
(1934), is still worth reading for anyone interested in Russia’s history. All
reports from the Soviet Union in the interwar period were controversial
and difficult to evaluate in practice. Western correspondents had to submit
their despatches to the Soviet censors at telegraph stations. Only through
background material in other articles could British and American newspa-
pers give their readers a more solid understanding of the changes in the
USSR. For an interesting comparison of how three famous correspondents
described the Soviet Union in the interwar period, see Allen McTavish
Johnson, ‘Moscow Dispatches, 1921–1934: The Writings of Walter Duranty,
William Henry Chamberlin and Louis Fischer in Soviet Russia’, PhD Thesis,
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Notes 315
Tulane University, 2000. During the Cold war, Chamberlin was a ‘hawk’
who criticised Franklin Roosevelt’s ‘concessions’ to the Soviet Union during
the last years of war.
16. William H. Chamberlin, The Russian Enigma.
17. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 1, d. 84, l. 33 Order from the people’s commis-
sariat of the medium machine-building industry on immediate transition
to production of ammunition according to the plans of 10, 11 and 14 June
1941.
18. Ivan Vernidub, Boepripasy Pobedy. Ocherki, Moscow: TsNIINTIKPK 1998, p. 27.
19. E.B. Druzhinina, ‘Korol’ tankov’: Fakty iz biografii I. M. Zal’tsmana’,
Industrializatsiia v SSSR: Uroki istorii, Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 179–186.
20. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 1, d. 95, ll. 184–185, deputy people’s commis-
sar Nosenko at NKTankoprom to director Zaltsman at the Kirov Works in
Cheliabinsk, 13 October, 1941.
21. OGAChO, f. P-288, op.6, d. 292, l. 56–80.
22. Resolution of 25 July, 1942 from the party committee at the Kirov works in
Cheliabinsk, based on a report by director Makhonin.
23. OGAChO, f. P-124, op. 1, d. 281, l. 92–94.
24. OGAChO, f. P-124, op. 1, d. 282, l. 102–104.
25. See Jacques Sapir, L’Économie mobilisée: Essai sur les économies de type sovié-
tique, Paris: La Découverte 1989; idem, Logik der sowjetischen Ökonomie oder
die permanente Kriegswirtschaft, Berlin: Lit 1992.
26. At Stalingrad and along the Volga River, from November 1942 until
February 1943, 160 Soviet divisions with over 1.1 million soldiers and
3500 tanks were engaged to destroy five Axis armies, two of which were
German armies with over 50 divisions. They captured or killed over
600,000 men. By way of comparison, at the approximately simultaneous
Battle of El Alamein, ten British divisions with 480 tanks destroyed nine
German and Italian divisions, which lost approximately 60,000 men. The
great differences in Germany’s losses in the Soviet Union and their signifi-
cance for the outcome of the war in the European theatre is emphasised by
David Glantz, Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War, 1941–1943, Lawrence,
KS: University Press of Kansas 2005, pp. xv–xvii, 37. Glantz (pp. 3–62) also
highlights a series of less successful Red Army operations in 1942. The
official Soviet historiography gave no mention of this or did so in a very
distorted form.
27. The Battle of Kursk has been well analysed in the literature, while the opening
of the Russian archives has revealed some new facts on the force relations and
on the losses on both sides, David Glantz, Colossus Reborn, p. 48–59; see also
Robin Cross, Citadel. The Battle of Kursk, New York: Barnes & Noble 1993.
28. Eduard Sobolev, Konstruktorskoe biuro: Sudby liudei i mashin, Cheliabinsk,
‘Vsem!’, 1997, p. 86.
29. OGAChO, R-792, op. 14, d. 135, l. 14–15, 31–34.
30. OGAChO, R-792.5.40: 40–41. The management was to make sure that the
personnel would receive motor transport to and from the factory, particu-
larly for the late night shifts.
31. Galina Kibitkina, ‘Rozhdenie i stanovlenie Tankograda’, Tankograd, No. 10,
1999, p. 2.
32. Aleksandr Bek, Novoe naznachenie, Frankfurt am Main: Posev 1972.
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316 Notes
33. P.V. Ustiantsev, A.V. Pislegina & A.Ch. Fakhretdennova, Uralvagonzavod, Elita
rossiiskoi industrii / Ural Car-Making Works: The Elite of the Russian Industry,
Ekateringburg: Start 2001.
34. The publication of source volumes on the Great Patriotic War was a pri-
ority task in the 1990s. A large number of archival items were published
in the Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina, 1941–1945 series, under the edi-
torship of the Institute of Military History by the Ministry of Defence.
The thematic source collections on the supreme military leadership, the
General Staff, the Supreme Headquarters, the partisan movement and the
Battles of Stalingrad, Kursk and Berlin, etc., serve as a solid introduction
to the archives themselves. Since 2007, a general order by the Russian
minister of defence has started a new declassification procedure for all
materials in the ministry’s central archive concerning the period up to
1945.
35. An example of this new historiography is the fourth volume of the collec-
tive Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina 1941–1945 (Moscow: Nauka 1999), enti-
tled ‘The People and the War’. The research from the last 10–15 years is also
reflected in Voina i obshchestvo (Moscow: Nauka 2004), in which some 30
articles cover both the battle history and the history of the home front, even
such themes as collaboration, desertion, the relations with the Orthodox
Church and the treatment of returning POWs.
8 1418 Long Days on the Home Front in

the Southern Urals
1. K.I. Zubkov, ‘Ural v geopoliticheskikh stratagemakh Vtoroi Mirovoi voiny’,
in Ural v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, 1941–1945 gg. Ekaterinburg: RAN UO,
Institut istorrii, 1995; Iu.V. Velichko, ‘Strategicheskoe znachenie Urala v
period Vtoroi Mirovoi voiny’, Ural v strategii Vtoroi Mirovoi voiny, Ekaterinburg
2000, pp. 72–76.
aspekt’, in Ural v Velikoi Otechetsvennoi voine, 1941–1945 gg., Ekaterinburg
1995, pp. 55–62.
3. See Oleg Veprev & Viacheslav Liutov, Gosudarstvennaia bezopasnost: Tri veka
na Iuzhnom Urale,, Cheliabinsk: Iuzhno-Uralskoe Knizhnoe Izdatelstvo,
2002, pp. 319–352; Vladimir P. Motrevich, ‘Novye materialy o deiatel’nosti
germanskoi razvedki na Urale v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny’,
VOENnyi KOMmentator, Ekaterinburg, no. 1, 2002, pp. 63–76.
4. OGAChO, f. R-220, op. 6, d. 7, l. 382–383.
5. P.G. Agaryshev & N.P. Paletskikh, ‘Cheliabinskaia oblast v gody Velikoi
Otechestvennoi voiny’, in Iuzhnyi Ural v sud’be Rossii, Cheliabinsk 2003,
pp. 208–211.
6. In general, on the Soviet railway system in World War II and the question
of moving troops to the front in the first phases of the German-Russian
war and the simultaneous evacuation of industry and people eastwards, see
Georgii A. Kumanev, ‘Podvig zheleznodorozhnikov’, Eshelony idut na vostok:
Iz istorii perebazirovaniia proizvoditel’nykh sil SSSR v 1941–1942 gg., Moscow:
Nauka 1966, pp. 116–140.
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Notes 317
7. The reports that were sent to the people’s commissariats described the chaos
that reigned when large amounts of evacuated equipment arrived in eche-
lon after echelon. Goods sometimes remained at a station for days instead of
being mounted as soon as possible; see, for example, the report in OGAChO,
f. 288, op. 9, d. 288, l. 116.
8. OGAChO, f. P-220, op. 13, d. 1, l. 85–86, 317, P-792, op. 7, d. 13, l. 2–4.
9. OGAChO, f. R-1142, op. 3, d. 2, l. 31–39, 60–62; f. P-288, op. 4, d. 146, ll.
36–43.
10. Direktivnye ukazaniia vysshikh organov gosudarstvennoi vlasti po voprosam
evakuatsii i reevakuatsii naseleniia, March 1940–October 1945 (more than
100 pages), OGAChO, f. R-1142, op. 3, d. 2, 25–30, 31–39, 60–62.
11. V.D. Pavlenko, ‘Rol’ Cheliabinskogo oblispolkoma v priëme i razmeshchenii
evakuirovannogo naseleniia (iiun 1941–1942 gg.)’, in Iuzhnyi Ural v sud’be
Rossii, Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 212–215; M.N. Potëmkina, ‘Evakuirovannye v
Cheliabinskoi oblasti: Vklad v delo Pobedy’, ibidem, pp. 216–220.
12. OGAChO, f. P-124, op. 1, d. 224, 7–12, 68, 126–132.
13. OGAChO, f. R-1177, op. 2, d. 29, l. 20–21.
14. OGAChO, f. R-220, op. 6, d. 7, l. 71–72.
15. The increased role and work of the security service NKVD-NKGB during
the war years has been analysed by Aleksandr I. Volkhin, ‘Bor’ba orga-
nov NKVD-GUGB Urala i Sibiri s antisovetskoi agitatsiei i propagandoi v
gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny’, VOENnyi KOMmentator, Ekaterinburg,
2001, no. 1, pp. 19–46; idem, ‘Poisk povstancheskikh organizatsii organami
NKVD-GUGB, borba s terroristicheskimi aktami i banditizmom na Urale i v
Sibiri v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny’, ibidem, pp. 47–62.
16. OGAChO, f. R-1146, op. 1, d. 10, l. 43.
17. OGAChO, f. R-220, op. 13, d.11, l. 8–9.
18. E. B. Druzhinina, ‘Korol tankov’: Fakty iz biografii I.M. Zaltsmana’, in
nogo zavoda), Cheliabinsk 2003, p. 180.
19. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 8, d. 145, l. 78–81.
20. OGAChO, f. R-1402, op. 1, d. 1, l. 225–229; Memorandum for a report on
which theatre plays should be performed. It was regretted that no plays
with local themes had been written by Urals authors, l. 82–83. In general,
on the cultural life in Cheliabinsk during the war years, see Aleksandr V.
Speranskii, V gornile ispytanii: Kul’tura Urala v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi
voiny, Ekaterinburg: UrO RAN 1996, ch. V, pp. 175–218 on the role of thea-
tres in the mobilization efforts of the population.
21. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 8, d. 145, l. 78–81.
22. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 3, d. 87, l. 2.
23. Report to the deputy USSR procurator Mokichev on the problems with crim-
inals at the enterprise, December 1942, OGAChO, f. R-792, op.3, d. 108, l.
21–22.
24. See Pravda, 27 December 1944.
25. See the survey of the labour force at the factory, OGAChO, f. P-124, op.1, d.
221, l. 176.
26. Svodka o sostoianii trudovoi distsipliny po Kirovskomu zavodu, Deputy Director
Tilip.
27. OGAChO, f. P-297, op. 2, d. 858, l. 29, 8.
9780230_208872_11_not.indd 317 7/4/2011 8:41:15 PM

318 Notes
28. RGASPI, f. 644, op. 14, d. 14, l. 144; data according to A.A. German & A.N.
Kurochkin, Nemtsy SSSR v ‘trudovoj armii’, p. 122.
29. OGAChO, f. R-274, d.2, op.5, l. 50.
30. Report of 4 January 1943 to the city soviet executive committee, OGAChO,
f. R-200, op. 13, d. 10, l. 17.
31. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 6, d. 18, l. 32, 36–37.
32. Report on delivery in the first decade (ten days) of December according to
plan of 35 Katiusha rocket artillery guns, OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 4, d. 123,
l. 124; Letter from Director Poliantsev to obkom Secretary Kashina 31
October, 1941, OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 4, d. 123, ll. 70–71.
33. See G.K. Pavlenko, ‘Kadry trudovykh rezervov Cheliabinskoi oblasti, 1940–
1945 gg.’, in Iuzhnyi Ural v sudbe Rossii, Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 240–244.
34. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 4, d. 125, l. 106.
35. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 3, d. 5, l. 85–87.
36. OGAChO, f. R-274, op. 3, d. 1429, l. 53–53ob.
37. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 6, d. 213, l. 18–18ob, 33–33ob, 40–40ob. Stenogram
from a meeting on 14 October 1942.
38. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 5, d. 33, l. 21a.
39. OGAChO, f. R-1317, op. 21, d. 17, l. 130–132.
40. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 5, d. 58, l. 116–117.
41. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 5, d. 77, l. 92.
42. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 4, d. 307, l. 73–74ob.
43. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 6, d. 358, l. 1; G. A. Goncharov,’Chislennost’ i
razmeshchenie’trudarmeitsev’ na Urale v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny’,
Promyshlennost’ Urala v XIX–XX vekakh, Moscow: AIRO-XX 2002, p. 247.
44. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 4, d.322, l. 1–1ob, 5–7.
45. OGAChO, f. 92, op, 5, d. 228, l. 9.
46. G.A. Goncharov, ‘Osobye stroitel’nye montazhnye chasti (OSMCh) na Urale
v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny’, Ural v voennoi istorii Rossii: Traditsii i
sovremennost’, Ekaterinburg 2003, pp. 27–30.
47. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 4, d. 322, l. 28. Report to the military procurator at
the NKVD troops in Cheliabinsk oblast concerning desertions from the fac-
tory, OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 3, d. 108, l. 1–1p.
48. Leonid L. Mininberg, Sovetskie evrei v nauke i promyshlennosti SSSR v period
vtoroi mirovoi voiny (1941–45gg.), Moscow: ITs-Granit 1995, p. 372. It was also
said that on cloudy days the Lenin statue would not be seen at all, and on
sunny days the building would cast a shadow even over the Kremlin. In the
1990s, the ‘new Russians’ and the city authorities managed to quickly rebuild
the cathedral according to the original drawings from the 19th century.
49. Cheliabinskaia oblast’ 1917–1945, document 262 and the commentary in
footnotes 235–236.
50. For the decisions concerning the Soviet Germans, being citizens of the
USSR, see the documentary volumes edited and commented by the leading
expert Nikolai F. Bugai, ‘Mobilizovat’ nemtsev v rabochie kolonny... I. Stalin’,
Moscow: Gotika 1998; and A.A. German & A.N. Kurochkin, Nemtsy SSSR v
‘trudovoi armii’ (1941–1945), Moscow: Gotika, 1998.
51. Those who pretended to work, did so excessively slowly or even sabotaged
a building site were sentenced to up to ten years in prison and were sent
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Notes 319
to the Gulag camps. See, for example, an NKVD order of 24 March 1942,
OGAChO, f. 1619, op. 1, d. 7, l. 20–22, in Cheliabinskaia oblast, 1917–1945,
Cheliabinsk: Iuzhno-Ural’skoe izdatel’stvo 1999, pp. 203–204.
52. T.V. Koshman, ‘Trudarmeitsy Kazakhstana na voennykh obiektakh Urala v
gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny’, in Ural v voennoi istorii Rossii: traditsii i
sovremennost, Ekaterinburg 2004, pp. 71–75.
53. Skvoz gody: Cheliabinskskii metallurgicheskii kombinat. Istoricheskii ocherk.
Cheliabinsk: ChMK 1994.
54. OGAChO, f. R-1619, op. 1, d. 33, l. 46–47.
55. Nikita V. Petrov & K.V. Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 1934–1941. Spravochnik,
Moscow: Zvenia 1999, pp. 356–357.
56. OGAChO, f. P-878, op. 1, d. 302, l. 15–18.
57. OGAChO, f. R-1619, op. 2, d. 26, l. 1–2, 5.
58. This hidden part of Cheliabinsk’s history has been meticulously clarified
by history teacher Marina Salmina and her pupils at School No. 59 in the
Traktorozavodskii city district. Ekaterina Burkova and Natal’ia Aksionova
wrote a term paper on the German POWs in the Urals (‘Voennoplennye
Germanskoi armii na Urale 1942–1955 g.g.’). Their paper was based on
substantial documentation from a deserted cemetery in the city district
with buried POWs, and on over 100 archival files in OGAChO. Their paper
described the living and working conditions of the POWs and the role they
played in the reconstruction efforts after the war.
59. Gennadii Kornilov, Uralskoe selo i voina (Problemy demograficheskogo razvitija),
Ekaterinburg: Uralagropress 1993, pp. 38–39. Kornilov was a pioneer in the
analysis of the near-famine conditions in the Urals during the war years, a
topic that was carefully censored in Soviet historiography. Kornilov based
his research on extensive reports from the countryside of how hundreds of
families whose husbands had been called up to the army were starving and
how many children had bellies swollen from malnutrition.
60. Nadezhda P. Paletskich, ‘Spetsposeleniia na Urale v period Velikoi
Otechestvennoi voiny’, in Industrializatsiia v SSSR: Uroki istorii, Cheliabinsk
2003, pp. 154–157.
61. On the food situation in general in the USSR during the war, see William
Moskoff, The Bread of Affliction: The Food Supply in the USSR during World
War II, Cambridge, New York & Melbourne: Cambridge University Press
1990.
62. V.P. Motrevich, ‘Golod na srednem Urale v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi
voiny’, Ural v voennoj istorii Rossii, Ekaterinburg 2003, pp. 85–88.
63. OGAChO, f. 220, op. 6, d. 8, l. 373–375.
64. OGAChO, f. 220, op. 6, d. 3, l. 70–72.
65. OGAChO, f. R-1146, op. 1, d. 2l. 25.
66. OGAChO, f. R-200, op. 6, d. 9l. 22.
67. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 8, d. 32, l. 14.
68. I.A. Usjlik, ‘Bor’ba s ugolovnoj prestupnost’iu v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi
voiny’, in Iuzhnyi Ural v sud’be Rossii, Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 225–227.
69. OGAChO, f. 220, op. 6, d. 8, l. 378–379.
70. OGAChO, f. R-274, op. 3, d. 1616, l. 157.
71. OGAChO, f. P-297, op. 2, d. 904, l. 75–81.
9780230_208872_11_not.indd 319 7/4/2011 8:41:15 PM

320 Notes
72. OGAChO, f. R-220, op. 6, d. 7, l. 35.

73. Zhenskoe litso Pobedy. 100 dokumentov o zhenshchinakh Cheliabinskoi oblasti v
gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, Cheliabinsk 2002, p. 214, note 49, based on
documents in OGAChO, f. P-385, op. 6, d. 10, l. 134, 191; P-915, op. 1, d. 62,
l, 23.
74. OGAChO, f. 804, op. 7, d. 93, l. 15–27.
75. Iakov Goldstein, Otkrovenno govoria. Vospominaniia, razmyshleniia,
Cheliabinsk: Rifei 1994, p. 166. Goldstein offers a lot of his own observa-
tions of the city. However, he just as often retells rumours on the love lives
and affairs of his compatriots when, according to his view, fiancées and
partners were changed more often than shirts and with a lack of attention
to the usual morals. Goldstein’s assertion that Isaak Zaltsman had numer-
ous love affairs with female crane operators and secretaries should be taken
with a pinch of salt (ibidem., pp. 162–166).
76. Kornilov, Ural’skoe selo i voina, Ekaterinburg 1993, p. 45.
77. OGAChO, f. 1595, op.1, d.63, l. 8, rapport om hälsoläget i Cheliabinsk under
krigsåren, 15 November 1944.
78. OGAChO, f. 288, op. 8, d. 32, l. 13–14.
79. OGAChO, f. 288, op. 9, d. 37, l. 40.
80. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 7, d. 13, l. 131.
81. OGAChO, f. R-220, op.13, d. 7, l. 36–37.
82. OGAChO, f. R-220, op. 13, d. 8, l. 59.
83. OGAChO, f. R-1555, op. 1, d. 51, l. 18–18ob.
84. N. L. Usol’tseva, ‘Mediko-sanitarnoe obsluzhivanie trudiashchichsia ChTZ
v gody Velikoi Otetejstvennoi voiny (1941–1945 gg.)’, in Industrializatsiia v
SSSR: Uroki istorii, Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 162–165.
85. OGAChO, f. 792, op. 7, d. 20, l. 61.
86. OGAChO, f. R-840, op. 2, d. 57, l. 64–64ob.
87. OGAChO, f. R-220, op. 13, d. 10, l. 13.
88. OGAChO, f. R-274, op.20, d. 5, l. 43.
89. See, e.g., OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 4, d. 275, l. 8–12; compare a report of 12 July
1941 on how political information was organized in the city district after
war broke out, OGAChO, P-288, op. 4, d. 238, l. 11–12ob, 58.
90. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 8, d. 145, l. 19–161, a list and description of the lec-
tures given in 1944.
91. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 8, d. 145, 19–21ob, 63–67, 78–81, a survey of lectur-
ing activities in the second half of 1944.
92. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 7, d. 13, l. 160.
93. OGAChO, f. 804, op. 7, d. 111, l. 107; Cheliabinskskii rabochii, 6 August 1943,
No. 161, p. 2.
94. M.V. Gavrilinia, ‘Iuzhno-Uralskii gosudarstvennyi universitet: Vekhi istorii’,
Ural v istorii Rossii, p. 308–310. Since the 1990s, the former ChPI has been
renamed Southern Urals State University and has incorporated economic
and juridical faculties.
95. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 9, d. 285, l. 3–8. Petrov, Informatsiia otdela propa-
gandy i agitatsii Cheliabinskogo gorkoma VKP(b), 5 May 1945.
96. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 9, d. 225, l. 14–16, Informatsiia o provedenii Dnia
Pobedy v gorode Zlatouste.
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Notes 321
9 The New Military-Industrial Complex in

Cheliabinsk during the Cold War
1. M.V. Gavrilinia, ‘Iuzhno-Ural’skii gosudarstvennyi universitet: Vekhi istorii’,
Iuzhnyi Ural v istorii Rossii, pp. 308–310.
2. OGAChO, f. R-220, op. 13, d. 39, l. 126–129.
3. The numbers after the ‘closed cities’ have nothing to do with distances or
location. They were simply chosen to spread disinformation regarding the
most secret objects in the military-industrial complex.
4. For a general overview on post-war tank production, see Liubov’ V. Shubarina,
‘Borba SKB ChTZ za liderstvo v sozdanii i proizvodstve tiazhëlykh tankov
(1945–1960 gg.)’, Iuzhnyi Ural v sud’be Rossii, Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 285–288.
5. E.L. Glotova, ‘Osnovnye napravleniia konversii predpriiatii mashinos-
troeniia Cheliabinskoi oblasti (1945–1949)’, Iuzhnyi Ural v sud’be Rossii.,
6. OGAChO, R-792. 19. 44: 1–15, the Foundation and Economic Calculations
on the Reconstruction in Accordance with the Order of People’s Commissar
Malyshev from 26 May 1945. This also contains a short history of how the
factory was built in the early 1930s. For an inventory of the worn-out parts
of the factory from April 1947, see OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 15, d. 106, l. 17–22.
For the activities during the 1940s, see Otchët o rabote Kirovskogo zavoda v g.
Cheliabinske za 1947 god., f. R-792, op. 19-s, d. 87, l. 1–10, 52–66. Godovoi
otchët po osnovnoi deiatelnosti na 1948 g., OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 19, d. 101,
l. 3–10, 65–73.
7. OGAChO, P-124, op. 821, l. 116–121.
8. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 19, d. 111, l. 84–86. Zaltsman’s notes on the IS-4
heavy tanks, OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 15, d. 54, l 1–6. Concerning tank
‘701’ see his note of 19 March 1946, OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 15, d. 9, l.
1–3.
9. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 16, d. 181, l. 14–24. Prikaz ministra Transportnogo
mashinostroeniia Soiuza SSR, Nosenko, 19 February 1949. The army’s
requirements were: maximum 50 tons and a crew of four men, one D-25
122 millimetre gun, two DShK 12.7 millimetre machine guns, the same
armour as on the IS-3, at least the same maximum speed, ground pressure
0.77–0.8 kilograms per square centimetre, a diesel tank of 425–450 litres to
an engine of 650 horse power (13 ph per ton) and a range capacity of 2000
kilometres and 200 hours for the engine.
10. A.R. Zaets,’Proizvodstvo bronetankovoi tekhniki na Urale v poselvoennyi
period’, in Ural v voennoi istorii Rossii: Traditsii i sovremennost’, Ekaterinburg
2003, pp. 35–40.
11. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 17, d. 29, l. 79–91, Malyshev’s speech on 8 September
1946 was a magnificent survey of what actually characterises the devel-
opment of armaments during a war as compared to their evolution in
peacetime.
12. The articles in Bez tain i sekretov describe the most important tanks produced
in Leningrad and in cooperation with the designers at the Cheliabinsk
Tractor Factory. See also Liubov V. Shubarina,’Bor’ba SKB ChTZ za liderstvo v
sozdanii i proizvodstve tiazhëlykh tankov (1945–1960 gg.)’, in Iuzhnyi Ural v
9780230_208872_11_not.indd 321 7/4/2011 8:41:15 PM

322 Notes
sud’be Rossii, p. 285–288; idem, ‘Sozdanie tanka T-10 na Cheliabinskom trak-

tornom zavode (1948–1951)’, Industrializatsiia v SSSR: Uroki istorii, pp. 226–9.
13. OGAChO, f. 220, op. 13, d. 40, l. 10–14 March 1950. Decision by the city
soviet and the city party committee.
14. OGAChO, f. R-220, op. 13, d. 20, l. 53–54.
15. OGAChO, f. P-92, op. 6, d. 31, l. 92–97.
16. OGAChO, f. P-92, op. 6, d.. 31, l. 92–97.
17. Elena Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo: Politika i povsednevnost’,
1945–1953, Moscow: Rosspen 1999, p. 43.
18. Articles in Voprosy istorii, no. 2, 1994, p. 60, and Otechestvennaia istoriia,
No. 5, 1997, p. 168. On German women who were deported to Cheliabinsk
and Kopeisk in the last phase of World War II, see Freya Klier, Verschleppt ans
Ende der Welt: Schicksale deutscher Frauen in sowjetischen Arbeitslagern, Berlin:
Ullstein, 1999, p. 204. It has been said that these arrested German women
compensated for the lost labour force that Russian men would have other-
wise represented had they not been killed by the husbands of these women.
In other words, it was a kind of war contribution.
19. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 1, d. 96, l. 111–113, letters from director Zaltsman
and the head of the Transport Building Ministry Nosenko, September
1948.
20. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 19, d. 96, l. 95.
21. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 16, d. 12, l. 16–20, on the camp prisoners who took
the place of foreign POWs.
22. OGAChO, f. R-220, op. 13, d. 20, l. 61–61ob.
23. N.P. Khomutova, ‘Zhilshchnyi vopros na predpriiatiakh voenno-promysh-
lennogo kompleksa Iuzhnogo Urala (1945–1955 gg.)’, Iuzhnyi Ural v istorii
Rossii, pp. 303–307.
24. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 19, d. 111, l. 94–95.
25. OGAChO, f. R-792, op. 15, d. 250, l. 7.
26. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1077, l. 32; OGAChO, f. P-124, op. 1, d. 904,
l. 88–91.
27. On the Zaltsman case, see Gennadii V. Kostyrchenko, Tainaia politika
Stalina: Vlast’ i antisemitizm, Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniia 2001,
pp. 616–618. See also the Politburo criticism of the Cheliabinsk obkom,
Cheliabinsk region and city party chairman Beloborodov on 26 January
1950, TsK VKP(b) i regional’nye partiinye komitety, 1945–1953, V.V. Denisov
et al. (ed.) Moscow: Rosspen 2004, pp. 240–244.
28. Isaak Zaltsman & G. Edelgauz, ‘Vspominaia uroki Tankograda’, Kommunist,
1984, no. 16, pp. 76–87.
29. Galina Kibitkina, ‘Korol’ tankov’, manuscript at OGAChO. On the accusations
at the local level against Zaltsman, OGAChO, P-124/1/904/88–91, Postanovlenie
sobraniia partiinogo aktiva Kirovskogo zavoda, 19–20 July 1949.
30. See also the document in the source volume Sovetskaia zhizn, 1945–1953.
Seria Dokumenty sovetskoi istorii. Ed. E. Iu. Zubkova, L.P. Kosheliova,
G.A. Kuznetsova, A.I. Miniuk & L.A. Rogovaia, Moscow: Rosspen 2003,
pp. 292–293.
31. M.N. Fedchenko, ‘Molodëzh ChTZ. Iz opyta sotsializatsii v usloviakh proiz-
vodstvennoi mikrosredy (1946–1950)’, in Industrializatsiia v SSSR: Uroki
istorii, p. 221.
9780230_208872_11_not.indd 322 7/4/2011 8:41:15 PM

Notes 323
32. E.B. Druzhinina, ‘Korol’ tankov’: Fakty iz biografii I. M. Zaltsmana’, in

Industrializatsiia v SSSR: Uroki istorii, p.180.
33. Elena Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo: Politika i povsednevnost,
1945–1953, Moscow: Rosspen 1999, pp. 146–148.
34. See also A.I. Prishepa, ‘O nachal’nom periode dissidentstva v SSSR (na pri-
merakh Urala)’, Totalitarizm v Rossii (SSSR) 1917–1991. Oppozitsiia i repressii.
Materialy nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii, Perm 1998, pp. 56–64.
35. P.R. Rozhdestvenskii, ‘Materialy k istorii samodeiatelnykh molodëzhnykh
obedinenii v SSSR posle 1945 goda’, Pamiat. Istoricheskii sbornik. Moscow.
1981/ Paris 1983, p. 226.
36. E. Iu. Shutkova, ‘Molodëzhnaia oppozitsiia stalinizmu v poslevoennoe
vremia’, Totalitarizm v Rossii (SSSR) 1917–1991. Oppozitsiia i repressii, Materialy
nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii, Perm’ 1998, pp. 71–73.
37. Vladimir Novosëlov & Vitalii Tolstikov, Tainy ‘Sorokovki’, Ekaterinburg:
Ural’skii Rabochii 1995.
38. Sergeï Vladimirovich Tulinskii, Iuzhno-Ural’skii Gosudarstvennyi universitet,
1943–2003. Istoricheskii ocherk, Cheliabinsk: IuUrGU 2003.
39. Tatiana P. Pushkarëva, ‘Dukhov, Leonid Nikolaevich, ‘Inzhener–konstruktor.
100 let so dnia rozhdeniia’, Kalendar’ znamenatel’nykh i pamjatnykh dat,
Cheliabinsk 2004, pp. 159–162. On the history of Southern Urals State
University (IuUrGU) from its beginnings as a technical institute for tank
construction established during the last years of the Great Patriotic War,
see Sergei Tulinskii, Iuzhno-Uralskii Gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1943–2003.
Istoricheskii ocherk, Cheliabinsk: IuUrGU 2003.
40. Aleksandr Finodeev, ‘Uchastie Kirovskogo zavoda Narkomata (Ministerstva)
transportnogo mashinostroeniia v sozdanii iadernogo oruzhiia’,
Industrializatsiia v SSSR: Uroki istorii, pp. 223–225, idem, ‘Nachal’nyj etap
razvitiia raketnoi promyshlennosti na Iuzhnom Urale’, Iuzhnii Ural v sud’be
Rossii. Materialy nauchnoi konferentsii, pp. 279–284. See also V.P. Terekhov,
‘Stanovlenie i razvitie Ural’skogo raketostroitel’nogo kompleksa’, Ural v voen-
noi istorii Rossii: Traditsii i sovremennost, Ekaterinburg 2004, pp. 138–148.
10 Historical Memory and Research in

Today’s Cheliabinsk
1. See articles in Igor Narskii, (ed.), Vek pamiati, pamiat’ veka: Opyt obrashcheniia
s proshlym v XX stoletii, Cheliabinsk: Kamennyi poias 2004.
2. The eminent American expert on the Soviet defence industry and mili-
tary strategy Raymond Garthoff described how US Intelligence almost by
chance – and because of mistakes from the Soviet side – found out the loca-
tion of the atomic cities in the Urals. On a blurry photograph in a regional
newspaper the high-voltage electricity network in the Urals was discerned,
and several years before the U-2 spy plane flew over the Soviet Union, it
was figured out precisely where the Russian atomic cities were located.
See Garthoff, A Journey through the Cold War: A Memoir of Containment and
Coexistence, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution 2001, p. 94.
3. Two guide books to new source materials can serve as an excellent intro-
duction to declassified and recently published documents; compare I.A.
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324 Notes
Kodrakov, Otkrytyi arkhiv–2. Spravochnik sbornikov dokumentov, vysjedshikh v

svet v otechestvennykh izdatel’stvakh v 1917–2000, Moscow: Rosspen 2005.
4. Igor Narskii, Zhizn’ v katastrofe: Budni naseleniia Urala v 1917–1922 gg.,
Moscow: Rosspen 2001. See also A.V. Ivanov & A.T. Tertyshnyi, Ural’skoe
krest’ianstvo i vlast’ v period grazhdanskoi voiny (1917–1921gg.): Opyt osmyslen-
iia problemy v otechestvennoi istoriografii, Ekaterinburg: Ural’skii gosudarsven-
nyi universitet ekonomiki, 2002, for a critical survey of Soviet and recent
Russian historiography on the Civil War in the Urals 1918–1921.
5. Aleksandr Bazarov, Kulak i Agro-Gulag, vol. 1, Cheliabinsk: Iuzhno-Ural’skoe
knizhnoe izdatelstvo 1991; idem, Durelom ili gospoda kolkhozniki, vol 1–2,
Kurgan: Zaural’e, 1997.
6. Tatiana Slavko, Kulatskaia ssylka na Urale, 1930–1936, Moscow: Mosgorarkhiv
1995.
7. Viktor Kirillov, Istoriia repressii v Nizhnetagil’skom regione Urala, 1920–1950 gody,
vol. 1–2, Nizhnii Tagil 1996; idem, Istoriia repressii i pravozashchinoe dvizhenie
v Rossii, Ekaterinburg: UMTs UPI 1999; idem, Kniga pamiati. Posviashchaetsia
Tagilchanam – zhertvam repressii 1917–1980-ch godov Ekaterinburg: UIF Nauka
1994; Zhertvy repressii: Nizhnii Tagil 1920–1980-e gody, Ekaterinburg: n.p.
1999. See also his Sostoianie raboty nad knigami pamjati zhertv polititjeskich
repressij v Rossii, Kazachstane i Ukraine, Nizhnii Tagil: n.p. 2002.
8. M.A. Feldman, ‘Industrializatsiia v Rossii i v SSSR v 20–30-e gg. XX
veka (metodologicheskie aspekty)’, Industrializatsiia v SSSR: Uroki istorii,
Cheliabinsk 2003, p. 71–74.
9. Igor Narskii, (ed.), Ural v kontekste rossiiskoi modernizatsii. Sbornik nauchnykh
statei, Cheliabinsk: Kamennyi poias 2005.
10. The archivists Aleksandr Finodeev, Galina Kibitkina and others at OGAChO
have edited a large number of documentary collections, for example
Cheliabinskaia oblast, 1917–1945, Neizvestnaia voina, 1941–1945, Zhenskoe
litso Pobedy and Eti detskie voennye gody.
11. Aleksandr Finodeev (ed.), Arkhiv – khranitel vremeni. Istoriia arkhivnoi
sluzhby Cheliabinskoi oblasti v dokumentakh, vospominaniakh, fotografiakh,
Cheliabinsk: ChPO Kniga 2004.
12. See Rasstrel’nye spiski (Lists of executions) in the newspaper Cheliabinskskii rabo-
chii, for e.g. 23 March, 3, 11, 18, 25 April, 15, 29 May, 6, 28 June, 10, 19, 24 July,
7, 14, 28 August 1991, 7, 8, 9, 14, 23, 30 July, 4, 25 August, 1, 5, 29 September,
4, 12, 24 November and 24 December 1991; 3, 15 January, 19, 25 February, 3,
11, 31 March, 8 April, 6, 13, 19 May, 16 June 1992, 7, 8, 9, 14, 23, 30 July, 1,
5, 29 September, 4, 12, 24 November, 24 December 1992. Under the heading
‘Reabilitirovannye’, Vechernii Cheliabinsk published lists of 106 persons on 24
and 26 November and 3, 8, 10, 24 and 29 December 1992. Each of these issues
of the newspapers contains hundreds of names and brief biographical data.
Even much later, local newspapers were still publishing similar articles and
lists of persons who were victims of political repression during the Soviet era.
13. See Stephen Kotkin,”Modern Times: The Soviet Union and the Interwar
Conjuncture”, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 2,
nr 1, 2001, pp. 111–165.
14. Leonid Komarov, Rossiia tankov ne imela, Cheliabinsk: n.p. 1993.
15. Vladimir Novosiolov & Vitalii Tolstikov, Tainy ‘Sorokovki’, Ekaterinburg:
Uralskii Rabochii 1994.
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Notes 325
16. Aleksandr Vasil’evich Bakunin, Istoriia sovetskogo totalitarizma, vol. 1,

Ekaterinburg 1996.
17. Compare Aleksandr V. Speranskii, ‘Totalitarnaia kultura SSSR i Germaniia
30–40-kh gg.: Skhodstva i razlichiia’, Ural v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine,
Ekaterinburg 1995, p. 101–107.
18. E.E. Ivanov & M.A. Kudinov,’Industrializatsiia SSSR glazami russkoi emigrat-
sii’, Industrializatsiia SSSR: Uroki istorii, Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 190–193. On Piotr
Struve, Pavel Miliukov and Sergei Melgunov, as well as other Russian historians
in exile, see Istoriki-emigranty. Voprosy russkoi istorii v rabotakh 20-x–30-x godov,
Moscow: Institute of Russian History of the Academy of Sciences 2002; Iurii N.
Emelianov, S.S. Melgunov: V Rossii i emigratsii, Moscow: Editorial URSS 1998.
19. Igor Narskii (ed.), Chelovek i voina. Voina kak iavlenie kultury, Moscow:
AIRO-XX 2001.
20. Boris Lichman, Mnogokontseptual’naia istoriia Rossii. Posobie dlia abiturien-
tov, Ekaterinburg: SV-96 2000; idem, Istoriia Rossii: Teoriia izucheniia, vol 1:
S drevneishikh vremën do kontsa XIX veka & vol. 2: Dvadtsatyi vek, Ekaterinburg:
SV-96 2001.
21. Compare Lichman, Istoriia Rossii, vol. 2, Dvadtsatyi vek, pp. 126–167, on the
great transformations from the late 1920s to the 1950s.
22. P. E. Alekseev & V. D. Kamynin,’Industrializatsiia SSSR kak obiekt
mnogokontseptualnogo rassmotreniia’, Industrializatsiia v SSSR: Uroki istorii,
23. Compare in particular, Marina Sergeevna Salmina, Istoriia Iuzhnogo Urala.
XX – nachalo XXI veka, Cheliabinsk: Vzgljad 2004.
24. See for example, A.A. Danilov, L. G. Kosulina & A. V. Pyzhkov, Istoriia Rossii.
XX – nachalo XXI vekov. Uchebnik dlia 9 klassa obshcheobrazovatelnykh uch-
rezhdenii, Moscow: Prosveshchenie 2003, p. 27 ‘Sotsial’naia sistema v 1930-e
gody’, pp. 205–209, as well as the tasks for the students in the working
papers Rabochaia tetrad po istorii Rossii. XX vek: 1928–1953
25. Compare the term papers in Memorial’s Russia-wide competition for
schoolchildren published in the series ‘Man in History. Russia’s 20th cen-
tury’: Chelovek v istorii. Rossiia – XX vek. Sbornik rabot pobeditelei. Moscow:
Obshchestvo Memorial / Zvenja 2001–2008.
26. Ilya Polezhaikin, ‘Prinuditel’nyi trud na Cheliabinskom Traktornom
Zavode’, term paper for 11th grade at General School No 59.
27. See Ekaterina Burkova & Natalia Aksënova’s term paper ‘Voennoplennye
germanskoi armii na Urale, 1942–1955 gg.’, term paper for the 11th grade
at the General School No 59’; see also Marina P. Salmina, O chëm rasskazalo
staroe kladbishche. Po materialam issledovatelskoi deiatel’nosti uchashchichsia,
Cheliabinsk: Cheliabinskskii gosudarstvennyi universitet 2003.
28. Denis A. Stepanov, ‘Donos kak sposob vzaimootnoshenii cheloveka s
vlast’iu. (Po materialam dokumentov 1920x–1940-kh gg. v OGAChO)’, term
paper for the 11th class at School No. 59 in Cheliabinsk, 2003. The young
Stepanov had investigated a topic that had been much discussed in the
scholarly community in the West. He eagerly listened to my descriptions
of how Sheila Fitzpatrick and other historians had analysed the Soviet sys-
tem of denunciations, donositel’stvo, in Stalinist Russia. For example, Sheila
Fitzpatrick ‘Supplicants and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia
in the 1930s’, Slavic Review, Spring 1996, no. 1, pp. 78–105.
9780230_208872_11_not.indd 325 7/4/2011 8:41:16 PM

326 Notes
29. Vladimir Karpov, Generalissimus, Moscow: Veche 2003.

30. For a survey of all lists of victims of Soviet repression in various parts of the
country, see Knigi pamjati zhertv politicheskikh repressij v SSSR: Annotirovannyi
ukazatel, St Petersburg: Rossiiskaia natsionalnaia biblioteka 2003, edited by
Anatolii Razumov from the association ‘Vozvrashchennyje imena’; on the
martyrologies from Cheliabinsk oblast in particular, p. 181.
31. On the rehabilitation process of the 1950s by the KGB, see Oleg Veprev &
Viacheslav Liutov, Gosudarstvennaia bezopasnost’: Tri veka na Iuzhnom Urale,
Cheliabinsk: Iuzhno-Ural’skoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo 2002, pp. 381–384.
32. ‘Ob utverzhdenii Polozheniia o gorodskoi komissii po vosstanovleniiu prav
lits, postradavsjikh ot polititjeskikh repressii’, Vechernii Cheliabinsk, 27 April
2000. Local Memorial groups have since the 1990s established data on vic-
tims of political repression. Most of these data have been made available on
CD-ROM disks published by the Memorial Society.
33. ‘V oblasti – 11592 zhertv politicheskikh repressii’, Vechernii Cheliabinsk,
11 October 1994; See also, Veprev & Liutov, Gosudarstvennaia bezopasnost’,
p. 383; G. Gavrilova, ‘Stranichka istorii: Den’ politzakliuchënnykh’, Vechernii
Cheliabinsk, 4 November 1999.
34. Compare the interview with Chief Archivist and Deputy Head of the
Cheliabinsk Province Archival Committee, Galina Nikolaevna Kibitkina,
‘Voennye tainy KPSS raskryty’, Vechernii Cheliabinsk, 31 May 2001, and the
lists of declassified documents: Rassekrechennye dokumenty (55-letiiu Pobedy
v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine posviashchaetsia), Komitet po delam arkhivov
and OGAChO, vols. 1–2, 2000.
9780230_208872_11_not.indd 326 7/4/2011 8:41:16 PM

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9780230_208872_12_ref.indd 344 7/4/2011 7:08:25 PM
Index
Page numbers followed by n refer to endnotes, with note number.
ABTU, Auto, Armour and Tank Carr, Edward, 41, 296n31

Directorate, 170, 177 Caterpillar, Inc., 104, 107, 116
Albrecht, Karl, 298n60 censorship, 137, 161, 251
American Relief Administration, Central Asia, 221, 238
ARA, 37, 296n26 central committee of the Communist
amphibious tanks, 188, 212, 260 Party, 44, 51, 72, 78, 138–40, 143,
Amtorg, 107 156, 196, 224, 267, 312
anti-religious propaganda, 79, 300n10 Chamberlin, William Henry, 6, 40,
anti-Soviet elements, 141, 146, 150–1, 157 191–2, 314n15
architecture, Soviet, 5, 82–4, 264, Cheka, VChK, Extraordinary
291n5, 301n16 committee against counter-
artillery hauler S-2, 8, 120, 170, 192 revolution, 23, 32, 36, 74, 240,
Arzamas-16 (Sarov), 257, 274, 275 292n10, 295n23, 296n27
Asha steel works, 45, 167 Chekh Legion in World War I, Russian
Atomgrad, 255, 280 Civil War, 19–21, 23–4, 27
atomic bomb, 257, 274–5, 283 Chekhoslovakia, 19, 165
atomic bomb project, 274, 283 Chekhov, Anton, 224
atomic city, 255 Cheliabinsk-40 (Ozërsk), 6, 255, 257,
274–5
Babel, Isaak, 1, 39, 290n1 Cheliabinsk-70 (Snezhinsk), 6, 283
Bakal iron and steel works, 45, 63 Cheliabinsk Electrode factory, 248
Bakalstroi, 237–8 Cheliabinsk Electro-metallurgical
Balzhi, Mikhail, 211–13 works (ChEMK), 47
barracks, 8, 10, 62, 64, 89–92, 98, Cheliabinsk Iron and Steel Works
226, 232–5, 238–9, 248, 262–3, (ChMZ), 239
265–6, 277, 282 Cheliabinsk Politechnical Institute
Beck, Friedrich, 135, 306n3 (ChPI), 10, 213, 255–6, 320
Bek, Aleksandr, 214, 315n32 Cheliabinsk Regional Power station
Beria, Lavrentii, 146, 154–6, 158–60, (ChGRES), 46
190, 263, 286, 314n13 Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory (ChTZ), 5,
Berlin, 128, 163, 165, 213, 252, 279 88, 98–9, 104–6, 109–10, 117–18,
Bettelheim, Charles, 83 128, 130–3, 145, 168–73, 177,
Bliukher, Vasilii, 17–18, 23 179–80, 192, 195, 197–8, 222–3,
Blue Army, 35–6 231, 260, 262–3, 265–7, 269, 277,
Brodokalmak, 2–3, 17, 246, 292n7 285, 303n9
Bruskin, Aleksandr, 117, 132, 144 Cheliabmetallurgstroi, 237, 239–40
Budionnyi, Semën, 30 see also Bakalstroi
Bukharin, Nikolai Grigorievich, 151 Cheliabtraktorstroi, Cheliabinsk
Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich, 35, 49, Tractor Building Site (ChTS), 85,
75–6, 136, 295n20 105
Burov, Andrei, 85, 301n23 Christie, Walter, 121, 133, 305n26
345
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346 Index
Cold War, 2, 6, 10, 136, 149, 176, 255, five-year plan, third, 153, 302n49
257, 275, 277, 280, 313n2, 314n15 Frunze, Mikhail, 23
collective farms, see kolkhozy Fuller, J.F.C., 124
collectivisation of agriculture, 1, 4,
13, 24, 36, 48–56, 59–61, 66–7, Gabo, Naum, 84, 301n20
72, 102, 106, 136, 152, 242, 281, Germany, 15, 31, 70, 84
284, 286, 292n4, 296n31, 309n28 Ginzburg, Semën, 188, 190, 314n10
Conquest, Robert, 136 GKO (State Defense Committee), 176,
constructivism, Soviet architecture 187, 190, 203, 210, 214, 229, 243,
style, 82–3, 87 262
cultural palace (dvorets kultury), 82, glasnost, 5, 10, 137, 161, 280, 290n1,
87, 101 308n25, 311n1
Glavenergo, Main Energy directorate, 117
Denikin, Anton, 21, 293n10 Godin, William, 135, 306n3
desertion, 36, 227, 229, 235–6 Goebbels, Joseph, 174
Detroit, 85, 105, 107, 109, 117 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 161, 280, 282
diesel engines, 9, 118, 120–1, 123, Goregliad, A., 233
126, 169, 188–9, 193, 197, 202, Gor’kii (the city, today Nizhnii
208, 259, 305, 321 Novgorod), 84, 108, 142
Djilas, Milovan, 70 Gor’kii Automobile Factory, 176
Dneprodzerzhinsk, 43 Gosplan (State Planning commission),
Dnepropetrovsk, 43, 172 43–4, 130, 175–6, 180, 187, 222
Dudov, E.P., 197 Greater Urals project, 44, 59
Dukhov, Nikolai Leonidovich, 128, Guderian, Heinz, 9
149–50, 178, 195, 197, 199–200, Gulag, Main Labour Camp
209, 211, 255, 275 administration, concentrataion
Dzerzhinskii, Feliks, 33, 172 camps, 57–8, 63, 65, 111, 135,
137–8, 141, 146, 148, 152–4,
Engels, Friedrich, 271 158–60, 188, 226, 229, 234,
epidemics, 31, 37, 64, 98, 246, 248, 238–41, 244, 249, 262–4, 271,
293n10 273, 290n1, 293n10, 304n16,
Estonia, 236 307n15, 309n29
evacuation, 168, 185–9, 203, 211, GUPVI, Main directorate for
219–23, 264, 316n6 prisoners-of-war and internees,
POW camps, 241
Fainsod, Merle, 147
Far East, 20, 91, 151, 156, 250 Henry, Ernst, (pen name of Sergei
February 1917 revolution, 16, 19, 24, 74 Rostovskii), 163, 311n1
Feldman, M.A., 312n34, 324n8 Hitler, Adolf, 1, 163, 165, 184, 186,
Ferrous Alloys Factory (Ferrosplav), 47 217, 219, 237, 250, 301, 311n1,
fifth column, 151–2 313n8
Filatov, 233, 249 Höglund, Zeth, 135, 158
Finland, 150–1, 170–2, 175, 177, 192, Holocaust, 185, 313n4
250 housing conditions, 10, 62, 64–5, 85,
five-year plan, first, 6, 13, 42–5, 89–91, 110, 229, 233–5, 258–9,
49–50, 72, 76, 84, 102–3, 291n6, 261, 264–7, 277
297n45, 302n49
five-year plan, second, 44–5, 48, 74, Iagoda, Genrikh, 138, 152
131, 147, 302n49 Iakovlev, Aleksandr, 161
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Index 347
industrialisation, 41–3, 47–8, 51, 61, Kurchatov, Igor V., 255, 274–5
70, 74, 82, 104, 106, 108, 111–12, Kurgan, 2, 33, 36, 73, 219
115, 126, 129, 133, 191, 279, Kuzbass, 113
281–2, 284–6, 296n31, 303n5, Kuznetsk, 44
303n9, 304n16 Kyshtym, 38, 63, 230
industrial mobilisation, see
mobilisation plan Lenin, 23, 27, 35, 37, 58, 70–1, 73,
intelligentsia, 83, 148, 150, 249 94, 136, 236, 271, 286, 293n10,
International Harvester Inc., 104, 107 295n20, 299n3, 299n4, 306n1
Iofan, Boris, 236 Lichman, Boris, 284
Irkutsk, 32 Liddell Hart, Basil, 124
Italy, 113, 250, 291n2 Lominadze, Vissarion, 141, 153
Izhorsk factory, 189 Lovin, Kazimir, 98, 106–7, 109, 117,
145
Japan, 1, 42, 151, 163, 171, 250–1, 297 Lugovtsev, Faddei, 156–8
Kabakov, Ivan, 117, 139–40 machine and tractor stations, MTS,

kadety, KD, Constitutional Democrats, 56,78, 103, 106, 140, 241–2, 249,
14, 17 259
Kaganovich, Lazar Moiseevich, 76, Magnitogorsk, 5, 44–6, 54, 63–6,
78, 185, 300n7 72–3, 82, 84, 94, 111, 114, 140–1,
Kalibr factory, 221–2 148, 153, 192, 219–20, 231
Kalinin, Mikhail, 116–17 Makarenko, Anton, 38, 296n27
Kamenev, Lev, 137 Makhonin, Sergei, 210, 315n22
Kamensk, 48, 63–4, 236 Malyshev, Viacheslav, 171–2, 175, 187,
Kamensk-Sinarsk, 48 190, 200, 208, 210, 314n12
Karabash, 48, 63–4, 242 Manchuria, 1, 23
Karaganda, 44 Mannerheim Line, 170, 177
Karlgren, Anton, 69, 299n1 Mariupol, 188, 236–7
katiusha, see rocket artillery launcher Markhasov, I.G., 117
Kautsky, Karl, 34–5 Martov, Iulii, 14
Kazachstan, 48, 220, 238, 274, Marx, Karl, 271, 299n2
319n52 marxism, 58, 71, 271
KGB, Committee of State Security, mass arrests, 14, 156
326n31 mass executions, 158, 185, 308n26
Khalkhin-Gol 1939 battle, 125 Matiasevich, Mikhail, 33
Kirov, Sergei, 82, 137 Mauthausen prisoner-of-war camp, 156
Knickerbocker, Hubert, 42 Medvedev, Roy, 135–6, 139
Kolchak, Aleksandr, 23, 25, 27, 32, 74 Meksin, L.A., 117
Koliushchenko, Dmitrii, 14–16, 21 Memorial, 285, 287, 325n25, 326n32
Koliushchenko Works, 85, 168, 221, Mensheviks, 16, 21, 157
230–1 Merkulov, Viktor, 233
kolkhozy, collective agricultural farms, Miass, city of, 2, 10, 15, 20, 34, 36, 45,
53–5, 57, 59, 60, 63, 103, 109–10, 100, 218, 273, 275, 277
239, 244–5, 290 Mikoian, Anastas, 151
Komarov, Leonid, 10, 283 military-industrial complex, 6, 9–10,
Kopeisk, 46, 50, 62, 64–5, 104, 241, 43, 71, 159, 252, 255, 257, 259,
243, 299n69, 322n18 261, 263, 267, 269, 271, 273, 275,
kulaks, 58–9, 62–3, 65, 150, 242, 309n28 277, 280, 314n12, 321n3
9780230_208872_13_ind.indd 347 7/4/2011 8:42:13 PM

348 Index
Miliutin, Nikolai, 84 NKTankoprom, people’s commissariat

Minaev, A.M., 66 of tank industry, 188, 196, 200,
mobilisation plan, 9, 48, 128–33, 170, 220, 316n20
175–7, 179–81, 188, 191–2, 217, NKTP, people’s commissariat of heavy
257, 312n28 industry, 104–5, 132, 144
Mogilnikov, Vladimir, 16, 18, 21, 292 NKVD, people’s commissariat of
Mokhov, A.F., 248–9 internal affairs (1934–46), 59,
Molière, 224 63–5, 75, 78, 81, 91, 93, 98–9,
Molotov (city, now Perm), 243, 252 126, 130, 138, 140–2, 145–6,
Molotov, Viacheslav, 76, 89, 140, 151, 150–1, 153–9, 222–3, 229,
155, 180, 190, 217 236–42, 247, 249, 271, 285, 287,
Moore, Barringtom Jr., 147, 154 290, 308n26, 310n34
Morozov, Aleksandr, 128 nomenklatura, 72, 78, 83, 136, 150
Moscow, 5, 9, 13, 20, 33, 44, 47, 71–2, Nosenko, Ivan, 259, 267, 315
76, 78, 80, 84, 99–100, 106, 108, Novosëlov, Vladimir, 314n12
117, 127–8, 130, 132, 135–6,
143–5, 163, 165, 170, 172, 174, October 1917 revolution, 12, 17–18
178, 183, 186, 188, 190–2, 197, OGPU, United State Political
199–200, 210, 214, 217, 219–20, Directorate (1922–34), 7, 24,
222, 224, 227, 236, 239, 252, 50–1, 56, 58–9, 62, 126, 152, 154,
266, 268, 271–2, 277, 288, 291n5, 240, 292n4, 298n49, 309n28
291n6, 301n16 Ogurtsov, Dmitrii, 142
Mosin, Vadim, 267 Omsk, 2, 25
Motovilikhi, 201 operational art, 125, 127
Murom, 268 Operation Barbarossa, 2, 9, 174–6,
MVD, ministry of internal affairs, 183, 186, 219, 280, 313n4
160, 262–3, 271 Operation Springtime, 127
Ordzhonikidze, Sergo, 45, 96, 106,
Nazi-Germany, 1–2, 9, 42, 45, 114, 117–18, 133, 144, 303n5
138, 147, 174, 177, 181, 184, 193, Ordzhonikidze machine-building
206, 217–18, 268, 286, 294, 313n5 works (Stankomash), 48, 84, 220,
see also Germany 261
Nesterovskij, Izrail, 117, 132, 145, Orël, 206–8
168–9 Orenburg, 13–14, 16, 19–20, 22
Nikolai II, tsar, 15 ORS, workers’ procurement, 244
Nizhnii Novgorod, see Gor’kii Osoaviakhim, voluntary defence
Nizhnii Tagil, 5, 9, 74, 78, 111, 140, organization, 166–7
188–90, 203, 211, 219, 222, 240, Ozërsk, see Cheliabinsk-40
304n16
NKB, people’s commissariat of Palace of Congress in Moscow, 80
armament, 176, 180, 220 Paris, 1, 39, 87, 120, 128, 290n1
NKLegProm, people’s commissariat of Pasternak, Boris, 115–16
light industry, 144 Patolichev, Nikolai, 224, 225, 247
NKMashProm, people’s commissariat perestroika, 280, 308
of machine-building industry, 144 Perm, 23, 72, 74, 140, 157, 190, 219,
NKSM, people’s commissariat of 243, 252, 287
medium machine-building Pertsev, I.I., 249
industry, 170 Petrograd, 13, 15, 17–20, 23, 34, 106,
NKStroi, 179, 188, 220 185
9780230_208872_13_ind.indd 348 7/4/2011 8:42:13 PM

Index 349
Piatakov,Georgii, 33, 141, 143–5, sanatorium, 98, 211, 248

294n18 Sandomir, 214
Planned economy, 7, 48, 152–3 Sapir, Jacques, 204–5
Podolsk, 156, 189 Saprykin, G.D., 236
Pogodin, M.P., 224 Saratov, 140
Poland, 9, 31, 74, 131, 151, 159, 174, Satka Works, 45, 63–4
183, 236, 243 Schiller, Friedrich von, 224
political prisoners, 14, 36, 111, 154, Schneider, James, 61
160, 240 Scott, John, 94, 148, 291n6
Potsdam, 279 Semipalatinsk, 274
Putilov works, 61, 148–9 Serov, N., 229
shadow enterprise, 188
Radek, Karl, 136, 145 Shakespeare, William, 224
radiofikatsiia, mass introduction of Shaposhnikov, Boris, 61
radio receivers, 103 Shildkrot, Mikhail, 236
Rapoport, Jakov Davydovich, 240 show trials, 44, 77, 109, 136, 140, 143,
Raskin, Boris, 142 145, 152, 294n15, 295n18
Rathenau, Walther, 70 Siberia, 1–2, 8, 14–15, 21, 23, 25, 27,
rationing, 33, 244 31–2, 38, 44, 46–7, 50, 57, 60, 62,
Red Army, 10, 19–21, 23, 28–34, 36, 64, 78, 90, 114, 186, 188, 214,
58, 63, 71, 74, 77, 83, 118, 120, 218, 220, 238, 241, 290n1, 291n3,
122–7, 135, 145–9, 162, 165, 170, 291n6
175, 183–4, 186, 193, 198, 203, Slavko, Tatiana, 281
205–7, 213, 215, 217–18, 226–7, Snezhinsk, see Cheliabinsk-70
230–1, 235, 238, 241–3, 248–9, SNK, see Sovnarkom
251–2, 278, 292n5, 294n15, ‘Snow Wine’, dissident group, 270
305n33, 315n26 Social Democrats, 13–16, 21, 69, 136
Red Guard troops, 17–18, 20–1 Socialist Revolutionaries (SR), 14–17,
rehabilitation of victims of political 19–21, 32, 157, 309n33
despotism, 159–61, 243, 287, sotsgorodók, socialist model city, 84–5,
326n31 87
Reichswehr, 124 Souvarine, Boris, 1, 291–2n2
repressions, 8, 32, 37, 51, 126, soviet Germans, 138, 150, 237–41,
135–6, 143, 146, 149–50, 152, 279, 283, 318n50
153, 159–61, 280–1, 283–4, 287, sovkhoz, state-owned collective farm,
292–3, 307n15, 308n25, 308– 54, 63, 114
9n26, 311n1, 324n12, 326n30, sovnarkom, (Council of people’s
326n32 commissars, SNK), 175, 220, 266
Rittersporn, Gabór, 158 Spanish Civil war, 1936–9, 126, 165,
rocket artillery launcher, 193, 221, 177
230, 318n32 Spartakiad, 99, 251
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 250, 314n15 Special Design Bureau SKB-2, 149–50,
Rostovskii, Sergei (pen-name Ernst 168–9, 172, 178, 196–7
Henry), 163, 165, 311n1 special settlers (spetspereselentsy,
Russian Social-Democratic Party spetsposelentsy), 55, 60, 62, 64–6,
(RSDAP), 14, 16, 18–19, 24, 74 241–3
Rydeberg, Georg, 165 sport, 65, 99, 251, 269
Ryndin, Kuz’ma, 74–6, 78, 98–9, stakhanovite, 83, 96, 112, 230, 233,
140–2, 147, 299n5, 307n13 304n17
9780230_208872_13_ind.indd 349 7/4/2011 8:42:13 PM

350 Index
Stalin, Joseph, 13, 34, 49, 51, 55, 60, KV-1S, 197, 200, 204, 206, 208, 210
61, 67, 69, 70, 71, 75, 76, 77, 78, KV-2, 178–9
89, 102, 106, 127, 134, 135, 136, KV-3, 179, 195
137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 146, 151, KV-8, 179
152, 154, 155, 157, 158, 160, 161, KV-9, 179, 200
172, 175, 178, 180, 184, 185, 187, KV-13, 208
204, 208, 210, 214, 236, 257, KV-85, 197
258, 268, 274, 276, 286, 287, Panther, 206, 211, 214
288, 291n2, 292, 295n18, 299n2, Panzer III, 183
300n7, 306n1, 307n11, 313n2 PT-76, 260
Stalingrad, 104, 203, 207, 220, 238, SMK (Sergei Mironovich Kirov),
251, 315n26, 316n34 172, 177–8
Stalingrad Tractor Factory, 104, 116, T-10, 212, 260–1
118, 126, 176, 197, 203, 210, 227, T-12, 120
262 T-24, 120
Stalinism, 70, 136, 311n1 T-26, 125, 188
Stalinist neo-classicism, 82–3 T-28, 126, 131–3, 149
Stalin-line fortifications, 43 T-29, 132–3, 306n40
‘Stalin organs’, see rocket artillery T-34, 122–3, 126, 128, 183–4,
launcher 188–90, 197–9, 201–4, 207,
state capitalism, 70 210–11, 314n14
Stolypin, Piotr, 2 T-35, 126
Suvenirov, Oleg, 127 T-40, 188–9
Svechin, Aleksandr, 61 T-100, 177
Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg), 9, 46, Tiger, 206, 208, 214
55, 72, 99, 139–40, 189–90, 197, Tashkent, 221
204, 219, 222, 243, 252 Tatar autonomous republic, 233
Svetlov, M.A., 224 Tekelev, A.I., 2
Sweden, 128, 250 terror, the Great 1937 terror, 24, 36,
Switzerland, 16, 250, 291n6 74, 77, 126–7, 134–43, 145–7,
149–61, 190, 280–1, 283, 286–7,
tank, BT, 183 292n4, 292n5, 306n3, 309n32,
BT-2, 121 309n33, 310n34, 314n13
BT-5, 122 Terry, Edward J., 113–14
BT-7, 122–3 Tevosian, Ivan, 214
BT-7M, 123, 305n26 Thälmann, Ernst, 250
Christie, 121, 133, 305n26 Thane, John, 116
Ferdinand, 214 Thurston, Robert, 136
IS-1 (Iosif Stalin), 197, 208–10 Tinchenko, Iaroslav, 127
IS-2, 197, 209–10, 213–14 Titov, N.N., 17
IS-3, 197, 211–12, 214, 258, 260, Tobolsk, 14–15
279, 321n9 Tolstikov, Vitalii S., 283
IS-4, 259–60, 321n8 Tomsk, 46
IS-5, 260 totalitarianism, 283–4, 301n18
IS-8, 260 town-planning, Cheliabinsk, 72, 301n16
Jagdpanther, 215 tractor, Komintern, 170
Jagdtiger, 214 S-2, 179, 192–3
KV-1 (Kliment Voroshilov), 177–9, S-4, 170
195, 198, 200, 204 S-60, 258
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Index 351
S-64, 259 Varga, Evgenii, 38

S-65, 118, 170, 179, 192–3, 211, 258 Vasenko, Evdokimov, 15, 17, 23
SG-65, 118, 192 Vega, Lope de, 224
Stalinets-60, 109, 120 Verkhne-Uralsk, 15, 19, 20, 153
Universal, 149 Vernidub, Ivan, 129, 193
Trans-Siberian Railway, 2, 20, 23, Versailles Peace Conference, and
27–8, 32, 46 Treaty, 250
Trashutin, Ivan, 197 Vladivostok, 23, 27
Treubov, Grigorii, 108 voenpred, Red army representative at
Triandafillov, Vladimir, 125, 305n29 defense industry factory, 120,
Troianov, I.S., 208 148, 308n23
Troitsk, 19–20, 28–9, 32–4, 36, 52, 56, Voitsekhovskii, Sergei, 20, 23
66, 98, 249 Volga, river, region, 5, 18, 24, 37, 42,
Trotsky, Leon, 7, 27, 33–4, 108–9, 139, 102, 140, 158, 186, 217–20
295n18, 295n19, 303n10 Volga-Germans, 238
Tseits, N.V., 128, 177 Voroshilov, Kliment, 42, 57, 140, 149,
Tsvilling, Samuil, 14–17, 20 167, 172
Tukhachevskii, Mikhail, 28, 30, 31, Voroshilov Works, 125
74, 125, 128, 137, 294n15, 305n32 Voznesenskii, Nikolai, 187, 267
Tupolev, Andrei, 159 VSNKh, Supreme Council of the
Turkey, 7, 250 Economy, 42, 113
Ufa, 20–1, 26–8, 38, 46, 74 Warsaw, 31

Ufaleisk, 48 Webb, Beatrice and Sidney, 7
Ukraine, 34, 41–3, 47, 55, 59, 62–3, Wehrmacht, 183, 201, 206, 208, 219,
66, 102, 132, 148–9, 152, 172, 280, 313n8
184, 186–7, 197, 217, 222, 234, Werth, Alexander, 312–13n1
236, 243, 294n18, 313n4 Werth, Nicolas, 309, 313n1
Umanets, 90 White Army, in Civil war 1918–20,
UMM, Red Army directorate for 27–8, 30–2, 278
mechanisation and motorisation,
118 Zaltsman, Isaak Moiseevich, 148–9,
Ural-Kuznetsk project, 44, 72 195–6, 199, 210–12, 224, 233–4,
Uraltrak, (ChTZ since 1992), 6 258–60, 262–3, 266–9, 308n24
Uritskii, Semën, 23 Zemskov, Viktor, 62, 242
USA, 104, 108, 118, 121, 163, 187, 251, Zhukov, Georgii, 199
283 Zigel, M.A., 125
UZTM, Urals Heavy Machine- Zinovev, Georgii, 34, 109, 136–7, 139–40
building Factory in Sverdlovsk, Zlatoust, 2, 15, 20, 28, 32, 34, 46,
189–90 63–4, 74, 114, 230–1, 236, 249
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9780230_208872_13_ind.indd 352 7/4/2011 8:42:13 PM

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9780230_208872_01_prexi.indd i 7/4/2011 8:34:26 PM

PLANS FOR STALIN’S WAR-MACHINE: Tukhachevskii and Military-Economic

9780230_208872_01_prexi.indd ii 7/4/2011 8:34:26 PM

9780230_208872_01_prexi.indd iii 7/4/2011 8:34:26 PM

9780230_208872_01_prexi.indd iv 7/4/2011 8:34:27 PM

9780230_208872_01_prexi.indd v 7/4/2011 8:34:27 PM

1 Cheliabinsk As a Mirror of Russia in the 20th Century 1

2 From the Civil War to the Five-year Plans 13

3 The Industrial City As a Socialist Vision and Soviet Reality 69

4 The Tractor Factory’s Civilian Production

5 Stagnation and Streamlining in the

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6 Industrial Preparedness in Cheliabinsk, 1939–1940 163

7 Production Conditions for Heavy Tanks in the Urals 183

9 The New Military-Industrial Complex in

10 Historical Memory and Research in Today’s Cheliabinsk 278

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For more than 15 years, the conditions for conducting research on

9780230_208872_01_prexi.indd ix 7/4/2011 8:34:27 PM

fortunate enough to have Larisa Iarosh guide me through its memora-

9780230_208872_01_prexi.indd x 7/4/2011 8:34:27 PM

9780230_208872_02_cha01.indd 1 6/27/2011 11:31:23 AM

9780230_208872_02_cha01.indd Sec1:1 6/27/2011 11:31:24 AM

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These new transport facilities transformed Cheliabinsk from a slum-

Figure 2 Saturday market in the 1920s in the village of Brodokalmak, one

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the peasantry, who formed the majority of Russia’s population at that

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tractor factory – Cheliabinskii Traktornyi zavod, or ChTZ for short (the

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founded on the steppes of the Southern Urals during the 1930s. In a

We are steaming ahead at full speed on the road from industrialisa-

9780230_208872_02_cha01.indd Sec1:6 6/27/2011 11:31:25 AM

9780230_208872_02_cha01.indd Sec1:7 6/27/2011 11:31:25 AM

facilities were all built simultaneously. Entire city regions grew up in

9780230_208872_02_cha01.indd Sec1:8 6/27/2011 11:31:25 AM

9780230_208872_02_cha01.indd Sec1:9 6/27/2011 11:31:26 AM

far surpassed that of German industry. The wartime effectiveness of

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between Lenin’s Bolsheviks and Iulii Martov’s Mensheviks and, piece

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and labour parties. In Cheliabinsk, this committee grew into a parallel

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committee and later formed the voluntary Verkhne-Uralsk Cossack

The Civil War in the Southern Urals

Soviet power was established throughout Russia following the success-

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The rebellion of the Czech troops in Cheliabinsk had therefore been

9780230_208872_03_cha02.indd 23 6/27/2011 11:31:35 AM

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Figure 8 Admiral Aleksandr Vasilevich Kolchak (1874–1920), the son of a naval

One of their moves was to support Admiral Kolchak as the supreme