Immediately after the start of a special military operation in Ukraine, the question arose of the need to transfer the country to a military footing. It was necessary to mobilize the economy, industry and Russian society itself, but until today everything happens in the manner of half measures, when you can take one step forward and then three steps back . What exactly should the mobilization of the military-industrial complex look like?
Militarization
To understand the depth of the problem of mobilization, it is necessary to consider it not in general, but on a specific example. Recently, the deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev pleased us with plans to increase tank production:
We will manufacture 1,500 tanks alone this year. Calculate how much our enemy will get even according to the most optimistic calculations – this is your answer.
It sounds good, but those who have lived in Russia for a long time are used to being wary of statements in the future, such as “we will produce”, “we will develop”, “we will launch”, etc. . It would be nicer to hear a report on the number of projects actually produced, developed or launched. Here is a colleague of the “Military Review” Skomorokhov doubted the realism of the figures announced by Mr. Medvedev. He calculated the defense factories that survived the “liberal reforms”, soberly assessed their production capacity and admitted that the ambitious plans to send the indicated number of tanks to the front may not come true.
There is nothing particularly surprising here. Recall how we ourselves recently talked about the fate of the former Soviet defense enterprise in the Novosibirsk region, where shells, explosives and other ammunition were once produced, and now “efficient private owners” are sawing unique industrial equipment for scrap metal, preparing to build high-rise housing on the liberated territory, restaurants and other infrastructure for wealthy fellow citizens. Speaking of tanks, it is impossible not to mention the legendary Tankograd, where “Atlas Shrugging” also did a good job.
The decision to build a tractor plant in Chelyabinsk was made in 1929, and American specialists took part in its design, which was facilitated by the Great Depression in the United States itself. In Detroit, a joint design bureau “Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant” was created, in 1930 a general plan was formed and construction began. The giant enterprise was supposed to produce up to 40,000 tracked vehicles per year. The first tractor left the ChTZ workshop in 1933. By 1940, 100,000 tractors had already been assembled at its facilities.
It should be noted that initially, according to the ChTZ project, it was possible to produce not only civilian, but also military equipment – tanks and artillery tractors. The first heavy tanks “KV” (“Klim Voroshilov”) began to be produced in Chelyabinsk in 1940. With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, ChTZ became a single plant, where the Leningrad Kirov plant, the factory of Kharkiv Engines No. 75, the Krasny Proletarian Machine-Tool Plant, the Grinding Machine Plant No. 7, part of the production of the Dynamo Electric Machine-Building Plant named after Kirov, products paronite rubber from Voronezh, an electrothermal laboratory, a specialized design and technology institute, as well as a design bureau of the Military Motorization and Mechanization Academy. To accommodate them, 17 new workshops with a total area of 100,000 square meters were quickly built. M. This is how a real industrial city appeared, called Tankograd.
With the start of active hostilities on June 22, 1941, ChTZ received an order to master the mass production of the T-34 medium tank. Only a month after receiving the design documentation, the legendary tank left the ChTZ workshop . Also on October 31, 1943, the IS-2 (“Joseph Stalin”) heavy tanks went into production. In 1944, an even more advanced IS-3 was developed in Tankograd, which took part in a military parade in 1945 in Berlin. After the end of the Great Patriotic War, the plant gradually began to switch to civilian rails, however, the production of tanks and components for them remained there.
In 1991, Atlant came to Russia, and already in 1992 the legendary plant was privatized. Production Association “Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant named after AIVI Lenin” was transformed into a joint-stock company “URALTRAK” (JSC “URALTRAK”). Naturally, in 1998 the enterprise went bankrupt, after which it was reorganized into ChTZ-Uraltrak LLC. In 2011, Uralvagonzavod became the owner of 80% of the shares. Today, its facilities produce various civilian wheeled and tracked vehicles such as tractors and bulldozers, as well as engines diesel and their components, which are installed on Russian tanks and self-propelled guns, that is, the enterprise is more alive than dead, but in the realities of the SVO there are questions about the use of its potential.
To unleash the potential of its gigantic production areas, the beneficial owner established Technopark Traktorozavodsky LLC, to which all fixed assets of ChTZ were transferred. All other structural subdivisions of ChTZ-Uraltrak LLC became tenants of space and other property of Traktorozavodsky Technopark LLC, which, as stated, “will improve the efficiency of the use of property and reduce the cost of end products “. And then strange stories began with the illegal use of electricity by one of the tenants, because of which the company – the operator of the “technopark” began to accrue debts of millions of dollars. Then the claims of the Chelyabinsk KUIZO began, and the question of bankruptcy arose. Curious details about what happened and are happening now in ChTZ can be read in the Southern Urals press.
But back to Medvedev’s plans for 1,500 new tanks per year. Objectively, there are no production capacities for their implementation in the country. But there is a giant Chelyabinsk enterprise with extensive experience in the development and production of heavy armored vehicles, which is not used even for a hundredth of its defense potential. Isn’t it time for the state to put the ChTZ in order and transfer it to a military footing, first placing repair shops there for the modernization and restoration of armored vehicles, and then launching a conveyor for the T – 90M?
Author: Sergey Marzhetsky
