"Pests" in the tank industry. History of the industry
“Clean as soon as possible”
In the previous part of the cycle about becoming tank industry, we only partially touched on the use of repressive organs in this area. However, this topic is worth a separate consideration.
Already in the 1929 year, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a decree on the military industry, in which the majority of the blame for the numerous disruptions to the production plan lay with various "wrecking" organizations. In particular, among the “ringleaders” was the assistant to the chief of the Main Military Industrial Directorate (GVPU) Vadim Sergeyevich Mikhailov, who was eventually shot. The decision also indicates that part of the blame, of course, lies with the leadership of the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office. This was almost a direct accusation of the head of the Directorate, Alexander Fedorovich Tolokontsev - he was charged with "insufficient vigilance for many years and obvious sabotage and omissions in the military industry." I must say that Tolokontsev at the beginning of the trial of "pests" tried to convince Stalin of the innocence of his subordinates, but was not heard. In the spring of 1929, he was removed from his post and transferred to the post of head of the Main Directorate of Engineering and Metalworking Industries - this was an actual demotion. On April 27 of the same year, the former head of the SPPU at a meeting of the Politburo, among other things, said:
In the 1937 year, Tolokontsev will be shot.
In his report, the former head of the military industry sector mentioned Ivan Petrovich Pavlunovsky, who at that time was the deputy people's commissar of the Workers 'and Peasants' Inspectorate. It was he who was put at the head of the commission to correct the situation with catastrophic delays in mastering the production of new tanks. In particular, the decree ordered "as soon as possible to clean the entire personnel of the military industry to the factories inclusive." It was clear that with his excessive zeal, Pavlunovsky, who, incidentally, was also shot in the 37 year, would chop wood, which would leave the tank industry without the last qualified personnel. Therefore, in a month's time, at least a hundred experienced engineers with a spotless reputation were mobilized into the military industry. They also decided to organize technical retraining courses to strengthen, as they would say now, the key competencies of the engineering staff of the industry. But it didn’t help much, and the acute shortage of personnel in tank construction was still felt. But on the front of the fight against "pests" things were going well ...
It turned out that "wrecking not only undermined the supply base of the Red Army, but also caused direct damage to the improvement of military equipment, hindered the rearmament of the Red Army and worsened the quality of military supplies." These are words from the Resolution of the Politburo of February 25 1930 of the year 500 "On the progress of liquidation of wrecking at the enterprises of the military industry." In particular, on the basis of this document, an understanding has come that it will not be possible to catch up on its own and will have to purchase equipment abroad. Allocated XNUMX thousand rubles for these purposes and equipped the procurement commission, which was discussed in the first part of the story.
Calm before the storm
The mastery of new foreign technology in the early 30s at the factories of the USSR was very dramatic at first, but the repressions somehow bypassed this process. It was necessary to solve a whole mass of the most difficult tasks and, quite likely, the country's leadership temporarily moderated its ardor of exposing numerous "pests" and "enemies of the people." One of these problems was the development of the assembly of engines for high-speed vehicles of the BT series, requiring powerful motors. Initially, there were enough Liberty power plants purchased from the USA and domestic aviation M-5, which were brought back to life after being used by the Air Force at the Krasny Oktyabr and Aviaremtrest factories. At the same time, it was even necessary to repair the M-5 (which were also copies of Liberty), collecting one or two workers from several worn out engines - they could not yet produce spare parts on their own. A chronic shortage of bearings, which had to be purchased abroad, created serious difficulties. Two domestic factories could provide the tank building program with bearings by only 10-15%! For the T-26 of 29 types of bearings in the USSR, 6 items were not produced, and for BT - 6 out of 22. Starters, generators, electric motors for rotation of towers and even simple fans were also imported in Soviet tanks.
In the 1933 year, Kliment Voroshilov reports that of the 710 BT tanks produced, only 90 have guns - the rest simply didn’t. During the development of new brands of armored steel, the enterprises again did not have time to deliver to the plants No. 37 and the Kharkov steam locomotive. By the 1934 year, the Yaroslavl rubber-asbestos factory was unable to provide tank production with Ferrado tapes, rollers, disks and other technical rubber. Because of this, tank enterprises had to independently master the production of such components. Catch was an aircraft engine M-17 - it was required for the BT, and for the T-28, and even for the heavy T-35. And Rybinsk Aircraft Engine Plant No.26 could produce only 300 engines per year. It was here that the most important shortcoming of Soviet strategists was manifested when the tank industry was created without regard to the capabilities of allies. Tank plants were being built, and motor production, for example, did not even appear in plans. The purely tank and legendary B-2 will appear only before the war itself, in the 1939 year. By the way, by that time the BT series will have time to become morally and technically obsolete. This tank, more precisely, its wheeled caterpillar mover, certainly had a negative impact on the development of the domestic tank industry. The leadership of the Red Army pushed the idea of J. Christie into industry, ignoring the complexity of production and the enormous cost of finalizing this type of mover. The most unpleasant thing is that with a chronic shortage of qualified specialists in design bureaus and factories, a lot of time was occupied by deadlock work with a wheel-caterpillar mover. In November 1936, the director of the Kirov plant Karl Martovich Ots was barely able to abandon the production of the T-29 tank. This tank with a combined mover was supposed to take the place of the average classic T-28. One of the arguments of Ots in a memorandum to Stalin himself was the development of a new modification of the T-28A with reinforced tracks, so "you can guarantee long speed runs without damaging the track."
By the end of the 30's, the government planned to produce 35 thousand tanks annually, and for this ambitious goal, additional armored production was launched in Taganrog and Stalingrad. However, these enterprises did not have time to put into operation on time, and production volumes even several years after the launch seriously lagged behind the planned ones. Obviously, this, as well as the stalled production rate of armored vehicles, became the last straw of patience in the Politburo, and the leadership once again lowered the chain dogs. In 1936, Yezhov “uncovered” a conspiracy at the Bolshevik plant, while unraveling a whole bunch of complex counter-revolutionary and fascist forces. It turned out that at the Kirov pilot plant, and at the Voroshilov tank factory, and at the gun factory No. 17, and even at the Artillery Research Marine Institute, whole gangs of “pests” were being wielded. It was they who were to blame for the failure of work on the T-43-1 wheel-track-floating tank, as well as the T-29 with the T-46-1. Karl Ots was reminded of his stubbornness with the T-29 tank and attributed the leadership of the Trotsky-Zinoviev group at his factory in Leningrad. On October 15, on October 1937, the People's Commissar of Defense Industry Moisei Lvovich Rukhimovich was arrested, who managed to work in office for less than a year. In 1938, he was shot. Both Innokenty Khalepsky and Mikhail Siegel, who stood at the very beginnings of Soviet tank building, were shot. Dozens of mid-level designers were sent to camps.
The 1936-1937 clean-up was the last major military action against the engineering and management elite of the tank industry. After two waves of repression (the first was at the end of the 20's), the party leadership gradually realized that the bloodlessness of tank building would lead to the inevitable collapse of the country's defense in the face of the growing fascism in Europe.
- Evgeny Fedorov
- en.wikipedia.org
- “We will press and help - they will adapt!” The Soviet Union masters the production of tanks
The era of import substitution. How the Soviet Union learned to do tanks
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