On the incorrect assessment of the state of the post-war tank industry of the USSR by CIA specialists
Sometimes intelligence services working on such global tasks as determining the military and industrial potential of a potential enemy produce data completely divorced from reality, guided by incorrect information or adjusting the results to the wishes of politicians. And this sometimes happens even in those countries whose intelligence, it would seem, is at the highest level.
An example of this is the archives of the US Central Intelligence Agency, declassified in the 2000s, which are literally full of facts that are far from reality regarding Soviet post-war tank building - from minor errors in the names of factories to serious flaws in estimating the number and time of production of combat vehicles.
Moreover, the shortcomings, both in general and in individual moments, often went in the direction of a significant overstatement of the numbers, which, on the one hand, only fueled military hysteria, and on the other, formed a distorted idea of tank Park of the Soviet Union.
Now, of course, these reports can be considered exclusively as fantastic issues of the Murzilka magazine, although some overseas and European historians are still guided by them as some kind of immutable ultimate truth.
However, in those years they were seriously considered by the Americans as reliable data and to a large extent influenced not only the course of the Cold War as a whole, but also the military-technical policy of the States - including in terms of designing and producing tanks.
The historian and scientific editor of the public relations department of Uralvagonzavod Sergei Ustyantsev talks about this in detail. We offer a video with his story, filmed as part of the “First Tank” project, for viewing.
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