A brick on socialism
Brick is one of the main materials in construction: it was, is and should be
This is a continuation of the theme of sabotage in the Soviet national economy, in this case in construction and the production of building materials, as interconnected industries. This time the focus is on brick.
Brick was one of the most common materials in construction at that time, due to its versatility and suitability for almost any construction, and in this role it even surpassed concrete. For example, the People's Commissariat for Construction of the USSR performed 1939 thousand cubic meters of brickwork and laid 1 thousand cubic meters of concrete in 532,1. In 1, it performed 337,1 thousand cubic meters of brickwork and laid 1940 thousand tons of concrete.
In enclosing structures, that is, walls, partitions and some types of load-bearing structures, brick clearly dominated. In industrial construction, brick is various furnaces and chimneys, without which few enterprises could do.
Each major new building required a lot of bricks. For example, the new metallurgical plant in Stalinsk (Novokuznetsk), consisting of four blast furnaces, 12 open-hearth furnaces, a blooming mill and two rolling mills, 5 coke batteries, required 1 thousand cubic meters of concrete and 600 million pieces of brick (180 thousand cubic meters of brickwork).
However, with this very brick and especially its production, some strange things were constantly happening, which even forced people to talk openly about sabotage in the brick industry, about which an article once appeared in the “Construction Newspaper”.
Brick factories were built and not built
A lot of bricks were needed, and the demand for them grew. For example, 1 thousand cubic meters of brickwork, which the construction trusts of the USSR People's Commissariat of Construction made in 532,1 - this is 1939 million pieces of brick, at the rate of 612 pieces per cubic meter of masonry.
This new department, formed in May 1939, carried out only a part of the construction work related to large-scale industrial construction. Small-scale industrial construction, housing and public utility construction, which also required bricks in large quantities, was distributed among other union and republican people's commissariats.
According to the assessment of the Main Construction Industry Directorate of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry - the main construction organization in the USSR until the beginning of 1939 - at the end of the third five-year plan, that is, in 1942, it would be necessary to carry out a huge volume of construction, including 14 million cubic meters of brickwork or 5,6 billion pieces of brick.
However, with the huge construction program, the shortage of bricks was growing sharply already by the beginning of the third five-year plan. In 1937, brick factories were short of 2,8 billion pieces, and in 1938 – 3,4 billion pieces of bricks.
At the beginning of the first five-year plan, there were 943 large brick factories and about 12-14 thousand small brick factories in the USSR, for which it was difficult to collect specific statistics. Of course, new construction required powerful and well-equipped brick factories, so the creation of a new brick industry began in the first five-year plan.
In 1930, 29 new brick factories were founded with an estimated cost of 146,2 million rubles for 1,18 billion bricks per year.
The same thing happened again story, as with the construction of cement factories. New and well-equipped brick factories were built, built, built... but they were never completed. In 1939, 100 million rubles were spent on these enterprises, but only 7 factories with a capacity of 290 million bricks or 24,4% of the total capacity were put into operation.
Technological gaps
An interesting phenomenon was observed at operating brick factories – a gap between production capacities. In order for the enterprise to operate rhythmically, the production capacity of one workshop making blanks must correspond to the production capacity of another workshop doing final processing.
In a brick factory that uses the plastic molding method, there are four main sections: raw material preparation (moistening with water or steam, mixing until a homogeneous mass is obtained), green brick molding (cutting a clay strip into blanks using a machine), drying (green brick must be dried to 6-8% moisture, otherwise it will crack during firing), and firing in a kiln.
Cutting bricks from clay strip. And that's how all the billions of bricks are made - by hand.
In 1939, the capacity of the kilns operating in the USSR brick factories was 4,8 billion pieces, and the capacity of the dryers was 3,5 billion pieces, or 27% less. Due to such an "organization" of production, roughly a third of the kilns were idle. This, by the way, was 1,3 billion pieces of brick, twice as much as the People's Commissariat of Construction used.
Drying from the inside. It was just a wooden shed. What was the problem with building more of the same sheds?
It cannot be said that the problem was not taken care of. It was possible to solve the problem by switching to a dry molding method, in which clay with a moisture content of 6-7% is ground into powder, from which a special press under pressure forms green brick, immediately ready for firing.
In 1936, an order was placed for 180 dry-molding presses. These presses were manufactured, delivered to brick factories, but... the vast majority were not assembled and launched. At the Taganrog brick factory, a dry-pressing shop was built by... only 9 workers. Perhaps, comments are unnecessary here.
Ruined enterprises
Many good brick factories were brought to such a state that they mainly produced defective products, completely useless. One of the Ural brick factories, built in 1930, initially produced excellent products - tripoli brick. This is a brick formed from tripoli, a loose sedimentary rock, mainly silica, quartz and feldspar, similar in appearance to chalk. Unlike red brick, tripoli brick has a much lower thermal conductivity and was used for thermal insulation of underground pipelines, industrial furnaces or for filling brickwork.
Soon the plant began to go through chaos, 30 directors changed over the course of ten years of operation, and since 1935, tripoli bricks began to be produced under-fired. The low-quality bricks were very similar to normal ones, but they quickly fell apart in masonry. Then the plant was transferred to the production of red clay bricks, but in 1938, the plant produced 78% of third-grade bricks, which were actually unsuitable for masonry. The plant, which belonged to the local industry, was eventually pushed off to the People's Commissariat of Construction, leaving it to decide the fate of the ruined enterprise.
Unloading bricks from dryers for transportation to the kiln. During the production process, all the bricks are visible, and it is almost impossible to spoil them unnoticed. Sabotage in the brick industry was committed openly.
There were many similar examples of factories that produced defective products.
Some brick factories produced such a clay mass from their kilns that customers had difficulty selecting 20-25% of bricks that were even slightly suitable for masonry. Raw materials and fuel (approximately 1 kg of coal were used to fire 250 bricks) were wasted.
Under-removal of bricks
It is also possible to distribute the bricks incorrectly. There were several brick factories around Moscow that supplied Moscow construction sites, including the Cheryomushkinsky brick factory. In May 1939, its sites were so full of finished products (3 million bricks) that there was no place to store new batches.
It turned out that the manager of Mosstroysnabsbyt, Comrade Vituro, gave orders for bricks to those construction sites that had not yet begun work and had no need for bricks. For example, Mosstroytrest received an order for 1,1 million bricks, but took out only 79 thousand. Or Moszhilstroy had an order for 2 million bricks, but took out 557 thousand. The manager did not give orders for bricks to those construction sites where work was already in full swing. The plant did not have the right to release bricks under orders to other consumers, even those in dire need, and was forced to stop production due to the impossibility of storing new batches of bricks somewhere.
But then it turned out that some Moscow construction sites were littered with bricks that lay around without any accounting, like on the sites of the 2nd construction department of the Mospromstroy trust, which had accumulated building materials in its warehouses for more than four months of work.
Ban advanced masonry techniques
Well, if there is a shortage of bricks, then you can save them with rational methods of laying. Even before the beginning of the first five-year plan, engineer N. S. Popov invented a system of laying in which external and internal outer rows, horizontal ties were laid out of bricks, and the space between them was filled with lightweight concrete or concrete inserts.
This system was tested and in 1932 was recommended by the People's Commissariat of Public Utilities of the RSFSR for wide use in the construction of buildings up to 15 meters high or the upper floors of multi-story buildings.
The Popov system saved 40% of bricks for laying external walls and 20% for laying internal partitions. It would seem that this should have been immediately applied. However, Glavstroyproekt prohibited the use of lightweight masonry of the Popov system and similar ones in industrial and even domestic buildings, and even took the trouble to compile a list of structures in which lightweight masonry was categorically not allowed.
Although Popov's masonry was included in the technical specifications of the Construction Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, and a separate instruction was even issued for it in 1939, nevertheless, in 1940, 150 thousand cubic meters of masonry were laid using this method, or 6% of the total volume.
The iron order under Stalin, alas, is not supported by facts
In general, the same methods as in the cement industry: new plants are built and not completed; the latest equipment, manufactured and delivered, is not installed and not put into operation; excellent enterprises are reduced to the state of botched plants. And this cannot be explained by random circumstances. It is a consequence of decisions made and implemented by someone.
To change 10 directors of a brick factory in 30 years, that is, on average, once a quarter - these are someone's decisions. Moreover, they selected such directors under whom the factory fell apart. Or it was a multi-stage collapse, when each such "temporary worker" destroyed something, and he was quickly transferred to another place. Then in such a mess it will be difficult to figure out, even with the use of a stool, who exactly did what.
The appointment of incompetent people to production is also someone's decision. But this is only one side of the matter.
Someone who knows nothing but wants to do something will learn quickly. If a brick falls apart in the kiln, such a director will read books or talk to technicians, that is, he will figure it out and learn in a few attempts. But if a brick factory has been producing products that are only fit for throwing away for months or even years, like one factory in Leningrad, which was written about in the Stroitelnaya Gazeta, then there is not only incompetence, but also absolute indifference to production. This is the other side of the matter.
Judging by the known facts, there were quite a few such absolutely indifferent people in leadership positions, although they should not be there. As if someone specially selected and promoted them.
This is the story of how saboteurs hit socialism with a brick.
Of course, many people don't like these facts now, especially those who talk about the "iron order" under Stalin. Here it is - this very iron order. This is all of 1939-1940, right after the repressions.
Nevertheless, the most important sectors of the national economy are being destroyed almost openly, the names of the guilty are printed in newspapers, even with the prefix “comrade,” and nothing happens, because the same stories are repeated further.
Where are the immediate arrests and subsequent executions?
The theory of "iron order" under Stalin, alas, is not supported by facts. One "Construction Newspaper" gave enough facts to recognize this theory as ridiculous.
But we have to admit something completely different: the Soviet government and the Communist Party were completely unable to defend themselves against the internal enemy, which was secretly undermining the economic and military power of the country created by this government and the party.
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