Chief designer of the KV and IS heavy tanks, builder of Tankograd
A fellow designer said of him: 'Kotin won't sleep at night if he hasn't hooked someone.' His tanks bore the names Kirov, Voroshilov, and Stalin.
A giant of Soviet heavy-tank design: the engineer-administrator who gave the Red Army the KV series, the IS (Iosif Stalin) heavy tanks, and the SU-152 and ISU-152 self-propelled guns. Appointed chief designer at the Kirov Plant in 1937 at just 29, he began by upgrading the T-28, then, drawing lessons from Spain, turned to developing heavily armoured breakthrough tanks. After the German invasion he served as Deputy People's Commissar for the Tank Industry while personally directing the evacuation of factories from Leningrad to Chelyabinsk, forging the vast 'Tankograd' complex that produced 18,000 tanks and SPGs during the war. After 1945 he designed the PT-76 amphibious tank, the T-10 heavy tank, and the K-700 tractor, before capping his career as Deputy Minister of Defence Industry in 1968.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1932–1937Engineer and design bureau chief, Research Dept., Military Academy of Mechanisation and Motorisation
- 1937–1968Chief Designer of SKB-2, Kirov Plant (Leningrad / Chelyabinsk)
- 1941–1943Deputy People's Commissar for the Tank Industry and Chief Designer
- 1943–1945Director and Chief Designer, Experimental Tank Plant No. 100 (Chelyabinsk)
- 1949–1968Director and Chief Designer, VNII-100 Tank Research Institute
- 1968–1972Deputy Minister of Defence Industry, USSR
Related historical events
Wartime production and design in Chelyabinsk
The evacuation of the Kirov Plant to the Urals began in July 1941. On 6 October, the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant was reorganized as the Kirov Plant of the People's Commissariat for the Tank Industry and incorporated into a KV production complex. Kotin became chief designer of the complex, later known informally as Tankograd, and on 9 October also became deputy people's commissar for the tank industry. His combined responsibilities for production organization and design continued after he left the deputy commissar post in August 1943 to become director and chief designer of Experimental Tank Plant No. 100 in Chelyabinsk.
The design team under Kotin improved the KV tanks and began work on a successor heavy tank, the IS, in the summer of 1942. The IS-2, armed with a 122 mm gun, appeared in 1943; production of the IS-3 began in January 1945, but it did not see combat during the war. The team also developed the SU-152, ISU-152 and ISU-122 self-propelled guns using KV and IS tank chassis. Plant No. 100 handled experimental design, while repair plants and brigades across the front supported field maintenance of the tanks. By the end of the war, Kotin’s team had designed more than 50 combat vehicles, and Tankograd had produced over 18,000 tanks and self-propelled guns.