Tankograd

Origin of the name

"Tankograd" was not the name of a city to begin with. It was an unofficial name for the world's largest tank plant, built in October 1941 on the base of the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant (ChTZ), and only later was it transferred to the whole city, much of which was geared to keeping that plant running.

The merger of 1941

In October 1941 ChTZ was combined with seven enterprises partly or wholly evacuated to Chelyabinsk to form a tank-building combine. The Kharkov Motor Plant No. 75 and the Leningrad Kirov Plant were evacuated in full, and on 6 October 1941 the plant was accordingly renamed the Kirov Plant of the People's Commissariat of Tank Industry in the city of Chelyabinsk (Plant No. 100). With them came 15,000 Leningrad workers, and the Moscow enterprises Dinamo and Krasny Proletary joined later. After the Leningrad Kirov Plant was moved there, this was the only plant in the country producing heavy tanks and self-propelled guns, and the head enterprise for tank diesel engines.

Output that fed the front

Over the war years the plant produced 18,000 tanks and self-propelled guns, 48,500 tank diesel engines and 17.7 million ammunition blanks. The 18,000 vehicles amount to one-fifth of all tanks built in the USSR during the war. The plant created 13 new types of tanks and self-propelled guns and six types of tank diesel engines, and it was the first in world tank-building practice to put the assembly of heavy tanks, and then of medium tanks, on a conveyor. It built the KV-1 from 1941 and the IS-2 from 1943, and in 1943 produced the SU-152 and ISU-152 self-propelled guns with 152 mm guns. Mass production of the T-34 began on 22 August 1942: the line was organised in 38 days, and building the T-34 alongside the KV on the same machine tools was mastered in one month and two days (33 days).

Workers in unfinished shops

These volumes were achieved through the shock labour of the plant's workers, who worked 16 to 18 hour shifts in unfinished shops, often exceeding their norms two or three times over. Seventeen new shops with a total area of 100,000 square metres were built and commissioned in the shortest possible time, and the workforce grew from 25,000 in non-military production to 60,000 by 1944. In the same city, the No. 541 ammunition plant counted nearly two-thirds women among its 10,000 workers and up to 40 per cent teenagers aged 13 and over, who worked at machine tools installed in classrooms and corridors. The city also held Camp No. 102 for interned prisoners of war and the Chelyabmetallurgstroy (Chelyablag) forced-labour camp of the GULAG system. During the war the plant won the All-Union competition and was awarded the State Defence Committee's Red Banner 33 times, two of which were left to the collective for permanent keeping.

A city of tank production

Chelyabinsk as a whole became a tank production base. The People's Commissariat of the Tank Industry was located there from 1941 to 1945, together with the commissariats of ammunition, medium machine building, power stations and construction. The population grew from 270,000 to 650,000, and more than 300 plants, combines and factories were evacuated to the Southern Urals, most of them to Chelyabinsk. Other city plants made ammunition, diesel engines, electrical equipment and armoured glass for aircraft, and by the end of the war every third tank and combat aircraft carried Chelyabinsk steel. By 1945 the plant had received the Order of Kutuzov, 1st Class, the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Star.

After the war

With the war over, the plant returned to tractor production. The Stalinets-80 was assembled in January 1946, and on 20 June 1958 the plant took back the name Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant. "Tankograd" remained as a memory of the war years, and in 2020 Chelyabinsk received the honorary title City of Labour Valour.