Incompatible words? Far-fetched? Life has proven and continues to prove that this is not so. There is no exaggeration, no mysticism in the assertion that in the body of the T-34 tank there was and is to this day a certain substance that can be called a soul. I think that every creation of human hands and in the hands of a person has it, but thirty-four among them is a more typical example. Why? This still needs to be proven.
Since the mid-seventies of the last century, the direction associated with the history of the T-34 tank has been determined in my life, although the only connection with it was just a close human relationship: I am the daughter of one of the creators of this tank, Nikolai Alekseevich Kucherenko, the permanent head of the design bureau No. 520, where the T-34 tank was drawn and then converted into metal in the workshops in order to test it at the proving grounds.
As a child, my grandmother, sending me into the yard to play with my peers, for some reason strictly warned me not to keep up any talk about tanks. I promised, but I could not fulfill her order: all the kids around me talked only about the tank, played tank battles and talked about their dads who make tanks here, at the factory.
I was not interested in tanks - poetry, I composed them, not yet knowing how to write.
Then there was an evacuation from Kharkov to Nizhniy Tagil, where for the first time I saw a tank emerging from the gates of Uralvagonzavod. And I, five-year-old, did not like him very much. Could I have thought that the T-34 would become not only my father's, but also, to a large extent, my fate? As a reflection, as an image that I will love and cherish.
I must say, looking back, that they began to write about this secret machine almost at the beginning of the war. Articles and essays, then books about the creation of armor, about how shipbuilders make tanks. All these works were, to put it mildly, strange. It turned out that the T-34 tank appeared from scratch, as a miracle that it was created by one designer M. I. Koshkin, that until the end of the war the tank remained unsurpassed. Everything was so and not quite so.
The T-34 turned out to have a large and complex prehistory, and in it the tragic fate of the outstanding design engineer Afanasy Osipovich Firsov, a true teacher of young designers. In it, the events of 1937, when different directions of the development of the machine collided in the design bureau and the chief designer Mikhail Ilyich Koshkin, who had just arrived at the plant, made the only correct choice out of three possible: he put the designers on a group of designers raised by the repressed Firsov. For two years, this group created the A-20 tank, modified as the A-32 tank to become the A-34 tank (index A means a prototype). The question of who should be considered the creator of the T-34 tank has survived in its lack of professionalism to this day and excites many.
Indisputable fact: M. I. Koshkin, about whom it was rumored that he was allegedly a party worker and did not even know how to read drawings, in fact had a higher engineering education. Two years before becoming a chief designer at the Kharkov plant, where the T-34 tank was later created, he worked in the tank design bureau of the Leningrad plant. In the museum complex "History of the T-34 tank", many unique exhibits testify to this. There are many drawings on display showing various details of the T-34 and signed by Mikhail Ilyich's hand. It was he, together with the designer A. A. Morozov presented drawings of a new tank at meetings of the Defense Committee, defended the concept of a tracked vehicle, later presented two experimental tanks, having traveled with them from Kharkov to Moscow, caught a cold, fell ill and died in September 1940. In essence, he gave his life for the T-34 tank. In the history of the creation of the T-34 tank, Koshkin undoubtedly belongs to the first place.
April 12, 1942. A decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on awarding the Stalin Prizes to the creators of various types of weapons is published. Number 10 includes Morozov, Koshkin, Kucherenko, design engineers of plant number 183, who were awarded the prize "for the development of the design of a new type of medium tank."
My father, who gave his life to the tank industry, always believed that the T-34 was the creation of a collective mind and heart. He called the tank a kolobok, which was “blown away” and asked the journalists who interviewed him in the post-war years about who created the T-34 tank, not to forget the creators of the unique diesel engine: K. F. Chelpan, P. P. Chupakhina, I. Ya. Trashutin, Ya. E. Vikhman, remember the artilleryman V. G. Grabin and his KB guns on T-34 tanks, remember the great E. O. Paton and his connecting seams on T-34 tanks.
And here is a rather detailed story by Alexander Alexandrovich Morozov about the creators of the thirty-four in KB-520 with details of who and what created in the car:
“Let us name the designers of the T-34 tank who gave all their knowledge and technical experience to create it, to increase the power of the Red Army. The foundations of the T-34 tank design were laid and developed by the late Mikhail Ilyich Koshkin, the former head of the plant's designers. He managed to give the designers the right direction in their work, organized a team of young designers. Engineer Mikhail Ilyich Koshkin constantly taught designers not to be afraid of difficulties, which are always a lot when solving complex design and production problems. We owe this remarkable designer first of all to the appearance of such a completely new type of tank, which is the T-34. In the struggle for the creation of the T-34, M. I. Koshkin's closest assistants were the designers N. A. Kucherenko and M. I. Tarshinov, who put the initiative and a lot of creative energy into the development of the ideas embodied in the T-34. Possessing extensive practical experience in the design and manufacture of tanks, comrades Kucherenko and Tarshinov made extensive use of it when designing the shape of the T-34 hull, which has become classic.
One of the main components of any tank is the turret. A. A. Maloshtanov and M. A. Nabutovsky. Their merit lies in the fact that, creating the towers, they said a new word in tank technology.
The transmission and chassis mechanisms of the T-34 represented the further development of these units in the BT tank. Designers Ya. I. Baran and V. G. Matyukhin carried out this development and then constantly improved and improved the mechanisms and chassis. Together with the plant's technologists, the designers P. P. Vasiliev, B. A. Chernyak, A. Ya. Mitnik, V. Ya. Kurasov, A. S. Bondarenko, V. K. Baydakov, A. I. Speichler, G. P. Fomenko, M. B. Schwarburg.
There is also such an addition to the saga about the creators: at five factories in the country, in Stalingrad, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Omsk, at Krasny Sormovo, the T-34 tank was created according to the drawings of the Uralvagonzavod. However, each plant had its own design bureau. And despite the fact that there was a need to comply with the basic standards, in different design bureaus there were additions that later became necessary for all factories. And when on Victory Days I see festive shields in Moscow with a portrait of M. I. Koshkin, then I am glad - they have not forgotten, but I am upset that next to him is the last model of the T-34-85 tank of the 1944 model, to which Mikhail Ilyich could no longer have anything to do. It should be displayed more accurately.
Many of the tankers' memories of the thirty-four in one way or another convey their feeling of the soul of the tank. In the museum complex "History of the T-34 tank" there is an exhibition "Three tankmen". Three different fates, not connected by anything except thirty-four.
Dmitry Kabanov went to war very young. He had never seen anything in his life except this tank. Haven't kissed a girl yet. I did not listen to the nightingales with my beloved together. And this is how he felt his "iron friend", this is how he spoke of her in triangles sent from the front to his mother and sister:
“I really miss music and books. Sometimes I listen to music on the radio in the evenings with Tanya, but here the possibilities are limited, and this pleasure must be saved."
“My Tatiana is a rather mischievous person, unlike my old affection -“Argentina”, but I don't give her a chance and pay little attention to her whims”.
Our Columbine is ready for battle. There is a brand new one, brushed, freshly baked. From the letters you can see on what different vehicles the tankers are fighting.
Presented in the exposition group of the museum "Three Tankers", and the remarkable Soviet poet Sergei Orlov. I got the happiness of being friends with him. The history of his participation in the war is legendary. He went to the front as a volunteer. Burned twice in the tank. He once told me, by the way: “Actually, not twice, but three times, but I don’t count that first fire, we quickly coped with it. And they didn't raise a fuss. " In 1943, he was blinded by a light shock, and, having lost his sight, managed to pull out the wounded radio operator through the tank hatch. Haven't seen the light for six months. He underwent eight operations. They said that he fought in a heavy KV tank. I asked:
- Didn't you drive a thirty-four?
He replied casually:
- We had different tanks in our regiment: KV, IS, and thirty-fours. I, as the commander of a tank regiment, drove them all.
- Which one was the best?
He laughed, understanding the background of the question:
- Tell your father that I liked the thirty-four. She was like a woman, sometimes unpredictable.
- He perfectly knew how to poeticize his feelings.
The third in the exhibition "Three Tankmen" Leonid Nikolaevich Kartsev. He fought in a thirty-four, and after the war he entered the academy of armored and mechanized troops and eventually became the chief designer at Uralvagonzavod, where the T-34 tank was made during the war.
Leonid Nikolaevich, thank God, is alive, whenever possible he visits the museum complex "History of the T-34 Tank". Once, standing in front of the T-34-76, he said dreamily:
- What a perfectly beautiful bottom this car has.
I bent down. I looked at what he admired for a long time. An even field of metal between the two propellers. And nothing more. Kartsev answered my bewilderment:
- All beauty is in brilliant simplicity.
Once the legendary widow of the Marshal of the Armored Forces Mikhail Efimovich Katukov, Ekaterina Sergeevna, remembered her husband's phrase, which I wrote down word for word:
"The movement of a column of T-34 tanks always causes me emotional excitement."
Again, a word associated with seemingly incompatible concepts: soul and tank.
That is why in the museum complex "The History of the T-34 Tank" on the ground floor, the central place is occupied by the stand named "The Soul of the Tank". It is twelve composited images of groups of people who directly developed the components of the machine. We call them the twelve apostles of the thirty-four. Next to this stand is another: "The Heart of the Tank". And right there the very heart - the famous diesel engine, the names and photographs of its creators.
Many years ago, in 1976, when the idea of creating this museum arose, it was difficult to imagine its future, but I had a premonition that there was a need for it. We were supported by the great museum worker, Semyon Stepanovich Geychenko, who after the war raised the Pushkin Mikhailovskoye from the ashes. He himself lost an arm in the war, was not a tanker, but he knew the value of a tank battle. Having made friends with him, I showed him the materials that I had accumulated after the Book about Father was published in the Ogonyok magazine and came out as a separate edition: numerous documents and photographs, military items, letters from the front … studied for a long time what I put in front of him. He was silent. Then he said:
- This is wealth. Collect the museum. For a small exposition, the material is already there. T-34 is a symbol of the century, the tank will be able to stand up for itself in peacetime.
I feel Geichenko's correctness every day. Especially when I go to the tank park and see children of different ages crawling and jumping on the T-55 armor. This is a tank specially prepared for them with a ladder so that they can touch it.
The tank park of our museum complex contains only Soviet tanks related to the T-34. In front of the museum there is a T-34-76 tank. A 1942 car that went through the war. It is visible to everyone driving along Dmitrovskoe highway. In front of the entrance to the museum, there are other exhibits: the SU-100, made on the basis of the T-34 tank, and next to it the T-34-85, the modernization of the T-34-76 tank. This car, which appeared on the fields of war in 1944, for its brilliant features began to be called legendary.
Further, in the row of tanks in front of the entrance to the museum, there are T-54 B, T-55 A, T-64 AK, T-72 A, T-80 B. These are the children and grandchildren of the thirty-four. The history of their relationship is complex and multifaceted. Now the museum is preparing a special tour of the tank park, which will tell about the post-war life of the descendants of the famous "mother".
Much has been experienced in the almost ten years since the museum "spilled out through the gate", and with all the organizational difficulties, there is a lot of beauty here. First of all, people.
Galina Frolovna Chikova, director of the museum, was next to me from the first day. Organizer's talent, ability to work with people. She is both a strategist and a tactician in museum affairs.
Igor Gennadievich Zheltov, a reserve colonel, a professional in his field, who rose from the deputy commander of a tank company for technical matters to a senior lecturer at the Military University.
Olga Abramovna Kovrishkina is our main mistress, who is in charge of all the internal museum business.
Vladimir Viktorovich Gorbunov - head of the press service - the link between the museum and the media.
Many young people work in the museum. People of the older and younger generations get along well with each other, they are related and united by pride in the Great Victory, they were united by the history of the legendary tank of the 20th century.
