It's no secret that the weapons of the Second World War were forged by joint efforts. The Soviet Union and Germany helped each other to arm themselves, and the industrialization of the USSR, necessary for a big war, would have been impossible without the help of Western specialists.
The USSR paid for these services by selling grain confiscated from the population to the West, which resulted in millions who died of hunger.
If the conditions of the Versailles Peace were not so harsh in relation to Germany or the Great Depression began ten years later, Stalin's industrialization might not have happened.
Economic and political problems in developed countries present developing countries with a unique opportunity to gain access to advanced technologies. The clearest example of this in the first half of the twentieth century is the Soviet Union.
As a result of the First World War, Germany faced a real prospect of extinction. The Germans did not have the opportunity to defend their country, since the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919, limited the size of the German army to a purely symbolic size of 100 thousand people. In addition, Germany was not allowed to conduct any kind of military training in educational institutions, as well as to have heavy artillery, tanks, submarines, airships and military aircraft. She was deprived of the right of accreditation in other countries of her military missions, German citizens were not allowed to enter military service and receive military training in the armies of other states.
Therefore, back in 1919, the commander-in-chief of the German ground forces, General Hans von Seeckt, came to the conclusion about the need for close military cooperation between Germany and Russia. “We will have to put up with Soviet Russia - we have no other choice. Only in a strong alliance with Great Russia does Germany have the prospect of regaining the position of a great power. England and France are afraid of an alliance between the two continental powers and are trying to prevent it by all means, so we must strive for it with all our might,”he wrote in a memorandum to the German government in early 1920.
The same summer, a confidential meeting of the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council Lev Trotsky with the former Minister of War of Turkey Enver Pasha took place, at which the Turkish general said that the Germans had asked him to convey to Moscow proposals for establishing long-term military cooperation. The proposal of the Germans came to the Bolsheviks at an opportune moment: the catastrophic failure of the Polish campaign, led by Tukhachevsky and Stalin, demonstrated all the weaknesses of the Red Army and forced Moscow to thoroughly engage in military construction. The help of the Germans in this matter was invaluable. The chief of armaments of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA) Ieronim Uborevich said directly that "the Germans are for us the only outlet so far through which we can study achievements in military affairs abroad, moreover from the army, which has very interesting achievements in a number of issues." …
German conception
From the end of 1920, secret negotiations began between Soviet Russia and Germany on the establishment of military-technical and economic cooperation. At the beginning of the next year, at the initiative of von Seeckt, the Sondergroup R (Russia) was created in the German War Ministry, and in the spring of 1921 its first authorized Colonel Otto von Niedermeier, together with the majors of the German General Staff F. Chunke and V. Schubert made a study tour of the defense factories and shipyards of Petrograd, which the Soviet side hoped to restore and modernize with the help of German capital and specialists. Niedermeier was accompanied by the Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of Soviet Russia Lev Karakhan. The conclusion of the Germans was disappointing: the state of affairs at the defense factories and shipyards of Petrograd is catastrophic, so there can be no talk of a quick establishment of the production process.
Nevertheless, by the middle of 1921, "Sondergroup R" agreed with German industrialists that the firms Blohm und Voss (submarines), Albatros Werke (air fleet) and Krupp (weapons) would provide Russia with "both their technical forces and the necessary equipment ". To finance the planned projects in Germany, a consortium was even formed led by Deutsche Orientbank, which included all the largest banks in the country.
At the end of September 1921, in Berlin, at the apartment of General Staff Major Karl von Schleicher, secret negotiations between the People's Commissar for Foreign Trade Krasin and representatives of the Reichswehr led by von Seeckt took place, during which a specific scheme of cooperation was approved. "Sondergroup R" gives the Soviet side orders for the production of aircraft, heavy artillery and other items of military equipment, guarantees payment, and also provides loans to replenish the equipment of Soviet factories. The Soviet side undertakes to attract German firms for the execution of orders at the direction of "Sondergroup R" and to guarantee the direct participation of German military-technical personnel in the fulfillment of its orders at Soviet factories.
In addition, in order to restore industry, the Soviet side undertook to create trusts, which would include the main enterprises for the manufacture of heavy artillery (Perm Motovilikha and Tsaritsyn factories), aircraft (Moscow, Rybinsk, Yaroslavl), gunpowder, shells, etc.
Junkers in Fili
The largest project of Sondergroup R in Russia was the construction of an aircraft plant by Junkers. On November 26, 1922, in Moscow, three agreements were concluded between the government of the RSFSR and the Junkers firm: on the production of metal aircraft and motors, on the organization of transit air traffic between Sweden and Persia, and on aerial photography in the RSFSR. In accordance with the first of these contracts, the Russo-Baltic plant in Fili, near Moscow (now the Khrunichev plant) was fully transferred to Junkers for lease use, which "the concessionaire accepts and equips."
The production program was set at 300 aircraft per year, the Soviet side undertook to purchase 60 aircraft annually. The plant was supposed to reach its design capacity in three years - by January 29, 1925.
In a short time, Junkers managed to move to Russia a modern aircraft plant by those standards with a staff of more than 1,300 people. However, the Germans were let down by the economic situation. The order for the supply of 100 aircraft to the Soviet Air Force was concluded at fixed prices, based on an hourly wage of 18 kopecks in gold, but the introduction of the NEP and inflation in the USSR nullified all calculations, so that the cost of the aircraft turned out to be twice the established prices. The Soviet side nevertheless demanded that the letter of the agreement be fulfilled: “You have undertaken to sell the planes at a fixed price and thereby assumed a commercial risk; the contract remains a contract. " And at the same time she accused the Germans of insufficient capital investment in equipping the plant. Junkers flatly denied this accusation: "We, from the point of view of a private industrialist, have invested colossal sums."
The Soviet government, having found fault with the fact that the company could not "concentrate in Fili reserves of aluminum and duralumin in an amount sufficient for the production of 750 aircraft and 1125 engines, that is, our main task - to have a significant material base for metal aircraft construction within the Union has not been achieved", terminated all contracts with Junkers. The company immediately found itself on the verge of bankruptcy, and only an emergency loan of 17 million marks provided by the German government "in recognition of the merits of Professor Hugo Junkers in German aircraft construction" saved it from complete liquidation. But the company could no longer engage in serial production of aircraft, and it had to significantly reduce its business, focusing only on the development of new types of aircraft.
As for the plant in Fili, it received subsidies in the amount of 3,063,000 rubles for 1924-1925 and 6,508,014 rubles for 1925-1926. The most interesting thing is that the command of the Soviet Air Force explained the need for subsidies by the fact that "the powerful plant in Fili, which is part of the general plan for the development of the military air force, is mothballed." These words cannot be interpreted otherwise than as a direct recognition of the fact that Junkers has fulfilled its main obligation - to build a modern aircraft plant in Russia. And the cavils of Soviet officials about the secondary articles of the agreement were due to only one thing - the unwillingness to pay money for the work performed. Such a trick in relations with Western firms - "bourgeois" and "imperialists" - the Bolshevik government uses more than once.
However, the Junkers, one might say, were lucky: in 1928, in order not to pay the electrical engineering firm AEG under the contract, the Soviet "authorities" arrested the specialists of this company for sabotage in the framework of the notorious "Shakhty case". Soviet engineers who were involved in this case were shot, and the Soviet government graciously allowed the Germans to return to Germany, but, of course, without paying for the work done.
Despite the sad experiences of Junkers and AEG, German companies continued to operate in Soviet Russia. The Stolzenberg company set up the production of artillery charges and gunpowder at the factories of Zlatoust, Tula and Petrograd, together with the Germans, the production of toxic substances was launched at the Bersol plant near Saratov, Carl Walter built workshops in Tula where the barrels for rifles and machine guns were cut. The Mannesmann company repaired at the Mariupol Metallurgical Plant named after Ilyich rolling mill-4500, which was bought by the plant before the revolution and destroyed during the revolution and the Civil War. In 1941, from under the noses of the Germans, this camp was taken to the Urals, and, according to some experts, armor for the T-90 tank is still rolled on it.
The Friedrich Krupp company, on the basis of an agreement concluded in July 1923 on the reconstruction of Soviet military factories and the supply of artillery shells to the German army, helped the Bolsheviks to establish modern production of grenades and artillery shells. The Germans also provided financing for the project, providing $ 600,000 for setting up production and paying $ 2 million in advance for the order.
Ford and Stalin architect
The experience of using the problems of developed countries for their own purposes, acquired by the Soviet Union in working with Germany, was very useful to the Bolsheviks when an economic crisis erupted in the West.
In 1926, the first signs of an impending recession were recorded in the American economy - the volume of construction began to noticeably decrease. Architectural and design firms, including the famous Albert Kahn, Inc. in Detroit, whose founder Albert Kahn became famous as "the architect of Ford". Even for him, one of the largest industrial architects of the twentieth century, a famous specialist in the design of modern factories, the volume of orders was rapidly declining and by the end of 1928 had vanished.
Bankruptcy seemed inevitable, but in April 1929 a stranger entered Kahn's office, claiming to be an employee of the Amtorg firm - this formally private joint-stock company was in fact the unofficial trade and diplomatic mission of the USSR in the United States. The visitor offered Kahn an order for the design of a tractor plant worth 40 million dollars (it was the Stalingrad Tractor Plant) and promised new orders if agreed.
The situation was rather dubious, since there were no diplomatic relations between the USSR and the USA. Kahn asked for some time to think, but the stock crash in late October, which marked the beginning of the Great Depression, put an end to all his doubts. Soon, the Soviet government received from Albert Kahn, Inc. a whole program of industrial construction in the Soviet Union, known in Soviet history as "industrialization in the USSR." In February 1930, between Amtorg and Albert Kahn, Inc. An agreement was signed, according to which Kahn's firm became the main consultant to the Soviet government on industrial construction and received a package of orders for the construction of industrial enterprises worth $ 2 billion (about $ 250 billion in today's money).
Since the complete list of construction projects of the first five-year plans in our country has never been published, the exact number of Soviet enterprises designed by Kahn is still unknown - most often they talk about 521 or 571 objects. This list undoubtedly includes tractor plants in Stalingrad, Chelyabinsk, Kharkov; automobile plants in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod; blacksmith shops in Chelyabinsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Kolomna, Magnitogorsk, Nizhny Tagil, Stalingrad; machine-tool plants in Kaluga, Novosibirsk, Verkhnyaya Salda; foundries in Chelyabinsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Kolomna, Magnitogorsk, Sormov, Stalingrad; mechanical plants and workshops in Chelyabinsk, Podolsk, Stalingrad, Sverdlovsk; thermal power plant in Yakutsk; rolling mills in Novokuznetsk, Magnitogorsk, Nizhny Tagil, Sormov; 1st State Bearing Plant in Moscow and much more.
However, this is not to say that Albert Kahn, Inc. I designed each object from scratch. He just transferred finished projects of American factories with American equipment to Russia. Albert Kahn's firm acted as a coordinator between the Soviet customer and hundreds of Western (primarily American) companies, supplying equipment and advising on the construction of individual projects. In fact, a powerful stream of American and European industrial technology flowed through Kahn to the USSR, and all the largest construction projects in the USSR with the help of Kahn's connections actually became worldwide. Thus, the technological project of the Nizhny Novgorod Automobile Plant was completed by the Ford company, the construction project by the American company Austin. The Moscow Automobile Plant (AZLK) was built in 1930, also modeled on Ford's assembly plants. The construction of the 1st State Bearing Plant in Moscow (GPZ-1), which was designed by Kana, was carried out with the technical assistance of the Italian company RIV.
The Stalingrad Tractor Plant, built according to Kahn's design in 1930, built in the USA, dismantled, transported and in just six months assembled under the supervision of American engineers, was equipped with equipment from more than 80 American engineering companies and several German firms.
All projects of Albert Kahn in the USSR, which followed the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, were developed by a branch of his company, opened in Moscow and worked under the leadership of Moritz Kahn, the brother of the head of the company. This branch, which bears the modest Russian name "Gosproektstroy", employed 25 leading American engineers and about 2,500 Soviet employees. At the time, it was the largest architectural bureau in the world. Over the three years of its existence, "Gosproektstroy" passed through it more than 4 thousand Soviet architects, engineers and technicians who studied the American science of design and construction. By the way, at the same time, the Central Bureau of Heavy Engineering (CBTM) was operating in Moscow - exactly the same "production and training" branch of a foreign company, only its founder was the German Demag.
Payment and reckoning
However, a serious obstacle soon arose on the path of Soviet-American cooperation: the Soviet government began to run out of currency, the main source of which was grain exports. In August 1930, when the time came to pay the American firm Caterpillar $ 3.5 million for equipment for the Chelyabinsk and Kharkov tractors, as well as the Rostov and Saratov combine plants, Stalin wrote to Molotov: “Mikoyan reports that the workpieces are growing and we are exporting bread every day 1-1, 5 million poods. I think that this is not enough. We must now raise the daily export rate to at least 3-4 million poods. Otherwise, we risk being left without our new metallurgical and machine-building (Avtozavod, Chelyabzavod, etc.) factories … In a word, we need to furiously speed up the export of grain."
In total, from 1930 to 1935, the USSR had to pay American firms $ 350 million (more than $ 40 billion today) in loans, plus interest on them for about the same amount at the rate of 7% per annum. On August 25, 1931, Stalin wrote to Kaganovich: “In view of currency difficulties and unacceptable credit conditions in America, I speak out against any new orders for America. I propose to prohibit the giving of new orders to America, to interrupt any negotiations already begun on new orders and, if possible, to break the already concluded agreements on old orders with the transfer of orders to Europe or to our own factories. I propose not to make any exceptions to this rule neither for Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsstroy, nor for Kharkovstroy, Dneprostroy, AMO and Avtostroy. This meant the end of cooperation with Kahn, who fulfilled his task in the eyes of the Soviet government: he designed and laid down a network of new industrial enterprises, and also formed orders for technological equipment, which could now be transferred to any firms. And in 1932, the Bolsheviks refused to extend the contract to Kahn's firm.
The facilities designed by Kahn continued to be built. So, on March 22, 1933, the Aviamotor Trust signed a five-year technical assistance agreement with Curtiss-Wright (USA), providing for the organization of turnkey production of air-cooled aircraft engines with a capacity of 635, 725 and 1000 horsepower. This is how the construction of the Perm Aviation Engine Plant (Plant No. 19) began. On April 5, 1938, its director V. Dubovoy wrote to the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry: “The agreement with the Wright company made it possible for the plant to quickly master the production of a modern powerful air-cooled engine“Wright-Cyclone”and, without reducing the production rate, move every year to a new, a more modern and powerful motor model. During the term of the contract, we received from the company a wealth of technical material, which significantly accelerated the development of Soviet aircraft engine building. Firm "Wright" conscientiously reacted to the fulfillment of contractual obligations, the implementation of the contract proceeded satisfactorily. We believe that the renewal of the technical assistance agreement with Wright will be beneficial."
As you know, the first Soviet aviation engine M-25 with a capacity of 625 hp was produced at the Perm plant. with. (copy of "Wright-Cyclone R-1820F-3"). In addition, this enterprise was the largest aircraft engine plant during the Great Patriotic War.
World construction sites of Soviet industrialization
In 1928, the Leningrad State Institute for the Design of New Metal Plants developed and published a project for the Ural Machine-Building Plant intended for the production of excavators, crushers, blast furnace and steel-making equipment, rolling mills, hydraulic presses, etc. American technology in the field of heavy engineering . In other words, the designers initially focused on imported equipment. Applications for its supply were sent to 110 foreign firms, and all of them expressed their readiness to help the Soviet Union in the construction of a major machine-building plant. Moreover, the Soviet government decided not to spare money for the construction of Uralmash.
A serious obstacle arose on the path of Soviet-American cooperation - the Soviet government began to run out of currency, the main source of which was grain exports.
A serious obstacle arose on the path of Soviet-American cooperation - the Soviet government began to run out of currency, the main source of which was grain exports.
The first water well (this was the beginning of the plant) was drilled by the Germans from the Froelich-Kluepfel-Deilmann firm using German equipment, since domestic specialists simply did not know how to drill wells with a diameter of 500 mm and a depth of 100 m. The water supply system was equipped with pumps from the German company Jaeger. Compressed air was provided by compressors from Borsig, Demag and Skoda. The gas generating station was equipped with gas generators of the German company Kohler. More than 450 cranes were installed at the plant alone, and all of them were imported, mainly made in Germany.
The iron foundry was equipped with equipment from the German company Krigar, and the charge was loaded with cranes from the British company Sheppard. AEG electric furnaces, as well as Mars-Werke sandblasting chambers and saws were installed in the steel shop. Uralmash's largest press-forging shop in Europe was equipped with two steam-hydraulic presses from the German firms Hydraulik, Schlemann and Wagner.
The pride of the plant is the mechanical workshop No. 1, which consisted of 337 machines, of which 300 were purchased from the "bourgeoisie". In particular, a unique German lathe was installed there, capable of processing workpieces weighing up to 120 tons. A huge carousel machine, also made in Germany, had a faceplate diameter of 620 centimeters, and one of the gear cutting machines could handle gears of five meters in diameter.
The Ural Heavy Machine Building Plant (UZTM) was commissioned on July 15, 1933. From 1928 to 1941, 311 foreign specialists worked at Uralmash, including 12 builders, four heads of plant divisions, 46 designers, 182 workers of various specialties. Most of all foreign citizens were citizens of Germany - 141 people.
Another symbol of Stalin's industrialization is Dneproges. Its design and construction was carried out by the American civil engineering firm Cooper. The site for the construction was prepared by the German firm Siemens, which also supplied electric generators. The Dneproges turbines (except for one, already our copy) were manufactured by the American company Newport News, which is now called Northrop Grumman and is the largest American manufacturer of aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines.
Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Trade Arkady Rozengolts, speaking at the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1934, noted: thousand horsepower each. There are no such powerful turbines in Europe, but all over the world there are only a few of them”.
However, all power plants built under the famous GOELRO plan were equipped with imported equipment.
As the Steel Was Tempered
In November 1926, the presidium of the Ural Regional Economic Council approved the construction site for a new metallurgical plant - a site near Magnitnaya Mountain. On March 2, 1929, Vitaly Hasselblat was appointed chief engineer of Magnitostroi, who immediately went to the United States as part of a group of Soviet specialists. The trip plans included ordering both construction projects and the American industrial equipment needed for the plant. The main result of the trip was the conclusion on May 13, 1929 of an agreement between the Vostokstal association and Arthur McKee from Cleveland for the design of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (a little later a contract was signed with the German company Demag for the design of the rolling mill of this mill). The Americans undertook to prepare a construction and technological project with a full description and specification of equipment, machine tools and mechanisms, to transfer their production experience (patents, know-how, etc.) to the Soviet customer, and to send qualified specialists to the USSR to oversee the construction and launch of the facility., to allow Soviet engineers and workers to master the company's production methods at its enterprises, as well as coordinate the supply of equipment for Magnitogorsk.
As a prototype for the Magnitogorsk Combine, the Americans chose a metallurgical plant in Gary, Indiana, owned by US Steel.
On July 1, 1930, the laying of the first blast furnace in Magnitogorsk took place. At a solemn meeting dedicated to this event, American engineers McMorey and Struven stood next to the Soviet builders under red banners. All in all, more than 800 foreign specialists and highly qualified workers from the USA, Germany, England, Italy and Austria worked on the construction of Magnitogorsk. German specialists from AEG contracted to install the central power plant, they also supplied the most powerful 50-megawatt turbine with a generator to Magnitogorsk at that time. The German company Krupp & Reismann established refractory production in Magnitogorsk, and the British company Traylor - the mining industry.
But here, too, the cooperation of the Bolsheviks with the "bourgeoisie" did not pass without excesses. The launch of the first blast furnace was scheduled for January 31, 1932. Specialists of the Arthur McKee company, headed by Vice President Haven, declared that it was inexpedient to start melting in a thirty-degree frost, with an incompletely dried furnace, and advised to wait until spring. But from the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry came a sanction to start the blast furnace. As a result, during the start-up, first a pipe burst on one of the wells, then hot gases suddenly burst out of the masonry. According to the recollections of eyewitnesses, “there was a panic, someone shouted“Save yourself, who can!”. The situation was saved by the deputy manager of Magnitostroi Chingiz Ildrym, who, at the risk of being burned to death, rushed to the winch and stopped the blowing."
This accident served as a pretext for the Soviet government to terminate the contract with Arthur McKee: the Americans did their job and could go home - then it was already possible to do without them. After all, if the mine of the first blast furnace was laid out by Russian workers under the supervision of the Americans for two and a half months, then for such an operation on the second furnace it took 25 days, and for the third - only 20. If more than a thousand workers participated in the installation of the first and second blast furnaces, then in the installation the fourth - only 200 people. While on the construction of the first furnace, American specialists advised all types of work - from concreting foundations to electrical installation, then on the second blast furnace only installation work, on the third only assembly of charging mechanisms, and the fourth furnace has already been completely built by our engineers. After the major overhaul, the blast furnaces of McKee are still operating at MMK today. And the first rolling blooming mill No. 2 of the German company Demag worked continuously from 1933 to 2006.
Instead of gratitude - shooting
What is most shocking in the history of Stalin's industrialization is that virtually all of the key figures in this project turned out to be enemies of the people. The first builder and director of Uralmash Bannikov, the first chief engineer Fidler, his successor Muzafarov, the builder of the power plant Popov and many other builders of the plant were shot.
Legendary metallurgist Avraamy Pavlovich Zavenyagin said: “Magnitogorsk was erected, in essence, by three heroes: Gugel (Ya. S. Koksokhimstroy Magnitostroya. - "Expert") and Valerius (KD Valerius - head of the Magnitostroya trust in 1936. - "Expert") ". All three were shot in the late thirties.
Zavenyagin himself was saved only thanks to his personal friendship with Molotov (they became friends in 1921, when, while participating in a party conference in Kharkov, they lived in the same hotel room). In 1936, Molotov called Zavenyagin, who was then director of MMK, with the words: “We decided not to finish you off. We offer to go to Norilsk as the head of construction. And Zavenyagin traded Magnitka for the Norilsk Combine.
Magnetostroy's favorite Chingiz Ildrym was shot in the Sukhanov prison in 1941. Both the first director of Magnitostroi V. Smolyaninov and the manager of Magnitostroi in 1930 were shot. J. Schmidt, and the renowned foreman brigadier, Commander of the Order of Lenin V. Kalmykov. The first chief engineer V. Hasselblat died of exhaustion in a concentration camp in the town of Chibyu near Ukhta.
Cleaning went on at other construction sites of the first five-year plans. For example, on February 14, 1931, the head of the OGPU, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, reported in a memo to Stalin: “In addition to the arrests made, 40 people were cleared from the staff of the Chelyabtraktorostroy Construction Administration. and measures were taken to remove the rest of the unusable element from the construction”.
As a result of the repressions of the thirties, almost everyone who was directly or indirectly involved in the procurement of imported equipment for these construction projects was destroyed. Therefore, it is difficult to get rid of the belief that one of the main goals of the pre-war wave of repression was to conceal the truth about how and by whom industrialization was carried out in the USSR. So that in history textbooks it will forever be preserved as "an unparalleled feat of the liberated proletariat, led by the Bolshevik Party and the genius Stalin."
