The history of the legendary Yuzhmash, whose rockets were the guarantors of peace during the Cold War and an integral part of international space programs, is close to an inglorious end. There are no personnel, no orders, no money, not even water in toilets. Even worse, the tragic fate of UMZ reflects the future of the entire Ukrainian industry.
A year ago, employees of the Yuzhnoye State Design Bureau named after V. I. Yangel celebrated the 60th anniversary of the enterprise. In the congratulatory addresses on the occasion of the anniversary, it was noted that during this time, in collaboration with the Yu. Makarov Design Bureau specialists managed to create 13 combat missile systems, seven space missile systems, more than 70 types of spacecraft, about 50 types of rocket engines and propulsion systems for various purposes, over 150 new materials and technologies. In addition, more than 900 launches of space carrier rockets were carried out and more than 400 research and military satellites were launched into orbits.
This year, it would be logical to continue the parade of memorable dates with the 20th anniversary of the creation of the international project Sea Launch, in which Ukraine was once represented by KB Yuzhnoye and PO Yuzhmash. However, by and large, there is nothing to celebrate. Due to the crisis in Ukrainian-Russian relations, the project is “frozen” and is unlikely to be revived in its previous form. At least there is no talk of further use of Ukrainian Zenit missiles for launches, and the Yuzhny Machine-Building Plant, which produced them, is now on the verge of final liquidation.
Rockets and closets
As a matter of fact, the enterprise has been idle without orders since last year, and in January its employees were sent on vacation at their own expense due to accumulated wage arrears. The forced downtime lasted until April. Then, after paying off the debt and accompanied by generous promises from the top officials of the state to fill UMZ with work, the workers returned to the shops. But, apparently, not for long, since they have nothing special to do there. And, judging by the latest events, this time the matter will not be limited to simple idleness.
As the assistant to the general director of the enterprise on general issues Vladimir Tkachenko told reporters, the industrial water has been disconnected at the plant for more than two weeks. In this regard, it was necessary to stop work in the foundries, in the areas associated with the forge and in places where the metal is hardened and cooled. For the same reason, the bathrooms were closed, depriving employees of basic amenities.
In parallel, there are rumors of a possible power outage, backed up by recent power outages at pumping stations. But new wage arrears are no longer rumors, but reality: after April, payments stopped again. “They said that restructuring is expected, and starting from August, staff will be cut by 30-40%. So far, workers are not paid wages, apparently expecting that people themselves will quit,”says the head of the independent trade union Yuzhmash Yevgeny Derkach.
An additional incentive for voluntary dismissal is now the representatives of the military registration and enlistment offices, guarding the conscripts of men right at the main entrance. Moreover, they prefer to grab the employees of the design bureau. Either because they come to work later than the others, or because they are not needed for the dying production. In turn, the "dodgers", relying on the support of colleagues and even the management, stubbornly unwilling to part with the last cadres, maintain a perimeter defense: they carry out telephone notification of danger and do not leave the territory of the plant until the "catchers" leave.
Fear Factory
Dnepropetrovsk owes its unspoken title to the capital of Soviet rocketry to the Korean War. It was she who forced the then leadership of the military-industrial complex, headed by the Minister of Armaments Dmitry Ustinov, in 1950 to urgently redesign the unfinished Dnepropetrovsk Automobile Plant into a top-secret "mailbox number 586". In the same year, instead of trucks and dump trucks, it launched the production of the first Soviet combat missile R-1 (which was documented as a "vertical take-off vehicle"), which Sergei Korolyov and his assistants copied from the captured "V-2". A little later, the plant begins to produce the R-5M, the world's first missile capable of carrying a nuclear charge.
A few years later, a special design bureau OKB-586 (now KB Yuzhnoye) was created on the territory of "Plant No. 586". It is headed by Mikhail Yangel, a former deputy of Korolev, who took up the development of a rocket using high-boiling propellants, which made it possible to keep the "product" on alert, that is, filled with fuel, for a long time (more than a month).
In 1959, after successful tests, the R-12 liquid-propellant single-stage medium-range ballistic missile was adopted by the Soviet army. Four years later, its innovative R-12U modification for a silo launcher takes over on combat duty in the newly created strategic missile forces. And a little earlier, the R-16 was created - the first two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile capable of "covering" the territory of the United States and thus depriving the main strategic enemy of the Soviet Union of the advantage of an unanswered strike.
By that time, the Dnepropetrovsk Machine-Building Plant was already fully focused on the products developed by Yangel's team. As Secretary General Nikita Khrushchev told reporters after visiting the plant: “We have put the production of missiles on the conveyor! Recently I was at a plant and saw how rockets go out there, like sausages from automatic machines."
This result was made possible thanks to the well-coordinated work of the tandem in the person of the head of the Yangel Design Bureau and his former chief engineer Alexander Makarov, who was appointed director of the plant in 1961. “It was they who created the model of a unified experimental design and production base, which to this day is an innovation in the field of production and design,” wrote later another ex-director of Yuzhmash, former President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma.
The main joint creation of Yangel and Makarov was the R-36M (SS-18 Satan according to NATO classification) - a missile system with a multipurpose intercontinental ballistic missile of a heavy class, which allowed the use of various types of combat equipment (warheads), including multiple individually guided warheads, and implemented the strategy of a guaranteed retaliatory strike. The unparalleled "Satan", with its autonomous control system and complete ampulization of fuel systems after refueling (this made it possible to keep the missile in full combat readiness for a decade and a half), which became the main element of the "missile shield" of the USSR, forced the Americans in the early 70s, nicknamed YMZ "the fear factory", urgently go to negotiations on nuclear missile disarmament.
One of the most sensational novelties then was the so-called mortar start invented by Yangel, when a multi-ton colossus in its version of launching from a transport and launch container was first “fired” from the TPK under the pressure of powder accumulators, and then its engine was started. This made it possible for the designer Vladimir Utkin, who was completing the Satan project after the death of Mikhail Yangel in 1971, together with his brother Alexei later to create the RT-23 UTTH Molodets (SS-24 Scalpel) - a combat railway missile system, in the amount of 12 trains with 36 launchers that were on alert in the Strategic Missile Forces of the USSR and Russia in 1987-1994 (all of them were written off and disposed of under the terms of the START-2 Treaty).
No less actively Yuzhmash, 80% of whose production in the 1960s-1980s were combat missiles, participated in space programs. The Zenit rocket created there as a modular part of the first stage of the Energia launch vehicle was used in the implementation of the project of the first (and, unfortunately, the last) Soviet reusable spacecraft Buran. And liquid-propellant launch vehicles of the light class "Cyclone" or created on the basis of R-12 and R-14 "Cosmos" and "Interkosmos" launched spacecraft into low-earth orbit, many of which (series AUOS, "Celina" or "Typhoon") were created again by Dnepropetrovsk specialists. The workshops of "side production" did not lag behind, producing tractors first under the brand "Belarus" (due to the secrecy of the enterprise), and then their own - YMZ (with a total of more than two million cars), as well as other peaceful "consumer goods".
Space business
With the collapse of the Union, the glorious history of Yuzhmash, like many other giants of the military-industrial complex, could have ended overnight. Hundreds of missiles produced there annually were no longer needed by anyone - as well as tens of thousands of tractors. Most of the subcontractors found themselves beyond the new borders, and the state order was replaced by the “wild market”. The 1994 presidential election saved the situation. The new head of state, Leonid Kuchma, did everything for the survival of Yuzhmash, who was not alien to him, and, moreover, was one of the few flagships of the young Ukrainian economy.
Since then, commercial space has become the main topic for the plant and the Yuzhnoye design bureau. One of the first projects was Sea Launch - the creation, using a floating platform, of an offshore spaceport at the equator, where there are the best conditions for launching (you can use the Earth's rotation speed as efficiently as possible). In addition to Yuzhmash and Yuzhnoye, the Sea Launch Company consortium, created in 1995, included Boeing Commercial Space Company (the space subsidiary of the American aviation giant), the Russian RSC Energia and the Norwegian shipbuilding company Aker Kværner. Four years later, the first commercial launch was successfully carried out, and in just 15 years (until May 2014), 36 launches were carried out (of which 33 were successful).
Soon after the first launches of the Sea Launch, the Yuzhnoye design bureau came up with the idea of its ground-based analogue, which was originally named “Launch from the Desert” (later the more familiar Land Launch was agreed upon). It was a joint project of Russia, Ukraine and the United States to use the launch complex at the Baikonur cosmodrome to launch the upgraded Zenit-2SLB and Zenit-3SLB launch vehicles. During this program, from 2008 to 2013, six successful spacecraft launches were carried out.
On the basis of the legendary Satan, the Dnepr carrier rocket was created, from 1999 to 2015 it performed 22 launches, with the help of which more than 140 spacecraft belonging to 20 states were launched into orbit. And already at the very end of Kuchma's second presidential term (in 2003), Ukraine signed an agreement with Brazil on long-term cooperation on the creation of the Cyclone-4 RSC for launching spacecraft at the Brazilian near-equatorial cosmodrome Alcantara.
Along the way, the Yuzhmash employees earned money by maintaining and extending the service life of missiles in service with the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, "adapted" Czech trolleybuses and trams to Ukrainian realities, and also mastered the production of wind turbines, equipment for the food industry and chassis assemblies for An-140, An -148 and An-158. Together, this gave a noticeable workload of production facilities and enviable wages by the standards of Dnepropetrovsk.
The confidence of Yuzhmash workers in their own prosperous future was not shaken by the five-year rule of Yushchenko, who tired them during his infrequent visits with boring lectures about Trypillian culture and the Holodomor. “The caravan is moving, and the money is dripping,” they reasoned. Moreover, the money was dripping more and more tangibly - the Russian defense industry, which had revived since the second half of the 2000s, with its purchases began to awaken in the memory of factory workers the memories of the blessed Soviet times. And when the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Rogozin, who visited Yuzhmash already under Yanukovych (at the end of 2013), spoke about the creation of a united rocket and space corporation, the former happiness seemed very close.
To the ground
But February 2014 burst out, and all plans were covered with a red-and-black basin with a red-black tint. In early March last year, the newly appointed Governor Igor Kolomoisky visited the plant. He wandered around the shops with an anxious look, having signed a kind of "memorandum of cooperation" with the general director of Yuzhmash Sergei Voit. As a result of this excursion, orders at the plant did not increase, but metal from strategic reserves began to be exported from there (about the same, 600 thousand tons of technical oil were pumped out of pipelines controlled by Kolomoisky state company Ukrnafta last year). At the same time, information appeared on the Web about the possible sale to third countries of documentation on the BMBR "Voyevoda" (Soviet name of the famous "Satan") produced in Dnipro.
For some time, Kolomoisky's naive compatriots thought that everything would change. And, in principle, they were not mistaken. But the changes turned out to be for the worse. Back in April last year, Kuchma, who knew all the ins and outs of the survival of his native enterprise, warned: “We have too much tied to Russia to refuse to cooperate with it. But, if we lose contracts with the Russian Federation, we need to give an alternative. In Europe, I do not see any sales markets for Yuzhmash's products”.
Already in August, the Ukrainian Security Council made a decision to end military and scientific and technical cooperation with enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex. This greatly inspired patriots like the chairman of the Council of Entrepreneurs of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Volodymyr Don, who said the following: “Today, exports from this enterprise to Russia have decreased by 80%. These are products related to weapons. This is logical, we cannot sell to our potential enemies weapons, from which they will kill our soldiers, our soldiers, our citizens. A number of measures need to be taken. The erroneous position of the plant's management lies in the fact that they think: the state will help. Nobody will help."
The staff of the enterprise became convinced that the state really abandoned the industrial giant to its own devices. “As a result of a consistent reduction in the production of rocket and space technology, the inflow of funds decreased by more than four times, from UAH 1 billion 907 million in 2011 to UAH 450 million in 2014. At the same time, under agreements with Russia, the reduction turned out to be more than 60 times - from 1 billion 719 million to 28 million UAH. Further production of the Zenit launch vehicle (Sea Launch and Land Launch projects) has been suspended. Renewal is in question. Russia is cutting back on cooperation on other projects (Dnepr, the Federal Space Program). As a result of the loss of the main customer, the deficit of working capital amounted to about UAH 700 million at the end of 2014. The company's debts as of 2015-01-01 amount to about UAH 640 million, including salaries, related payments and social benefits - more than UAH 140 million,”the UMZ website reported (after a short time, the information was deleted for some unknown reason).
President Petro Poroshenko, who appeared at the plant a month after its stop in February, habitually promised both an order through the Ministry of Defense (“There is a proposal for Yuzhmash in the defense order. said an order for UAH 45 million will be offered for trolleybuses for Dnepropetrovsk and Dnepropetrovsk region "). In both cases, Poroshenko cheated. Until now, nothing has been heard about the state order ("guess what nomenclature"), but with the trolleybuses of the Dnipropetrovsk people "they gave a ride" completely shamelessly. On July 6, Yuzhmash was supposed to sign a contract for the supply of ten cars, but the auto company Bogdan Motors, controlled by Oleg Svinarchuk (Poroshenko's business partner), suddenly filed a complaint due to a lack of necessary documents from the plant. After that, the Antimonopoly Committee hastily canceled the contract.
The affairs of the Dnepropetrovsk Machine-Building Plant in foreign markets are no less "successful". Back in December 2014, the American company Orbital Science Corporation stopped cooperation with Yuzhmash due to the explosion of the engine of the Antares launch vehicle with the Cygnus transport ship. Against this background, the statement that Ukraine intends to transfer its tightly "frozen" space project "Alcantavra" from Brazil to the United States looks even funnier.
“This was the only major investment project of Ukraine abroad, not only confirming our country as a leader in the aerospace industry, but also giving the prospect of loading and developing our enterprises for many years,” ex-Prime Minister Mykola Azarov wrote on his Facebook page. “At the command of their masters, they put an end to the most advanced branch of Ukraine - the aerospace industry,” he stated.
According to political scientist Andrey Zolotarev, the situation with Yuzhmash and the Yuzhnoye design bureau is fraught with the loss of the status of a space power for all of Ukraine. "Bazaar" capitalism does not need space. He is not interested in the prospect, but in profit now and today,”the expert believes, confident that in the process of reforms, Ukraine will receive a new model of the economy, which will be inscribed in the Western market. The only successful option for such a “fit” is “total deindustrialization”.
So the devastation sung by Bulgakov, who was born in Kiev, is really not in the Yuzhmash closets, but in the heads of those who, in full accordance with the words of the party anthem of the communists so hated by them, undertook to destroy the world that they did not create to the ground and leave behind chaos, to create which, perhaps, not even the famous "Satan" can do it.
