On March 4, 1807, Emperor Alexander I signed a decree on the construction of a plant for the production of edged weapons in the Urals
The history of cold steel is directly related to the history of human development, and our ancestors were no exception. Since the appearance of the first Slavs on the lands of our homeland, their whole life is in one way or another connected with weapons. They helped to fight off the raids of neighbors, it helped to take the enemy cities to the sword, soldiers were buried with him in pre-Christian Russia. However, until the beginning of the 19th millennium in the Russian state, separate workshops were engaged in its manufacture, the production capacities of which eventually ceased to meet the demand for edged weapons. The problem was partly solved by purchases in Europe. Some samples came to Russia and from the East, but these were either trophies or gifts that had not so much military value as artistic value.
The strengthening of France with the coming to power of Napoleon and his military successes forced the imperial court from a different angle to look at providing the army with weapons. Until the beginning of the 19th century, only two factories functioned in Russia, which supplied the army with equipment: Tula and Sestroretsky. But their main task was the production of firearms, and the release of cold weapons was only an additional function. There was no separate production, concentrated on mass production, of blades. The creation of new weapons production in the country has become a vital necessity.
In 1807, Alexander I set the task for the Senate to organize a Russian center for the production of edged weapons, including decorated designer weapons.
Since the beginning of the 19th century, the production of edged weapons was concentrated at an arms factory in the city of Zlatoust, but before the Patriotic War of 1812, they did not have time to establish mass production. It was only in 1814 that a cold steel factory was built. It was officially opened on December 15, 1815, and since 1817, by the imperial order of Alexander I, all edged weapons for the army were manufactured exclusively here.
The factory did not appear from scratch. Back in 1754, an iron foundry and an ironworks were founded in Zlatoust, which became a good metallurgical base and served as the primary reason for the construction of an arms factory here. The products manufactured in Zlatoust were of high quality and low cost, and the presence of navigable rivers in the vicinity of the city provided convenient transportation of weapons to customers.
After the victory over Napoleon, Russia continued to increase its military-industrial capacity. And it so happened that the Zlatoust arms factory became the only enterprise in the country that provided the Russian army with melee weapons, and it remained for the next one and a half centuries.
Already in the second half of the 19th century, the Zlatoust factory almost completely supplied the army and navy with combat weapons for ordinary soldiers. Officers, however, often ordered exclusive edged weapons at the Zlatoust factory.
Among the first products of the factory, a ceremonial saber was made as a gift to Prince Grigory Volkonsky, the most famous Russian general who served under the leadership of Alexander Suvorov and Peter Rumyantsev. He served in 1803-1816 as the governor-general of Siberia, and at that time the city of Zlatoust was also subordinate to him.
In 1824, Emperor Alexander I visited Chrysostom to see the production of ceremonial blades with his own eyes.
The factory also made its contribution to providing the Russian army with cold steel in the 20th century. During the First World War, the factory produced more than 600 thousand blades and cavalry lances, and during the Great Patriotic War provided the army with weapons: 583 thousand cavalry blades and about a million army knives. By the way, the famous "black knives" (German "Schwarzmesser") were also produced in Zlatoust, which became a distinctive feature of the Ural Volunteer Tank Corps.
With the end of the Great Patriotic War, the factory received a special order: to manufacture ammunition for the participants in the 1945 Victory Parade. All edged weapons that took part in the famous parade were made in Zlatoust.
Nowadays, the products of the factory are distinguished by the excellent design of the blades, which is often called "engraving on steel". The Zlatoust blade can be easily distinguished by the combination of complex and exquisite ornaments, gilded coating and deep brewing tone, which makes the product unique.
