Hey all! You might be familiar with my Appreciation Posts (Stalingrad, Berlin).
Today it is time to highlight another historical map – Stalingrad Tractor Plant.
I really do love historical maps, and the devs again delivered!
The young Soviet Russia basically spent its 1920s fighting the Civil War (here is a suggestion for a related mini-event in Enlisted), suppressing rebellions against the new communist rule (Tambov Rebellion, Kronstadt rebellion, etc.), instigating World Revolution (which wasn’t a fantasyat the time since there was unrest in (Germany, Romania, Ireland, etc.), doing its best to prevent the economy from crumbling under the new management style and trying to hold on to power.
As such, by 1930s the new country was stabilized politically but was lagging behind the capitalist states economically, and an Industrialisation Plan was introduced, aimed at accelerating the country’s industrial potential and transforming the economy from predominantly agrarian into leading industrial.
Obviously, heavy industry doesn’t appear out of nowhere, especially when you inprisoned/exiled/killed many engineers from the former Russian Empire. So it was decided to purchase the equipment from abroad.
However, building heavy industry from scratch is also expensive, but that shouldn’t be an issue since you can freely expropriate all the money from Imperial bourgeois (now illegal), the church (now illegal) and businessmen (you guessed it, now illegal), as well as confiscate wheat from farmers and sell it abroad.
As luck would have it (for USSR), western capitalist economy was also suffering from economical downturn and the Great Depression, so the big corporations didn’t mind doing business with the new anti-corporate state at all.
On the day of the start-up of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant on June 17, 1930, Stalin sent a greeting to its workers and management: “The 50,000 tractors that you shall give the country every year are 50,000 shells that blow up the old bourgeois world and pave the way for a new socialist order in villages”.
One of such huge projects was the Stalingrad Tractor Plant – a factory designed by Albert Kahn Associates Inc (who also designed factories for Ford), build in the US, dismantled, transported to the USSR and erected in the new location in just 6 months. The Moscow office was headed by Albert Khan’s brother Moritz.
It is said that the Stalingrad Tractor Plant was a copy of International Harvester plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Thus, in 1926 Stalingrad Tractor Plant project was officially approved, and launched in 1930:
In that same year of 1926, Felix Dzerzhinsky (head of first Soviet secret police – Cheka and OGPU, one of the architects of Red Terror and represions, and a big fan of mechanization), and the plant was instantly given his name: Stalingrad Tractor Plant named after F.E. Dzerzhinsky.
A monument to Dzerzhinsky was erected at the square in front of the Plant, and it even survived WW2 with only minor damage to the left hand.
And guess what? These madlads at Darkflow actually did it!
The equipment for the plant was supplied by 80+ American and German manufacturers. About 370 american engineers were present at the plant during its commissioning and start-up.
The American workers were given new housing, they could buy groceries at special stores, had an English-language newspaper published for them, as well as lectures, concerts, dances, and film screenings.
One of many incredible stories of Stalingrad Tractor Plant and pre-war USSR in general, is the story of Robert Robinson, a Jamaican-American mechanic who went to work at the STZ, reportedly due to the Great Depression and racism he faced in the US. Soon after starting his work in Stalingrad, he was assaulted by two white Americans, who were subsequently fund guilty by the Soviet Court, sentenced to prison, but insteaad deported from the USSR "due to the fact that “racial animosity was inculcated in them by the capitalist system of exploitation of races”.
After his contract expired in 1932, Robinson did not to go back to the US and instead moved to Moscow to work at the Moscow Ball-Bearing Plant, where he was then elected a member of Moscow Soviet in 1934.
However, despite his attempts to leave the USSR in the following years, he was only able to do so in 1974.
In 1938, director of the STZ Fokin was executed for “subversive and sabotage organization”, his predecessor Melamed was executed the next day, the plant’s fist director Ivanov, who had reported on the “sabotage activities”, was executed later that year.
The first vehicles produced at the Stalingrad Tractor Plant (Stalingradskiy Traktorniy Zavod or STZ) were the STZ-1 tractors (a copy of McCormick Deering 15-30), which would go on to become the most widespread tractor in the USSR in 1930-1940s.
We can see it in Enlisted on the assembly line:
Another historical vehicle we can see on the level is STZ-5 Stalinets, a dedicated artillery tractor design. With over 9900 built, it was the most-produced Soviet military tractor during WW2.
This one is also drivable in the game:
During the war it was also fitted with the BM-13-16 Katyusha rocket launcher system (Darkflow give pls?):
STZ-5 shared the same chassis and engine with STZ-3 tractor which we can also see in the game:
STZ-3 was internationally acclaimed, and in 1938 at the World Industrial Exhibition in Paris it received the Grand Gold Medal and the Grand Prix.
Having set up the production of tracked vehicles, naturally Stalingrad Tractor Plant was ready to start producing tanks as well. And to terminate all contracts with foreign workers.
The first tank produced at the plant was the T-26, which would go on to become the Red Army’s most numerous tank before WW2.
It was a comprehensive development of the Vickers Mk.E purchased from Britain and was one of the most successful tank designs of the 1930s.
In total Soviet engineers developed 53 variants of the T-26, including the flamethrower KhT-26 we can see in Enlisted’s Stalingrad:
In early 1941, the plant started producing T-34 tanks and continued manufacturing a major portion of Red Army’s T-34s during the war up to September 1942, when the production was stopped due to fighting happening already within the plant’s premises.
*Report of the factory workshop No. 5 for August, 23 - September 12, 1942: *
"Since day the German troops approached the plant, bombed and shelled the factory area, workshop No. 5 has completed the following work:
- 68 new tanks produced,
- 23 tanks repaired.
In addition, assistance was given to the Red Army in repairs by sending highly skilled workers to repair crews, as well as providing spare parts and various equipment.
Six HE bombs, about 154 incendiary bombs, and one shell hit the workshop during the indicated period. The gas storage was burned, and the roof was destroyed in two places".
Tanks were manufactured and fixed right when the war was within meters.
Workers of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant also took active part in defence of the city.
Cut off from suppliers and vendors, Stalingrad Tractor Plant had to produce a unique modification of T-34 during the war, which we now know as T-34 STZ.
The wedge-shaped design of the mantlet and absence of rubber bands on the roadwheels are the main distinguishing features of STZ tanks. Simplicity of design for certain component parts, units and mechanisms of the tank were a feature of Stalingrad Tractor Plant’s production, which worked in the frontline zone and had to cut the costs on everything.
As of 2023, the only surviving T-34 STZ has been recovered from the Don river and is currently displayed in Kubinka near Moscow:
The Battle of Stalingrad ended on February 2, 1943 at the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, with the surrender of a group of German troops under the command of Colonel-General Karl Strecker.
Lastly, Here is a comparison of the ingame map to real aerial photos:
Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed.
Shoutout to the only level designers of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant map I could find online: Oleg Volk and Artem Glazov!
