The story
Until 1961, the plant was called the Stalingrad Tractor Plant named for F. Dzerzhinsky (Russian: Сталинградский тракторный завод им. Ф. Э. Дзержинского, Stalingradski traktorni zavod im. F.E. Dzerzhinskogo, or СТЗ, STZ). It was one of the first industrial facilities to be built as part of the planned rapid industrialization of the USSR, which was adopted in the late 1920s. The foundation stone was laid in a groundbreaking ceremony on July 12, 1926.
Construction of the plant was carried out with the involvement of experts from Western countries, primarily the United States. It was designed by Albert Kahn Associates Inc., the company started by Albert Kahn, the architect for Henry Ford. In 1928, a group of Soviet engineers visited Kahn's office with an order for designing and building the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, and in April 1929, the Soviet trade representative Saul Bron signed the contract with Albert Kahn. The full value of the contract, including equipment, was US$30 million, which would equate to about US$450 million in today's money.
Once the contract was agreed, design and construction of the plant proceeded without delay, and the entire facility was installed within a period of six months under the supervision of American engineers. The steel structures were manufactured in New York by the McClintic-Marshall Company, and then transported to Stalingrad for field assembly. The huge flow of cargo was shipped via the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean and Black Sea, then by river and over land to the place of construction. The plant was kitted out with equipment from more than eighty US engineering companies and several German firms.
The new factory was officially opened on June 17, 1930, and the first tractor to begin production on the assembly line was the 15-30, manufactured in the US by the McCormick Deering company; in the USSR, it became known as the 15/30 STZ (or STZ-1). By April 1932, the Stalingrad Tractor Plant was working at full capacity, with 144 tractors a day rolling off the conveyor.
Tank production began in 1932 with the launch of the T-26 light infantry tank, which was easy to manufacture and operate, and considered to be more reliable than foreign equivalents. In 1939, the first automated machine tool line in the USSR was designed and commissioned at the Volgograd Tractor Plant on the initiative of I. P. Inochkina, a design engineer who worked at the plant for 35 years. By the end of the 1940s, dozens of such lines were in operation at bearing and automotive plants.
By the time war broke out in September 1939, the tractor plant had produced a quarter of a million standard tractors as well as 40,000 tracked versions. During World War II, the plant was retooled to produce military equipment and weapons for the Soviet Red Army, most notably the T-34 tank. The plant became world-famous during the Battle of Stalingrad. When the German Wehrmacht reached the city in the summer of 1942, the tractor plant was their first target, and it was largely destroyed during the fierce fighting that ensued over the next few months. Once the hostilities had ended with the final Soviet victory in February 1943, the site was cleared of shells and debris so that restoration work could begin immediately. Full-scale production resumed at the plant within months of the city being liberated.
From Wikipedia’s article on Volgograd Tractor Plant, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4