Soviet tank industry of period of the Great Patriotic War: technical-technological limitations of activity and fighting for their overcoming

Introduction. The paper considers the effect of key issues of the development of the military industry of the USSR in the pre-war and military period, which had a determining effect on the quality of tanks being created in the country. The main trends in the development of tank building in the context of industrial modernization in the 1930s-1940s are revealed. Materials and Methods. The work was carried out on the basis of a wide range of sources, mostly of a monographic nature, reflecting modern historiographic approaches to the topic under study. As the main methodological treatment is the modernization theory in combination with the system approach. Results. The author argues that the result of the accelerated modernization of the Soviet Union in the 1930s became the creation of a qualitatively heterogeneous industrial potential. Implementation of high-performance technologies of the flow-conveyor production of the “Fordist” type in the tractor building and automobile industry made it possible to use labor of low-skilled labor everywhere. The complex of these restrictions had a decisive influence on the choice of approaches to the design and production of tanks by Soviet constructors and production managers. Discussion. The work provides a brief retrospective review of the main trends in the development of the Soviet tank industry in the pre-war period, in the context of the overall social and technological modernization of the country. The significance of the factor of international cooperation and trade ties with the capitalist countries in the formation of the scientific and technical potential of the tank-building industry in the pre-war period is revealed. The factors of uneven development and qualitative potential of the Soviet machine building, created during the first five-year plans, are revealed. Conclusions. Before the Great Patriotic War, the secular tank industry could not fully solve the problem of the quality of its products. The outbreak of the war led to the evacuation, a partial loss of valuable stuff and equipment. In the eastern regions of the USSR, the military-political leadership of the country managed to recreate the tank industry through rigid mobilization methods of managing and concentrating evacuated resources. The lack of specialists forced the wide use of high-performance technology of flow-conveyor assembly in combination with the maximum simplification of the design of tanks. But this dramatically worsened their combat potential. The limited combat capabilities of such tanks had to be compensated for by their massive use.