Russia at war 1941-1945

evacuation of all essential industries, and particularly the war industries, to the east. It knew from the start that this was a matter of life and death if the Germans were going to overrun large areas of European Russia.

This transplantation of industry in the second half of 1941 and the beginning of 1942 and its "rehousing" in the east, must rank among the most stupendous organisational and human achievements of the Soviet Union during the war.

A steep increase in war production and the reorganisation of the entire war industry on a new basis depended on the rapid transfer of heavy industry from the western and central areas of European Russia and the Ukraine to the distant rear, where it would not only be out of the German army's reach, but would also be beyond the range of German aircraft.

As early as July 4, the State Defence Committee ordered the Chairman of the Gosplan, Voznesensky, to draw up a detailed plan for setting up in the east what was, in effect, "a second line of industrial defence". The aim was to organise a "coherent productive combination between the industries already existing in the east and those to be

transplanted there".

The evacuation of industry to the Urals, the Volga country, Western Siberia and Central Asia, started at a very early stage of the war, not only from industrial centres immediately threatened by the Germans, but from other centres as well. Thus, as early as July 2, it was decided to move the armoured-plate mill from Mariupol in the Southern Ukraine, to

Magnitogorsk, though Mariupol was still hundreds of miles away from the front. On the following day, the State Defence Committee, after approving the plans for the output of guns and small arms during the next few months, decided to transfer to the east twenty-six armament plants from Leningrad, Moscow and Tula. During the same week it was

decided to send east part of the equipment, workers and technical staff from the diesel department of the Kirov Plant in Leningrad and the Tractor Plant in Kharkov. Another large plant for manufacturing tank engines was to be transferred from Kharkov to

Cheliabinsk in the Urals.

At the same time, the conversion of certain industries was decided upon: thus, the Gorki automobile plant was to concentrate on the output of tank engines. These two decisions laid the foundations for a vast Volga-Urals combine for the mass-production of tanks.

Similar steps were taken in respect of the aircraft industry.

With the German threat to the Eastern Ukraine growing, it was decided to evacuate

without delay such vast enterprises as the Zaporozhie steel mills (Zaporozhstal). On August 7 orders were given to evacuate the enormous tube-rolling mill at

Dniepropetrovsk. The first trains evacuating this plant left on August 9, and the ninth group of trains loaded with the plant's equipment, arrived at Pervouralsk in the Urals on September 6. By December 24 it was in production again.

Many other large plants were also evacuated during August. The dismantling and loading of the equipment went on non-stop for twenty-four hours a day, often under enemy

bombing. The size of the operation may be judged from the fact that in the case of

Zaporozhstal alone, it required 8,000 railway trucks to evacuate the entire plant and its stocks. Most of the equipment, weighing some 50,000 tons, was put to work in the

Magnitogorsk engineering combine.

On September 21, L. P. Korniets, of the Ukrainian Government, who supervised the

evacuation, was able to report to the Government that "At Zaporozhie all plants have been evacuated. The evacuation took place in an organised manner, and with proper

camouflage." He added that the raw materials were now being evacuated. In addition to the local workers, many hundreds of miners had been brought to Zaporozhie to help with the dismantling of the steel-mill equipment.

Rather less successful was the evacuation of some of the plants of the Donbas, which was overrun by the Germans more quickly than had been expected, and here the scorched-earth policy was extensively applied. Similarly, the Dnieper Dam was at least partly demolished by the retreating Russians. All the same, it had been possible to rescue a great deal: altogether, 283 major industrial enterprises had been evacuated from the Ukraine between June and October, besides 136 smaller factories.

More difficult, in the chaotic conditions of the first weeks of the invasion, had been the evacuation of the industrial plants of Belo-russia, all the more so as the railways were under constant air bombardment; even so, some 100 enterprises (though not comparable in importance to those of the Ukraine) were evacuated, chiefly from the eastern parts of Beloirussia (Gomel and Vitebsk).

The evacuation of Leningrad plants, and their workers, began in July after the Germans had reached the Luga river; but only ninety-two enterprises specialising in war