THE SOVIET DEFENCE-INDUSTRY COMPLEX FROM STALIN TO KHRUSHCHEV STUDIES IN RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN HISTORY AND SOCIETY

General Editors: R. W. Davies, Emeritus Professor of Soviet Economic Studies, and E. A. Rees, Senior Lecturer in Soviet History, both at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham Recent titles include: Lynne Attwood CREATING THE NEW SOVIET WOMAN John Barber and Mark Harrison (editors) THE SOVIET DEFENCE-INDUSTRY COMPLEX FROM STALIN TO KHRUSHCHEV Vincent Barnett KONDRATIEV AND THE DYNAMICS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT R. W. Davies SOVIET HISTORY IN THE YELTSIN ERA James Hughes IN A RUSSIAN PROVINCE Melanie Ilic WOMEN WORKERS IN THE SOVIET INTERWAR ECONOMY Peter Kirkow RUSSIA'S PROVINCES E. A. Rees (editor) DECISION-MAKING IN THE STALINIST COMMAND ECONOMY Lennart Samuelson PLANS FOR STALIN'S WAR MACHINE Tukhachevskii and Military-Economic Planning, 1925-1941 Vera Tolz RUSSIAN ACADEMICIANS AND THE REVOLUTION

Studies in Russian and East European History and Society Series Standing Order ISBN 978-0-333-71239-9 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England The Soviet Defence• Industry Complex from Stalin to Khrushchev

Edited by

John Barber Vice-Provost King's College Cambridge

and

Mark Harrison Professor of Economics University of Warwick

~ in "''°dation with PALGRAVE MACMILLAN First published in Great Britain 2000 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-40612-8 ISBN 978-0-230-37885-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230378858

First published in the United States of America 2000 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-22602-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Soviet defence-industry complex from Stalin to Khrushchev I edited by John Barber and Mark Harrison. p. cm. - (Studies in Russian and East European history and society) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-22602-2 1. Defense industries--History. I. Barber, John, 1944- II. Harrison, Mark, 1949- III. University of Birmingham. Centre for Russian and East European Studies. IV. Series. HD9743.S672S68 1999 338.4'76233'0947-dc21 99-16308 CIP Selection and editorial matter© John Barber and Mark Harrison 2000 Chapter 1 ©John Barber, Mark Harrison, Nikolai Simonov and Boris Starkov 2000 Chapter 5 and 6 © Mark Harrison 2000 Chapter 12 ©Mark Harrison and Nikolai Simonov 2000 Chapters 3, 7-11, 13 © Macmillan Press Ltd 2000 Chapters 2 and 4 © see Acknowledgements 2000 Soticover reprint of the hardcover l st edition 2000 978-0-333-72763-8 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WlP OLP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 Contents

List of tables vii List of figures ix

Preface x

Acknowledgements Xll

Notes on the contributors XlV

Glossary and abbreviations XVl

Part I Overview 1 The structure and development of the defence-industry complex 3 John Barber, Mark Harrison, Nikolai Simonov, and Boris Starkov

Part II The formative phase 2 The 'war scare' of 1927 and the birth of the defence-industry complex 33 Nikolai Simonov 3 The Red Army and economic planning, 1925-40 47 Lennart Samuelson 4 Defence spending and defence industry in the 1930s 70 R. W Davies and Mark Harrison

Part III The war and the postwar period 5 Wartime mobilisation: a German comparison 99 Mark Harrison 6 New postwar branches (1): rocketry 118 Mark Harrison 7 New postwar branches (2): the nuclear industry 150 Nikolai Simonov

v vi Contents

Part IV The defence-industry complex and society 8 The defence-industry complex in Leningrad (1): the interwar period 173 Aleksandr Lasik and Aleksandr Shcherba 9 The defence-industry complex in Leningrad (2): the postwar uranium industry 184 Nataliia Lebina 10 Krasnoiarsk-26: a of the defence-industry complex 195 Viktoriia Glazyrina

Part V Regulation and control 11 Mobpodgotovka: mobilisation planning in interwar industry 205 Nikolai Simonov 12 Voenpriemka: prices, costs, and quality assurance in interwar defence industry 223 Mark Harrison and Nikolai Simonov 13 The security organs and the defence-industry complex 246 Boris Starkov

References 269 Index 276 List of tables

1.1. 'Cadre' defence factories and their ministerial subordination, 1929-56 11 2.1. NKVM five-year programme of orders, 1929/30-33 42 3.1. A Soviet estimate of the military balance: the Soviet Union versus a coalition of likely adversaries, 1928 51 3.2. Production requirements of NKVM for one year of war in mobilisation plans, 1927-30 58 3.3. NKVM procurement of weapons, 1930-2 59 3.4. The Red Army stock of armament in 1927 and 1933 60 3.5. The NKVM mobilisation request for 1932, 1933 and 1938 (production for one year of war), June 1933 62 3.6. Soviet estimates of the military capacity of , Poland and Japan, 1937 65 4.1. Budget outlays, total and on defence, 1928/29-40 73 4.2. Personnel of the Soviet regular armed forces 75 4.3. Alternative measures of the real growth of munitions procurement, 1928-1940 76 4.4. Ships entering service with the Soviet Navy, 1930-41 77 4.5. Nominal NKO outlays on military equipment compared with the number of weapons procured, 1930-40 78 4.6. Real defence outlays according to Bergson, 1928-40 81 4.7. State budget appropriations to the NKVM/NKO (the defence budget), 1932-7 82 4.8. Military equipment orders of NKVM-NKO, 1932-7 85 4.9. Gross production of armament industries, 1932-7 86 4.10. Capital investment in armament industries, 1932-7 87 4.11. The share of defence in investment, 1932-7 88 4.12. The defence burden, from TsSU and Bergson, 1928-40 90 4.13. The defence burden in proportion to labour incomes, 1928-40 91 5.1. German and Soviet war production, 1940-5 100 5.2. Logistic curves fitted to war production series: five cases 102 5.3. Employment in the German and Soviet economies, 1939/40 104 5.4. The relative volume of industrial production in physical units, 1940 105 5.5. Agricultural employment and productivity in Germany and the Soviet Union, 1938/40 107

Vil viii List of tables

5.6. Output per worker in German industry, 1940--4 109 5.7. Labour productivity in Soviet industry, 1928-50 110 5.8. Labour productivity in Soviet engineering and metalworking, 1941-5 112 5.9. Numbers of weapon types in production in Germany and the Soviet Union, 1944 113 5.10. Production runs of Soviet aircraft, 1941-5 114 6.1. Innovation in liquid-fuelled rocketry, Germany and USSR, 1931-49 120 6.2. Soviet rocket specialists and officials sent to Germany, 1945-6 133 6.3. Main items of German rocketry captured by Soviet forces, 1945 138 6.4. Summary of German jet propulsion technology captured by Soviet forces, 1945 140 7.1. Uranium ore mined in the USSR and allied or occupied territory, 1945-50 166 7.2. Plan of finance of 'special works' for 1951-5 168 11.1. MP-33: the supply of weaponry and combat equipment envisaged for one year of waging war in 1933 209 11.2. MP-1: the supply of weaponry and industrial materials envisaged for one year of waging war in 1939 211 11.3. The dimensions of four specialised military-industry commissariats, January 1939 214 11.4. The planned military equipment orders of NKO, by supply commissariat, 1940 215 11.5. The planned military equipment orders of NKO, by supply commissariat, currently and in the event ofwar, 1940 216 11.6. Weapons and military equipment ordered and supplied, 1939-40 219 List of figures

5.1. Fitted logistic curves of war production: five cases 103 6.1. The technological frontier of jet propulsion in the 1940s: a~~~ 1~

ix Preface

This book had its origins in a series of meetings between Nikolai Simonov, Boris Starkov, and the editors in England and Russia in the early 1990s. With the fall of the Soviet state, Russian archives were offering new opportunities for historical research on hitherto closed topics. Through the twists and turns of the Russian post-Communist transition, the political stock of the Russian defence-industry complex performed strongly. At the same time its true history remained unwritten. International collaborative teamwork seemed the most effective bridge between old-style Sovietology and the new prospect of path-breaking investigation of the primary documents held in state, mil• itary, and party archives. In the course of this research the circle of our collaborators widened. We were joined by the senior British economic historian of the Soviet Union R.W. Davies, the Swedish military-economic historian Lennart Samuelson, and, from St Petersburg, members of Boris Starkov's group of researchers on the history of the defence industry. Our work was underpinned by financial support from the British Economic and Social Research Council in the period from the summer of 1994 to the late autumn of 1996. The present book is the result of this collaboration. It deals with the history of the Russian defence complex in its formative years. In 1917 Soviet leaders had believed themselves to be at the forefront of a movement which would end in worldwide revolution and social transformations on a continental scale. Within a few years these expectations proved illusory. The book begins in the mid-1920s as the new Soviet state grappled with new realities - a world at peace, but full of hostility, and of enemies within as well as without. Soviet leaders found themselves still in power, but weakened and isolated. They launched their country into the process of building ' in a single country'. In the 1930s under Stalin's rule the Soviet Union rearmed and its defence industry expanded, though at heavy cost. In the 1940s the country fought off Hitler's deep invasion, mobilised its economic and industrial resources, and played a major part in the eventual defeat of the Axis powers; then it had to face a postwar world of terrifying new weapons and new industrial requirements. By the 1950s, when Khrushchev assumed the leader• ship, the Soviet Union had transformed itself into a global military-industrial power. Thus the years which ran from Stalin to Khrushchev comprise an era in which the Soviet Union really did revolutionise the international economic and political order. This book is organised in five parts. Part I presents an overview - a collective evaluation (Chapter 1) of the main themes of the book by the

x Preface xi principal Russian and English participants in the project. Parts II and III cover various aspects of the defence-industry complex in two historical phases of its formation: the interwar years (Chapters 2 to 4), and the wartime and postwar phase (Chapters 5 to 7). Part IV reviews issues in the social history of the defence-industry complex, taking two cities as subjects of three case studies (Chapters 8to10). Part V considers how the defence-industry complex was regulated by military and economic planners and by the security organs (Chapters 11 to 13). The historical documents on which this book is based are scattered through a dozen different archives. Russian archives, like the Russian economy, social order, and political system, are today in transition. The transition from secrecy to openness is just as difficult and painful as the transition from state socialism to a market economy, or from the one-party state to a pluralist democracy. This applies in particular to defence-related fields, even where the defence issues lie entirely in the past. Many such documents have been entirely declassified and are accessible to anyone. Others may be cited but not quoted, or quoted but not identified by their catalogue reference of fond, opis', and delo. This explains much of the lack of uniformity in the style of archival references of the different chapters, which would otherwise be regrettable. Many more documents continue to be withheld from scholarly investigation. They will keep their surprises for future generations, perhaps even forever. Acknowledgements

The editors wish to express their collective thanks to the Economic and Social Research Council for financial support under grant no. R000221176, to the Centre for Russian and East European Studies of the University of Birming• ham, to King's College, Cambridge, and to the University of Warwick Research and Teaching Innovations Fund for other financial support, and to the University of Warwick for the grant of study leave; to Dr N.S. Simonov and Prof. B.A. Starkov for their indispensible collaboration; to Prof. J.M. Cooper, Prof. R.W Davies, Dr E.A. Rees, Dr Lennart Samuelson, and the late Prof. P.J.D. Wiles, for advice and help over the long period in which this project was devised and executed (at the final stage, Prof. Davies and Dr Rees also read the whole typescript and contributed many valuable comments and criticisms); to the directors and staff of the following archives for assistance to the authors and access to documents: APRF (the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, Moscow), Arkhiv Sluzhby Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii• skoi Federatsii (the Foreign Intelligence Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow), Arkhiv Soveta Ministrov SSSR (the Archive of the Council of Ministers of the USSR (Moscow), Arkhiv UFSB (the Archive of the St Petersburg and Leningrad District Administration of the Federal Security Service, St Petersburg), Arkhiv UNKVD (the Archive of the St Petersburg District Administration of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, St Petersburg), GARF (the State Archive of the Russian Federation), RGAE (the Russian State Economics Archive), RGVA (the Russian State Military Archive), RTsKhIDNI (the Russian Centre for Conservation and Study of Documents of Contemporary History), TsA FSBR (the Central Archive of the Federal Security Service of Russia, Moscow), and TsGA IPD (the Central State Archive of Historical Political Documents, St Petersburg); and to Carfax Publishers for permission to use material for Chapters 2 and 4 from articles previously published in Europe-Asia Studies. Chapter 2 is a revised version of Simonov, N.S., '"Strengthen the defence of the land of the Soviets": the 1927 "war alarm" and its consequences', Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 48(8), 1996, 1355-64; Chapter 4 is revised and substantially abridged from Harrison, M., and Davies, R.W, 'The Soviet military-economic effort under the second five• year plan (1933-1937)', Europe-Asia Studies, 49(3), 1997, 369-406. The authors are additionally and separately grateful as follows: Lennart Samuelson (Chapter 3) to the Stockholm Institute for East European Eco• nomies, the Swedish Institute, and the Wallander Research Foundation for financial support; R.W Davies and Mark Harrison (Chapter 4) to the ESRC for financial support of research on 'Economic development and centre-local

xii Acknowledgements Xlll

relations in the Soviet command economy' (principal investigators: Prof. R.W Davies and Dr E.A. Rees) under grant no. R000235636; Mark Harrison (Chapter 5) to the participants in the All-University of California economic history conference at UC Santa Barbara (especially Gregory Grossman, David Holloway, and Kerry Ellen Pannell) for discussion and comments; Mark Harrison (Chapter 6) to the members of economic history seminars at the University of Warwick and All Souls' College, Oxford (especially Naomi Azrieli, Stephen Broadberry, Nick Crafts, Charles Feinstein, and Avner Offer) for discussion and comments, and to Mike Berry, David Edge• rton, and David Holloway for help with sources. Notes on the contributors

John Barber is Fellow and Vice-Provost of King's College, Cambridge, Lec• turer in Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge, author of Soviet historians in crisis, 1928-1932 (Macmillan, 1981) and co-author (with Mark Harrison) of The Soviet home front, 1941-5: a social and economic history of the USSR in World War II (Longman, 1991).

R.W. Davies is Emeritus Professor of Russian Economic Studies at the Uni• versity of Birmingham, co-editor (with Mark Harrison and S.G. Wheatcroft) of The economic transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1994), and author of The Industrialization of Soviet Russia (Macmillan) of which four volumes have appeared since 1980 and further volumes are now in preparation.

Viktoriia Glazyrina is a research student in the Department of History of the State University of Economics and Finance, St Petersburg.

Mark Harrison is Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, co• author (with John Barber) of The Soviet home front, 1941-5: a social and economic history of the USSR in World War 11 (Longman, 1991), co-editor (with R.W. Davies and S.G. Wheatcroft) of The economic transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1994), author of Accounting for war: Soviet production, employment and the defence burden, 1940-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1996), and editor of The economics of World War 11: six great powers in international comparison (Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Natalia Lebina is Professor of Russian History at the State University of Economics and Finance, St Petersburg, chief editor of the "Russian everyday life" section in the journal Rodina, and author of books and articles on Russian social history including (with M.V Shkarovskii) Prostitutsiia v Peter• burge, 40-e gody XIX veka-40e gody XX veka [Prostitution in St Petersburg from the 1840s to the 1940s] (Progress-akademiia, 1994).

Aleksandr Losik is Professor of Russian History at the Aerospace Academy, St Petersburg.

Lennart Samuelson is Research Fellow in the Department of Strategic Stu• dies of the National Defence College, Stockholm, and author of Plans for Stalin's war-machine: Tukhachevskii and military-economic planning, 1925-41, (Macmillan, in press).

xiv Notes on the contributors xv

Aleksandr Shcherba is Reader in Russian History at the Aerospace Academy, St Petersburg.

Nikolai Simonov, formerly Senior Researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, is author of Voenno• promyshlennyi kompleks SSSR v 1920-1950-e gody: tempy ekonomicheskogo rosta, struktura, organizatsiia proizvodstva i upravlenie [The military-industrial complex of the USSR from the 1920s to the 1950s: rates of economic growth, structure, production organisation, and management) (Rossiiskaia politiches• kaia entsiklopediia, 1996).

Boris Starkov is Professor of Russian History at the State University of Economics and Finance, St Petersburg, and author of Dela i liudi Stalinskogo vremeni [Affairs and people of the Stalin period) (Izdatel'stvo Sankt-Peter• burgskogo universiteta ekonomiki i finansov, 1995). Glossary and abbreviations

Note

The name adopted for ministries in Soviet Russia after the revolution was narodnyi komissariat or 'people's commissariat'. Narodnyi komissariat was usually abbreviated to narkomat, or narkom- (e.g. Narkomfin, the People's Commissariat of Finance), or to the initial letters NK- (e.g. NKVD, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs). On 15 March 1946 the people's commissariats were renamed ministerstva ('ministries'), abbreviated to Min• ( e.g. Minfin) or to the initial letter M- (e.g. MVD).

GIRD Jet Propulsion Research Group of Osoaviakhim (until 1933) GIRT State Institute for jet propulsion technology of N arkomboepripasov, 1942-44 GKO or GOKO State Defence Committee, the war cabinet (1941-5) Glavredmet chief administration of rare metals of Narkomtsvetmet/Mintsvetmet GNP gross national product Gosplan State Planning Commission (of the Council of Ministers, formerly Sovnarkom) chief administration of corrective-labour camps of the MVD (NKVD) GVMU chief war-mobilisation administration of Narkomtiazhprom KB design bureau; also TsKB (central design bureau), OKB ('experimental' or 'special' design bureau), and so on krai territory - usually a group of national or ethnic autonomous regions within a Union Republic (e.g. the Krasnoiarsk krai of the Russian Federation) MGB (NKGB) Ministry (Commissariat) of State Security (1943-53) Minaviaprom Ministry (Commissariat) of the Aircraft Industry (N arkomaviaprom) Minoboronprom Ministry (Commissariat) of the Defence (N arkomoboronprom) Industry (1936-9 and 1953 onwards)

xvi Glossary and abbreviations xvii

Minselmash the postwar Ministry of Agricultural Machinery (in wartime, Narkomboepripasov) Minsredmash Ministry of Medium Engineering (1953 onwards) Mintsvetmet Ministry (Commissariat) of Nonferrous (N arkomtsvetmet) Metallurgy Minvooruzheniia Ministry (Commissariat) of Armament (N arkomvooruzheniia) MO (NKO) Ministry (Commissariat) of Defence (1934-46 and from 1953) MVD (NKVD) Ministry (Commissariat) of Internal Affairs (from 1934) Narkomaviaprom see Minaviaprom N arkomboepripasov the wartime Commissariat for Ammunition Narkomfin Commissariat of Finance Narkommash Commissariat of Engineering (1936-9) Narkomoboronprom see Minoboronprom Narkomtiazhprom Commissariat of Heavy Industry (1932-6) N arkomtsvetmet see Mintsvetmet N arkomvooruzheniia see Minvoornzheniia NII research institute NKGB seeMGB NKO see MO (from 1934) NKVD seeMVD NKVM Commissariat of Military and Naval Affairs (until 1934) NMP ob last' region (formerly province) within a Union Republic, with a city as its capital (e.g. Leningrad oblast', Sverdlovsk oblast') OGPU Unified State Political Administration (security agency until 1934, predecessor of the NKVD) OKB see KB Osoaviakhim (1) Society for Cooperation in Air and Chemical Defence (i.e. civil defence) (2) the codename of the operation to deport German specialists to the USSR (October 1946) PGU First Chief Administration of the Council of Ministers (Sovnarkom) R&D research and development raion district - a neighbourhood or ward within a region or urban settlement xviii Glossary and abbreviations

RNII Jet Propulsion Research Institute of Narkomtiazhprom (lead design organisation for rocketry, 1933-8) RVS or Rewoensovet Revolutionary Military Council RZSTO the business sessions of STD Sharashka penal research or design establishment under the NKVD-MVD Sovnarkom Council of People's Commissars (renamed the Council of Ministers in March 1946) STO Council of Labour and Defence TsAGI Zhukovskii Central Aero-Hydrodynamics Institute of Minaviaprom Ts KB see KB VGU Second Chief Administration of the Council of Ministers (Sovnarkom) VSNKh Supreme Council of the National Economy (1917-32)