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 STALINISM 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-Soviet Union-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 closed city 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 Germany, 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.