Kharkiv Tractor Plant (KhTZ or HTZ) ( uk, Харківський тракторний завод, translit=Kharkivskyi Traktornyi Zavod) is an
agricultural machinery
Agricultural machinery relates to the mechanical structures and devices used in farming or other agriculture. There are many types of such equipment, from hand tools and power tools to tractors and the countless kinds of farm implements that ...
manufacturer in the
Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
city of
Kharkiv
Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.[Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...]
's
First Five-Year Plan
The first five-year plan (russian: I пятилетний план, ) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a list of economic goals, created by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, based on his policy of socialism in ...
for
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
industrialization (1927-1932), KhTZ was Ukraine's largest
tractor
A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most commo ...
manufacturer, producing both wheeled and tracked tractors. In 2016, the Ukrainian security service (SBU) alleged that at the
Kremlin's direction the Russian owners were planning to decommission the enterprise. The industrial plant was reported destroyed by extensive shelling and resulting fires on the fourth day of the Russian Federation's invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022.
History
Building of the Plant in the First Five Year Plan
The Kharkiv Tractor Plant, on the south-east edge of Kharkiv, was one of three major tractor plants (the others at
Stalingrad and
Chelyabinsk
Chelyabinsk ( rus, Челя́бинск, p=tɕɪˈlʲæbʲɪnsk, a=Ru-Chelyabinsk.ogg; ba, Силәбе, ''Siläbe'') is the administrative center and largest city of Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. It is the seventh-largest city in Russia, with a ...
) built as one of "the giants of the first five-year plan", and was named after the Commissar for Heavy Industry, the
Sergo Ordzhonikidze
Sergo Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze,, ; russian: Серго Константинович Орджоникидзе, Sergo Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze) born Grigol Konstantines dze Orjonikidze, russian: Григорий Константино ...
Kharkiv Tractor Works. In the 1920s tractors had been seen as a way of improving agricultural production and persuading the peasantry of the merits of the regime and voluntary collectivisation. However, it was said that in the Spring of 1929 only five were functioning in Ukraine where a huge amount of agricultural production took place.
Tractor production was therefore an important part of the new five-year plan. But with policies of forced
collectivisation
Collective farming and communal farming are various types of, "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member- ...
and 'the liquidation of the kulaks as a class', tractors became even more important symbolically and practically - to increase output and to compensate for the widespread loss of horses which were slaughtered in peasant resistance to forced collectivisation.
The plant was constructed upon designs formulated by
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
architect
Albert Kahn, the designer for
Henry Ford
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that mi ...
, for the similar scale tractor factory in
Stalingrad. Although not a carbon copy of the
Stalingrad plant in terms of either material or labor, it was an early example of architectural standardization in the USSR.
Stalin described the project as "a steel bastion of the collectivisation of agriculture in the Ukraine" and trusted that the workers and the engineering and technical personnel would "overcome the difficulties of the young enterprise" by utilizing the experience of the Stalingrad Works".
Construction of the plant began in April 1930 in the steppe behind the station of Losevo, located 15 kilometers southeast of Kharkiv. The aim was a plant that would eventually make almost everything needed for a tractor from the iron and steel to the most complex parts. Construction involved some 10,000 workers, 2000 horses, 90 million bricks, 160,000 tons of steel and 100,000 tons of iron. The building workers were former peasants escaping collectivisation, demobilised Red Army soldiers and some members of the Komsomolsk. They lived in primitive conditions in some 1500 wooden barracks.
Bricks were made on site with kilns constructed for the purpose and using local clay - some of which was dug out of the foundations. Materials were often hauled by hand and sleds. There were few machines - 24 powered concrete mixers and 4 gravel crushers. Building techniques often had to be learned on site by workers who in the past might only have built wooden peasant houses with their brick stoves.
Workers were encouraged by the propaganda of the time which praised heroes like the bricklayer Arkady Mikunis who was said to have laid 12,000 bricks in a day in a contrived example of fast work or a young woman, Varva Shmel, who went from being a peasant girl to a mechanic. The plant had its own newspaper (Temp) and agitators. Forms of socialist competition were used and slackers could be punished by denunciation on wall newspapers.
The shell of the plant was competed by July 1931. Some 500 specially selected workers were sent on special training courses in Moscow and Leningrad to learn how to use the new imported equipment. The first test tractors were produced in August and full production begun in October 1931. The opening of the plant was a major propaganda event both in the Ukrainian SSR and the wider USSR.
The Factory in the 1930s
In October 1931, the plant started the production of the SXTZ 15/30 wheel-type tractors, which was equipped with a 30-horsepower kerosene engine and developed a speed of 7.4 km / h. The tractor was a copy of the “International 15/30” tractor produced by the American company
International Harvester
The International Harvester Company (often abbreviated by IHC, IH, or simply International ( colloq.)) was an American manufacturer of agricultural and construction equipment, automobiles, commercial trucks, lawn and garden products, household e ...
. The first director of the plant was P. I. Svistun. By the following year, In 1932, 17 374 tractors came off the assembly line and the works was awarded the Order of Lenin. In 1936, the 150,000th tractor is said to have left the plant.
On September 17, 1937, the KhTZ began serial production of the caterpillar tractor SXTZ-NATI. This was the first mass-produced tractor of Soviet design.
On the plant's opening in 1931, American Communist
Fred Beal
Fred Erwin Beal (1896–1954) was an American labor-union organizer whose critical reflections on his work and travel in the Soviet Union divided left-wing and liberal opinion. In 1929 he had been a ''cause célèbre'' when, in Gastonia, North Car ...
was appointed director of Propaganda and Cultural Relations for its colony of several hundred foreign workers and specialists, mostly Americans, Germans and
Czechoslovaks. Under his name, Moscow published a ''Pictorial Survey'' of their contribution to "socialist construction". In this, Beal admitted only to the voluntary renunciation of "luxuries". Later, he was to give a very different account. The colony suffered acute shortages of food and fuel, but was "divided by a chasm from the ten thousand Russian workers employed". To protest their conditions, these workers resorted to the only weapon open to them, "silent sabotage". Meanwhile, the crowds of the hungry and dispossessed who daily besieged the foreign colony were regularly trucked out into countryside and abandoned in deserted villages and on wasteland.
"Engineers" often picked for their political loyalty, would be rushed through their schooling and let loose upon the factory where they would seek to corect the work of the distrusted foreign specialists. The result was breakable parts, ruined machinery and hampered production. According to Beal, who remained until the summer of 1933, "the average tractor sent out from the plant had a very short life".
The bosses of the plant and some of its workers were inevitably caught up in the purges of the later 1930s. These included the party agitator Boris Bibikov, who was shot as a Trotskyite but who it seems had sympathised with Kirov. Part of his story is told by his grandson, Owen Matthews, in an English language family memoir. Amongst the accusations made in these cases were various forms of sabotage in the plant including breaking machines, delaying the payment of wages etc.
World War II, The Great Patriotic War
During the Second World War, the plant's equipment was evacuated to Stalingrad and then to Rubtsovsk, in the
Altai Krai in
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
. There it was the basis of the M. I. Kalinin Altai Tractor Plant, which began production in 1942. The original Kharkiv plant itself was almost completely destroyed during the war.
On 24 October 1941, after a four-day battle, Kharkiv and the district was occupied by German forces. On 14 December, the German ''Stadtkommandant'' ordered the Jewish population to be concentrated in a hut settlement near the KhTZ. In two days, 20,000 Jews were gathered there. Those Jews that an SS ''Sonderkommando'' did not shoot were killed throughout January in a
gas van
A gas van or gas wagon (russian: душегубка, ''dushegubka'', literally "soul killer"; german: Gaswagen) was a truck reequipped as a mobile gas chamber. During the World War II Holocaust, Nazi Germany developed and used gas vans on a large ...
.
When Kharkiv was liberated by
Soviet forces for the final time in August 1943, work immediately began on rebuilding the factory.
Production restarted at the end of 1944.
Soviet Era to 1991
![The Soviet Union 1947 CPA 1205 stamp (Kharkiv Tractor Plant) cancelled](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/The_Soviet_Union_1947_CPA_1205_stamp_%28Kharkiv_Tractor_Plant%29_cancelled.jpg)
From 1949 the plant made the DT-54 diesel tractor, the main ploughing tractor used in agriculture until 1962. From 1954 to 1972 the plant also produced a wheel-type row-crop tractor with a tractive force of 0.6 tons-force. In 1962 the T-74 ploughing tractor went into production. The plant produced its millionth tractor in 1967. During the ninth five-year plan (1971–75) the T-150K was introduced.
The Soviet era factory was awarded the
Order of the Red Banner of Labour
The Order of the Red Banner of Labour (russian: Орден Трудового Красного Знамени, translit=Orden Trudovogo Krasnogo Znameni) was an order of the Soviet Union established to honour great deeds and services to th ...
in 1948, another
Order of Lenin
The Order of Lenin (russian: Орден Ленина, Orden Lenina, ), named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was established by the Central Executive Committee on April 6, 1930. The order was the highest civilian decoration b ...
in 1967, and the
Order of Georgi Dimitrov
The Order of Georgi Dimitrov (or Order of Georgy Dimitrov, bg, Орден Георги Димитров) was the highest award of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. It was instituted on 17 June 1950 and awarded to Bulgarians and foreigners for out ...
in 1975.
In the 1980s, the plant achieved maximum productivity – the output was up to 70,000 tractors a year. For small farms and small jobs, low-power tractors with engines from 12 to 24 hp, such as XTZ-7, DT-14, T-19, T-20 and T-25 were produced, as well as the medium powered DT-54 and DT-75. By the beginning of 1986 the plant was supplying tractors to 36 countries and prepared production of new models of large-capacity wheeled tractors: T-150KM and T-150K-02.
Post-Soviet era
In 1994, two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of Ukraine, the plant was transformed into an open joint stock company. In the new century, the plant was producing tractors, including universal wheeled tractors of general purpose XTZ-17221 and XTZ-17222, as well as upgraded the T-150 series, the wheeled arable XTZ-16131, the crawler-type XTZ-181, the machinery for farmers ХТZ-3510, wheel loaders ХТZ-156.
In addition to tractors, the Kharkiv Tractor Plant (HTZ) also produced military products – artillery tractors ATL. In the 2000s it was producing light multi-purpose tractors MT-LB and self-propelled artillery units produced on its basis – 2C1 “Gvozdika”.
The KhTZ District
In 1936, Ordzhonikidzevskyi, the "socialist city" (''sotsgorod'') that developed around the plant to house its workers, had been named like the factory after
Sergo Ordzhonikidze
Sergo Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze,, ; russian: Серго Константинович Орджоникидзе, Sergo Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze) born Grigol Konstantines dze Orjonikidze, russian: Григорий Константино ...
(who died the following year). In February 2016, twenty-five years after the break up of the Soviet Union, it was renamed
Industrialnyi District to comply with
decommunization laws.
[Another 48 streets and 5 districts "decommunized" in Kharkiv]
Ukrayinska Pravda
''Ukrainska Pravda'' ( uk, Українська правда, lit=Ukrainian Truth) is a Ukrainian online newspaper founded by Georgiy Gongadze on 16 April 2000 (the day of the Ukrainian constitutional referendum). Published mainly in Ukrai ...
(3 February 2015)
Three districts renamed in Kharkiv
SQ (3 February 2015)
It was decided not to rename the Zhovtnevyi and the Frunzenskyi districts in Kharkiv
Korrespondent.net
The ''Korrespondent.net'' (russian: Корреспондент.net; uk, Кореспондент.net; literally: ''Correspondent'') is an online newspaper in Ukraine launched in 2000. It is a sister project to the '' Korrespondent'' printed weekl ...
(3 February 2015) The popular name for neighbourhood was, and has remained, "KhTZ", with a reputation of being one of the more socially deprived areas of the Kharkiv.
Alleged Russian plot against the plant in 2016
In 2007, the local investor
Oleksandr Yaroslavskyi
Oleksandr Vladylenovych Yaroslavskyi ( uk, Олександр Владиленович Ярославський; born 5 December 1959, Zhdanov) is a Ukrainian businessman. He was formerly co-owner of UkrSibbank and president of FC Metalist Kha ...
sold his majority stake in the concern to the Russian billionaire
Oleg Deripaska.
In 2006 Deripaska had been described in leaked
U.S. diplomatic cables as "among the 2–3 oligarchs
Vladimir
Vladimir may refer to:
Names
* Vladimir (name) for the Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak and Slovenian spellings of a Slavic name
* Uladzimir for the Belarusian version of the name
* Volodymyr for the Ukr ...
Putin turns to on a regular basis".
In 2016, after the Ukraine government had sold its near-30 percent stake as part of a widespread sell-off of businesses to private enterprise, the
Security Service of Ukraine
The Security Service of Ukraine ( uk, Служба безпеки України, translit=Sluzhba bezpeky Ukrainy}) or SBU ( uk, СБУ, link=no) is the law enforcement authority and main intelligence and security agency of the Ukrainian ...
(SBU) claims to have foiled a plot by the management of Deripaska's industrial group to effectively dismantle the Kharkov Tractor Plant,
that was then still producing 60 per cent of the tractors sold in Russia. Following the instructions of the Russian owners, the new General Director of the factory, appointed in March 2016, is said to have prepared the foundry equipment (as well as technical and design papers, blueprints, etc.) for dismantling and further export. It is also reported that the Director was preparing to discharge nearly a third of all workers. A corresponding order had been issued and a new staff list approved.
"Implementation of these plans would lead to a complete cessation of the Kharkiv Tractor Plant activities and sabotage of the Ministry of Defense order," the SBU said. The SBU seized control of the plant's property and accounts, a move that it says prevented the loss of production equipment and unique blueprints and saved nearly a thousand of skilled workers from discharge.
In late April 2016, with the support of Austrian businessman Siegfried Wolf who had been the nominal owner of plant under Deripaska's direction,
Yaroslavskyi's DCH groups resumed a controlling stake in the company.
Among the other assets of DCH (Development Construction Holding) are the
Sukha Balka Iron Ore Mine and the
Dnieper Metallurgical Combine
Dnieper Metallurgical Combine ( uk, Дніпровський металургійний комбінат , translit=Dniperovskyi Metalurhiynyi Kombinat) is one of the biggest metallurgical companies in Ukraine along with Kryvorizhstal and Illich ...
.
In November 2018, the Russian Federation put Yaroslavskyi on a sanctions list. Sanctions were also imposed on the companies belonging to DCH, including the Kharkov Tractor Plant. Yaroslavskyi described restrictive economic measures as a "political issue".
Plans for Ecopolis HTZ, 2022
On the 90th anniversary of the Kharkiv Tractor Plant, 1 October 2021, Yaroslavskyi's DCH group announced that its extensive industrial site would be redeveloped as Ukraine's largest technology park, "Ecoplis HTZ".
HTZ would continue as an anchor tenant, to be joined by participants in an innovation hub, a logistics and e-commerce complex, a medical center, an agro-technological cluster, a shopping center and research labs.
The construction of what would have been the largest of the new tenants, the automated logistics sorting hub for the national postal operator
Ukrposhta
JSC Ukrainian Postal Service or Ukrposhta ( uk, Укрпошта) is the national postal service of Ukraine. It is a public company with 100% state ownership due to its strategic importance. In 1999–2015 it was a unitary enterprise of the gov ...
, was to have started in March 2022. A number of global hi-tech companies were committed to follow, including the global IT giant
Hewlett Packard.
Ecopolis HTZ, was the central project of the Kharkiv Development Strategy and of President
Volodymyr Zelensky
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy, ; russian: Владимир Александрович Зеленский, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Zelenskyy, (born 25 January 1978; also transliterated as Zelensky or Zelenskiy) is a Ukrainian politicia ...
's National Program "Ukrainian Silicon Valley". Yaroslavskyi was to help co-ordinate an investment of about $1 billion to create more than 10,000 new high-tech jobs.
Destroyed in Russian invasion, February 2022
According to a Feb. 28, 2022, report from Agroportal24h, the Kharkiv Tractor Plant was destroyed and "engulfed in fire" by "massive shelling" from Russian forces.
There is video purporting to record explosions and fire at the plant on 25 and 27 February 2022.
On 22 March 2022, the Romanian news site ''Observator'' reported that KhTZ tractor production is to restart in Halboca, a village near the city of Jassy (Iași) in eastern Romania. KhTZ is moving salvaged equipment to Halboca where planning permission for the new plant is to be expedited.
Products
Until the Russian invasion in February 2022, the Kharkiv Tractor Plant was producing machines designed to perform a variety of functions in many industries, agricultural and communal services, construction.
KhTZ manufactures wheeled (180-240 hp) and tracked tractors (190 hp) for agriculture.
![XTZ-243K](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/XTZ-243K.jpg)
Wheeled tractors:
* XTZ-241K
* XTZ-242K
* XTZ-243K
* XTZ-248K
* XTZ-249K
* XTZ-150К-09.172.00
* XTZ-150К-09.172.10
![XTZ-181](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/XTZ-181.20.jpg)
Tracked tractors:
*ХТZ-181.20
* ХТZ-181.22
Special equipment:
* BKM-2M drilling and crane machine
* Mulcher
* ММТ-2, ММТ-2М
* Т-156B
* ММТ-2P
Gallery
File:McCormick-Deering 15-30 The First Tractor Propaganda Shot.jpg, McCormick-Deering 15-30 (International Harvester), father of "KhTZ 15-30" 1931
File:Трактор СХТЗ 15-30.jpg, First serial SKhTZ 15-30
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R0210-340, Sachsendorf, Maschinenpark der MAS.jpg, SKhTZ-NATI
File:T 150 K front.JPG, T-150K
File:XTZ-181.22.jpg, XTZ-181.22
File:Bohdana self-propelled howitzer (cropped).jpg, 2S22 Bohdana Self-propelled Howitzer
References
External links
Official websiteInstagram accountLinkedIn profile
{{Authority control
Tractor manufacturers of Ukraine
Ukrainian brands
Companies of Ukraine
Economy of Kharkiv
Industrialnyi District (Kharkiv)